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    ,    ,     .    , ,       ,       ,    .    ,   ,       -,   .      1925       ,    .    ,    ,       .

    -,        ,   ,     .      .



  .., 2026.



Sinclair Lewis  

Arrowsmith 



I am indebted to Dr. Paul A. De Kruy not only for much of the bacteriological and medical material for this book, but also for his help in developing the plot itself, for the fact that he saw a living person in each character of the novel, for his philosophy as a scientist.        -            ,        ,  ,         ,    . With this acknowledgement I want to remember the months of our closeness during the work on the book - in the United States, in the West Indies, in Panama, in London, in Fontainebleau.                 ,  -,  ,  ,  . I wish I could reproduce our conversations on the way, and the days in the laboratories, and the late-night restaurants, and the deck at dawn when we entered tropical harbors.        ,    ,   ,    ,      .



Sinclair Lewis  



1

In a wagon making its way through the forests and swamps of the Ohio desert, a girl of about fourteen, wearing a tattered dress, sat as the driver.  ,       ,         . Her mother was buried near the Monongahela - the girl herself lined the grave with turf on the bank of the river with a beautiful name.                  . Her father lay feverish on the floor of the wagon, and around him played her brothers and sisters, dirty children in rags - happy children.       ,        ,       .

At a fork in the road, in the middle of a grassy road, the girl stopped the van, and the sick man said in a broken voice:  ,    ,   ,     :

- Emmy, you'd better turn onto Cincinnati.  ,      . If we manage to find Uncle Ed, I think he'll take us in.      , ,  ,    .

Nobody will want to take us in, said the girl.      ,   . Lets go straight ahead as long as we can.    ,  . To the west!  ! And Ill see a lot of new things!     !

She cooked dinner, put the children to bed and sat alone by the fire for a long time.   ,         .

She was Martin Arrowsmith's great-grandmother.     .

A boy sat cross-legged in the doctor's chair in Doc Vickerson's office, reading Gray's Anatomy.       ,    ,     "" . His name was Martin Arrowsmith, from Elk Mills, Winnemac.      -   .

In Elk Mills (then, in 1897, a shabby little village of red brick houses smelling of apples), it was said that the brown leather pull-out chair in which Doc Vickerson performed minor operations, occasionally pulled teeth, and more often dozed, began its existence in a barber shop.  - (,  1897 ,           ) ,     ,           ,   ,     . It was also believed that its owner had once been called Dr. Vickerson, but over the years he had become simply "Doc," and was even shabbier and much more unyielding than his chair.   ,       ,        "",          .

Martin was the son of J. J. Arrowsmith, who was manager of the New York Ready-Made Garment Sale.      ,     "-   ". Out of sheer spirit and stubbornness, the boy became, at the age of fourteen, the doc's unofficial and, of course, unpaid assistant;            , ,   ; when the doc was making his rounds of patients in the neighborhood, he took his place - although in what capacity it was necessary to take the doc's place, no one could explain.      ,     ,      ,     . Martin was a slender boy, not very tall;    ,   ; his hair and restless eyes were black, and his skin was unusually white, and this contrast seemed to speak of passionate inconstancy.        ,    ,   , ,    . Yet, thanks to his square head and fairly broad shoulders, he did not look effeminate;             ; there was not in him that irritable timidity which young gentlemen of an artistic disposition call scrupulousness.        ,       . When he tossed his head while listening, his right eyebrow his, lying a little higher than the left, rose and twitched in his characteristic expression, energetic and independent - and then it was clear that the boy knew how to stand up for himself, and that daring inquisitiveness was revealed for which the teachers and the director of the Sunday school disliked him.  , ,  ,   ,    ,        ,   ,     ,      ,     ,         .

Martin, like most of the inhabitants of Elk Mills before the Slavic-Italian immigration, was a typical purebred American Anglo-Saxon - in other words, he had German and French blood, Scottish, Irish, perhaps a little Spanish, probably some of that mixture called Jewish blood, and a large dose of English, which in turn is a combination of ancient British, Celtic, Phoenician, Romance, Germanic, Danish and Swedish elements. ,    -  - ,        ,        , , , ,  , ,       ,    ,      ,        , , , , ,    .

