Explore "A Legend" by Aleksandr Kuprin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The tall, thin, long-haired man, in whose face were so strangely blended the paleness of a life full of starvation and moral impurity and the stern profoundness of inspiration, began to play on his violin. It was a majestic, fairy tune, plaintively beautiful in its upper notes, dominated by sombre sadness in the lower. There was something medieval in it, something hopeless, unpleasantly sweet, cruel, prolonged, and terrifying.
The host, who considered himself a patron of music, dressed in a red dressing-gown, his large, light, wandering eyes glistening almost like those of a madman, arose from his chair, and, pretending to be overwhelmed by the ecstasy of creative inspiration, began to improvise a story to the music. And the studiedly irregular motions of his sleeves were overturning glasses and goblets on the wet cloth.