Chapter 16 Section VI

It was a Tuesday, and immediately after lunch he could stroll to his favorite spot and stay until supper time.The Wendell Library was not connected by a corridor to any other building, but it was connected closely and firmly to Pnin's heart.He walked past the large bronze statue of the first director of the academy, Alfus Frieze, wearing a sports cap and knickerbockers, clutching the bronze bike he had always intended to ride. The handlebar of a bicycle, the foot was just firmly in place, and that foot was permanently glued to the left pedal.There was snow on the saddle, and a few jokers recently strapped a ridiculous basket to the front of the handlebars, and there was snow in the basket too.Pnin shook his head and said "Huligani" angrily, and then he came to the turf-paved slope from which the winding path of leaf-leaved elms descended, and he accidentally stepped on a flat stone and nearly Son throw a bucket.In addition to the thick book under his right arm, he carried his briefcase in his left hand, that old, black portfel' of Central European style.He clenched the leather handle tightly, swung it rhythmically, and walked proudly towards his books, towards his office in the library, towards the Russian academic paradise.

A flock of pigeons, forming an oval circle, was circling the clear and pale sky above the College Library, now soaring high and turning gray, now flapping white and flying, now turning gray again.In the distance came the whistle of a train, as sad as it was driving on the prairie.A small squirrel ran across a small patch of snow in the sun in a panic. The shadow of a tree spread dark blue on the tea-green turf, and the bare tree pierced into the sky , there was a lively, scratching sound from above; the pigeons flitted there for the third and last time.By this time the squirrel had disappeared into the branch of the tree, squeaking non-stop, as if scolding the sinners who tried to snatch it from the tree.Pnin slipped again on the dirt-black snow of the trail and jerked an arm up to regain his balance.With a wretched smile, he stooped to pick up the fallen copy of "The Literary Treasury", which opened to reveal a snapshot on the illustrated page of Leo Tolstoy trudging along a Russian pasture , came towards the camera lens, and the horses with slender manes behind them also turned to the person taking the picture in a daze.

V boyu li, v stranstvii, v volnah? On the battlefield, on the journey, or on the raging waves?Either on the Wendell campus?A sticky layer of cheese stuck to Pnin's dentures, and he chewed gently for a while before stepping up the slippery steps of the library. Pnin, like many of the older faculty members at the college, had long since paid no attention to the presence of students on campus, in the hallways, and in the library—in short, not at all, except to pay attention to them in classrooms. where.At first it had made him uncomfortable to see some students sleeping soundly among the ruins of knowledge with their poor young heads on their arms; Except for the fact that he didn't seem to notice anyone in the reading room.

Mrs. Thayer was on duty at the cashier.Her mother and Mrs. Clements' mother were cousins. "How are you today, Professor Pnin?" "Very well, Mrs. Fell." "Have Laurence and Joan returned?" "Not yet. I brought the book because I got that recall card—" "I wonder if poor Isabel really wants a divorce." "No. Mrs. Fell, let me ask—" "If they do bring her back, I reckon we'll have to find another room for you again." "Mrs. Fell, let me inquire. I got this card yesterday—can you tell me who wants to borrow this book?"

"Let me check." She looked it up.The other reader turned out to be Timofey Pnin; last Friday he asked for volume eighteen.Likewise, volume eighteen was lent to this Pnin, and he took it out on Christmas Day, and is standing there with his hands resting on the book, and an ancestral photograph on it. One of the magistrates in 1990 posed exactly the same way. "Impossible!" cried Pnin. "It was the nineteenth, 1947 edition that I wanted last Friday, not the eighteenth, 1940 edition." "But you see—you've clearly written the eighteenth volume. Anyway, the nineteenth volume is still bound. Do you still read this?"

"Eighteen or nineteen," Pnin muttered. "It doesn't matter much! I've got the year right, that's all that matters! Well, I'm going to use the eighteenth volume--as soon as the nineteenth volume is bound, please send a notification card to I." Complaining slightly, he picked up the bulky and embarrassing book, went into a recessed nook he liked, and put the book there wrapped up in a green scarf. These women, they are so illiterate.The year is clearly written clearly. He went first, as usual, into the periodical reading room, where he read the news from the latest Russian paper. (Today is Saturday, February 12th—well, it's Tuesday's paper, what careless readers!) That daily newspaper has been started since 1918 by a group of Russian émigrés in Chicago.As usual, he scanned the advertisement column carefully.Dr. Popov, photographed in a new white coat, assures the elderly of the return of youth and happiness.A record company listed a catalog for sale in Russian, like "A Broken Life, A Waltz" and "Songs of Frontline Drivers" or something.One undertaker, somewhat of a character in a Gogol novel, boasted of his sumptuous hearses and said they were also suitable for picnic rides.Another Gogol-like character rents out "a two-room apartment to dlya trezvih in Miami, with fruit trees and flowers in the yard," while Hammond has "a A Quiet Little Family" longed to rent out a room in the family—and so the reader, somehow suddenly filled with passion, saw his parents, Dr. Pawell and Valeria Pnin, face to face forty years ago. Sitting in two armchairs in a small, brightly lit living room of his house on Galernaye Street in St. Petersburg, he was reading a medical magazine, she a political review.

He also perused the latest news on a long and tedious factional war between three exile groups.It was Party A who took the lead, condemning Party B for being dull, lifeless, and inactive, and exemplified it by the proverb, "He wants to climb the fir tree, but he is afraid of scratching the flesh on his calf." A scathing letter to the editorial office of an old optimist, titled "Fir Trees and Dullness," begins with the following sentence: "There is an American saying: 'He who lives in a glass house, don't try to throw a stone. Kill two birds.’” Recently, this newspaper published a 2,000-word essay by a representative of the C faction, entitled “On Fir Trees, Glass Houses, and Optimism,” and Pnin agreed with relish. Read it through.

