In September, I immediately threw a call - to read the "Black Prince". It was picked up (and thanks again to those who picked it up). In November, I read The Black Prince and (instead of a review) threw another cry: to answer some questions - I myself deliberately did not answer them. She promised to reply later. Today, December is in the yard, and with it the year is coming to an end, it is not good to transfer old debts to a new one.
My answers to my own questions are below. And below them are some answers from the author. This time, my perception of Murdoch's book with the author's idea, alas, did not coincide.
The following text, correspondingly monstrously long, will be of interest (at least in places) only to those to whom it may concern
Q. Why is the novel called The Black Prince?
Because this is another Murdoch novel based on her reflections on Shakespeare's heroes, the most famous of which is, of course, the black prince Hamlet (I thought). Who exactly became Iris's Hamlet is another question, but I didn't see the black princes of non-Hamlets point-blank there. Plus, the main character's name is Bradley Pearson, built on the alliteration with the "black prince" in English (the Black Prince), which, unfortunately, is not transmitted in translation.
Q. A. Murdoch's novel "The Black Prince" - what is it actually about?
I gave a whole series of clues to this question, from which any one could come up ... probably ... But I myself was thinking about something else. I myself thought that “Aunt Iris” (as some livelib participants call her with obvious disdain) finally went crazy, realized that the meaning of life (and love, respectively, what kind of life without love) is in its complete worthlessness. I thought that for A.M. her period of violent cynicism arrived in time (and to me, who had reached about the same age at which she was at the time of the creation of the Black Prince, this was understandable and especially pleasant).
Love ( love?!) described in The Black Prince as skillfully as Murdoch's best pen can - not really something that could be associated with her life experience at that moment, but the professional use of pre-cuts ... plus amazingly high-pitched banter. Therefore, as a duet of lovers, she chose people in a very awkward combination - not in order to attract rare readers who are looking for a reflection of similar personal experience, their hidden feelings, or tolerant intellectuals. And in order to properly push everyone else away - not from herself - she herself is just at the same time here with the latter: they say, all this is terribly disgusting to me and myself, that's why I am writing, I will give full play to my sadomasochistic nature.
Here's my answer to that question: The Black Prince is about Iris' disappointments in love. And in life. And in people.
Q. Which of the heroes is the Black Prince? And which one is Hamlet?
Well, at first I was sure that the Black Prince is Bradley, it’s not for nothing that Murdoch alliterated his name with the title of the novel. Then I turned my attention to Julian: the perception of her gender (by me, by me - other readers disagree with me, and they are rather right) was as ambivalent as in relation to Shakespeare's Hamlet, only in reverse: Hamlet would become more understandable for me, be he a woman and Julian a man. At some point, a glimpse of the subconscious hinted that this was F. Loxius, whose surname and initial Iris clearly chose for a reason, but consciousness nevertheless extinguished this glimpse: let me remind you that I didn’t see the Black Princes of non-Hamlets in the novel, but about Loxius - see my failed answer below.
Q. Who do you take Bradley Pearson for / with whose opinion do you most agree? (With Christian that Bradley "eventually lost his mind and went insane"? With Francis Marlowe that Brad had a homosexual love for Arnold Buffin and killed him because of his Freudian complexes? With Rachel: "It was a dull loser, ashamed of his origin, of his ignorance, and absurdly ashamed of his service "? With Julian, who saw "a lifetime of efforts and failures" of the same Pearson, who passed off "the fabrications of another mind" as quotations from her own letter?
I specially cite this question in an unabridged form, because I agree with every single opinion - ie. I am in solidarity with everyone. Bradley Pearson is a narcissistic and crazy Peter Pan.
Q. Who did Bradley love anyway?
Himself, dear. And no one else. True, he sometimes “gets up” (sorry for being rude, it’s Iris’s fault, every now and then referring to the Post Office Tower - at that time the tallest building in London and - oh, yes - similar to a phallus) to the male sex. On the female sometimes, too, but more often, if that woman is in some role and the man is also (very Shakespearean, this is all too, yes). But an erection and love are not the same in my concept, after all, even though I am more cynical than Iris.
Q. Who killed Arnold Baffin?
At first I thought Rachel killed Arnold. At the last paragraph of the last chapter (that is, even before the afterwords) - she changed her mind, especially since Peter Pan, in my opinion, still deserved a prison. The afterwords confused me - and I could not decide who the killer was there anyway. At the same time, Julian also dragged in (as one of the Hamlets). And then I thought: does it matter? Maybe Iris didn't know either? Either she didn't want others to know the answer for sure.
Q. Who is Mr. Loxey?
He is my mistake. Looking ahead a little, I’ll say that it consisted in the fact that I was just mediocrely too lazy to type such an interesting name on Google when it met on the first pages of the novel. If I had done it right away, the whole novel would have been read with a “key”, but ... because. I postponed this study until the end of reading, then ... in general, the results are obvious. I accepted Julian's opinion (from her afterword) that Loxius is Bradley himself, released early from prison, his "renewed" personality, if Loxius had not noted it " unimaginably primitive concepts" About Me. Unfortunately (for me), he did this in the very last paragraph of the novel, when the “key” was literally “at hand” (in the form of manuals on Murdok studies). And when I took this “key” in my hands, I realized that without it I went to the wrong “door” at all.
Q. In which of the characters in the novel did Iris Murdoch show herself most of all?
Yes, everywhere and in everyone. As in the heroes of the Sea. Most of all I saw her in Bradley and Arnold, in Rachel and Julian.
Q. What gender (and orientation) was Iris Murdoch?
I did not expect serious answers to this question. But I myself will answer in all seriousness with what I actually know - from her biography. Iris Murdoch was a biological woman who psychologically identified with a homosexual man.
I hung up a reproduction of Titian's work "The Punishment (Flaying) of Marcia" after I got acquainted with the author's intention of the "Black Prince".
For those who have read this paragraph, I mentally present a medal for patience and perseverance and suggest that they take a break for tea / coffee / break dance / rock and roll before proceeding to the second part (very different from the first) - to the author's intention .
