Практическое занятии № 15 10 страница

Two shots were fired to our front, and I thought, ' This it it. Now it comes.' It was all the warning I wanted. I awaited, with a sense of exhilaration, the permanent thing.

But nothing happened. Once again I had "over-prepared the event." Only long minutes afterwards one of the sentries entered and reported something to the lieutenant. I caught the phrase, "Deux civils."*

The lieutenant said to me, "We will go and see," and following the sentry we picked our way along a muddy over­grown path between two fields. Twenty yards beyond the farm buildings, in a narrow ditch, we came on what we sought: a woman and a small boy. They were very clearly dead: a small neat clot of blood on the woman's forehead, and the child might have been sleeping. He was about six years old and he lay like an embryo in the womb with his little bony knees drawn up. " Malchance "* the lieutenant said. He bent down and turned the child over. He was wearing a holy medal* round his neck, and I said to myself, ' The juju doesn't work.' There was a gnawed piece of loaf under his body. I thought, 'I hate war.'

Лекция 49

JOHN JAMES OSBORNE

(1929)

John James Osborn was born in London in the family of an artist. He worked as a journalist, as an actor in provincial repertory during which he began to write plays. He made his name with “Look Back in Anger” (1956) which was followed by many other plays. They belong to the so called “Kitchen Sink Drama”, this term is applied to the plays which showed working-class or lower-middle class life, with an emphasis on domestic realism. Osborne’s works at their most positive praise the qualities of loyalty, tolerance and friendship. He belongs to the group of “Angry Young Men” (a journalistic catch-phrase), whose political views were radical or anarchic and who described various forms of social alienation.

Look Back in Anger

A pause. The iron mingles with the music. Cliff shifts restlessly in his chair, Jimmy watches A 1 i s o n, his foot beginning to twitch dangerously. Presently, he gets up quickly, crossing below A 1i s o n to the radio, and turns it off.)

What did you do that for?

Jimmy. I wanted to listen to the concert, that's all,

A1ison. Well, what's stopping you?

Jimmy. Everyone's making such a din—that's what's stopping me.

A1ison. Well, I'm very sorry, but I can't just stop everything because you want to listen to music.

Jimmy. Why not?

A1ison. Really, Jimmy, you're like a child.

Jimmy. Don't try and patronise me. (Turning to Cliff.) She's so clumsy. I watch for her to do the same things every night. The way she jumps on the bed, as if she were stamping on someone's face, and draws the curtains back with a great clatter, in that casually destructive way of hers. It's like someone launching a battleship. Have you ever noticed how noisy women are? (Crosses below chairs to L.C.) Have you? The way they kick the floor about, simply walking over it? Or have you watched them sitting at their dressing tables, drop­ping their weapons and banging down their bits of boxes and brushes and lipsticks? (He faces her dressing table.)

I've watched her doing it night after night. When you see a woman in front of her bedroom mirror, you realize what.a reu.ud son of a’.r you ever.;some din b«:3tK.dng Ins tiligrr-i into some mp-of lamb fat and rustle? Well, she's just like that. Thank God they don't have i women surgeons! Those primitive hands would have. your guls out in no time. Flip! Out it comes, like ihe powder out of its box. Flop! Back it goes, like the powder puff on the table. Cliff (grimacing cheerfully). Ugh! Stop it!

Jimmy, (moving upstage}. She'd drop your guts like hair clips and flufT all over the door. You've got to be fundamentally insensitive to be as noisy and as clumsy as that. (He moves C., and leans against the table.)

I had a flat underneath a couple of girls once. You heard every damned thing those bastards did, all day and night. The most simple, everyday actions were a sort of assault course on your sensibilities. I used to plead with them. I even got to screaming the most ingenious obsceni­ties I could think of, up the stairs at them. But nothing, nothing, would move them. With those two, even a simple visit to the lavatory sounded like a medieval siege. Oh, they beat me in the end—I had to go. I expect they're still at it. Or they're probably married by now, and driving some other poor devils out of their minds. Slamming their doors, stamping their high heels, banging their irons and saucepans—the eternal flaming racket of the female. (Church bells start ringing outside.)

