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244
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
portant thing in life; and the social community of the
future lay in the vista it opened up, a community in
which each man should live for others, even as now
two live for each other. In all this lay very much of
Sonya’s deepest feeling and ideal of happiness.
The motto of the first part was to be, " What shall
it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
own sold ?" and of the second part, " He who loses his
life shall save it."
But after the first reading to our friends the work
entered into a new phase. Up to then we had seen it
as it might have been rather than as it was. Now all
the faults and shortcomings of the work, which had
been written in such feverish haste, became apparent.
And then began the tedious process of revision.
During the whole of that winter Sönya could not
bring herself to think of her great mathematical work,
though the date of the competition for the Prix Bordin
was already fixed.1 She ought to have been working
for it with the utmost diligence. Mittag Leffler, who
always felt a kind of responsibility for her, and knew
that it was of the greatest importance for her to gain
the prize, was in despair when, each time that he called
upon her, he found her embroidering in her
drawing-room. She had, just then, a perfect mania for
needlework. Like the Ingeborg of ancient romance, weaving
the deeds of her heroes, so she embroidered in silk and
wool the drama she could not indite with pen and ink.
WhUe her needle mechanically went in and out, her
imagination was at work, and one scene after the other
was pictured in her mind.
I, for my part, worked with the pen, and when we
found that needle and pen had arrived at the same
result, our joy was great. It certainly reconciled us
1 Appendix H.
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