Break - break - break - break - break
From the first pages of The Black Prince, Murdoch intrigues the reader with the "Editor's Preface" - a certain F. Loxia. We drive "Loxia" into Google - who flies out in the first line? That's right, Phoebus Apollo.
Loxius - "broadcasting allegorically" - an epithet of Apollo, associated with the fact that the words of the Pythia, who announced the predictions of Apollo, were in the nature of incoherent speeches that were "processed" by special priests, after which they were of a poetic nature.
(link)
Murdoch herself wanted to give a hint to the inexperienced reader: when the book was being typed, she asked Christopher Cornford (one of her friends) to draw a cover with an image of the head of the statue of Apollo at Olympia:
« The Black Prince is, of course, Apollo, - said A.M. in an interview with French journalist Jean-Louis Chevalier in 1978, - most of the critics who submitted their book reviews in England didn't even seem to get it, despite the picture of Apollo on the cover!» Instead, critics have linked the image of the protagonist with Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Murdoch demonstrated the connection between Loxia and Apollo: " Apollo is a murderer, a rapist, as it is said about him in the novel, when the identity of Loxius, who killed a fellow musician, is discussed in a terrible way, an image that personifies power and authority, not necessarily a positive image».
Sophocles in the tragedy "Oedipus Rex" calls Apollo either Loxius or Lyceum. Throughout the history of world literature, Apollo is known as a musician and as a seducer of women. In a painting by Titian (which the British artist Tom Phillips incidentally used as a backdrop), Apollo lovingly scrapes off the skin of Marsyas, a satire he defeated in a musicians' competition. is duplicated throughout The Black Prince in several situations: in the suspicion of Arnold Buffin's murder by his fellow writer Bradley Pearson, in his forced sexual intercourse with Julian, and in his own suffering and death, which proved necessary for the writing of his book.
Titian's painting for Murdoch, like the myth of Apollo and Marsyas itself, reflects " something that has to do with human life, all its ambiguities, all its nightmares, its horrors and torments, and at the same time there is something beautiful in this, the picture is beautiful, in it there is some entry of the spiritual into the human sphere and the closeness of the gods».
A.M. spoke about her ambivalent attitude towards Apollo, whom she “ would like to exalt as a god, a terrible god, but also as an outstanding artist, thinker and as a great source of life».
Apollo influenced the life of Bradley Pearson, the man " destroyed by art; he is also ruined by Black Eros”, which Murdoch in some sense associated with Apollo.
Then she said:
- But I still have a lot of fire, keep in mind. I am not yet a finished man, like poor Priscilla. I still have a lot of fire and strength. Like this.
- Certainly.
- You do not understand. I'm not talking about innocence and not about love. And not even about the will to live. I mean fire. Fire! Who burns. Which kills.
Publisher's FOREWORD
This book owes its existence to me in several respects. Its author, my friend Bradley Pearson, entrusted me with the care of its publication. In this primitive mechanical sense, it will now be published thanks to me. I am also that "kind friend," etc., addressed here and there in its pages. But I do not belong to the actors in the drama that Pearson narrates. The beginning of my friendship with Bradley Pearson dates back to a time later than the events described here. At the time of disaster, we both felt the need for friendship and happily found this blessed gift in each other. I can state with confidence that, if it were not for my constant participation and approval, this story, most likely, would have remained unwritten. Too often, those who scream the truth to an uncaring world end up breaking down, falling silent, or beginning to question "their own sanity. Without my support, this could have happened to Bradley Pearson. He needed someone who believed in him and believed in him." And in need he found me, his alter ego.
The following text, in its essence, as well as in general outlines, is a story about love. Not only superficially, but fundamentally. The story of man's creative struggles, the search for wisdom and truth is always a story about love. It is presented here vaguely, sometimes ambiguously. Man's struggles and searches are ambiguous and gravitate toward mystery. Those whose life is passing by dark light, they will understand me. And yet, what could be simpler than a love story, and what could be more captivating? Art gives charm to horrors - this may be its blessing, or perhaps its curse. Art is rock. It became a rock for Bradley Pearson as well. And in a completely different way for me too.
My role as a publisher was simple. I should probably call myself something else… How? Impresario? A jester or a harlequin who appears in front of the curtain, and then solemnly partes it? I saved for myself the very last word, the final conclusion, the conclusion. But I'd rather be Bradley's jester than his judge. In a way, I seem to be both. Why this story was written will become clear from the story itself. But in the end, there is no mystery here. Every artist is an unfortunate lover. And unfortunate lovers love to tell their story.
F. LOXY, PUBLISHER
FOREWORD BY BRADLEY PEARSON
Although several years have passed since the events described here, in describing them, I will use the latest narrative device, when the spotlight of perception passes from one present moment to another, remembering the past, but not knowing the future. In other words, I will incarnate again in my past "I" and, for clarity, I will proceed only from the facts of that time - a time that is in many respects different from the present. So, for example, I will say: “I am fifty-eight years old,” as I was then. And I will judge people inaccurately, perhaps even unfairly, as I judged them then, and not in the light of later wisdom. But wisdom—for I hope I rightly think it is wisdom—is not entirely absent from the story. To some extent, it will inevitably have to “illuminate” him anyway. A work of art is equal to its creator. It cannot be more than him. As it can not be less in this case. Virtues have secret names; virtue itself is a mystery, inaccessible to the mind. Everything that matters is mysterious. I will not attempt to describe or name what I have learned in the austere simplicity of the life I live in Lately. I hope that I have become wiser and more merciful than I was then — I have undoubtedly become happier — and that the light of wisdom, falling on the figure of a simpleton, will reveal not only his errors, but also the strict appearance of truth.
The novel was published in 1972, that is, even before postmodernism became the subject of broad philosophical reflection, or at least it had not yet occupied a central place in the discussions of philosophers, writers, and art critics. The book, in general, is not distinguished by the author's desire to refute the literary canons that have developed within the framework of modern culture. Moreover, the problematics of The Black Prince, based on the relationship between art and reality, gives reason to attribute the novel to a greater extent to modern literature, which gravitates towards elitism, while postmodern seeks to overcome the hierarchy and all kinds of barriers. However, from a certain point of view, the world of Bradley Pearson, the protagonist of the novel, can be described as a "postmodern state".
