"Franz_Kafka_-_A_Report_to_an_Academy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kafka Franz)

A Report to an Academy



Honored members of the Academy!


You have done me the honor of inviting me to give your Academy an account of the life I formerly led as an ape.


I regret that I cannot comply with your request to the extent you desire. It is now nearly five years since I was an ape, a short space of time, perhaps, according to the
calendar, but an infinitely long time to gallop through at full speed, as I have done, more or less accompanied by excellent mentors, good advice, applause, and orchestral
music, and yet essentially alone, since all my escorters, to keep the image, kept well off the course. I could never have achieved what I have done had I been stubbornly
set on clinging to my origins, to the remembrances of my youth. In fact, to give up being stubborn was the supreme commandment I laid upon myself; free ape as I was,
I submitted myself to that yoke. In revenge, however, my memory of the past has closed the door against me more and more. I could have returned at first, had human
beings allowed it, through an archway as wide as the span of heaven over the earth, but as I spurred myself on in my forced career, the opening narrowed and shrank
behind me; I felt more comfortable in the world of men and fitted it better; the strong wind that blew after me out of my past began to slacken; today it is only a gentle
puff of air that plays around my heels; and the opening in the distance, through which it comes and through which I once came myself, has grown so small that, even if
my strength and my willpower sufficed to get me back to it, I should have to scrape the very skin from my body to crawl through. To put it plainly, much as I like
expressing myself in images, to put it plainly: your life as apes, gentlemen, insofar as something of that kind lies behind you, cannot be farther removed from you than
mine is from me. Yet everyone on earth feels a tickling at the heels; the small chimpanzee and the great Achilles alike.


But to a lesser extent I can perhaps meet your demand, and indeed I do so with the greatest pleasure. The first thing I learned was to give a handshake; a handshake
betokens frankness; well, today now that I stand at the very peak of my career, I hope to add frankness in words to the frankness of that first handshake. What I have
to tell the Academy will contribute nothing essentially new, and will fall far behind what you have asked of me and what with the best will in the world I cannot
communicateЧnonetheless, it should indicate the line an erstwhile ape has had to follow in entering and establishing himself in the world of men. Yet I could not risk
putting into words even such insignificant information as I am going to give you if I were not quite sure of myself and if my position on all the great variety stages of the
civilized world had not become quite unassailable.


I belong to the Gold Coast. For the story of my capture I must depend on the evidence of others. A hunting expedition sent out by the firm of HagenbeckЧby the way,
I have drunk many a bottle of good red wine since then with the leader of that expeditionЧhad taken up its position in the bushes by the shore when I came down for a
drink at evening among a troop of apes. They shot at us; I was the only one that was hit; I was hit in two places.


Once in the cheek; a slight wound; but it left a large, naked, red scar which earned me the name of Red Peter, a horrible name, utterly inappropriate, which only some
ape could have thought of, as if the only difference between me and the performing ape Peter, who died not so long ago and had some small local reputation, were the
red mark on my cheek. This by the way.


The second shot hit me below the hip. It was a severe wound, it is the cause of my limping a little to this day. I read an article recently by one of the ten thousand
windbags who vent themselves concerning me in the newspapers, saying: my ape nature is not yet quite under control; the proof being that when visitors come to see
me, I have a predilection for taking down my trousers to show them where the shot went in. The hand which wrote that should have its fingers shot away one by one.
As for me, I can take my trousers down before anyone if I like; you would find nothing but a well-groomed fur and the scar madeЧlet me be particular in the choice of
a word for this particular purpose, to avoid misunderstandingЧthe scar made by a wanton shot. Everything is open and aboveboard; there is nothing to conceal; when
the plain truth is in question, great minds discard the niceties of refinement. But if the writer of the article were to take down his trousers before a visitor, that would be
quite another story, and I will let it stand to his credit that he does not do it. In return, let him leave me alone with his delicacy!