"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand Of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the
novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what
they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming,
another third of it spent in telling lies.
"The truth against the world!"-Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments,
do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and
devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never
will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great
deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There!
That's the truth!
They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea
Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process
of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which
is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-
phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that
never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we
read a novel, we are insane-bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we
hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity
returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?
But our society, being troubled and bewildered, seeking guidance, sometimes puts an entirely
mistaken trust in its artists, using them as prophets and futurologists.
I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that theawen cannot come upon them, and the
god speak through them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens? if they
did notknow it happens, because, they have felt the god within them use their tongue, their hands?
Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough.
Nor would I say that the artist alone is so burdened and so privileged. The scientist is another
who prepares, who makes ready, working day and night, sleeping and awake, for inspiration. As
Pythagoras knew, the god may speak in the forms of geometry as well as in the shapes of dreams; in
the harmony of pure thought as well as in the harmony of sounds; in numbers as well as in words.


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But it is words that make the trouble and confusion. We are asked now to consider words as useful
in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a word
(sentence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to one fact
which is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound, and-ideally-quantifiable.
Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number-Apollo blinds those who press
too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer
with Dionysios, every now and then.
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust
everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically
defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.
Oh, it's lovely to be invited to participate in Futurological Congresses where Systems Science
displays its grand apocalyptic graphs, to be asked to tell the newspapers what America will be
like in 2001, and all that, but it's a terrible mistake. I write science fiction, and science
fiction isn't about the future. I don't know any more about the future than you do, and very
likely less.