Djuna Barnes. Nightwood
Первой наткнулась на фразу ниже и вспомнила анекдот про чувака на встречной полосе, а именно фразу: "Да тут их тысячи". В применении к Барнс можно сказать что у нас тут целая страна таких.
"In her face was the tense expression of an organism surviving in an alien element"
"Ее лицо хранило выражение напряженности организма выживающего во враждебном окружении"
И еще парочка великолепных кусочков, подозреваю что я многое упускаю, и неплохо бы потом и перечитать (Сонтаг в дневниках к такому же выводу приходит):
"I knew all at once that the tradegy of the beast can be two legs more awful than a man's. ...
.... "Can't the morning come now, so i can see what my face is mixed up with?" At that flash of lightning went by and I saw the cow turning her head straight back so her horns made two moons against her shoulders, the tears soused all over her great black eyes ... ... and I thought there are directions and speeds that no one has calculated, for believe it or not that cow had gone somewhere very fast we didn't know of, and yet was still standing there."
" ...when I think back to my past, everyone in my family a beauty ...Frau Mann took up her glass? looking at it with one eye closed. "I've an albumn of my own" she said in a warm voice "and everyone in it looks like a soldier - even though they are dead.""
"She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden."
"... as the unicorn is neither man nor beast deprived, but human hunger pressing its breast to its prey" (по моему гениально!!!)
"... some condition of life of which he was the sole surviving retainer. His manner was that of a servant of a defunct noble family, whose movements recall, though in a degraded form, those of a late master. Even the doctors's favourite gesture - plucking hairs out of his nostrils - seemed "vulgarization" og what was once a thoughtful plucking of the beard" (ну а здесь Барнс уже просто жжот)
" ... in spite of a long series of convulsions of the spirit, analogous to the displacement in the fluids of the oyster, that must cover its itch with a pearl ..." (вообще ассоциативный ряд ну просто через край)
А книга на русский не переведена (