IV.—THE MATURE ARTIST

1

The years 1848 and 1849 saw the climax¹ of a great crisis both in Wagner's life and his art; it had been developing for two or three years before, and its reverberations did not wholly die away for some years after. All his life and his work at this time were, as I have already said, simply a violent purgation of the spirit—a nightmare agony from which he woke with a cry of relief. He shakes off the theatre, and faces the world on a new footing as a man. And in silence, unknown to everybody and almost to himself, he develops into a new musician. For the moment his mind is a jumble² of art, ethics³, politics and sociology. But as usual his artistic⁴ instincts guide him surely in the end. After many gropings in this direction and that, he settles down to the Ring drama, which he first of all plans, in 1848, in the form of a three-act opera with the title of Siegfried's Death. He falters⁶ a little even then, being obsessed⁷ by two other subjects, Jesus of Nazareth and Friedrich Barbarossa; but finally he rejects them both, the greater adaptability⁸ of the Siegfried drama for music being intuitively evident to him. The next twenty-six years are to be taken up with the working out of this gigantic theme, with Tristan and the Meistersinger as a kind of diversion in the middle of it; then comes the quiet end with Parsifal. I do not propose to discuss the philosophical⁹—or pseudo-philosophical—ideas of any of these works. It is only as a musician that Wagner will live, and to a musician the particular philosophy or philosophies that he preached in the Ring and Tristan and Parsifal are matters of very small concern. Wagner himself was always inclined to over-estimate the importance of his own philosophising, and his vehement¹⁰ garrulity¹¹ has betrayed both partisans¹² and opponents into taking him too seriously as a thinker. Had he not left us his voluminous prose works and letters, indeed, we should never have suspected the hundredth part of the portentous¹⁵ meanings that he and his disciples¹⁶ read into his operatic libretti. To those who still see profound metaphysical revelations in the later works it may be well to point out that Wagner saw revelations equally inspired and inspiring in the earlier ones, which no one takes with excessive seriousness to-day on their dramatic side. The philosophising all smacks¹⁷ too much, for our taste, of the sentimental¹⁸ Germany of the mid-nineteenth century. For Wagner, Senta is "the quintessence of Woman [das Weib überhaupt], yet the still to-be-sought-for, the longed-for, the dreamed-of, the infinitely¹⁹ womanly Woman—let me out with it in one word: the Woman of the Future."[404] Tannh?user was "the spirit of the whole Ghibelline race for every age, comprehended in a single, definite, infinitely moving form; but at the same time a human being right down to our own day, right into the heart of an artist full of life's longing²⁰."[405] "Lohengrin sought the woman who should have faith in him; who should not ask who he was and whence he came, but should love him as he was, and because he was what he appeared to himself to be. He sought the woman to whom he should not have to explain or justify²¹ himself, but who would love him unconditionally²². Therefore he had to conceal²³ his higher nature, for only in the non-revealing of this higher—or more correctly heightened—essence could he find surety that he was not wondered at for this alone, or humbly²⁴ worshipped as something incomprehensible,—whereas his longing was not for wonder or adoration²⁵, but for the only thing that could redeem²⁶ him from his loneliness and still his yearning²⁷—for Love, for being loved, for being understood through Love.... The character and the situation of this Lohengrin I now recognise with the clearest conviction as the type of the only really tragic²⁸ material, of the tragic element of our modern life; of the same significance, indeed, for the Present as was the Antigone, in another relation, for the life of the Greek state.... Elsa is the unconscious, the un-volitional³⁰, into which Lohengrin's conscious, volitional being yearns³¹ to be redeemed³²; but that yearning is itself the unconscious, un-volitional in Lohengrin, through which he feels himself akin¹³ in being to Elsa. Through the capacity of this 'unconscious consciousness' as I myself experienced it in common with Lohengrin, the nature of Woman ... became more and more intimately revealed to me ... that true Womanhood that should bring to me and all the world redemption, after man's egoism, even in its noblest form, had voluntarily broken itself before her. Elsa, the Woman ... made me a full-fledged revolutionary. She was the spirit of the folk, for redemption by whom I too, as artist-man, was yearning."[406]

