Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Peter the Great
"Measure thy powers on thine undertaking - and not the undertaking by thy powers."
This bold advice, the dictum of a poet and fellow-countryman of my own, has been the almost indispensable inspiration of this historical work of mine. The figure which forms its subject - towering above the history, bound up, to this very hour, with the existence, of the Russian nation - is not one to be lightly approached.
Therefore it is that I have come to him so late, that I have worked backwards, up the course of the years, from the great Inheritress to the creator of her inheritance.
Have I dared, then, at last, to exchange glances with that great bronze giant, who, so the poets say, 'steps down, on twilight nights, from his granite pedestal, hard by the Neva river-bank, and rides through the sleeping city' - triumphant even in death? Have I indeed - oh, mighty ghost! who, for well-nigh two hundred years, like some terrible and familiar demon, hauntest the places thou didst know in life, - have I, in good truth, happened on the magic formula which brings back speech to phantoms, and builds life up around them, out of the dust of bygone days?
I have lived those dead hours over again, in fancy. I have seen the faces, I have felt the warmth, of the beings and the things that filled them.
About the Publisher
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
