Орландо

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ISBN 978-5-9925-1099-7

 
Вульф, Вирджиния.
В88 
Орландо : книга для чтения на английском 
языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2016. — 
320 с. — (Modern prose).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1099-7.

Предлагаем вниманию читателей один из самых известных романов английской писательницы Вирджинии 
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УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ-93

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A Biography 
to V. Sackville-West.

Preface

Many friends have helped me in writing this book. Some 
are dead and so illustrious that I scarcely dare name them, 
yet no one can read or write without being perpetually in 
the debt of Defoe, Sir Th omas Browne, Sterne, Sir Walter 
Scott, Lord Macaulay, Emily Brontё, De Quincey, and Walter 
Pater, — to name the fi rst that come to mind. Others are 
alive, and though perhaps as illustrious in their own way, 
are less formidable for that very reason. I am specially 
indebted to Mr C.P. San ger, without whose know ledge of 
the law of real property this book could never have been 
written. Mr Sydney-Turner’s wide and peculiar erudition has 
saved me, I hope, some lamentable blunders. I have had the 
advantage — how great I alone can estimate — of Mr Arthur 
Waley’s knowledge of Chinese. Madame Lopokova (Mrs 
J.M. Keynes) has been at hand to correct my Russian. To the 
unrivalled sympathy and imagination of Mr Roger Fry I 
owe whatever understanding of the art of painting I may 
possess. I have, I hope, profi ted in another department by 
the singularly penetrating, if severe, criticism of my nephew 
Mr Julian Bell. Miss M.K. Snowdon’s indefatigable researches 
in the archives of Harrogate and Cheltenham were none 
the less arduous for being vain. Other friends have helped 
me in ways too various to specify. I must content myself 
with naming Mr Angus Davidson; Mrs Cartwright; Miss 
Janet Case; Lord Berners (whose knowledge of Elizabethan 

A BIOGRAPHY TO V. SACKVILLE-WEST. PREFACE

music has proved invaluable); Mr Francis Birrell; my brother, 
Dr Adrian Stephen; Mr F.L. Lucas; Mr and Mrs Desmond 
Maccarthy; that most inspiriting of critics, my brotherin-law, Mr Clive Bell; Mr G.H. Rylands; Lady Colefax; 
Miss Nellie Boxall; Mr J.M. Keynes; Mr Hugh Walpole; 
Miss Violet Dickinson; the Hon. Edward Sackville-West; 
Mr and Mrs St. John Hutchinson; Mr Duncan Grant; Mr 
and Mrs Stephen Tomlin; Mr and Lady Ottoline Morrell; 
my mother-in-law, Mrs Sydney Woolf; Mr Osbert Sitwell; 
Madame Jacques Raverat; Colonel Cory Bell; Miss Valerie 
Taylor; Mr J.T. Sheppard; Mr and Mrs T.S. Eliot; Miss Ethel 
Sands; Miss Nan Hudson; my nephew Mr Quentin Bell 
(an old and valued collaborator in fi ction); Mr Raymond 
Mortimer; Lady Gerald Wellesley; Mr Lytton Strachey; the 
Viscountess Cecil; Miss Hope Mirrlees; Mr E.M. Forster; 
the Hon. Harold Nicolson; and my sister, Vanessa Bell — 
but the list threatens to grow too long and is already far too 
distinguished. For while it rouses in me memories of the 
pleasantest kind it will inevitably wake expectations in the 
reader which the book itself can only disappoint. Th erefore 
I will conclude by thanking the officials of the British 
Museum and Record Offi  ce1 for their wonted courtesy; my 
niece Miss Angelica Bell, for a service which none but she 
could have rendered; and my husband for the patience with 
which he has invariably helped my researches and for the 
profound historical knowledge to which these pages owe 
whatever degree of accuracy they may attain. Finally, I would 
thank, had I not lost his name and address, a gentleman in 
America, who has generously and gratuitously corrected the 
punctuation, the botany, the entomology, the geography, and 
the chronology of previous works of mine and will, I hope, 
not spare his services on the present occasion.

1 Record Offi  ce — Государственный архив

Chapter 1

He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though 
the fashion of the time did something to disguise it — 
was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which 
swung from the raft ers. It was the colour of an old 
football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the 
sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, 
like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps 
his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a 
vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the 
barbarian fi elds of Africa; and now it swung, gently, 
perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing 
through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the 
lord who had slain him.
Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fi elds of asphodel, 
and stony fi elds, and fi elds watered by strange rivers, 
and they had struck many heads of many colours off  
many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from 
the raft ers. So too would Orlando, he vowed. But since 
he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with them in 
Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother 
and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room 
and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his 
blade. Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull 

ORLANDO

6

bumped on the fl oor and he had to string it up again, 
fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so 
that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk, black 
lips triumphantly. Th e skull swung to and fro, for the 
house, at the top of which he lived, was so vast that 
there seemed trapped in it the wind itself, blowing 
this way, blowing that way, winter and summer. Th e 
green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually. 
His fathers had been noble since they had been at all. 
Th ey came out of the northern mists wearing coronets 
on their heads. Were not the bars of darkness in the 
room, and the yellow pools which chequered the fl oor, 
made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a 
vast coat of arms in the window? Orlando stood now 
in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard. 
When he put his hand on the window-sill to push 
the window open, it was instantly coloured red, blue, 
and yellow like a butterfl y’s wing. Th us, those who 
like symbols, and have a turn for1 the deciphering of 
them, might observe that though the shapely legs, the 
handsome body, and the well-set shoulders were all 
of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, 
Orlando’s face, as he threw the window open, was lit 
solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen face it 
would be impossible to fi nd. Happy the mother who 
bears, happier still the biographer who records the 

1 have a turn for — (разг.) имеют склонность, расположены к чему-л.

