Счастливчик Джим
Nov. 8th, 2001 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avvaПеречитывал сегодня страницы наугад из Lucky Jim Кинсли Эмиса. Самый первый и всё ещё лучший, по-моему, из "академических романов".
Ну просто невозможно объяснить словами, какой там весёлый юмор и замечательная, до боли знакомая, рефлексия героя. И издёвка над всеми академическими ритуалами и канонами. Невозможно описать умертвляющую тоску академического стиля лучше, чем:
It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but its own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. 'In considering this strangely neglected topic,' it began. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool.
(это я отыскал отрывок из романа, к-й когда-то сделал для того, чтобы послать друзьям, убедить их прочесть книгу).
Вроде бы его перевели и издали лет 10 назад, но перевод я не видел. Интересно, насколько хорош?
Вот весь отрывок (в оригинале, естественно):
In the excerpt below, the hero is Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer
in the department of History, still in his probation stage, and Welch
is his supervising Professor, whose mere word can terminate or
accellerate Jim's academic carreer.
------------
A minute later Dixon was sitting listening to a sound like the ringing
of a cracked door-bell as Welch pulled at the starter. This died away
into a treble humming that seemed to involve every component of the car.
Welch tried again; this time the effect was of beer-bottles jerkily
belaboured. Before Dixon could do more than close his eyes he was pressed
firmly back against the seat, and his cigarette, still burning, was cuffed
out of his hand into some interstice on the floor. With a tearing of
gravel under the wheels the car burst from a standstill towards the grass
verge, which Welch ran over briefly before turning down the drive. They
moved towards the road at walking pace, the engine maintaining a loud
lowing sound which caused a late group of students, most of them wearing
the yellow and green College scarf, to stare after them from a small
covered-in space beside the lodge where sports notices were posted.
They climbed College Road, holding to the middle of the highway. The
unavailing hoots of a lorry behind them made Dixon look furtively at
Welch, whose face, he saw with passion, held an expression of calm
assurance, like an old quartermaster's in rough weather. Dixon shut his
eyes again. He was hoping that when Welch had made the second of the two
maladroit gear-changes which lay ahead of him, the conversation would turn
in some other direction than the academic. He even thought he'd rather hear
some more about music or the doings of Welch's sons, the effeminate writing
Michel and the bearded pacifist painting Bertrand whom Margaret had
described to him. But whatever the subject for discussion might be, Dixon
knew that before the journey ended he'd find his face becoming creased and
flabby, like and old bag, with the strain of making it smile and show
interest and speak its few permitted words, of steering it between a
collapse into helpless fatigue and a tautening with anarchic fury.
'Oh... uh... Dixon.'
Dixon opened his eyes, doing everything possible with the side of his face
away from Welch, everything which might help to relieve his feelings in
advance. 'Yes, Professor?'
'I was wondering about that article of yours.'
'Oh yes. I don't...'
'Have you heard from Partington yet?'
'Well yes, actually I sent it to him first of all, if you remember,
and he said the pressure of other stuff was...'
'What?'
Dixon had lowered his voice below the medium shout required by the
noise of the car, in an attempt to half-conceal from Welch Welch's own
lapse of memory, and so protect himself. Now he had to bawl out: 'I told
you had said he couldn't find room for it.'
'Oh, couldn't he? Couldn't he? Well, of course they do get a lot of the
most... a most terrific volume of stuff sent to them, you know. Still,
I suppose if anything really took their eye, then they... they... Have
you sent it off to anyone else?'
'Yes, that Caton chap who advertised in the T.L.S. a couple of months ago.
Starting up a new historical review with an international bias, or something.
I thought I'd get in straight away. After all, a new journal can't very well
be bunged up as far ahead as all the ones I've...'
'Ah yes, a new journal might be worth trying. There was one advertised
in the _Times Literary Supplement_ a little while ago. Paton or some
such name the editor fellow was called. You might have a go at him, now that
it doesn't seem as if any of the more established reviews have got room for
your... effort. Let's see now; what's the exact title you've given it?'
Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright
green after a wet April. It wasn't the double-exposure effect of the last
half-minute's talk that had dumbfounded him, for such incidents formed the
staple material of Welch colloquies; it was the prospect of reciting
the title of the article he'd written. It was a perfect title, in that it
crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of
yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon
had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but its own seemed worse
than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance.
'In considering this strangely neglected topic,' it began. This what
neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what?
His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript
only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool. 'Let's
see,' he echoed Welch in a pretended effort of memory: 'oh yes; The
Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450
to 1485. After all, that's what it's... '
Unable to finish his sentence, he looked to his left again to find a man's
face staring into his own from about nine inches away. The face, which filled
with alarm as he gazed, belonged to the driver of a van which Welch had
elected to pass on a sharp bend between two stone walls. A huge bus now
swung into view from further round the bend. Welch slowed slightly, thus
ensuring that they would still be next to the van when the bus reached them,
and said with decision: 'Well, that ought to do it nicely, I should say.'
Before Dixon could roll himself into a ball or even take off his glasses,
the van had braked and disappeared, the bus-driver, his mouth opening and
shutting vigorously, had somehow squirmed his vehicle against the far wall,
and, with an echoing rattle, the car darted forward on to the straight. Dixon,
though on the whole glad at this escape, felt at the same time that the
conversation would have been appropriately rounded off by Welch's death.
He felt this more keenly when Welch went on: 'If I were you, Dixon, I
should take all the steps I possibly could to get this article accepted
in the next month or so. I mean, I haven't the specialized knowledge to
judge...' His voice quickened: 'I can't tell, can I? what it's worth. It's
no use anybody coming to me and asking "What's young Dixon's stuff like?"
unless I can give them an expert opinion of what it's worth, is it now?
But an acceptance by a learned journal would... would... You, well you
don't know what it's worth yourself, how can you?'
Dixon felt that, on the contrary, he had a good idea of what his
article was worth from a several points of view. From one of these, the
thing's worth could be expressed in one short hyphenated indecency; from
another, it was worth the amount of frenzied fact-grubbing and fanatical
boredom that had gone into it; from yet another, it was worthy of its aim,
the removal of the 'bad impression' he'd so far made in the College and
his Department. But he said: 'No, of course not, Professor.'
------------------------------------
Ну просто невозможно объяснить словами, какой там весёлый юмор и замечательная, до боли знакомая, рефлексия героя. И издёвка над всеми академическими ритуалами и канонами. Невозможно описать умертвляющую тоску академического стиля лучше, чем:
It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but its own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. 'In considering this strangely neglected topic,' it began. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool.
(это я отыскал отрывок из романа, к-й когда-то сделал для того, чтобы послать друзьям, убедить их прочесть книгу).
Вроде бы его перевели и издали лет 10 назад, но перевод я не видел. Интересно, насколько хорош?
Вот весь отрывок (в оригинале, естественно):
In the excerpt below, the hero is Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer
in the department of History, still in his probation stage, and Welch
is his supervising Professor, whose mere word can terminate or
accellerate Jim's academic carreer.
------------
A minute later Dixon was sitting listening to a sound like the ringing
of a cracked door-bell as Welch pulled at the starter. This died away
into a treble humming that seemed to involve every component of the car.
Welch tried again; this time the effect was of beer-bottles jerkily
belaboured. Before Dixon could do more than close his eyes he was pressed
firmly back against the seat, and his cigarette, still burning, was cuffed
out of his hand into some interstice on the floor. With a tearing of
gravel under the wheels the car burst from a standstill towards the grass
verge, which Welch ran over briefly before turning down the drive. They
moved towards the road at walking pace, the engine maintaining a loud
lowing sound which caused a late group of students, most of them wearing
the yellow and green College scarf, to stare after them from a small
covered-in space beside the lodge where sports notices were posted.
They climbed College Road, holding to the middle of the highway. The
unavailing hoots of a lorry behind them made Dixon look furtively at
Welch, whose face, he saw with passion, held an expression of calm
assurance, like an old quartermaster's in rough weather. Dixon shut his
eyes again. He was hoping that when Welch had made the second of the two
maladroit gear-changes which lay ahead of him, the conversation would turn
in some other direction than the academic. He even thought he'd rather hear
some more about music or the doings of Welch's sons, the effeminate writing
Michel and the bearded pacifist painting Bertrand whom Margaret had
described to him. But whatever the subject for discussion might be, Dixon
knew that before the journey ended he'd find his face becoming creased and
flabby, like and old bag, with the strain of making it smile and show
interest and speak its few permitted words, of steering it between a
collapse into helpless fatigue and a tautening with anarchic fury.
