The Sunless Parlour

The Sunless Parlour

stories, notes and translations

by

Lara Biyuts

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Lara Biyuts on Smashwords

The Sunless Parlour

Copyright 2010 by Lara Biyuts

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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The Sunless Parlour

"…in a sunless parlour where an old clock ticked in the shadows

and a cat slept by the empty grate."

(Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Writing in internet diaries and journals looks much like writing in the style following the pencil that used to be popular amidst the ancient China writers. The following the pencil style implied literary miniatures, poems, abstruse or playful thoughts, snatches of random musings, brief or verbose aphorisms, abstract reasoning and so forth. The ancient China writers as though wrote down their meditations, musing when writing and writing when musing, following their pencil, -- that’s what we in the blogosphere do, at times.

PART 1. Following the Pencil

Sweet Peas the Lover

(a tale in the manner of Oscar Wilde)

Unsophisticated and tender like a baby’s thoughts, the Sweet Peas came into blossom on the flowerbeds around the pillars and stands of the verandah, and soon, he fell in love with a dumb Marble, beautiful and ancient. The twiner was enchanted, positively out off his head, but in vain he embraced the impassive waist, when blooming at dawn: the Marble was not made for somebody else’s happiness; the beautiful cold idol could not feel love. Now, autumn came; it grew colder, and the Sweet Peas began wilting. And the moss-clad Marble looked at itself in the mirror of the puddle and spoke with an air of importance, The moss becomes me. But why I’m intertwined with these ill weeds? Hearing that, Zephyrus the West Wind got determined to change the Marble’s look. With the help of the army of grains of sand from the pathway, the Wind joyfully and half in jest attacked the specimen of antiquity -- and the Sweet Peas fell like a crimson snow of a dream.

Night Dreams

(reminiscence)

When I was young, I had two odd dreams. The dreams could be called philosophic sooner than prophetic. Personally I can’t explain them and I don’t know what caused them.

In the first dream, I saw myself on a lawn, on a bright sunny day. The lawn is green; the sky was blue above. I am standing in a shade of a big building. A massive gray building like those Palaces of Culture or museums built under communists. I used to be in one of places like this, and feeling at ease I open the heavy paned front door of the building, and come in.

Finding myself in a spacious hall with large windows, I can see it was something like a museum, since the room is filled with statues, which stand in rows. No humans, only the statues of humans, but I don’t fear. The statues are obviously made of wood, since all of them are charred. The black charred figures of humans in rows, and nothing more. I feel ill at ease, and I leave the room.

I go outdoors, and what do you think I see there? The lawn proves to be an enormous green field. And on the green field there are statues too. Statues of big animals, made of wood. Dinosaurs, as I guess. And all the statues are charred too. Imagine, the black statues on the bright green field underneath the blue sky. I avert my eyes from the statues of dinosaurs, being about to go back to the palace, but my dream is over.

In the second dream, I enter a room, which seems to be a public library. There are no windows; the walls are black, the shelves are black too. Scanty lighting. The black shelves are filled with thick black volumes. The black colour of everything in the room has dark-blue hue, which seems to give the scanty lighting. Among the books, there are something else on the shelves. Black air bombs. Glossy, the bombs has the dark-blue hue too. I look at the shelves narrowly, and I can see the books’ pages are not white. They are crimson or blood stained. I have not time to be frightened in this black room, because my dream is over.

Recalling the night dreams, I think someone showed me a sort of video with his musings. Highly talented imagery. But the musings were not mine. Somebody else’s. Somebody who was wiser than me.

More Night Dreams

(reminiscence)

The reminiscence is connected with the yahoo group, in which I am currently a member, only indirectly, but this recollection is what I’d like to share with somebody long ago, because some questions arose, which may be of interest to those who like reading about weird things. The theme of the reminiscence is night dreams.

