Zoshchenko Mikhail
Returned youth
Mikhail Zoshchenko
Returned youth
Letters to the writer. Returned youth. Before Sunrise: Tale // Comp. and entered. article by Yu.V. Tomashevsky.- M .: Mosk. worker, 1989.- 543 p. The book of the outstanding Soviet writer MM Zoshchenko (1894-1958) includes the well-known novels "Returned Youth" and "Before the Sunrise", as well as "Letters to a Writer", which have not been republished since 1931. These works constitute a kind of trilogy in which Zoshchenko, an artist, researcher and thinker, reflects on the possibilities of a person to improve his spiritual, moral and physical health.
This is a story about how one Soviet chelorek, burdened with years, illness and melancholy, wanted to regain his lost youth. And what? He brought her back in a simple yet surprising way.
Man has regained his lost youth! A fact worthy of publication in the press. Nevertheless, not without timidity, the author begins this work. This book will probably bring insults and grief to us.
Ah, we are especially concerned about one category of people, a group of people, so to speak, involved in medicine.
These persons, well, there, say, doctors, paramedics, medical assistants, ambulance workers, as well as, well, let's say, the heads of pharmacies with their wives, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors, these faces, having seen the book, the contents of which are initially several will remind them of their profession, these persons, undoubtedly, will negatively, and perhaps even be hostile to our work.
The author humbly asks these persons to take a more lenient attitude to our work. The author, in turn, also promises them to be indulgent if he happens to read stories or there, say, stories written by a doctor, or a relative of this doctor, or even his neighbor.
2. SOME UNUSUALITY OF OUR WORKS
Our story this time bears little resemblance to ordinary literary gizmos. It also bears little resemblance to our former artistic things, written with a naive, rude hand in the haste of our youth and frivolity.
No, on the one hand, this composition can also be called artistic. There will also be an artistic description of the pictures of our northern nature, a description of the banks, streams and forest edges. There will be an interesting and even entertaining plot. There will be various complex and heartfelt experiences of the heroes, as well as the reasoning and voluntary statements of these heroes about the benefits of current politics, about the worldview, about the restructuring of characters and the glorious days to come.
Here will be everything that the reader expects from the book, which he took to read in the evening, in order to dispel his daily worries and to plunge into someone else's life, into someone else's experiences and thoughts of others.
But this is only on the one hand. On the other hand, our book is something completely different. It is, perhaps, a scientific essay, a scientific work, set out, however, in a simple, partly stupid everyday language, accessible due to familiar combinations to the most diverse strata of the population who have neither scientific training, nor the courage or desire to find out what is happening beyond the entire surface life.
This book will touch upon questions that are complex and even partly too complex, remote from literature and unfamiliar to the hands of a writer.
Questions such as, for example, the search for lost youth, the return of health, freshness of feelings, and so on, and so on, and so on. And also questions about the reorganization of our entire life and about the possibilities of this reorganization, about capitalism and about socialism and about the development of a worldview will be touched upon. And besides, we will touch upon other, no less important issues, taken in their highest meaning and in the light of the current days.
3. WHAT IS OUR COMPOSITION LIKE
Well, if this is not a scientific work, if, say, the Academy of Sciences or there, say, a section of scientific workers, in agreement with the city committee and the Writers' Union, does not find here signs of scientific writing or finds these signs, but does not count the author as having sufficiently mastered Marxist-Leninist worldview, then this book can be labeled with a more average, more, so to speak, harmless title that does not irritate the eyes and ears of individual citizens and organizations.
Zoshchenko Mikhail
Returned youth
Mikhail Zoshchenko
Returned youth
Letters to the writer. Returned youth. Before Sunrise: Tale // Comp. and entered. article by Yu.V. Tomashevsky.- M .: Mosk. worker, 1989.- 543 p. The book of the outstanding Soviet writer MM Zoshchenko (1894-1958) includes the well-known novels "Returned Youth" and "Before the Sunrise", as well as "Letters to a Writer", which have not been republished since 1931. These works constitute a kind of trilogy in which Zoshchenko, an artist, researcher and thinker, reflects on the possibilities of a person to improve his spiritual, moral and physical health.
This is a story about how one Soviet chelorek, burdened with years, illness and melancholy, wanted to regain his lost youth. And what? He brought her back in a simple yet surprising way.
Man has regained his lost youth! A fact worthy of publication in the press. Nevertheless, not without timidity, the author begins this work. This book will probably bring insults and grief to us.
Ah, we are especially concerned about one category of people, a group of people, so to speak, involved in medicine.
These persons, well, there, say, doctors, paramedics, medical assistants, ambulance workers, as well as, well, let's say, the heads of pharmacies with their wives, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors, these faces, having seen the book, the contents of which are initially several will remind them of their profession, these persons, undoubtedly, will negatively, and perhaps even be hostile to our work.
The author humbly asks these persons to take a more lenient attitude to our work. The author, in turn, also promises them to be indulgent if he happens to read stories or there, say, stories written by a doctor, or a relative of this doctor, or even his neighbor.
2. SOME UNUSUALITY OF OUR WORKS
Our story this time bears little resemblance to ordinary literary gizmos. It also bears little resemblance to our former artistic things, written with a naive, rude hand in the haste of our youth and frivolity.
No, on the one hand, this composition can also be called artistic. There will also be an artistic description of the pictures of our northern nature, a description of the banks, streams and forest edges. There will be an interesting and even entertaining plot. There will be various complex and heartfelt experiences of the heroes, as well as the reasoning and voluntary statements of these heroes about the benefits of current politics, about the worldview, about the restructuring of characters and the glorious days to come.
Here will be everything that the reader expects from the book, which he took to read in the evening, in order to dispel his daily worries and to plunge into someone else's life, into someone else's experiences and thoughts of others.
But this is only on the one hand. On the other hand, our book is something completely different. It is, perhaps, a scientific essay, a scientific work, set out, however, in a simple, partly stupid everyday language, accessible due to familiar combinations to the most diverse strata of the population who have neither scientific training, nor the courage or desire to find out what is happening beyond the entire surface life.
This book will touch upon questions that are complex and even partly too complex, remote from literature and unfamiliar to the hands of a writer.
Questions such as, for example, the search for lost youth, the return of health, freshness of feelings, and so on, and so on, and so on. And also questions about the reorganization of our entire life and about the possibilities of this reorganization, about capitalism and about socialism and about the development of a worldview will be touched upon. And besides, we will touch upon other, no less important issues, taken in their highest meaning and in the light of the current days.
3. WHAT IS OUR COMPOSITION LIKE
Well, if this is not a scientific work, if, say, the Academy of Sciences or there, say, a section of scientific workers, in agreement with the city committee and the Writers' Union, does not find here signs of scientific writing or finds these signs, but does not count the author as having sufficiently mastered Marxist-Leninist worldview, then this book can be labeled with a more average, more, so to speak, harmless title that does not irritate the eyes and ears of individual citizens and organizations.
Let this book be called, say, a culture film. Let it be something like a cultural film, sort of like we have been on the screen: "Abortion", or "Why is it raining", or "How silk stockings are made", or, finally, "What is the difference between a man and a beaver" ... These are films on large modern scientific and industrial topics, worthy of study.
Just like in these films, first we will have a scientific reasoning with different footnotes, information about this and that, with different comments and maybe even diagrams and articles that finally clarify the essence of the matter.
And only then the reader, slightly tired and knocked down by other people's thoughts, will receive a portion of entertaining reading, which will seem to be a kind of visual illustration of the above thoughts and arguments.
Of course, minds are impatient, not accustomed to being led by, as well as minds, well, let's say, inflexible, rude or, perhaps, low, not having a special interest in various natural phenomena, except for the distribution of food - these minds can, of course, to discard the beginning and comments in order to immediately proceed to incidents and incidents and immediately, so to speak, get a portion of entertaining reading.
In this case, without prejudice to themselves, they will read, starting from the 17th chapter, the truthful story about the amazing life of one person who, in our real days, in the days, so to indicate, the triumph of materialism and physiological foundations, returned his youth and thereby had courage and happiness to compete in the ability with nature itself or, as they said before the revolution, with the Lord God himself.
Of course, the author is forced to say that he is a man, well, perhaps, ignorant in matters of medicine. Not that he is ignorant, well, not entirely, perhaps, well-grounded, not entirely, perhaps, versed in individual small, varied and often terribly confusing details of this science. Nevertheless, in the course of the story, the author will be forced to touch upon some advanced medical questions about this and that, well, there about neurasthenia, about disturbed balance, about the loss of strength and the causes of these phenomena.
It’s not that the author absolutely didn’t know anything about this matter. No, he imagines something. But, of course, this notion is not so completely solid. Not that you wake a person up at night, and he will immediately explain everything to you and tell you everything, sleepily - where what happens, and why it happens, and how this or that is called in Greek, and what is cancer, and which side of the population has a kidney , and for what purpose nature has attached a spleen to man, and why, in essence, this confused and even partly scanty organ is called this rather frivolous name, which noticeably reduces human nature in its usual greatness.
No, the author, of course, is not a doctor, and his knowledge in this area is limited. Nevertheless, from childhood, the author had a deep and even exclusive interest in medicine and even at one time tried to treat his less valuable relatives with various home chemicals - iodine, tar, glycerin, grass that dogs eat when they get sick, and mental influences. What kind of treatment, I must say, sometimes went quite successfully and did not always end in the death of one or another gape relative.
But not only to his relatives, but to all people, the author looked closely with undisguised curiosity, followed, so to speak, the daily play of their organisms and who lived how long, what fell ill and from what exactly died. And what is the flu. And what is old age. And why is withering coming. And what should be done to delay the rapid flow of our dear life.
And, I must say, disappointing pictures gradually opened up before the amazed gaze of the author.
5. DISSOLVING PICTURES
Well, even up to the age of thirty-five, as far as the author could have noticed, people live tolerably, work in their field, have fun, spend recklessly what nature has given them, and after that, for the most part, they begin to rapidly decay and approach old age *. * The author has in mind the so-called intelligentsia stratum, moreover a stratum that has the old petty-bourgeois habits and traditions. The author does not touch in this case, so to speak, the rising class, for the simple reason that here the nervous health is sufficiently safe. However, something will also be said about proletarian health, about the health of those people who now, by the nature of their duties, have touched systematic mental work and amassed neurasthenia on this matter.
Current page: 1 (total of the book has 11 pages)
Zoshchenko Mikhail
Returned youth
Mikhail Zoshchenko
Returned youth
Letters to the writer. Returned youth. Before Sunrise: Tale // Comp. and entered. article by Yu. V. Tomashevsky. - M .: Mosk. worker, 1989.– 543 p. The book of the outstanding Soviet writer MM Zoshchenko (1894-1958) includes the well-known novels "Returned Youth" and "Before the Sunrise", as well as "Letters to a Writer", which have not been republished since 1931. These works constitute a kind of trilogy in which Zoshchenko - an artist, researcher and thinker - reflects on the possibilities of a person to improve his spiritual, moral and physical health.
This is a story about how one Soviet chelorek, burdened with years, illness and melancholy, wanted to regain his lost youth. And what? He brought her back in a simple yet surprising way.
Man has regained his lost youth! A fact worthy of publication in the press. Nevertheless, not without timidity, the author begins this work. This book will probably bring insults and grief to us.
Ah, we are especially concerned about one category of people, a group of people, so to speak, involved in medicine.
These persons, well, there, say, doctors, paramedics, medical assistants, ambulance workers, as well as, well, let's say, the heads of pharmacies with their wives, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors, these faces, having seen the book, the contents of which are initially several will remind them of their profession, these persons, undoubtedly, will negatively, and perhaps even be hostile to our work.
The author humbly asks these persons to take a more lenient attitude to our work. The author, in turn, also promises them to be indulgent if he happens to read stories or there, say, stories written by a doctor, or a relative of this doctor, or even his neighbor.
2. SOME UNUSUALITY OF OUR WORKS
Our story this time bears little resemblance to ordinary literary gizmos. It also bears little resemblance to our former artistic things, written with a naive, rude hand in the haste of our youth and frivolity.
No, on the one hand, this composition can also be called artistic. There will also be an artistic description of the pictures of our northern nature, a description of the banks, streams and forest edges. There will be an interesting and even entertaining plot. There will be various complex and heartfelt experiences of the heroes, as well as the reasoning and voluntary statements of these heroes about the benefits of current politics, about the worldview, about the restructuring of characters and the glorious days to come.
Here will be everything that the reader expects from the book, which he took to read in the evening, in order to dispel his daily worries and to plunge into someone else's life, into someone else's experiences and thoughts of others.
But this is only on the one hand. On the other hand, our book is something completely different. It is, perhaps, a scientific essay, a scientific work, set out, however, in a simple, partly stupid everyday language, accessible due to familiar combinations to the most diverse strata of the population who have neither scientific training, nor the courage or desire to find out what is happening beyond the entire surface life.
This book will touch upon questions that are complex and even partly too complex, remote from literature and unfamiliar to the hands of a writer.
Questions such as, for example, the search for lost youth, the return of health, freshness of feelings, and so on, and so on, and so on. And also questions about the reorganization of our entire life and about the possibilities of this reorganization, about capitalism and about socialism and about the development of a worldview will be touched upon. And besides, we will touch upon other, no less important issues, taken in their highest meaning and in the light of the current days.
3. WHAT IS OUR COMPOSITION LIKE
Well, if this is not a scientific work, if, say, the Academy of Sciences or there, say, a section of scientific workers, in agreement with the city committee and the Writers' Union, does not find here signs of scientific writing or finds these signs, but does not count the author as having sufficiently mastered Marxist-Leninist worldview, then this book can be labeled with a more average, more, so to speak, harmless title that does not irritate the eyes and ears of individual citizens and organizations.
Let this book be called, say, a culture film. Let it be something like a cultural film, sort of like we have been on the screen: "Abortion", or "Why is it raining", or "How silk stockings are made", or, finally, "What is the difference between a man and a beaver" ... These are films on large modern scientific and industrial topics, worthy of study.
Just like in these films, first we will have a scientific reasoning with different footnotes, information about this and that, with different comments and maybe even diagrams and articles that finally clarify the essence of the matter.
And only then the reader, slightly tired and knocked down by other people's thoughts, will receive a portion of entertaining reading, which will seem to be a kind of visual illustration of the above thoughts and arguments.
Of course, minds are impatient, not accustomed to being led by, as well as minds, well, let's say, inflexible, rude or, perhaps, low, not having a special interest in various natural phenomena, except for the distribution of food - these minds can, of course, to discard the beginning and comments in order to immediately proceed to incidents and incidents and immediately, so to speak, get a portion of entertaining reading.
In this case, without prejudice to themselves, they will read, starting from the 17th chapter, the truthful story about the amazing life of one person who, in our real days, in the days, so to indicate, the triumph of materialism and physiological foundations, returned his youth and thereby had courage and happiness to compete in the ability with nature itself or, as they said before the revolution, with the Lord God himself.
Of course, the author is forced to say that he is a man, well, perhaps, ignorant in matters of medicine. Not that he is ignorant, well, not entirely, perhaps, well-grounded, not entirely, perhaps, versed in individual small, varied and often terribly confusing details of this science. Nevertheless, in the course of the story, the author will be forced to touch upon some advanced medical questions about this and that, well, there about neurasthenia, about disturbed balance, about the loss of strength and the causes of these phenomena.
It’s not that the author absolutely didn’t know anything about this matter. No, he imagines something. But, of course, this notion is not so completely solid. Not that you wake up a person at night, and he will immediately explain everything to you and tell you everything, sleepily - where what happens, and why it happens, and how this or that is called in Greek, and what is cancer, and which side of the population has a kidney , and for what purpose nature has attached a spleen to man, and why, in essence, this confused and even partly scanty organ is called this rather frivolous name, which noticeably reduces human nature in its usual greatness.
No, the author, of course, is not a doctor, and his knowledge in this area is limited. Nevertheless, from childhood, the author had a deep and even exceptional interest in medicine and even at one time tried to treat his less valuable relatives with various home chemicals - iodine, tar, glycerin, grass that dogs eat when they get sick, and mental influences. What kind of treatment, I must say, sometimes went quite successfully and did not always end in the death of one or another gape relative.
But not only to his relatives, but to all people, the author looked closely with undisguised curiosity, followed, so to speak, the daily play of their organisms and who lived how long, what fell ill and from what exactly died. And what is the flu. And what is old age. And why is withering coming. And what should be done to delay the rapid flow of our dear life.
And, I must say, disappointing pictures gradually opened up before the amazed gaze of the author.
5. DISSOLVING PICTURES
Well, even up to the age of thirty-five, as far as the author could have noticed, people live tolerably, work in their field, have fun, spend recklessly what nature has given them, and after that, for the most part, they begin to rapidly decay and approach old age *. * The author has in mind the so-called intelligentsia stratum, moreover a stratum that has the old petty-bourgeois habits and traditions. The author does not touch in this case, so to speak, the rising class, for the simple reason that here the nervous health is sufficiently safe. However, something will also be said about proletarian health, about the health of those people who now, by the nature of their duties, have touched systematic mental work and amassed neurasthenia on this matter.
They lose their taste for many good things. Their muzzle grows dull. Their eyes sadly look at many decent and recently loved things. They are seized by various amazing and even incomprehensible diseases, from which doctors fall into a wise contemplative state and become anxious about the helplessness of their profession.
These patients are also captured by diseases that are more understandable and, so to speak, generally accessible, described in textbooks, such as, for example: melancholy, dropsy, paralysis, sugar sickness, tuberculosis, and so on, and the like, and so on.
Those who have fallen ill then leave as soon as possible with their illnesses and suitcases to various resorts and coasts in search of their lost youth. They bathe in the sea, dive and swim, roll for hours in the most terrible sun, wander in the mountains and drink special and laxative waters. They get sick even more from this and look at the doctors with respect, expecting miracles from them, the return of lost strength and the restoration of lost juices.
Doctors make patients douching and moxibustion, bathe them in bathtubs, give them various enemas and enemas from salt and mineral waters for scientific purposes. Or they conduct conversations with the sick about purely nervous phenomena on the part of the body, while convincing the patient to abandon destructive thoughts and believe that he is healthy like a bull and that his painful phenomena are something imaginary, it seems as if even a fantasy that does not have no real soil. This latter completely confuses the innocent patient and reconciles him with the thought of his imminent death. In addition, the inexorable forces of nature and the disturbed habitual balance for the most part do not lend themselves well to further tricks of science and the life-giving properties of hydrotherapy. And a person who has fallen ill often ends his earthly march without knowing finally what, in fact, happened to him and what fatal mistake he made in his life.
6. EVEN MORE DISSOLVING PICTURES
Then, thinking that these observations, how to say, are purely accidental, that these observations were made on people whose health and nervous forces were undermined by many and various shocks - war, revolution and everything, so to speak, the originality of our life - the author then, Not trusting what he had seen, he turned back and deliberately read biographies and descriptions of the lives of all known and famous people of previous eras and centuries *.
