BB: The book [Ada] is funny and accessible [indeed]. Sure, it
also includes riddles no one person will be able to master, but so
does life, and we can enjoy both.
Here I disagree. The riddles of art (whose main purpose is to
show what life should be) and the often unsolvable riddles of life are
very different.
Let me quote from The Gift:
Часто повторяемые поэтами жалобы на то, что, ах,
слов нет, слова бледный тлен, слова никак не могут выразить наших каких-то там
чувств (и тут же кстати разъезжается шестистопным хореем), ему казались столь же
бессмысленными, как степенное убеждение старейшего в горной деревушке жителя,
что вон на ту гору никогда никто не взбирался и не взберётся; в одно прекрасное,
холодное утро появляется длинный, лёгкий англичанин – и жизнерадостно
вскарабкивается на вершину.
The oft repeated complaints of poets that, alas, no words are
available, that words are pale corpses, that words are incapable of expressing
our thingummy-bob feelings (and to prove it a torrent of trochaic
hexameters is let loose) seemed to him just as senseless as the staid
conviction of the eldest inhabitant of a mountain hamlet that yonder mountain
has never been climbed by anyone and never will be; one fine, clear morning a
long lean Englishman appears — and cheerfully scrambles to the top. (Chapter
Three)
I don't want to say that I am the person who can
solve all riddles in Ada but, as BB himself admitted, I did
solve a few riddles in the novel that most readers hadn't even
noticed.
Alexey Sklyarenko