'Oh... uh... Dixon.'
Dixon opened his eyes, doing everything possible with the side of his face
away from Welch, everything which might help to relieve his feelings in
advance. 'Yes, Professor?'
'I was wondering about that article of yours.'
'Oh yes. I don't...'
'Have you heard from Partington yet?'
'Well yes, actually I sent it to him first of all, if you remember,
and he said the pressure of other stuff was...'
'What?'
Dixon had lowered his voice below the medium shout required by the
noise of the car, in an attempt to half-conceal from Welch Welch's own
lapse of memory, and so protect himself. Now he had to bawl out: 'I told
you had said he couldn't find room for it.'
'Oh, couldn't he? Couldn't he? Well, of course they do get a lot of the
most... a most terrific volume of stuff sent to them, you know. Still,
I suppose if anything really took their eye, then they... they... Have
you sent it off to anyone else?'
'Yes, that Caton chap who advertised in the T.L.S. a couple of months ago.
Starting up a new historical review with an international bias, or something.
I thought I'd get in straight away. After all, a new journal can't very well
be bunged up as far ahead as all the ones I've...'
'Ah yes, a new journal might be worth trying. There was one advertised
in the _Times Literary Supplement_ a little while ago. Paton or some
such name the editor fellow was called. You might have a go at him, now that
it doesn't seem as if any of the more established reviews have got room for
your... effort. Let's see now; what's the exact title you've given it?'
Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright
green after a wet April. It wasn't the double-exposure effect of the last
half-minute's talk that had dumbfounded him, for such incidents formed the
staple material of Welch colloquies; it was the prospect of reciting
the title of the article he'd written. It was a perfect title, in that it
crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of
yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon
had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but its own seemed worse
than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance.
'In considering this strangely neglected topic,' it began. This what
neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what?
His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript
only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool. 'Let's
see,' he echoed Welch in a pretended effort of memory: 'oh yes; The
Economic Influence of the Developments in Shipbuilding Techniques, 1450
to 1485. After all, that's what it's... '
Unable to finish his sentence, he looked to his left again to find a man's
face staring into his own from about nine inches away. The face, which filled
with alarm as he gazed, belonged to the driver of a van which Welch had
elected to pass on a sharp bend between two stone walls. A huge bus now
swung into view from further round the bend. Welch slowed slightly, thus
ensuring that they would still be next to the van when the bus reached them,
and said with decision: 'Well, that ought to do it nicely, I should say.'
Before Dixon could roll himself into a ball or even take off his glasses,
the van had braked and disappeared, the bus-driver, his mouth opening and
shutting vigorously, had somehow squirmed his vehicle against the far wall,
and, with an echoing rattle, the car darted forward on to the straight. Dixon,
though on the whole glad at this escape, felt at the same time that the
conversation would have been appropriately rounded off by Welch's death.
He felt this more keenly when Welch went on: 'If I were you, Dixon, I
should take all the steps I possibly could to get this article accepted
in the next month or so. I mean, I haven't the specialized knowledge to
judge...' His voice quickened: 'I can't tell, can I? what it's worth. It's
no use anybody coming to me and asking "What's young Dixon's stuff like?"
unless I can give them an expert opinion of what it's worth, is it now?
But an acceptance by a learned journal would... would... You, well you
don't know what it's worth yourself, how can you?'
Dixon felt that, on the contrary, he had a good idea of what his
article was worth from a several points of view. From one of these, the
thing's worth could be expressed in one short hyphenated indecency; from
another, it was worth the amount of frenzied fact-grubbing and fanatical
boredom that had gone into it; from yet another, it was worthy of its aim,
the removal of the 'bad impression' he'd so far made in the College and
his Department. But he said: 'No, of course not, Professor.'
------------------------------------