Jimmy. Oh, hell! Now the bloody bells have started! (He rushes to the window.) Wrap you? Stop ringing those-bells! There's somebody going crazy in here! I don't' want to hear them:

Alison. Stop shouting! (Recovering immediately). You'll lie Miss Drury up here.

Jimmy. I don't give a damn about Miss Drury—that mild old gentlewoman docs fool me, even if she lakes in you two. She's an old robber. She gets more than enough out of us for this place every week. Anyway, she's probably in church, (points to the window) swinging on those bloody bells! (C1iff goes to the window, and closes it.)

C1iff. Come on now, be a good boy. I'll take us all out, and we'll have a drink.

Jimmy. They're not open yet. It's Sunday. Remember? Anyway, it's raining.

C1iff. Well, shall we dance? (He pushes Jimmy round the floor, who is past the mood for this kind of fooling.)

Do you come here often?

Jimmy.Only in the mating season. All right, all right, very funny. (He tries to escape, but C liff holds him like a vice.)

Let me go.

C 1 i ff. Not until you've apologised for being nasty to everyone. Do you think bosoms will be in or out, this year?

Jimmy. Your teeth will be out in a minute, if you don't let go! (He makes a great effort to wrench himself free, but Cliff hangs on. They collapse to the floor C., below the table, struggling. Alison carries on with her ironing. This is routine, but she is getting close to breaking point, all the same. Cliff manages to break away, and finds himself in front of the ironing board. Jimmy springs up. They grapple.)

A1ison. Look out, for heaven's sake! Oh, it's more like a zoo every day!

(Jimmy makes a frantic, deliberate effort, and manages to push C1iff on to the ironing board, and into Alison. The board collapses. C1iff falls against her, and they end up in a heap on the floor. A1ison cries out in pain. Jimmy looks down at them, dazed and breathless.)

Cliff (picking himself up). She's hurt. Are you all right?

A1ison. Well, does it look like it!

C1iff. She's burnt her arm on the iron.

Jimmy. Darling, I'm sorry.

Alison. Get out!

Jimmy. I'm sorry, believe me. You think, I did it on pur——

Alison (her head shaking helplessly}. Clear out of my sight.

Лекция 50

KINGSLEY AMIS

Kingsley Amis was educated at Oxford and after graduation taught English at the University at Swansea. Amis was considered one of the leading representatives of the young English writers of the 1950-s, colloquially called the “Angry Young Men”. These writers had much in common as far as the attitudes and characteristic features of their heroes were concerned. Their books expressed the disgust of the young generation with an outworn and morally bankrupt social order. The characteristic feature of their outlook was individualism. Their protest was “ineffectual, incoherent and unfocused rebelliousness” (J. B. Priestly) “Lucky Jim”, characteristic of the early Amis, is essentially an English University novel. Concern with educational problems in general and the crisis of outlook and vocational prospects is typical of this group of writers.

The Zucky Jim

Hurrying through the side streets, deserted at this hour before works and offices closed, Dixon thought of Welch. Would Welch have asked him to set up a special subject if he wasn't going to keep him as a lecturer? Substitute any human name for Welch's and the answer must be no. But retain the original reading and no certainty was possible. As recently as last week month after the special subject had been mentioned, he'd heard Welch talking to the professor of education about "the sort of new man" he was after. Dixon had felt very ill for five minutes; then Welch had come up to him and begun discussing, in tones of complete honesty, what he wanted Dixon to do with the Pass people next year.

At the memory, Dixon rolled his eyes together like marbles and sucked in his cheeks to give a consumptive or wasted appearance to his face, moaning loudly as he crossed the sunlit street to his front door.

On the florid black hall stand there were a couple of periodi­cals and some letters that had come by the second post. There was something in a typed envelope for Alfred Beesley, who was a mem­ber of the College's English Department; a buff envelope con­taining football-pool⁵ coupons and addressed to W. Atkinson, an insurance salesman, some years older than Dixon, and another typed envelope addressed to J. Dickinson with a London postmark. Ho hesitated, then opened it. Inside was a sheet hastily torn from a pad bearing a few ill-written lines in green ink. Without formal­ity the writer announced that he'd liked the shipbuilding article and proposed to publish it "in due course". He'd be writing, again "before very long" and signed himself, "L. S. Caton".

