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2006-01-20

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 Virginia Woolf. Orlando

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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CHAPTER 1. He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 179, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 Орландо (engl) | Глава 2

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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It was Orlando's fault perhaps; yet, after all, are we to blame Orlando? The age was the Elizabethan; their morals were not ours; nor their poets; nor their climate; nor their vegetables even. Everything was different. The weather itself, the heat and cold of summer and winter, was, we may believe, of another temper altogether. The brilliant amorous day was divided as sheerly from the night as land from water. Sunsets were redder and more intense; dawns were whiter and more auroral. Of our crepuscular half-lights and lingering twilights they knew nothing. The rain fell vehemently, or not at all. The sun blazed or there was darkness. Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is, the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall. The moment is brief they sang; the moment is over; one long night is then to be slept by all. As for using the artifices of the greenhouse or conservatory to prolong or preserve these fresh pinks and roses, that was not their way. The withered intricacies and ambiguities of our more gradual and doubtful age were unknown to them. Violence was all. The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. Girls were roses, and their seasons were short as the flowers'. Plucked they must be before nightfall; for the day was brief and the day was all. Thus, if Orlando followed the leading of the climate, of the poets, of the age itself, and plucked his flower in the window-seat even with the snow on the ground and the Queen vigilant in the corridor we can scarcely bring ourselves to blame him. He was young; he was boyish; he did but as nature bade him do. As for the girl, we know no more than Queen Elizabeth herself did what her name was. It may have been Doris, Chloris, Delia, or Diana, for he made rhymes to them all in turn; equally, she may have been a court lady, or some serving maid. For Orlando's taste was broad; he was no lover of garden flowers only; the wild and the weeds even had always a fascination for him.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 175, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 CHAPTER 2.

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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At last the play was ended. All had grown dark. The tears streamed down his face. Looking up into the sky there was nothing but blackness there too. Ruin and death, he thought, cover all. The life of man ends in the grave. Worms devour us. Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe Should yawn? Even as he said this a star of some pallor rose in his memory. The night was dark; it was pitch dark; but it was such a night as this that they had waited for; it was on such a night as this that they had planned to fly. He remembered everything. The time had come. With a burst of passion he snatched Sasha to him, and hissed in her ear "Jour de ma vie!" It was their signal. At midnight they would meet at an inn near Blackfriars. Horses waited there. Everything was in readiness for their flight. So they parted, she to her tent, he to his. It still wanted an hour of the time.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 172, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 Орландо (engl) | Глава 4

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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"Another metaphor by Jupiter!" he would exclaim as he said this (which will show the disorderly and circuitous way in which his mind worked and explain why the oak tree flowered and faded so often before he came to any conclusion about Love). "And what's the point of it?" he would ask himself. "Why not say simply in so many words?" and then he would try to think for half an hour, - or was it two years and a half? - how to say simply in so many words what love is. "A figure like that is manifestly untruthful," he argued, "for no dragon-fly, unless under very exceptional circumstances, could live at the bottom of the sea. And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth, what is she? Confound it all," he cried, "why say Bedfellow when one's already said Bride? Why not simply say what one means and leave it?"

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 172, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 CHAPTER 3.

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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Then OUR LADY OF MODESTY speaks, so low that one can hardly hear: "I am she that men call Modesty. Virgin I am and ever shall be. Not for me the fruitful fields and the fertile vineyard. Increase is odious to me; and when the apples burgeon or the flocks breed, I run, I run; I let my mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes. I do not see. Spare, O spare!" Again the trumpets peal forth: "Modesty Avaunt! Begone Modesty!?" With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands and dance slowly, tossing their veils and singing as they go:

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 180, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 CHAPTER 4.

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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"But what used we young fellows in the cockpit of the "Marie Rose" to say about a woman who threw herself overboard for the pleasure of being rescued by a blue-jacket?" she said. "We had a word for them. Ah! I have it..." (But we must omit that word; it was disrespectful in the extreme and passing strange on a lady's lips.) "Lord! Lord!" she cried again at the conclusion of her thoughts, "must I then begin to respect the opinion of the other sex, however monstrous I think it? If I wear skirts, if I can't swim, if I have to be rescued by a blue-jacket, by God!" she cried, "I must!" Upon which a gloom fell over her. Candid by nature, and averse to all kinds of equivocation, to tell lies bored her. It seemed to her a roundabout way of going to work. Yet, she reflected, the flowered paduasoy - the pleasure of being rescued by a blue-jacket - if these were only to be obtained by roundabout ways, roundabout one must go, she supposed. She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. "Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires," she reflected; "for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There's the hairdressing," she thought, "that alone will take an hour of my morning, there's looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there's staying and lacing; there's washing and powdering; there's changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; there's being chaste year in year out..." Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. "If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered," Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor may fall from a mast-head. "A pox on them!" she said, realizing for the first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 173, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 Орландо (engl) | Глава 7

