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

advertisement, and which fact cannot now be changed by any forces even with the knowledge of the
experts in "monkey business", is that although I, who have lately been considered by very many people
as a rather good teacher of temple dances, have now become today a professional writer and will of
course write a great deal—as it has been proper to me since childhood whenever "I do anything to do a
great deal of it"— nevertheless, not having, as you see, the automatically acquired and automatically
manifested practice necessary for this, I shall be constrained to write all I have thought out in ordinary
simple everyday language established by life, without any literary manipulations and without any
"grammarian wiseacrings."
But the pot is not yet full! … For I have not yet decided the most important question of all—in which
language to write.
Although I have begun to write in Russian, nevertheless, as the wisest of the wise, Mullah Nassr Eddin,
would say, in that language you cannot go far.
(Mullah Nassr Eddin, or has he is also called, Hodja Nassr Eddin, is, it seems, little known in Europe and
America, but he is very well known in all countries of the continent of Asia; this legendary personage
corresponds to the American Uncle Sam or the German Till Eulenspiegel. Numerous tales popular in the
East, akin to the wise sayings, some of long standing and others newly arisen, were ascribed and are still
ascribed to this Nassr Eddin.)
The Russian language, it cannot be denied, is very good. I even like it, but … only for swapping
anecdotes and for use in referring to someone's parentage.
The Russian language is like the English, which language is also very good, but only for discussing in
"smoking rooms", while sitting on an easy chair with legs out-stretched on another, the topic of
Australian frozen meat or, sometimes, the Indian question.
Both these languages are like the dish which is called in Moscow "Solianka", and into which everything
goes except you and me, in fact everything you wish, and even the "after dinner Cheshma"* of
Sheherazade.
It must also be said that owing to all kinds of accidentally and perhaps not accidentally formed
conditions of my youth, I have had to learn, and moreover very seriously and of course always with
self-compulsion, to speak, read, and write a great many languages, and to such a degree of fluency, that if
in following this profession unexpectedly forced on me by Fate, I decided not to take advantage of the
"automatism" which is acquired by practice, then I could perhaps write in any one of them.
But if I set out to use judiciously this automatically acquired automatism which has become easy from
long practice, then I should have to write either in Russian or in Armenian, because the circumstances of
my life during the last two or three decades have been such that I have had for intercourse with others to
use, and consequently to have more practice in just these two languages and to acquire an automatism in
respect to them.
O the dickens! … Even in such a case, one of the aspects of my peculiar psyche, unusual for the normal
man, has now already begun to torment the whole of me.
And the chief reason for this unhappiness of mine in my almost already mellow age, results from the fact
that since childhood there was implanted in my peculiar psyche, together with numerous other rubbish
also unnecessary for contemporary life, such an inherency as always and in everything automatically
enjoins the whole of me to act only according to popular wisdom.
In the present case, as always in similar as yet indefinite life cases, there immediately comes to my
brain—which is for me, constructed unsuccessfully to the point of mockery, and is now as is said,
"running through" it—that saying of popular wisdom which existed in the life of people of very ancient
times, and which has been handed down to our day formulated in the following words: "every stick
always has two ends."
In trying first to understand the basic thought and real significance hidden in this strange verbal
formulation, there must, in my opinion, first of all arise in the consciousness of every more or less
sane-thinking man the supposition that, in the totality of ideas on which is based and from which must
flow a sensible notion of this saying, lies the truth, cognized by people for centuries, which affirms that