But the centuries to come, of which the fluttering, chirping gentlemen are prone5 to talk largely, will have something to say in the matter. And when they, the future centuries, quest back to the nineteenth century to find what manner of century it was — to find, not what the people of the nineteenth century thought they thought, but what they really thought, not what they thought they ought to do, but what they really did do, then a certain man, Kipling, will be read — and read with understanding. “They thought they read him with understanding, those people of the nineteenth century,” the future centuries will say; “and then they thought there was no understanding in him, and after that they did not know what they thought.”
But this is over-severe. It applies only to that class which serves a function somewhat similar to that served by the populace of old time in Rome. This is the unstable6, mob-minded mass, which sits on the fence, ever ready to fall this side or that and indecorously clamber back again; which puts a Democratic administration into office one election, and a Republican the next; which discovers and lifts up a prophet to-day that it may stone him to-morrow; which clamours for the book everybody else is reading, for no reason under the sun save that everybody else is reading it. This is the class of whim7 and caprice, of fad8 and vogue9, the unstable, incoherent, mob-mouthed, mob-minded mass, the “monkey-folk,” if you please, of these latter days. Now it may be reading The Eternal City. Yesterday it was reading The Master Christian10, and some several days before that it was reading Kipling. Yes, almost to his shame be it, these folk were reading him. But it was not his fault. If he depended upon them he well deserves to be dead and buried and never to rise again. But to them, let us be thankful, he never lived. They thought he lived, but he was as dead then as he is now and as he always will be.
He could not help it because he became the vogue, and it is easily understood. When he lay ill, fighting with close grapples with death, those who knew him were grieved. They were many, and in many voices, to the rim11 of the Seven Seas, they spoke12 their grief. Whereupon, and with celerity, the mob-minded mass began to inquire as to this man whom so many mourned. If everybody else mourned, it were fit that they mourn too. So a vast wail13 went up. Each was a spur to the other’s grief, and each began privately14 to read this man they had never read and publicly to proclaim this man they had always read. And straightaway next day they drowned their grief in a sea of historical romance and forgot all about him. The reaction was inevitable15. Emerging from the sea into which they had plunged16, they became aware that they had so soon forgotten him, and would have been ashamed, had not the fluttering, chirping men said, “Come, let us bury him.” And they put him in a hole, quickly, out of their sight.
And when they have crept into their own little holes, and smugly laid themselves down in their last long sleep, the future centuries will roll the stone away and he will come forth17 again. For be it known: That man of us is imperishable who makes his century imperishable. That man of us who seizes upon the salient facts of our life, who tells what we thought, what we were, and for what we stood — that man shall be the mouthpiece to the centuries, and so long as they listen he shall endure.
We remember the caveman. We remember him because he made his century imperishable. But, unhappily, we remember him dimly, in a collective sort of way, because he memorialized his century dimly, in a collective sort of way. He had no written speech, so he left us rude scratchings of beasts and things, cracked marrow-bones, and weapons of stone. It was the best expression of which he was capable. Had he scratched his own particular name with the scratchings of beasts and things, stamped his cracked marrowbones with his own particular seal, trade-marked his weapons of stone with his own particular device, that particular man would we remember. But he did the best he could, and we remember him as best we may.
Homer takes his place with Achilles and the Greek and Trojan heroes. Because he remembered them, we remember him. Whether he be one or a dozen men, or a dozen generations of men, we remember him. And so long as the name of Greece is known on the lips of men, so long will the name of Homer be known. There are many such names, linked with their times, which have come down to us, many more which will yet go down; and to them, in token that we have lived, must we add some few of our own.
Dealing18 only with the artist, be it understood, only those artists will go down who have spoken true of us. Their truth must be the deepest and most significant, their voices clear and strong, definite and coherent. Half-truths and partial-truths will not do, nor will thin piping voices and quavering lays. There must be the cosmic quality in what they sing. They must seize upon and press into enduring art-forms the vital facts of our existence. They must tell why we have lived, for without any reason for living, depend upon it, in the time to come, it will be as though we had never lived. Nor are the things that were true of the people a thousand years or so ago true of us to-day. The romance of Homer’s Greece is the romance of Homer’s Greece. That is undeniable. It is not our romance. And he who in our time sings the romance of Homer’s Greece cannot expect to sing it so well as Homer did, nor will he be singing about us or our romance at all. A machine age is something quite different from an heroic age. What is true of rapid-fire guns, stock-exchanges, and electric motors, cannot possibly be true of hand-flung javelins19 and whirring chariot wheels. Kipling knows this. He has been telling it to us all his life, living it all his life in the work he has done.
What the Anglo–Saxon has done, he has memorialized. And by Anglo–Saxon is not meant merely the people of that tight little island on the edge of the Western Ocean. Anglo–Saxon stands for the English-speaking people of all the world, who, in forms and institutions and traditions, are more peculiarly and definitely English than anything else. This people Kipling has sung. Their sweat and blood and toil20 have been the motives22 of his songs; but underlying23 all the motives of his songs is the motive21 of motives, the sum of them all and something more, which is one with what underlies24 all the Anglo–Saxon sweat and blood and toil; namely, the genius of the race. And this is the cosmic quality. Both that which is true of the race for all time, and that which is true of the race for all time applied25 to this particular time, he has caught up and pressed into his art-forms. He has caught the dominant26 note of the Anglo–Saxon and pressed it into wonderful rhythms which cannot be sung out in a day and which will not be sung out in a day.
The Anglo–Saxon is a pirate, a land robber and a sea robber. Underneath27 his thin coating of culture, he is what he was in Morgan’s time, in Drake’s time, in William’s time, in Alfred’s time. The blood and the tradition of Hengist and Horsa are in his veins28. In battle he is subject to the blood-lusts29 of the Berserkers of old. Plunder30 and booty fascinate him immeasurably. The schoolboy of to-day dreams the dream of Clive and Hastings. The Anglo–Saxon is strong of arm and heavy of hand, and he possesses a primitive31 brutality32 all his own. There is a discontent in his blood, an unsatisfaction that will not let him rest, but sends him adventuring over the sea and among the lands in the midst of the sea. He does not know when he is beaten, wherefore the term “bulldog” is attached to him, so that all may know his unreasonableness33. He has “some care as to the purity of his ways, does not wish for strange gods, nor juggle34 with intellectual phantasmagoria.” He loves freedom, but is dictatorial35 to others, is self-willed, has boundless36 energy, and does things for himself. He is also a master of matter, an organizer of law, and an administrator37 of justice.
And in the nineteenth century he has lived up to his reputation. Being the nineteenth century and no other century, and in so far different from all other centuries, he has expressed himself differently. But blood will tell, and in the name of God, the Bible, and Democracy, he has gone out over the earth, possessing himself of broad lands and fat revenues, and conquering by virtue38 of his sheer pluck and enterprise and superior machinery39.
Now the future centuries, seeking to find out what the nineteenth century Anglo–Saxon was and what were his works, will have small concern with what he did not do and what he would have liked to do. These things he did do, and for these things will he be remembered. His claim on posterity40 will be that in the nineteenth century he mastered matter; his twentieth-century claim will be, in the highest probability, that he organized life — but that will be sung by the twentieth-century Kiplings or the twenty-first-century Kiplings. Rudyard Kipling of the nineteenth century has sung of “things as they are.” He has seen life as it is, “taken it up squarely,” in both his hands, and looked upon it. What better preachment upon the Anglo–Saxon and what he has done can be had than The Bridge Builders? what better appraisement41 than The White Man’s Burden? As for faith and clean ideals — not of “children and gods, but men in a world of men”— who has preached them better than he?
Primarily, Kipling has stood for the doer as opposed to the dreamer — the doer, who lists not to idle songs of empty days, but who goes forth and does things, with bended back and sweated brow and work-hardened hands. The most characteristic thing about Kipling is his lover of actuality, his intense practicality, his proper and necessary respect for the hard-headed, hard-fisted fact. And, above all, he has preached the gospel of work, and as potently42 as Carlyle ever preached. For he has preached it not only to those in the high places, but to the common men, to the great sweating thong43 of common men who hear and understand yet stand agape at Carlyle’s turgid utterance44. Do the thing to your hand, and do it with all your might. Never mind what the thing is; so long as it is something. Do it. Do it and remember Tomlinson, sexless and soulless Tomlinson, who was denied at Heaven’s gate.
