"G.K.Chesterton. The man who was Thursday. A nightmare (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand--
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.
We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

G. K. C.




CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK


THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and
ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its
sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the
outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its
architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently
under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was
described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any
definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an
intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant
place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at
the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must
be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed
in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he
could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people
were not "artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with
the long, auburn hair and the impudent face-- that young man was not really
a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white
beard and the wild, white hat--that venerable humbug was not really a
philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That
scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like
neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not
discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he
have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole
place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a
workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who
stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written
comedy.
More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall,
when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole
insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again was more
strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens
were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish
trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on