idle again...

“Idle again by dedication,
oppressed by emptiness of soul,
he strove to achieve the appropriation
of other’s thought – a splendid goal;
with shelves of books deployed for action,
he read, and read – no satisfaction:
here’s boredom, madness or pretence,
here there’s no conscience, here no sense;
they’re all chained up in different fetters,
the ancients have gone stiff and cold,
the moderns rage against the old.
He’d given up girls – now gave up letters”

Pushkin, Eugene Onegin and Other Poems