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Миллер, Генри - Миллер - Тропик Козерога(engl)Проза и поэзия >> Переводная проза >> Миллер, Генри Читать целиком фЕКНС йСИИЕН. оНЛМСХ хЛЖЕНЛФВ (engl)
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Genry Miller. Tropic of Capricorn
Henry Miller was born in 1891 in Brooklyn, New York. He had a variety of
jobs as a young man, including several years working for the Western Union
Telegraph Company. During this time, encouraged by June Mansfield Smith, the
second of his five wives. Miller began to write. Aside from articles,
stories for pulp magazines and prose poems, Miller worked on his first
novels. Crazy Cock and Moloch, and on the copious notes which would
eventually transmute into the notorious 'Tropics' books.
In 1930, Miller went to live in Paris. For the next ten years he
mingled with impoverished expatriates and bohemian Parisians, including
Brassai, Artaud and Anais Nin, with whom he had a much documented affair.
His first published book. Tropic of Cancer, appeared in 1934 from the
Obelisk Press in Paris. It was followed five years later by its sister
volume. Tropic of Capricorn. Sexually explicit, these books electrified the
European literary avant-garde, received praise from Eliot, Pound, Beckett
and Durrell, but were almost universally banned outside France.
Miller returned to America in 1940, settling in Big Sur, California.
Here, he wrote the 'Rosy Crucifixion' trilogy - Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953)
and Nexus (1959) but, regarded by many as a writer of 'dirty books', he was
unable to get his major works published in America. In 1961, after an epic
legal battle. Tropic of Cancer was finally published in the States (in
England in 1963). Miller became a household name, hailed by the Sixties
counterculture as a prophet of freedom and sexual revolution. With the
subsequent unbanning of the rest of his books, Miller's work was finally
available in his own country.
He died on June 7 1980.
BY окE SAME AUTHOR
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
Black Spring
Aller Retour New York
The Cosmological Eye
The Colossus of Maroussi
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Quiet Days in Clichy
Sexus
Plexus
Nexus
Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch
The Books in my Life
A Devil in Paradise
The Wisdom of the Heart
My Life and Times
The World of Sex
Crazy Cock
Moloch
MODERN CLASSIC
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Capricorn
With an introduction by Robert Nye
Flamingo
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPuhlishers
Flamingo
An Imprint of HatperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
A Flamingo Modem Classic 1993 98765
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1966 Reprinted 14 times
First published in Great Britain by John Calder (Publishers) Limited
1964
Copyright 0 Henry Miller 1957 Introduction copyright O Robert Nye 1993
ISBN 0 00 654584 X Set in Plantin
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book
Manufacturing Ltd, Glasgow
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
INTRODUCTION
by Robert Nye
Henry Miller's first book. Tropic of Cancer, was published in Paris in
1934 and was immediately banned in all English-speaking countries. With its
sequel. Tropic of Capricorn (1939), which actually covers an earlier period
in Miller's life, it makes up a running fictional autobiography remarkable
for its candour, gusto, and completeness. The two books have in common a
plain-spoken truthfulness, a good-hearted comedy, and a quality of joy
discovered somewhere on the far side of despair, things that their author
was seldom to match and never to surpass in later self-unravellings.
When the 'Tropics' were at last made generally available in Britain and
America in the Sixties, they were praised as works of sexual liberation.
Since then they have sometimes been attacked as works of sexual misogyny.
All this seems to me rather to miss the point, as does criticism of the two
books for their verbal extravagance and their lack of art. Probably it is no
accident that nobody was ever indifferent concerning Henry Miller. There are
those who love him and there are those who hate him. His work does not allow
of the mild alternatives of liking or disliking. A case could be made that
this itself constitutes a fault, but I prefer to
find a virtue in such passion, and an important one. The Miller that
emerges from the books is, to my mind, an honest and lovable person,
splendidly undefeated by experience, a man with an unquenchable appetite for
the fundamental realities, and an infinite capacity for being surprised by
his own innocence. If there is any message extractable from his work it is
that of someone who - against all the odds and in spite of most of the
evidence - says 'More' to life. This I find honourable.
