"Christopher Morley - Thunder on the Left" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morley Christopher)

About This Book


The ancient Romans believed that when men heard thunder on the left the gods had something especially
important to impart. This book is the story of a weekend in an old house by the sea, with the heavy
atmosphere of an impending summer storm matched by the human tensions within the house tensions that
were bound to end in tragedy. This is the outside story. The inside box of the Chinese puzzle is a fantasy.
It is an account of a child who spies out the enemy world of adults, to find out if they are happy in that
strange world; and, by some magical shuffling of time or imagination, manages to project himself into the
lives of his playmates, grown middle-aged and bogged down in the terrible trivia of the "real" and
"earnest" life.

Masquerading as a man, he makes a strange impact on that world. Its sophisticated characters take it for
granted that he is an artist and are frightened by what they imagine is the sardonic humor behind his naive
candor.

In this book Morley is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf. He has the same sensitivity to country moods, to
the frail undercurrents in the stream of consciousness, the ethical issues flowing and ebbing beneath a
variety of sensations and impulses. Thunder on the Left has affinities to that great work of poetic
imagination, The Waves, which it preceded by six years.
 Thunder on the Left
By Christopher Morley
(v. 3.0)
Among the notionable dictes of antique Rome was the fancy that when men heard thunder on the
left the gods had somewhat of speciall advertisement to impart. Then did the prudent pause and
lay down their affaire to studye what omen Jove intended.
? SIR EUSTACE PEACHTREE.
THE DANGERS OF THIS MORTALL LIFE.
PENGUIN BOOKS, INC. - NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Published by Penguin Books, Inc. and Reprinted by permission of J. B. Lippincott Company
FIRST PENGUIN BOOKS EDITION, MARCH, 1946
Penguin Books, Inc., 245 Fifth Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Penguin Books Limited, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 TO
S. A. E.
The undertaking a comedy not merely sentimental was very dangerous.
—Oliver Goldsmith.

On parla des passions. "Ah! qu'elles sont funestes!" disait Zadig."Ce sont les vents qui enflent les voiles
du vaisseau," repartit Termite: "elles le submergent quelquefois; mais sans elles il ne pour-rait voguer. La
bile rend colère et malade; mais sans la bile l'homme ne saurait vivre. Tout est dangereux ici-bas, et tout
est necessaire."
—Voltaire, Zadig

"Your mind had to be tormented and fevered and exalted before you could see a god."
"It was cruel of you to do this," she said.
—James Stephens, In the Land of Youth.
 I