《【英文文学】Nights with the Gods.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【英文文学】Nights with the Gods.docx（91页珍藏版）》请在taowenge.com淘文阁网|工程机械CAD图纸|机械工程制图|CAD装配图下载|SolidWorks_CaTia_CAD_UG_PROE_设计图分享下载上搜索。
1、【英文文学】Nights with the GodsFOREWORDThe great spirits of the past, chiefly Hellenes, recently revisited England. With a view to an exchange of ideas on English contemporary life, they met at night in various towns of Italy, where, by the favour of Dionysus, the author was allowed to be present, and to
2、 take notes at the proceedings. The following pages contain some of the speeches delivered in the Assembly of the Gods and Heroes.The Author.33 St Lukes Road,Notting Hill,London, W.THE FIRST NIGHTARISTOTLE ON SPECIALISM IN ENGLANDThe first night the gods and heroes assembled on the heights around Fl
3、orence. From the magnificent town there came only a faint glimmer of artificial light, and the Arno rolled its waves melodiously towards the sea. On a height full of convenient terraces, offering a view on the Lily of the Arno, on Fiesole, and on the finely undulating outlines of the Apennine Mounta
4、ins, the Assembly sat down. From afar one could see the bold lines of the copy of Michelangelos David on the hill. The evening was lovely and balmy. Zeus opened the meeting with a request directed to Alexander, King of Macedon, to ask his teacher Aristotle to entertain them with his experiences at t
5、he seats of modern learning and study. Alexander did so, and the grave Stagirite, mellowed by the years, addressed the Assembly as follows:All my mortal life I have tried, by reading, by making vast collections of natural objects and animals, and by the closest thinking on the facts furnished to me
6、by men of all sorts of professions and crafts, to get at some unity of knowledge. I held, and still hold, that just as Nature is one, so ought KnowPg 2ledge too to be. I have written a very large number of treatises, many of which, thanks to Thy Providence, O Zeus, have escaped the smallpox called c
7、ommentaries, in that the little ones never got possession of those works. But while always loving detail and single facts, I never lost sight of the connection of facts. As a coin, whether a penny or a sovereign, has no currency unless the image of the prince is cut out on it, even so has no fact sc
8、ientific value unless the image of an underlying general principle is grafted thereon. This great truth I taught all my pupils, and I hoped that men would carefully observe it in all their studies. When then I went amongst the little ones, I expected them to do as I had taught their teachers to do.
9、However, what I found was, O Zeus, the funniest of all things.On my visit to what they call Universities I happened to call, in the first place, on a professor who said he studied history. In my time I believed that history was not as suggestive of philosophical truths as is poetry. Since then I hav
10、e somewhat altered my view. Naturally enough I was curious to know what my Professor of History thought of that, and I asked him to that effect. He looked at me with a singular smile and said: My young friend (I had assumed the appearance of a student), my young friend, history is neither more nor l
11、ess than a science. As such it consists of a long array of specialities. And which, I asked timidly, is your special period? Whereupon the professor gravely said: The afternoons of the year 1234 A.D. While everybody present in the Assembly, including even St Francis of Assisi, laughed at this point
12、of Aristotles narrative,Pg 3 Diogenes exclaimed: Why has the good man not selected the nights of that year? It would greatly reduce his labours.A peal of laughter rewarded the lively remark. Aristotle resumed his tale, and said: When the professor saw that I was a little amused at his statement, he
13、frowned on me and exclaimed in a deep voice, if with frequent stammerings, which as I subsequently learnt is the chief attraction of their diction, My young friend, you must learn to understand that we modern historians have discovered a method so subtle, and so effective, that, with all deference b
14、e it said, we are in some respects stronger even than the gods. For the gods cannot change the past; but we modern historians can. We do it every day of our lives, and some of us have obtained a very remarkable skill at it.At this point of Aristotles narrative Homeric laughter seized all present, an
15、d Aristophanes patted the Stagirite on the back, saying: Pray, consider yourself engaged. At the next performance of my best comedy you will be my protagonist. Aristotle thanked him with much grace, and continued: I was naturally very curious to learn what my Professor of History thought of the grea
16、t Greeks of my own time and of that of my ancestors. I mentioned Homer. I had barely done so but what my professor burst into a coarse and disdainful guffaw.Homer? he exclaimed; Homer?but of whom do you speak? Homer is nothing more nor less than a multiple syndicate of street-ballad-singers who, by
