Читать книгу The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear - Edward Lear - Страница 17

He broods less upon these material worries than upon the evanescence of life and of all those things, friendship and the beauty of the earth, which are his real attachments. He is capable of consoling himself for the shortage of material possessions with a quip, but his acute sense of the shortage of time is not so easily assuaged. He attempts to soothe his temporal anxieties by resort to those apologetics which are common to all who are sensitive to evanescence. ‘The fact is,’ he argues, ‘time is all nonsense,’ and he inclines to leave it at that, resolving the incomprehensible by invincible pursuit of his chosen craft. His pictures give permanence to memories and impression and thus create a desirable illusion of timelessness. Yet the possession of a keen sense of fact will not permit him to be more than temporarily soothed by such arguments. He cannot bluff himself. He knows he is walking in the ‘dusty twilight of the incomprehensible’ and instinctively seeks to escape through the door of nonsense. ‘I wish I were an egg and going to be hatched,’ he sighs, summing up his desire for Nirvana.