И отэто я, напочитав всё это, ловлю далёкий отголосок известного стихотворения "Raven" (1845), да так успешно, что способен вчитать в приведённые ниже куски текста как знакомые хореи целыми пачками, так и вообще просто интерпретацию и переложение всей вороньей фабулы в прозу 20-ого века.
Вот три куска из последнего, так сказать, нарративного акта, для самовнушения:
...the insidious contest that had gone on in sudden surges and long, listless interludes between Evylyn and this cold, malignant thing of beauty, a gift of enmity from a man whose face she had long since forgotten. With its massive, brooding passivity it lay there in the centre of her house as it had lain for years, throwing out the ice-like beams of a thousand eyes, perverse glitterings merging each into each, never aging, never changing.
[...]
“You see, I am fate,” it shouted, “and stronger than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in the dish of life.”
[...]
And all over the moonlit sidewalk around the still, black form, hundreds of prisms and cubes and splinters of glass reflected the light in little gleams of blue, and black edged with yellow, and yellow, and crimson edged with black.
И вот ещё кусок "Ворона", чтоб было понятно, хотя там надо перьев надёргать по всему тексту, чтоб интересненько вышло.
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!
¹ Ср. "The Monkey's Paw", W.W.Jacobs (190х), "La Venus d'Ille", Prosper Merimée (183х).
Аппендикс: чтиво.