"Nevsky Prospect" by Nikolai Gogol

What a quick phantasmagoria is performed on it in the course of a single day! How many changes it undergoes in the course of a single day and night!

Governesses, pale misses and rosy Slavs, walk majestically behind their light, fidgety girls, telling them to raise their shoulders a bit higher and straighten their backs; in short, at this time Nevsky Prospect is a pedagogical Nevsky Prospect.

But the closer it comes to two o’clock, the fewer in number are the tutors, pedagogues, and children: they are finally supplanted by their loving progenitors, who hold on their arms their bright, multicolored, weak-nerved companions.

But the closer it comes to two o’clock, the fewer in number are the tutors, pedagogues, and children: they are finally supplanted by their loving progenitors, who hold on their arms their bright, multicolored, weak-nerved companions.

Here you will meet singular side-whiskers, tucked with extraordinary and amazing art under the necktie, velvety whiskers, satiny whiskers, black as sable or coal, but, alas, belonging only to the foreign office.

Providence has denied black side-whiskers to those serving in other departments; they, however great the unpleasantness, must wear red ones.

Here you will meet wondrous mustaches, which no pen or brush is able to portray; mustaches to which the better part of a lifetime is devoted—object of long vigils by day and by night; mustaches on which exquisite perfumes and scents have been poured, and which have been anointed with all the most rare and precious sorts of pomades, mustaches which are wrapped overnight in fine vellum, mustaches which are subject to the most touching affection of their possessors and are the envy of passers-by.

Here you will meet wondrous mustaches, which no pen or brush is able to portray; mustaches to which the better part of a lifetime is devoted—object of long vigils by day and by night; mustaches on which exquisite perfumes and scents have been poured, and which have been anointed with all the most rare and precious sorts of pomades, mustaches which are wrapped overnight in fine vellum, mustaches which are subject to the most touching affection of their possessors and are the envy of passers-by.

A thousand kinds of hats, dresses, shawls—gay-colored, ethereal, for which their owners’ affection sometimes lasts a whole two days—will bedazzle anyone on Nevsky Prospect.

It seems as if a whole sea of butterflies has suddenly arisen from the stems, their brilliant cloud undulating over the black beetles of the male sex.

Here you will meet such waists as you have never seen in dreams: slender, narrow waists, no whit thicker than a bottle’s neck, on meeting which you deferentially step aside, lest you somehow imprudently nudge them with your discourteous elbow; timidity and fear will come over your heart, lest somehow from your imprudent breath the loveliest work of nature and art should be broken.

...some company agent, a Russian in a half-cotton frock coat gathered at the back, with a narrow little beard, who lives all his life in a slapdash way, in whom everything moves—back and arms and legs and head—as he goes deferentially down the sidewalk; now and then a lowly artisan; you will not meet anyone else on Nevsky Prospect.

He flew along so quickly that he was constantly pushing staid gentlemen with gray side-whiskers off the sidewalk.

These artists do not in the least resemble Italian artists—proud, ardent, like Italy and its sky; on the contrary, they are for the most part kind and meek people, bashful, lighthearted, with a quiet love for their art, who drink tea with their two friends in a small room, who talk modestly about their favorite subject and are totally indifferent to all superfluity.

They paint almost everything in dull, grayish colors—the indelible imprint of the north.

She glanced at Piskarev, and his heart fluttered at this glance; it was a stern glance, a sense of indignation showed on her face at the sight of such insolent pursuit; but on this beautiful face wrath itself was bewitching.

He did not feel any earthly thought; he was not heated with the flame of earthly passion, no, at that moment he was pure and chaste, like a virginal youth, still breathing the vague spiritual need for love. And that which in a depraved man would arouse bold thoughts, that same thing, on the contrary, made him still more radiant.

...the worn faces of these pathetic creatures, one of whom sat down almost in front of his nose and gazed at him as calmly as at a spot on someone’s clothes—all this convinced him that he had come to one of those revolting havens where pathetic depravity makes its abode, born of tawdry education and the terrible populousness of the capital.

One of those havens where man blasphemously crushes and derides all the pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, the beauty of the world, the crown of creation, turns into some strange, ambiguous being, where, along with purity of soul, she loses everything feminine and repulsively adopts all the mannerisms and insolence of a man, and ceases to be that weak, that beautiful being so different from us.

One of those havens where man blasphemously crushes and derides all the pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, the beauty of the world, the crown of creation, turns into some strange, ambiguous being, where, along with purity of soul, she loses everything feminine and repulsively adopts all the mannerisms and insolence of a man, and ceases to be that weak, that beautiful being so different from us.

She opened her pretty lips and began to say something, but it was all so stupid, so trite.

She would have been a priceless pearl, the whole world, the whole paradise, the whole wealth of an ardent husband; she would have been the beautiful, gentle star of an unostentatious family circle, and would have given sweet orders with one movement of her beautiful mouth.

He saw at once so many venerable old and half-old men with stars on their tailcoats, ladies who stepped so lightly, proudly, and gracefully over the parquet or sat in rows, he heard so many French and English words, moreover the young men in black tailcoats were filled with such nobility, talked or kept silent with such dignity...

She looked at Piskarev with imploring eyes and motioned to him to stay where he was and wait for her to come back, but he, in a fit of impatience, was unable to obey any orders, even from her lips.

The unpleasant and wan light of vexatious day showed in his windows.

How lovely her graceful gait! how musical the sound of her footsteps and the rustle of her simple dress! how beautiful her arm clasped round with a bracelet of hair!

Taking opium enflamed his thoughts still more, and if anyone was ever in love to the utmost degree of madness, impetuously, terribly, destructively, stormily, he was that unfortunate man.

He breathed the fresh air and felt freshness in his heart, like a convalescent who has decided to go out for the first time after a long illness.

Summoning his courage, he began in a trembling and at the same time fervent voice to present her terrible position to her.

God! in these words all her low, all her contemptible life was expressed—a life filled with emptiness and idleness, the faithful companions of depravity.

“Marry me!” her friend, till then sitting silently in the corner, picked up with an impudent look.

There are officers in Petersburg who constitute a sort of middle class in society. You will always find one of them at a soiree, at a dinner given by a state or actual state councillor, who earned this rank by forty long years of labor.

In the theater, whatever the play, you will always find one of them, unless they are playing some Filatkas, which are highly insulting to their fastidious taste.

He declaimed verses from Dmitri Donskoy and Woe from Wit superbly well, and possessed a special art of producing smoke rings from his pipe so skillfully that he could suddenly send ten of them passing one through another.

He tried to expound it the more eloquently as two good-looking ladies were just passing by.

Despite his being under the inebriating fumes of beer and wine, he felt it somewhat indecent to be in the presence of an outside witness while looking and behaving in such a fashion.

He finally concluded that Schiller could be excused because his head was full of beer; besides, he pictured the pretty blonde and decided to consign it all to oblivion.

Lieutenant Pirogov decided not to abandon his quest, even though the German lady had obviously rebuffed him.

Besides, the rather pleasant, cool evening induced him to take a little stroll on Nevsky Prospect; toward nine o’clock he calmed down and decided it was not nice to trouble the general on a Sunday, and besides he had undoubtedly been summoned somewhere; and therefore he went to a soiree given by one of the heads of the college of auditors, where there was a very pleasant gathering of functionaries and officers.

It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks.