友情提示:如果本网页打开太慢或显示不完整,请尝试鼠标右键“刷新”本网页!
读书室 返回本书目录 加入书签 我的书架 我的书签 TXT全本下载 『收藏到我的浏览器』

first visit to new england-第12部分

快捷操作: 按键盘上方向键 ← 或 → 可快速上下翻页 按键盘上的 Enter 键可回到本书目录页 按键盘上方向键 ↑ 可回到本页顶部! 如果本书没有阅读完,想下次继续接着阅读,可使用上方 "收藏到我的浏览器" 功能 和 "加入书签" 功能!

finger on the 'Blithedale Romance' and said that I preferred that to the
others; his face lighted up; and he said that he believed the Germans
liked that best too。

Upon the whole we parted such good friends that when I offered to take
leave he asked me how long I was to be in Concord; and not only bade me
come to see him again; but said he would give me a card to Emerson; if I
liked。  I answered; of course; that I should like it beyond all things;
and he wrote on the back of his card something which I found; when I got
away; to be; 〃I find this young man worthy。〃  The quaintness; the little
stiffness of it; if one pleases to call it so; was amusing to one who was
not without his sense of humor; but the kindness filled me to the throat
with joy。  In fact; I entirely liked Hawthorne。  He had been as cordial
as so shy a man could show himself; and I perceived; with the repose
that nothing else can give; the entire sincerity of his soul。

Nothing could have been further from the behavior of this very great man
than any sort of posing; apparently; or a wish to affect me with a sense
of his greatness。  I saw that he was as much abashed by our encounter as
I was; he was visibly shy to the point of discomfort; but in no ignoble
sense was he conscious; and as nearly as he could with one so much his
younger he made an absolute equality between us。  My memory of him is
without alloy one of the finest pleasures of my life:  In my heart I paid
him the same glad homage that I paid Lowell and Holmes; and he did
nothing to make me think that I had overpaid him。  This seems perhaps
very little to say in his praise; but to my mind it is saying everything;
for I have known but few great men; especially of those I met in early
life; when I wished to lavish my admiration upon them; whom I have not
the impression of having left in my debt。  Then; a defect of the Puritan
quality; which I have found in many New…Englanders; is that; wittingly or
unwittingly; they propose themselves to you as an example; or if not
quite this; that they surround themselves with a subtle ether of
potential disapprobation; in which; at the first sign of unworthiness in
you; they helplessly suffer you to gasp and perish; they have good
hearts; and they would probably come to your succor out of humanity; if
they knew how; but they do not know how。  Hawthorne had nothing of this
about him; he was no more tacitly than he was explicitly didactic。
I thought him as thoroughly in keeping with his romances as Doctor Holmes
had seemed with his essays and poems; and I met him as I had met the
Autocrat in the supreme hour of his fame。  He had just given the world
the last of those incomparable works which it was to have finished from
his hand; the 'Marble Faun' had worthily followed; at a somewhat longer
interval than usual; the 'Blithedale Romance'; and the 'House of Seven
Gables'; and the 'Scarlet Letter'; and had; perhaps carried his name
higher than all the rest; and certainly farther。  Everybody was reading
it; and more or less bewailing its indefinite close; but yielding him
that full honor and praise which a writer can hope for but once in his
life。  Nobody dreamed that thereafter only precious fragments; sketches
more or less faltering; though all with the divine touch in them; were
further to enrich a legacy which in its kind is the finest the race has
received from any mind。  As I have said; we are always finding new
Hawthornes; but the illusion soon wears away; and then we perceive that
they were not Hawthornes at all; that he had some peculiar difference
from them; which; by and…by; we shall no doubt consent must be his
difference from all men evermore。

I am painfully aware that I have not summoned before the reader the image
of the man as it has always stood in my memory; and I feel a sort of
shame for my failure。  He was so altogether simple that it seems as if it
would be easy to do so; but perhaps a spirit from the other world would
be simple too; and yet would no more stand at parle; or consent to be
sketched; than Hawthorne。  In fact; he was always more or less merging
into the shadow; which was in a few years wholly to close over him; there
was nothing uncanny in his presence; there was nothing even unwilling;
but he had that apparitional quality of some great minds which kept
Shakespeare largely unknown to those who thought themselves his
intimates; and has at last left him a sort of doubt。  There was nothing
teasing or wilfully elusive in Hawthorne's impalpability; such as I
afterwards felt in Thoreau; if he was not there to your touch; it was no
fault of his; it was because your touch was dull; and wanted the use of
contact with such natures。  The hand passes through the veridical phantom
without a sense of its presence; but the phantom is none the less
veridical for all that。




XVI。

I kept the evening of the day I met Hawthorne wholly for the thoughts of
him; or rather for that reverberation which continues in the young
sensibilities after some important encounter。  It must have been the next
morning that I went to find Thoreau; and I am dimly aware of making one
or two failures to find him; if I ever really found him at all。

He is an author who has fallen into that abeyance; awaiting all authors;
great or small; at some time or another; but I think that with him; at
least in regard to his most important book; it can be only transitory。
I have not read the story of his hermitage beside Walden Pond since the
year 1858; but I have a fancy that if I should take it up now; I should
think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it
then。  It is no solution of the problem; men are not going to answer the
riddle of the painful earth by building themselves shanties and living
upon beans and watching ant…fights; but I do not believe Tolstoy himself
has more clearly shown the hollowness; the hopelessness; the unworthiness
of the life of the world than Thoreau did in that book。  If it were newly
written it could not fail of a far vaster acceptance than it had then;
when to those who thought and felt seriously it seemed that if slavery
could only be controlled; all things else would come right of themselves
with us。  Slavery has not only been controlled; but it has been
destroyed; and yet things have not begun to come right with us; but it
was in the order of Providence that chattel slavery should cease before
industrial slavery; and the infinitely crueler and stupider vanity and
luxury bred of it; should be attacked。  If there was then any prevision
of the struggle now at hand; the seers averted their eyes; and strove
only to cope with the less evil。  Thoreau himself; who had so clear a
vision of the falsity and folly of society as we still have it; threw
himself into the tide that was already; in Kansas and Virginia; reddened
with war; he aided and abetted the John Brown raid; I do not recall how
much or in what sort; and he had suffered in prison for his opinions and
actions。  It was this inevitable heroism of his that; more than his
literature even; made me wish to see him and revere him; and I do not
believe that I should have found the veneration difficult; when at last
I met him in his insufficient person; if he had otherwise been present to
my glowing expectation。  He came into the room a quaint; stump figure of
a man; whose effect of long trunk and short limbs was heightened by his
fashionless trousers being let down too low。  He had a noble face; with
tossed hair; a distraught eye; and a fine aquilinity of profile; which
made me think at once of Don Quixote and of Cervantes; but his nose
failed to add that foot to his stature which Lamb says a nose of that
shape will always give a man。  He tried to place me geographically after
he had given me a chair not quite so far off as Ohio; though still across
the whole room; for he sat against one wall; and I against the other;
but apparently he failed to pull himself out of his revery by the effort;
for he remained in a dreamy muse; which all my attempts to say something
fit about John Brown and Walden Pond seemed only to deepen upon him。
I have not the least doubt that I was needless and valueless about both;
and that what I said could not well have prompted an important response;
but I did my poor best; and I was terribly disappointed in the result。
The truth is that in those days I was a helplessly concrete young person;
and all forms of the abstract; the air…drawn; afflicted me like physical
discomforts。  I do not remember that Thoreau spoke of his books or of
himself at all; and when he began to speak of John Brown; it was not the
warm; palpable; loving; fearful old man of my conception; but a sort of
John Brown type; a John Brown ideal; a John Brown principle; which we
were somehow (with long pauses between the vague; orphic phrases) to
cherish; and to nourish ourselves upon。

It was not merely a defeat of my hopes; it was a rout; and I felt myself
so scattered over the field of thought that I could hardly bring my
forces together for retreat。  I must have made some effort; vain and
foolish enough; to rematerialize my old demigod; but when I came away it
was with
返回目录 上一页 下一页 回到顶部 1 0
快捷操作: 按键盘上方向键 ← 或 → 可快速上下翻页 按键盘上的 Enter 键可回到本书目录页 按键盘上方向键 ↑ 可回到本页顶部!
温馨提示: 温看小说的同时发表评论,说出自己的看法和其它小伙伴们分享也不错哦!发表书评还可以获得积分和经验奖励,认真写原创书评 被采纳为精评可以获得大量金币、积分和经验奖励哦!