* The author would prefer to read the biographies of ordinary, small people, but the story, unfortunately, has no other material. However, in this sense, our parallel and comparison will be correct to some extent. People in our revolutionary epoch sometimes waste their nervous power no less than the so-called great people did.
And no. Even more disappointing pictures were revealed to the author.
Even more violent decay, even more complex and incomprehensible diseases, even more terrible melancholy, blues, disappointment, contempt for people (I) *, hypochondria and even earlier death could be seen on this, so to speak, great intellectual front.
*) Roman numerals here and hereafter indicate that there are comments to this text at the end of the book. However, for ease of reading, the author advises to read the story without referring to the comments. When reading the comments, you should look at which text they refer to.
A big black list can be made of these early dead great people (II).
Some died, barely reaching adulthood, others barely made it to the age of forty, and still others, having crossed the age of forty, eked out a miserable existence and still seemed to die for society.
They gave up their glorious work (III), they spent whole days on ottomans in torn felt shoes, smoked pipes, were sad, quarreled with their wives, cried and whined, wrote, for the sake of boredom and to forget, their memoirs about their beautiful heroic youth or composed theological and religious treatises, since this small goal does not require inspiration (IV) and complete stormy creative health, recovery and the physical well-being that was in youth (V).
7. GREAT PEOPLE
They often considered their illnesses to be a manifestation of God's will, or a special treachery of fate, or their tendency to failures, and after a short course, mainly hydrotherapy, they resignedly endured what happened to them, without even making any attempts to look deep into things to find the reason and understand the physical origin of your ailments.
But we can say, to the great happiness, not all in this sense were the same.
One category of people was distinguished by a special strength of health and had, unlike others, a long life - these are people prone to thoughtfulness and, so to speak, not an idealistic understanding of life. These are mainly all kinds of philosophers, naturalists, chemists, natural scientists and, in general, all kinds of professors and sages, who, by the nature of their profession, thought of something like that, thought something like that about different properties of nature.
In a word, these were people who not only composed odes or, say, suites and symphonies, not only painted different "Sunsets", and "Sunrise", and "Edge of the Forest" with colors, but also conscientiously thought about their life and about his extremely complex organism, and about managing it, and about his attitude to the environment.
These truly great people - most often atheists and materialists all almost lived to a ripe old age and calmly, without unnecessary ahs, shouts and laments, retreated, as it was said before, "into the kingdom of shadows and obscurity."
They were not very sick, and even, on the contrary, approaching old age, they were more and more healthy.
They fussed little, did not do stupid things and courageously walked towards their goal, not valuing, in fact, even their long life.
The famous Greek physician Hippocrates, "the father of medicine," as he was called, that is, it means that a person who fully understands the whole physical essence of the matter, lived to be ninety-nine years old.
And a certain Democritus, apparently the wisest man of all living, the Greek philosopher and founder of materialism * took one hundred and two years and died with a smile, saying that he could have lived longer if he had striven for that (VI).
*) The essential features of his teaching on materialism have remained almost unchanged among the materialists of our time.
8. SO TO SAY, "THE SECRET OF ETERNAL YOUTH"
No, nothing happens in vain. The author believes and is even sure that these professors and scientists were learning something like that, looking for some, maybe a secret, or, say, not a secret, but some suitable, only necessary line of behavior and, using this, they lived carelessly *, regulating their life and their body, as, say, a worker or a master there regulates his lathe.
*) In this case, we are not talking about science, the greatest discoveries of which allow us to hope for a successful outcome of a person's struggle for youth and longevity.
But this secret of his personal well-being and longevity of the professor, like a sin, was taken to the grave.
Of course, something abstract has been said about this. Some talked about the balance of body and soul. Others argued vaguely about the need to be closer to nature or, at least, not to interfere with it and generally walk barefoot.
Still others advised not to be surprised at anything and not to break away from the masses, saying that wisdom is always calm.
Some, descending from transcendental heights and not saying magnificent words about the soul, ordered to better monitor the small natural properties of their bodies, while advising to eat yogurt, fully expecting that this vegetarian dish gives a particularly long life, not allowing microbes to accumulate unnecessarily in our entrails and in the vulgar nooks and crannies of the body, which are naturally base and secondary importance.
However, when he was a student, the author knew a teacher who ate this milk diet for many years in a row and, falling ill with an unexpectedly light flu, as they say, "gave an oak", mourned by his relatives and students. Moreover, relatives and students unanimously argued that it was precisely the addiction to sour milk that crippled the patient, undermining his strength so much that the weakened body could not resist such, in essence, a trifling disease.