The blundering centuries have perseveringly45 pottered and groped through the dark; but it remained for Kipling’s century to roll in the sun, to formulate46, in other words, the reign47 of law. And of the artists in Kipling’s century, he of them all has driven the greater measure of law in the more consummate48 speech:
Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience49.
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford50.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap what he hath sown;
By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.
— And so it runs, from McAndrew’s Law, Order, Duty, and Restraint, to his last least line, whether of The Vampire51 or The Recessional. And no prophet out of Israel has cried out more loudly the sins of the people, nor called them more awfully52 to repent53.
“But he is vulgar, he stirs the puddle54 of life,” object the fluttering, chirping gentlemen, the Tomlinsonian men. Well, and isn’t life vulgar? Can you divorce the facts of life? Much of good is there, and much of ill; but who may draw aside his garment and say, “I am none of them”? Can you say that the part is greater than the whole? that the whole is more or less than the sum of the parts? As for the puddle of life, the stench is offensive to you? Well, and what then? Do you not live in it? Why do you not make it clean? Do you clamour for a filter to make clean only your own particular portion? And, made clean, are you wroth because Kipling has stirred it muddy again? At least he has stirred it healthily, with steady vigour55 and good-will. He has not brought to the surface merely its dregs, but its most significant values. He has told the centuries to come of our lyings and our lusts, but he has also told the centuries to come of the seriousness which is underneath our lyings and our lusts. And he has told us, too, and always has he told us, to be clean and strong and to walk upright and manlike.
“But he has no sympathy,” the fluttering gentlemen chirp2. “We admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical56 sense; but . . . he is totally devoid57 of sympathy.” Dear! Dear! What is to be understood by this? Should he sprinkle his pages with sympathetic adjectives, so many to the paragraph, as the country compositor sprinkles commas? Surely not. The little gentlemen are not quite so infinitesimal as that. There have been many tellers58 of jokes, and the greater of them, it is recorded, never smiled at their own, not even in the crucial moment when the audience wavered between laughter and tears.
And so with Kipling. Take The Vampire, for instance. It has been complained that there is no touch of pity in it for the man and his ruin, no sermon on the lesson of it, no compassion59 for the human weakness, no indignation at the heartlessness. But are we kindergarten children that the tale be told to us in words of one syllable60? Or are we men and women, able to read between the lines what Kipling intended we should read between the lines? “For some of him lived, but the most of him died.” Is there not here all the excitation in the world for our sorrow, our pity, our indignation? And what more is the function of art than to excite states of consciousness complementary to the thing portrayed61? The colour of tragedy is red. Must the artist also paint in the watery62 tears and wan-faced grief? “For some of him lived, but the most of him died”— can the heartache of the situation be conveyed more achingly? Or were it better that the young man, some of him alive but most of him dead, should come out before the curtain and deliver a homily to the weeping audience?
The nineteenth century, so far as the Anglo–Saxon is concerned, was remarkable63 for two great developments: the mastery of matter and the expansion of the race. Three great forces operated in it: nationalism, commercialism, democracy — the marshalling of the races, the merciless, remorseless laissez faire of the dominant bourgeoisie, and the practical, actual working government of men within a very limited equality. The democracy of the nineteenth century is not the democracy of which the eighteenth century dreamed. It is not the democracy of the Declaration, but it is what we have practised and lived that reconciles it to the fact of the “lesser breeds without the Law.”
It is of these developments and forces of the nineteenth century that Kipling has sung. And the romance of it he has sung, that which underlies and transcends64 objective endeavour, which deals with race impulses, race deeds, and race traditions. Even into the steam-laden speech of his locomotives has he breathed our life, our spirit, our significance. As he is our mouthpiece, so are they his mouthpieces. And the romance of the nineteenth-century man as he has thus expressed himself in the nineteenth century, in shaft65 and wheel, in steel and steam, in far journeying and adventuring, Kipling has caught up in wondrous66 songs for the future centuries to sing.
If the nineteenth century is the century of the Hooligan, then is Kipling the voice of the Hooligan as surely as he is the voice of the nineteenth century. Who is more representative? Is David Harum more representative of the nineteenth century? Is Mary Johnston, Charles Major, or Winston Churchill? Is Bret Harte? William Dean Howells? Gilbert Parker? Who of them all is as essentially67 representative of nineteenth-century life? When Kipling is forgotten, will Robert Louis Stevenson be remembered for his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, his Kidnapped and his David Balfour? Not so. His Treasure Island will be a classic, to go down with Robinson Crusoe, Through the Looking–Glass, and The Jungle Books. He will be remembered for his essays, for his letters, for his philosophy of life, for himself. He will be the well beloved, as he has been the well beloved. But his will be another claim upon posterity than what we are considering. For each epoch68 has its singer. As Scott sang the swan song of chivalry69 and Dickens the burgher-fear of the rising merchant class, so Kipling, as no one else, has sung the hymn70 of the dominant bourgeoisie, the war march of the white man round the world, the triumphant71 paean72 of commercialism and imperialism73. For that will he be remembered.
Oakland, California.
October 1901.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
idol
|
|
| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
chirp
|
|
| v.(尤指鸟)唧唧喳喳的叫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
chirping
|
|
| 鸟叫，虫鸣( chirp的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
winding
|
|
| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
prone
|
|
| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
unstable
|
|
| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
whim
|
|
| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
fad
|
|
| n.时尚；一时流行的狂热；一时的爱好 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
Vogue
|
|
| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
Christian
|
|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
rim
|
|
| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
wail
|
|
| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
privately
|
|
| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
inevitable
|
|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
plunged
|
|
| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
dealing
|
|
| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
javelins
|
|
| n.标枪( javelin的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
toil
|
|
| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
motive
|
|
| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
motives
|
|
| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
underlying
|
|
| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
underlies
|
|
| v.位于或存在于（某物）之下( underlie的第三人称单数 )；构成…的基础（或起因），引起 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
applied
|
|
| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
dominant
|
|
| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
underneath
|
|
| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
veins
|
|
| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
lusts
|
|
| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
plunder
|
|
| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
brutality
|
|
| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
unreasonableness
|
|
| 无理性； 横逆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
juggle
|
|
| v.变戏法，纂改，欺骗，同时做；n.玩杂耍，纂改，花招 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
dictatorial
|
|
| adj. 独裁的，专断的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
boundless
|
|
| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
administrator
|
|
| n.经营管理者，行政官员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
virtue
|
|
| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
machinery
|
|
| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
posterity
|
|
| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
appraisement
|
|
| n.评价，估价；估值 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
potently
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
thong
|
|
| n.皮带；皮鞭；v.装皮带 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
utterance
|
|
| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
perseveringly
|
|
| 坚定地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
formulate
|
|
| v.用公式表示；规划；设计；系统地阐述 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
reign
|
|
| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
consummate
|
|
| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
obedience
|
|
| n.服从，顺从 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
Ford
|
|
| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
vampire
|
|
| n.吸血鬼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
awfully
|
|
| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
repent
|
|
| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
puddle
|
|
| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
vigour
|
|
| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
rhythmical
|
|
| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
devoid
|
|
| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
tellers
|
|
| n.（银行）出纳员( teller的名词复数 )；（投票时的）计票员；讲故事等的人；讲述者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
compassion
|
|
| n.同情，怜悯 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
syllable
|
|
| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
portrayed
|
|
| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
watery
|
|
| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
remarkable
|
|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
transcends
|
|
| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的第三人称单数 )； 优于或胜过… | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
shaft
|
|
| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
wondrous
|
|
| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
essentially
|
|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
epoch
|
|
| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
chivalry
|
|
| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
hymn
|
|
| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
triumphant
|
|
| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
paean
|
|
| n.赞美歌，欢乐歌 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
imperialism
|
|
| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |