Disturbing?

What has been puzzling me for some time now is this. Why does ev­erything worth reading, hearing, looking at, have to be disturbing? That is according to all reviewers обозревателям and critics. Among the men and women who count считают, the pacesetters задающий тон in taste вкусе, the highest term выражения of praise восхваления is disturbing.

But now I must ask a question that will show how far out of touch потерял связь I am. Why do I have to be disturbed all the time? Why do the newer novelists романисты and playwrights (sometimes on TV too) and their critics and admirers think it is necessary I should be disturbed? Why should disturbing be the term of highest praise now? Why am I supposed to regard иметь this as the strongest recommendation ? What do they think I ought to be disturbed out of? Where the devil do they imagine I've been all my life — lolling сидел развалившись; in a rose-garden? However, let's forget me and consider рассмотреть the public in general. Why do they have to be disturbed all the time? For my part I can't believe it is necessary.

There are of course a certain number of stupidly complacent самодовольных peo­ple in this country who would be better after a jolt удара or two. Oh yes, such people exist and no doubt they ought to be disturbed.

They ought to be, but they won't be. Not for them the "disturb­ing" novels, plays, films, painting, sculpture, music. They keep well away избегают from such things. They take care to guard their complacency самодовольстве.

When we move away from these people to the population at large ко всему населению, the very notion сама идея of a general complacency that needs a shock потрясение is laugh­able. Never have the English felt more disturbed. They wonder интересуются day and night where the money's to come from and where it goes to. Crime increases and the prisons are overcrowded. Mental homes психиатрические лечебницы are packed out and psychiatrists desperately безнадёжно overworked. People take barbiturates and pep pills таблетки для повышения тонуса as they took acid drops леденцы (с кисло-сладким вкусом) when I was young. They spend not hundreds but thousands of millions on gambling азартные игры, amusements, cigarettes and booze спиртное, not out of из-за confidence or any ex­cess чрезмерности of joy but largely out of an attempt попыток to cope with worry, anxiety страха, deep-seated укоренившихся feelings of unease тревоги.

What they don't spend their money on is all that work, so fashion­able among the intelligentsia , which is praised восхваляется because it's disturbing. They want, as they say, to be taken out of themselves, not further into themselves. They don't want to pass their evenings being told what life's like, they've had that all day, thank you. And yet, being the chil-

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dren of their ancestors предков, not some race род newly created, when they watch their favourite television series or go to the pictures, they are really groping for what our age has deprived лишил them of—mythology, the time­less world of gods and heroes, unchanging and shining выдающиеся immortals.

Now we come to the inner circle узкому кругу of the educated , the sensitive, the cultured, the people to whom these reviews and notices of nov­els, plays, films, the visual arts изобразительные искусства, are being addressed. It is for their sake, to attract their attention, that disturbing is trotted out излагаются over and over again, with an occasional change to deeply disquieting беспокойства.

The truth is of course that these are the very people who have been feeling disturbed for years. Disturbing these people seems to me like watering наполнение водой the Thames . I shall be told of course that the really signifi­cant writers and artists of our time are expressing what such people feel. It is their duty to keep right on disturbing the disturbed, just as it is the duty of the intelligent and conscientious сознательной critic to single out выделять and recommend предлагать whatever will best disturb the disturbed. And to show them what they may not have noticed, that what they thought was still dark grey in fact now a deep black.

If the universe вселенная were absurd , we'd never realize it, having nothing to compare it with. Life can be disturbing of course, but it can't be all disturbance, without any point of reference отношение outside it; and I feel it's about time we kept this in mind запомнить — while we still have minds.

(From: "Essays of Five Decades" by J.B. Priestley. Abridged.)

2. Comment on the title of the essay. What does the author mean by the word "disturbing"?