High Castle

Presenting a realistic book by one of the greatest science fiction and futurologists of the XX century, we will immediately put all the dots on the "and" so as not to confuse the future reader with cheap PR tricks. Stanislav Lem's High Castle is not a book about Lviv, although it will surely amuse a Lviv lover of the 1920s and 1930s and take a worthy place in the book collection of every Lviv resident, somewhere between Krypyakevych and, say, Mechyslav Opalek. Stanislav Lem's High Castle are not trivial childhood memories or scandalous memoirs; this book will disappoint those who want to rummage in the underwear of the classics. Stanislaw Lem's "High Castle" is a high-quality fusion of fiction, memoirs and essays, a kind of "philosophy of remembrance", a study of the foundations of human consciousness, those "most valuable - because the first" connections with the material world, "mystery of the child in a particular form of culture." .

However, this book can be read without burdening any reflections, enjoying the light and witty style of the most famous Lviv resident of all times and peoples.

"High Castle" translated into English, Bulgarian, German , in Russian, Swedish, and now in Ukrainian.

Book review: Stanislav Lem "High Castle" (author Stanislav Bondar)

I see now how unsuccessful was the previous idea I used it to write - to trust the memory, to obediently follow her command and, restraining my reflections, to pour out of it on the table, as if from a pot, everything that had just happened. He hoped that she zealously kept everything important. He thought that this scattering, like colored glasses from a broken kaleidoscope, would form into some significant pattern. Perhaps not in an unambiguous pattern, but in their interpenetrating set, between which it will be possible to find various arrangements, albeit in a fragmentary, fragmentary, timidly allusive state. I hoped to repeat my childhood in this way in abbreviated words, which is now only an abstract concept - as if by me - but smeared on dozens of calendars, on all their black and red pages. I hoped that thanks to this approach I would paint a portrait - or a mechanism of memory, which is neither me nor a complete stranger to me, a completely passive storage, a spacious wasteland, a desk of the soul with many holes and hiding places. She is not me, because she is a self-sufficient force. Hapka is not where I am, and not where I am, moved or indifferent. After all, she did not save anything that I really wanted to remember - and vice versa, often kept what depended on me as little as possible.

So, I wanted to persuade her to the highest degree rather than myself. frankness to sketch it, for which I was, in the end, ready to take responsibility, although I never ruled over it and do not rule over it. I was planning an experiment, the result of which really interested me, as if it was not about me, as if it were not images and stories that should have come from me, but from someone who is not me. However, it has already happened that this someone has been lurking in me for a long time, exactly as the inner rings of the tree of his childhood and youth are hidden under numerous layers of adulthood. In this sense, we can almost literally admit that the young tree has been in such a powerful shelter for decades. Honestly, I don't remember the first time I was extremely surprised that I was. And at the same time, I was probably a little scared that I might not be there at all, or that I might be some kind of stick or dandelion, goat's foot or snail. And even a stone. Sometimes it seems to me that this happened before the war, that is, at the time described here, but I am not sure. In any case, this surprise did not leave me, although it did not turn into monomania. Eventually, I approached him from different angles, approached him in different ways, and sometimes recognized him as completely absurd, something to be ashamed of, like a physical defect. But then the question came back again: why, in fact, thoughts move in the head in one direction or another, which directs and directs them? I once believed that the soul - or rather consciousness - is an area about four or five inches in the middle of the face - behind the nose, just below the eyes. I have no idea why I decided to do so.

This was a "sub-philosophy", just as it used to be, a long time ago, there was a kind of "sub-" or "super-thinking" instead of thinking. And I also hoped to shake it out of my memory along with all the accompanying equipment. It had to happen by itself, limited to memories, the shock of that metaphorical pot. However, it failed. I see that by remembering, I inadvertently organized my memories. As a result, they have developed into traces that quite clearly lead in my direction, in the direction of me today - the so-called writer, ie a representative of one of the least respected and most shameful professions. After all, the bread of a writer is a frenzy of wild fantasizing, based on all sorts of arrogant or meaningless definitions such as "writer's kitchen". As for me, I did not have any such kitchen. In any case, I still haven't noticed her. So everything I poured out of the bag of memory, at once, on the fly, was easy to direct. It's not about some outrageous lies or distortions. It happened by itself, in any case - unintentional. In the end, I'm not excusing myself.

