Thursday, May 15, 2014

Orwell's sensibilities

...the truly dramatic thing, about Raffles ... is the fact that he is a GENTLEMAN. Raffles is presented to us ... not as an honest man who has gone astray, but as a public-school man who has gone astray. His remorse, when he feels any, is almost purely social; he has disgraced 'the old school', he has lost his right to enter 'decent society', he has forfeited his amateur status and become a cad. - Raffles and Miss Blandish

что бы он сказал сегодня, интересно. почитав, скажем, 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain

у Оруэлла там много забавного:
... above all, he is intensively patriotic. ... According to the public-school code there is only one means of rehabilitation: death in battle. Raffles dies fighting against the Boers (a practiced reader would foresee this from the start), and in the eyes of both Bunny and his creator this cancels his crimes. ... At the front he unmasks a spy at the cost of revealing his own identity, and then dies gloriously by a Boer bullet.

выделено мной (кроме GENTLEMAN, это автор)

No comments: