Ronald Firbank (1886-1926) spent his days in exquisite bliss. He wrote his novels on postcards in flower-decorated hotel rooms. His movements around the world were unpredictable. "Tomorrow I'm going to Haiti. They say the president there is a Real Darling!" - reported the telegram that a friend received from him. At a gala dinner held in his honor, the pathologically timid writer decided to swallow only one pea. He revered the word "rested" and all the books that he liked called rested.***A person who does not like Ronald Firbank may have rare virtues, but I do not want to associate with him.Wistan Hugh Auden***Ronald Firbank was loved all the literary dudes of the 20th century, but they did it from afar, in absentia: the object of their worship was considered to be too restless a person. Eccentric and egocentric, Rossini from literature, English Gabriele D'Annunzio, only without the Italian oiliness in his gaze, Firbank continued Wilde's line in English literature, bringing it to complete insanity: both in terms of language and in terms of pretentiousness. Using Kierkegaard's terminology, Firbank is an aesthetician in its purest form, a person for whom there are no concepts of good and evil in literature, and therefore it is not surprising that from the lectern one reads about a young lady who gave birth to a thrush through the nasal duct, and her ladyship is suspected of having a relationship with a dog. Fine. Sexual energy drives these lines through the book, and even the famous Firbank character Cardinal Pirelli (not to be confused with tires) is nothing more than a masquerade eccentric, filled with a noble lust for everything that moves. A masquerade, an ironic prank in dark alleys, buffoonery with a flute and a little nervously - all this magnificent nonsense grows like a tree to the scale of the universe - and again returns to the author. That's Firbank. After him, only Boris Vian could write in the same spirit, and even he was at the early stage of “Foam of Days.” The appendix of the collection contains statements by contemporaries about the writer, and this section is no less important, since writers like Wilde and Firbank built their lives around their own writing, and not vice versa. Hence the jokes. This book must be read in small portions, since there is no plot as such - the course of action resembles a mad tea party and a ball at the queen's at the same time: with all the characters flowing in (flowing in, spreading out and swimming in) Gleb Shulpyakov