"Zen in the Art of Writing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray Douglas)
… ON CREATIVITY
GO PANTHER-PAWED WHERE ALL THE MINED TRUTHS SLEEPNot smash and grab, but rather find and keep;Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleepTo detonate the hidden seeds with stealthSo in your wake a weltering of wealthSprings up unseen, ignored, and left behindAs you sneak on, pretending to be blind.On your return along the jungle path you've madeFind all the littered stuffs where you have strayed;The small truths and the large have surfaced thereWhere you stealth-blundered wildly unawareOr seeming so. And so these mines were minedIn easy game of pace and pounce and find;But mostly fluid pace, not too much pounce.Attention must be paid, but by the ounce.Mock caring, seem aloof, ignore each mileAnd metaphors like cats behind your smileEach one wound up to purr, each one a pride,Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside,Now summoned forth in harvests from the brakeTurned anteloping elephants that shakeAnd drum and crack the mind to awe,To behold beauty yet perceive its flaw.Then, flaw discovered, like fair beauty's mole,Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.This done, pretend these wits you do not keep,Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.WHAT I DO IS ME – FOR THAT I CAME
for Gerard Manley Hopkins
What I do is me – for that I came.What I do is me!For that I came into the world!So said Gerard;So said that gentle Manley Hopkins.In his poetry and prose he saw the Fates that choseHim in genetics, then set him free to find his wayAmong the sly electric printings in his blood.God thumbprints thee! he said.Within your hour of birthHe touches hand to brow, He whorls and softly stampsThe ridges and the symbols of His soul above your eyes!But in that selfsame hour, full born and shoutingShocked pronouncements of one's birth,In mirrored gaze of midwife, mother, doctorSee that Thumbprint fade and fall away in fleshSo, lost, erased, you seek a lifetime's days for itAnd dig deep to find the sweet instructions therePut by when God first circuited and printed thee to life:"Go hence! do this! do that! do yet another thing!This self is yours! Be it!"And what is that?! you cry at hearthing breast,Is there no rest? No, only journeying to be yourself.And even as the Birthmark vanishes, in seashell earNow fading to a sigh, His last words send you in the world:"Not mother, father, grandfather are you.Be not another. Be the self I signed you in your blood.I swarm your flesh with you. Seek that.And, finding, be what no one else can be.I leave you gifts of Fate most secret; find no other's Fate,For if you do, no grave is deep enough for your despairNo country far enough to hide your loss.I circumnavigate each cell in youYour merest molecule is right and true.Look there for destinies indelible and fine And rare.Ten thousand futures share your blood each instant;Each drop of blood a cloned electric twin of you.In merest wound on hand read replicas of what I planned and knewBefore your birth, then hid it in your heart.No part of you that does not snug and hold and hideThe self that you will be if faith abide.What you do is thee. For that I gave you birth.Be that. So be the only you that's truly you on Earth."
Dear Hopkins. Gentle Manley. Rare Gerard. Fine name.
What we do is us. Because of you. For that we came.
THE OTHER ME
I do not writeThe other meDemands emergence constantly.But if I turn to face him much too swiftlyThenHe sidles back to where and whenHe was beforeI unknowingly cracked the doorAnd let him out.Sometimes a fire-shout beckons him,He reckons that I need him,So I do. His taskTo tell me who I am behind this mask.He Phantom is, and I facadeThat hides the opera he writes with God,While I, all blind,Wait raptureless until his mindSteals down my arm to wrist, to hand, to fingertipsAnd, stealing, find Such truths as fall from tonguesAnd burn with sound,And all of it from secret blood and secret soul on secret ground.With gleeHe sidles forth to write, then run and hideAll week until another try at hide-and-seekIn which I do pretendThat teasing him is not my end.Yet tease I do and feign to look away,Or else that secret self will hide all day.I run and play some simple game,A mindless leapWhich from sleep summons forthThe bright beast, lurking, whose preservesAnd gaming ground? My breath,My blood, my nerves.But where in all that stuff does he abide?In all my rampant seekings, where's he hide?Behind this ear like gum,That ear like fat?Where does this mischief boyHatrack his hat?No use. A hermit he was bornAnd lives, recluse.There's nothing for it but I join his ruse, his game,And let him run at will and make my fame.On which I put my name and steal his stuff,And all because I sneezed him forth With sweet creation's snuff.Did R. B. write that poem, that line, that speech?No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;Say not my name.Praise other me.TROYMy Troy was there, of course,Though people said: Not so.Blind Homer's dead. His ancient myth'sNo way to go. Leave off. Don't dig.But I then rigged some means wherebyTo seam my earthen soul or die.I knew my Troy.Folks warned this boy it was mere taleAnd nothing more.I bore their warning, with a smile,While all the while my spadeWas delving Homer's gardened sun and shade.Gods! Never mind! cried friends: Dumb Homer's blind!How can he show you ruins that n'er were?I'm sure, I said. He speaks. I hear. I'm sure.Their advice spurnedI dug when all