« There is a crime »: a new edition of the « Grapes of Anger » has come out

« The Grapes of Anger » – the novel of American writer John Steinbeck, honored with Pulitzer in 1940, has a new edition, Hummingbird reported. The translation is by Ventsislav K. Venkov. The book is part of the bibliophile collection of editions of the most significant and representative works of classics.

The minimalist design is the artist Ivo Rafailov.

« Grapes of Anger » is one of the most discussed books in the United States in the 20th century. John Steinbeck is criticized politically by both left and right because of his social commitment.

In Bulgaria, the novel is also known as « Anger of Ants » – an edition of « Folk Culture » since 1960, translated by Hristo Kanev. And in this edition, the drainage of the cover is minimalist.

« Grapes of Anger » has an impressive cinema under the direction of John Ford with Henry Fonda in the lead role. The film was awarded two Oscar awards in 1941 for directing and actress in supporting role.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) He is a novelist, publicist, playwright and essayist, a chronicler of bets and illusions of his time. He was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1962. The humanistic atmosphere of his work testifies to his impartial instinct for justice. Born in the California city of Salinas, Steinbeck has known the pain of local farmers and workers since the beginning of the 20th century.

His fiction works are penetrated by compassion to the dismantled, but they are further admired by the dominance of the human spirit and the fierce irreconcilability with the nature of power. Novels like « Grapes of Anger » and « The Winter of Our Dissatisfaction » continue to sound up -to -date in one sense or another. Their messages are understood as the universal truths of the difficult path that man and his soul in a society, whose virtues, are thinning at the expense of pandemic greed, opportunism and selfishness.

Dnevnik publishes an excerpt provided by the Hummingbird Publishing House.

From the « Grapes of Anger » by John Steinbeck

Chapter 25

The spring in California is wonderful. The valleys with flowering fruit trees turn into fragrant pink and white waters of the shallow sea. Then, from the old twisted stems, the first shoots of the grapes emerge and descend down to cover the stems. The lush hills are oval and soft as a female breast. And on the equal agricultural fields, miles of pale green lettuce, drained cauliflower and unearthly gray-green artichokes are sprayed.

Then the leaves appear on the trees, the petals of the fruit trees fall and sprinkle the ground with white and pink. The middle of the flowers inflate, grow and produce color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, and figs that harvest the color in the fruit itself. All of California weighs on fruit, and the fruit grows, the juices are gaining, and the branches are gradually overflowing with its weight, so they have to be put on the supports so that they do not break.

Behind all this fertility are understanding and knowledgeable people who are able to people; People who experiment with seeds and constantly create technologies for larger yields than plants whose roots will be able to resist millions of enemies in the soil: mold, insects, rust and head. These people work carefully and tirelessly to improve both the seed and the roots.

In addition, there are chemists who spray trees against pests, spray sulfur on the vineyards and eliminate diseases and rot, mildo and infections. Doctors prophylactics and doctors at the border points following the appearance of the fruit fly and the Japanese beetle, people who put the sick trees under quarantine, eradicate them and burn them, people with knowledge. The most caught of all are those who ashlade young trees and vines because they work with surgical accuracy and delicacy; They are required to have both the fingers and the hearts of the surgeon when they cut the bark, put the graft under it, and bandage the wound to protect it from the air.

It is great people. Between the rows are the cultivators, the spring grasses pull out and turn them to rot under the soil, so that it becomes more fertile; crush the soil to keep the water closer to the surface; They wrap the soil so that it holds puddles of water for irrigation, and destroy the roots of the weeds, which can take away from the water of the fruit trees.

And all this time the fruit does not stop collecting juices, and the vineyards bloom in long strands. And during the growth season the heat increases and the leaves become dark green. Blue plums are drained like small green eggs of chickens, and branches hang out of their weight on the supports. Solid green bulbs are also formed, and the first moss appears on the peaches. The flowers of the vineyards shake off their small petals and their hard grains turn into green buttons, and the buttons begin to gradually sway.

Men who work on the fields, the owners of small orchards look and calculate. The harvest is emerging as very good. And people are proud because the year is fruitful thanks to their knowledge. Their knowledge has transformed the world. Short, weak -boggedo has become large and high mining.