Then he returned to his reading table with shelves to do his research. He intends to write a petite histoire of Russian culture, in which he will introduce a selection of Russian anecdotes, customs, literary anecdotes, etc., like la Grande Histoire in miniature - a series of important events of cause and effect All reflected.He is still in the joyful phase of collecting materials; and many good-hearted lads are delighted and honored to see Pnin digging through the library as he draws a box of Card, as if it is a big walnut, take it to a secluded corner, chew this spiritual food quietly there, sometimes move your lips and make silent comments, critical, satisfied, The bewildered one raised his sparse eyebrows from time to time, hung high on his broad brow for a long time, and simply forgot it there until all traces of displeasure or doubt had faded from his face, Those two eyebrows fell safely.He was lucky indeed to be in Wendale.In the nineties a distinguished Slavic scholar and bibliophile named John Thorston Todd (whose bearded bust now stands above the drinking fountain) visited hospitable Russia, A large collection of books had been collected there, and since his death, that batch of books had been quietly moved to a distant bookshelf.Pnin, in order not to be stung by the amerikanski electric current on the iron bookshelf, would put on rubber gloves and go over there, staring greedily at the publications: there were unknown publications published in the roaring sixties, all in Hardcover on moiré cardboard; historical monographs from a hundred years ago, with brown spots on the sleeping pages; classic Russian literature, hardcover with the author's sad, terrible cameo on the cover, The profiles of the poets reminded the moist-eyed Timofey of his childhood, when he could caress the slightly frayed sideburns of Pushkin on the cover, or Zhukovsky's. Dirty nose.

Today, Pnin was reading Kosternskoy's tome on Russian mythology (Moscow, 1855 edition) - a rare book that must not be taken out of the library, he sighed, not unpleasantly, and began A passage is transcribed from one of those ancient pagan games, which were then practiced in the woodlands of the upper Volga, and which were permitted by Christian rites.During a festive week in May—the so-called "green week" around Whitsun—the country girls weave garlands of buttercups and wild orchids; Hanging on the willows by the river; and on Whitsun's day, shake them from the tree and drop them into the river, and the garlands spread out and float like many snakes, and the girls sing while they float .

Pnin suddenly thought of a wonderful sentence that described a scene very similar to this, but he couldn't remember it for a while, so he had to make a note on his index card, and looked back at Kosterenskoy. masterpiece. When Puning raised his eyes again, it was already dinner time. He took off his spectacles, and while holding them rubbed his tired eyes with his knuckles; his mind was still thinking, and his eyes gazed softly above the window, where, as the thought died away, the purple-blue twilight appeared, Refracted by the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling, a silver edge was added, and a row of shiny book spines were reflected in the fine lines of the black spider webs.

Before leaving the library, he decided to look up the correct pronunciation of the word "interested", so from the "Webster's Dictionary" on a table in the reading room, at least in the old 1930 edition , found that the word did not place the stress on the third syllable as he did.He looked for the errata at the back, but couldn't find it, and then, when he slammed the heavy dictionary shut, he realized that the index card with the notes he had been holding in his hand had been careless. I don't know where it's stuck inside.I had to search and search among the 2,500 thin pages, some of which were torn!A librarian, gentle Mr. Keith, with smooth white hair and a bow tie, slender, pink-faced, strolled over at his sigh, grabbed the huge creature by both ends, and It picked it up, turned it upside down and shook it, and out of it poured out a small comb, a Christmas card, Pnin's note card, and a piece of transparent tissue paper that dropped very listlessly on Pnin's bed. Mr. Keith picked it up on his feet and put it back in the dictionary on the page of the stamp of the United States of America and its overseas territories. Pnin put his index card in his pocket, and at that moment, without prompting, he remembered the phrase he had just forgotten: ... plila i pela, pela i plila... ...she floats and sings, she sings and floats... That's right!Death of Ophelia! !Appears in Andrei Kronneberg's good old Russian translation of 1844 - favorite reading of Pnin's boyhood, as well as his father's and his grandfather's when they were young!In it, as in the passage by Costerence Cowie, we remember that there were also willows, and there were also garlands.Where can I check it out?Alas, Mr. Todd didn't get GamletVil'yama Shekspira, nor did the Wendale library, and whenever you're forced to look things up in English translations, you'll never find your edited clone from Wengrove This or that beautiful, sublime and sonorous sentence that I read in the original hardcover book of Nebelg will never be forgotten in my life.How pathetic! In this gloomy campus, the sky is getting dark enough.Over the more gloomy mountains in the distance, under a layer of clouds and mist, there is still a tortoiseshell-like sky.The sad lights of Wendale, shimmering and fluttering in a hollow among the dark hills, pretended to have their usual charm, and Pnin knew well enough that you would find the place when you got there. It's a row of brick houses, a gas station, an ice rink, and a supermarket.Pnin was going to the tavern in Library Lane to eat a hunk of Virginia ham and a good bottle of beer, and he was suddenly very tired as he walked.Not only because of the extra trip to the library, the huge volume of "Literary Treasury" seemed to be getting heavier and heavier, but also the fact that Pnin had heard half of it that day and didn't want to get to the bottom of it, which also annoyed him at the time Distracted, bored, the same vexation we recall when we make a little mistake, a momentary rudeness, or a threat we decide not to heed.