"...she talked so enchantingly, so wittily, so wisely (but unfortunately always in French, which notoriously loses its flavour in translation) that he forgot the frozen waters or night coming or the old woman or whatever it was, and would try to tell her — plunging and splashing among a thousand images which had gone as stale as the women who inspired them — what she was like. Snow, cream, marble, cherries, alabaster, golden wire? None of these. She was like a fox, or an olive tree; like the waves of the sea when you look down upon them from a height; like an emerald; like the sun on a green hill which is yet clouded — like nothing he had seen or known in England. Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue. English was too frank, too candid, too honeyed a speech for Sasha. For in all she said, however open she seemed and voluptuous, there was something hidden; in all she did, however daring, there was something concealed. So the green flame seems hidden in the emerald, or the sun prisoned in a hill. The clearness was only outward; within was a wandering flame."

Orlando, Virginia Woolf


Под именем Орландо выведена возлюбленная Вирджинии, Вита Сэквилл-Уэст, под именем Саши - возлюбленная Виты, Вайолет Трефьюсис.


И это так непривычно, странно, в мире, где преобладает собственничество, натыкаться на такое светлое, прекрасное описание того, кого люди с традиционными нравами посчитали бы соперником автора - и это же одновременно так правильно, ведь как можно не ценить человека, который дорог тому, кого ты любишь.



Я совсем ничего не могу найти про их знакомство, может, это бы представило всё под другим углом, но сейчас я заворожена этим эпизодом.







Violet Trefusis as a young girl