'raptures over nature'

"But just look at this panorama!" Samoilenko said to him as the horses turned left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into view, and the river itself glistened—yellow, turbid, mad ...

"I don't see anything good in it, Sasha," replied Laevsky. "To constantly go into raptures over nature is to show the paucity of your imagination. All these brooks and cliffs are nothing but trash compared to what my imagination can give me."

The carriages were now driving along the riverbank. The high, mountainous banks gradually converged, the valley narrowed, and ahead was what looked like a gorge; the stony mountain they were driving along had been knocked together by nature out of huge stones, which crushed each other with such terrible force that Samoilenko involuntarily grunted each time he looked at them. The somber and beautiful mountain was cut in places by narrow crevices and gorges that breathed dampness and mysteriousness on the travelers; through the gorges, other mountains could be seen, brown, pink, purple, smoky, or flooded with bright light. From time to time, as they drove past the gorges, they could hear water falling from a height somewhere and splashing against the rocks.

"Ah, cursed mountains," sighed Laevsky, "I'm so sick of them!"

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Duel" (1891) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)