"G.K.Chesterton. The man who was Thursday. A nightmare (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

of law; I say you are a contradiction in terms. I only wonder there were not
comets and earthquakes on the night you appeared in this garden."
The man with the meek blue eyes and the pale, pointed beard endured
these thunders with a certain submissive solemnity. The third party of the
group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's braids of red hair,
but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of admiration
and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle.
Gregory resumed in high oratorical good humour.
"An artist is identical with an anarchist," he cried. "You might
transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws
a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He
sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of
perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen.
An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet
delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the
world would be the Underground Railway."
"So it is," said Mr. Syme.
"Nonsense! " said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else
attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains
look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because
they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that
whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It
is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next
station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture!
oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station
were unaccountably Baker Street!"
"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say
of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare,
strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We
feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it
not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station?
Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker
Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this,
that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of
mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take
your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who
commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!"
"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically.
"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train comes
in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has
won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left
Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand
things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of
hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,'
it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing
conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of Adam."
Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.
"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the question, 'And what
is Victoria now that you have got there ?' You think Victoria is like the
New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like Victoria.