It cannot be said with certainty that when Martin went to work as Doc Vickerson's assistant, he was driven entirely by a lofty desire to become a Great Healer.    , ,        ,        . True, he inspired awe in his peers when he dressed their abrasions or dissected albumens and at the same time explained the amazing and mysterious things hidden in physiology; ,     ,           ,        ; but at the same time he was not entirely free from the vain desire to gain among his comrades the fame that shone on the son of an Episcopal priest, a boy who smoked a whole cigar without feeling sick.                 ,     , ,    ,   . But today he was diligently reading the chapter on the lymphatic system, pronouncing long and completely incomprehensible words aloud, and his muttering in the dusty room made one even more sleepy.         ,       ,            .

The room was the middle one of three occupied by Doc Vickerson, facing Main Street, directly above the New York Garment Sale.     ,   ,    ,   "-   ". On one side of it was a musty parlor, on the other was Vickerson's bedroom.        ,     . Doc was an old widower;    ; he cared nothing for what he contemptuously called "feminine comforts";      ,    " "; his bedroom, containing a rickety wardrobe and a camp bed covered with dirty blankets, was never cleaned except by Martin on those rare occasions when the boy was overcome by fits of sanitary zeal.   ,          ,   ,       ,       .

This middle room served simultaneously as an office, a doctor's office, an operating room, a living room, a place for playing poker, and a storage room for hunting and fishing equipment.      ,  , , ,           . Against the brown plaster wall stood a glass case containing a zoological collection and medical curiosities, and next to it was the most terrible and most enticing object that the Elk Mills boys knew:             ,         ,    - : a skeleton with a single gold tooth in a grin.       . In the evenings, when Doc was away, Martin, to enhance his prestige, would bring the quiet boys into the eerie darkness of the room and strike a sulfur match on the skeleton's jaw.  ,     ,                   .

On the wall hung a stuffed pike, handcrafted by the doc and mounted on a homemade polished board.     ,         . Next to the rusty stove, on the spit-stained, worn-to-the-core linoleum, stood a spittoonjust a box of sawdust.      ,           . On the shabby table lay a pile of memoranda of debts that the doc constantly vowed to "finally collect from these scoundrels," but which he would never, under any circumstances, collect from any debtor.         ,     ", ,   ",    ,           . From year to year... from decade to decade... from century to centurynothing changed for the hard-working doctor in the bustling, beehive-like town.                  -  ,   , .

The most unsanitary corner was occupied by a cast-iron sink, which was used more often for washing egg-stained plates after breakfast than for sterilizing instruments.       ,          ,    . Around its edges lay a broken test tube, a broken fish hook, an unlabeled bottle of some unknown pills, a heel bristling with nails, a chewed cigar butt, and a rusty lancet stuck in a potato.       ,   ,     - ,  ,   ,         .



This unkempt, neglected room expressed the soul of Doc Vickerson, was its symbol:        ,   : it was more exciting than the impersonal stacks of shoeboxes at the New York Sale;   ,       "- "; it beckoned Martin Arrowsmith to exploration and adventure.        .

The boy raised his head and an inquisitive eyebrow.   ,   . Doc Vickerson's heavy footsteps could be heard on the stairs.        . Doc isn't drunk!   ! Martin won't have to put him to bed.       .

But it was a bad sign that Doc went first through the hallway into the bedroom.    ,        . The boy began to listen and heard Doc open the bottom cabinet in the washbasin, where he kept a bottle of Jamaican rum.     ,       ,     . There was a gurgling sound; ; then the invisible doctor put the bottle back and decisively slammed the door with his foot.            . No big deal for now.   . He only took a swig from the bottle once.     . If he now went straight into the office, everything would turn out well.       ,   . But Doc was still standing in the bedroom.       . Martin sighed when the washbasin door was quickly opened again, and the gurgling sound was heard again, then for the third time.  ,      ,    ,    .

The doc's gait was much more cheerful when he burst into the office, a grey bulk with a grey brush of a moustache - huge, unreal and indefinite, like a cloud that for a moment took on the appearance of a man.     ,             ,   ,  ,      . Immediately rushing into the attack - the usual technique of someone who wants to prevent a conversation about his misdeed - the doc walked up to the desk and thundered:         ,       ,        :

- What are you doing here, young man!     ,  ! What are you doing here?    ? I-I knew the cat would bring something if I didnt lock the door. -  ,   - ,     . - He hiccupped softly;    ; he smiled to show that he was joking, because people dont always know how to recognize the mood of the doctor. ,  ,  ,       ,    .