17、a belated process of throwing back the reflex of present and modern events to remote ages,Pg 4 and by the well-known means of literary contamination, epical syncretism, and religious, mythop?ic, and subconscious impersonation have been hashed into the appearance of one great poet.Our critical method
18、s, my young friend, are so keen that, to speak by way of simile, we are able to spot, from looking at the footprints of a man walking in the sand, what sort of buttons he wore on his cuffs.Poor Cuvierotherwise one of my revered colleaguesused to say: Give me a tooth of an animal and I will reconstru
19、ct the rest of the animals body. What is Cuviers feat as compared with ours? He still wanted a tooth; he still was in need of so clumsy and palpable a thing as a tooth; perhaps a molar. We, the super-Cuviers of history, we do not want a tooth any more than toothache; we want nothing. No tooth, no fo
20、otprint even, simply nothing. Is it not divine? We form, as it were, an Ex Nihilo Club. We have nothing, we want nothing, and yet give everything. Although we have neither leg to stand on, nor tooth to bite with, we staunchly prove that Homer was not Homer, but a lot of Homers. Is that not marvellou
21、s? But even this, my young friend, is only a trifle. We have done far greater things.These ancient Greeks (quite clever fellows, I must tell you, and some of them could write grammatical Greek), these ancient Greeks had, amongst other remarkable men, one called Aristotle. He wrote quite a number of
22、works; of course, not quite as many as he thought he did. For we have proved by our Ex Nihilo methods that much of what he thought he had written was not written by him, butPg 5 dictated. We have gone even so far (I myself, although used to our exploits, stand sometimes agape at our sagacity), we ha
23、ve gone so far as to prove that in the dictation of some of his writings Aristotle was repeatedly interrupted by letters or telephonic messages, which accounts for gaps and other shortcomings.Well, this man Aristotle (for, we have not yet pluralised him, although Ibut this would pass your horizon, m
24、y young friend)this clever man has left us, amongst other works, one called Politics. It is not wanting in quality, and it is said, if with certain doubts, that there are a few things to be learnt from it. It is, of course, also said that no professor has ever learnt them. But this is mere calumny.
25、Look at their vast commentaries. Of course, how can one accept some of the glaring fallacies of Aristotle? Imagine, that man Aristotle wants us to believe that nearly all Greek states were founded, equipped with a constitution, and in a word, completely fitted out by one man in each case. Thus, that
26、 Sparta was founded, washed, dressed, fed, and educated by one Lycurgus. How ridiculous!Having proved, as we have, that Homers poetry, a mere book, was made by a Joint Stock Company, Unlimited, how can we admit that a big and famous state like Sparta was ordered, cut out, tailored, stuffed and set o
27、n foot by one man? Where would be Evolution? If a state like Sparta was made in the course of a few months by one man, what would Evolution do with all the many, many years and ages she has to drag along? Why, she would die with ennui, bored to death. Can we admit that? Can one let Evolution die? Is
28、 she notPg 6 a nice, handy, comely Evolution, and so useful in the household that we cannot be happy until we get her? To believe in a big, important state like Sparta having been completely established by one man is like saying that my colleague, the Professor of Zoology, taking a shilling bottle o
29、f Bovril, has reconstituted out of its contents a live ox walking stately into his lecture-room. Hah-hah-hah! Very good joke. (Secretary! Put it into my table-talk! Voltairian joke! serious, but not grave.)Now, you see, my young friend, in that capital point Aristotle was most childishly mistaken; a
30、nd even so in many another point. We have definitely done away with all state-founders of the ancients. Romulus is a myth; so is Theseus; so is Moses; so is Samson (not to speak of Delilah); so is everybody who pretended to have founded a city-state. Since he never existed, how could he have founded
31、 anything? Could I found a city-state? Or any state, except a certain state of mind, in which I say that no single man can found a city-state? Could I? Of course, I could not. Well then, how could Lycurgus? Was he a LL.D.? Was he a member of the British Academy? Was he a professor at Oxford? Had he
32、written numerous letters to The Times? Was he subscriber to so respectable a paper as The Spectator? It is ridiculous to speak of such a thing. Lycurgus founding Sparta! It is too amusing for words. These are all myths. Whatever we cannot understand, we call a myth; and since we do not understand ma
33、ny things, we get every day a richer harvest of myths. We are full of them. We are the real living mythology.To this long oration, Aristotle continued, IPg 7 retorted as calmly as I could, that we Greeks had states totally different from those of the moderns, just as the latter had a Church system a