The yahoo group, dedicated to the New Temple of Antinous, which I left before I joined the Ekklesia Antinoou group, was the first yahoo group I knew and it was one of my first steps on the Net in 2004. Shortly soon after the day of my joining the group, I had two odd night dreams, which I’d like to tell about in the hope of learning of an opinion from anybody who can interpret dreams. Those night dreams were so bright and remarkable that I still remember every detail, and still evokes some questions. The first dream was very short. I saw a white-skinned man wearing a light t-shirt and toga, worn properly, with perfect folds; the toga seemed to be made of a finest and softest wool, and I think that in my sleep I happened to see a true toga. The Man was young rather than old. He had a sandy hair, short and thick; he had thick glasses on; his face was round. Not tall; rather thin. I saw him never before. The colour of his dress was light but not white, rather soft-greenish-blue hued. And the space of the room was of the same colour. It must be said that the lighting of the picture was like that of a good Hollywood movie. The man held a huge cup with two handles in his hands on his breast level, and he as though offered it to me, looking up at me with a friendly enigmatic smile. Made of a white metal, the cup looked like a font/baptistery, and it was full of a liquid that changed quickly colours several times until it turned into what I prefer in real life, that is black coffee. The coffee in the cup glittered because of a light shining from somewhere above. The man smiled, and the huge heavy cup in his hands got closer and closer to my face. I can say nothing of the lower part of the man’s form because the cup prevented from seeing it. I did not hasten to taste the offered drink, and after several moments of my stillness, something happened. This dream finished in the way that made me doubt that the dream was mine; the end of the dream made me suspect that it was shown to me by somebody else or it was somebody else’s vision that transmitted to me in some extraordinary way -- but I proceed. From somewhere, maybe from behind my shoulder, suddenly, a small snow-white female briefs flew towards the man. The briefs were evidently thrown by somebody’s hand, but it was not my hand. This kind of communing was never familiar to me. At the moment, when the briefs hit the man’s face, the light was as though switched off. Darkness. Puzzling. Oppressive. And because of the oppressiveness I woke.

The dream was not a nightmare, as the reader sees, and yet it was stunning, because I felt and I still feel certain that the dream was not mine, that is it was not a procreation of my consciousness, but it was as though shown to me in my sleep by someone, if only it this last were possible.

The second dream was not a nightmare either. I saw a sunlit street of an old European town, which I did not recognize. A group of humans walked along the street, and this looked like a parade. The group was not large, only two dozen or so. Men and women of approximately the same age and stature. Men were wearing grey suits, white shirts and dark ties. The not numerous women were wearing long dresses that could not be visible, because every person of the group had on a long beautiful cope of snow-white lace with a simple yet beautiful floral ornament that in theory could be knitted with a crochet hook. Heads of the people were hooded. Thick books were in their hands. The people gabbled and chanted reading the books aloud on the move. I could make out a face of one of the men with drooped eye. He was white-skinned; his black hair was rather long and wavy; he had a short beard; his chiseled features looked typical and yet unknown to me. The people walked and chanted without paying attention to all around. Or rather, I only could guess that they chanted, because I could not hear or understand the chanting; I could only see their lips moving and heads nodding slightly. Bending to their books, they looked concentrated or they wanted to look like this. It was obviously a demonstration. The streets of the town, where they walked, were sunlit. The ancient soft-sandy and soft terracotta buildings of the town were two or three storeyed no more; many windows and small balconies were flowers-adorned, and I discerned small red roses here and there. The weather looked fine. I remember, pavements were not asphalt. A timeless town? Now, the group of the cope-clad people stopped at a shady place. It was a verandah of a café or something of the kind, and there the group parted. The larger part remained standing with books in hands, and several men took quickly several chairs, sat down on the chairs face to their group -- their heads were without hoods now, their copes were undone and their grey present day suits could be more visible -- and leaning back and crossing legs, they as though began listening to the chanting of their comrades. After this short divertissement, the group re-conjoined quickly, and the parade went on. And my dream came to an end.

So simple was the dream, and at the same time it was so bright and unforgettable. It was rather beautiful than frightening. But it looked so alien to my real life that it made suppose an intervention of somebody’s consciousness. May be the dreams like this and the intervention is a usual thing for somebody, and for those who read this message in particular, but not for me, though I understand that any night dream is to be odd in virtue of its unexplored enigmatic nature. Now, if I am right, and the dream was shown to me by somebody, then one is tempted to suggest that there are those in the world, who can invade one’s subconsciousness so easily. Not everyone’s, but a subconsciousness of the one who has made a step out of one’s native system. (Scientologists?) Have anybody in our group experienced anything of the kind? Perhaps, anybody recognizes the people, who I have described?

The Longest Novels Ever Written

(view)

The 19th century German short-story writer E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote the first German-language detective story Das Fräulein von Scuderi (Mademoiselle Scudéry), featuring the French writer Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701), often known as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, as the central figure of his story. By the by, one of her novels Artamène, which contains about 2.1 million words, ranks as one of the longest novels ever written. Could anybody tell whether the novel may be reckoned the first of the longest? 2 volumes of Book 1 of my own novel is 500 000, + 4 sequels of the novel, for the time being -- and yet, my intention never was a competition to Mademoiselle de Scudéry.

Time for Reminiscence?

(reminiscence)

…Oops again, and oddly enough, at present I can’t recall when I learnt of homosexual relationship; I only remember that when aged 19 I knew nothing of the same sex love -- no information on the subject, no sexual experience. True, I felt and suspected of a special tenderness, and maybe I met its traces in real life and in objects of art, maybe, but I knew nothing of it and was never told about it. At the age of 19, I began to verse again, after a long pause -- more truly, I began to write doggerels again. One day, among works of Honoré de Balzac, which I borrowed from the library, I saw a story The Girl with the Golden Eyes:

gutenberg.org/files/1659/1659.txt

It was a highly entertaining story, mystery, but, quite unexpectedly, for the first time in my adult life I did not quite understand what I read about, like it was in my childhood, when I used to read some adult fiction, which I shouldn’t do.