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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"Heaven be praised!" cried Orlando still laughing. She heard the sound of chariot wheels driven at a furious pace down the courtyard. She heard them rattle along the road. Fainter and fainter the sound became. Now it faded away altogether. "I am alone," said Orlando, aloud since there was no one to hear. That silence is more profound after noise still wants the confirmation of science. But that loneliness is more apparent directly after one has been made love to, many women would take their oath. As the sound of the Archduke's chariot wheels died away, Orlando felt drawing further from her and further from her an Archduke (she did not mind that), a fortune (she did not mind that), a title (she did not mind that), the safety and circumstance of married life (she did not mind that), but life she heard going from her, and a lover. "Life and a lover," she murmured; and going to her writing-table she dipped her pen in the ink and wrote:

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 183, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 CHAPTER 5.

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law, Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw, Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade, Forget her Pray'rs or miss a Masquerade, Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball - we know as if we heard him how Mr Pope's tongue flickered like a lizard's, how his eyes flashed, how his hand trembled, how he loved, how he lied, how he suffered. In short, every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life; every quality of his mind is written large in his works; yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other. That time hangs heavy on people's hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 174, для младшеклассников. Диалогов: 2%.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 CHAPTER 6.

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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After some hours of death, suddenly a jay shrieked "Shelmerdine", and stooping, she picked up one of those autumn crocuses which to some people signify that very word, and put it with the jay's feather that came tumbling blue through the beech woods, in her breast. Then she called "Shelmerdine" and the word went shooting this way and that way through the woods and struck him where he sat, making models out of snail shells in the grass. He saw her, and heard her coming to him with the crocus and the jay's feather in her breast, and cried "Orlando", which meant (and it must be remembered that when bright colours like blue and yellow mix themselves in our eyes, some of it rubs off on our thoughts) first the bowing and swaying of bracken as if something were breaking through; which proved to be a ship in full sail, heaving and tossing a little dreamily, rather as if she had a whole year of summer days to make her voyage in; and so the ship bears down, heaving this way, heaving that way, nobly, indolently, and rides over the crest of this wave and sinks into the hollow of that one, and so, suddenly stands over you (who are in a little cockle shell of a boat, looking up at her) with all her sails quivering, and then, behold, they drop all of a heap on deck - as Orlando dropped now into the grass beside him.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 180, для младшеклассников.

41 k

2006-01-20

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 Орландо (engl) | Глава 10

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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Having asked then of man and of bird and the insects, for fish, men tell us, who have lived in green caves, solitary for years to hear them speak, never, never say, and so perhaps know what life is- having asked them all and grown no wiser, but only older and colder (for did we not pray once in a way to wrap up in a book something so hard, so rare, one could swear it was life's meaning?) back we must go and say straight out to the reader who waits a-tiptoe to hear what life is - alas, we don't know.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 179, для младшеклассников.

42 k

2006-01-20

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 THE END

Писательница: Вулф Вирджиния

Глава в томе: Орландо (engl)

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So Orlando, at the turn by the barn, called "Orlando?" with a note of interrogation in her voice and waited. Orlando did not come. "All right then," Orlando said, with the good humour people practise on these occasions; and tried another. For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand. Choosing then, only those selves we have found room for, Orlando may now have called on the boy who cut the nigger's head down; the boy who strung it up again; the boy who sat on the hill; the boy who saw the poet; the boy who handed the Queen the bowl of rose water; or she may have called upon the young man who fell in love with Sasha; or upon the Courtier; or upon the Ambassador; or upon the Soldier; or upon the Traveller; or she may have wanted the woman to come to her; the Gipsy; the Fine Lady; the Hermit; the girl in love with life; the Patroness of Letters; the woman who called Mar (meaning hot baths and evening fires) or Shelmerdine (meaning crocuses in autumn woods) or Bonthrop (meaning the death we die daily) or all three together - which meant more things than we have space to write out - all were different and she may have called upon any one of them.

Координаты: 0 год; 0 кубика адреналина. Индекс удобочитаемости Флеша — 182, для младшеклассников.