Читать книгу The Last Books of H.G. Wells - Colin Wilson - Страница 9

III

COMPENSATION BEYOND THE HAPPY TURNING

THE SCENERY OF my dreamland is always magnificent or exquisite or otherwise delightful. I should not note it if it were not, and I find dear and delightful people I had never hoped to see again, happy and welcoming. Sometimes they are just themselves for a time, sometimes they are agreeably blended with other people, and at any moment they may see fit to impersonate someone else and cease to be whatever they began by being.

Nobody is dead in this world of release, and I hate nobody. I think that this absence of hate may be very recent. It may be due to my subconscious revolt against the unavoidable hates, disputes, suspicions and conflicts of our daily life in this war. Or it may be that with advancing years a mellowing comes to the mind with the attenuation of ambitions and rivalries. They matter so little at seventy-seven. Both factors, the normal one and this abnormal one of war conditions, may be contributing to my escape.

My waking life is now one of very fierce and definite antagonisms. I feel that the generations ahead may be cheated of much or all of the huge emancipations that could and should follow upon this world storm of fighting; and that ancient and evil organizations and traditions and the necessity common minds are under to believe they have natural inferiors, of whom they are entitled to take advantage, may frustrate all our hopes. I am compelled to spend my utmost energy in warfare against these things.

Dreamland is in flat contradiction to all this distressful strain. Nothing of these conflicts pursues me beyond the Happy Turning. At the Happy Turning is a recognizable Holy Water Stoup which has somehow identified itself with Truth, and in my Dreamland there is not the slightest difficulty about dipping a finger and sprinkling the Holy Catholic Church, or whatever ugly menace to mankind happens to be upon my heels, with it. Whereupon the evil I fear and fight here with all my strength, explodes with a slightly unpleasant odour, and vanishes. Why did I let my heart be troubled? Why was I afraid?