9. WHY NOT TO TALK ABOUT INTERESTING THINGS
Not wanting to even hint at humiliating or reproaching great people for anything, the author still wants to note that nothing particularly sensible and positive, and most importantly, accessible and understandable to all people, was not said in this area.
And the wise elders, who knew something about themselves, retreated to another world, never making their neighbors happy.
No, of course, the author does not intend to say now: well, they say, the elders died with their secret, but the author, a fine fellow and a son of a bitch, discovered this secret and this very minute will make humanity happy with his intolerable discovery. No. Everything is much simpler and, perhaps, even more offensive. Everything that the author will say, in all likelihood and even undoubtedly, is known to the department of health and medicine.
In their free time, people study literature, talk about music, collect stamps, dry butterflies, insects and various, I apologize, dung beetles, but the author suspects that the only real topic after politics (which, in essence, will ultimately be almost the same thing, because the social reorganization of society leads to new, healthy forms of life, and therefore to new health) - this is the only topic that is almost on everyone's mind, which is almost close to everyone, and understandable, and necessary like water, like food and like the sun - this is our life, our youth, our freshness and our ability to dispose of these precious gifts.
10. LOST HEALTH
In fact, sometimes you just read with amazement and anxiety old books, which describe the adventures of heroes of the most diverse classes and professions.
These were extremely good fellows and healthy men. These were strong and even powerful characters. These were gluttons and drunkards, which we never dreamed of in our dreams.
Every now and then you read: "He felt thirsty, refreshed, having eaten two bottles of rosé Angevin wine, and, jumping on a horse, rushed at a gallop after his offender ..."
Well, let's say, bring two bottles of Angevin wine to our man, our inhabitant, who lives in 1933. He, perhaps, after that not only will not sit on a horse, he, in all likelihood, will not be able to say "mother". And he will lie down next to his horse, sleep it off, squeak and gasp, and then only, having drawn the cart, he will go about his business, waving his hand at his offender, who, in turn, seeing the pursuit behind him, must have already scrambled to distant lands (VII).
11. UNFORTUNAL ATTEMPTS
Not being a professor, or there, say, an academician, or, for example, even a graduate student, the author, due to some of his naivety and a certain amount of insolence, nevertheless tried to figure out what was the secret found by the elders.
And is it possible, having understood this secret, to slightly lift the veil over unfading youth and longevity?
But, naturally, nothing good came of it.
But, on the one hand, the author saw people living smoothly and soon dying from a minor cold, on the other hand, he had to see the devil knows what a stormy and uneven life in a stormy and even amazing era, and nevertheless, the owner of this life lived for a long time, excellent and distinguished by exemplary health and well-being.
Then the author, not giving up yet, began to look closely at the work, so to speak, of individual parts of our mechanism and, in general, at various trifles and trifles, which the professors could, what good, overlook, due to their high official and social position, finding them, well, let's say , too vulgar, scanty, not elevated, or even simply humiliating for humanity and the rapid growth of the entire Christian culture, based on idealism and proud superiority against other animals, born, which is good, unlike man, from mold, water and other heinous chemical connections.
No, the author, alas, did not make any new discoveries in this area, but he saw a lot of things that are instructive and worthy of the most true surprise. And so, before embarking on our story, we want to tell you something, without which it will be absolutely impossible to understand the whole story of a man who has regained his youth.
We will tell you five small, but very funny stories that explain the main point of the matter. As a last resort, these stories can be read with complete good nature, like stories.
The first story will be about how a person behaves when he feels good. The second story is about what a person does when he feels bad. The third tells about what a person does to make him feel bad. And the last two funny stories make you think about the need to learn how to control yourself and your extremely complex body.
So let's listen to five stories. And then we proceed to a story, which, as you see, is not so easy to get to because of an extremely difficult topic.
This boy was in that completely, so to speak, meaningless, embryonic period of his life, when no sense, no seemingly smile or swagger could be expected from him.
True, he was well fed and healthy. He lay in clean, unsoaked diapers. A light silk blanket, made from my mother's coat, enveloped his tiny, pitiful body. Lace tricks and flowers were sewn here and there. And nothing - not a flea, not a draft, not dust that got into the nose - nothing disturbed this tiny microorganism. He lay, as mentioned above, in the cradle. His mother stood by the window, slipping a new nipple onto the bottle. Joy and maternal pleasure shone on her weary face.
Hell yes, it was a smile. It was a long lasting and no accidental smile. She was not addressing her mother, or the bottle with a new nipple, or anything in particular. The smile was in itself, like a reaction of some, perhaps, chemical processes that are beyond my understanding.
In this smile some kind of triumph of life, a triumph of health and well-being shone.
“What does this mean?” I thought. And even some kind of resentment and unfriendly feeling stirred in my stale soul.
What does this mean? What is this little rubbish smiling at? Well, it's still clear why the mother is smiling ... But this little ogre ... He has no thoughts. What is joy, friendship, love, money, pleasure - he does not understand. He doesn't look anywhere. He doesn't admire anything. Remembers nothing. Nevertheless, a smile wanders on his childish trifling face.
