JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 32 из 124Naturally the publisher knew it immediately and this fact made him so uncomfortable that he advised Sebastian to modify the whole passage, a thing which Sebastian flatly refused to do, saying finally that he would get the book printed elsewhere – and this he eventually did.
'You seem to wonder', – he wrote in one letter, 'what on earth could make me, a budding author (as you say – but that is a misapplied term, for your authentic budding author remains budding all his life; others, like me, spring into blossom in one bound), you seem to wonder, let me repeat (which does not mean I am apologizing for that Proustian parenthesis), why the hell I should take a nice porcelain blue contemporary (X does remind one, doesn't he, of those cheap china things which tempt one at fairs to an orgy of noisy, destruction) and let him drop from the tower of my prose to the gutter below. You tell me he is widely esteemed; that his sales in Germany are almost as tremendous as his sales here; that an old story of his has just been selected for Modern Masterpieces; that together with Y and Z he is considered one of the leading writers of the "post-war" generation; and that, last but not least, he is dangerous as a critic. You seem to hint that we should all keep the dark secret of his success, which is to travel second-class with a third-class ticket – or if my simile is not sufficiently clear – to pamper the taste of the worst category of the reading public – not those who revel in detective yarns, bless their pure souls – but those who buy the worst banalities because they have been shaken' up in a modem way with a dash of Freud or "stream of consciousness" or whatnot – and incidentally do not and never will understand that the pretty cynics of today are Marie Corelli's nieces and old Mrs Grundy's nephews. Why should we keep that shameful secret? What is this masonic bond of triteness – or indeed tritheism? Down with these shoddy gods I And then you go and tell me that my "literary career" will be hopelessly handicapped from the start by my attacking an influential and esteemed writer. But even if there were such a thing as a "literary career" and I were disqualified merely for riding my own horse, still I would refuse to change one single word in what I have written. For, believe me, no imminent punishment can be violent enough to make me abandon the pursuit of my pleasure, especially when this pleasure is the firm young bosom of truth. There are in fact not many things in life comparable to the delight of satire, and when I imagine the humbug's face as he reads (and read he shall) that particular passage and knows as well as we do that it is the truth, then delight reaches its sweetest climax.
'You seem to wonder', – he wrote in one letter, 'what on earth could make me, a budding author (as you say – but that is a misapplied term, for your authentic budding author remains budding all his life; others, like me, spring into blossom in one bound), you seem to wonder, let me repeat (which does not mean I am apologizing for that Proustian parenthesis), why the hell I should take a nice porcelain blue contemporary (X does remind one, doesn't he, of those cheap china things which tempt one at fairs to an orgy of noisy, destruction) and let him drop from the tower of my prose to the gutter below. You tell me he is widely esteemed; that his sales in Germany are almost as tremendous as his sales here; that an old story of his has just been selected for Modern Masterpieces; that together with Y and Z he is considered one of the leading writers of the "post-war" generation; and that, last but not least, he is dangerous as a critic. You seem to hint that we should all keep the dark secret of his success, which is to travel second-class with a third-class ticket – or if my simile is not sufficiently clear – to pamper the taste of the worst category of the reading public – not those who revel in detective yarns, bless their pure souls – but those who buy the worst banalities because they have been shaken' up in a modem way with a dash of Freud or "stream of consciousness" or whatnot – and incidentally do not and never will understand that the pretty cynics of today are Marie Corelli's nieces and old Mrs Grundy's nephews. Why should we keep that shameful secret? What is this masonic bond of triteness – or indeed tritheism? Down with these shoddy gods I And then you go and tell me that my "literary career" will be hopelessly handicapped from the start by my attacking an influential and esteemed writer. But even if there were such a thing as a "literary career" and I were disqualified merely for riding my own horse, still I would refuse to change one single word in what I have written. For, believe me, no imminent punishment can be violent enough to make me abandon the pursuit of my pleasure, especially when this pleasure is the firm young bosom of truth. There are in fact not many things in life comparable to the delight of satire, and when I imagine the humbug's face as he reads (and read he shall) that particular passage and knows as well as we do that it is the truth, then delight reaches its sweetest climax.