Слепой убийца

Условиями на фабриках дед гордился; он прислушивался к жалобам, когда у кого-нибудь хватало смелости пожаловаться, и сокрушался, узнавая о несчастных случаях. Он постоянно совершенствовал механику, – можно сказать, все совершенствовал. Дед первым из городских фабричных владельцев провел на фабрику электричество. Еще он считал, что Цветочные клумбы поднимают рабочим настроение, – обычно высаживали циннии и львиный зев: они дешевые, яркие и долго цветут. Дед уверял, что женщины у него на фабрике в безопасности, как в собственных гостиных. (Он считал, у них есть гостиные. Он считал, что в этих гостиных безопасно. Ему нравилось обо всех думать хорошо.)

What was a demon-lover, she wanted to know? Why was the sea sunless, why was the ocean lifeless? Why did the sunny pleasure-dome have caves of ice? What was Mount Abora, and why was the Abyssinian maid singing about it? Why were the ancestral voices prophesying war?

I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. I know all of them now. Not the answers of Samuel Taylor Coleridge – I’m not sure he had any answers, since he was hopped up on drugs at the time – but my own answers. Here they are, for what they’re worth.

The sacred river is alive. It flows to the lifeless ocean, because that’s where all things that are alive end up. The lover is a demon-lover because he isn’t there. The sunny pleasure-dome has caves of ice because that’s what pleasure-domes have – after a while they become very cold, and after that they melt, and then where are you? All wet. Mount Abora was the Abyssinian maid’s home, and she was singing about it because she couldn’t get back to it. The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

His idea of French was verb forms and Phaedra, with a reliance on pithy maxims from noted authors. Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait – Estienne; C’est de quoi j’ai le plus de peur que la peur – Montaigne; Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point – Pascal; L’histoire, cette vieille dame exaltée et menteuse – de Maupassant. Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains – Flaubert. Dieu s’est fait homme; soit. Le diable s’est fait femme – Victor Hugo. And so forth.

She did not spare herself, said Reenie. She ruined her health. She went beyond her strength, especially considering her condition.

What virtue was once attached to this notion – of going beyond your strength, of not sparing yourself, of ruining your health! Nobody is born with that kind of selflessness: it can be acquired only by the most relentless discipline, a crushing-out of natural inclination, and by my time the knack or secret of it must have been lost. Or perhaps I didn’t try, having suffered from the effects it had on my mother.