Читать книгу One, None and a Hundred-thousand - Luigi Pirandello - Страница 18

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Have you ever seen a house in process of construction? I have, many times, here at Richieri. And I thought:

"Just look for a moment at man, what he is capable of doing! He mutilates the mountain, hews rocks out of it, squares them, lays them one upon another, and, what is and is not, that which was a bit of the mountain has become a house."

"'I,' says the mountain, 'am a mountain and do not move.'

"So you do not move, old girl? Just look at those ox-drawn carts. They are laden with you, with your stones. They are carting you off in little wagons, my dear! Did you think you were going to stay where you are? Already, you are a couple of miles away, down on the plain. Where? Why, in those houses there—don't you see them?—a yellow one, a red one, a white one, of two, three and four stories. And your beeches, your walnuts, your firs—there they are, in my house. Do you see how well we have worked them over? Who would recognize them now in those chairs, in those clothespresses, in those cupboards?

"You, mountain, are so very much bigger than man, with your beeches, your walnuts and your firs; man is a very small animal, and yet, he has in himself something that you have not. From standing always on his feet, that is to say, upright on two paws only, he grew tired; to stretch out on the earth like the other animals did not appeal to his sense of comfort and was not good for him, especially since, having lost his hair, his hide—his hide, eh!—had become more delicate. It was then that his eyes fell upon the tree, and the thought occurred to him that he might be able to get out of it something upon which he could more conveniently sit. He then perceived that the raw wood was not comfortable and he padded it; he thereupon flayed his domestic animals, while others he sheared, and proceeded to line the wood with leather, while the space between the leather and the wood he stuffed with wool.

"'Ah!' he murmured, as he stretched himself out, 'how comfortable this is!'

"The goldfinch sings in its cage between the curtains upon the window-shelf. Can it be that it is conscious of the approaching springtime? Ah, it may be that the nearness of the spring is similarly felt by the old walnut bough from which my chair was made, which now creaks to the goldfinch's song. And it may further be that, by means of the song and the creaking, the imprisoned goldfinch and the walnut made into a chair understand each other."