Even in the 'Tropics' Miller is, of course, an extraordinarily diffuse
and uneven writer. He repeats, paraphrases, and parodies himself with an
abandon that in a lesser spirit would be suicidal. He is sometimes brutal,
he is often sentimental. But having said that, I have said most of what
might be said against him. The best pages here, as in his one other great
work. The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), are white-hot and inspired, both
funny and terrible, a man's attempt to tell the whole truth about the life
that he has known. Miller is one of the few modern writers who can move a
reader to tears, quite simply, by the pressure of his own feeling. He can
also communicate, and induce in the reader, a delicious delight in the fact
of being alive. I never read Miller on song without feeling better, happier,
more myself and less alone, for having done so.
On the ovarian trolley
Foreword to Historia Calamitatum
(the story of my misfortunes)
Often the hearts of men and women are stirred, as likewise they are
soothed in their sorrows, more by example than by words. And therefore,
because I too have known some consolation from speech had with one who was a
witness thereof, am I now minded to write of the sufferings which have
sprung out of my misfortunes, for the eyes of one who, though absent, is of
himself ever a consoler. This I do so that, in comparing your sorrows with
mine, you may discover that yours are in truth nought, or at the most but of
small account, and so you shall come to bear them more easily.
Peter Abelard
0NCE you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead
certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never
anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in
through the gills. In the sub-strata, where the moon shone steady and
opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord.
In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the
real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There
was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a
child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender
because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved,
substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had
not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure,
ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to
tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me
so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere
sight of human misery. I never helped any one expecting that it would do any
good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the
condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was
convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of
men? Now and then a friend was converted; it was something to make me puke.
I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often
said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.
What was most annoying was that at first blush people usually took me
to be good, to be kind, generous, loyal, faithful. Perhaps I did possess
these virtues but if so it was because I was indifferent: I could afford to
be good, kind, generous, loyal, and so forth, since I was free of envy. Envy
was the one thing I was never a victim of. I have never envied anybody or
anything. On the contrary, I have only felt pity for everybody and
everything.
From the very beginning I must have trained myself not to want anything
too badly. From the very beginning I was independent, in a false way. I had
need of nobody because I wanted to be free, free to do and to give only as
my whims dictated. The moment anything was expected or demanded of me I
balked. That was the form my independence took. I was corrupt, in other
words, corrupt from the start. It's as though my mother fed me a poison, and
though I was weaned young the poison never left my system. Even when she
weaned me it seemed that I was completely indifferent, most children rebel,
or make a pretense of rebelling, but I didn't give a damn, I was a
philosopher when still in swaddling clothes. I was against life, on
principle. What principle? The principle of futility. Everybody around me
was struggling. I myself never made an effort. If I appeared to be making an
effort it was only to please someone else; at bottom I didn't give a rap.
And if you can tell me why this should have been so I will deny it, because
I was born with a cussed streak in me and nothing can eliminate it. I heard
later, when I had grown up, that they had a hell of a time bringing me out
of the womb. I can understand that perfectly. Why budge? Why come out of a
nice warm place, a cosy retreat in which everything is offered you gratis?
The earliest remembrance I have is of the cold, the snow and ice in the
gutter, the frost on the window panes, the chill of the sweaty green walls
in the kitchen. Why do people live in outlandish climates in the temperate
zones, as they are miscalled? Because people are naturally idiots, naturally
sluggards, naturally cowards. Until I was about ten years old I never
realized that there were "warm" countries, places where you didn't have to
sweat for a living, nor shiver and pretend that it was tonic and
exhilarating. Wherever there is cold there are people who work themselves to
the bone and when they produce young they preach to the young the gospel of
work -which is nothing, at bottom, but the doctrine of inertia. My people
were entirely Nordic, which is to say idiots. Every wrong idea which has
ever been expounded was theirs. Among them was the doctrine of cleanliness,
to say nothing of righteousness. They were painfully dean. But inwardly they
stank. Never once had they opened the door which leads to the soul; never
once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark. After dinner the
dishes were promptly washed and put in the closet; after the paper was read
it was neatly folded and laid away on a shelf; after the clothes were washed
they were ironed and folded and then tucked away in the drawers. Everything
was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and
on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one
idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.