CHAPTER 1

7

life of such a one! Never need she vex herself, nor he 
invoke the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, 
from glory to glory, from offi  ce to offi  ce he must go, 
his scribe following aft er, till they reach whatever seat 
it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, 
to look at, was cut out precisely for some such career. 
Th e red of the cheeks was covered with peach down; 
the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the 
down on the cheeks. Th e lips themselves were short 
and slightly drawn back over teeth of an exquisite 
and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy 
nose in its short, tense fl ight; the hair was dark, the 
ears small, and fi tted closely to the head. But, alas, that 
these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without 
mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are 
seldom born devoid of all three; for directly we glance 
at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit 
that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the 
water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened 
them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome 
pressed between the two blank medallions which were 
his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, 
thus do we rhapsodize. Directly we glance at eyes and 
forehead, we have to admit a thousand disagreeables 
which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore. 
Sights disturbed him, like that of his mother, a very 
beautiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks 
with Twitchett, her maid, behind her; sights exalted 
him — the birds and the trees; and made him in love 

ORLANDO

8

with death — the evening sky, the homing rooks; and 
so, mounting up the spiral stairway into his brain — 
which was a roomy one — all these sights, and the 
garden sounds too, the hammer beating, the wood 
chopping, began that riot and confusion of the passions 
and emotions which every good biographer detests. 
But to continue — Orlando slowly drew in his head, 
sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air 
of one doing what they do every day of their lives at 
this hour, took out a writing book labelled Aethelbert1: 
A Tragedy in Five Acts, and dipped an old stained goose 
quill in the ink.
Soon he had covered ten pages and more with 
poetry. He was fl uent, evidently, but he was abstract. 
Vice, Crime, Misery were the personages of his drama; 
there were Kings and Queens of impossible territories; 
horrid plots confounded them; noble sentiments 
suff used them; there was never a word said as he 
himself would have said it, but all was turned with a 
fl uency and sweetness which, considering his age — 
he was not yet seventeen — and that the sixteenth 
century had still some years of its course to run, were 
remarkable enough. At last, however, he came to a 
halt. He was describing, as all young poets are for ever 
describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of 
green precisely he looked (and here he showed more 
audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened 

1 Aethelbert — Этельберт (552–616), король Кента

CHAPTER 1

9

to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. Aft er 
that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature 
is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and 
letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them 
together and they tear each other to pieces. Th e shade 
of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split 
his metre. Moreover, nature has tricks of her own. 
Once look out of a window at bees among fl owers, at a 
yawning dog, at the sun setting, once think “how many 
more suns shall I see set”, etc., etc. (the thought is too 
well known to be worth writing out) and one drops 
the pen, takes one’s cloak, strides out of the room, and 
catches one’s foot on a painted chest1 as one does so. 
For Orlando was a trifl e clumsy.
He was careful to avoid meeting anyone. Th ere was 
Stubbs, the gardener, coming along the path. He hid 
behind a tree till he had passed. He let himself out at 
a little gate in the garden wall. He skirted all stables, 
kennels, breweries, carpenters’ shops, washhouses, 
places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge 
horse-shoes, stitch jerkins — for the house was a town 
ringing with men at work at their various craft s — 
and gained the ferny path leading uphill through 
the park unseen. Th ere is perhaps a kinship among 
qualities; one draws another along with it; and the 
biographer should here call attention to the fact that 
this clumsiness is oft en mated with a love of solitude. 

1 catches one’s foot on a painted chest — (разг.) зацепляется ногой о раскрашенный сундук

ORLANDO

10

Having stumbled over a chest, Orlando naturally loved 
solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever 
and ever and ever alone.
So, aft er a long silence, “I am alone”, he breathed at 
last, opening his lips for the fi rst time in this record. 
He had walked very quickly uphill through ferns and 
hawthorn bushes, startling deer and wild birds, to a 
place crowned by a single oak-tree. It was very high, 
so high indeed that nineteen English counties could 
be seen beneath; and on clear days thirty or perhaps 
forty, if the weather was very fi ne. Sometimes one 
could see the English Channel, wave reiterating upon 
wave. Rivers could be seen and pleasure boats gliding 
on them; and galleons setting out to sea; and armadas 
with puff s of smoke from which came the dull thud 
of cannon fi ring; and forts on the coast; and castles 
among the meadows; and here a watch tower; and 
there a fortress; and again some vast mansion like that 
of Orlando’s father, massed like a town in the valley 
circled by walls. To the east there were the spires of 
London and the smoke of the city; and perhaps on the 
very sky line, when the wind was in the right quarter, 
the craggy top and serrated edges of Snowdon herself 
showed mountainous among the clouds. For a moment 
Orlando stood counting, gazing, recognizing. Th at 
was his father’s house; that his uncle’s. His aunt owned 
those three great turrets among the trees there. Th e 
heath was theirs and the forest; the pheasant and the 
deer, the fox, the badger, and the butterfl y.