The mother, looking at the child with a happy, fading glance, said: - Quite a healthy child. Why shouldn't he smile?
13. THE MAN IS BITTED
This player was losing great. He furiously rummaged through his pockets, snatched out a new wad of money and thrust it on the table as if he wanted to say: "Here ... Eat ... Crush me ... Trample ... Rip out my heart ..."
This man was terribly nervous.
His eyes threw lightning. Hands trembled and did not obey their owner. He screamed like a woman, with some sort of squealing in his voice when there was some misunderstanding.
In his nervous excitement, he spun in the chair. At times they screamed. And when he was sitting, he contrived with his skinny knees to lift the edge of the heavy oak table.
“This means,” the author said to himself, “that there are circumstances in which our body works extremely badly. The enormous energy that has arisen in this process is wasted, as it were. It is, or rather, wasted on the devil knows what - on screams, fuss and even, as we have seen, on lifting tables and heavy furniture. "
And so, when the loser started yelling especially shrilly at his neighbor, a kind of young subject who had apparently just entered the field of life, this neighbor declared with resentment in his voice that he would immediately quit the game if this lost psychopath did not lose more correctly.
“Why are these fools interceding?” Thought the author. “But by the way, such unanimous support probably just indicates that these screams, squeals and violent movements of the loser are a completely natural and even obligatory manifestation of the organism, that it should it would be that this is in the order of things and that, if it were not for this, a person would probably damage his internal economy and, perhaps, would die from a stroke or from a broken heart "(VIII).
14. DO NOT HAVE MEMORIES
No, they were not the frozen Leningrad monkeys who cough and sneeze and look at you pitifully, propping their muzzle with their paws.
They were, on the contrary, hefty, strong monkeys, living almost under their native sky.
Terribly stormy movements, right even the monstrous joy of life, terrible, amazing energy and frantic health were visible in every movement of these monkeys.
They raged terribly, every second they were in motion, every minute they gripped their females, ate, shit, jumped and fought.
It was just hell. It was a real and even, speaking in sublime language, a magnificent feast of health and life.
There is a man standing next to the cage - the author. He is slow in his movements. The skin on his face is yellowish, his eyes are tired, without much shine, his lips are compressed into an ironic, squeamish smile. He's bored. He, if you please see, went into the menagerie to have some fun. He went under the roof to hide from the scorching rays of the sun. He is tired. He leans on a stick.
And nearby, in indescribable delight, forgetting about their captivity, monkeys rage, so to speak - the author's cousins \u200b\u200band cousins.
But that's not the point.
One visitor to the menagerie, some, apparently, a Persian, who for a long time and lovingly watched the monkeys, grabbing my stick without a word, hit one of the monkeys in the face with it, not very much, it is true, but very insulting and insidious, even if from the point of view of the rest of humanity.
The monkey screeched terribly, began to throw itself, scratch and gnaw at the iron bars. Her malice was as great as her mighty health.
And some compassionate lady, regretting what had happened, handed the injured monkey a branch of grapes.
Immediately, the monkey smiled peacefully, began hastily eating grapes, stuffing them by both cheeks. Contentment and happiness shone on her face. The monkey, forgetting the hurt and pain, allowed even the insidious Persian to stroke his paw.
Mikhail Zoshchenko
Returned youth
Letters to the writer. Returned youth. Before Sunrise: Tale // Comp. and entered. article by Yu.V. Tomashevsky.- M .: Mosk. worker, 1989.- 543 p. The book of the outstanding Soviet writer MM Zoshchenko (1894-1958) includes the well-known novels "Returned Youth" and "Before the Sunrise", as well as "Letters to a Writer", which have not been republished since 1931. These works constitute a kind of trilogy in which Zoshchenko, an artist, researcher and thinker, reflects on the possibilities of a person to improve his spiritual, moral and physical health.
This is a story about how one Soviet chelorek, burdened with years, illness and melancholy, wanted to regain his lost youth. And what? He brought her back in a simple yet surprising way.
Man has regained his lost youth! A fact worthy of publication in the press. Nevertheless, not without timidity, the author begins this work. This book will probably bring insults and grief to us.
Ah, we are especially concerned about one category of people, a group of people, so to speak, involved in medicine.
These persons, well, there, say, doctors, paramedics, medical assistants, ambulance workers, as well as, well, let's say, the heads of pharmacies with their wives, relatives, acquaintances and neighbors, these faces, having seen the book, the contents of which are initially several will remind them of their profession, these persons, undoubtedly, will negatively, and perhaps even be hostile to our work.
The author humbly asks these persons to take a more lenient attitude to our work. The author, in turn, also promises them to be indulgent if he happens to read stories or there, say, stories written by a doctor, or a relative of this doctor, or even his neighbor.
