"Stanislaw Lem - His Masters Voice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

various periods of his life, and occasionally even at the same time.
Therefore, I cannot claim to offer anything other than the notions of
myself that I have formed over the space of roughly forty years, and their
only singularity, it seems to me, is that they are not flattering. Nor is this
uncomplimentariness limited to "the pulling off of the mask," which is the
only trick available to the psychoanalyst. To say, for example, of a genius
that morally he was a bastard may not necessarily hit him in the place of his
private shame. A mind that "reached the ceiling of the age," as Yowitt puts
it, will not be bothered by that type of diagnosis. The shame of a genius may
be his intellectual futility, the knowledge of how uncertain is all that he
has accomplished. And genius is, above all, constant doubting. Not one of the
greats, however, bent beneath the pressure of society, has pulled down the
monuments raised to him in his life, calling himself thereby into question.
As one whose genius has been duly certified by several dozen learned
biographers, I think I may say a word or two on the topic of intellectual
summits; which is simply that clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast
expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a
constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to
bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its
boundary. No matter how much genuine strength it may contain, there is also,
inevitably, a considerable part that is only the pretense of that strength.
The fundamental traits of my character I consider to be cowardice,
malice, and pride. As it turned out, this triumvirate had at its disposal a
certain talent, which concealed it and ostensibly transformed it, and
intelligence assisted in this -- intelligence is one of life's most effective
instruments for masking inborn traits, once it decides that such a course is
desirable. For forty-odd years I have been an obliging, modest individual,
devoid of any sign of professional arrogance, because for a very long time and
most persistently I schooled myself in precisely this behavior. But as far
back into childhood as I can recall, I sought out evil, though of course I was
unaware of it.
My evil was isotropic, unbiased, and totally disinterested. In places of
veneration, such as churches, or in the company of particularly worthy
persons, I liked to think forbidden thoughts. That the content of these
thoughts was ludicrously puerile does not matter in the least. I was simply
conducting experiments on a scale practically accessible to me. I do not
remember when I began these experiments. I remember only the deep sense of
injury, the anger, and the disappointment that came upon me some years later,
when it turned out that a head filled with wickedness would never, not in any
place nor in any company, be struck by lightning; that breaking free of and
not participating in the Proper brought with it no -- absolutely no --
punishment.
If it is at all possible to speak thus of a child of less than ten, I
wanted that lightning or some other form of dire retribution; I summoned it,
challenged it, and grew to despise the world, the place of my existence,
because it had demonstrated the futility of all action and thought, evil
included. Thus I never tormented animals, or hurt even the grass underfoot; on
the other hand, I lashed out at stones, the sand, I abused furniture,
subjected water to torture, and mentally smashed the stars to pieces, to
punish them for their indifference to me, and as I did so my fury became more