In my bitterness I often search for reasons to condemn them, the better
to condemn myself. For I am like them too, in many ways. For a long while I
thought I had escaped, but as time goes on I see that I am no better, that I
am even a little worse, because I saw more dearly than they ever did and yet
remained powerless to alter my life. As I look back on my life it seems to
me that I never did anything of my own volition but always through the
pressure of others. People often think of me as an adventurous fellow;
nothing could be farther from the truth. My adventures were always
adventitious, always thrust on me, always endured rather than undertaken. I
am of the very essence of that proud, boastful Nordic people who have never
had the least sense of adventure but who nevertheless have scoured the
earth, turned it upside down, scattering relics and ruins everywhere.
Restless spirits, but not adventurous ones. Agonizing spirits, incapable of
living in the present Disgraceful cowards, all of them, myself included. For
there is only one great adventure and that is inward towards the self, and
for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.
Once every few years I was on the verge of making this discovery, but
in characteristic fashion I always managed to dodge the issue. If I try to
think of a good excuse I can think only of the environment, of the streets I
knew and the people who inhabited them. I can think of no street in America,
or of people inhabiting such a street, capable of leading one on towards the
discovery of the self. I have walked the streets in many countries of the
world but nowhere have I felt so degraded and humiliated as in America. I
think of all the streets in America combined as forming a huge cesspool, a
cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away
to everlasting shit. Over this cesspool the spirit of work weaves a magic
wand; palaces and factories spring up side by side, and munition plants and
chemical works and steel mills and sanatoriums and prisons and insane
asylums. The whole continent is a nightmare producing the greatest misery of
the greatest number. I was one, a single entity in the midst of the greatest
jamboree of wealth and happiness (statistical wealth, statistical happiness)
but I never met a man who was truly wealthy or truly happy. At least I knew
that I was unhappy, unwealthy, out of whack and out of step. That was my
only solace, my only joy. But it was hardly enough. It would have been
better for my peace of mind, for my soul if I had expressed my rebellion
openly, if I had gone to jail for it, if I had rotted there and died. It
would have been better if, like the mad Czolgosz, I had shot some good
President McKinley, some gentle, insignificant soul like that who had never
done anyone the least harm. Because in the bottom of my heart there was
murder: I wanted to see America destroyed, razed from top to bottom. I
wanted to see this happen purely out of vengeance, as atonement for the
crimes that were committed against me and against others like me who have
never been able to lift their voices and express their hatred, their
rebellion, their legitimate blood lust.
I was the evil product of an evil soil. If the self were not
imperishable, the "I" I write about would have been destroyed long ago. To
some this may seem like an invention, but whatever I imagine to have
happened did actually happen, at least to me. History may deny it, since I
have played no part in the history of my people, but even if everything I
say is wrong, is prejudiced, spiteful, malevolent, even if I am a liar and a
poisoner, it is nevertheless the truth and it will have to be swallowed. As
to what happened ...
Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of
a contradiction. Until the one for whom this is written came along I
imagined that somewhere outside, in life, as they say, lay the solutions to
all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of
life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead I lost hold
of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and I
found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach
myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not
looked for - myself. I found that what I had desired all my life was not to
live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself. I
realized that I had never the least interest in living, but only in this
which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same
time, and beyond it. What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even
what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had
stifled every day in order to live. Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no
importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of
effort, I cannot say what I think and feel - that bothers me, that rankles.
From childhood on I can see myself on the track of this spectre, enjoying
nothing, desiring nothing but this power, this ability. Everything else is a
lie - everything I ever did or said which did not bear upon this. And that
is pretty much the greater part of my life.
