Freeing us from all the compulsions and contacts of the railway, the bondage1 to fixed2 hours and the beaten track, the approach to each town through the area of ugliness and desolation created by the railway itself, it has given us back the wonder, the adventure and the novelty which enlivened the way of our posting grand-parents. Above all these recovered pleasures must be ranked the delight of taking a town unawares, stealing on it by back ways and unchronicled paths, and surprising in it some intimate aspect of past time, some silhouette3 hidden for half a century or more by the ugly mask of2 railway embankments and the iron bulk of a huge station. Then the villages that we missed and yearned4 for from the windows of the train—the unseen villages have been given back to us!—and nowhere could the importance of the recovery have been more delightfully6 exemplified than on a May afternoon in the Pas-de-Calais, as we climbed the long ascent7 beyond Boulogne on the road to Arras.
It is a delightful5 country, broken into wide waves of hill and valley, with hedge-rows high and leafy enough to bear comparison with the Kentish hedges among which our motor had left us a day or two before; and the villages, the frequent, smiling, happily-placed villages, will also meet successfully the more serious challenge of their English rivals—meet it on other grounds and in other ways, with paved market-places and clipped charmilles instead of gorse-fringed commons, with soaring belfries instead of square church towers, with less of verdure, but more, perhaps, of outline—certainly of line.
ARRAS: H?TEL DE VILLE
The country itself—so green, so full and close in texture8, so pleasantly diversified9 by clumps10 of woodland in the hollows, and by3 streams threading the great fields with light—all this, too, has the English, or perhaps the Flemish quality—for the border is close by—with the added beauty of reach and amplitude11, the deliberate gradual flow of level spaces into distant slopes, till the land breaks in a long blue crest12 against the seaward horizon.
There was much beauty of detail, also, in the smaller towns through which we passed: some of them high-perched on ridges13 that raked the open country, with old houses stumbling down at picturesque14 angles from the central market-place; others tucked in the hollows, among orchards15 and barns, with the pleasant country industries reaching almost to the doors of their churches. In the little villages a deep delicious thatch16 overhangs the plastered walls of cottages espaliered with pear-trees, and ducks splash in ponds fringed with hawthorn17 and laburnum; and in the towns there is almost always some note of character, of distinction—the gateway18 of a seventeenth century h?tel, the triple arch of a church-front, the spring of an old mossy apse, the stucco and black cross-beams of an ancient guild-house—and always the straight4 lime-walk, square-clipped or trained en berceau, with its sharp green angles and sharp black shade acquiring a value positively19 architectural against the high lights of the paved or gravelled place. Everything about this rich juicy land bathed in blond light is characteristically Flemish, even to the slow-moving eyes of the peasants, the bursting red cheeks of the children, the drowsy20 grouping of the cattle in flat pastures; and at Hesdin we felt the architectural nearness of the Low Countries in the presence of a fine town-hall of the late Renaissance21, with the peculiar22 “movement” of volutes and sculptured ornament—lime-stone against warm brick—that one associates with the civic23 architecture of Belgium: a fuller, less sensitive line than the French architect permits himself, with more massiveness and exuberance24 of detail.
This part of France, with its wide expanse of agricultural landscape, disciplined and cultivated to the last point of finish, shows how nature may be utilized25 to the utmost clod without losing its freshness and naturalness. In some regions of this supremely27 “administered” country, where space is more restricted, or the fortunate accidents5 of water and varying levels are lacking, the minute excessive culture, the endless ranges of potager wall, and the long lines of fruit-trees bordering straight interminable roads, may produce in the American traveller a reaction toward the unkempt, a momentary28 feeling that ragged29 road-sides and weedy fields have their artistic30 value. But here in northern France, where agriculture has mated with poetry instead of banishing31 it, one understands the higher beauty of land developed, humanised, brought into relation to life and history, as compared with the raw material with which the greater part of our own hemisphere is still clothed. In France everything speaks of long familiar intercourse32 between the earth and its inhabitants; every field has a name, a history, a distinct place of its own in the village polity; every blade of grass is there by an old feudal33 right which has long since dispossessed the worthless aboriginal34 weed.
As we neared Arras the road lost its pleasant windings35 and ran straight across a great plateau, with an occasional long dip and ascent that never deflected36 it from its purpose, and the villages became rarer, as they always do on the high6 wind-swept plains of France. Arras, however, was full of compensations for the dullness of the approach: a charming old grey town, with a great air of faded seventeenth-century opulence37, in which one would have liked to linger, picking out details of gateway and courtyard, of sculptured masks and wrought-iron balconies—if only a brief peep into the hotel had not so promptly38 quenched39 the impulse to spend a night there.