This seems all very remote from us now; one wonders how any one, even Wagner himself, could ever have taken these operatic puppets with such appalling³³ seriousness. The Ring stands a little nearer to us; but no longer can we follow Wagner in his philosophising even there. For Wagner Siegfried was "the human being in the most natural and gayest fulness of his physical manifestation³⁴.... It was Elsa who had taught me to discover this man: to me he was the male-embodied³⁵ [der m?nnlich-verk?rperte] spirit of the eternal and only involuntarily creative force [Geist der ewig und einzig zeugenden Unwillkür], of the doer of true deeds, of Man in the fulness of his most native strength and his most undoubted love-worthiness."[407] We can hardly regard Siegfried in that light to-day. As we meet with him in the libretto³⁶ he is, as Mr. Runciman says, rather an objectionable young person; we cannot quite reconcile ourselves to his ingratitude³⁷ and his super-athletic fatuousness³⁸; he reminds us too much of Anatole France's description of the burly, bullet-headed general in Les Dieux ont Soif—the sparrow's brain in the ox's skull³⁹. As we see him on the stage he is, under the best conditions, slightly ridiculous, a sort of overgrown Boy Scout⁴⁰. It is only in his music that he is so magnificently alive, so sure of our sympathy. Sensible musicians, indeed, do not trouble very much in these days about the metaphysics or the esoteric implications of the Wagnerian dramas. Wotan must stand or fall by his own dramatic grandeur⁴¹ and by the quality of the music that is given to him to sing, not by the degree of success with which he illustrates⁴² a particular theory of the Will. Tristan is none the better for all its Schopenhauerisms, natural or acquired; we may be thankful that it is none the worse for them.

Wagner's philosophical stock, indeed, was never a very large one. The "problems" of his operas are generally problems of his own personality and circumstances. His art, like his life, is all unconscious egoism. His problems are always to be the world's problems, his needs the world's needs. Women obsessed him in art as in life: they kindled⁴⁴ fiery⁴⁵ passion in man, or they "redeemed" him from passion, or they set a sorrow's crown of sorrows on his head by failing to redeem him. Passion, redemption, renunciation—these are the three dominant⁴⁷ motives⁴⁹ of Wagner's work; and wherever we look in that work we find himself. Indulgence—revulsion; hope—frustration⁵⁰; passion—renunciation; these are the antitheses⁵¹ that are constantly confronting us. In the Flying Dutchman, Vanderdecken-Wagner is redeemed by the woman who loves and trusts him unto death. Tannh?user-Wagner fluctuates between the temptress and the saint. Lohengrin-Wagner seeks in vain the woman who shall love him unquestioningly. Wieland the Smith, the hero of a libretto he sketched⁵³ in 1849, is again Wagner, lamed⁵⁴ by life, but healed at last by another "redeeming⁵⁵" woman. Wotan-Wagner, finding the world going another way than his, wills his own destruction and that of the world. Tristan-Wagner finds love insatiable, and death the only end of all our loving. Sachs-Wagner renounces⁵⁶ love. Parsifal-Wagner finds salvation⁵⁷ in flight from sensual love. Always there is this oscillation between desire and the slaying⁵⁸ of desire, between hope for the world and despair for the world. In 1848, in an hour of physical and mental joy in life, he conceives a blithe⁵⁹ and exuberant⁶⁰ Siegfried, the super-man of the future, striding joyously⁶¹ and victoriously⁶³ through life. But the revulsion comes almost in a moment. He realises his solitariness⁶⁴ as man and artist. "I was irresistibly⁶⁵ driven to write something that should communicate this grievous consciousness of mine in an intelligible⁶⁶ form to the life of the present. Just as with my Siegfried the strength of my yearning had borne me to the primal⁶⁷ fount of the eternal purely⁶⁸-human; so now, when I found this yearning could never be stilled by modern life, and realised once again that redemption was to be had only in flight from this life, in escaping from its claims upon me by self-destruction, I came to the primal fount of every modern rendering⁶⁹ of this situation—to the Man Jesus of Nazareth." Like Jesus, confronted with the materialism⁷⁰ of the world, he longs for death, and reads a similar longing into all humanity.

So the oscillation goes on to the very end of his days. There is no need, no reason, to discuss the "philosophy" of such a mind. He is no philosopher: he is simply a tortured human soul and a magnificent musical instrument. All that concerns us to-day is the quality of the music that was wrung⁷¹ from the instrument under the torture.

2

The most astounding⁷² fact in all Wagner's career was probably the writing of Siegfried's Death in 1848. That drama is practically identical with the present G?tterd?mmerung; and we can only stand amazed at the audacity⁷³ of the conception, the imaginative power the work displays, the artistic growth it reveals since Lohengrin was written, and the total breach⁷⁴ it indicates with the whole of the operatic art of his time. But Siegfried's Death was impossible in the idiom of Lohengrin; and Wagner must have known this intuitively. This is no doubt the real reason for his writing no music for six years, from the completion of Lohengrin in August 1847 to the commencement of work on the Rhinegold at the end of 1853. His artistic instincts always led him infallibly, no matter what confusion might reign⁷⁶ in the rest of his thinking. He conceives the idea of the Meistersinger, for instance, in 1845, just after finishing Tannh?user. But a wise and kindly⁷⁷ fate intervenes and turns him aside from the project. He was not ripe for the Meistersinger, either poetically⁸¹ or musically, as we can see not only by a comparison of his later musical style with that of Tannh?user, but by comparing the sketch⁵² of the drama that he wrote in 1845 with the revised drafts of 1861. It was his original intention, again, to introduce Parsifal into the third Act of Tristan; but his purely artistic instincts were too sound to permit him to adhere to that plan. How unripe⁸² he was in 1848 for a setting of Siegfried's Death hardly needs demonstration⁸³ now. The swift and infallibly telling strokes with which he has drawn⁸⁴ Hagen and Gutrune in the G?tterd?mmerung, for example, were utterly⁸⁵ beyond him then; it took twenty years' evolution before he could attain⁸⁶ to that luminousness⁸⁷ and penetration⁸⁸ of vision, that rapidity and certainty of touch. So much, again, of the tragic atmosphere in which the G?tterd?mmerung is enveloped⁸⁹ comes from the subtle harmonic idiom that Wagner had evolved by that time, that it is hard to imagine the extent of his probable failure had he persisted in setting the text to music in 1848. The lyrical style of Lohengrin, the leisurely⁹⁰ spun⁹¹ tissue of that lovely work, were neither drastic enough, close enough, nor elastic⁹² enough for Siegfried's Death. And of this he must have had a dim consciousness.

So he puts the musical part of his task on one side for six years, broods continually over the subject, finds it growing within him, and at last shapes it into not one opera but four. When he begins work upon the music of the Rhinegold he is a new being. His imagination has developed to an extent that is without a parallel in the case of any other musician. The characters and the milieu⁹³ of the Rhinegold are themselves evidence of the audacious sweep of his vision: he undertakes to re-create in music gods and men and giants, creatures of the waters and creatures of the bowels⁹⁴ of the earth; the music has to flood the scene now with water, now with fire, with the murky⁹⁵ vapours of the underworld and the serene⁹⁶ air of the heights over against Valhalla. Never before had any composer dreamed of an opera so rich in all varieties of emotion, of action, of atmosphere. The practice he had in the Rhinegold developed his powers still further: in the Valkyrie the painting grows surer and surer, the imagination sweeps on to conceptions beyond anything that any musician before him would have thought possible: in Siegfried there is an absolute exultation⁹⁷ of style; the music seems to dance and cry aloud out of pure joy in its own strength and beauty. His melody has already become terser⁹⁸ and more suggestive in the Rhinegold, and has lost much of its earlier rhythmic⁹⁹ formality. His harmonic range, while narrow enough compared with that of Tristan and the G?tterd?mmerung, has yet developed greatly. He dares anything in pursuit of his ideal of finding in his music the full and perfect counterpart of the characters and the scenes; that endless E flat chord at the commencement of the Rhinegold prelude¹⁰⁰ is an innovation the audacity of which we can hardly estimate to-day.

