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FICTION READING

Text 1

A FEW WORDS ABOUT MYSELF
AND MY WIFE ANTONIA

(From “A Severed Head’
1
by Ir. Murdoch )

To describe one’s character is difficult and not necessarily
illuminating. The story which follows will reveal, whether I will or
no, what sort of person I am. Let me offer here only a few elementary
facts. I grew up into the war during which I spent on the whole a safe
and inactive time. I suffer intermittently from a complex of disorders
of which asthma and hay fever are the best known, though not the
most disagreeable, and I never succeeded in passing as completely fit.
I went on to Oxford when the war was over, and so began my life as
an ordinary citizen at a comparatively advanced age. I am a very tall,
reasonably good-looking man. I used to be a good boxer, and passed
when I was younger as a raffish quarrelsome violent fellow. This
reputation was precious to me: equally precious is the reputation
which I have more lately gained of having become morose,
something of a recluse, something indeed of a philosopher and cynic,
one who expects little and watches the world go by. Antonia accuses
me of being flippant: but Georgie once pleased me more by saying
that I had the face of someone laughing at something tragic. My face,
I might add, is the long pale rather heavy old-fashioned face that all

1
Текст друкується за виданням Потапова И.А., Кащеева М.А. Пособие
по переводу английского литературного текста. – Москва: Высшая школа.
1975. С. 54 – 56.

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