Ah..

This, resulted in yet another shame. Not the vile little urge to boast of my intelligence that had made me break the ice here and start talking, but a desire to "throw myself on others' necks." This desire to throw myself on people's necks so that they recognise me as good and start embracing me or something like that (swinishness, in short), I consider the most loathsome of all my shames, and I had suspected it in myself for a very long time- namely, ever since the corner I had kept myself in for so many years, though I don't regret it. I knew that I had to be gloomier among people. What comforted me, after each such disgrace, was simply that the "idea" was with me all the same, in secret as always, and that I hadn't betrayed it to them. With a sinking feeling, I sometimes imagined that once I had spoken my idea to someone, I would suddenly have nothing left, so that I'd become like everybody else, and might even abandon the idea; and so I preserved and cherished it and trembled at the thought of babbling. And then here, almost with the first encounter, I had been unable to hold out, I hadn't betrayed anything, of course, but I have babbled inadmissibly; the result was disgrace. A nasty recollection! No, it's impossible for me to live with people; I think so even now; I say it for forty years to come. My idea is- my corner!



I am a corner- I live in a corner.
I am but an adolescent.