skopia
Burckhardt invented cultural history by looking past popes and battles at how Renaissance Italians lived, finding the moment people began to think of themselves as individuals. We still see the period his way.
Walking home from Hampstead at night, a drawing master meets a woman all in white escaped from an asylum. Collins tells it as sworn testimony, and Victorian England bought Woman in White perfume.
Turgenev said this was the only work of his that still gave him pleasure. Vladimir, sixteen, loves the princess next door, twenty-one, and her secret lover is nobody he can fight.