PARTISAN REVIEW
forty years of age cut
his
own throat, lost a great deal of blood yet
lived through it. He was then put away in a mad-house. There he
crawled about on
his
hands and knees and devoured his own excre–
ment. The last line inscribed on his hospital report read:
Monsieur de
M aupassant va s'animaliser.
I read the book to the end and got up from bed. The fog came
close to the window and the world was hidden away. My heart con–
tracted as the foreboding of some essential truth touched me with
light fingers.
(Translated from the Russian by Raymond Rosenthal and
Waclaw Solski.)