The entire novel is a narrative of how it was written. This high degree of self-reflection is feature postmodern writers. The reader finds the protagonist of the work in a state of crisis of worldview (is he experiencing his “own” postmodern?) The fact that in a book written by a woman, the story is told on behalf of a man can be interpreted as the author’s desire to get away from the traditional principle of binary oppositions for modernity. Confidence in this increases as you read the novel. Pearson's few sex scenes and erotic experiences can only cause a sympathetic attitude towards him, if we consider them from the standpoint of phallocentrism traditional for Western European culture. The only attempt at male self-affirmation ends for Pearson with a dramatic denouement, against which his short-term possession of the object of his passion looks ridiculous and out of place. In general, the main character's relationship with women can most likely be defined in the spirit of Baudrillard as modeling a special world in which "the feminine principle is not opposed to the masculine, but seduces him." It is known that in Baudrillard's system the concept of temptation differs from desire as related to production. Maybe that's why Pearson doesn't seem cynical when he responds to his sister Priscilla's complaints about her childlessness as a result of her abortion: “I never wanted to have children, and I don’t understand this desire in others.”
It is no coincidence that they do not find in Pearson an understanding of his attempts ex-wife Christian gets close to him again. Apparently, their marriage was rendered impossible by her attempts to dominate her relationship with her husband. Christian herself is aware of the reason for the alienation: "It seemed to you that my love is a destructive force, that I need power ...".
Indicative in this regard is the attitude of Pearson (and, presumably, Murdoch herself) to another character, Francis Marlowe, whom Pearson ranks among the cynics and pseudoscientists. This image causes hostility already by its appearance and way of existence: a short, foul-smelling, drinking, untidy and narrow-minded loser, a doctor deprived of a diploma, a self-proclaimed psychoanalyst. Even his appearance during a rather intimate conversation between Rachel and Pearson makes the latter, this sophisticated intellectual, the impression of nothing more than the presence of a pet in the room. The ever-present irony towards Marlo, it seems, is directed, in fact, against his pseudoscientific theory, in the center of which is the opposition of male and female principles, all sorts of phallic symbols, the Oedipus complex, etc. The author's irony here is quite consonant with the position of Deleuze and Guattari, thanks to which, in the context of the methodology of schizoanalysis, the paradigm figure of Anti-Oedipus appeared in postmodern philosophy. In contrast to psychoanalysis, which assumes the presence of forced causality, schizoanalysis postulates the need to constitute a subjectivity free from external causation. In characterizing his relationship with Rachel, Pearson contrasts two interpretations. One of them does not go beyond the generally accepted framework of psychoanalysis: “In our age, it is customary to explain the boundless and incomprehensible world of causal relationships with “sexual drives” ... , will feel like a different person ... Pretends to think about his book, but he himself has female breasts in his mind. He pretends to care about his honesty and directness, but in fact he is worried about a completely different straightforwardness. Pearson himself is of a different opinion: “Such interpretations not only primitivize and trivialize, but also completely miss the mark ... I was not so flat and stupid as to imagine that simple sexual relaxation could bring me that higher freedom that I was looking for, I did not at all confuse animal instinct with the divine principle. To some extent, it can be recognized that here Pearson, in the spirit of Heidegger, refuses to search for some initial fundamental principle, and also opposes the alienation of the mental and bodily.
Opposition to modernism is also found in Pearson's attempts to describe his feelings for his beloved: “My love for Julian was probably predetermined even before the creation of the world ... God said:“ Let there be light ”- and then this love was created. She has no history." This kind of experience can be interpreted as a rejection of the modernist claims to novelty, as a situation referred to in postmodernism by the term DEJA-VU . If in modernity the absence of novelty is not compatible with creativity, then the realization of the impossibility of innovations in postmodernity is the basis and act of creativity. Despite the fact that "time became eternity" and "there was nowhere to rush," the protagonist's ideal love did not in the least prevent him from realizing his dream of becoming a great artist. Let us once again pay attention to the correlation of flesh and spirit in Pearson's mind: “of course, the flame of desire warmed and animated ... blissful and unsullied visions, but it did not seem to exist separately, or rather, I did not perceive anything separately. When physical desire and love are inseparable, it connects us with the whole world, and we join something new. Lust becomes a great binding principle that helps us overcome duality, it becomes a force that turned disunity into unity ... ” Such a love experience fits well into the framework of the “new corporality” philosophy that took shape in postmodernism, which recognizes the unconscious as natural, but not organic, desire as corporeal, but outside of physiology. “Sex is the link that connects us with the world, and when we are truly happy and experience the highest spiritual satisfaction, we are not enslaved by it at all, on the contrary, it fills with meaning everything that we do not touch, no matter what we watched". The process of acquiring the features of divinity, miraculousness by the world, the opening of a new horizon, which does not follow linearly from the previous state, described in this passage, is expressed in postmodernism by the concept transgression, applied, primarily to the sphere of sexuality.
Murdoch also expresses his position on this issue in the afterword of the publisher, a certain Mr. Loxia, who published Pearson's sad story. Loxius opposes the authors of the three previous afterwords, the heroes of the story. Of particular interest are his remarks about Julian, whose love became in Pearson's life a source of both great sadness and creative inspiration. Julian writes: “Pearson is mistaken in believing that his Eros is the source of art ... Erotic love is not capable of generating art ... The energy of the spirit behind some line can be called sexual energy ... Love is possession and self-affirmation. Art is neither. To mix it with Eros, even if black, is the most subtle and most destructive of mistakes that an artist can make. Loxius answers as follows: “There are no such depths available to your gaze, ... or to the gaze of another human being, from which it would be possible to determine what nourishes. And what does not feed art. Why did you need to bifurcate this black big man, what are you afraid of? ... To say that great art can be as vulgar and pornographic as it pleases means to say only a little. Art is joy, play and absurdity.” Also important is Loxia's remark that Pearson, according to Julian, understood only the vulgar side of Shakespeare: “When you grow older in art, you will understand much more. (Then you, perhaps, will be able to comprehend the vulgar side of Shakespeare).