34、bsolutely different from our religious institutions; so that if anyone had tried to persuade an Athenian of my time that a few hundred years later there would be Popes, or single men claiming and obtaining the implicit obedience of all believers in all countries, the Athenian would sooner have gone
35、mad than believe such stuff. For, to him, as a Greek, it must have seemed hopelessly incredible that an office such as that of the universal Pope should ever be tolerated; or, in other words, that a single man should ever be given such boundless spiritual power. I said all that with much apparent de
36、ference; but my professor got more and more out of control.What, said he, what do you drag in Popes for? We talk of Lycurgus, not of Popes. Was Lycurgus a Christian? Let us stick to the point. The point is that Lycurgus never existed, since so many professors, who do exist beyond doubt, deny his his
37、torical existence. Now, either you deny the existence of these professors, which you cant; or you deny that of Lycurgus, which you must. Existence cannot include non-existence. For, non-existence is, is it not?the negation of existence. And since the professors exist, their non-existence would invol
38、ve us in the most exasperating contradictions with them, with ourselves, and with the daily Press. This, however, would be a disaster too awful to be seriously thought of. Consequently, Lycurgus did not exist; nor did any other state-founding personality in Greek or Roman times.In fact when you come
39、 to think of it, nobodyPg 8 ever existed except ourselves. Adam was not; he will be at the end of ends. The whole concept of the world is wrong as understood by the vulgar. Those old Greek and Roman heroes, like Aristomenes, Coriolanus, Cincinnatus, never existed for a day. Nor did the Doric Migrati
40、on, the Twelve Tables, and lots of other so-called events. They have been invented by schoolmasters for purposes of exams. Did Dracos laws ever exist? Ridiculous. That man Aristotle speaks of them, but it is as evident as soap that he invented them for mods. or other exams. of his.The vulgar constan
41、tly ask me whether or no history repeats itself. What, for goodness sake, does that matter to me? It is sufficient for all purposes that historians repeat each other, for it is in that way that historical truth is established. Or do not the great business-princes thus establish their reputation? The
42、y go on repeating Best furniture at Staples, Best furniture at Staples, three hundred and sixty-five times a year, in three hundred and sixty-five papers a day. By repetition of the same thing they establish truth. So do we historians. Thats business. What, under the circumstances, does it matter, w
43、hether history itself does or does not repeat itself?One arrogant fellow who published a wretched book on General History, thought wonders what he did not do by saying, that History does repeat itself in institutions, but never in events or persons. Can such drivel be tolerated! Why, the repetition
44、by and through persons (read: historians) is the very soul of history. We in this country have said and written in and out of time and on every sort ofPg 9 paper, that the Decline and Fall of the Burmese Empire is the greatest historical work ever written by a Byzantine, or a post-Byzantine. We have
45、 said it so frequently, so incessantly, that at present it is an established truth. Who would dare to say that it is not? Why, the very Daily Nail would consider such a person as being beneath it.We real historians go for facts only. Ideas are sheer dilettantism. Give us facts, nothing but single, l
46、imited, middle-class facts. In the Republic of Letters we do not suffer any lordly ideas, no more than the idea of lords. One fact is as good as another, and far worse. Has not our greatest authority taught that the British Empire was established in and by absent-mindedness, that is, without a trace
47、 of reasoned ideas? As the British Empire, even so the British historians, and, cela vo sang dir, all the other historians. Mind is absent. Mind is a periodical; not a necessity. We solid researchers crawl from one fact to another for crawlings sake.The gods and heroes were highly amused with the ta
48、le of Aristotle, and it was with genuine delight that they saw him resume the story of his experiences at the seats of learning. When I left the Professor of History, continued Aristotle, I felt somewhat heavy and dull. I could not easily persuade myself that such utter confusion should reign in the
49、 study of history after so many centuries of endless research. I hoped that the little onesPg 10 might have made more real advance in philosophy; and with a view to ascertain the fact, I entered a lecturing hall where a professor was even then holding forth on my treatise De Anima. He had just published a thick book on my little treatise, although (or perhaps because?.) anothe