JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 58 из 124The two lines which have finally tapered to the point of meeting are really not the straight lines of a triangle which diverge steadily towards an unknown base, but wavy lines, now running wide apart, now almost touching. In other words there have been at least two occasions in these two people's lives when unknowingly to one another they all but met. In each case fate seemed to have prepared such a meeting with the utmost care; touching up now this possibility now that one; screening exits and repainting signposts; narrowing in its creeping grasp the bag of the net where the butterflies were flapping; timing the least detail and leaving nothing to chance. The disclosure of these secret preparations is a fascinating one and the author seems argus-eyed as he takes into account all the colours of place and circumstance. But, every time, a minute mistake (the shadow of a flaw, the stopped hole of an unwatched possibility, a caprice of free will) spoils the necessitarian's pleasure and the two lives are diverging again with increased rapidity. Thus, Percival Q is prevented, by a bee stinging him on the lip, at the last minute, from coming to the party, to which fate with endless difficulty had managed to bring Anne; thus, by a trick of temper she fails to get the carefully prepared job in the lost property office where Q's brother is employed. But fate is much too persevering to be put off by failure. And when finally success is achieved it is reached by such delicate machinations that not the merest click is audible when at last the two are brought together.
I shall not go into further details of this clever and delightful novel. It is the best known of Sebastian Knight's works, although his three later books surpass it in many ways. As in my demonstration of The Prismatic Bezel, my sole object is to show the workings, perhaps detrimentally to the impression of beauty left by the book itself, apart from its artifices. It contains, let me add, a passage so strangely connected with Sebastian's inner life at the time of the completing of the last chapters, that it deserves being quoted in contrast to a series of observations referring rather to the meanders of the author's brain than to the emotional side of his art.
'William [Anne's first queer effeminate fiancй, who afterwards jilted her] saw her home as usual and cuddled her a little in the darkness of the doorway. All of a sudden, she felt that his face was wet. He covered it with his hand and groped for his handkerchief. "Raining in Paradise," he said… "the onion of happiness… poor Willy is willy nilly a willow." He kissed the corner of her mouth and then blew his nose with a faint moist squizzle. "Grown-up men don't cry," said Anne.
I shall not go into further details of this clever and delightful novel. It is the best known of Sebastian Knight's works, although his three later books surpass it in many ways. As in my demonstration of The Prismatic Bezel, my sole object is to show the workings, perhaps detrimentally to the impression of beauty left by the book itself, apart from its artifices. It contains, let me add, a passage so strangely connected with Sebastian's inner life at the time of the completing of the last chapters, that it deserves being quoted in contrast to a series of observations referring rather to the meanders of the author's brain than to the emotional side of his art.
'William [Anne's first queer effeminate fiancй, who afterwards jilted her] saw her home as usual and cuddled her a little in the darkness of the doorway. All of a sudden, she felt that his face was wet. He covered it with his hand and groped for his handkerchief. "Raining in Paradise," he said… "the onion of happiness… poor Willy is willy nilly a willow." He kissed the corner of her mouth and then blew his nose with a faint moist squizzle. "Grown-up men don't cry," said Anne.