Читать книгу The Acorn-Planter - Джек Лондон, William Hootkins - Страница 1

     In the morning of the world, while his tribe

     makes its camp for the night in a grove, Red

     Cloud, the first man of men, and the first man

     of the Nishinam, save in war, sings of the duty

     of life, which duty is to make life more abundant.

     The Shaman, or medicine man, sings of

     foreboding and prophecy. The War Chief, who

     commands in war, sings that war is the only

     way to life. This Red Cloud denies, affirming

     that the way of life is the way of the acorn-

     planter, and that whoso slays one man slays

     the planter of many acorns. Red Cloud wins

     the Shaman and the people to his contention.

     After the passage of thousands of years, again

     in the grove appear the Nishinam. In Red

     Cloud, the War Chief, the Shaman, and the

     Dew-Woman are repeated the eternal figures

     of the philosopher, the soldier, the priest, and

     the woman—types ever realizing themselves

     afresh in the social adventures of man. Red

     Cloud recognizes the wrecked explorers as

     planters and life-makers, and is for treating

     them with kindness. But the War Chief and

     the idea of war are dominant The Shaman

     joins with the war party, and is privy to the

     massacre of the explorers.

     A hundred years pass, when, on their seasonal

     migration, the Nishinam camp for the night in

     the grove. They still live, and the war formula

     for life seems vindicated, despite the imminence

     of the superior life-makers, the whites, who are

     flooding into California from north, south, east,

     and west—the English, the Americans, the

     Spaniards, and the Russians. The massacre by

     the white men follows, and Red Cloud, dying,

     recognizes the white men as brother acorn-planters,

     the possessors of the superior life-formula

     of which he had always been a protagonist.

     In the Epilogue, or Apotheosis, occur the

     celebration of the death of war and the triumph

     of the acorn-planters.