Dixon took a felt hat of Atkinson's from the hall stand, put it on his head and did a little dance in the narrow hall. Welch would find it harder to sack him now. It was good news apart from that; it was generally encouraging; perhaps the article had some merit after all. No, that was going too far; but it did mean it was the right sort of stuff, and a man who'd written one lot of the right sort of stuff could presumably write more. He replaced the hat, glancing idly at the periodicals which were destined for Evan Johns, office worker at the college and amateur oboist. The front page of one of them bore a large and well-produced photograph of a contem­porary composer Johns might reasonably be supposed to admire. An idea came into Dixon's mind, which was the more ready to receive it in this mood of exultation. He stood still and listened for a moment, then crept into the dining room, where the tab was laid for high tea. Working quickly but carefully, he began altering the composer's face with a soft black pencil; The lower lip he turned into a set of discoloured snaggle teeth, adding another lower lip, thicker and looser than the original, underneath. Duelling scars appeared on the cheeks, hairs as thick as tooth picks sprang from the widened nostrils, the eyes, enlarged and converging, spilled out on to the nose. After crenellating the jawline and hiding the forehead in a luxuriant fringe, he added a Chinese moustache and pirate's earrings, and had just replaced the paper on the hall stand when somebody began to come in by the front door. He sprang into the dining room and listened again. After a few seconds he smiled as a voice called out, "Miss Cutler," in an accent northern like his own, but eastern where his own was western. Ho came out and said: "Hallo, Alfred."

"Uh, hallo, Jim." Beesley was tearing his letter open with some haste. The kitchen door was opened behind Dixon and the head of Miss Cutler, their landlady, emerged to see who and how many they were. Satisfied on these points, she smiled and withdrew. Dixon turned back to Beesley who was now reading his letter scowling as he did so.

"Coming in to tea?"

Beesley nodded and handed Dixon the typewritten sheet. "Spot of good news to take home with me for the week-end."

Dixon read that Beesley was thanked for his application but that Mr. P. Oldham been appointed to the pos!. "Oh, bad luck, Alfred. Still, there'll be others to go for, won't there?"

"Doubt it, for October. Time's running pretty short now."

They took their seats at the tea table. "Were you very set on it?" Dixon asked.

"Only in go far as it, would have been a way for getting away from Fred Karno." This was how Beesley was accustomed to refer to his professor.

"I suppose you were quite set on it, then."'

"That's right. Anything new from Neddy about your chances?"

"No, nothing direct, but I've just had a bit of good news. That chap Caton's taken my article, the thing about shipbuilding." ""That's a comfort, eh? When's it coming out?"

"He didn't¹¹ say.”

Oh? Got the letter there?" Dixon passed it to him. "Mm, not too fussy about stationery and so on, is he? I see... Well, you'll be wanting more definite information than that, won't you?"

Dixon's nose twitched his glasses up into position, a habit of his. "Will I?"

"Well, Christ, Jim, of course, you will, old man. A vague accept­ance of this kind isn't any use to anyone. Might be a couple of years before it comes out, if then. No, you pin him down to a date, when you'll have got some real evidence to give Neddy. Take my advice."

Uncertain whether the advice was sound, or whether it arose out of Beesley's disappointment, Dixon was about to temporize when Miss Cutler came into the room with a tray of tea and food.

Dixon and Beesley said something to her, receiving, as usual, no reply beyond a nod until the tray was unloaded; then a conversation followed, only to be abruptly broken off at the entry of insurance salesman and ex-Army major, Bill Atkinson.

The meal continued and Atkinson soon partook in it, though remaining aloof from the conversation, which ran for a few minutes on the subject of Dixon's article and its possible date of pub­lication. "Is it a good article?" Beesley asked finally.

Dixon looked up in surprise. "Good? How do you mean, good?, Good?"

"Well, is it any more than accurate and the sort of thing that gets turned out? Anything beyond the sort of thing that will help you to keep your job?"