I was a contradiction in essence, as they say. People took me to be
serious and high-minded, or to be gay and reckless, or to be sincere and
earnest, or to be negligent and carefree. I was all these things at once -
and beyond that I was something else, something which no one suspected,
least of all myself. As a boy of six or seven I used to sit at my
grandfather's workbench and read to him while he sewed. I remember him
vividly in those moments when, pressing the hot iron against the seam of a
coat, he would stand with one hand over the other and look out of the window
dreamily. I remember the expression on his face, as he stood there dreaming,
better than the contents of the books I read, better than the conversations
we had or the games which I played in the street I used to wonder what he
was dreaming of, what it was that drew him out of himself. I hadn't learned
yet how to dream wideawake. I was always lucid, in the moment, and all of a
piece. His daydreaming fascinated me. I knew that he had no connection with
what he was doing, not the least thought for any of us, that he was alone
and being alone he was free. I was never alone, least of all when I was by
myself. Always, it seems to me, I was accompanied: I was like a little crumb
of a big cheese, which was the world, I suppose, though I never stopped to
think about it. But I know I never existed separately, never thought myself
the big cheese, as it were. So that even when I had reason to be miserable,
to complain, to weep, I had the illusion of participating in a common, a
universal misery. When I wept the whole world was weeping -so I imagined. I
wept very seldom. Mostly I was happy, I was laughing, I was having a good
time. I had a good time because, as I said before, I really didn't give a
fuck about anything. If things were wrong with me they were wrong
everywhere, I was convinced of it. And things were wrong usually only when
one cared too much. That impressed itself on me very early in life. For
example, I remember the case of my young friend Jack Lawson. For a whole
year he lay in bed, suffering the worst agonies. He was my best friend, so
people said at any rate. Well, at first I was probably sorry for him and
perhaps now and then I called at his house to inquire about him; but after a
month or two had elapsed I grew quite callous about his suffering. I said to
myself he ought to die and the sooner he dies the better it will be, and
having thought thus I acted accordingly, that is to say, I promptly forgot
about him, abandoned him to his fate. I was only about twelve years old at
the time and I remember being proud of my decision. I remember the funeral
too - what a disgraceful affair it was. There they were, friends and
relatives all congregated about the bier and all of them bawling like sick
monkeys. The mother especially gave me a pain in the ass. She was such a
rare, spiritual creature, a Christian Scientist, I believe, and though she
didn't believe in disease and didn't believe in death either, she raised
such a stink that Christ himself would have risen from the grave. But not
her beloved Jack! No, Jack lay there cold as ice and rigid and unbeckonable.
He was dead and there were no two ways about it. I knew it and I was glad of
it. I didn't waste any tears over it. I couldn't say that he was better off
because after all the "he" had vanished. He was gone and with him the
sufferings he had endured and the suffering he had unwittingly inflicted on
others. Amen! I said to myself, and with that, being slightly hysterical, I
let a loud fart - right beside the coffin.
This caring too much - I remember that it only developed with me about
the time I first fell in love. And even then I didn't care enough. If I had
really cared I wouldn't be here now writing about it: I'd have died of a
broken heart, or I'd have swung for it. It was a bad experience because it
taught me how to live a lie. It taught me to smile when I didn't want to
smile, to work when I didn't believe in work, to live when I had no reason
to go on living. Even when I had forgotten her I still retained the trick of
doing what I didn't believe in.
I was all chaos from the beginning, as I have said. But sometimes I got
so close to the centre, to the very heart of the confusion, that it's a
wonder things didn't explode around me.
It is customary to blame everything on the war. I say the war had
nothing to do with me, with my life. At a time when others were getting
themselves comfortable berths I was taking one miserable job after another,
and never enough in it to keep body and soul together. Almost as quickly as
I was hired I was fired. I had plenty of intelligence but I inspired
distrust. Whereever I went I fomented discord - not because I was idealistic
but because I was like a searchlight exposing the stupidity and futility of
everything. Besides, I wasn't a good ass-licker. That marked me, no doubt.
People could tell at once when I asked for a job that I really didn't give a
damn whether I got it or not. And of course I generally didn't get it. But
after a time the mere looking for a job became an activity, a pastime, so to
speak. I would go in and ask for most anything. It was a way of killing time
- now worse, as far as I could see, than work itself. I was my own boss and
I had my own hours, but unlike other bosses I entrained only my own ruin, my
own bankruptcy. I was not a corporation or a trust or a state or a
federation or a polity of nations - I was more like God, if anything.
This went on from about the middle of the war until... well, until one
day I was trapped. Finally the day came when I did desperately want a job. I
needed it. Not having another minute to lose, I decided that I would take
the last job on earth, that of messenger boy. I walked into the employment
bureau of the telegraph company - the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of
North America - towards the dose of the day, prepared to go through with it.
