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John Powys: Atlantis

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John Powys Atlantis

Atlantis: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Published in 1954, John Cowper Powys called this novel, a 'long romance about Odysseus in his extreme old age, hoisting sail once more from Ithaca'. As usual there is a large cast of human characters but Powys also gives life and speech to inanimates such as a stone pillar, a wooden club,and an olive shoot. The descent to the drowned world of Atlantis towards the end of the novel is memorably described, indeed, Powys himself called it 'the best part of the book'. Many of Powys's themes, such as the benefits of matriarchy, the wickedness of priests and the evils of modern science which condones vivisection are given full rein in this odd but compelling work.

John Powys: другие книги автора


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In this mood of nervous apprehension it had been distressingly aware of all the other entities in that corridor. One of these was an extraordinary-looking club from the Nemean forest on the mainland. Another was a still-living olive-stump, not more than a foot high, growing between two flagstones in the centre of the corridor.

A third had a quite different sort of identity and was a small brown moth with a way of flying that sometimes was faint, weak, fluttering, drooping and drifting, and at other times was jerky, violent, desperate, almost suicidal; while the fourth among them was just an ordinary house-fly.

All these had been struggling frantically for five hours of suspense to convey to one another, each with its own private interpretation, their particular version of the terrific shock that was now turning that dawn in the palace of the King of Ithaca into such a shattering experience.

“How extraordinary it is,” the Sixth Pillar pondered, as it felt a breath of cooler wind, “that these two human bipeds, this simple Tis and this sly little rogue Nisos, can go on sleeping quietly among us here like a pair of acorn-surfeited swine, when someone or something who has a friend outside is telling us in here what the dawn-goddess has just confirmed, namely that things have begun to happen in our universe that may prove to be the beginning of its end.”

Having uttered these words in a tone that was barely distinguishable from a sad soft air that had just crossed the slaves’ graves, the Sixth Pillar decided that until new revelations should reach it, it would revert to the hieroglyphical if egotistical problem that was dearest of all to its un-roofed heart, namely the mysterious “U” and “H” carved upon its pediment which had been interpreted for generations as meaning “the Son of Hephaistos”.

Further and further into the corridor, implacably moving from pillar to pillar, and throwing a phantom-like chilly greyness over the dark flagstones as she moved, came the dawn-goddess. The one solitary ancient olive-stump that grew inside the corridor near its entrance and thrust forward one crooked bough like a raised hand with fleshless fingers lifted by a long-dead corpse from between the flagstones, could not hinder the dawn’s ashen-pale luminosity from enveloping it but it hardly seemed to be welcoming this pallid illumination.

On the contrary it seemed to be imploring the dawn to approach more slowly so that the awkward nakedness of its reluctant resurrection should not put either of them to shame. Between this corpse-like protuberance from beneath the floor and an enormous fire-blackened club that was propped against the inner side of the low entrance-arch there was now flitting through the grey light a small but alert house-fly.

This small creature seemed as conscious of the unnatural tension as was the over-vigilant Sixth Pillar itself. For though the little fly appeared to be using the resurrected bough solely for the purpose of cleaning its front legs, the visits it paid to the formidable club resting beside the entrance-arch were clearly actuated by a quite different motive.

Obviously what was urging the fly in this case was the necessity it felt of talking to somebody about this tension who had a philosophic mind. But the awakened house-fly was not the only insect in the place who feared, like the Sixth Pillar, that there was some planetary catastrophe imminent, either happening now, or just going to happen.

There was also a very disturbed light-brown moth. This moth seemed for some definite reason of its own to avoid alighting upon the olive-stump; but it also, like the fly, kept paying repeated visits to that Heraklean weapon by the entrance.

