Vladimir Nabokov. Lance : Клуб изучающих испанский языкVladimir Nabokov. Lance
Vladimir Nabokov. LANCE
inspect, and smile at, and inhale, and stroke again—with that same smile of nameless, moaning, melting pleasure— the never-before-touched matter of which the celestial object is made. Any true scientist (not, of course, the fraudulent mediocrity, whose only treasure is the ignorance he hides like a bone) should be capable of experiencing that sensuous pleasure of direct and divine knowledge. He may be twenty and he may be eighty-five but without that tingle there is no science. And of that stuff Lance is made.
Straining my fancy to the utmost, I see him surmounting the panic that the ape might not experience at all. No doubt Lance may have landed in an orange-colored dust cloud somewhere