spleenful

At times it would seem that all that the characters in Tranquility need do is to cross a spleenful of verbs to have angry sex with one another to share a bot-tle of slivovitz in grudging peace or to love each other in order to drive each other mad as though madness were like small pox a disease spread through some mysterious medium of contagion.

This is occasioned, like so much in Maud, by an intersection of external and internal sensation that exerts an influence on the speaker and, in this case, disrupts the "spleenful folly." It is important to note, however, that the dominant mode of utterance and bodily sensation for the protagonist at this important transition in the poem, is still one of excitability, seen clearly in the continuance of the trisyllabic foot with occasionally frenetic dactylic bursts: / x x / x x / x x / Maud in the light of her youth and her grace / x x / x x / x x / x / Singing of Death and of Honour that cannot die.

If, as is likely, Pushkin knew at the time he wrote the Tales who the real Joseph Delorme was, then it is easy to imagine that he conceived Belkin--incapable of dealing with his household problems, bullied by his housekeeper, and too bashful to talk to women--in direct opposition to the spleenful Delorme.