THE QUALITY OF BOSTON AND THE QUANTITY OF NEW YORK
Later in the summer, or earlier in the fall, than when we saw him newly returned from Europe, that friend whom the veteran reader will recall as having so brashly offered his impressions of the national complexion1 and temperament2 looked in again on the Easy Chair.
"Well," we said, "do you wish to qualify, to hedge, to retract3? People usually do after they have been at home as long as you."
"But I do not," he said. He took his former seat, but now laid on the heap of rejected MSS., not the silken cylinder4 he had so daintily poised5 there before, but a gray fedora that fell carelessly over in lazy curves and hollows. "I wish to modify by adding the effect of further observation and adjusting it to my first conclusions. Since I saw you I have been back to Boston; in fact, I have just come from there."
We murmured some banality6 about not knowing a place where one could better come from than Boston. But he brushed it by without notice.
"To begin with, I wish to add that I was quite wrong in finding the typical Boston face now prevalently Celtic."
"You call that adding?" we satirized7.
He ignored the poor sneer8.
"My earlier observation was correct enough, but it was a result of that custom which peoples the hills, the shores, and the sister continent in summer with the New-Englanders of the past, and leaves their capital to those New-Englanders of the future dominantly9 represented by the Irish. At the time of my second visit the exiles had returned, and there were the faces again that, instead of simply forbidding me, arraigned10 me and held me guilty till I had proved myself innocent."
"Do you think," we suggested, "that you would find this sort of indictment11 in them if you had a better conscience?"
"Perhaps not. And I must own I did not find them so accusing when I could study them in their contemplation of some more important subject than myself. One such occasion for philosophizing them distinctly offered itself to my chance witness when an event of the last seriousness had called some hundreds of them together. One sees strong faces elsewhere; I have seen them assembled especially in England; but I have never seen such faces as those Boston faces, so intense, so full of a manly12 dignity, a subdued13 yet potent14 personality, a consciousness as far as could be from self-consciousness. I found something finely visionary in it all, as if I were looking on a piece of multiple portraiture15 such as you see in those Dutch paintings of companies at Amsterdam, for instance. It expressed purity of race, continuity of tradition, fidelity16 to ideals such as no other group of faces would now express. You might have had the like at Rome, at Athens, at Florence, at Amsterdam, in their prime, possibly in the England of the resurgent parliament, though there it would have been mixed with a fanaticism17 absent in Boston. You felt that these men no doubt had their limitations, but their limitations were lateral18, not vertical19."
"Then why," we asked, not very relevantly, "don't you go and live in Boston?"
"It wouldn't make me such a Bostonian if I did; I should want a half-dozen generations behind me for that. Besides, I feel my shortcomings less in New York."
"You are difficult. Why not fling yourself into the tide of joy here, instead of shivering on the brink20 in the blast of that east wind which you do not even find regenerative? Why not forget our inferiority, since you cannot forgive it? Or do you think that by being continually reminded of it we can become as those Bostonians are? Can we reduce ourselves, by repenting21, from four millions to less than one, and by narrowing our phylacteries achieve the unlimited22 Bostonian verticality23, and go as deep and as high?"
"No," our friend said. "Good as they are, we can only be better by being different. We have our own message to the future, which we must deliver as soon as we understand it."
"Is it in Esperanto?"
"It is at least polyglot24. But you are taking me too seriously. I wished merely to qualify my midsummer impressions of a prevailing25 Celtic Boston by my autumnal impressions of a persisting Puritanic Boston. But it is wonderful how that strongly persistent26 past still characterizes the present in every development. Even those Irish faces which I wouldn't have ventured a joke with were no doubt sobered by it; and when the Italians shall come forward to replace them it will be with no laughing Pulcinello masks, but visages as severe as those that first challenged the wilderness28 of Massachusetts Bay, and made the Three Hills tremble to their foundations."
"It seems to us that you are yielding to rhetoric29 a little, aren't you?" we suggested.
