Читать книгу Dragon/s Dream. A Postmodern Fable - C. Ioutsen - Страница 8

In a season of falling leaves it was especially tranquil at the foot of the mountains. Northern winds had been rising steadily, getting more robust with each passing day, bringing with them damp coolness and sweet fragrance of decay. Bare branches stood out crisply off the sky, seen from below as an intricate labyrinthine pattern, framed by the flashes of the clinging foliage. Most birds had departed for warmer regions, and most ground-dwellers had been busy tending to their hideouts; the air was still but for the wails of wind and creaking of tree-trunks.

These days the Dragon took a habit of having a walk in the woods, and a secluded pond there was his final destination. He appreciated its placid waters and overgrown shores, its sentinel trees and patches of the blue reflected on the surface – a world within a world, embracing itself before the oncoming cold. He inhaled deeply and held his breath.

«How can wind bend a tree? It is just a wind,» a voice of a duck quacked to his left.

«It bends a tree,» said the Dragon without looking. «Do not forget about that.»

«Is it a riddle of some sort?»

«A riddle arises as soon as one has said it; when one has solved it, it is gone.»

«Sometimes it is not,» complained the duck. «For instance, I cannot enter the same wood twice. After I got out, it has changed and is not the same wood anymore.»

«Too bad for you,» said the Dragon sympathetically.

«It is not so bad,» intermitted another duck’s voice. «I cannot enter the same wood even once, for it is changing while I am entering it.»

«You enter the wood,» said the Dragon. «Is it not what matters?»

«Let me ask you something. When you come to this wood, is it the same wood for you and for us three?»

«It is the same for me, I dare say.»

The Dragon glanced at the ducks, which were circling lazily in the pond, their tiny legs working steadily in the shallows. Only two were present.

«You mentioned there were three of you.»

«There are three of us.»

«Where is the third?»

The duck pointed, and the Dragon could see a ginger shape lying in a heap on the ground, surrounded by a few feathers. It was furry, spread-eagled and in considerable dishevelment. Of all things it came closest to a dead fox.

«It is a dead fox,» said the Dragon.

«The fox ate the duck,» explained the duck.

«Did the fox die after that or before?»

«It was already dead when we all got here.»

«It must be quite alive by now,» said the Dragon.

In the meantime the fox indeed grew tired of being dead. It lifted an arm tentatively, then a leg, wiggled its ears and after a short hesitation bounced energetically. The ducks, scared, took off promptly, crying in alarm. The Dragon looked at the fox, and the fox looked back with some insolence; they both started strolling along the shore.

«How do you like lilies?» said the Dragon. «They are splendid this time of year, especially those that sprout on the water.»

«I see no lilies on the water,» objected the fox. «None.»

They passed several water-lilies, and the Dragon indicated one:

«See? That is what I was talking about.»

«It is not a lily but a water-lily,» remarked the fox irritably.

«I often mean water-lily when I say lily,» said the Dragon. «Any sign is arbitrary before it is applied. Only afterwards it gains meaning that it lacked previously, and that connects it to the thing it represents; they both almost become one.»

«If a sign gets extra meaning, it becomes another sign altogether.»

«Almost, I said.»

The fox prickled its ears at a far-off sound and appeared to listen intently.

«And my sign and your sign might not be the same.»

«I know nothing about any signs,» said the fox with a dreamy expression on its face. «But that duck was exceptionally delicious.»

«To see that, I do not have to look.»

«You are able to see without looking?»

«Do you want to try me?»

«All right. How many eyes have you got?» inquired the fox.

«A pair of them, I suppose,» said the Dragon absent-mindedly.

«Did you count?»

«I told you, dragons do not have to. Our very ability to think and to talk is all about replacing things with ideas, with signs.»

«An idea of a thing is not its perfect image!» protested the fox.

«Just so. It needs to connect, above all, with other ideas and only so much with the thing itself. New ideas are thus determined by old ideas and cannot exist without them.»

«Unlike new things.»

«That is immaterial. When we think we talk about a thing, we really talk about an idea of a thing.»

«A thing precedes an idea, no?»

«I would not put it precisely like that,» said the Dragon.

The sun was setting and the sky was turning purple. The shadows were creeping upon the water of the pond, drinking colors from whatever they touched, dissolving outlines, softening shapes. The night-time was upon the woods.

«A single idea does not suffice. The best idea can come from many good ideas. And good ideas come from many ordinary ideas.»

«What about your ideas?» asked the fox critically.

«If you understand me at all, you recognize them as senseless.»

«Surely that is a contradiction.»

«To contradict each other, ideas must have something in common,» said the Dragon. «Otherwise, they cannot be compared effectively. The world is different for us, how more so our ideas!»

«In this respect they are all similar, are they not? I wonder, may it be possible for some ideas to be more similar than others?»

«Any idea may be of an advantage, if that is what you are asking about. Besides, the merit of an idea can only be stated in comparison with another idea. Any idea can be compared only with other ideas. Whether it should be – that is a separate issue.»

«I thought it was your point,» yawned the fox.

«You cannot understand an idea without the support of other ideas, and other ideas without the support of each other. Advancing with one idea, you increasingly depend on another. Consequently, your understanding improves as a whole but declines with any given instance. To understand everything is to understand very little.»

«And the moral of this?» asked the fox, exasperated.

«You do not need me to tell you,» said the Dragon.