their backs were turned,For I had learned when I was eight:Doom was my Fate, they said. The world would end!That day I panicked, thought it true,That you and I and theyWould never see the light of the next day -Yet that day came.With shame I saw it come, recalled my doubtAnd wondered what those Doomsters were about?From that day on I kept a private joy,And did not let them senseMy buried Troy;For if they had, what scorns,Derision, jokes;I sealed my City deepFrom all those folks;And, growing, dug each day. What did I findAnd given as gift by Homer old and Homer blind?One Troy? No, ten!Ten Troys? No, two times ten! Three dozen!And each a richer, finer, brighter cousin!All in my flesh and blood,And each one true.So what's this mean?Go dig the Troy in you\Go NOT WITH RUINS IN YOUR MINDGo not with ruins in your mindOr beauty fails; Rome's sun is blindAnd catacomb your cold hotel!Where should-be heavens could-be hell.Beware the temblors and the floodThat time hides fast in tourist's bloodAnd shambles forth from hidden homeAt sight of lost-in-ruins Rome.Think on your joyless blood, take care,Rome's scattered bricks and bones lie thereIn every chromosome and geneLie all that was, or might have been.All architectural tombs and thronesAre tossed to ruin in your bones.Time earthquakes there all life that growsAnd all your future darkness knows,Take not these inner ruins to Rome,A sad man wisely stays at home;For if your melancholy goesWhere all is lost, then your loss growsAnd all the dark that self employsWill teem -so travel then with joys.Or else in ruins consummateA death that waited long and late,And all the burning towns of bloodWill shake and fall from sane and good,And you with ruined sight will seeA lost and ruined Rome. And thee?Cracked statue mended by noon's lightYet innerscaped with soul's midnight.So go not traveling with moodOr lack of sunlight in your blood,Such traveling has double cost,When you and empire both are lost.When your mind storm-drains catacomb,And all seems graveyard rock in RomeTourist, go not.Stay home.Stay home!I DIE, SO DIES THE WORLDPoor world that does not know its doom, the day I die.Two hundred million pass within my hour of passing,I take this continent with me into the grave.They are most brave, all-innocent, and do not knowThat if I sink then they are next to go.So in the hour of death the Good Times cheerWhile I, mad egotist, ring in their Bad New Year.The lands beyond my land are vast and bright,Yet I with one sure hand put out their light.I snuff Alaska, doubt Sun King's France, slit Britain's throat,Promote old Mother Russia out of mind with one fell blink,Shove China off a marble quarry brink,Knock far Australia down and place its stone,Kick Japan in my stride. Greece? quickly flown.I'll make it fly and fall, as will green Eire,Turned in my sweating dream, I'll Spain despair,Shoot Goya's children dead, rack Sweden's sons,Crack flowers and farms and towns with sunset guns.When my heart stops, the great Ra drowns in sleep,I bury all the stars in Cosmic Deep.So, listen, world, be warned, know honest dread.When I grow sick, that day your blood is dead.Behave yourself, I'll stick and let you live.But misbehave, I'll take what now I give.That is the end and all. Your flags are furled…If I am shot and dropped? So ends your world.DOING IS BEINGDoing is being.To have done's not enough;To stuff yourself with doing-that's the game.To name yourself each hour by what's done,To tabulate your time at sunset's gunAnd find yourself in actsYou could not know before the factsYou wooed from secret self, which much needs wooing,So doing brings it out,Kills doubt by simply jumping, rushing, runningForth to beThe now-discovered me.To not do is to die,Or lie about and lie about the thingsYou just might do some day.Away with that!Tomorrow empty staysIf no man plays it into beingWith his motioned way of seeing.Let your body lead your mindBlood the guide dog to the blind;So then practice and rehearseTo find heart-soul's universe,Knowing that by moving/seeingProves for all time: Doing's being!WE HAVE OUR ARTS So WE WON'T DIE OF TRUTHKnow only Real? Fall dead.So Nietzsche said.We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth.The World is too much with us.The Flood stays on beyond the Forty Days.The sheep that graze in yonder fields are wolves.The clock that ticks inside your head is truly TimeAnd in the night will bury you.The children warm in bed at dawn will leaveAnd take your heart and go to worlds you do not know.All this being soWe need our Arts to teach us how to breatheAnd beat our blood; accept the Devil's neighborhood,And age and dark and cars that run us down,And clown with Death's-head in himOr skull that wears Fool's crownAnd jingles blood-rust bells and rattles groansTo earthquake-settle attic bones late nights.All this, this, this, all this-too much!It cracks the heart!And so? Find Art.Seize brush. Take stance. Do fancy footwork. Dance.Run race. Try poem. Write play.Milton does more than drunk God canTo justify Man's way toward Man.And maundered Melville takes as taskTo find the mask beneath the mask.And homily by Emily D. shows dust-bin Man's anomaly.And Shakespeare poisons up Death's dartAnd of gravedigging hones an art.And Poe divining tides of bloodBuilds Ark of bone to sail the flood.Death, then, is painful wisdom tooth;With Art as forceps, pull that Truth,And plumb the abyss where it wasHid deep in dark and Time and Cause.Though Monarch Worm devours our heart,With Yorick's mouth cry, "Thanks!" to Art.