In general, Shakespeare, or rather his Hamlet (however, according to Pearson, this is one and the same person), occupies a very special place in the novel. The whole story of Pearson, told by himself, in one way or another is compared with the great tragedy of Shakespeare. The reflective nature of Pearson is inevitably associated with the image of the Prince of Denmark. The characters of the novel, Pearson and Julian, find appropriate allusions in their behavior and relationships, for example, their first declaration of love is interspersed with quotations from the dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia. And Pearson's first great insight, his comprehension of ideal love, comes to him during his conversation with Julian about Hamlet. It is noteworthy that the conversation itself looks rather incoherent for a reader familiar with the traditional methods of literary criticism. Young Julian, who dreams of becoming a writer, turns to Pearson as an accomplished writer and an experienced critic. However, the result of their communication, perhaps emotionally pleasant for her, is unlikely to meet the girl's expectations. Pearson gives an unusual interpretation that makes Shakespeare an even more enigmatic author, and his work even more confusing and difficult for Julian to understand (and most likely for most readers). The very dialogue of the writer and his young companion about the great tragedy is constantly interrupted in the most ridiculous way, the attention of the reader and the characters themselves now and then switches to objects and actions that are not very compatible with a deep understanding of one of the most majestic images in world literature - purple boots, pink tights, unbuttoned shirt collar, heat, smells, noise from the street, etc. main meaning conversation constantly slips away, the narrator tries to express something important, but not in words, but as if between the lines, refuses, in fact, from a single matrix of meaning. At the same time, there remains a wide field for the activity of the reader himself, for his ability to independently create the meaning of the text. Shakespeare, in the words of Pearson, “created a book that endlessly thinks about itself, not by the way, but in essence, a construction of words, like a hundred Chinese balls one inside the other, ... a reflection on the bottomless fluidity of reason and the redemptive role of words in life those who do not really have their own "I", that is, in people's lives. Hamlet is words, and Hamlet is words. Here one can see the idea of self-movement of the text, founded in postmodernism, as a self-sufficient procedure for generating meaning. In other words, the "death of the author" is proclaimed as a symbol of external coercive causality. Addressing the reader, Pearson himself says of his narration: "The story must inevitably soon break free of my control."
The rejection of the linear type of determinism in the novel should, one way or another, lead to the metaphor of "the death of a god." However, Murdoch's position on this issue can hardly be considered unambiguous. On the one hand, when it comes to love and art, Pearson’s reasoning is more in tune with the views of Plato, whose name is repeatedly mentioned on the pages of the book: “I felt that everything that happened to me ... conceived some divine power... Human love is the gateway to all knowledge, as Plato understood. And through the gate that Julian opened, my being entered into another world. But as far as Pearson's worldview as a whole is concerned, the postmodernist metaphor mentioned above is quite applicable to him. God as the support of the Universe and man is absent in it. “God, if he existed, would laugh at his creation ... life is terrible, meaningless, subject to the game of chance, ... pain and the expectation of death rule over it. … Man is an animal constantly suffering from anxiety, pain and fear… Our world is a vale of horror…”
Being in this shaky reality, according to Pearson, gives rise to irony, a phenomenon that, as you know, occupies a central place in postmodern philosophy. Pearson's reasoning on this subject is quite consonant with the postmodern idea of constructing a way of being in conditions of cultural and symbolic secondary meaning: "Irony is a kind of" tact "... This is our tactful sense of proportion when selecting forms to embody beauty... How can a person "correctly" describe another? How can a person describe himself?... Even "I'm tall" sounds differently, depending on the context... But what else can we do but try to put our vision into this ironic-sensitive mixture, which, if I were a character fictional, would be much deeper and denser?
It is also necessary to say about the title of the novel. The “Black Prince” (“Black Eros”) is a symbolic figure that can be interpreted as broadly as desired. However, it is unlikely that any version will be exhaustive. Here again it would be appropriate to return to the postmodern concept of seduction, in which the main thing is the endless process of solving a riddle, the secret of which cannot be fully revealed. In this case, we can also talk about seducing the reader. The extreme abstractness of the title is a kind of guarantee against imposing on the reader of some rigidly defined interpretation of the work, that is, the classical epistemological paradigm of representing the fullness of meaning is rejected in the novel.
Thus, the novel traces such features of postmodern discourse as the rejection of binarism and phallocentrism, of hierarchy (“arts do not form a pyramid”), seduction, physicality, irony, the figure of Anti-Oedipus, “the death of the subject” (respectively, “the death of God” , "the death of the author"), etc. This gives grounds to consider the novel as a special case of the formation of postmodernism as a system of value worldview in the second half of the 20th century. One way or another, the very possibility of such an interpretation may indicate changes in consciousness and culture caused by the phenomenon of postmodernism.
14. Graham Greene
(1904–1991) - English writer, in many of whose works the detective story is combined with religious overtones.
From 1926 to 1930 he served in the letters department of the London Times.
Green said goodbye to journalism after the success of his first novel, The Man Within (1929). In 1932 he published the action-packed political detective Istanbul Express. This and subsequent books with elements of the detective genre - The Assassin (1936), The Confidant (1939), The Office of Fear 1943) - he called "entertaining". His novels This Battlefield (1934) and England Made Me (1935, Russian translation 1986) reflect the socio-political ferment of the 1930s. Brighton Candy (1938) - the first "entertainment" novel, the events of which are highlighted by religious issues.
In the late 1930s, Greene traveled extensively in Liberia and Mexico. Deeply personal accounts of these trips were written in two books of travelogues, Journey Without a Map (1936) and Lawless Roads (1939). Political persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico prompted him to write the novel Power and Glory (1940), whose hero, a sinner who "drinks padre", opposes the persecutors of the church.
From 1941 to 1944, Greene, as an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was in West Africa, where the events of his novel The Heart of the Matter (1948), which brought him international recognition, will unfold. The events of Greene's next important novel, love story The End of a Novel (1951), takes place in London during the German bombing raids in World War II.