"Perhaps I am. But you see what I mean. And I should like to explain further that I believe the Celtic present and the Pelasgic future will rule Boston in their turn as the Puritanic past learned so admirably to rule it: by the mild might of irony30, by the beneficent power which, in the man who sees the joke of himself enables him to enter brotherly into the great human joke, and be friends with every good and kind thing."
"Could you be a little more explicit31?"
"I would rather not for the moment. But I should like to make you observe that the Boston to be has more to hope and less to fear from the newer Americans than this metropolis32 where these are so much more heterogeneous33. Here salvation34 must be of the Jews among the swarming35 natives of the East Side; but in Boston there is no reason why the artistic36 instincts of the Celtic and Pelasgic successors of the Puritans should not unite in that effect of beauty which is an effect of truth, and keep Boston the first of our cities in good looks as well as good works. With us here in New York a civic37 job has the chance of turning out a city joy, but it is a fighting chance. In Boston there is little doubt of such a job turning out a joy. The municipality of Boston has had almost the felicity of Goldsmith—it has touched nothing which it has not adorned38. Wherever its hand has been laid upon Nature, Nature has purred in responsive beauty. They used to talk about the made land in Boston, but half Boston is the work of man, and it shows what the universe might have been if the Bostonians had been taken into the confidence of the Creator at the beginning. The Back Bay was only the suggestion of what has since been done; and I never go to Boston without some new cause for wonder. There is no other such charming union of pleasaunce and residence as the Fenways; the system of parks is a garden of delight; and now the State has taken up the work, no doubt at the city's suggestion, and, turning from the land to the water, has laid a restraining touch on the tides of the sea, which, ever since the moon entered on their management, have flowed and ebbed39 through the channel of the Charles. The State has dammed the river; the brine of the ocean no longer enters it, but it feeds itself full of sweet water from the springs in the deep bosom40 of the country. The Beacon41 Street houses back upon a steadfast42 expanse as fresh as the constant floods of the Great Lakes."
embankment
CHARLES EMBANKMENT, BELOW HARVARD BRIDGE
"And we dare say that it looks as large as Lake Superior to Boston eyes. What do they call their dam? The Charlesea?"
"You may be sure they will call it something tasteful and fit," our friend responded, in rejection43 of our feeble mockery. "Charlesea would not be bad. But what I wish to make you observe is that all which has yet been done for beauty in Boston has been done from the unexhausted instinct of it in the cold heart of Puritanism, where it 'burns frore and does the effect of fire.' As yet the Celtic and Pelasgic agencies have had no part in advancing the city. The first have been content with voting themselves into office, and the last with owning their masters out-of-doors; for the Irish are the lords, and the Italians are the landlords. But when these two gifted races, with their divinely implanted sense of art, shall join forces with the deeply conscienced taste of the Puritans, what mayn't we expect Boston to be?"
"And what mayn't we expect New York to be on the same terms, or, say, when the Celtic and Pelasgic and Hebraic and Slavic elements join with the old Batavians, in whom the love of the artistic is by right also native? Come! Why shouldn't we have a larger Boston here?"
"Because we are too large," our friend retorted, undauntedly. "When graft44 subtly crept among the nobler motives45 which created the park system of Boston the city could turn for help to the State and get it; but could our city get help from our State? Our city is too big to profit by that help; our State too small to render it. The commonwealth46 of Massachusetts is creating a new Garden of Eden on the banks of the Charlesea; but what is the State of New York doing to emparadise the shores of the Hudson?"
"All the better for us, perhaps," we stubbornly, but not very sincerely, contended, "if we have to do our good works ourselves."
