Translated material
Arkady Dragomoshchenko. Reading as time pores
Robert Van Gulik. Sexy life in ancient China. Per. from English. A.M. Kabanova. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Oriental Studies, 2000.
≈ A solid white stone is ⌠THI ■, right?
≈ Not so.
≈ maybe ⌠ ⌠ ■?
≈ That's right.
≈ Why?
Gunsun Moon
N EKOGA, at the time of fatigue (listing the reasons for which it is undeniably inappropriate here), I added to please myself with unpretentious fun. It’s by no means wine, not the wind from the mountains, not to break the biscuit and the muscular dress┘ Suppose a beer, a postcard to Kirkegor or a meeting with a friend who has not seen 38 years and a meeting with which in the applied place does not make an appropriate impression, since in the end no one will recognize anyone (which was obviously a condition for such non-meeting), or, for the example, reading Robert Van Gulik (Robert Van Gulik). Even the most unthinkable mixture of things sometimes does not bring discouraging confusion into use. The world is invulnerable. There is reason to assume that the true measure of things did not even dream of surrealism. Learning ≈ this is only melting distinction, to match the breath on the glass of its absence.
The unpretentious volumes of the Dutch diplomat, who has lived almost all his life in China and knew the use of not only in routine journals, the intricacies of the Beijing dialect, but also in the features of the erotic chinoiserie, these wiped, with the aftertaste of a cigarette ash, a book, the reading of which has more than once diverted the ink pencil of his fate, and the heel of the heel, Determine my private landscape in a special way. Of course, you can like them to Levkin’s magic caskets, ≈ Put an angel, close the varnish cover, open and ≈ please! ≈ A ticket for the blissful thread of the Chinese opera is right there.
Books, as usual, were accompanied ( the past time, alas, inevitable) by the author’s drawings of Robert Van Gulik himself, whose hand did not shy away from picketish details. Taoist monks with signs of degeneration, naked and intricately connected prostitutes, frightening physiognomy of craftsmen of dagger strike, cooking, lepers, ghosts, merchants and formidable messengers of the emperor, together, created uniformly unproving background for the diagonal optics of the adventure. Is it necessary to hide that among the many of these pages I sometimes had to face the instant of the "rupture of strings"?
But most of all, no doubt, they were attracted by the actual cards preferred by each book, and sometimes each of the chapters, as well as the indispensable lists of actors and their professions, which added anticipation a certain charm of the false reliability of the expected events.
Although this time remains a mystery which country was talking about in novels. Avoid exclamation marks. Avoid monks on the rural road. Avoid talking with the monarchs about poetry ┘ people whose fate is read in the wind, like calligraphy of grass, not burdened with anthropomorphic likening, should not be afraid. And upon returning to the direct "place of action" it remains to rely on the opinion of experts indicating that the author knew the material more than thoroughly. We will trust them in order not to dispel the charm of the first (and always ≈ first) exit to the Pruscium judge Dee.
About which here and there we learn in passing that in China of the 7th century, during the era of Tan, there really was his prototype, which was named the judge of Dee, and just like the protagonist Robert Van Gulik, performed the affairs of the subwannese, "unraveling" secrets, reducing the ends with the ends of the incidents more reminiscent of the scattered metaphors, rather reports. And whose life in books seems to be quite unpretentious, if not monotonous, as it is appropriately, the “life” of the characters of the Mystery genre: several wives, chess, green tea, lesson hours in the presence , contemplation of sunset on the terrace, the ceremony of the costume change, something else, which is fully filled with proper places in the register of details, tightening the place, time and action in the brown The likeness of classicism.
At the same time, the Mystery genre in itself is quite classic, and therefore, alien to excesses. Along the way, we note that in the Russian tradition, speaking of this genre, it is customary to be content with the name "Detective" , in the legitimacy of which one cannot be finally confident, but what is offering a reason for thinking about approaches to our subject. Here are a few hastily taken values of both, Mystery and the Detective.
Mystery (Literature). Something is not fully understood, preventing or avoiding a complete unraveling of mystery (Enigma). [The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright ╘ 1992 by Houthon Miffin Company]
Mystery (Theology). Religious truth, inaccessible to reason and knowed only in divine revelation [ibid.].
Detective . (Literature) 2. Literary work or movie depicting the adventure of detectives. [WITH. I. Ozhegov. Dictionary of the Russian language, 1984].
Of course, it is unraveling to rephrack the last definition in this way: “Lit. The work depicting the advent of mystics”, let's say, Carlos Castaneda.
However, in a different perspective, this is not subject to comparison. Judge Dee ≈ precisely the judge representing the power of the emperor. Moreover, he is Confucian (therefore, the Taoist monks are initially criminal for him) and, as for the true Confucian, “and Jing”, without doubt, is the first for him, i.e. “Table” book, more precisely, with a relentless reminder of the law of recombination, in other words, of the syntactic nature of the world that exists within the limits of the even “even” or “oddness” as in the ritual of ratios and alternations.
Just as this or that trigram has a fixed value, but whose meaning arises only in the context of a hexagram, a separate hexagram is just as inconvenient, which acquires significance only in the ring of the entire book and Jing "under the dream of" wings "accompanying it. It is by no means a secret that all the "investigations" of the judges are simply optional, due to the invasion of the incident.
His purpose is enclosed in another, to confront the case ≈ literally be a bodily letter of the law, canon, the deviation from which, like extracting an incorrect tone, according to “Lee Ji”, threatens with cosmic disasters, and therefore, even at the everyday level, the judge of Dee, due to the debt, is charged with seeing the small hesitation or violation of the correct action, and not only to see the state of things in the state Regulated equilibrium of the ritual.
Speaking about the Pater Brown of Chesterton, Borges writes that at first we are offered a secret, then she is given a demonic or magical interpretation in order to ultimately replace them with quite a few . It seems that there is every reason to assume a similarity in the method of Robert Van Gulik and, say, Chesterton. It would seem that the habits of demons bring the scale of both together.
Both there and there , the secret should be solved, revealed, enlightened by quite specific life circumstances, controlled by the cause and consequence, habits and desires, which, in fact, is the effect of the exclusion of chaos or instability from the picture of the world. So, in the "sunlight" the night ghost turns out to be the rags of the old wallpaper, and several found logical links again return the promise of intelligibility to the world. In addition, death has no reason. Then, in order to dress it up like a doll, we will find more than one in our bins.
Nevertheless, I will note one more thing┘ Each time, folding the puzzle, finding the possibilities of combining slippery inconsistencies and evasive coincidences, the judge of Dee, completing the case, as if it does not quite accomplish it, leaving the reader an intangible feeling that the solved puzzle not only did not acquire a fullness of understanding, not only did not disappear from the Confucian field, as unnecessary and consumed The product, but it itself turns into a fragment for the time being, is not the determined "secret" ≈ this is like the finale of one of the films by Alena Rene, the camera ran into the firewall, on which the tree is spelled out in the full growth, and we are slowly and steadily immersed in the process of approaching (again?) into the inflorescences of enzymes, then into fragments of single intransigns, and after ≈ Further, deeper into the pores of a stone seeming impenetrable. Surfaces.
I will allow myself to finish the recovery of one letter.
So, Rita, Ed Birnbaum (in the past, or where in the year before last, or maybe several years of that) all the same AIDS, and his friend, whose name is lost along with the letter, is now, probably, ≈ as usual, takes care of him up to death.
According to the deceased, his remains indulge in cremation, the ashes are divided into three parts √ One goes to the mother of a student who later told us the story of a dancer, a friend, the other, as I understand it, to the director of the theater, and the third is Ed▓a Birnbaum, who spent the last days with him.
The first portion of the ashes was, as he bequeathed, soon scattered over the ocean, the second was scattered a little later on some forest (it seems, at the Black Mountain Theater), and the third one ≈ a friend wished to keep it personally. Forever. To this end, he began to wander along the "antique" shops, looking for the appropriate beauty of the casket, freely or involuntarily making acquaintance with the owners of this kind of institutions.
This is how autumn (spring, winter, summer ≈ to choose from), and at the beginning of the next season in one of the SOHO small shops, he discovers a “marvelous” work box, which immediately appears to him.
However, the owner, a taciturn Belgian (Russian? Chinese? Chinese?), Flatly refuses to sell it, referring to the fact that, they say, they say, one person had already looked for this little thing for himself and not only looked, but brought a deposit, promising to pick it up as soon as he finds his free time, IE on occasion. It is in this place that we enter the element of Vasily Kondratyev. The air is performed by the mysterious junkers flying from the bridge by the Stimfalian opera of cards, incinerating space, as well as ≈ flickering words and delayed scales of smiles: time goes on.
A friend of the deceased has a few more and several times in the bench to get inquire to whether the stranger took his box.
"Where to rush?" ≈ Every time he hears from the owner. √ a man paid. And who prevents a person from waiting? "
But it so happens that a friend of the deceased, who had managed to pretty much to be attached to the casket, and to walks, and to the shop, and to conversations, finds that the autumn has come, at the same time finds the opportunity to convince the owner to give him a box nearby.
Both like the undertaking. They put the box on the counter, open, and at the bottom, of course, find a page from Yellow Pad with the address and the name of the person who paid the deposit. His name is Ed Birnbaum. And in order to emphasize that it was happening in September, I write a deliberately ridiculous phrase: "The September night was so bright that it seemed very high, a star dies on the edge of consciousness."