The small acids have become big and sweet, and that old grapes, which grew between the trees and fed the birds with its fine berries, gave rise to a thousand new varieties – both red, black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow – with each variety has its own characteristic taste. People in experienced stations have created new fruits: nectarines, forty varieties of blue plum and nuts with paper shells. And again they do not stop working: selection, grafting, changing, working tirelessly to make the Earth more fertile.

The cherries ripen first. They are bought at three cents and a half kilos. Fuck them, we can’t even get it for that money. Black cherries and red cherries, juicy and sweet; But the birds are in half every cherry, and the wasps are buzzing in every bird’s hole. And the pits are sprayed on the ground and dry with black rags hanging on them.

Purple plums soften and gain sugar. God, how do we pick them and dry them and treat them with sulfur? What wages to pay, and the lowest are many. And the purple plums make a carpet on the ground. First, their shells wrinkle and flocks of flies are packed on the feast, and the valley is filled with the aroma of sweet rot. Then their meat darkens and the harvest fades on the ground.

And pears turn yellow and soften. Five dollars per tonne. Five dollars for fifty boxes of twenty kilos. Trim and spray the trees, process the garden, berry, put in cartridges, truck loads, unload in the canning factory and what in the end? Fifty crates for five dollars. It won’t happen. And the yellow fruit pats on the ground and smears. The wasps hammer the trunk in the soft meat, and the smell of fermentation and rot begins to be rolled around. What about grapes, and we can’t produce good wine. Because it’s not in the buyers’ pocket. Tear the grapes from the vineyard – both the good, the rot, and the wasp of the wasps. Put everything in the press – both the handles, the dust, and the rot.

But there was mold and formic acid in the barrels.

Bump sulfur and tannin.

And the fermentation does not carry the rich aroma of wine, but the stench of rot and chemicals.

Abe, fuck him. There is an alcohol content. And one can get drunk with him. Small farmers watched the loans gradually flood them like a tide. They sprayed the fruit trees, but did not sell the harvested; They pushed and thundered, but failed to pick the yield. Knowledgeable people may have worked, judged, but nevertheless the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the rotting grape porridge in the barrels poison the air. Try her wine. There is no taste of grapes – only sulfur, tannin and alcohol.

This small orchard will be part of a large holding next year because the loans have suffocated its owner.

This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only large owners are capable of surviving as they also have canned factories. And four pears, after you peel them, cut them into halves, cook and canned, you still come out for fifteen cents. Yes, but canned pears do not spoil. They last for years.

The rot spreads throughout the state, and the sweet smell causes great grief everywhere. Those who pile up the trees and cause the seed to become fruitful and wholesale do not know how to give the hungry people to eat their yields. The creators of new fruits in this world cannot create a system for their fruits to be eaten. And this failure weighs on a huge grief over the whole state.

What the roots of the vines and the trees worked on should be destroyed to maintain the price, which is sadder and worse than anything else. Whole wagons with oranges are poured on the ground. People come from miles to take from the fruit, but they are forbidden. How will you make them buy a dozen oranges for twenty cents if they can just go and take them. Millions are starving; Millions need this fruit – and the golden mountains are flooded with kerosene.

And the country is filled with Gniloch’s stench.

Ships to burn coffee instead of fuel. Heat corn – release very high heat. Throw the potatoes into the river and put security on the shores so that people could not remove them from the water. He slaughtered the pigs, buried them and let them decompose and poison the soil.

There is a crime that is not enough to brand. There is grief that tears are not able to symbolize. There is a failure that all our successes collapse: both the fertile soil, and make a row of trees with strong logs and ripe fruit. And the children of Pelagra are sentenced to death because oranges do not make any profit. And the court doctors are forced to write in their death acts « died of malnutrition » because the food must rot – it is forced to rot.

The people come with nets to remove potatoes from the river, and the guards repel them; He arrives with his torn cars to get from the discarded oranges, but they are already for Kerosene. And the people stand and look silently as the potatoes move down the river, listening to the sketching pigs kill them in a single excavation and pouring them with a nasty lime, watching the orange hills decompose into a cavity; and the eyes of the people see the failure of the system; And in the eyes of the people, anger becomes stronger.

In the souls of the people, the grapes of anger are poured and weighted from juice; They weigh and are ready for grape harvest.