Читать книгу Kobiety (Women). A Novel of Polish Life онлайн

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Is there any man in the world who could thus lull my watchfulness to sleep? There is one, only one. But the price I should pay would be all that makes life charming.

When Janusz is sleeping on my lap, I then invariably think of—Roslawski.

As a rule, it is from a novelist’s or an artist’s standpoint—from without and objectively—that I view whatever happens in my life; consciously throwing all my impressions into the form of sentences, rounded and complete, often affected and unnatural; and in everything I say, think, or do, seeking for dramatic, literary, or picturesque effects. This peculiarity I hold for one of the tragic sides of my life, since it almost entirely robs my impressions of their directness.

People sometimes blame me for being mannered, for attitudinizing, for performing everything with artifice, whether I make a bow or do my hair. And I fully admit they are right. But then, artificiality comes naturally to me. Every motion, every smile of mine is present to me before it is elicited: it is scrutinized and judged by me, as though I were some one else. For me, there is no present; I look at all things from out of the Future: there are no involuntary bursts of thought, no inarticulate words or mechanical gestures for me. And should I try to behave with apparent artlessness, I should then be artificial twice over.