"Conrad, Joseph - Typhoon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

sufficient subject for meditation. Yet it was but a bit of a sea
yarn after all. I felt that to bring out its deeper significance
which was quite apparent to me, something other, something more
was required; a leading motive that would harmonize all these
violent noises, and a point of view that would put all that
elemental fury into its proper place.

What was needed of course was Captain MacWhirr. Directly I
perceived him I could see that he was the man for the situation.
I don't mean to say that I ever saw Captain MacWhirr in the
flesh, or had ever come in contact with his literal mind and his
dauntless temperament. MacWhirr is not an acquaintance of a few
hours, or a few weeks, or a few months. He is the product of
twenty years of life. My own life. Conscious invention had
little to do with him. If it is true that Captain MacWhirr never
walked and breathed on this earth (which I find for my part
extremely difficult to believe) I can also assure my readers that
he is perfectly authentic. I may venture to assert the same of
every aspect of the story, while I confess that the particular
typhoon of the tale was not a typhoon of my actual experience.

At its first appearance "Typhoon," the story, was classed by some
critics as a deliberately intended storm-piece. Others picked
out MacWhirr, in whom they perceived a definite symbolic
intention. Neither was exclusively my intention. Both the
typhoon and Captain MacWhirr presented themselves to me as the
necessities of the deep conviction with which I approached the
subject of the story. It was their opportunity. It was also my
opportunity; and it would be vain to discourse about what I made
of it in a handful of pages, since the pages themselves are here,
between the covers of this volume, to speak for themselves.

This is a belated reflection. If it had occurred to me before it
would have perhaps done away with the existence of this Author's
Note; for, indeed, the same remark applies to every story in this
volume. None of them are stories of experience in the absolute
sense of the word. Experience in them is but the canvas of the
attempted picture. Each of them has its more than one intention.
With each the question is what the writer has done with his
opportunity; and each answers the question for itself in words
which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, were written with
a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations. And
each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in
its own way to the conscience of each successive reader.

"Falk" -- the second story in the volume -- offended the delicacy
of one critic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject.
But what is the subject of "Falk"? I personally do not feel so
very certain about it. He who reads must find out for himself.
My intention in writing "Falk" was not to shock anybody. As in