В первый день своего пребывания на фестивале у Бенедикта было 2 мероприятие.
Вечером были Letters Live, где Бенедикт и другие знаменитости зачитывали письма людей. Это не просто письма. Это письма великих или простых людей, в которых отражены моменты истории.
читать дальше
1 х
2 х
3 х
4 х
5 х
6 х
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22 х
23 х
24 х
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
32 х
33 х
34
35
36
37 х
38
39
40
41
42 х
43
44
45
46 х
47 х
48 х
49
50
51 х
52
53
54
55 х
56
57
58
59
http://24.media.tumblr.com/fb7b148e6bb070c276160280b902c08d/tumblr_n6enpqQNzn1trdsoko10_1280.jpg
60 х
61
62
63
64 х
65
66
67
68 х
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108 х
109
110
111
112
113
Бенедикт прочел 6 писем: письмо Роберта Скотта жене, письмо Тэда Хьюза сыну и вместе с актрисой Лизой Дуан (Lisa Dwan) они прочили переписку между солдатом Крисом Бакером (Chris Baker) и его невестой Бесси Мур (Bessie Moor).
Письмо Роберта Скотта жене.
Моей вдове.
читать дальше
Dearest darling — we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through — In our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end — the first is naturally to you on whom my thoughts mostly dwell waking or sleeping — If anything happens to me I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me and that pleasant recollections are with me as I depart —
I should like you to take what comfort you can from these facts also — I shall not have suffered any pain but leave the world fresh from harness and full of good health and vigour — this is dictated already, when provisions come to an end we simply stop where we are within easy distance of another depot. Therefore you must not imagine a great tragedy — we are very anxious of course and have been for weeks but on splendid physical condition and our appetites compensate for all discomfort. The cold is biting and sometimes angering but here again the hot food which drives it forth is so wonderfully enjoyable that we would scarcely be without it.
We have gone down hill a good deal since I wrote the above. Poor Titus Oates has gone — he was in a bad state — the rest of us keep going and imagine we have a chance to get through but the cold weather doesn't let up at all — we are now only 20 miles from a depot but we have very little food or fuel.
Well dear heart I want you to take the whole thing very sensibly as I am sure you will — the boy will be your comfort I had looked forward to helping you to bring him up but it is a satisfaction to feel that he is safe with you. I think both he and you ought to be specially looked after by the country for which after all we have given our lives with something of spirit which makes for example — I am writing letters on this point in the end of this book after this. Will you send them to their various destinations?
I must write a little letter for the boy if time can be found to be read when he grows up — dearest that you know cherish no sentimental rubbish about remarriage — when the right man comes to help you in life you ought to be your happy self again — I hope I shall be a good memory certainly the end is nothing for you to be ashamed of and I like to think that the boy will have a good start in parentage of which he may be proud.
Dear it is not easy to write because of the cold — 70 degrees below zero and nothing but the shelter of our tent — you know I have loved you, you know my thoughts must have constantly dwelt on you and oh dear me you must know that quite the worst aspect of this situation is the thought that I shall not see you again — The inevitable must be faced — you urged me to be leader of this party and I know you felt it would be dangerous — I've taken my place throughout, haven't I? God bless you my own darling I shall try and write more later — I go on across the back pages.
Since writing the above we have got to within 11 miles of our depot with one hot meal and two days cold food and we should have got through but have been held for four days by a frightful storm — I think the best chance has gone we have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last for that depot but in the fighting there is a painless end so don't worry. I have written letters on odd pages of this book — will you manage to get them sent? You see I am anxious for you and the boy's future — make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games — they encourage it at some schools — I know you will keep him out in the open air — try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting. Oh my dear my dear what dreams I have had of his future and yet oh my girl I know you will face it stoically — your portrait and the boy's will be found in my breast and the one in the little red Morocco case given by Lady Baxter — There is a piece of the Union flag I put up at the South Pole in my private kit bag together with Amundsen's black flag and other trifles — give a small piece of the Union flag to the King and a small piece to Queen Alexandra and keep the rest a poor trophy for you! — What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home — what tales you would have for the boy but oh what a price to pay — to forfeit the sight of your dear dear face — Dear you will be good to the old mother. I write her a little line in this book. Also keep in with Ettie and the others— oh but you'll put on a strong face for the world — only don't be too proud to accept help for the boys sake — he ought to have a fine career and do something in the world. I haven't time to write to Sir Clements — tell him I thought much of him and never regretted him putting me in command of the Discovery.