I had just come from the public library and I had under my arm some fat
books on economics and metaphysics. To my great amazement I was refused the
job.
The guy who turned me down was a little runt who ran the switchboard.
He seemed to take me for a college student, though it was dear enough from
my application that I had long left school. I had even honoured myself on
the application with a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University. Apparently
that passed unnoticed, or else was suspiciously regarded by this runt who
had turned me down. I was furious, the more so because for once in my life I
was in earnest. Not only that, but I had swallowed my pride, which in
certain peculiar ways is rather large. My wife of course gave me the usual
leer and sneer. I had done it as a gesture, she said. I went to bed thinking
about it, still smarting, getting angrier and angrier as the night wore on.
The fact that I had a wife and child to support didn't bother me so much,
people didn't offer you jobs because you had a family to support, that much
I understood only too well. No, what rankled was that they had rejected me.
Henry V. Miller, a competent, superior individual who had asked for the
lowest job in the world. That burned me up. I couldn't get over it. In the
morning I was up bright and early, shaved, put on my best clothes and
hot-footed it to the subway. I went immediately to the main offices of the
telegraph company ... up to the 25th floor or wherever it was that the
president and the vice-presidents had their cubicles. I asked to see the
president. Of course the president was either out of town or too busy to see
me, but wouldn't I care to see the vice-president, or his secretary rather.
I saw the vice-president's secretary, an intelligent, considerate sort of
chap, and I gave him an earful. I did it adroitly, without too much heat,
but letting him understand all the while that I wasn't to be put out of the
way so easily.
When he picked up the telephone and demanded the general manager I
thought it was just a gag, that they were going to pass me around like that
from one to the other until I'd get fed up. But the moment I heard him talk
I changed my opinion. When I got to the general manager's office, which was
in another building uptown, they were waiting for me. I sat down in a
comfortable leather chair and accepted one of the big cigars that were
thrust forward. This individual seemed at once to be vitally concerned about
the matter. He wanted me to tell him all about it, down to the last detail,
his big hairy ears cocked to catch the least crumb of information which
would justify something or other which was formulating itself inside his
dome. I realized that by some accident I had really been instrumental in
doing him a service. I let him wheedle it out of me to suit his fancy,
observing all the time which way the wind was blowing. And as the talk
progressed I noticed that be was warming up to me more and more. At last
some one was showing a little confidence in me 1 That was all I required to
get started on one of my favourite lines. For, after years of job hunting I
had naturally become quite adept, I knew not only what not to say, but I
knew also what to imply, what to insinuate. Soon the assistant general
manager was called in and asked to listen to my story. By this time I knew
what the story was. I understood that Hymie - "that little kike", as the
general manager called him - had no business pretending that he was the
employment manager. Hymie had usurped his prerogative, that much was dear.
It was also dear that Hymie was a Jew and that Jews were not in good odour
with the general manager, nor with Mr. Twilliger, the vice-president, who
was a thorn in the general manager's side.
Perhaps it was Hymie, "the dirty little kike" who was responsible for
the high percentage of Jews on the messenger
force. Perhaps Hymie was really the one who was doing the hiring at the
employment office - at Sunset Place, they called it. It was an excellent
opportunity, I gathered, for Mr. Clancy, the general manager, to take down a
certain Mr. Bums who, he informed me, had been the employment manager for
some thirty years now and who was evidently getting lazy on the job.
The conference lasted several hours. Before it was terminated Mr.
Clancy took me aside and informed me that he was going to make me the boss
of the Works. Before putting me into office, however, he was going to ask me
as a special favour, and also as a sort of apprenticeship which would stand
me in good stead, to work as a special messenger. I would receive the salary
of employment manager, but it would be paid me out of a separate account. In
short I was to float from office to office and observe the way affairs were
conducted by all and sundry. I was to make a little report from time to time
as to how things were going. And once in a while, so he suggested, I was to
visit him at his home on the q.t. and have a little chat about the
conditions in the hundred and one branches of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph
Company in New York City. In other words I was to be a spy for a few months
and after that I was to have the run of the joint. Maybe they'd make me a
general manager too one day, or a vice-president. It was a tempting oner,
even if it was wrapped up in a lot of horse shit. I said Yes.
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