"Good God, no. You don't think I take that sort of stuff se­riously, do you?" Dixon noticed that Atkinsdn's thickly lashed eyes were fixed on him.

"I just wondered," Beesley said, bringing out the curved nickel banded pipe round which he was trying to train his personality, like a creeper up a trellis. "I thought I was probably right."

"But look here, Alfred, you don't moan I ought to take it se­riously, do you? What are you getting at?"

"I don't mean anything. I've just been wondering what bat led you to take up this racket in the first place."

Dixon hesitated. "But I explained all this to you months ago, about feeling I'd be no use in a school and so on."

"No, I mean why you are a medievalist." Beesloy struck a match, his small vole-like face set in a frown. "Don't mind, Bill, do you?" Receiving no reply, he went on between sucks at his pipe: "You don't seem to have any special interest in it, do you?"

Dixon tried to laugh. "No, I don't, do I? No, the reason why I am a medievalist, as you call it, is that the medieval papers were a soft option' in the Leicester course, so I specialized in them. Then, when I applied for the job here, I naturally made a big point of that, because it looked better to seem interested in something specific. It's why I got the job instead of this clover boy from Ox­ford who mucked himself up² at the interview by chewing the fat³ about modern theories of interpretation. But I never guessed I'd. be landed with all the medieval stuff and nothing but medieval stuff." Ho repressed a desire to smoke, having finished his five-o'clock cigarette at a quarter past three.. "I see," Beesley said, sniffing. "I did not know that be­fore."

"Haven't you noticed how we all specialize in what we hate most?" Dixon asked, but Beesley, puffing away at his pipe, had already got up. Dixon's views on the Middle Ages themselves would have to wait until another time.

"Oh, well, I'm off now," Beesley said. "Have a good time with the artists, Jim. Don't get drunk and start telling Neddy what you've just been telling me, will you? Cheero, Bill," he added unan­swered to Atkinson, and went out, leaving the door open.

Лекция 51

WILLIAM GOLDING

(1911-1994)

W. Golding was educated in Oxford. He worked as a writer, actor and producer with small theatre companies and then as a small theatre companies and then as a teacher; during the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy and was lieutenant in command of a rocket ship. After the war he returned to writing and teaching. “Lord of the Flies” appeared in 1954 and was an immediate success, Golding often presents isolated individuals or small groups in extreme situations dealing with man in his basic condition strirred of trappings, creating a quality of a fable. His novels are remarkable for their strikingly varied settings, several of them historical.

***

The fire was dead. They saw that straight away; saw what they had really known down on the beach when the smoke of home had beckoned. The fire was right out, smokeless and dead; the watchers were gone. A pile of unused fuel lay ready.

Ralph turned to the sea. The horizon stretched, impersonal once more, barren of all but the faintest trace of smoke. Ralph ran stumbling along the rocks, saved himself on the edge of the pink cliff, and screamed at the ship.

"Come back! Come back!"

He ran backwards and forwards along the cliff, his face always to the sea, and his voice rose in­sanely.

"Come back! Come back!"

Simon and Maurice arrived. Ralph looked at them with unwinking eyes. Simon turned away, smearing the water from Ins cheeks. Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew.

"They let the bloody fire out."

He looked down the unfriendly side of the mountain. Piggy arrived, out of breath and whim­pering like a littlun. Ralph clenched his fist and went very red. The inrentness of his gaze, the bitterness of his voice pointed for him.

"There they are”.

A procession appeared, far down among the pink screes that lay near the water's edge. Some of the boys wore black caps but otherwise they were almost naked. They lifted sticks in the air together, whenever they came to an easy patch. They were chanting, something to do with the bundle that the errant twins carried so carefully. Ralph picked out Jack easily, even at that distance, tall, red-haired, and inevitably leading the procession.

Simon looked now, from Ralph to Jack, as he had looked from Ralph to the horizon, and what he saw seemed to make him afraid. Ralph said nothing more, but waited while the procession*came nearer. The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes.

"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away. Piggy snivelled and Simon shushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church.

Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly, with lifted spear.