He continued more seriously, sometimes forgetting what he was talking about:    ,  ,   :

 Are you reading old Gray?    ? Good thing.  . A doctors library consists of three books:      : Grays Anatomy, the Bible, and Shakespeare. "" , , . Study. . You could become a great doctor.      . Youll live in Zenith and make five thousand dollars a year  like your senator.               . Always aim higher.   . Seize your luck.  . And work on yourself.    . First, graduate from college, then go to medical school.   ,     . Study chemistry.  . Latin. . Science! ! Im a lousy doctor.  -. I have neither a stake nor a yard.    ,  . Im an old bachelor and a drunkard.     . And you  youll be a prominent doctor.       . Youll make five thousand a year!      !

Murray's wife has endocarditis.    . I can't do anything for her.       . There's no one to sit with her, to hold her hand.    ,   . The road is just a curse.    . The drainage pipe behind the grove has collapsed.     . Curse! !

Endocarditis and  

You need to study, study!   , ! Know the basics.  . Chemistry. . Biology. . I havent studied them. -   . Mrs. Jones, the wife of Reverend Jones, thinks she has a stomach ulcer.  ,   , ,     . She wants to go to the city for an operation.      . An ulcer, of course! ,  ! Both of them, the Reverend himself and his wife, eat beyond their means!  ,      ,    !

That they wont fix the drainage... And also:       : You dont have to be like me, a drunkard.    ,  , . You have to study - accumulate knowledge.     . What you dont understand, Ill explain.   , .

The boy, though he was an ordinary country boy, not averse to throwing stones at cats and playing tag, experienced a fever of treasure hunting when Doc, with a slurred tongue, tried to open to his spiritual vision the glory of knowledge, told him of the universality of biology, of the triumphant precision of chemistry. ,       ,           ,   ,            ,     ,    . Doc was an old, fat man, unclean, degraded.     , , . He had no grammar, his vocabulary would have embarrassed anyone, and his comments on his rival, the kindly Doctor Needham, were downright scandalous;     ,      ,      ,   ,   ; and yet he knew how to awaken in Martin a dream of chemical experiments with noisy explosions and stinking dreams, a dream of examining microscopic bugs that no boy in Elk Mills had ever seen.  -              ,     ,          -.

The doctor's voice became muffled.    . The old man sank into a chair, his gaze was cloudy, his lower lip drooped.    ,    ,   . Martin begged him to lie down, but the doctor did not give in.    ,    .

 I dont want to sleep!    ! No! ! Listen. . You dont appreciate it, but I Im already old.   ,      . Im sharing with you all the knowledge that Ive acquired.      ,   . Im showing you my collection.   . The only museum in the entire region.     . Im a pioneer of education.    .

Hundreds of times Martin had dutifully looked at the objects laid out in the dark bookcase with its dull polish;       ,        ; at the beetles and at the pieces of mica;      ; at the embryo of a two-headed calf;    ; at the stones removed from the liver of a certain respectable lady, whose name Doc enthusiastically told to each of his visitors.  ,      ,         . Doc stood in front of the bookcase and moved his huge, but trembling index finger.       ,    .

 Look at this butterfly.     . It's a porthesia chrysorrhoea.   porthesia chrysorrhoea. Doc Needham couldn't tell you its name.        . He doesn't know any butterfly's name!   ,    ! He doesn't care whether you gain knowledge or not.  ,     . Have you remembered its name now?     ?  He turned to Martin.     .  Are you listening?   ? Are you interested?  ? Huh? ? Ugh, damn it! , ! Nobody wants to know about my museum  not a soul!            ! The only museum in the whole land!      !! ! I'm an old loser!    !

No, really, no, Martin began to assure.  ,  , ,    . Your museum is magnificent!     !

 Look here!   ! Look! ! Do you see? ? Right here, in the bottle?  ,  ? It's an appendix.   . The first appendix ever removed in this county.  ,    . And I removed it!    ! Yes! ! What do you think!   ! Old Doc Vickerson was the first appendicitis operator in this backwater!          ! And he founded the first museum.    . A small one, true... but it's a start.       . I didn't save up the money like Doc Needham, but I laid the foundation for the first collectionthe first!    ,   ,        !