Бенедикт читает письмо Тэда Хьюза
х
Письмо Тэда Хьюза сыну Нику.
Жизнь как могучая река.
читать дальше
Dear Nick,
I hope things are clearing. It did cross my mind, last summer, that you were under strains of an odd sort. I expect, like many another, you'll spend your life oscillating between fierce relationships that become tunnel traps, and sudden escapes into wide freedom when the whole world seems to be just there for the taking. Nobody's solved it. You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses. I came to America, when I was 27, and lived there three years as if I were living inside a damart sock—I lived in there with your mother. We made hardly any friends, no close ones, and neither of us ever did anything the other didn't want wholeheartedly to do. (It meant, Nicholas, that meeting any female between 17 and 39 was out. Your mother banished all her old friends, girl friends, in case one of them set eyes on me—presumably. And if she saw me talking with a girl student, I was in court. Foolish of her, and foolish of me to encourage her to think her laws were reasonable. But most people are the same. I was quite happy to live like that, for some years.) Since the only thing we both wanted to do was write, our lives disappeared into the blank page. My three years in America disappeared like a Rip Van Winkle snooze. Why didn't I explore America then? I wanted to. I knew it was there. Ten years later we could have done it, because by then we would have learned, maybe, that one person cannot live within another's magic circle, as an enchanted prisoner.
So take this new opportunity to look about and fill your lungs with that fantastic land, while it and you are still there. That was a most curious and interesting remark you made about feeling, occasionally, very childish, in certain situations. Nicholas, don't you know about people this first and most crucial fact: every single one is, and is painfully every moment aware of it, still a child. To get beyond the age of about eight is not permitted to this primate—except in a very special way, which I'll try to explain. When I came to Lake Victoria, it was quite obvious to me that in some of the most important ways you are much more mature than I am. And your self-reliance, your Independence, your general boldness in exposing yourself to new and to-most-people-very-alarming situations, and your phenomenal ability to carry through your plans to the last practical detail (I know it probably doesn't feel like that to you, but that's how it looks to the rest of us, who simply look on in envy), is the sort of real maturity that not one in a thousand ever come near. As you know. But in many other ways obviously you are still childish—how could you not be, you alone among mankind? It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them. Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances. And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making 'no contact'. But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child. Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced. Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful. So there it is. And the sense of itself, in that little being, at its core, is what it always was. But since that artificial secondary self took over the control of life around the age of eight, and relegated the real, vulnerable, supersensitive, suffering self back into its nursery, it has lacked training, this inner prisoner. And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that's the moment it wants. That's where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that's where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.
And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.
2 письмо Криса Баркера к Блесси Мун (1944г. и 1945 г.)
The First One
Послушать
Dear Bessie,
Yesterday I got your letter card dated the 3rd of April. There was one from deb and another one from Mum, and of course, I had to read these first. And I could read yours only once, and then had to put it in my pocket, while my poor old head tried to cope with its content as far as I could remember. You have come at me with such terrific rush of warmth, and I am so very much in need of you.
Well, I washed and made my bed, it was six o’clock before I received your letter and fidgeted around. Then I thought, ‘I must read it again before I go to sleep’, so I pushed off to the latrine where the humblest may be sure of privacy and read your words again. The comic expression ‘It shakes me’ is true in a serious sense about this deeply thrilling state of well-being that you have caused or created.After I had re-read your letter, out came the chessman, and we played one game which I won before adjourning to the canteen to gather round wireless for the news, a rite in these surroundings. Then we were collared for Bridge which we played till ten o’clock. All the time, the only thing I wanted to do was read your words, this tiny part of you, again and again.
