"DjunaBarnes-LadiesAlmanack" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barnes Djuna)

Grange languishes, and which never weighs the home-going Cart of the Farmer, but
sows itself alone and reaps itself unrecorded.
Now in this Month, as it is with Mother Earth, so it will appear it is with all
things of Nature, and most especially Woman.
For in this Month she is a little pitiful for what she has made of man, and what
she has throughout the Ages, led him to expect, cultivating him indeed to such a
Pitch that she is somewhat responsible.
Patience Scalpel was of this Month, and belongs to this Almanack for one Reason
only, that from Beginning to End, Top to Bottom, inside and out, she could not
understand Women and their Ways as they were about her, above her and before
her.
She saw them gamboling on the Greensward, she heard them pinch and moan within
the Gloom of many a stately Mansion; she beheld them floating across the
Ceilings, (for such was Art in the old Days), diapered in Toile de Jouy, and
welded without Flame, in one incalculable Embrace. "And what", she said, "the
silly Creatures may mean by it is more than I can diagnose! I am of my Time my
Time's best argument, and who am I that I must die in my Time, and never know
what it is in the Whorls and Crevices of my Sisters so prolongs them to the
bitter End? Do they not have Organs as exactly alike as two Peas, or twin
Griefs; and are they not eclipsed ever so often with the galling Check-rein of
feminine Tides? So what to better Purpose than to sit the Dears on a Stack of
Blotters, and let it go at that, giving them in their meantime a Bible and a
Bobbin, and say with all PessimismЧthey have come to a blind Alley; there will
be no Children born for a Season, and what matter it?"
Thus her Voice was heard throughout the Year, as cutting in its Derision as a
surgical Instrument, nor did she use it to come to other than a Day and yet
another Day in which she said, "I have tried all means, Mathematical, Poetical,
Statistical and Reasonable, to come to the Core of this Distemper, known as
Girls! Girls! And can nowhere find where a Woman got the Account that makes her
such a deft Worker at the Single Beatitude. Who gave her the Directions for it,
the necessary Computation and Turpitude? Where, and in what dark Chamber was the
Tree so cut of Life, that the Branch turned to the Branch, and made of the
Cuttings a Garden of Ecstasy?"
Merry Laughter rose about her, as Doll Furious was seen in ample dimity,
sprigged with Apple Blossom, footing it fleetly after the proportionless
Persuasions of Senorita Fly-About, one of Buzzing Much to Rome!
"In my time", said Patience Scalpel, "Women came to enough trouble by lying abed
with the Father of their Children. What then in this good Year of our Lord has
paired them like to like, with never a Beard between them, layer for layer, were
one to unpack them to the very Ticking ? Methinks", she mused, her Starry Eyes
aloft, where a Peewit was yet content to mate it hot among the Branches, making
for himself a Covey in the olden Formula, "they love the striking Hour, nor
would breed the Moments that go to it. Sluts!" she said pleasantly after a
little thought, "Are good Mothers to supply them with Luxuries in the next
Generation; for they themselves will have no Shes, unless some Her puts them
forth! Well I'm not the Woman for it! They well have to pluck where they may. My
Daughters shall go amarrying!".
FEBRUARY
hath 29 days
THIS be a Love Letter for a Present, and when she is Catched, what shall I do