"Hans Phaall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began to rave,
and foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of his
enclosure. There were three fellows in particular who worried me
beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and
threatening me with the law. Upon these three I internally vowed the
bitterest revenge, if ever I should be so happy as to get them
within my clutches; and I believe nothing in the world but the
pleasure of this anticipation prevented me from putting my plan of
suicide into immediate execution, by blowing my brains out with a
blunderbuss. I thought it best, however, to dissemble my wrath, and to
treat them with promises and fair words, until, by some good turn of
fate, an opportunity of vengeance should be afforded me.
One day, having given my creditors the slip, and feeling more than
usually dejected, I continued for a long time to wander about the most
obscure streets without object whatever, until at length I chanced
to stumble against the corner of a bookseller's stall. Seeing a
chair close at hand, for the use of customers, I threw myself doggedly
into it, and, hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first volume
which came within my reach. It proved to be a small pamphlet
treatise on Speculative Astronomy, written either by Professor Encke
of Berlin or by a Frenchman of somewhat similar name. I had some
little tincture of information on matters of this nature, and soon
became more and more absorbed in the contents of the book, reading
it actually through twice before I awoke to a recollection of what was
passing around me. By this time it began to grow dark, and I
directed my steps toward home. But the treatise had made an
indelible impression on my mind, and, as I sauntered along the dusky
streets, I revolved carefully over in my memory the wild and sometimes
unintelligible reasonings of the writer. There are some particular
passages which affected my imagination in a powerful and extraordinary
manner. The longer I meditated upon these the more intense grew the
interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my
education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects
connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me
diffident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing
me to mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence,
merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain
enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude
ideas which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the
appearance, may not often in effect possess all the force, the
reality, and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition;
whether, to proceed a step farther, profundity itself might not, in
matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate
source of falsity and error. In other words, I believed, and still
do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial,
and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we
seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.
Nature herself seemed to afford me corroboration of these ideas. In
the contemplation of the heavenly bodies it struck me forcibly that
I could not distinguish a star with nearly as much precision, when I