To Amiens therefore we passed on, passing again, toward sunset, into a more broken country, with lights just beginning to gleam through the windows of the charming duck-pond villages, and tall black crucifixes rising ghostly at the cross-roads; and night was obliterating40 the mighty41 silhouette of the cathedral as we came upon it at length by a long descent.
AMIENS: WEST FRONT OF THE CATHEDRAL
It is always a loss to arrive in a strange town after dark, and miss those preliminary stages of acquaintance that are so much more likely to be interesting in towns than in people; but the deprivation42 is partly atoned43 for by the sense of adventure with which, next morning, one casts one’s self upon the unknown. There is no conjectural44 first impression to be modified, perhaps7 got rid of: one’s mind presents a blank page for the town to write its name on.
At Amiens the autograph consists of one big word: the cathedral. Other, fainter writing may come out when one has leisure to seek for it; but the predominance of those mighty characters leaves, at first, no time to read between the lines. And here it may be noted45 that, out of Italy, it takes a town of exceptional strength of character to hold its own against a cathedral. In England, the chapter-house and the varied46 groupings of semi-ecclesiastical buildings constituting the close, which seem to form a connecting link between town and cathedral, do no more, in reality, than enlarge the skirts of the monument about which they are clustered; and even at Winchester, which has its college and hospital to oppose to the predominance of the central pile, there is, after all, very little dispersal of interest: so prodigious47, so unparalleled, as mere48 feats49 of human will-power, are these vast achievements of the Middle Ages. In northern France, where the great cathedrals were of lay foundation, and consequently sprang up alone, without the subordinate colony of monastic buildings of8 which the close is a survival—and where, as far as monuments of any importance are concerned, the architectural gap sometimes extends from Louis the Saint to Louis the Fourteenth—the ascendancy50 of the diocesan church is necessarily even more marked. Rouen alone, perhaps, opposes an effectual defence to this concentration of interest, will not for a moment let itself be elbowed out of the way by the great buttresses51 of its cathedral; and at Bourges—but Bourges and Rouen come later in this itinerary52, and meanwhile here we are, standing53, in a sharp shower, under a notaire’s doorway54, and looking across the little square at the west front of Amiens.
Well! No wonder such a monument has silenced all competitors. It would take a mighty counter-blast to make itself heard against “the surge and thunder” of that cloud of witnesses choiring forth56 the glories of the Church Triumphant57. Is the stage too crowded? Is there a certain sameness in the overarching tiers of the stone hierarchy58, each figure set in precise alignment59 with its neighbours, each drapery drawn60 within the same perpendicular61 bounds? Yes,9 perhaps—if one remembers Rheims and Bourges; but if, setting aside such kindred associations, one surrenders one’s self uncritically to the total impression produced, if one lets the fortunate accidents of time and weather count for their full value in that total—for Amiens remains62 mercifully unscrubbed, and its armies of saints have taken on the richest patina63, that northern stone can acquire—if one views the thing, in short, partly as a symbol and partly as a “work of nature” (which all ancient monuments by grace of time become), then the front of Amiens is surely one of the most splendid spectacles that Gothic art can show.
On the symbolic64 side especially it would be tempting65 to linger; so strongly does the contemplation of the great cathedrals fortify66 the conviction that their chief value, to this later age, is not so much ?sthetic as moral. The world will doubtless always divide itself into two orders of mind: that which sees in past expressions of faith, political, religious or intellectual, only the bonds cast off by the spirit of man in its long invincible67 struggle for “more light”; and that which, while moved by the10 spectacle of the struggle, cherishes also every sign of those past limitations that were, after all, each in its turn, symbols of the same effort toward a clearer vision. To the former kind of mind the great Gothic cathedral will be chiefly interesting as a work of art and a page of history; and it is perhaps proof of the advantage of cultivating the other—the more complex—point of view, in which enfranchisement68 of thought exists in harmony with atavism of feeling, that it permits one to appreciate these arch?ological values to the full, yet subordinates them to the more impressive facts of which they are the immense and moving expression. To such minds, the rousing of the sense of reverence69 is the supreme26 gift of these mighty records of medi?val life: reverence for the persistent70, slow-moving, far-reaching forces that brought them forth. A great Gothic cathedral sums up so much of history, it has cost so much in faith and toil71, in blood and folly72 and saintly abnegation, it has sheltered such a long succession of lives, given collective voice to so many inarticulate and contradictory73 cravings, seen so much that was sublime74 and terrible, or foolish, pitiful and grotesque,11 that it is like some mysteriously preserved ancestor of the human race, some Wandering Jew grown sedentary and throned in stony75 contemplation, before whom the fleeting76 generations come and go.