"Look! We've killed a pig—we stole up on them—we got in a circle—"

Voices broke in from the hunters.

"We got in a circle—"

"We crept up—"

"The pig squealed—"

The twins stood with the pig swinging between them, dropping black gouts on the rock. They seemed to share one wide, ecstatic grin. Jack had too many things to tell Ralph at once. Instead, he danced a step or two, then remembered his dignity and stood still, grinning. He noticed blood on his hands and grimaced distastefully, looked for some­thing on which to clean them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed.

Ralph spoke.

"You let the fire out."

Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to let it worry him.

"We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We had a smashing time. The twins got knocked over—"

"We hit the pig—"

"—I fell on top—"

"I cut the pig's throat," said Jack, proudly, and

yet twitched as he said it. "Can I borrow yours, Ralph, to make a nick in the hilt?"

The boys chattered and danced. The twins con­tinued to grin.

"There was lashings of blood," said Jack, laughing and shuddering, "you should have seen it!"

"We'll go hunting every day—"

Ralph spoke again, hoarsely. He had not moved.

"You let the fire out."

This repetition made Jack uneasy. He looked at the twins and then back at Ralph.

"We had to have them in the hunt," he said, "or there wouldn't have been enough for a ring."

He flushed, conscious of a fault.

"The fire's only been out an hour or two. We can, light up again—"

He noticed Ralph's scarred nakedness, and the sombre silence of all four of them. He sought, charitable in his happiness, to include them in the thing that had happened. His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

He spread his arms wide.

"You should have seen the blood!"

The hunters were more silent now, but at this they buzzed again. Ralph flung back his hair. One arm pointed at the empty horizon. His voice was loud and savage, and struck them into silence.

"There was a ship."

Jack, faced at once with too many awful implica­tions, ducked away from them. He laid a hand on the pig and drew his knife. Ralph brought his arm down, fist clenched, and his voice shook.

"There was a ship. Out there. You said you'd keep the fire going and you let it out!" He took a step towards Jack who turned and faced him.

"They might have seen us. We might have gone home—"

This was too bitter for Piggy, who forgot his timidity in the agony of his loss. He began to cry out, shrilly:

"You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home—"

Ralph pushed Piggy on one side.

"I was chief; and you were going to do what I said. You talk. But you can't even build huts—then you go off hunting and let out the fire—"

He turned away, silent for a moment. Then his voice came again on a peak of feeling.

"There was a ship—"

Лекция 52

IRIS MURDOCH

(1919)

I. Murdoch was educated in Oxford. She worked for some time in the Civil Service, then lectured in philosophy in Oxford and London. He first novel “Under the Net” (1954) was followed by many other successful works. Her novels, which have been described as psychological detective stories, portray complicated and sophisticated relationships, and her plots combine comic, bizarre, and macabre incidents in a highly patterned symbolic structure. Her portrayal of 20 th-cent, middle-class and intellectual life shows acute observation as well as a wealth of invention.

An Unofficial Rose

Hugh brooded quietly. He had a sense of everything being now in order. Or rather it was not yet quite in order, but a stage had been reached, a clearance had been made, and he felt as if he had only now, at his leisure, to put each thing neatly into its place. With this there came to him a com­fortable sense of being justified.

He thought about Ann. He had spent, he felt, shortly before: leaving, a quite reasonable amount of time at Grayhallock, and had really done his best to cheer her up. He had found, in fact, that she scarcely needed cheering, so immersed was she in the mysterious world of village life which seemed to him, over such trifles, so inordinately busy. Miranda being down with the German measles also gave Ann plenty to do in the house, which was perhaps just as well. He had arrived just in time to admire her winning entry in the flower-arrangement contest, and to note, partly with relief and partly with a slightly shocked surprise, that she was doing everything as usual, was thoroughly back in her old bread-and-buttery routine, and seemed hardly to have noticed Randall's depar­ture so little difference had it made to the shape of her days. Hugh thought, I wouldn't have behaved so if my spouse had left me, I'd have broken the place up. He felt almost a small resentment on Randall's behalf. But, for Ann, it doubtless did very well, and he was glad to be able to leave her with a clear conscience.

There was still no direct news of Randall. It appeared that he had left Rome, and there were rumours of his having been seen in Taormina and that he was trying to buy a villa there.

Hugh felt no distress about his son, but only a sort of rather exhausted rather pleasurable feeling such as one might have after a successfully brought-off bout of illicit love-making. No one knew. It had been his own private coup, his own privately arranged alteration to the face of the world, the beautiful extravagant, feckless setting of Randall free. He had been let out, like a wild bird, like a wild beast, and whatever should come of his more extended prowl his father did not feel that he would regret his act. He could be confident that Randall would slash the colour on. Happy or not, Randall would cer­tainly live. And Hugh could now be demure with an un­troubled heart. This crime squared him with the tipsy gods.

Yet it had been all for Emma. Or had it really? Emma. He wondered if he would ever see her again; and he thought now of the possibility of her death with a calm resignation which did justice to her own dignity. He must in the end let her be, It was impossible to remake the past. They had fashioned their own destinies and had of necessity become dream figures to each other, and there was no violence of action, no feverish grasping and flinging back of the years, which could alter that now. Emma, enthroned in her wisdom, her witchery, her illness and the shear mystery of her own life had sufficiently given him a sign. She was he felt, beyond him; and his humility contained its own flat cheerfulness. As he dropped his hands in resignation he felt something akin to relief. After all he had doubtless, in the old days, turned her down for.some good reasons.

He had thought lately a great deal more about Fanny, a Fanny more real to him now than at any time since her death, ^; as if the pale shade had waited its moment. He saw her, playing patience on the counterpane with Hatfield purring beside her.

He saw her anxious face lifted after the doctor had: gone. Poor Fanny! She had had, like Ann, her simplicities. He had indeed sometimes thought of her as a miniature Ann. Yet why miniature? Ann was not so large, after all, nor Fanny so small. Fanny had had her life, she had been something. He saw her life behind him, remoter now, like a pastel-shaded ellipse. He was glad that he had not lied to her about the swallows, though she had been, in a way, a person to be lied to. It was as if at the end he had recognized in her a dignity which she had had all along, but had kept humbly lowered like a dipped flag or a crumpled crest. He was glad, after all, that he had stayed with her. He was glad that he had been good to her.

Felix had finished his letter and got up. He passed by Hugh to say good-night, and Hugh noticed benevolently how tired, in fact, Felix looked, and how his hair was greying and re­ceding. Being in love is an exhausting business.

Felix asked, 'Is there any news of Ann? I do hope she's, getting on all right ‘How very kind of you to think of her. She was quite well when I left. She has such resources.

Not moping, you thought?

‘Certainly not. Gay, rather, in her own little way. She's quite a bouncy little person really.'

'A bouncy little person,' said Felix. 'Yes, I'm glad she's not depressed. Well, good-night, Hugh. I hope you remembered to bring your painting things?'

'Yes. I'm looking forward to painting again. I'm looking forward to everything. I expect we shall see the sun tomorrow. Good-night, Felix.'

Hugh got up when Felix was gone and wandered out of the now empty bar on to the deck. He walked to the rail. Behind the ship the pale road of the wake stretched away back into the night. The black empty water surrounded them, the old eternal preoccupied ruthless sea. Hugh worshipped its dark­ness, its vastness, its utter indifference. He felt lighter and happier than at any time since Fanny became ill; perhaps, he suddenly thought, lighter and happier than ever before. Yet how did one know? One forgot, one forgot. What hold had one on the past? The present moment was a little light travel­ling in darkness. Penn Graham would forget, and think that he enjoyed his time in England. Ann had forgotten the real Randall, Randall had forgotten the real Ann, probably by now. Hugh had rejected Emma for reasons, and forgotten the reasons. His consciousness was a tenuous and dim receptacle; and it would soon be extinct. But meanwhile there was now, the wind and the starry night and the great erasing sea. And ahead there was India and the unknown future, however brief. And there was comfortable cosy Mildred and gay enamoured Felix. Perhaps he had been confused, perhaps he had under­stood nothing, but he had certainly survived. He was free. “O spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more seen.”