How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to remain with him; if she’d returned Richard's kiss on the corner of Bleeker and McDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with rose-shaped buttons. Couldn’t they have discovered something larger and stranger than what they've got. It is impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future, as taking place in Italy or France, among big sunny rooms and gardens; as being full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave and possibly even beyond. She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. That's who I was. This is who I am--a decent woman with a good apartment, with a stable and affectionate marriage, giving a party. Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port.Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at the pond's edge at dusk, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber sandals. Richard had called her Mrs. Dalloway, and they had kissed. His mouth had opened to hers; (exciting and utterly familiar, she'd never forget it) had worked its way shyly inside until she met its own. They'd kissed and walked around the pond together.It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

آلا خبروني يا أهل آورفليس ماذا الذي عندكم في هذه البيوت؟ و ما الذي تخزنونه و تحرسونه وراء أبوابكم الموصدة؟أعندكم السلام-ذلك الحافز الهادىء الذي يكشف لكم عما فيكم من قدرة؟ أعندكم الذكريات-تلك القباب المشعة التي تصل قمم الفكر بعضها ببعض؟أم عندكم ذلك الجمال الذي ينتهي بكم من الأشياء المصنوعة من الخشب و الحجر المقدس إلى الجبل المقدس؟أم عندكم الرفاهية و شهوة الرفاهية-تلك الشهوة الخبيثة التي تتسل إلى البيت ضيفة، فلا تلبث آن تصبح مضيفة، و تنتهي بأن تبيت سيدة؟

يبدو أننا أحياناً نفضل أن ندور حول رغباتنا بدلاً من الاعتراف بها لأنفسنا والمجاهرة بها، حتى لا نتحمل في سبيل ذلك بعض العناء كضريبة ضرورية لنيل ما نريد ،أو لأننا نغمغم لأنفسنا بما نرغب ونترقب من الأقدار أن تهبه لنا بغير أن نبدو نحن ساعين إليه أو متلهفين عليه لأننا نخجل أن نجاهر به و-"الخياط العظيم لا يقص كثيراً " كما يقول المثل الصيني ،وإنما يمضي إلى هدفه المحدد بلا تردد فلا يقطع إلا ما يتطلبه تحقيق هذا الهدف أما نحن فإننا نقص في إتجاهات مختلفة وبعيدة عن الهدف الذي نتمناه صامتين وننتظر من يرغمنا على السعادة التي نعرفها ونريدها من أعماقنا

Радость. Долг каждого человека - взращивать свою внутреннюю радость. Но многие религии забыли это правило. Большинство храмов темны и холодны. Литургическая музыка помпезна и грустна. Священники одеваются в черное. Ритуалы прославляют пытки мучеников и соперничают в изображении жестокостей. Как если бы мучения, которые претерпели их пророки, были свидетельствами их истинности.Не является ли радость жизни лучшим способом отблагодарить Бога за его существование, если он существует? А если Бог существует, почему он должен быть мрачным существом?

I Hear the sledges with the bells - Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells - Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! - From the molten - golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle - dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! - how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells! III Hear the loud alarum bells - Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now - now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale - faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - Of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - In the clamor and the clanging of the bells! IV Hear the tolling of the bells - Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people - ah, the people - They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone - They are neither man nor woman - They are neither brute nor human - They are Ghouls: - And their king it is who tolls: - And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells: - Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells: - To the sobbing of the bells: - Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells - To the tolling of the bells - Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells, - To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

আমরা তো অল্পে খুশিআমরা তো অল্পে খুশি, কী হবে দু:খ করে?আমাদের দিন চলে যায় সাধারণ ভাতকাপড়ে।চলে যায় দিন আমাদের অসুখে ধারদেনাতেরাত্তিরে দুভায়ে মিলে টান দিই গঞ্জিকাতে।সবদিন হয়না বাজার, হলে হয় মাত্রাছাড়া -বাড়িতে ফেরার পথে কিনে আনি গোলাপচারা।কিন্তু পুঁতব কোথায়? ফুল কি হবেই তাতে?সে অনেক পরের কথা টান দিই গঞ্জিকাতে।আমরা তো অল্পে খুশি, কী হবে দু:খ করে?আমাদের দিন চলে যায় সাধারণ ভাতকাপড়ে।মাঝে মাঝে চলেও না দিন বাড়ি ফিরি দুপুররাতে ;খেতে বসে রাগ চড়ে যায় নুন নেই ঠান্ডা ভাতে।রাগ চড়ে মাথায় আমার আমি তার মাথায় চড়ি,বাপব্যাটা দুভায়ে মিলে সারা পাড়া মাথায় করি।করি তো কার তাতে কী? আমরা তো সামান্য লোক।আমাদের ভাতের পাতে লবণের ব্যবস্থা হোক।

...злорадство - то чувство, которое описывает человека, как существо, которому предначертано страдать и потерпеть крах, - пронизывает всё в нашу эпоху; ...даже те, кто утверждает, что отвергают такую точку зрения, как правило, сегодня чувствуют, что стремление к ценности должно быть сродни болезненному крестовому походу, где каждый, сжав зубы, посвящает себя этой мрачной, но святой борьбе со злом. И подобное отношение... наделяет это зло чересчур большой властью. ...зло изначально бессильно,.. а Вселенная не настроена против человека, она "доброжелательна". Всё это означает, что человеческие ценности... можно достичь здесь, в этой жизни. Поэтому счастье не следует рассматривать как несчастный случай, напротив, метафизически, как нормальное, естественное развитие событий.Если выразить это более кратко и философски, то глубинный смысл человека заключается не в надгробии, над которым торжественно растянулись венцы, сплетённые из его заслуг при жизни, а в беззаботном веселье, сопровождающем его путь до самого последнего вздоха.Леонард Пейкофф. Предисловие к "Хорошей статье