"Gurdjieff, G I - Beelzebubs Tales To His Grandson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gurdjieff G I)

oneself to sleep, but weighty and bulky tomes.
However that may be, I begin…
But begin with what?
Oh, the devil! Will there indeed be repeated that same exceedingly unpleasant and highly strange
sensation which it befell me to experience when about three weeks ago I was composing in my thoughts
the scheme and sequence of the ideas destined by me for publication and did not know then how to begin
either?
This sensation then experienced I might now formulate in words only thus:
"the-fear-of-drowning-in-the-overflow-of-my-own-thoughts."
To stop this undesirable sensation I might then still have had recourse to the aid of that maleficent
property existing also in me, as in contemporary man, which has become inherent in all of us, and which
enables us, without experiencing any remorse of conscience whatever, to put off anything we wish to do
"till tomorrow."
I could then have done this very easily because before beginning the actual writing, it was assumed that
there was still lots of time; but this can now no longer be done, and I must, without fail, as is said, "even
though I burst", begin.
But with what indeed begin… ?
Hurrah! … Eureka!
Almost all the books I have happened to read in my life have begun with a preface.
So in this case I also must begin with something of the kind.
I say "of the kind", because in general in the process of my life, from the moment I began to distinguish a
boy from a girl, I have always done everything, absolutely everything, not as it is done by other, like
myself, biped destroyers of Nature's good. Therefore, in writing now I ought, and perhaps am even on
principle already obliged, to begin not as any other writer would.
In any case, instead of the conventional preface I shall begin quite simply with a Warning.
Beginning with a Warning will be very judicious of me, if only because it will not contradict any of my
principles, either organic, psychic, or even "willful", and will at the same time be quite honest—of
course, honest in the objective sense, because both I myself and all others who know me well, expect
with indubitable certainty that owing to my writings there will entirely disappear in the majority of
readers, immediately and not gradually, as must sooner or later, with time, occur to all people, all the
"wealth" they have, which was either handed down to them by inheritance or obtained by their own
labor, in the form of quieting notions evoking only naпve dreams, and also beautiful representations of
their lives at present as well as of their prospects in the future.
Professional writers usually begin such introductions with an address to the reader, full of all kinds of
bombastically magniloquent and so to say "honeyed" and "inflated" phrases.
Just in this alone I shall follow their example and also begin with such an address, but I shall try not to
make it very "sugary" as they usually do, owing particularly to their evil wiseacring by which they
titillate the sensibilities of the more or less normal reader.
Thus…
My dear, highly honored, strong-willed and of course very patient Sirs, and my much-esteemed,
charming and impartial Ladies—forgive me, I have omitted the most important—and my in no wise
hysterical Ladies!
I have the honor to inform you that although owing to circumstances that have arisen at one of the last
stages of the process of my life, I am now about to write books, yet during the whole of my life I have
never written not only not books or various what they are called "instructive articles", but also not even a
letter in which it has been unfailingly necessary to observe what is called "grammaticality", and in
consequence, although I am now about to become a professional writer, yet having had no practice at all
either in respect of all the established professional rules and procedures or in respect of what is called the
"bon ton literary language", I am constrained to write not at all as ordinary "patented-writers" do, to the
form of whose writings you have in all probability become as much accustomed as to your own smell.