The Centaur

14 hrs. 43 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author John Updike

Narrator Viktor Pronin

Description

The novel bewilders with its unusualness, because it intertwines ancient Greek myths and modern reality.

Updike identifies his hero with the centaur Chiron—who sacrifices himself, like Christ, and his immortality for humanity—thus enabling the writer to elevate the everyday problems of a schoolteacher to the level of eternal themes…

Caldwell turned away, and at that very moment an arrow pierced his ankle. The class erupted in laughter. Pain shot up along the thin core of his shin, bored through the knee’s folds, and, growing, surged into his abdomen. He stared at the blackboard on which he had just written in chalk: 5,000,000,000—the assumed age of the universe in years. The class’s laughter, first breaking out as surprised loud barking, turned into a unified jeering, surrounding him from all sides, destroying the solitude he so craved—he wanted to keep the pain all to himself, to measure its strength, to listen as it would fade, to dissect it carefully. Pain sent a tentacle into his skull, spreading wet wings in his chest, and suddenly—blinded by a bloody fog—it seemed to him that he himself was an enormous bird that had shaken itself awake from sleep. The board, washed since the evening, was covered with whitish smears like a film and enveloped his consciousness. Pain pressed with furry paws on his heart and lungs; it crept up to his throat, and it seemed to him now that his brain was a piece of meat he had lifted high on a plate to save it from the hungry teeth of predators. Several boys in bright shirts of all the colors of the rainbow jumped up, flung into the dirty shoes onto the hinged seats of their desks, with sparkling eyes—they continued tormenting their teacher. It was impossible to endure this kind of pandemonium. Caldwell limped to the door and shut it behind him under a savage, triumphant roar.