"Yes, if we do them. But shall they remain undone47 if we don't do them? The city of New York is so great that it swings the State of New York. The virtues48 that are in each do not complement49 one another, as the virtues of Boston and Massachusetts do. Where shall you find, in our house or in our grounds, the city and the State joining to an effect of beauty? When you come to New York, what you see of grandeur50 is the work of commercialism; what you see of grandeur in Boston is the work of civic patriotism51. We hire the arts to build and decorate the homes of business; the Bostonians inspire them to devote beauty and dignity to the public pleasure and use. No," our friend concluded with irritating triumph, "we are too vast, too many, for the finest work of the civic spirit. Athens could be beautiful—Florence, Venice, Genoa were—but Rome, which hired or enslaved genius to create beautiful palaces, temples, columns, statues, could only be immense. She could only huddle52 the lines of Greek loveliness into a hideous53 agglomeration54, and lose their effect as utterly55 as if one should multiply Greek noses and Greek chins, Greek lips and Greek eyes, Greek brows and Greek heads of violet hair, in one monstrous56 visage. No," he exulted57, in this mortifying58 image of our future ugliness, "when a city passes a certain limit of space and population, she adorns59 herself in vain. London, the most lovable of the mighty60 mothers of men, has not the charm of Paris, which, if one cannot quite speak of her virgin61 allure62, has yet a youth and grace which lend themselves to the fondness of the arts. Boston is fast becoming of the size of Paris, but if I have not misread her future she will be careful not to pass it, and become as New York is."
We were so alarmed by this reasoning that we asked in considerable dismay: "But what shall we do? We could not help growing; perhaps we wished to overgrow; but is there no such thing as ungrowing? When the fair, when the sex which we instinctively63 attribute to cities, finds itself too large in its actuality for a Directoire ideal, there are means, there are methods, of reduction. Is there no remedy, then, for municipal excess of size? Is there no harmless potion or powder by which a city may lose a thousand inhabitants a day, as the superabounding fair loses a pound of beauty? Is there nothing for New York analogous64 to rolling on the floor, to the straight-front corset, to the sugarless, starchless diet? Come, you must not deny us all hope! How did Boston manage to remain so small? What elixirs65, what exercises, did she take or use? Surely she did not do it all by reading and thinking!" Our friend continued somewhat inexorably silent, and we pursued: "Do you think that by laying waste our Long Island suburbs, by burning the whole affiliated66 Jersey67 shore, by strangling the Bronx, as it were, in its cradle, and by confining ourselves rigidly68 to our native isle69 of Manhattan, we could do something to regain70 our lost opportunity? We should then have the outline of a fish; true, a nondescript fish; but the fish was one of the Greek ideals of the female form." He was silent still, and we gathered courage to press on. "As it is, we are not altogether hideous. We doubt whether there are not more beautiful buildings in New York now than there are in Boston; and as for statues, where are the like there of our Macmonnies Hale, of our Saint-Gaudens Farragut and Sherman, of our Ward27 Indian Hunter?"
"The Shaw monument blots71 them all out," our friend relentlessly72 answered. "But these are merely details. Our civic good things are accidental. Boston's are intentional73. That is the great, the vital difference."
It did not occur to us that he was wrong, he had so crushed us under foot. But, with the trodden worm's endeavor to turn, we made a last appeal. "And with the sky-scraper itself we still expect to do something, something stupendously beautiful. Say that we have lost our sky-line! What shall we not have of grandeur, of titanic74 loveliness, when we have got a sky-scraper-line?"
It seemed to us that here was a point which he could not meet; and, in fact, he could only say, whether in irony or not, "I would rather not think."
We were silent, and, upon the reflection to which our silence invited us, we found that we would rather not ourselves think of the image we had invoked75. We preferred to take up the question at another point.
"Well," we said, "in your impressions of Bostonian greatness we suppose that you received the effect of her continued supremacy76 in authors as well as authorship, in artists as well as art? You did not meet Emerson or Longfellow or Lowell or Prescott or Holmes or Hawthorne or Whittier about her streets, but surely you met their peers, alive and in the flesh?"
