I am here through an error – not in this prison, specifically – but in this whole terrible, striped world; a world which seems not a bad example of amateur craftsmanship, but is in reality calamity, horror, madness, error – and look, the curio slays the tourist, the gigantic carved bear brings its wooden mallet down upon me.
And all these are worlds,” said Hagen. “Or else,” said Clements with a yawn, “a frightful mess. I suspect it is really a fluorescent corpse, and we are inside it.
To wonder at trifles – no matter the imminent peril – these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest form of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from common sense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.
I can only explain my behaviour then by the mechanism of that dream vacuum wherein revolves a deranged mind.
One thing should be established once for all, indefeasibly. I loved, love, and shall love only you. I implore you and love you with everlasting pain and passion, my darling.
Once a perfect little beauty in a tartan frock, with a clatter put her heavily armed foot near me upon the bench to dip her slim bare arms into me and tighten the strap of her roller skate, and I dissolved in the sun, with my book for fig leaf, as her auburn ringlets fell all over her skinned knee, and the shadow of leaves I shared pulsated and melted on her radiant limb next to my chameleonic cheek.
I may as well confess that I gave Luzhin my French governess, my pocket chess set, my sweet temper, and the stone of the peach I plucked in my own walled garden.
And I still have other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain.
What was it – through everything terrible, nocturnal, unwieldy – what was that thing? It had been last to move aside, reluctantly yielding to the huge, heavy wagons of sleep, and now it was first to hurry back – so pleasant, so very pleasant – swelling, growing more distinct, suffusing his heart with warmth: Marthe is coming today!
The years are passing, my dear, and presently nobody will know what you and I know.
Before letting go he looked down. Some kind of hasty preparations were under way there: the window reflections gathered together and leveled themselves out, the whole chasm was seen to divide into dark and pale squares, and at the instant when Luzhin unclenched his hand, at the instant when icy air gushed into his month, he saw exactly what kind of eternity was obligingly and inexorably spread out before him.
You are sure you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your coming? Tell me only this.
To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would – invariably, with icy precision – plump for the former.
He traveled, he studied, he taught... He learned to appreciate the singular little thrill of following dark byways in strange towns, knowing well that he would discover nothing, save filth and ennui and discarded merry cans with labels and the jungle jingles of exported jazz. He often felt that the famed cities, the museums, the ancient torture house and the suspended garden were but places on the map of his own madness.
Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I travelled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman’s fancy.
I have nothing but very sad associations with the Old and rotting World. No colored ads in your magazines will change the situation.’ ‘My.
Being mad, he failed to take into account the scheming of irresponsible politicians. Being mad, he believed that other governments would act in accordance with the principles of mercy and common sense.
When you wanted me to spend my afternoons sunbathing on the Lake instead of doing my work, I gladly gave in and became a bronzed glamor boy for your sake, instead of remaining a scholar and, well, an educator.
I could see the corridor window, where the wires-six thin black wires-were doing their best to slant up, to ascend skyward, despite the lightning blows dealt them by one telegraph pole after another; but just as all six, in a triumphant swoop of pathetic elation, were about to reach the top of the window, a particularly vicious blow would bring them down, as low as they had ever been, and they would have to start all over again.
The dining-room was curiously impersonal, like all places where people eat, – perhaps because food is our chief link with the common chaos of matter rolling about us.