He fell into a chair and groaned:    , :

- You're right.   . I'm going to bed!  ! I'm exhausted. . - But when Martin helped him to his feet, he jerked to the side, began to grope with his hand on the desk, and looked around suspiciously.         ,    ,      ,  . - I wanted to give you something.      -. To start your studies.    . Don't forget the old man.   . Will anyone remember the old man?  -  ?

Doc held out his beloved magnifying glass, which he had used for years in his botany studies, in his outstretched hand.         ,      . He watched as Martin put the magnifying glass in his pocket, sighed, tried to say something else, and silently wandered off to the bedroom.  ,      , ,   -      .



2

The state of Winnemac borders Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan and, like them, is a combination of East and Midwest.     , ,    ,  ,       . Its brick villages, shaded by plane trees, its industries and traditions dating back to the Revolutionary War, breathe New England.    ,  ,    ,     ,   . The largest city in the state, Zenith, was founded in 1792.          1792 . But with its fields of wheat and corn, red barns and silos, Winnemac belongs to the Midwest, and many of its counties, despite the hoary antiquity of Zenith, began to be settled only since 1860.     ,          ,    ,     ,     1860 .

Winnemac University is located in Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith.     ,     . It has twelve thousand students;      ; Next to this wonder, Oxford is a tiny theological school, and Harvard is an elegant college for young gentlemen.         ,        . The university has a baseball field under a glass roof;        ; its buildings stretch for many miles;      ; it employs hundreds of young Ph.D.s to accelerate the training of students in Sanskrit, navigation, bookkeeping, eyeglass fitting, sanitary engineering, Provencal poetry, customs regulations, turnip cultivation, automobile design, the history of the city of Voronezh, the peculiarities of Matthew Arnold's style, the diagnosis of kymoparalytic myohypertrophy, and department store advertising.             , , ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,   ,    ,      . Its president is the foremost expert in the United States on money-making and table speeches;              ; and Winnemac was the first university in the world to introduce radio transmission of its correspondence courses.              .

This is not some college for young snobs, devoted to idle trifles.   -    ,   . It is the property of the citizens of the state, and the citizens of the state need (or are led to believe they need) a factory for turning out men and women who will lead moral lives, play bridge, drive good cars, be enterprising in business, and occasionally mention this or that book, although everyone knows they have no time to read.     ,     (  ,   )       ,      ,    ,     ,            ,   ,    . It is a Ford factory;    ; the cars it turns out, although they rattle, are impeccably standardized, and their parts can be easily interchanged from one to another.      ,   ,          .

The influence of Winnemac University and the number of its students are growing every hour, and it can be expected that by 1950 it will have created an entirely new world civilization - more powerful, more vigorous, more pure.           ,   ,   1950          ,  ,  .

In 1904, when Martin Arrowsmith, having received the degree of Bachelor of Science and Arts, was preparing to enter the medical faculty, Winnemac had only five thousand students, but it was already a fairly lively center.  1904 ,   ,      ,      ,      ,      .

Martin was twenty-one years old.     . He still looked pale, in contrast to his sleek black hair, but he was a decent runner, a good center in basketball, and an avid hockey player.            ,    ,       . The female students whispered about his "romantic looks";     " "; but since this was before the invention of the sex problem and before the era of kissing parties, they spoke of him only from a distance, and he did not know that he could become the hero of love stories.               ,       ,    ,       . For all his stubbornness, he was shy.       . He was not entirely inexperienced in caresses, but he did not turn them into an occupation.       ,      . His company consisted of young men whose masculine pride was to smoke a greasy corn pipe and wear a greasy sweater.     ,            .

The university became his world.    . Elk Mills no longer existed for him. -     . Doc Vickerson was dead, buried and forgotten;   ,    ; Martin's father and mother died, leaving him with only enough money to finish university.     ,       . His life's goal was chemistry and physics, with a view to biology the following year.             .

Martin's idol was Professor Edward Edwards, head of the chemistry department, known to everyone by the nickname "Double Edwards."      ,   ,     "-". Edwards' knowledge of the history of chemistry was immense.       . He read Arabic and infuriated his colleagues by insisting that the Arabs had anticipated all the results of their research.   -      , ,       . Professor Edwards himself never did any research.       . He sat in front of the fireplace, stroked his shepherd dog and chuckled into his beard.    ,       .