"No," our friend admitted, "not at every corner. But what I did meet was the effect of those high souls having abode77 there while on the earth. The great Boston authors are dead, and the great Boston artists are worse—they have come to New York; they have not even waited to die. But whether they have died, or whether they have come to New York, they have left their inspiration in Boston. In one sense the place that has known them shall know them no more forever; but in another sense it has never ceased to know them. I can't say how it is, exactly, but though you don't see them in Boston, you feel them. But here in New York—our dear, immense, slattern mother—who feels anything of the character of her great children? Who remembers in these streets Bryant or Poe or Hallock or Curtis or Stoddard or Stedman, or the other poets who once dwelt in them? Who remembers even such great editors as Greeley or James Gordon Bennett or Godkin or Dana? What malignant78 magic, what black art, is it that reduces us all to one level of forgottenness when we are gone, and even before we are gone? Have those high souls left their inspiration here, for common men to breathe the breath of finer and nobler life from? I won't abuse the millionaires who are now our only great figures; even the millionaires are gone when they go. They die, and they leave no sign, quite as if they were so many painters and poets. You can recall some of their names, but not easily. No, if New York has any hold upon the present from the past, it isn't in the mystical persistence79 of such spirits among us."
"Well," we retorted, hardily80, "we have no need of them. It is the high souls of the future which influence us."
Our friend looked at us as if he thought there might be something in what we said. "Will you explain?" he asked.
"Some other time," we consented.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
complexion
|
|
| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
temperament
|
|
| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
retract
|
|
| vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
cylinder
|
|
| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
poised
|
|
| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
banality
|
|
| n.陈腐；平庸；陈词滥调 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
satirized
|
|
| v.讽刺，讥讽( satirize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
sneer
|
|
| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
dominantly
|
|
| 有统治权地，占优势地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
arraigned
|
|
| v.告发( arraign的过去式和过去分词 )；控告；传讯；指责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
indictment
|
|
| n.起诉；诉状 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
manly
|
|
| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
subdued
|
|
| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
potent
|
|
| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
portraiture
|
|
| n.肖像画法 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
fidelity
|
|
| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
fanaticism
|
|
| n.狂热，盲信 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
lateral
|
|
| adj.侧面的，旁边的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
vertical
|
|
| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
brink
|
|
| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
repenting
|
|
| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
unlimited
|
|
| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
verticality
|
|
| 垂直性，垂直状态； 垂直度 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
polyglot
|
|
| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
prevailing
|
|
| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
persistent
|
|
| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
ward
|
|
| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
wilderness
|
|
| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
rhetoric
|
|
| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
explicit
|
|
| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
metropolis
|
|
| n.首府；大城市 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
heterogeneous
|
|
| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
salvation
|
|
| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
swarming
|
|
| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
artistic
|
|
| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
civic
|
|
| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
adorned
|
|
| [计]被修饰的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
ebbed
|
|
| （指潮水）退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
bosom
|
|
| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
beacon
|
|
| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
steadfast
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
rejection
|
|
| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
graft
|
|
| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
motives
|
|
| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
commonwealth
|
|
| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
undone
|
|
| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
virtues
|
|
| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
complement
|
|
| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
grandeur
|
|
| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
patriotism
|
|
| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
huddle
|
|
| vi.挤作一团；蜷缩；vt.聚集；n.挤在一起的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
hideous
|
|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
agglomeration
|
|
| n.结聚，一堆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
utterly
|
|
| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
monstrous
|
|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
exulted
|
|
| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
mortifying
|
|
| adj.抑制的，苦修的v.使受辱( mortify的现在分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
adorns
|
|
| 装饰，佩带( adorn的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
mighty
|
|
| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
virgin
|
|
| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
allure
|
|
| n.诱惑力，魅力；vt.诱惑，引诱，吸引 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
instinctively
|
|
| adv.本能地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
analogous
|
|
| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
elixirs
|
|
| n.炼金药，长生不老药( elixir的名词复数 )；酏剂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
affiliated
|
|
| adj. 附属的, 有关连的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
jersey
|
|
| n.运动衫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
rigidly
|
|
| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
isle
|
|
| n.小岛，岛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
regain
|
|
| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
blots
|
|
| 污渍( blot的名词复数 )； 墨水渍； 错事； 污点 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
relentlessly
|
|
| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
intentional
|
|
| adj.故意的，有意（识）的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
titanic
|
|
| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
invoked
|
|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
supremacy
|
|
| n.至上；至高权力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
abode
|
|
| n.住处，住所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
malignant
|
|
| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
persistence
|
|
| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
hardily
|
|
| 耐劳地，大胆地，蛮勇地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |