"Olaf Stapledon - A Man Divided" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

"No, no I Perhaps telepathy may have something to do with it sometimes, but mainly it's just a heightening of imaginative insight.
The other person's tone of voice and facial expression, the whole smell of him, so to speak, suddenly flash a meaning at me.
Johnson minor suddenly became a vivid picture of a desperately perplexed and frightened little person. And also I saw myself
with the same imaginative penetration. I saw myself as he saw me, and indeed very much more clearly than he could possibly
have seen me."

"You see," he said, looking round at me with an open smile which was impossible to the normal Victor, "it's not only other
people that come clear, and not only my own mind, but everything. To pursue the metaphor, not only the stream turns limpid, but
the banks, the fields, the people in them, the sky, the whole universe become--yes, limpid. I see into everything, in a sense. Not,
of course, spatially, like X- rays. Not mystically either, seeing God in them, or what not. Rather, instead of being just coloured
shapes, they become bewilderingly pregnant symbols; pregnant with whatever was relevant to them in my past experience. That's
it! The wretched Johnson minor's puckered brows and quivering lip suddenly flooded me with all my forgotten experience of
such things, and with anew, shattering insight into their meaning in terms of the mental suffering of Johnson himself, there and
then."

I think it was at this point that Victor bent down to watch a violent drama that had staged itself in a cobweb strung between the
tall grasses beside our path. But he did not stop talking. "Sometimes," he said, "I seem able to trace the waking to some event
outside myself. It's the impact of experience that shakes me into life--Johnson minor's struggle not to blub, or the conjunction of
you and Edith and the marriage service. The sight of this spider preparing its dinner might do the trick, if ever my sleep-walking
self could stoop to notice such things. God I what a spectacle it is, isn't it!" He jerked out an almost frightened laugh. "See how
he's tying up the wretched fly like a struggling parcel! Over and over the string goes, and tighter and tighter. And the poor devil
goes on buzzing, steadily as a machine. Ha! There's one of his wings roped now. And he's getting tired. It's like catching a lion in
a net in the Sahara, or one of those gladiatorial duels with net and sword. Now the whole string bag is finished, and next comes
the feasting."

Another question occurred to me. "When you slipped back into the dream-life after the Johnson minor incident, you had no idea
(as you said) of what had happened in the wide-awake state. Then, is the waking state also vague about the events of the
dreaming state. For instance, have you now forgotten what happened before you 'woke' in the church this morning?"

"No, no!" He laughed rather bitterly. "In the wide-awake life I remember the sleep-walker life with most distressing clarity, and
often in far more detail than the somnambulist could notice when things were actually happening. I remember it all not only more
clearly but in a new light, from a new angle. For instance, I remember damning you brutally yesterday because you had booked
us several three-star hotels instead of the four-star ones I had demanded for the honeymoon tour. And I remember, too, what I did




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not notice at the time, namely that your look of contrition had also a tinge of disgust and contempt about it. Now, of course, my
outburst fills me with unutterable shame. At least it does, and it doesn't; because when I look harder at the memory it doesn't
really seem mine at all, not something I did, but something that stupid snob did, who shares my body. Then again, I remember
saying 'good-night' to Edith on the evening before the wedding. The greedy-respectful kiss, and the soapy remarks! Now, it
makes me shudder, both for myself and for her. I wonder just how much damage that fool somnambulist has done to her. What I