“Was my childhood sad for some particular reason? The fact, for instance, that I grew up amid great solitude? Lonely fields, a solitary manor in their midst... In winter, a boundless snowy sea; in summer, a sea of grainfields, grass, and flowers. And the eternal quietude of those fields ... I knew all that, even then. The depth of the summer evening sky, the melancholy vista of the fields betokened something else that seemed to exist apart from them, called forth a dream and a yearning after something I lacked, moved me with an incomprehensible love and tenderness, I knew not for whom or for what...”
IVAN BUNIN - The Life of Arseniev
