"That cur, that robot, that imprecator who prances around on television, who gets in all the magazines, that paper-lion philosopher with whom I would under no circumstances be friends and whom, even worse, I wouldn't read if he weren't me, that me who is me without being me, who resembles me and whom I detest — I don't find him odious, exactly, just pathetic.
In the new version, Leonard Bast now has space to breathe, and to suffocate, so that his pursuit of culture and his embarrassment in the face of the Schlegels' effortless manners and easy culture seem exactly as pathetic as one's own.
Dark, dank carpets, scraps of mess, dogs, swollen old people, strewn newspapers it's exactly the kind of pathetic grot in which you can imagine our Nicholas slaving away at his whirring Dell PC, opening up an image editor and plastering insanities onto photographs of soldiers.
Dark, dank carpets, scraps of mess, dogs, swollen old people, strewn newspapers – it's exactly the kind of pathetic grot in which you can imagine our Nicholas slaving away at his whirring Dell PC, opening up an image editor and plastering insanities onto photographs of soldiers.
And by impression, I mean, "that's exactly what I established when I asked other adults the most pathetic, immature thing they've done".
He focuses not on the pathetic Rusalka, here a streetwalker with a heart of — not gold, exactly, more like sequins — but rather on the Water Gnome, commandingly sung and acted by the bass Willard White.
