“Of Human Bondage” - по сути своей подробное (иногда даже чересчур) описание жизни некоего Филипа Кэри. Он хром, рано потерял родителей, имеет сложности в общении с людьми и не знает чего хочет. На протяжении 680 страниц он в отчаянных поисках себя и смысла человеческой жизни вообще. От религии к идеализму и вере в прекрасное, затем приходит реализм и осознание красоты в полном смысле этого слова, и, наконец, нигилизм.
As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely something he did for his own pleasure. Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful; and though it might be no more than an illusion that he had the power of selection, though it might be no more than a fantastic legerdemain in which appearances were interwoven with moonbeams, that did not matter: it seemed, and so to him it was. In the vast warp of life (a river arising from no spring and flowing endlessly to no sea), with the background to his fancies that there was no meaning and that nothing was important, a man might get a personal satisfaction in selecting the various strands that worked out the pattern. There was one pattern, the most obvious, perfect, and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew to manhood, married, produced children, toiled for his bread, and died; but there were others, intricate and wonderful, in which happiness did not enter and in which success was not attempted; and in them might be discovered a more troubling grace.
Но самое потрясающее в этой книге не эта теория. Точнее, она– лишь составляющая достигнутого Моэмом эффекта. Ведь жизнь Филипа – это твоя собственная жизнь. Конечно, я не готова сейчас принять бессмысленность существования. Мне 18. я хочу творить и наслаждаться эстетически прекрасным и мозгодолбающим. Моэм всего лишь человек, он не может знать наверняка.
Другое дело, что если я приду со временем к тем же выводам – смогу ли я так же, себе на пользу, их принять? Начертить позатейливей и растаять. На словах – прекрасно, на деле – угнетает. Как впрочем, и самая идеальная схема.
Советую)