It must have been clear to the Sixth Pillar by this time that the dawn-goddess was not going to reveal to them anything beyond what they had all instinctively known, namely that something momentous, something that probably affected them all, had really occurred; otherwise the Pillar would hardly have relapsed into her ancient ponderings about those letters that had been engraved ages ago upon her marmoreal flesh. They must have been engraved there before she had had time to become a conscious, separate, inanimate entity. In fact they must have been engraved when all she felt was what her mother, the earth, felt.

Meanwhile the two human sleepers, lying discreetly apart on their goat-skin mats, one the middle-aged cow-herd, Tis, and the other the princely boy-helper of the household, Nisos, were both vaguely aware, even in their dreams, that psychic disturbing tremors of some sort were troubling that rocky palace and probably that whole rocky island.

What this especially simple cow-herd and what this especially alert princely house-boy would actually do, if, their dreams shaken off, they found themselves conscious, whether they understood its nature or not, of a catastrophic, all-affecting event, remained to be seen. None of their sub-human neighbours, animate or inanimate, not the club, not the olive-stump, not the moth, not the fly, had any doubt about the existence — for they had all learnt it from pleasant and unpleasant personal experience — of a very considerable gulf or gap or lacuna between the feelings, impressions, intimations, instincts, and, above all, reasonings, of all human beings, and their consequent action.

“It all depends, my pretty one,” whispered the olive-stump to the house-fly as the latter in its agitation tried to clean its left back leg by brushing it against its gauzy transparent right wing, as it laid its square black head sideways against the smoothest portion of the upspringing shoot, “whether Nisos had a visit from Hierax his pet hawk while both you and I were still fast asleep.”

“Why doesn’t Pyraust come to ask you things like I do?” whispered the fly to the olive-shoot.

The older creature hesitated a moment. Then he said: “Because, Myos darling, she knows that I know who sends her here.”

The fly, who had balanced itself very carefully on its front-legs and had begun to clean both its back-legs with its gauzy wings pressed its huge black head still closer against the skin of the olive-shoot and allowed its unemotional staring black eye to drink up the conversation that was now proceeding between the brown moth and the club of Herakles.

“I suppose you don’t want to tell me who sends her?” whispered the house-fly. “I don’t mind telling you at all,” replied the other, “or anyone else either. It is Enorches, the High-Priest of the Orphic Mysteries who sleeps in the big ante-chamber of Athene’s Temple where Telemachos ought to sleep. Instead of which Telemachos sleeps in that hut you pass on the left as you go in.”

“Why does the Priest of Orpheus take that big ante-room for himself?” asked the house-fly, standing perfectly still now and staring at the brown moth whose wings were fanning the queer slit that went down the upper portion of the club of Herakles.

“That’s for Athene to answer, little fly,” replied olive-shoot with a curious hissing sound, as if its sap was seething.

“My Lord Telemachos has let himself be wheedled and worked upon by that Orpheus Priest ever since our Lady Penelope died. She would have scarce endured to see it.”

“You’re getting angry,” said the fly to itself. “By Zeus I believe if that Priest Enorches came in now you’d split into two and spurt poison over him.” The olive-shoot was getting angry and it wished it had wings like the fly so that it could accompany the fly to where the club was leaning.

“The Club is surely,” thought the olive-stump, “watching us now while it listens to the chatter of that silly little moth-girl Pyraust.” And the fly said to itself: “How tiresome it is that so many learned and scholarly philosophers have no eye into which you can look and read their thoughts! I’ve seen my own eyes reflected in a hundred different things and I may say without boasting that they are fierce and implacable. But even I can’t read any living creature’s thoughts with them. Now why is that? I can’t even read the thoughts of that silly little moth. Now why is it that I am no good at expressing the stem and majestic authority through my eyes which I feel so powerfully in the pit of my stomach? Isn’t it a funny thing that a person should feel inside him feelings that he can’t express in any possible way to other creatures? As for this poor amphibium of a half-in, half-out olive-shoot, it seems totally devoid of all real insight, it can only see through the inflamed pores of its touchy skin!

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