14–20 March 1887

I will not conceal it: all the poetry of country life and solitude has vanished. I do not know why. Nowhere do I feel so miserable as at home. If I do not work, I torment myself, am afraid of the future, etc. Is solitude really necessary to me? When I am in town, country life seems a paradise; when I am here, I feel no delight whatever. To-day, in particular, I am quite out of tune.

Have just read through my diary for the last two years. Good heavens! how could my imagination have been so deceived by the melancholy bareness of Maidanovo? How everything used to please me!