AMIENS: AMBULATORY OF THE CATHEDRAL
Yes—reverence is the most precious emotion that such a building inspires: reverence for the accumulated experiences of the past, readiness to puzzle out their meaning, unwillingness77 to disturb rashly results so powerfully willed, so laboriously78 arrived at—the desire, in short, to keep intact as many links as possible between yesterday and to-morrow, to lose, in the ardour of new experiment, the least that may be of the long rich heritage of human experience. This, at any rate, might seem to be the cathedral’s word to the traveller from a land which has undertaken to get on without the past, or to regard it only as a “feature” of ?sthetic interest, a sight to which one travels rather than a light by which one lives.
The west front of Amiens says this word with a quite peculiar emphasis, its grand unity79 of structure and composition witnessing as much to constancy of purpose as to persistence80 of effort.12 So steadily81, so clearly, was this great thing willed and foreseen, that it holds the mind too deeply subject to its general conception to be immediately free for the delighted investigation82 of detail. But within the building detail reasserts itself: detail within detail, worked out and multiplied with a prodigality83 of enrichment for which a counterpart must be sought beyond the Alps. The interiors of the great French cathedrals are as a rule somewhat gaunt and unfurnished, baring their structural84 nakedness sublimely85 but rather monotonously86 to eyes accustomed to the Italian churches “all glorious within.” Here at Amiens, however, the inner decking of the shrine87 has been piously88 continued from generation to generation, and a quite extraordinary wealth of adornment89 bestowed90 on the choir55 and its ambulatory. The great sculptured and painted frieze91 encircling the outer side of the choir is especially surprising in a French church, so seldom were the stone histories lavished92 on the exterior93 continued within the building; and it is a farther surprise to find the same tales in bas-relief animating94 and enriching the west walls of the transepts. They are full13 of crowded expressive95 incidents, these stories of local saints and Scriptural personages; with a Burgundian richness and elaborateness of costume, and a quite charming, childish insistence96 on irrelevant97 episode and detail—the reiterated98 “And so,” “And then” of the fairy-tale calling off one’s attention into innumerable little by-paths, down which the fancy of fifteenth-century worshippers must have strayed, with oh! what blessedness of relief, from the unintelligible99 rites100 before the altar.
Of composition there is none: it is necessarily sacrificed to the desire to stop and tell everything; to show, for instance, in an interesting parenthesis101, exactly what Herod’s white woolly dog was about while Salome was dancing away the Baptist’s head. And thus one is brought back to the perpetually recurring102 fact that all northern art is anecdotic, and has always been so; and that, for instance, all the elaborate theories of dramatic construction worked out to explain why Shakespeare crowded his stage with subordinate figures and unnecessary incidents, and would certainly, in relating the story of Saint John, have included Herod’s “Tray and Sweetheart” among14 the dramatis person?—that such theories are but an unprofitable evasion103 of the ancient ethnological fact that the Goth has always told his story in that way.
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1
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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diversified
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| adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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amplitude
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| n.广大；充足；振幅 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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hawthorn
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| 山楂 | |
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gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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utilized
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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banishing
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的现在分词 ) | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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opulence
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| n.财富，富裕 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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obliterating
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| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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deprivation
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| n.匮乏；丧失；夺去，贫困 | |
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43
atoned
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| v.补偿，赎（罪）( atone的过去式和过去分词 )；补偿，弥补，赎回 | |
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44
conjectural
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| adj.推测的 | |
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45
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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46
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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49
feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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50
ascendancy
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| n.统治权，支配力量 | |
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51
buttresses
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| n.扶壁，扶垛( buttress的名词复数 )v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52
itinerary
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| n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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55
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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56
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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58
hierarchy
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| n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层 | |
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alignment
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| n.队列；结盟，联合 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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63
patina
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| n.铜器上的绿锈，年久而产生的光泽 | |
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64
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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66
fortify
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| v.强化防御，为…设防；加强，强化 | |
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invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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68
enfranchisement
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| 选举权 | |
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69
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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unwillingness
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| n. 不愿意，不情愿 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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prodigality
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| n.浪费，挥霍 | |
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structural
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| adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的 | |
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85
sublimely
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| 高尚地，卓越地 | |
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monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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87
shrine
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| n.圣地，神龛，庙；v.将...置于神龛内，把...奉为神圣 | |
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piously
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| adv.虔诚地 | |
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adornment
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| n.装饰；装饰品 | |
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bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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frieze
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| n.(墙上的)横饰带，雕带 | |
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lavished
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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animating
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| v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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reiterated
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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parenthesis
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| n.圆括号，插入语，插曲，间歇，停歇 | |
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recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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103
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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