Теофил Норт

УДК 
372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ-93
 
У 12

ISBN 978-5-9925-0363-0

Уайлдер Т.
У 12 Теофил Норт: Книга для чтения на английском языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2009. — 544 с. — 
(Серия «Modern Prose»).

ISBN 978-5-9925-0363-0

Торнтон Уайлдер — знаменитый американский писатель, автор таких романов, как «Мартовские Иды», «Мост 
короля Людовика Святого», «День восьмой», «Каббала».
«Теофил Норт» — частично автобиографический роман 
о молодом человеке, окончившем Йельский университет, 
который пробует пробиться в мире, устраиваясь на случайные работы в Ньюпорте — городе, где он когда-то проходил 
военную службу. Постепенно он становится вовлеченным в 
жизнь каждого из своих работодателей и помогает каждому 
из них пережить какой-либо жизненный кризис.
Неадаптированный текст романа снабжен подробным 
комментарием и словарем. Книга адресована студентам языковых вузов и всех любителей англоязычной литературы.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2009

1
The Nine Ambitions

I
n the spring of 1926 I resigned from my job.
Th e fi rst days following such a decision are like 
the release from hospital aft er a protracted illness. One 
slowly learns how to walk again; slowly and wonderingly one raises one’s head.
I was in the best of health1, but I was innerly exhausted. I had been teaching for four and a half years in a 
boys’ preparatory school in New Jersey and tutoring 
three summers at a camp connected with the school. 
I was to all appearance cheerful and dutiful, but within  
I was cynical and almost totally bereft  of sympathy 
for any other human being except the members of my 
family.  I was twenty-nine years old, about to turn thirty. 
I had saved two thousand dollars — set aside, not to be 
touched — for either a return to Europe (I had spent a 
year in Italy and France in 1920–1921) or for my expenses as a graduate student in some university. It was not 
clear to me what I wanted to do in life. I did not want to 

1 in the best of health — (разг.) в прекрасной физич еской форме

T. WILDER. THEOPHILUS NORTH

teach, though I knew I had a talent for it; the teaching 
profession is oft en a safety-net for just such indeterminate natures. I did not want to be a writer in the sense of 
one who earns his living by his pen; I wanted  to be 
far more immersed in life than that. If I were to do any 
so-called “writing,” it would not be before I had reached 
the age of fi ft y. If I were destined to die before that, I 
wanted to be sure that I had encompassed as varied a 
range of experience as I could — that I had not narrowed my focus to that noble but largely sedentary pursuit that is covered by the word “art.”
Professions. Life careers. It is well to be attentive to 
successive ambitions that fl ood the growing boy’s and 
girl’s imagination. Th ey leave profound traces behind 
them. During those years when the fi rst sap is rising the 
future tree is foreshadowing its contour. We are shaped 
by the promises of the imagination.
At various times I had been afi re with Nine Life 
Ambitions — not necessarily successive, sometimes 
concurrent, sometimes dropped and later revived, 
sometimes very lively but under a diff erent form and 
only recognized, with astonishment, aft er the events 
which had invoked them from the submerged depths 
of consciousness.
Th e First, the earliest, made its appearance during my twelft h to my fourteenth years. I record it with 
shame. I resolved to become a saint. I saw myself as a 
missionary among primitive peoples. I had never met a 
saint but I had read and heard a great deal about them. 
I was attending a school in North China and the parents of all my fellow-students (and my teachers in their 
way) were missionaries. My fi rst shock came when I 

THE NINE AMBITIONS

5

became aware that (perhaps covertly) they regarded the 
Chinese as a primitive people. I knew better than that.1 
But I clung to the notion that I would be a missionary to 
a really primitive tribe. I would lead an exemplary life 
and perhaps rise to the crown of martyrdom. Gradually 
during the next ten years I became aware of the obstacles in my path. All I knew about sainthood was that 
the candidate must be totally absorbed in a relationship 
with God, in pleasing Him, and in serving His creatures 
here on earth. Unfortunately I had ceased to believe in 
the existence of God in 1914 (my seventeenth year), my 
view of the intrinsic divinity in my fellow-men (and 
in myself) had deteriorated, and I knew that I was incapable of meeting the strictest demands of selfl essness, 
truthfulness, and celibacy.
Perhaps as a consequence of this brief aspiration I 
retained through life an intermittent childishness. I had 
no aggression and no competitive drive. I could amuse 
myself with simple things, like a child playing on the 
seashore with shells. I oft en appeared to be vacant or 
“absent.” Th is irritated some; even valued friends, both 
men and women (perhaps including my father), broke 
with me charging me with “not being serious” or calling me a “simpleton.”
Th e Second — a secularization of the fi rst — was 
to be an anthropologist among primitive peoples and 
all my life I have returned to that interest. Th e past and 
the future are always present within us. Readers may 
observe that the anthropologist and his off -shoot the 
socio logist continue to hover about this book.

1 I knew better than that. — (разг.) У меня было другое 
мнение.

T. WILDER. THEOPHILUS NORTH

Th e Th ird, the archaeologist.
Th e Fourth, the detective. In my third year at college I planned to become an amazing detective. I read 
widely in the literature, not only in its fi ctional treatment, but in technical works dealing with its refi ned 
scientifi c methods. Chief Inspector North would play 
a leading role among those who shield our lives from 
the intrusions of evil and madness lurking about the 
orderly workshop and home.
Th e Fift h, the actor, an amazing actor. Th is delusion 
could have been guessed at aft er a consideration of the 
other eight ambitions.
Th e Sixth, the magician. Th is aim was not of my 
seeking1 and I have diffi  culty in giving it a name. It had 
nothing to do with stage-performance. I early discovered that I had a certain gift  for soothing, for something 
approaching mesmerism — dare I say for “driving out 
demons”? I understood what a shaman or a medicineman probably relies upon. I was not comfortable with 
it and resorted to it seldom, but as the reader will see it 
was occasionally thrust upon me. It is inseparable from 
a certain amount of imposture and quackery. Th e less 
said about it the better.
Th e Seventh, the lover. What kind of a lover? An 
omnivorous lover like Casanova*? No. A lover of all 
that is loft y and sublime in women, like the Provencal 
Troubadours? No.
Years later I found in very knowledgeable company a description of the type to which I belonged. 

1 Th is aim was not of my seeking — (зд.) Это не было моей 
целью (я этой роли не искал)
* Комментарии к словам, отмеченным знаком «*», можно посмотреть в конце книги (c. 522–540)

THE NINE AMBITIONS

7

Dr. Sigmund Freud* spent his summers in a suburb of 
Vienna called Grinzing. I was spending a summer in 
Grinzing and without any overtures on my part I was 
invited to call at his villa on Sunday aft ernoons for 
what he called Plaudereien — desultory conversations. 
At one of these delightful occasions the conversation 
turned upon the distinction between “loving” and “falling in love.”
“Herr Doktor 1,” he asked, “do you know an old 
English comedy — I forget its name — in which the 
hero suff ers from a certain impediment [Hemmung]? 
In the presence of ‘ladies’ and of genteel well-broughtup girls he is shy and tongue-tied, he is scarcely able 
to raise his eyes from the ground; but in the presence 
of servant girls and barmaids and what they are calling 
‘emancipated women’ he is all boldness and impudence. 
Do you know the name of that comedy?”
“Yes, Herr Professor. Th at is She Stoops to Conquer.”
“And who is its author?”
“Oliver Goldsmith*.”
“Th ank you. We doctors have found that Oliver 
Goldsmith has made an exemplary picture of a problem that we frequently discover among our patients. 
Ach, die Dichter haben alles gekannt!” (“Th e poet-natures have always known everything.”)
He then went on to point out to me the relation of 
the problem to the Oedipus complex and to the incesttabu under which “respectable” women are associated 
with a man’s mother and sisters — “out of bounds.”