Back in the tent, and to bed. How impossible to sleep with thought and wonder of you hot within me. As I toss and turn and wriggle and writhe I think of you, probably doing the same. Isn’t it blooming awful? I know that if I think of you, I will not sleep, yet I keep on thinking of you, and get hotter and hotter. Phew! I could do with a couple of ice-blocks around me.
Finally to sleep. Up in the morning, my first thoughts, of your nearness and your distance from me, and the hope that I can race off this first six pages, to post this afternoon. Unfortunately there is no likelihood of my early return. I must be another year; I may be another three or four. Relax, my girl, or you’ll be a physical wreck in no time. Regard me as what you will, but don’t altogether forget circumstance, distance, environment. I do so joyfully, happily, eagerly, but you must have more sense.
In the film tonight there was a joke that the state of being in love was the happiest way of being miserable. So be miserable happily, don’t look over your shoulder too much, enjoy what is, so far as you can, and remember the old, wise tag ‘Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday’. I am a born worrier myself, but feel I could be all that you wanted me to be. Probably more important, I know that you are what I want, not in any limited sense, but in all. I want to confide in you. I want to creep into you. I want to protect you. That I am not capable is unimportant, what is significant is that you should think I am. My hands cannot caress you; my words strive hard to tell you all the things I dare. You spoke of yourself being ‘guilty of slobbering’ – it’s no crime. I am proud of it. If your incoherent babbling mean what mine do, it’s jolly good. Don’t worry about being bounced out of favor, and try to grow out of this engulfed, nothing belongs to oneself feeling. Regard me as a promise rather than a threat, and pick holes in me where you can, so that I seem less regal. Remember we are both in this together, and that it has somehow occurred undesignedly, unrehearsed, because we had it in us. Yes, I wish that I was with you. But life is hard – wishing won’t make it easy. My thoughts are with you far too often for my physical serenity and my mental equilibrium. During the day I simply lap you up and cause trouble at night. Engulfed describes my state, too, a rather floundering, uncertain one.
I wonder what you look like. Don’t have a special photograph taken. I know you haven’t a bus-back face but I have never looked at you as now I would. I wonder how many times I have seen you, and how many we have been alone. Now my foolish pulse races at the thought that you even have a figure. I want, very much, to touch you, to feel you, to see you as you naturally are, to hear you. I want to sleep and awaken with you. I want to live with you. I want to be strong and I want to be weak with you. I want you.
I want my letters to be of interest, so please let me know how and what you want me to write. On occasions, you’ll understand, I may not be in a position to write.
Let me know if you think I am mad. When my signature dries I am going to kiss it. If you do the same, that will be a complete unhygienic circuit.
Yours,
Chris
The Second One
My dearest one,
I have just heard the news that all the Army men captured by ELAS are to return to their homes. Because of the shipping situation we may not commence to go before the end of February, but can probably count on being in England sometime in March. It may be sooner. I have only just left our Major giving the signal as received from Alexander. It has made me very warm inside. It is terrific, wonderful, shattering. I don’t know what to say, and I cannot think. The delay is nothing, the decision is everything. Now I am confirming in my head the little decisions I have made when contemplating just the possibility. I must spend the first days at home, I must see Deb and her mother. I must consider giving party somewhere. Above all, I must be with you. I must warm you, surround you, love you and be kind to you. Tell me anything that is in your mind, write tons and tons and tons, and plan our time. I would prefer not to get married, but want you to agree on the point. In the battle, I was afraid. For you. For my mother. For myself. Wait we must, my love and my darling. Let us meet, let us be, let us know, but do not let us, now, make any mistakes. I am anxious, very anxious, that you should not misunderstand what I have said. Say what you think – but – please agree, and remember I was afraid, and I am still afraid.How good for us to see each other before I am completely bald! I have some fine little wisps of hair on the top of my head. It is not much good me trying to write about recent experiences now that I know that I shall be able to tell you everything myself within such short time. What I have my eye on now is the first letter from you saying that you know I am alright, and the next, saying you know I am coming to you. I must try to keep out of hospital with some of these post P.O.W. complaints. Plan a week somewhere (not Boscombe or Bournemouth) and think of being together. The glory of you. When I was captive I used to try and contact you and think hard ‘Bessie, my dearest, I am alright. Do not worry.’ I never felt that I got through, somehow. But now it is over, and you know that I am alright and going to be with you soon, to join and enjoy. Do not get very excited outwardly. I am conscious of the inner tumult, the clamour, but I am not too much outwardly joyful. Moderation is my advice. Watch the buses as you cross the street.
