Chapter 9 Chapter nine

The relationship between Sebastian and Claire lasted six years.During this period, Sebastian wrote his first two novels: "The Slope of the Prism" and .It took him more than seven months to create the first part (April to October 1924), and twenty-two months to create the second part (July 1925 to April 1927). moon).Between the autumn of 1927 and the summer of 1929 he wrote three short stories, which were later (in 1932) republished under the title The Funny Mountain.In other words, Claire witnessed the creation of the first three of his five works in total (I omit works from his youth - such as the poems he wrote at Cambridge - which he himself destroyed).In the intervals between the creation of the above works, Sebastian has been planning this or that innovative project, sometimes changing it, sometimes putting it aside, sometimes making changes, so we can safely assume that during these six years he has been very busy. .And Claire loved his profession.

Claire broke into Sebastian's life without knocking, the way one walks in because a room resembles one's own.She stayed in this room, forgetting the way out, so she got used to the strange creatures inside silently, and stroked them, although their shapes surprised her.Claire had no particular intentions, no thought of making herself happy or making Sebastian happy, not even the slightest worry about what was going to happen afterwards; it was just a matter of naturally accepting living with Sebastian because Life without him is inconceivable, even more inconceivable than earthlings pitching tents on the mountains of the moon.If she had borne Sebastian a child, the two of them would probably have married quietly, as that was the easiest solution for them and the child; Thoughts had been made of conforming to custom and having an ethical white wedding ceremony; presumably both would have appreciated that if they had done the necessary considerations.Sebastian doesn't have your advanced "to hell with prejudice" stuff.He knew very well that showing contempt for the moral code would be tantamount to showing self-importance, tantamount to showing his prejudice.He usually chooses the ethical road that is easiest to follow (just as he chooses the aesthetic road that has the most thorns) simply because it is the best short-cut to his stated goal; same), unwilling to bother with problems that others have raised and solved.

Claire was twenty-two when she met Sebastian.She does not remember her father; her mother is also dead, and her stepfather is remarried, so that the vague notion of "home" given to her by her stepfather and his second wife can be interpreted in terms of the old Sophists. To put it figuratively, "replaced hilt and replaced blade", although she obviously couldn't hope to get the original hilt and blade back and fit them together - at least not in this lifetime.She lived alone in London, and she seemed to go to an art school, and she took courses in oriental languages, among other things.People liked her because she was quiet and pretty, with a face that was not bright but attractive, and a voice that was soft and husky, somehow haunting, as if God had endowed her with a genius in a subtle way to be remembered. : She came to your heart with a very clear image that people will never forget.Even her large hands with protruding knuckles had a special charm, and she was good at dancing, a light and silent dancer.But what was best about her was that she was one of those very, very rare women who don't take the world for granted, are insensitive, and don't see everyday things as merely familiar mirrors of their own femininity.She has an imagination—an influence of the soul—and her imagination has a particularly strong, almost masculine quality.She also has a real sense of beauty.This sense of beauty has less to do with art than with her relish in seeing a halo of sanctity around a frying pan, or a resemblance between a weeping willow and a Skye terrier.Last but not least, she has a god-given sharp sense of humor.No wonder she fit in so well with Sebastian.

They saw each other a lot in the early days; Claire went to Paris in the fall, and I suspect Sebastian visited her in Paris more than once.By then Sebastian's first book had been conceived.Claire had learned to type, so for her the summer nights of 1924 were pages that entered the feed slot of the typewriter and rolled out again with vivid words in black and purple.I can imagine Claire tapping lightly on the shiny keyboard, accompanied by the rustle of warm rain showers on the dark elms outside the window, accompanied by Sebastian's slow, serious voice (Pula Miss Te said that he was not just dictating, he was giving orders).Sebastian spends most of his day writing, but the progress is very difficult, so Claire typed and recorded only eleven or twelve pages of new content every night, and these are often reworked, because Sebastian often does whatever he wants and I daresay he would sometimes do what no writer would ever do—copy a typed page in crooked non-English writing, and then dictate it again.There are two reasons for his painstaking pains in using words.One is the case with all such writers: they have to cross the abyss between "means of expression" and "thought"; you feel that the right words, the only words available, are waiting on the far, foggy shore You, the feeling is maddening; and unclothed "thoughts" clamoring for the words on this side of the abyss is shuddering.Sebastian does not use ready-made phrases, because the things he wants to say have a special body, and he knows that real concepts cannot exist without tailor-made words to express them.So (to use a closer analogy), the apparently naked "thought" demands to be clothed so that it can be seen; and words that hide at a distance are not superficial shells, they are just waiting to be covered by them. veiled "thoughts" to ignite them, activate them.Sebastian sometimes felt like a child who had been given a big mess of wires and ordered to perform miracles of light.He did create it; sometimes he didn't even realize how he did it, and sometimes he spent hours ripping at wires in seemingly rational ways—without getting anything done.Claire had never composed a line of imaginative prose or poetry in her life, but she knew so well (that was her own miracle) every detail of Sebastian's painstaking efforts that, for her, What she typed is not so much a vehicle for conveying its natural meaning as it is a display of the loops, chasms, and detours that Sebastian groped through along the ideal line of expression.