1 Herr Doktor — (нем.) Господин доктор

T. WILDER. THEOPHILUS NORTH

“Do you remember the name of that young man?”
“Charles Marlow.”
He repeated the name with smiling satisfaction. I 
leaned forward and said, “Herr Professor, can we call 
that situation the ‘Charles Marlow Complex’?”
“Yes, that would do very well. I have long looked for 
an appropriate name for it.”
Th eophilus suff ered, as they say (though there was 
no suff ering about it), from that Hemmung. Well, let 
other fellows court and coax, month aft er month, the 
stately Swan and the self-engrossed Lily. Let them leave 
to Th eophilus the pert magpie and the nodding daisy.
Th e Eighth, the rascal. Here I must resort to a foreign language, el picaro1. My curiosities throw a wide 
net. I have always been fascinated by the character 
who represents the opposite of my New England and 
Scottish inheritance — the man who lives by his wits, 
“one step ahead of the sheriff ,” without plan, without 
ambition, at the margin of decorous living, delighted 
to outwit the clods, the prudent, the money-obsessed, 
the censorious, the complacent. I dreamt of covering 
the entire world, of looking into a million faces, light 
of foot, light of purse and baggage2, extricating myself 
from the predicaments of hunger, cold, and oppression 
by quickness of mind. Th ese are not only the rogues, 
but the adven turers. I had read, enviously, the lives of 
many and had observed that they were oft en, justly or 
unjustly, in prison. My instinct had warned me and 
my occasional nightmares had warned me that the su
1 el picaro — (исп.) плут
2  light of foot, light of purse and baggage — (разг.) легкий 
на подъем, не обремененный тяжелым багажом и толстым 
кошельком

THE NINE AMBITIONS

9

preme suff ering for me would be that of being caged 
and incar cerated. I have occasionally approached the 
verge of downright rascality, but not without carefully 
weighing the risk. Th is eighth ambition leads me into 
my last and overriding one:
Th e Ninth, to be a free man. Notice all the projects I 
did not entertain: I did not want to be a banker, a merchant, a lawyer, nor to join any of those life-careers that 
are closely bound up with directorates and boards of 
governors — politicians, publishers, world reformers. I 
wanted no boss over me, or only the lightest of supervisions. All these aims, moreover, had to do with 
people — but with people as individuals.
As the reader will see, all these aspirations continued 
to make claims on me. As they were confl icting they got 
me into trouble; as they were deep-lodged their fulfi llment oft en brought me inner satisfaction.
I was now free aft er four and a half years of relative 
confi nement. Since my trip abroad, six years earlier, I 
had kept a voluminous Journal (from which the present book is largely an extract, covering four and a half 
months). Most of the entries in this Journal were characterizations of men and women I knew, together with 
as much of the life-story of each as I could learn. Myself 
was present for the most part only as witness — though 
occasionally an entry was devoted to an ill-digested bit 
of self-examination. I might almost say that for the 
last two years the center of my life had become that 
gallery of portraits. Only years later did I come to see 
that it was a form of introspection via1 extrospection. 

1 via — (лат.) через

T. WILDER. THEOPHILUS NORTH

It’s wonderful the way nature strives to create harmony 
within ourselves.
From the moment I resigned, two days before leaving the school, I discovered that several things were happening to me in my new state of freedom. I was recapturing the spirit of play — not the play of youth which 
is games (aggression under the restraint of rules), but 
the play of childhood which is all imagination, which 
improvises. I became light-headed. Th e spirit of play 
swept away the cynicism and indiff erence into which 
I had fallen. Moreover, a readiness for adventure rea woke in me — for risk, for intruding myself into the 
lives of others, for extracting fun from danger.
It happened that in 1926 it became possible for me 
to enter upon my new liberty earlier than I expected. 
Six weeks before the school’s term-end an epidemic 
of infl uenza declared itself in central New Jersey. Th e 
infi r mary fi lled up and overfl owed. Beds were installed 
in the gymnasium which soon looked like a lazaret. 
Parents drove down and took their sons home. Classes 
came to an end and we masters were free to leave and 
I set out at once. I did not even return to my home in 
Connecticut since I had so recently enjoyed the Easter 
vacation there. I had bought a car from a fellow-master, Eddie Linley, on the condition that I take possession of it at his home in Providence, Rhode Island, aft er 
he’d driven it there from our school in New Jersey. I had 
known the car well for some time. It had belonged to 
the tutoring camp in New Hampshire where Eddie was 
also on the staff . Like all the masters we had taken  turns 
in driving the students — usually in the larger vehicles — to church or to dances or to the motion pictures.