Tuesday, 29 June

In the evening the Soviet Foreign Office invited me to watch a movie. It was about a good friend of Pushkin’s who shared the same name. He also died because of a love duel. The poets in our country never try to compose poems in order to make them famous. Usually if one couldn’t make a name for himself in politics, then he started composing poems. As he retreated and didn’t compete with people, and entertained himself with poems and wine, the words of the poems were mainly negative. But the two best-known poets died from fighting. One can see the difference between the Chinese [and Russian culture].