That evening Double-Edwards gave one of his usual parties, always eagerly attended.    -      ,   . He leaned back in a brown plush chair and joked quietly, to the delight of Martin and five or six other young chemistry enthusiasts, teasing Dr. Norman Brumfitt, the English literature professor.                 -   ,    ,   . The room was full of merriment, beer and Brumfitt.    ,   .

Every school has its rebel, destined to awe and confound the crowded lecture halls.       ,        . Even in such an intensely virtuous institution as the University of Winnemac, there was such a rebelthis same Norman Brumfit.    - ,   ,   ,     . He was free to speak of himself as an amoral being, an agnostic, and a socialist, since everyone knew that he was celibate, a Presbyterian, and a Republican.      ,    ,   ,    ,    ,        . Today, Brumfit was in good spirits.     . He insisted that whenever we deal with a man of genius, it can be proven that he has Jewish blood.  ,   ,       ,  ,      . As always happens at Winnemac, when the subject of Judaism comes up, the conversation turned to Max Gottlieb, professor of bacteriology in the medical department.     ,     ,     ,     .

Professor Gottlieb was an enigma at the university.     . It was known that he was a Jew, that he was born and educated in Germany, and that his work on immunology had won him fame in the East and Europe.  ,   ,                     . He rarely left his dilapidated brown house, unless it was to return to the laboratory in the evening, and few of the students who were not in his course knew him by sight;        ,   ,     ,     ,    ,    ; but everyone had heard of him - a tall, thin, dark-faced recluse.        ,    . Thousands of fables circulated about him.     . They said that he was the son of a German prince, that he was incredibly rich and lived as meagerly as other professors, only because he carried out mysterious and expensive experiments - perhaps even involving human sacrifices. ,     ,         ,    ,  ,       ,  ,     . They said that he had achieved the ability to create life in the laboratory, that by vaccinating monkeys, he speaks monkey language, that he was expelled from Germany as a devil worshipper and anarchist and that every evening he secretly drinks real champagne with dinner. ,        , ,   ,       ,                     .

Tradition did not allow professors and lecturers to criticize their colleagues in the presence of students, but no one dared to consider Max Gottlieb a colleague.            ,         . He was as impersonal as a cold northeast wind.   ,   - . Dr. Brumfitt orated:   :

 I am, I dare say, liberal enough in the question of the rights of science, but with a man like Gottlieb... I am ready to believe that he knows all about material forces, but it astonishes me when such a man blindly closes his eyes to the vital force that creates all others.   ,  ,      ,    ,     ,       ,   ,         ,   . He maintains that knowledge is worthless unless it is based on figures.  ,     ,     . Excellent! ! If any of you young luminaries can take and measure the genius of Ben Jonson with a tailor's tape measure, then I will agree that we poor philologists, with our undoubtedly absurd faith in beauty, and fidelity to ideals, and in the world of dreams, that we are on the wrong track!  -  ,  ,         ,   ,  ,  ,       ,   ,    ,      !

Martin Arrowsmith did not quite grasp the precise meaning of these words, but in his youthful ardor he was not at all embarrassed.          ,         . He was relieved to hear Professor Edwards, from amidst the thicket of beard and tobacco smoke, utter something strangely resembling ugh, the abyss!    ,                ", ! and, interrupting Brumfit, took over the conversation himself. " ,  ,   . At another time, Double would have asserted with amiable sarcasm that Gottlieb was a mortician who spent year after year destroying the theories of other scientists, while himself contributing nothing new to science.          ,   "  ",        ,   ,        . But today, in defiance of such empty-headed verbalists as Brumfit, he began to extol Gottlieb for his long, lonely, invariably unsuccessful efforts to synthesize the antitoxin, for the devilish pleasure with which he refuted his own propositions along with those of others. Ehrlich or Sir Almroth Wright.  ,    -,  ,      , ,     ,   ,               . He also spoke of Gottlieb's famous book, "Immunology," which has been read by seven-ninths of all people who have any chance of understanding itand there are nine of them in the whole world.        "",       ,     ,        .




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