Green's later work is distinguished by a sense of topicality that he probably acquired while working as a correspondent for the New Republic magazine in Indochina. The scene of Green's later novels is exotic countries on the eve of international conflicts: in the revelatory, insightful novel The Quiet American (1955) - Southeast Asia before the American invasion; in Our Man in Havana (1958) - Cuba on the eve of the revolution; in The Comedians (1966) - Haiti in the reign of François Duvalier. Although religion is present in Green's later work, it recedes into the background, and its authority ceases to be indisputable. For example, the ending of the novel At the Cost of Loss (1961) makes it clear that Christianity is unable to help modern man.
Green's other works include The Room for the Living (1953), The Greenhouse (1957) and The Compliant Lover (1959); collections of short stories "Twenty-One Stories" (1954), "A Sense of Reality" (1963) and "Can We Kidnap Your Husband?" (1967); essay collections Lost Childhood (1951; later expanded), Selected Essays (1969); novels A Journey with Auntie (1969, Russian translation 1989), Honorary Consul (1973, Russian translation 1983), The Human Factor (1978, Russian translation 1988), Monsignor Quixote (1982, Russian translation). translation 1989) and "The Tenth" (1985, Russian translation 1986); biography Lord Rochester's Monkey (1974). Many of his works have been made into films, including The Third (1950); sometimes he acted as a screenwriter.
Iris MURDOC
BLACK PRINCE
Publisher's FOREWORD
This book owes its existence to me in several respects. Its author, my friend Bradley Pearson, entrusted me with the care of its publication. In this primitive mechanical sense, it will now be published thanks to me. I am also that "kind friend," etc., addressed here and there in its pages. But I do not belong to the actors in the drama that Pearson narrates. The beginning of my friendship with Bradley Pearson dates back to a time later than the events described here. At the time of disaster, we both felt the need for friendship and happily found this blessed gift in each other. I can state with confidence that, if it were not for my constant participation and approval, this story, most likely, would have remained unwritten. Too often, those who scream the truth to an uncaring world end up breaking down, falling silent, or beginning to question "their own sanity. Without my support, this could have happened to Bradley Pearson. He needed someone who believed in him and believed in him." And in need he found me, his alter ego.
The following text, in its essence, as well as in general outlines, is a story about love. Not only superficially, but fundamentally. The story of man's creative struggles, the search for wisdom and truth is always a story about love. It is presented here vaguely, sometimes ambiguously. Man's struggles and searches are ambiguous and gravitate toward mystery. Those whose lives are spent in this dark light will understand me. And yet, what could be simpler than a love story, and what could be more captivating? Art gives charm to horrors - this may be its blessing, or perhaps its curse. Art is rock. It became a rock for Bradley Pearson as well. And in a completely different way for me too.
My role as a publisher was simple. I should probably call myself something else… How? Impresario? A jester or a harlequin who appears in front of the curtain, and then solemnly partes it? I saved for myself the very last word, the final conclusion, the conclusion. But I'd rather be Bradley's jester than his judge. In a way, I seem to be both. Why this story was written will become clear from the story itself. But in the end, there is no mystery here. Every artist is an unfortunate lover. And unfortunate lovers love to tell their story.
F. LOXY, PUBLISHER
FOREWORD BY BRADLEY PEARSON
Although several years have passed since the events described here, in describing them, I will use the latest narrative device, when the spotlight of perception passes from one present moment to another, remembering the past, but not knowing the future. In other words, I will incarnate again in my past "I" and, for clarity, I will proceed only from the facts of that time - a time that is in many respects different from the present. So, for example, I will say: “I am fifty-eight years old,” as I was then. And I will judge people inaccurately, perhaps even unfairly, as I judged them then, and not in the light of later wisdom. But wisdom - for I hope I rightly think it is wisdom - is not entirely absent from the story. To some extent, it will inevitably have to “illuminate” him anyway. A work of art is equal to its creator. It cannot be more than him. As it can not be less in this case. Virtues have secret names; virtue itself is a mystery, inaccessible to the mind. Everything that matters is mysterious. I will not attempt to describe or name what I have learned in the austere simplicity of the life I have been living lately. I hope that I have become wiser and more merciful than I was then - I have undoubtedly become happier - and that the light of wisdom, falling on the figure of a simpleton, will reveal not only his errors, but also the strict appearance of truth. I have already made it clear that I consider this "reportage" a work of art. By this I do not mean to say that he is a product of fiction. All art deals with the absurd, but strives to achieve simplicity. Real art expresses the truth, it is the truth, perhaps the only truth. In what follows, I have tried to be wise and tell the truth as I understand it, not only about the superficial, "interesting" aspects of this drama, but also about what lies underneath.
I know that people usually have a completely distorted idea of themselves. A person truly manifests itself in a long chain of deeds, and not in a short list of self-interpretation. This is especially true of artists who, while imagining that they are hiding, actually expose themselves throughout their work. So I am all exposed here, although the soul, in complete contradiction to the laws of my craft, alas, still yearns for shelter. Under the sign of this preliminary reservation, I will now try to characterize myself. I will speak, as I have already explained, on behalf of myself, as I was several years ago - the main and sometimes inglorious "hero" of this story. I am fifty eight years old. I am a writer. "Writer" is my simplest and, perhaps, the most faithful general characteristics. That I am also a psychologist, a self-taught philosopher, a researcher of human relations, follows from the fact that I am a writer, a writer of precisely my kind. I have spent my whole life searching. Now the search has led me to try to express the truth. My gift, I hope and believe, I kept clean. And this means, among other things, that as a writer I was not successful. I never sought pleasantness at the expense of truth. I have known long, painful streaks of life without self-expression. "Wait!" - this is the most powerful and sacred decree for the artist. Art has its martyrs, among them not the last place is occupied by silencers. I am not afraid to say that there are saints in art who simply kept silent all their lives, but did not desecrate the purity of the paper sheet by expressing what would not be the height of beauty and proportion, that is, would not be true.
As you know, I have published quite a bit. I say "as is known", relying on the fame I have acquired outside the realm of art. My name is famous, but, unfortunately, not because I am a writer. As a writer, I have been and no doubt will be understood by only a few connoisseurs. The paradox, perhaps, of my whole life, the absurdity that now serves as the subject of constant meditation for me, is that the following dramatic story, so unlike my other works, may well turn out to be my only "bestseller". It undoubtedly has elements of a cruel drama, "incredible" events that ordinary people love to read about so much. It even fell to my lot, so to speak, to bathe in the rays of newspaper glory.