2. SOME UNUSUALITY OF OUR WORKS
Our story this time bears little resemblance to ordinary literary gizmos. It also bears little resemblance to our former artistic things, written with a naive, rude hand in the haste of our youth and frivolity.
No, on the one hand, this composition can also be called artistic. There will also be an artistic description of the pictures of our northern nature, a description of the banks, streams and forest edges. There will be an interesting and even entertaining plot. There will be various complex and heartfelt experiences of the heroes, as well as the reasoning and voluntary statements of these heroes about the benefits of current politics, about the worldview, about the restructuring of characters and the glorious days to come.
Here will be everything that the reader expects from the book, which he took to read in the evening, in order to dispel his daily worries and to plunge into someone else's life, into someone else's experiences and thoughts of others.
But this is only on the one hand. On the other hand, our book is something completely different. It is, perhaps, a scientific essay, a scientific work, set out, however, in a simple, partly stupid everyday language, accessible due to familiar combinations to the most diverse strata of the population who have neither scientific training, nor the courage or desire to find out what is happening beyond the entire surface life.
This book will touch upon questions that are complex and even partly too complex, remote from literature and unfamiliar to the hands of a writer.
Questions such as, for example, the search for lost youth, the return of health, freshness of feelings, and so on, and so on, and so on. And also questions about the reorganization of our entire life and about the possibilities of this reorganization, about capitalism and about socialism and about the development of a worldview will be touched upon. And besides, we will touch upon other, no less important issues, taken in their highest meaning and in the light of the current days.
3. WHAT IS OUR COMPOSITION LIKE
Well, if this is not a scientific work, if, say, the Academy of Sciences or there, say, a section of scientific workers, in agreement with the city committee and the Writers' Union, does not find here signs of scientific writing or finds these signs, but does not count the author as having sufficiently mastered Marxist-Leninist worldview, then this book can be labeled with a more average, more, so to speak, harmless title that does not irritate the eyes and ears of individual citizens and organizations.
Let this book be called, say, a culture film. Let it be something like a cultural film, sort of like we have been on the screen: "Abortion", or "Why is it raining", or "How silk stockings are made", or, finally, "What is the difference between a man and a beaver" ... These are films on large modern scientific and industrial topics, worthy of study.
Just like in these films, first we will have a scientific reasoning with different footnotes, information about this and that, with different comments and maybe even diagrams and articles that finally clarify the essence of the matter.
And only then the reader, slightly tired and knocked down by other people's thoughts, will receive a portion of entertaining reading, which will seem to be a kind of visual illustration of the above thoughts and arguments.
Of course, minds are impatient, not accustomed to being led by, as well as minds, well, let's say, inflexible, rude or, perhaps, low, not having a special interest in various natural phenomena, except for the distribution of food - these minds can, of course, to discard the beginning and comments in order to immediately proceed to incidents and incidents and immediately, so to speak, get a portion of entertaining reading.
In this case, without prejudice to themselves, they will read, starting from the 17th chapter, the truthful story about the amazing life of one person who, in our real days, in the days, so to indicate, the triumph of materialism and physiological foundations, returned his youth and thereby had courage and happiness to compete in the ability with nature itself or, as they said before the revolution, with the Lord God himself.
Of course, the author is forced to say that he is a man, well, perhaps, ignorant in matters of medicine. Not that he is ignorant, well, not entirely, perhaps, well-grounded, not entirely, perhaps, versed in individual small, varied and often terribly confusing details of this science. Nevertheless, in the course of the story, the author will be forced to touch upon some advanced medical questions about this and that, well, there about neurasthenia, about disturbed balance, about the loss of strength and the causes of these phenomena.
It’s not that the author absolutely didn’t know anything about this matter. No, he imagines something. But, of course, this notion is not so completely solid. Not that you wake a person up at night, and he will immediately explain everything to you and tell you everything, sleepily - where what happens, and why it happens, and how this or that is called in Greek, and what is cancer, and which side of the population has a kidney , and for what purpose nature has attached a spleen to man, and why, in essence, this confused and even partly scanty organ is called this rather frivolous name, which noticeably reduces human nature in its usual greatness.
No, the author, of course, is not a doctor, and his knowledge in this area is limited. Nevertheless, from childhood, the author had a deep and even exclusive interest in medicine and even at one time tried to treat his less valuable relatives with various home chemicals - iodine, tar, glycerin, grass that dogs eat when they get sick, and mental influences. What kind of treatment, I must say, sometimes went quite successfully and did not always end in the death of one or another gape relative.
But not only to his relatives, but to all people, the author looked closely with undisguised curiosity, followed, so to speak, the daily play of their organisms and who lived how long, what fell ill and from what exactly died. And what is the flu. And what is old age. And why is withering coming. And what should be done to delay the rapid flow of our dear life.