We are free of duties and yesterday I went to our friends in Athens, taking some of your coffee and cocoa, which they were very pleased to have. Thank you for sending it. We were embraced very kindly, kissing and so on, continental fashion.
I hope that you will not start buying any clothes (if you have the coupons left), because you think you must look nice for me. I shall be sorry if you do. Just carry on as near as possible to normal. My return at the present time allows us to make public our mutual attachment. I shall tell my family I hope to spend a week away with you somewhere during my leave. My counsel to you is to tell as few people as possible. To someone like Miss Ferguson you can politely reply to her observations that you thought it was your business, rather than hers. Try to avoid preening yourself and saying much. This is my advice, not anything but that. I hope you understand. I do not ever want it to be anything but our affair. Do not permit any intrusion.
I do not know how long leave I shall get. I could get as little as fourteen days, and I may get as much as a month. I am wondering how I shall tell you I am in England. Probably it is still quicker to send a telegram than a letter, and I hope to send you one announcing that I am on the same island. I will send another when I am actually soon to get on the London bound train, and you can ring Lee Green 0509 when you think I have arrived there. You must bear in mind that I shall be with my brother until we get home. Also, that, having been away from home for so long, my parents will want to see a lot of me. I hope that everything will work itself out without any unhappiness to anyone. I shall be in great demand from two or three points and it will be difficult to manage without offence.
It is a strange thing, but I cannot seem to get going and write very freely. All I am think about is I am going home. I am going to see her. It is a fact, a real thing, an impending event, like Shrove Tuesday, Xmas Day, or the Lord Major’s Banquet. You have to be abroad, you have to be hermetically sealed off from your intimates, from your home, to realise what a gift this going-home is.
The few letters of yours that I had on me, I burnt the day previous to our surrender, so no one but myself has read your words. In the first ten days of our captivity I did not think any soft thoughts about you; all I did was concentrate on trying to tell you I was alright. But when we had a few supplies dropped by aircraft (at great risk to themselves in the misty snowbound Greek mountain villages) and we started hoping we might get sent home upon our release, I was always wondering about you, about us. It is a pity that the winter weather will not be kind to us out of doors. But it will be nice sitting next to you in the pictures, no matter what may be on the screen. It will be grand to know that we have each other’s support and sympathy. Won’t it be wonderful to be together, really together, in the flesh, not just to know that a letter is all we can send?
I love you.
Chris
Пресса о Бенедикте на фестивале.
The Teledraph
Wales Online
Бенедикт Камбербэтч на Hay Festival. День 1 часть 2
В первый день своего пребывания на фестивале у Бенедикта было 2 мероприятие.
Вечером были Letters Live, где Бенедикт и другие знаменитости зачитывали письма людей. Это не просто письма. Это письма великих или простых людей, в которых отражены моменты истории.
читать дальше
Вечером были Letters Live, где Бенедикт и другие знаменитости зачитывали письма людей. Это не просто письма. Это письма великих или простых людей, в которых отражены моменты истории.
читать дальше