Iris MURDOC
BLACK PRINCE
Publisher's FOREWORD
This book owes its existence to me in several respects. Its author, my friend Bradley Pearson, entrusted me with the care of its publication. In this primitive mechanical sense, it will now be published thanks to me. I am also that "kind friend," etc., addressed here and there in its pages. But I do not belong to the actors in the drama that Pearson narrates. The beginning of my friendship with Bradley Pearson dates back to a time later than the events described here. At the time of disaster, we both felt the need for friendship and happily found this blessed gift in each other. I can state with confidence that, if it were not for my constant participation and approval, this story, most likely, would have remained unwritten. Too often, those who scream the truth to an uncaring world end up breaking down, falling silent, or beginning to question "their own sanity. Without my support, this could have happened to Bradley Pearson. He needed someone who believed in him and believed in him." And in need he found me, his alter ego.
The following text, in its essence, as well as in general outlines, is a story about love. Not only superficially, but fundamentally. The story of man's creative struggles, the search for wisdom and truth is always a story about love. It is presented here vaguely, sometimes ambiguously. Man's struggles and searches are ambiguous and gravitate toward mystery. Those whose lives are spent in this dark light will understand me. And yet, what could be simpler than a love story, and what could be more captivating? Art gives charm to horrors - this may be its blessing, or perhaps its curse. Art is rock. It became a rock for Bradley Pearson as well. And in a completely different way for me too.
My role as a publisher was simple. I should probably call myself something else… How? Impresario? A jester or a harlequin who appears in front of the curtain, and then solemnly partes it? I saved for myself the very last word, the final conclusion, the conclusion. But I'd rather be Bradley's jester than his judge. In a way, I seem to be both. Why this story was written will become clear from the story itself. But in the end, there is no mystery here. Every artist is an unfortunate lover. And unfortunate lovers love to tell their story.
F. LOXY, PUBLISHER
FOREWORD BY BRADLEY PEARSON
Although several years have passed since the events described here, in describing them, I will use the latest narrative device, when the spotlight of perception passes from one present moment to another, remembering the past, but not knowing the future. In other words, I will incarnate again in my past "I" and, for clarity, I will proceed only from the facts of that time - a time that is in many respects different from the present. So, for example, I will say: “I am fifty-eight years old,” as I was then. And I will judge people inaccurately, perhaps even unfairly, as I judged them then, and not in the light of later wisdom. But wisdom - for I hope I rightly think it is wisdom - is not entirely absent from the story. To some extent, it will inevitably have to “illuminate” him anyway. A work of art is equal to its creator. It cannot be more than him. As it can not be less in this case. Virtues have secret names; virtue itself is a mystery, inaccessible to the mind. Everything that matters is mysterious. I will not attempt to describe or name what I have learned in the austere simplicity of the life I have been living lately. I hope that I have become wiser and more merciful than I was then - I have undoubtedly become happier - and that the light of wisdom, falling on the figure of a simpleton, will reveal not only his errors, but also the strict appearance of truth. I have already made it clear that I consider this "reportage" a work of art. By this I do not mean to say that he is a product of fiction. All art deals with the absurd, but strives to achieve simplicity. Real art expresses the truth, it is the truth, perhaps the only truth. In what follows, I have tried to be wise and tell the truth as I understand it, not only about the superficial, "interesting" aspects of this drama, but also about what lies underneath.
I know that people usually have a completely distorted idea of themselves. A person truly manifests itself in a long chain of deeds, and not in a short list of self-interpretation. This is especially true of artists who, while imagining that they are hiding, actually expose themselves throughout their work. So I am all exposed here, although the soul, in complete contradiction to the laws of my craft, alas, still yearns for shelter. Under the sign of this preliminary reservation, I will now try to characterize myself. I will speak, as I have already explained, on behalf of myself, as I was several years ago - the main and sometimes inglorious "hero" of this story. I am fifty eight years old. I am a writer. "Writer" is my simplest and perhaps most accurate general description. That I am also a psychologist, a self-taught philosopher, a researcher of human relations, follows from the fact that I am a writer, a writer of precisely my kind. I have spent my whole life searching. Now the search has led me to try to express the truth. My gift, I hope and believe, I kept clean. And this means, among other things, that as a writer I was not successful. I never sought pleasantness at the expense of truth. I have known long, painful streaks of life without self-expression. "Wait!" - this is the most powerful and sacred decree for the artist. Art has its martyrs, among them not the last place is occupied by silencers. I am not afraid to say that there are saints in art who simply kept silent all their lives, but did not desecrate the purity of the paper sheet by expressing what would not be the height of beauty and proportion, that is, would not be true.
As you know, I have published quite a bit. I say "as is known", relying on the fame I have acquired outside the realm of art. My name is famous, but, unfortunately, not because I am a writer. As a writer, I have been and no doubt will be understood by only a few connoisseurs. The paradox, perhaps, of my whole life, the absurdity that now serves as the subject of constant meditation for me, is that the following dramatic story, so unlike my other works, may well turn out to be my only "bestseller". It undoubtedly has elements of a cruel drama, "incredible" events that ordinary people love to read about so much. It even fell to my lot, so to speak, to bathe in the rays of newspaper glory.
I will not describe my works here. In connection with all the same circumstances that have already been discussed here, quite a lot of people know about them, although, I'm afraid, almost no one knows them. I published one early novel at the age of twenty-five. The second novel, or rather a quasi-novel, - when I was already forty. I also published a small book, "Fragments" or "Etudes", which I would not venture to call a philosophical work. (Pensees, perhaps, yes.) I was not given the time to become a philosopher, and I regret this only in part. Only magic and plots remain for centuries. And how poor and limited our understanding is, art teaches us this, probably no worse than philosophy. There is a hopelessness in creativity that every artist knows about. For in art, as in morality, we often miss the point because we are able to hesitate at a decisive moment. What is the decisive moment? Greatness consists in defining it, defining it, holding it and stretching it. But for most of us, the gap between "Oh, I'm dreaming of the future" and "Oh, it's late, it's all in the past" is so infinitely small that it's impossible to squeeze through. And we always miss something, imagining that we still have time to return to it. This is how works of art are destroyed, and this is how entire human lives are destroyed because we either linger or rush forward without looking back. It so happened that I would have a good plot for a story, but while I thought it over properly, in all details, I lost the desire to write - not because it is bad, but because it belongs to the past and is no longer of interest to me. My own thoughts quickly lost their appeal to me. Some things I ruined by taking them ahead of time. Others, on the contrary, by keeping them in my head for too long, and they ended before they were born. In just an instant, plans from the field of foggy, indefinite dreams passed into a hopelessly old, ancient history. Entire novels existed only in titles. It may seem to some that the three thin volumes left from this massacre do not give me sufficient grounds to claim the sacred title of "writer". I can only say that my faith in myself, my sense of vocation, even of doom, did not weaken for a moment - "it goes without saying," I would like to add. I was waiting. Not always patient, but at least in last years, all the more confident. Ahead, beyond the veil of the near future, I invariably foresaw great accomplishments. Please laugh at me - but only those who have waited just as long. Well, if it turns out that this fable about myself is my destiny, the crown of all my expectations, will I feel deprived? No, of course, because in the face of this dark force, a person has no rights. No one has a right to divine grace. We can only wait, try, wait again. I was driven by an elementary need to tell the truth about what is widely distorted and falsified; tell about a miracle that no one knows about. And since I am an artist, my story turned out to be artwork. May it be worthy of other, deeper sources that nourished it.
Some more information about myself. My parents ran a store. This is important, although not as important as Francis Marlo suggests, and certainly not in the sense he has in mind. I mentioned Francis as the first of my "characters" not because he is the most significant; it does not matter at all and is not really connected with the events described. He is a purely secondary, auxiliary figure in the story, as, apparently, in life in general. Poor Francis is organically incapable of being the main character. It would make an excellent fifth wheel for any cart. But I make it kind of a prologue to my story partly because, in a purely mechanical sense, it really started with him, and if on a certain day he had not ... and so on, I probably would never have ... and so on. Here is another paradox. One must constantly reflect on the absurdity of the case, which is even more instructive than thinking about death. Part of the reason I'm putting Francis in a special place is because, of the main actors in this drama, he's the only one who doesn't think I'm a liar. Please accept my gratitude, Francis Marlo, if you are still alive and accidentally read these lines. Later, someone else was found who believed, and this meant immeasurably more to me. But then you were the only one who saw and understood. Through the abyss of time that has elapsed since this tragedy, my greetings to you, Francis.
My parents ran a store, a small stationery shop in Croydon. They sold newspapers and magazines, all sorts of paper, and ugly "gifts." My sister Priscilla and I lived in this store. Of course, we didn’t literally eat and sleep in it, although we often happened to have tea there, and I have a “memory” of supposedly sleeping under the counter. But the store was the home and mythical realm of our childhood. Happier children have a garden, a kind of landscape against which their early years. We had a store, its shelves, its drawers, its smells, its countless empty boxes, its peculiar filth. It was a rundown, unprofitable establishment. My parents were seedy, unlucky people. Both of them died when I was not yet thirty years old, first my father, and soon after him my mother. My first book still caught her alive. She immediately became proud of me. My mother caused me vexation and shame, but I loved her. (Shut up, Francis Marlo.) My father was decidedly disagreeable to me. Or maybe I just forgot the affection I once had for him. Love is forgotten, as I shall soon be able to see.
I will not write about the store anymore. I still dream about him about once a week. Francis Marlo, when I told him once about it, saw something significant here. But Francis belongs to a sad host of half-educated theorists who, in the face of the uniqueness of personal fate, hide in horror behind the commonplaces of stupid “symbolism”. Francis wanted to "interpret" me. In the days of my glory, some others, smarter than him, tried to do the same. But the human person is always infinitely more complex than this kind of interpretation. When I say "infinite" (or, more correctly, "almost infinite"? Alas, I am not a philosopher), I mean not only a much larger number of details, but also a much greater variety in the nature of these details and a greater variety in the nature of their connections than imagine those who seek to simplify everything. With the same success, you can "explain" the painting by Michelangelo on a sheet of graph paper. Only art explains; art itself cannot be explained. Art and we are made for each other, and where this connection is cut off, human life is cut off. Only this we can affirm, only this mirror gives us a true image. Of course, we also have a subconscious, and my book will be partly about it. But we do not have maps of this inaccessible continent. "Scientific" cards, anyway.
My life, up to the dramatic climax described here, proceeded quite serenely. Another would say, even boring. If it is allowed to use such a beautiful and powerful word in an unemotional context, it can be said that my life was sublimely boring - a beautiful boring life. I was married, then I stopped being married, as I will tell below. I don't have children. I suffer from occasional stomach upsets and insomnia. I have lived alone almost all my life. Before the wife, and also after her, there were other women whom I am not talking about here, because they are of no importance and are not relevant. Sometimes I imagined myself as an aging Don Juan, but most of my victories are in the world of fantasy. In recent years, when it was too late to start, I sometimes wished I had kept a diary. The human capacity to forget is truly limitless. And it would be an undeniably valuable monument. It often occurred to me that a sort of "Diary of a Seducer" flavored with metaphysical speculation would probably be the ideal literary form for me. But these years have passed and sunk into oblivion. All about women. On the whole, I lived cheerfully, alone, but it cannot be said that I was unsociable, sometimes I was depressed, often sad. (Sadness and cheerfulness are not incompatible.) I had almost no close friends in my life. (I could not, it seems to me, have a woman as my friend.) In essence, this book is about such a "close friendship." I made acquaintances, though not close ones (“friendships”, perhaps, you can call them), and in my service. I do not speak here of the years spent in the service, just as I do not speak of these friends, not out of ingratitude, but partly for aesthetic reasons, since these people do not figure in my story, and, moreover, out of delicacy, since they may no longer want their name to be mentioned in connection with mine. Of these friends I name one Hartbourne - he was a typical inhabitant of the world of my great boredom and can give an idea of the rest, moreover, he, by mistake, but from sincere friendship, nevertheless became involved in my fate. Perhaps I should explain that my “service” was the office of financial management and that I served there for almost all the years as a tax inspector.
I repeat that I am not writing here about myself as a tax inspector. I don’t know why, but this profession, like the profession of a dentist, makes people laugh. However, in my opinion, this is a strained laugh. Both the dentist and the tax inspector naturally symbolize for us the hidden horrors of life; they say that we must pay, even if the price is ruinous, for all our pleasures, that blessings are given to us in debt, and not bestowed, that our most irreplaceable riches rot in the process of growth. And in the literal sense - what else causes us such relentless suffering as income tax or toothache? Hence, of course, this covertly hostile defensive mockery with which you are greeted as soon as you announce your involvement in one of these professions. I have always believed, however, that only for such fools as Francis Marlowe, a man who chooses the profession of tax inspector is a hidden sadist. I don't know anyone who is further from sadism than I am. I am quiet to the point of timidity. But it turned out that even my peaceful and respectable occupation was eventually used against me.
By the time this story begins - and I have not long to put it off - I was no longer working in my tax office, having retired before retirement age. I went to tax because I needed a job that I knew writing wouldn't give me. And he left the service when he finally saved up enough money to have a decent annual income. I lived, as already mentioned, until recently quietly, without tragedies, but with a higher goal. I worked tirelessly and patiently waited for the hour of my freedom to come and I could only write. On the other hand, I managed to write a little even during the years of slavery and am not inclined, like some, to attribute my lack of productivity to lack of time. In general, I consider myself rather lucky. Even now. Maybe especially now.
The shock of leaving the service was stronger than I expected. Hartbourne warned me that this would happen. But I didn't believe. Apparently, I am a man of habit more than I thought. Or maybe it's because I foolishly expected inspiration to come with the first glimpse of freedom. One way or another, I was not ready for the fact that my gift would leave me. I used to write all the time. Or rather, he wrote all the time and destroyed what was written all the time. I will not say how many pages I have destroyed, this figure is huge. And that was my pride and my sorrow. Sometimes I felt like I was at a dead end. But I did not for a moment despair in my striving for perfection. Hope, faith, and selfless service drove me forward as I continued to work, grow old, and live alone with my emotions. At least I knew that I could always write something.
But now I left the tax office and could now sit at my desk at home every morning, pondering any thought. And then it turned out that I had no thoughts at all. But I endured it with infinite patience. I was waiting. I again tried to develop an orderly lifestyle, to create a monotony from which bursts are born. I waited, listened. I live, as will be explained in more detail below, in a noisy part of London, in a once "decent" but now seedy quarter. I think we together, my quarter and I, embarked on this pilgrimage that took us away from "decency." But now the noise, which I had not noticed before, began to get on my nerves. For the first time in my life, I felt the need for silence.
It is true, as some may remark to me, not without sarcastic irony, that I have always been, in a certain sense, an adherent of silence. Arnold Buffin once said something similar to me with a laugh and offended me greatly. Three small books in forty years of continuous literary work - this cannot be called verbosity. If I really can distinguish true values, then I, in any case, understood how important it is to keep your mouth shut for the time being, even if it threatens you with silence for life. Writing is like marriage. In no case should you take a decisive step until you yourself are amazed at your happiness. Immoderate verbiage has always disgusted me. Contrary to popular belief, the negative is stronger than the positive and its ruler. But then I needed the most real, literal silence.
And I made the decision to leave London and immediately felt closer to my buried treasure. Faith in my own abilities returned to me, I felt in my chest that dormant, waiting force, which is the grace of the artist. I decided to rent a house by the sea for the summer. I haven't had enough of the sea in my life. I did not have to live alone with him, spend days and nights in a deserted place on the coast, where only the sound of the surf is heard, which is not even a sound at all, but the voice of silence itself. In this regard, I must tell you about one rather wild idea that I have been hatching for many years: for some reason I thought that I would achieve greatness as a writer only by going through some kind of test. In vain I waited for this test. Even total war (I was not in the army) did not disturb the smooth course of my life. Serenity seemed to be my bad fate. I was so possessed by it, and my mental timidity was so great, that a summer outside London already seemed to me almost a feat. True, for a man of my make-up, old-fashioned, neurotic, with puritanical inclinations, a slave to his habits, such a trip was indeed a whole adventure, a desperately bold, dangerous step. Or maybe, in the depths of my soul, I knew what terrible miracles were finally waiting for accomplishment, frozen on the verge of being behind a light veil of the near future? My searching gaze fell on an advertisement in the newspaper: for a moderate fee, a house on the seaside is rented, called - "Patara". I wrote, everything was arranged and I was ready to leave when Francis Marlowe, like a messenger of fate, knocked on my door. In the end, I did get to Patara, but what happened there was not at all what my forebodings promised.
Re-reading this preface now, I am convinced how incompletely it conveys my essence. How little words can convey at all, unless they are the words of a genius. I though creative person, but more of a puritan than an aesthete. I know that human life is terrible. I know that it is nothing like art. I do not profess any religion, I only believe in my own destiny. Ordinary religions are related to dreams. In them, under a thin outer layer, abysses of horror and fear are hidden. Any person, even the greatest, does not cost anything to break, there is no salvation for anyone. Any theory that denies this is false. I don't have any theories. All politics is the drying up of tears and the never-ending struggle for freedom. Without freedom there is neither art nor truth. I bow to great artists and to people who are able to say "no" to tyrants.
It remains to write the words of dedication. First, there is someone whom I, of course, cannot name here. But from the bottom of my heart, out of a duty of justice, and not for the sake of eloquence, I dedicate this work, inspired by you and written thanks to you, to you, my dear friend, my comrade and mentor, and I express gratitude, the measure of which is known to you alone. I know that you will be indulgent to its numerous shortcomings, as you always, with merciful understanding, forgave the equally numerous weaknesses of its author.
BLACK PRINCE
Holiday of love
End of free trial.