The novella The Girl with the Golden Eyes may be called a criminal drama, but the text is full of reservations and meaningful hints, which creates a sort of an additional suspense, and the ending was above me. Why did that French lady kill the girl with the golden eyes? I reread the final part one more time, then once again, but in vain.

Suspecting that there was something subtle, complicated and forbidden in the plot, I did not understand what it was, and the passions that overwhelmed the main characters seemed abstruse or difficult to understand. It was so then, and it must be said that afterwards, retrospectively I learned that it was the time, when The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde by Peter Ackroyd was to be released. Now, in the late 1990s (several years before my personal computer era), I could afford to stop going to work, and at the same time I’ve got an access to a great amount of books, which I was never able to read before. And then, having spent two years reading detective stories and other pulp fiction (as well as classic books) translated into Russian, I recalled the only story by Balzac that remained an enigma to me.

Apparently in the 1990s I had learnt some information about what was obscure to me formerly, so I understood the story completely as soon as I reread it. The reason of the murder was jealousy -- I guessed instantly -- the lady was jealous of the girl with the golden eyes to one young man, Henri de Marsay, who proved to be the lady’s half-brother whom she saw never before and found suddenly in the course of her and his love affairs. De Marsay was a man of fashion and a quite fiendish person, whose image was in several books by Balzac, and whose beautiful features bore a striking resemblance with his sister’s. I instantly understood the nature of the jealousy, which meant that I knew of homosexual relationship as a facet of life, at that moment, and yet the first information of my new lore slipped my memory. Something supernatural is in this, and this proves that it was only a piece of information, nothing more -- no experience, no rumors, which a human could remember much better.

P. S.

The reminiscence, mentioned above, was written and published in my blog post in 2007. Some time passed, and today I know what it was. A source of the piece of information. Believe it or not, but my source was the radio BBC world service.

(2014)

Eyes

(about this writer)

"Narrowed eyelids.

Mountains. Clouds.

Streams and fords.

Years and centuries."

Talking of eyes. I’d call my own hazel eyes velvet like Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) said in his PRINCESS MARY (The Third Extract from Pechorin’s Diary):

She has such velvet eyes -- yes, velvet is the word. I should advise you to appropriate the expression when speaking of her eyes. The lower and upper lashes are so long that the sunbeams are not reflected in her pupils. I love those eyes without a glitter, they are so soft that they appear to caress you…

Not exactly, simply my eyes hardly ever twinkle. In the novel Anna Karenina, Nabokov loved the line: Anna felt her eyes twinkled in the darkness (translation is mine). It’s amazing how Leo Tolstoy could understand reflections and motivations of a drug-addict, since Anna was a drug-addict like all the ladies of her time who took laudanum, which was a tincture of opium or medicine in which opium is the main ingredient. I never liked Tolstoy’s writings. His Russian seems so rough (unskillful) here and there as thought he translated from French or English. No wonder, for in many noble homes of old Russia, babies were taught French language first, and only then they were taught their native language. Judging by his works, it was so with Leo. Most interesting fact is that, according to his own notes, he did not know that his character, army officer Count Vronsky would attempt suicide. As Tolstoy writes in one letter: …I was writing, and now, all of a sudden, Vronsky began to shoot himself. Nice wording began to shoot himself, isn’t it? I would say in another way: all of a sudden, he showed his intention to shoot himself or something of the kind. Tolstoy’s Russian was so funny here and there.

Talking of Leo Tolstoy. Believe it or not, but I never read the novel War and Peace. I studied it, of course, reading it in excerpts, and the process of studying was so boring that it evoked in me a feeling of a steady aversion to the novel, which I still can’t overcome. I don’t read Tolstoy’s books, but Tolstoy’s idea of senselessness and absurdity of any war is great, and his words about the nature of a war as a most unnatural event in life of mankind makes him a great man.

Kiss Yourself! Kiss!

I.

Your image is triune and always on my mind.

The image from Evelyn Waugh’s book, Nickolas Grace’s performance in the TV series, and the image, which I’ve hymned in my writings. Harold Acton, the prototype of Evelyn Waugh’s personage was born in 1904, the personage came into the world in 1945, the English movie was made in 1981, and the first vision of yours I saw in 2003. Anthony. Your image is not my second self, though yes, I’d say that it is my second self, if it were not too bold of me. One day, I was enthralled, and now there is no need of disenthralling.