До Адама

УДК 
372.8-821.111(73)-93
ББК 
81.2 Англ
 
Л76

ISBN 978-5-9925-1051-5

Лондон, Джек.
Л76 
До Адама : Книга для чтения на английском языке / Дж. Лондон. — Санкт-Петербург : 
КАРО, 2015. — 192 с. — (Серия “Classical 
Literature”).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1051-5.

Герой повести Дж. Лондона «До Адама» — вполне образованный человек, современник автора. Он страдает раздвоением личности — ему с детства снятся сны, в которых 
он переносится в доисторические времена, к первобытным 
людям, которые еще не научились говорить и не расстались 
с шерстью. Каждую ночь ему снилось продолжение предыдущего сна — природа, охота, взаимоотношения с другими 
племенами полулюдей-полуобезьян. Эти видения пугали 
героя, и только повзрослев, по обрывкам снов он смог реконструировать жизнь своего альтер-эго.
В предлагаемой вниманию читателей книге представлен неадаптированный текст повести с комментариями и 
словарем.

УДК 372.8-821.111(73)-93
ББК 81.2 Англ

© КАРО, 2015

“Th ese are our ancestors, and their history is 
our history. Remember that as surely as we one 
day swung down out of the trees and walked 
upright, just as surely, on a far earlier day, did 
we crawl up out of the sea and achieve our fi rst 
adventure on land.”

Chapter I
P
ictures! Pictures! Pictures! Oft en, before I 
learned, did I wonder whence came the 
multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; 
for they were pictures the like of which I had never 
seen in real wake-a-day life. Th ey tormented my 
childhood, making of my dreams a procession of 
nightmares and a little later convincing me that 
I was diff erent from my kind, a creature unnatural 
and accursed.
In my days only did I attain any measure of 
happiness. My nights marked the reign of fear — 
and such fear! I make bold to state that no man of 
all the men who walk the earth with me ever suff er 

BEFORE ADAM

4

fear of like kind and degree. For my fear is the fear 
of long ago, the fear that was rampant in the 
Younger World, and in the youth of the Younger 
World. In short, the fear that reigned supreme in 
that period known as the Mid-Pleistocene.
What do I mean? I see explanation is necessary 
before I can tell you of the substance of my 
dreams. Otherwise, little could you know of the 
meaning of the things I know so well. As I write 
this, all the beings and happenings of that other 
world rise up before me in vast phantasmagoria, 
and I know that to you they would be rhymeless 
and reas onless.
What to you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the 
warm lure of the Swift  One, the lust and the atavism 
of Red-Eye? A screaming incoherence and no 
more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the 
doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, and 
the gibbering councils of the horde. For you know 
not the peace of the cool caves in the cliff s, the 
circus of the drinking-places at the end of the day. 
You have never felt the bite of the morning wind in 
the tree-tops, nor is the taste of young bark sweet 
in your mouth.
It would be better, I dare say, for you to make 
your approach, as I made mine, through my 
childhood. As a boy I was very like other boys — 

CHAPTER I

5

in my waking hours1. It was in my sleep that I was 
diff erent. From my earliest recollection my sleep 
was a period of terror. Rarely were my dreams 
tinctured with happiness. As a rule, they were 
stuff ed with fear — and with a fear so strange and 
alien that it had no ponderable quality. No fear 
that I experienced in my waking life resembled the 
fear that possessed me in my sleep. It was of a quality 
and kind that transcended all my experi ences.
For instance, I was a city boy, a city child, rather, 
to whom the country was an unexplored domain. 
Yet I never dreamed of cities; nor did a house ever 
occur in any of my dreams. Nor, for that matter, 
did any of my human kind ever break through 
the wall of my sleep. I, who had seen trees only in 
parks and illustrated books, wandered in my sleep 
through interminable forests. And further, these 
dream trees were not a mere blur on my vision. 
Th ey were sharp and distinct. I was on terms of 
practised intimacy with them. I saw every branch 
and twig; I saw and knew every diff erent leaf.
Well do I remember the fi rst time in my waking life that I saw an oak tree. As I looked at the 
leaves and branches and gnarls, it came to me with 

1 in my waking hours — когда я бодрствовал

BEFORE ADAM

6

distressing vividness that I had seen that same 
kind of tree many and countless times in my sleep. 
So I was not surprised, still later on in my life, to 
recognize instantly, the fi rst time I saw them, trees 
such as the spruce, the yew, the birch, and the 
laurel. I had seen them all before, and was seeing 
them even then, every night, in my sleep.
Th is, as you have already discerned, violates the 
fi rst law of dreaming, namely, that in one’s dreams 
one sees only what he has seen in his waking life, 
or combinations of the things he has seen in his 
waking life. But all my dreams violated this law. In 
my dreams I never saw ANYTHING of which 
I had knowledge in my waking life. My dream life 
and my waking life were lives apart, with not one 
thing in common save myself. I was the connecting 
link that somehow lived both lives.
Early in my childhood I learned that nuts came 
from the grocer, berries from the fruit man; but 
before ever that knowledge was mine, in my dreams 
I picked nuts from trees, or gathered them and ate 
them from the ground underneath trees, and in 
the same way I ate berries from vines and bushes. 
Th is was beyond any experience of mine.
I shall never forget the fi rst time I saw blueberries served on the table. I had never seen blueberries before, and yet, at the sight of them, there 

CHAPTER I

7

leaped up in my mind memories of dreams wherein 
I had wandered through swampy land eating my 
fi ll of them1. My mother set before me a dish of the 
berries. I fi lled my spoon, but before I raised it to 
my mouth I knew just how they would taste. Nor 
was I disappointed. It was the same tang that I had 
tasted a thousand times in my sleep.
Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence 
of snakes, I was tormented by them in my sleep. 
Th ey lurked for me in the forest glades; leaped up, 
striking, under my feet; squirmed off  through 
the dry grass or across naked patches of rock; 
or pursued me into the tree-tops, encircling the 
trunks with their great shining bodies, driving me 
higher and higher or farther and farther out on 
swaying and crackling branches, the ground a dizzy 
distance beneath me. Snakes! — with their forked 
tongues, their beady eyes and glittering scales, 
their hissing and their rattling — did I not already 
know them far too well on that day of my fi rst 
circus when I saw the snake-charmer lift  them up?
Th ey were old friends of mine, enemies rather, 
that peopled my nights with fear.
Ah, those endless forests, and their horrorhaunted gloom! For what eternities have I wandered 

1 eating my fi ll of them — (разг.) ел до отвала, сколько душе угодно

BEFORE ADAM

8

through them, a timid, hunted creature, starting at 
the least sound, frightened of my own shadow, 
keyed-up, ever alert and vigilant, ready on the 
instant to dash away in mad fl ight for my life. For 
I was the prey of all manner of fi erce life that dwelt 
in the forest, and it was in ecstasies of fear that 
I fl ed before the hunting monsters.
When I was fi ve years old I went to my fi rst 
circus. I came home from it sick — but not from 
peanuts and pink lemonade. Let me tell you. As we 
entered the animal tent, a hoarse roaring shook 
the air. I tore my hand loose from my father’s and 
dashed wildly back through the entrance. I collided 
with people, fell down; and all the time I was 
screaming with terror. My father caught me and 
soothed me. He pointed to the crowd of people, all 
careless of the roaring, and cheered me with 
assurances of safety.
Nevertheless, it was in fear and trembling, and 
with much encouragement on his part, that I at last 
approached the lion’s cage. Ah, I knew him on the 
instant. Th e beast! Th e terrible one! And on my 
inner vision fl ashed the memories of my dreams, — 
the midday sun shining on tall grass, the wild bull 
grazing quietly, the sudden parting of the grass 
before the swift  rush of the tawny one, his leap to 
the bull’s back, the crashing and the bellowing, and 

CHAPTER I

9

the crunch-crunch of bones; or again, the cool 
quiet of the water-hole, the wild horse up to his 
knees and drinking soft ly, and then the tawny 
one — always the tawny one! — the leap, the 
screaming and the splashing of the horse, and the 
crunch-crunch of bones; and yet again, the sombre 
twilight and the sad silence of the end of day, and 
then the great full-throated roar, sudden, like a 
trump of doom, and swift  upon it the insane 
shrieking and chattering among the trees, and I, 
too, am trembling with fear and am one of the 
many shrieking and chattering among the trees.
At the sight of him, helpless, within the bars of 
his cage, I became enraged. I gritted my teeth at 
him, danced up and down, screaming an incoherent 
mockery and making antic faces. He responded, 
rushing against the bars and roaring back at me his 
impotent wrath. Ah, he knew me, too1, and the 
sounds I made were the sounds of old time and 
intelligible to him.
My parents were frightened. “Th e child is ill,” 
said my mother. “He is hysterical,” said my father. 
I never told them, and they never knew. Already 
had I developed reticence concerning this quality 
of mine, this semi-disassociation of personality as 
I think I am justifi ed in calling it.

1 he knew me, too — (разг.) он тоже меня узнал

BEFORE ADAM

10

I saw the snake-charmer, and no more of the 
circus did I see that night. I was taken home, 
nervous and overwrought, sick with the invasion 
of my real life by that other life of my dreams.
I have mentioned my reticence. Only once did 
I confi de the strangeness of it all to another. 
He was a boy — my chum; and we were eight years 
old. From my dreams I reconstructed for him 
pictures of that vanished world in which I do 
believe I once lived. I told him of the terrors of that 
early time, of Lop-Ear and the pranks we played, of 
the gibbering councils, and of the Fire People and 
their squatting places.
He laughed at me, and jeered, and told me tales 
of ghosts and of the dead that walk at night. But 
mostly did he laugh at my feeble fancy. I told him 
more, and he laughed the harder. I swore in all 
earnestness that these things were so, and he began 
to look upon me queerly. Also, he gave amazing 
garblings of my tales to our playmates, until all 
began to look upon me queerly.
It was a bitter experience, but I learned my 
lesson. I was diff erent from my kind. I was abnormal with something they could not understand, 
and the telling of which would cause only misunders tanding. When the stories of ghosts and goblins 
went around, I kept quiet. I smiled grimly to