"Alexander Green - The ships in Liss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Alexander)

Alexander Grin.



THE SHIPS IN LISS

translated by Barry Scherr


PROGRESS PUBLISHING HOUSE
Moscow
1978


From compilation:
Alexander Grin,
"The Seeker of Adventure, Selected Stories",



I


There are people who remind you of an old-fashioned snuffbox. When
you pick up such an object, you ponder it fruitfully. It is an entire
generation, and we are alien to it. The snuffbox is placed among other
appropriate little objects and is shown to guests, but rarely does its owner
use it as an everyday item. Why? Do the centuries daunt him? Or are the
forms of another time, so deceptively similar to modern forms
geometrically, so different in essence that to see them constantly, to be in
constant contact with them, means to live imperceptibly in the past? Is
this perhaps a shallow thought about a complex disparity? Hard to tell.
But, as I began to say, there are people who remind you of an ancient
everyday item, and the spiritual essence of these people is as alien to the
manner of life around them as the above-mentioned snuffbox to a price
gouger from the Hotel Lisbon. Whether in childhood, or at one of those
turning points in life when the developing character seems to be like a
liquid saturated with a mineral solution тАФ disturb it just a little and it will
all irreversibly congeal into crystals that form with the speed of
lightning-maybe at such a turning point, thanks to a chance impression or
something else, their soul adopts a steadfast form once and for all. Its
needs are naive and poetic: the integrity, completeness, and the charm of
the habitual, where daydreams dwell so serenely and comfortably, free of
the moment's cavils. Such a person prefers horses to trains, candles to
electric bulbs, the downy plait of a girl to her artful coiffure with its smell
of burning and musk, roses to chrysanthemums, and the ungainly sailing
vessel with its lofty mass of white sails that reminds you of a jawly face
with a clear brow above blue eyes, to the steamship pretty as a toy. His
inner life is of necessity guarded, while his external life consists of mutual
repulsions.