But that's not all I want to say.I knew, as surely as I knew that Sebastian and I shared a father, that Sebastian's Russian was better and more natural than his English.I believe he may have forced himself to think he had forgotten Russian by not speaking Russian for five years.But language is a living and objective thing that cannot be easily dismissed.Also, it should be remembered that five years before his first book was published—that is, when he left Russia—his English was as poor as mine.A few years later, I improved my English artificially (by studying hard abroad); he tried to improve his English naturally in an English-speaking environment.His English has indeed improved amazingly, but I will say that if he had written in Russian to begin with, he would not have had so much pain in using the language.Let me say again that I have kept a letter he wrote me shortly before his death.That short letter was written in a purer and richer Russian than his English had ever been, no matter how beautiful the expressions he used in his writings.

I also know that when Clare jotted down the words Sebastian had picked out from the tangled manuscript, she would sometimes stop typing and gently pull out the Read that line, then frown slightly and say, "No, my dear, that doesn't speak English that way." Sebastian would stare at her, then continue pacing the room, reluctantly considering He listened to her opinion, while she gently folded her hands on her lap and waited quietly.Eventually Sebastian would mutter, "There's no other way to say that." "Well, what if, for example," Claire would say—and make a specific suggestion.

"Ah, well, if you like," Sebastian would reply. "I don't have to insist on my opinion, my dear, just do it your way, if you think bad grammar doesn't hurt..." "Ah, keep typing," he'd yell, "you're absolutely right, keep typing..." By November 1942, "Slant of the Prism" was complete.The novel, published in March of the following year, did not live up to expectations at all.I checked newspapers from that period, and as far as I know, the book is mentioned only once.It was in a Sunday paper, five and a half lines, interspersed with reviews of other books. "The Slant of the Prism is clearly a debut novel, so it should not be reviewed as harshly as (the aforementioned so-and-so's book). What is interesting about this book, in my opinion, is its Obscurity, and its obscurity is interesting, but there may also be a kind of fiction, the minutiae of which I can never fathom. But to help readers who like such things, I may add: Mr. Knight is good at describing Trivial details, as he is good at inserting adverbs between infinitives."

That spring was probably the happiest time of Sebastian's life.No sooner had he been freed from one book than he felt the vibration of the next.He's in great shape.He has a delightful companion.He was no longer troubled by the little worrying things that used to haunt him, like a swarm of ants relentlessly crawling all over the farm.Claire sent letters for him, checked laundry returns for him, made sure he had enough razor blades, tobacco, and salted almonds, which was one of his passions.He enjoyed going out to dinner with Claire and going to plays afterwards.Drama almost always made him sick and go home complaining, but he gradually found morbid pleasure in dissecting platitudes.He would dilate his nostrils at a word of greed, a word of wicked longing, and grit his back teeth in sudden disgust when he caught a small mistake.Miss Pratt recalled a time when her father, who was interested in investing in the film industry, invited Sebastian and Claire to see an expensive and spectacular in-house screening.The hero is a very handsome young man in a luxurious turban, and the plot is very dramatic.What surprised and annoyed Miss Pratt the most was that at the most tense moment of the plot, Sebastian laughed out loud, trembling all over. Claire was also very excited, but she kept tugging on his sleeve, helplessly Try to stop him.Sebastian and Claire must have had a great time together.It's hard to believe that this warm, cordial and beautiful time was not collected and treasured in some way by a god who witnessed the life of ordinary people.Fairies must have seen Sebastian and Claire walking in Kew or Richmond Park (I've never been to either park, but find their names fascinating); or seen them roaming the country in summer On the way, sitting in some nice little inn eating ham and eggs; or seeing them reading on the big sofa in Sebastian's study, the fire in the fireplace danced merrily, and the air was full of a kind of English Christmas. Nose, because a touch of spice is added to the scent of lavender and leather.The gods must have overheard Sebastian telling Claire about the unusual things he was going to describe in his next book.

One summer day in 1926, after painstakingly writing a particularly difficult chapter, Sebastian felt thirsty and dizzy, and he wanted to go on vacation abroad for a month.Clare was still in London on business, and she said she would see him in a week or two.When Claire finally arrived at the German seaside resort that Sebastian had decided to go to, to her surprise, the people at the hotel told her that Sebastian had gone somewhere, but he had been Will be back in two days.Clare was baffled by this; she later told Miss Pratt that she wasn't feeling too anxious or too upset at the time.We can imagine Claire's situation at the time: she was tall and thin, wearing a blue raincoat (the sky was cloudy and unfriendly), walking aimlessly on the seaside path; A child who was not disappointed; a few tricolor flags fluttered mournfully and rattled in the decaying breeze; and the steel-gray water lapped the beach here and there, crests turned to clouds of foam.On the far shore there was a beech forest, deep and dark, with no other shrubs in it but patches of creeping bindweed dotting the undulating brown soil; What was waiting between the smooth tree trunks: she thought that at any moment she might find a little land god in a red hat from a German fairy tale peeping at her from among the fallen leaves in the valley.She took out her swimming clothes and spent a happy but languid day lying on the soft white sand.It rained again the next morning and she stayed in the house until lunch reading John Donne, who for her has been forever associated with the gray light of that rainy day ever since Now, forever associated with the cry of a child clamoring to play in the hallway.Sebastian is coming soon.He must have been delighted to see Clare, but there was something awkward in his manner.He seemed tense and restless, and whenever Claire tried to look him in the eye, he kept turning his face away.He said he had met a man he had known years ago in Russia, and they had gone in his car—he named a place, on the coast a few miles away. "But, my dear, what's the matter?" she asked, studying his stern face.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," he said sullenly, "I can't sit here and do nothing, I want to do my job," he added, and looked away. "I wonder if you're telling the truth," she said. He shrugged, and touched the edge of his palm to the groove of the hat he was holding. "Come on," said he, "let's go to lunch and go back to London." But there was no convenient train that afternoon, and it would not be until evening.Since the sky had cleared, they went for a walk outside.Once or twice Sebastian tried to look as happy as he used to be with her, but it soon failed and neither of them spoke.They came to a beech wood.The woods were still as mysterious, full of monotonous suspense; although Claire didn't tell Sebastian that she had been here the day before, Sebastian said: "This place is so interesting, so quiet. It's scary, Can't you? You can probably count on seeing a brown pixie among those fallen leaves and bindweed."

"Listen, Sebastian," she cried suddenly, putting her hands on his shoulders, "I want to know what the hell is going on. You probably don't love me, do you?" "Oh, my dear, don't talk nonsense," he said with great sincerity, "but ... if you must know ... you understand ... I'm not a liar, well, I wanted you to know. The truth is , I had chest pains and arm pains that day, so I thought it would be best to go to a doctor in Berlin right away. The doctor put me in the hospital right then... Serious?... I hope not. We discussed coronary arteries, blood Supplies, aortic sinuses, etc., and in general he's a learned old chap. I'm off to London to see another doctor and get a second opinion, though I'm feeling fine today..." I think Sebastian already knows what he has.His mother died of the same disease, a rare form of angina that some doctors call "Leman's disease."On the face of it, however, there was at least a year between his first seizures, although during this time he felt a strange tingling in his left arm, as if it were tickling inside. He sat down to work again, and worked non-stop all autumn, winter, and spring.It turned out to be harder and longer for him to write than his first novel, even though the two books are about the same length.I was fortunate enough to learn about the day Sebastian finished writing.This was due to a person I met later—to be honest, many of the impressions I have made in this chapter were formed after I corroborated Miss Pratt's statement with another friend of Sebastian's, Although it's a bit of a mystery that the spark that set it all off came from a momentary impression of a plodding Claire Bishop on a London street. The door opened.Sebastian Knight can be seen sprawled flat on the study floor.Clare was binding the typed pages on the desk into a neat bundle.The man who entered the room stopped suddenly. "It's all right, Leslie," Sebastian said, lying on the floor. "I'm not dead. I've built a world. Today is my Sabbath. I'm resting."