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Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays — обложка книги
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Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays

Автор Роберт Льюис Стивенсон
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Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
Возрастное ограничение12+
Жанры
литература 19 веказарубежная классиказарубежная старинная литература

Описание

Книга представляет собой сборник воспоминаний и размышлений автора о путешествии через Америку, столкновениях с культурными различиями, природе Тихого океана, жизни в художественных сообществах и личных поисках смысла, объединённых в единый поток наблюдений и философских рассуждений.

Главный конфликт / проблема

Книга исследует конфликт между культурными предрассудками и реальными человеческими качествами, а также внутреннюю борьбу автора за смысл и идентичность в новом мире.

Ключевые идеи

  • Хаос и трудности эмиграции в 19‑веке
  • Культурные различия между Европой и Америкой
  • Важность имён и ландшафта в восприятии страны
  • Проблемы коммуникации и ожиданий в американском обществе
  • Организация и социальные нормы в эмигрантском поезде.
  • Экономические схемы и взаимопомощь среди пассажиров.
  • Эмоциональное воздействие открытых пространств и изоляции.
  • Расистские предрассудки и их влияние на иммигрантов
  • Путешествие по пустыням и горам как метафора внутреннего поиска
  • Влияние океана и лесных пожаров на природу и климат Монтерей
  • Монтерей как символ перехода от мексиканского к американскому влиянию и последующего упадка.
  • Кредитная культура и «tick» как проявление экономической зависимости мексиканцев.

Вывод

Книга приводит к выводу, что опыт эмиграции, столкновения с предрассудками и открытие природы и искусства позволяют человеку обрести более глубокое понимание себя и мира, подчёркивая важность эмпатии, честности и внутреннего удовлетворения.

Кому полезна

  • Студенты истории и культурологии
  • Путешественники и любители эмиграционных историй
  • Творческие люди и художники
  • Люди, интересующиеся философией и моралью

Главные темы

  • Путешествие и эмиграция
  • Культурные столкновения и предрассудки
  • Природа и ландшафты Тихого океана
  • Жизнь в художественных сообществах
  • Личностный рост и внутренний поиск
  • Моральные и философские размышления

Персонажи

  • Нарратор — Опытный путешественник, наблюдающий за поездкой, критически относится к расистским предрассудкам, описывает поездку и природу Тихого океана, сохраняет воспоминания о жизни в Барбизоне, описывает встречи с солдатом и резаком, размышляет о бедности и пишет письмо
  • Аретуса — Лёгкий, но небрежно одетый, носит книги Карла Орлеанского и Мишеля, а также свои нераспечатанные рондо
  • Кислота — Путешествует вместе с Аретусой, часто размышляет, но в итоге попадает под подозрение, но избегает наказания
  • Эмигрантский агент — Бедный, бритый человек, который помогает зарегистрировать багаж и советует оставаться в покое
  • Портёр — Суетливый и раздражённый, пытается переместить пассажиров и багаж
  • Мать с ребёнком — Старается защитить ребёнка, но не обращает внимания на вмешательство нарратора
  • Голландская вдова — Практичная и скептическая, но открытая к общению
  • Чёрный официант — Обучает нарратора американским обычаям, объясняет, что чаевые не принято давать
  • Немецкий пассажир — Пьяный и громкий, пытается общаться, но из-за усталости не удаётся
  • Кондуктор — Строгий, выгоняет пьющего пассажира
  • Белый чиновник — Собирает имена и распределяет пассажиров по вагонам
  • Старый мужчина — Отказался от предложения, считая его неподходящим

Цитаты

  • "The sun rises with a different splendour in America and Europe."
  • "Never. They considered themselves too highly to accept."
  • The train toiled over this infinity like a snail; and being the one thing moving, it was wonderful what huge proportions it began to assume in our regard.
  • The newsboy with whom we started from the Transfer was a dark, bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who treated us like dogs.
  • They declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking in the throat when they beheld them.
  • I have discovered a plan to make it broader, with which I here endow the public.
  • «The history of Monterey has yet to be written.»
  • «The Mexicans, although in the State are out of it. They still preserve a sort of international independence, and keep their affairs snug to themselves.»
  • "ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI"
  • "Il faut faire de la peinture nouvelle"

Сводка по автору из Wikidata

1850–1894. Robert Louis Stevenson. шотландский писатель и поэт (1850–1894)

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And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, the reasoner, the wise in his own eyes - God forbid it should be man that wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: Surely not all in vain.

CHAPTER XII A CHRISTMAS SERMON

BY the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve months; and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death- bed sayings have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and sceptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a manoeuvring king - remembered and embodied all his wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good humour in the famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying."

I

An unconscionable time a-dying - there is the picture ("I am afraid, gentlemen,") of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours are "numbered and imputed," and the days go by; and when the last of these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured; and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have served.

There is a tale in Ticitus of how the veterans mutinied in the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouing go home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. SUNT LACRYMAE RERUM: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.

The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of a noble character. It never seems to them that they have served enough; they have a fine impatience of their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to be singly thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies, those desperate characters - it is we ourselves who know not what we do, - thence springs the glimmering hope that perhaps we do better than we think: that to scramble through this random business with hands reasonably clean to have played the part of a man or woman with some reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire.

And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall we not require much of others? If we do not genially judge our own deficiencies, is it not to be feared we shall be even stern to the trespasses of others? And he who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more than that he has been unconscionably long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think his neighbour unconscionably long of getting hanged? It is probable that nearly all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much; it is certain we all think too much of sin. We are not damned for doing wrong, but for not doing right; Christ would never hear of negative morality; THOU SHALT was ever his word, with which he superseded THOU SHALT NOT. To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with inverted pleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds - one thing of two: either our creed is in the wrong and we must more indulgently remodel it; or else, if our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and should place our persons in restraint. A mark of such unwholesomely divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Fox without the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never he suffered to engross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the farther side, and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary clearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kind and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal of humility in judging others.

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life. Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.

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