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А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Э Ю Я
0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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1. Thoughts on receiving an Honorary Degree at Oxford
Входимость: 1. Размер: 9кб.

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1. Thoughts on receiving an Honorary Degree at Oxford
Входимость: 1. Размер: 9кб.
Часть текста: of his little daughter?' I had picked the book up in the market, and some pages at the beginning, where the pronunciation was explained, were torn out: that is why I never learnt to speak English. But I did learn to read. The first book I read was a volume of Swinburne, and I declaimed my favourite lines up there on the roof: From too much love of living. From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be. Than no man lives for ever. That dead men rise up never. That even the weariest river Comes somewhere safe to sea.   Later I got "The Golden Treasury of English Verse" from a bookbinder friend, and fell in love with William Blake, John Keats, and S. T. Coleridge, with all the passion of my eighteen-year-old heart. If by some miracle an Englishman could have turned up on the roof beside me and heard me spouting 'The Ancient Mariner' or 'Christabel', he would probably not have recognized his own language; for I pronounced English according to my lights - fantastically wrong, of course - and yet I thrilled to the powerful music of English poetry. I had nobody with whom to share my ecstasy since I had not a single friend who knew a word of English. From "The Golden Treasury" I learned by heart - and still remember - 'The Last Ride Together", Tennyson's 'May Queen', and 'Tam O'Shanter'. And in the winter, when the roofs were covered with snow and there was no work for roof-painters, I took Boswell's "Life of Johnson" out of the library and spent three months in the company of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Garrick, Sheridan and Gibbon, who became more real to me than the people I met every day. If Oliver Goldsmith had appeared at the door of my attic I would have known him instantly and welcomed him as one of my own kin. No wonder that at that time England was revealing itself to my imagination from its most poetic side....

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