Look at the Harlequins! is one of two Nabokov’s books, which I dislike. Yet I like two little bits in the book. Here they are:
Excerpt One
"Stop moping!" she would cry: "Look at the harlequins!"
"What harlequins? Where?"
"Oh, everywhere. All around you. Trees are harlequins, words are harlequins. So are situations and sums. Put two things together--jokes, images--and you get a triple harlequin. Come on! Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!"
I did. By Jove, I did.
Excerpt Two
…Except for a Provenгal boy polishing the banisters, there was nobody around, thus allowing me to indulge in one of my oldest and naughtiest pleasures: circulating stark naked all over a strange house.
The full-length portrait was not altogether a success, or rather contained an element of levity not improper to mirrors and medieval pictures of exotic beasts. My face was brown, my torso and arms caramel, a carmine equatorial belt undermargined the caramel, then came a white, more or less triangular, southward pointed space edged with the redundant carmine on both sides, and (owing to my wearing shorts all day) my legs were as brown as my face. Apically, the white of the abdomen, brought out in frightening repoussи, with an ugliness never noticed before, a man's portable zoo, a symmetrical mass of animal attributes, the elephant proboscis, the twin sea urchins, the baby gorilla, clinging to my underbelly with its back to the public.
A warning spasm shot through my nervous system. The fiends of my incurable ailment, "flayed consciousness," were shoving aside my harlequins.
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PoseidonPoseidon
Not sure about Nabokov. There's a lot of things I want to do in life, including reading the books I already own. Haven't a chance to read him. And stephen king's short stories whose writings you dislike, I haven't even begun, not even as bedtime stories.
I was surprised you picked Harlequin. When I was a child, someone gave me some Harlequin stationery. Thats how I know he is a clown, a thin one, with one teardrop on his cheek. It was a very good drawing, it captured me. When i read this post when it first appeared on the blog, I wanted to bring it out. or create a link on a blog list for my favourite writings or something (but i havent had a chance to get there). Excerpt one of course. That is how I want to live my life. Colourfully. I wanted to use the word harlequin for a nick somewhere. But when I checked with the dictionary what it means, it has a reputation to be Leader of the Demons in history. Now that I think of it, symbolically, demons have no rules, its apt somehow.
Actually what I wanted to say was, that excerpt one, when i laid eyes on it, it hit me in the gut immediately. Thats how good a choice you made.
as for excerpt two. well, gross ! is the word and I think i shall set my sights on more interesting vision, or at least mind vision !
thanks for this post.