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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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II

But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the child-like, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if WE should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor other. It was the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic - envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back-biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life - their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation. A man may naturally disclaim all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls; for these are gross and naked instances. And yet in each of us some similar element resides. The sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. It may be because we are envious, or because we are sad, or because we dislike noise and romping - being so refined, or because - being so philosophic - we have an over-weighing sense of life's gravity: at least, as we go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond of resisting temptations; here is one to be resisted. They are fond of self-denial; here is a propensity that cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good. One person I have to make good: myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy - if I may.

III

Happiness and goodness, according to canting moralists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friends and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, except for the self-centred and - I had almost said - the unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience; if quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid the penalties of the law, and the minor CAPITIS DIMINUTIO of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom - of cunning, if you will - and not of virtue.

In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not need to know; he knows not for what hire, and must not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know what goodness is, he must try to be good; somehow or other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there comes in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he to make his neighbour happy? How far must he respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so hard to brighten again? And how far, on the other side, is he bound to be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his own morality? How far must he resent evil?

The difficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on the point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them) hard to accept. But the truth of his teaching would seem to be this: in our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon all; it is OUR cheek we are to turn, OUR coat that we are to give away to the man who has taken OUR cloak. But when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable and surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice; its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil, as we to go to glory; and neither knows what he does.

The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.

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