side. I see in that ultimate whole the arrow aimed at me, a quarter of a century older. This is all the more surprising because I never thought I was "born a writer" or hoc erat in votis. After all, I still don't think so. This means that in that childhood and in the landfill that remained after him, many confusing traces had to be preserved, directions for reading, for exposing, mostly chaotic, deaf and torn. Or maybe it's not even traces, but just too much space and isolated islands. No, it's not absolute chaos, at least because there was a home, a school, parents, that at first I was very small and stuck a green "wing" to my nose, and then I was older, in a uniform. This alone created a fairly clear order. However, it was the order of an empty chessboard, where black and white stripes can be seen lengthwise, crosswise or diagonally. It is enough to put a little effort into the look to reconstruct everything as you wish. Meanwhile, the chessboard remains a chessboard, and we will not see anything beyond what is actually on it - alternately black and white squares. Only the order, direction, directive of the view change. Something very similar happened to the chessboard laid out here. I did not add anything, but of the many possible orders, one overemphasized. Maybe because he was looking for a leitmotif, a coordinate axis, a sequence of life? Not to admit even to yourself that many areas have been violated, lost, wasted? Or is it only because we always strive for both the present and the past to have some orderly and expressive meaning, although in reality this should not be the case? It seems that it is not enough for us to just live, not to mention adulthood, when inertia and lack of expressive meanings are not allowed - but in childhood? I wanted to give my voice to the child, not to disturb him, if possible. And he himself used it, plundered his pockets, drawers, notebooks to brag to the elders: that's how well everything was bequeathed from the beginning, that's how larvae of future virtues were even his sins. To justify this robbery, I turned it into a good guide, almost a holistic system. In this way he wrote another book - as if he did not know from the beginning, did not guess that it could not be otherwise, that any attempt to record memories is an illusion, a strict restriction - not to add anything of himself. I added too often, commented, interpreted. From other people's secrets and toys - well, not from my own, I don't have them anymore, they don't exist - I built a tomb for that kid and locked him in it - honest, detached and businesslike. It was as if he was writing about someone fictional, about someone who had never lived, who could be sculpted according to aesthetic canons, according to will and plan. It was not worthy. They don't do that to a child.

And

Do you remember the list of mysterious things that the Laputans found in Gulliver's pockets? Such mysterious and fantastic objects as a sharp-edged comb, a giant clock with a rhythmic ticking and many other wonders, already quite incomprehensible purpose? I was also once a Laputan. I met my father, scratching at him every time he sat in a high-backed chair, and rummaged in the pockets of his black suit, which smelled of tobacco and the hospital to which he admitted me. My father kept a metal cylinder in his left pocket of his vest, which resembled a hunting ammunition for a large beast. It could be untwisted and seen inside a small pyramid of nickel-plated watering cans stacked on top of each other. Each one had a smaller diameter than the previous one. These were otoscopes - they are used to listen to the ear. In the next pocket was a pencil, which during my first research was written off almost to the rest. The pencil was in a gold frame, which, when pressed (but it took more force than mine), clicked and put out a slate. The coat had a velvet metal box that clicked menacingly. There was a tiny wallet in it - not for coins, because it contained nothing but a piece of suede that unfolded by itself, it was worth unbuttoning it. There was also a small silver box with a button on the eye, in which lay something like a silver plate with a flat dark purple rubber band fitted underneath. However, you could not push your fingers into it, because they immediately became ink. And on the opposite side, also in a coat - a round mirror with a hole in the middle, cracked, on a black ribbon with a buckle. This mirror willingly magnified my cheek, turning my eye into a huge pond in which, like a round fish, the iris bark floated. Rough eyelashes ruled over the reeds around the pond. Again on the vest hung a flat watch on a gold chain, also gold, with three caps. The clock had numbers called Roman and a small second hand. I couldn't open the lids on the bottom of it on my own, and I wasn't always allowed to do that. There lived little wheels with ruby eyes that glowed and walked.

That's how I met my father, up close. He wore white shirts in a thin black stripe, with cuffs fastened with buttons, and a beautiful collar, which was also fastened, but not with pins. Many of these already worn collars lay on the drawers of the linen. They were pleasant to the touch due to their elastic fragility, and it always seemed to me that they could be made into something interesting and useful. However, I did not realize what it could be. My father's tie was soft, black, resembling a scarf and tied with a bow. His hat had wide soft brims and a rubber band that stretched perfectly. There were two sticks, one of which was sometimes lost somewhere. These were pretty ordinary sticks. My uncle was much more interesting - with a silver horse's head. And some incredibly old person, who could barely move and sometimes visited us, used another stick - with an ivory head. However, I never saw him up close, because I was hiding from that guest. He snorted terribly, and I didn't know he wasn't trying to scare me like that. It was someone like another uncle or cousin, but I don't think he looked like an uncle at all.
We lived on Brayerivska Street, at number four, on the second floor. My father and I usually went for a walk to the Jesuit Garden or up Mickiewicz Alley in the direction of St. George's Church. I don't know why my father took a stick with him, because he didn't rely on it then. In the winter afternoon, when there was still too much snow in the garden, we strolled Marshalkovskaya, past Jan Casimir University, where I could hold my head and look at large half-naked stone figures in whimsical and stone hats. They performed their incomprehensible functions: one was sitting, the other was holding an open book, resting it on his bare knee. The constant raising of my head was painful, so I mostly looked at my father, who was walking in front of me - to knee height, not much higher. Once I noticed that my father did not have his usual laced shoes, but some completely unfamiliar to me - smooth, without any fasteners. The gaiters with which he was inseparable also disappeared. "Where did you get those shoes?" I asked, puzzled, and then I heard someone else's voice from above: "Look how brave you are!"

This was not a father at all, but a completely foreign uncle, to whom I do not know how to complain. My father was a few steps behind.

I was scared. It was an extremely unpleasant feeling if I managed to remember him so well.