"Pale Fire": More Choice Bits

Just a great image:
The pool of opalescent ditch water had grown in length; along its edge walked a sick bat like a cripple with a broken umbrella.
*

And a nice bit re the "other reality" of Art:
Eystein had also resorted to a weird form of trickery: among his decorations of wood or wool, gold or velvet, he would insert one which was really made of the material elsewhere imitated by paint. This device which was apparently meant to enhance the effect of his tactile and tonal values had, however, something ignoble about it and disclosed not only an essential flaw in Eystein's talent, but the basic fact that "reality" is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.

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