It has been objected that the melody of the Rhinegold is on the miniature side, and that the score has little of the grand surge and sweep of the later operas. It may be so, but the style of the music seems admirably suited to the broad and simple outlines of this drama and the relatively¹⁰¹ simple psychology¹⁰² of the beings who take part in it,—beings who are now taking only the first step along the path that is to lead them all into such tragic complications. But in any case Wagner was obeying a sound instinct when he abandoned the broader style of Lohengrin in favour of the seemingly shorter-breathed style of the Rhinegold. It was the consequence of his intuition that his new dramatic ideas demanded a new musical form; we have to remember that everything he says on this topic in Opera and Drama is the outcome of his reflection upon Siegfried's Death and the best manner of its setting. The older forms of opera being inapplicable here, he had to devise a new method of unifying¹⁰⁴ his vast design. He found the solution of his problem in an application to opera of the symphonic web-weaving of Beethoven; but for this he needed short and extremely plastic motives. That as yet he cannot weave these motives, and the episodical matter between them, into so continuous a tissue as that of the later works is only natural; to expect him to have done so would be as unreasonable¹⁰⁵ as to expect the texture¹⁰⁶ of Beethoven's second symphony to be as closely woven as that of his fifth. But Wagner knew he had a wonderful new instrument in his grasp, and he did well to learn the full use of it by cautious practice.

3

The leit-motive⁴⁸, of course, is not Wagner's invention. Other operatic composers had tentatively handled the device before him; and in his own day Schumann had seen the possibilities of such a method being applied¹⁰⁷ to the song. In his Frühlingsfahrt, for example, the joyous⁶² major melody that accompanies the bright youths on their first setting out in life changes to the clouded minor¹⁰⁸ as the poet tells of the ruin that came upon one of them; and everyone knows the sadly expressive¹⁰⁹ effect of the winding¹¹⁰ up of the Woman's Life and Love cycle with a reminiscence of the melody of the opening song. The device of reminiscence in poetic⁸⁰ or dramatic music is indeed so obviously a natural one that we can only wonder that the pre-Wagnerian composers did not make more use of it. But Wagner did more than employ it as a sort of index or label; he turned it into the seminal¹¹¹ principle of musical form for perhaps three-fourths of the music of our time. He made it not merely a dramatic but a symphonic-dramatic instrument. He had experimented with the device from his youth, but until now without perceiving its symphonic possibilities. We have seen him carrying forward a significant theme from one scene to another in Das Liebesverbot. In Rienzi there is very little real use of the leit-motive. He will adopt a characteristic orchestral figure for a person or a situation at the commencement of a scene or "number," and play with it all through that particular set piece; but it is very rarely that he will remind us of a previous situation by importing the theme that symbolises it into a later situation. He does this, for example, with the "Oath" motive, which first accompanies Rienzi's story of his own vow¹¹³ to avenge¹¹⁴ his murdered brother (vocal¹¹⁵ score, pp. 77, 78), and is afterwards employed to accompany Colonna's threat of vengeance¹¹⁶ if Rienzi dooms¹¹⁷ him and his fellow conspirators¹¹⁸ to death (p. 266), Rienzi's rejection¹¹⁹ of Adriano's plea for mercy (p. 337), and finally Adriano's own resolve to be avenged¹²⁰ upon Rienzi (p. 416). In the Flying Dutchman the tissue is largely unified¹²¹ by typical themes, which, however, are as a rule merely repeated without substantial modification¹²², though now and then a motive is melodically¹²⁴ transformed to suggest a psychological variation, as when the "Redemption" theme from Senta's ballad—
nro.23
No. 23.

afterwards becomes the motive of "Love unto death"—
nro.24
No. 24.

In Tannh?user there is a good deal of recurrent material—the Bacchanale and the Pilgrims' Chorus, for instance—but the leit-motive can hardly be said to be used at all in the later sense. Lohengrin is strewn with leit-motives that are marvels¹²⁶ of characterisation; but here too they recur¹²⁵ in their original form time after time. For the most part they merely label the character: they do not change as he changes, nor do they spread themselves over the score with the persistence¹²⁷ of the motives of the later works.

4

The leit-motive in the Ring is quite another matter. Most of the motives in the earlier operas were vocal in origin, and their relatively great length—which makes them as a rule unsuitable for a flexible symphonic treatment—is the direct consequence of the length of Wagner's poetic lines at that time. In Rienzi, for example, the motive of Rienzi's prayer, the "Sancto spirito cavaliere" motive, the "Freedom" motive, the motive of the "Messengers of Peace," and others, are all of this type. In the Flying Dutchman the motive of "Longing for death," the two "Redemption" motives, the "Daland" motive, the "Festivity" motive, the "Rejoicing" motive, the "Longing for redemption" motive, and several others, are all vocal melodies in the first place; of the same kind are the motives of "Repentance," of "Love's magic," of "Love's renunciation" and others in Tannh?user; and in Lohengrin, the "Grail" motive, the "Farewell" motive, the "Elsa's prayer" motive, the "Knight¹²⁸ of the Grail" motive, the "Warning" motive, the "Doubt" motive, and others. All of these are fully¹²⁹ developed, self-existent melodies, not germ-figures destined¹³⁰ for the weaving of a quasi-symphonic web. And though some of the less important motives in the early operas are short, they were not made so with any intention of using them plastically. The first things that strike us in connection with the motives of the Ring are their general shortness, their very plastic nature, and the sense they convey of not having been conceived primarily in a vocal form. It is true that some of them are vocal in origin, but that fact does not stare us so aggressively in the face as it does in the previous works; while the lines of the Ring are themselves so short that even when a phrase is modelled on one or two of them it never spreads itself out so extensively as the typical phrases of the Flying Dutchman, Tannh?user and Lohengrin do. This at first sight seems to imply that the poetic form of the Ring exercised a powerful influence on the musical form. It is permissible¹³¹ for us to-day to invert¹³² that proposition. Wagner, writing in 1851, maintained that he had discarded the older form of verse, with its long lines and its terminal rhymes, because of his conviction that this was too conventional a garment to throw over the sturdy limbs of Siegfried, the untutored child of nature, and that he was therefore led to adapt the Stabreim of the Folk. Consistently with the theory I have already advanced in these pages, I prefer to believe—guided, as of course Wagner himself could not be guided at that time, by the evidence of the function the music performs in his later works—that the new orchestral musician that was coming to birth within him felt the necessity of shorter and more plastic germ-themes, and instinctively¹³³ urged the poet to cast his material into a form that would place no obstacle in the musician's way. But explain it as we will, the fact remains¹³⁴ that now he is coming to maturity¹³⁵ his leit-motives are on the whole both more concentrated and more purely instrumental than they had been hitherto; as I have said, even when they come to us in the first place from the mouths of the characters, they assume quite naturally the quality of instrumental themes in the subsequent course of the opera, whereas a purely orchestral rendering of the themes of Tannh?user and Lohengrin can never disguise their vocal origin. It is comparatively rarely that the Ring motives extend beyond two bars, or at the most three. The "Servitude" motive is virtually only one bar in length; so are the "Rhine Maidens¹³⁶' song," the "Smithing" motive, and the "Reflection" motive; the "Waves" motive, the "Ring" motive, the "Valhalla" motive, the "Might of youth " motive, the "Twilight¹³⁷" motive, the "Norns" motive, the "Dusk of the gods" motive, are all comprised within a couple of bars; several others run to three bars, and only one or two run to four.

In this respect, as in some others, the Meistersinger stands in a class apart from the other works of Wagner's maturity. It is the most purely vocal of all his later works, in the sense that while the orchestral tissue is superbly full and unceasing in its flow, the voice parts have an independence that is rare in the later Wagner. The style is in a way almost a reversion to that of Lohengrin, allowance being made, of course, for the more symphonic nature of the orchestral portion, and the more continuous nature of the whole. The Meistersinger is full of "set" pieces—arias, duets, trios, a quintet, choruses, ensembles¹³⁸, and so on. The necessity for all these lay in the nature of the subject; and Wagner, at that time at the very height of his powers, has so cunningly mortised all the components¹³⁹ of the opera that not a join is observable anywhere. A superficial glance at a table of the Meistersinger motives would be enough to convince us, without any knowledge of the opera, that a great many of the themes have had a vocal origin, either solo or choral. Others owe their length to the fact that Wagner is painting masses rather than individuals; only a fairly extended theme could depict¹⁴¹, for instance, the sturdy, pompous¹⁴² old Meistersingers and their stately processions. Where he is not following a vocal line or painting with broad sweeps of the brush, and is free to invent motives for purely orchestral use, he generally throws them into the same concise¹⁴³ form as those of the Ring—the "Wooing" motive, for example—
nro.25
No. 25.

which, by reason of its brevity, is one of the most plastic motives in the score. But as a whole the Meistersinger lives in a different world from the Ring or Tristan. There is no great fateful principle running through it, that can be symbolised in a short orchestral figure and flashed across the picture at any desired moment, after the manner of the "Curse" or the "Hagen" motive in the Ring, or the "Death" motive in Tristan. The people in the Meistersinger carry hardly any shadows about with them. Their natures are mostly ingenuous¹⁴⁴, transparent¹⁴⁵, unsubtle: such as we see them on the stage at any given moment, such are they to themselves and others in every hour of their lives. It was natural then that they should take upon themselves more of the burden of the drama than the characters of the Ring as a whole,—for these are only instruments in the hand of a fate that is best symbolised by the ever-present orchestra—and that the instrumental voices should co-operate joyously with them, rather than dog them and lie in wait for them, as in the Ring, with symbols of reminiscence and foreboding. That the whole essence of the Meistersinger lies in its simple human characterisation and simple story-telling is shown again by Wagner's reverting¹⁴⁶ in the Prelude to the pot-pourri feuilleton form of the Tannh?user overture,—a form he never used again after 1845, except here.

5

As he proceeds with the Ring his leit-motives in general become more and more concentrated. Now and then he will employ a fairly extended theme, but never without a good psychological reason. One of the longest motives in the whole tetralogy is that of the "Volsung race." Its length is justified¹⁴⁷ by the duty it has to perform: to concentrate the nobility and the suffering of that race into a chord or two would be beyond the powers of any musician; none but Wagner, indeed, could have expressed such an infinity¹⁴⁸ of elevated grief within the compass of seven or eight bars. Some of the other motives are astounding in their brevity and eloquence¹⁴⁹. Not till after his work on the Rhinegold had unsealed his imagination and perfected his technique could he have hoped to hit off the wild, half-animal energy of the Valkyries in some four or five notes that are merely the expansion of a single chord, or have dared to trust to what is virtually only a series of syncopations to symbolise Alberich's work of destruction (the Vernichtungsarbeit motive). Never before could he have written anything so eloquent¹⁵⁰ of death as the "Announcement of death" motive in the Valkyrie. In Siegfried, though the number of new motives is comparatively small, the same process of concentration is observable. The god-like nature and the stately gait of the Wanderer are suggested to us in three or four notes. And in the G?tterd?mmerung the concentration is amazing. In that stupendous work he is, in my opinion, at the very summit of his powers. He never wastes a note now: every new stroke he deals is incredibly swift, direct and telling. Absolutely sure of himself, he dispenses¹⁵² with a prelude—for the few bars of orchestral writing before the voices enter can hardly be called one—and trusts to the colour of a mere¹¹² couple of chords to tune¹⁵³ the audience's imagination to the atmosphere of the opening scene. One short characteristic figure suffices for the motive of Hagen, and nowhere in the whole of Wagner's or anyone else's work is a figure of two notes used so multifariously and with such far-reaching suggestion. It is evident that he now feels the harmonic instrument to be the most serviceable and flexible of all; and hundreds of his most overpowering effects in the G?tterd?mmerung are achieved by harmonic invention or harmonic transformation¹⁵⁴. The grisliness of the Hagen theme comes in large part—putting aside the question of orchestral colour—from the sort of dour¹⁵⁵, irreconcilable¹⁵⁶ element it seems to introduce into certain chords,—though in reality the harmony has nothing essentially¹⁵⁷ far-fetched in it—as in that tremendous passage near the end of the first Act of the G?tterd?mmerung—
nro.26
No. 26.

Hagen!

The new themes, too, rely for a great deal of their poignancy¹⁵⁸ upon some subtle and fleeting¹⁵⁹ taste of sweetness or some swift suggestion of darkness and mystery in the harmony, as in the exquisite¹⁶⁰ motive that is associated with the wedding of Gutrune—

nro.27
No. 27.

or in the motive of "Magic deceit"—
nro.28
No. 28.

while others make their effect by means of the utmost concentration of melodic¹²³ meaning, like the "Blood-brotherhood" motive, or by an epigrammatic condensation¹⁶¹ of rhythm, like the "Oath of fidelity¹⁶²" motive, which only Wagner could have invented, and which no other composer but Beethoven would have dared to use if it had been offered to him—
nro.29
No. 29.

painting1

Bruckmann

RICHARD WAGNER.

From the painting by H. Herkomer at Bayreuth.

It is on harmonic alteration¹⁶³ that he chiefly relies again, in the latter stages of the Ring, to suggest the fateful gloom that is gradually closing in upon the drama; much of the tense and tragic atmosphere of the G?tterd?mmerung comes from this clouding of the simpler texture of the motives of the earlier operas. One of the most remarkable¹⁶⁴ instances of this is his treatment of the "Servitude" motive, that is generally associated with Alberich. In the Rhinegold it appears in a variety of simple forms, such as this—
nro.30
No. 30.

and this—

In the G?tterd?mmerung a sense of almost intolerable strain, of a great tragedy sweeping¹⁶⁵ to its inevitable¹⁶⁶ end, is conveyed by various subtilisations of the harmony, of which the following may stand as a type—


When Siegfried appears on Brynhilde's rock, disguised as Gunther, the theme of the latter is metamorphosed from—

into—

Here everything is exquisitely¹⁶⁷ calculated,—the harmonic alteration, the orchestral colouring (the soft mysterious tones of trumpet¹⁶⁸ and trombones), the interrupted ending, and the long fateful silence that follows.

When Alberich, in his colloquy¹⁶⁹ with Hagen at the commencement of the second Act of the G?tterd?mmerung, looks forward to the approaching destruction of the gods, the "Valhalla" motive becomes altered from the familiar—

to—

Many other illustrations might be given of this harmonic intensification¹⁷⁰ of themes.

6

It has to be admitted, however, that Wagner's use of the leit-motive presents some singularities, and is at times open to criticism. He undoubtedly¹⁷¹ introduces the motives more frequently than they are really needed; there is no necessity, for example, for the "Siegfried's horn" motive to be sounded at almost every appearance of Siegfried or every mention of his name. Debussy has made merry over this superfluity of reference, comparing it to a lunatic presenting his card to you in person. But we can easily forgive Wagner this little excess of zeal¹⁷². He was doing something absolutely new for his time. He had a gigantic mass of material to unify¹⁰³, and this incessant¹⁷³ recurrence¹⁷⁴ of significant themes seemed to him the only way to do it. He could not foresee how familiar the operas and their motives would be to the whole musical world half a century later. In any case this peculiarity¹⁷⁵ of his style can be passed over with a mere mention. Of more importance is his habit of making many of the motives so much alike that a certain amount of confusion is set up even in the minds of those who know the operas well. The "Servitude" motive, for example, is so like the opening of the Rhine Maidens' song that everyone goes astray over the two themes now and then in the first stages of his acquaintance with the Ring. Still more confusing is his habit of taking a motive that at first has only a particular meaning, and making it express a general concept, the result being that we frequently associate it with the wrong character. His mind was curiously¹⁷⁷ like Bach's in this respect, that having fixed¹⁷⁸ upon a figure that seemed to him an adequate symbol for an action, a person, an animal, or a material object, he would use it for all future phenomena¹⁷⁹ of the same kind. But Bach's procedure is rather more logical, for his typical themes have as a rule a pictorial¹⁸⁰ or semi-pictorial character, and so they can be applied without incongruity¹⁸¹ to a number of pictures of the same general order. A phrase that symbolises waves, for example, in one work may be legitimately¹⁸² employed to symbolise waves in another, for the theme itself is so constructed as to suggest the motion of waves: at least that is the intention. But Wagner necessarily has to find musical symbols for all kinds of things in his operas for which it is quite impossible to discover an unmistakable, self-explanatory musical equivalent. The symbol has therefore to be an arbitrary one; it has no claim to pictorial veracity¹⁸³, but we agree to accept it because it fulfils a useful musical purpose. The "Fire" motive conveys a real suggestion of fire; the Rhinegold prelude has certain qualities that make us willing to associate it with a mighty¹⁸⁴ rolling river. But the "Ring" motive does not convey the slightest suggestion of a ring, nor has the "Gold" motive any resemblance to gold.

Wagner runs, then, a risk of being misunderstood, or not understood at all, when he takes an arbitrary symbol which we are willing to concede him in one case, and applies it to another. It would tax all the ingenuity¹⁸⁵ of the thorough-going Wagnerian to justify, for instance, in the scene of the Norns in the G?tterd?mmerung, the employment of the "Sleep" motive that is inevitably¹⁸⁶ associated in our minds with Wotan's parting from Brynhilde at the end of the Valkyrie. When Brynhilde is taking leave of Siegfried, in the second scene of the G?tterd?mmerung, and giving him Grane as a perpetual reminder¹⁸⁷ of herself, the orchestra accompanies his words with the "Love" motive from the duet between Siegmund and Sieglinde in the first act of the Valkyrie. So profound has been the impression we have received from it there that it is impossible for us to associate it with any other pair of lovers; and we cannot help wondering what Siegmund and Sieglinde have to do with Siegfried and Brynhilde and Grane. When Hagen describes the coming of Siegfried down the Rhine, it is quite right that the orchestra should give out the typical Siegfried theme, but quite wrong, surely, that this theme should be combined with that of the Rhine Maidens from the Rhinegold. The intention presumably is that from the Rhine Maidens we are to infer the Rhine;[408] but the musical intelligence does not like having to diverge¹⁸⁹ into deductive reasoning of this kind. Anyone who has learnt to associate the theme with the Rhine Maidens will naturally suppose either that they are to appear in person or that some allusion¹⁹⁰ is to be made to them, neither of which things happens. The "Treaty" motive of the Rhinegold, again, has become so firmly associated in our minds with the agreement between Wotan and the giants that we involuntarily think of them when we hear it again in the orchestra during the swearing of Blood-brotherhood by Siegfried and Gunther (G?tterd?mmerung, vocal score, p. 92).

One of the most curious uses of the leit-motive is to be found in Siegfried (V. S. p. 35). Siegfried, pouring contempt on the idea that Mime¹⁹¹ can be his father, is telling him how he once saw the reflection of his own face in the brook¹⁹²:

Unlike unto thee
there did I seem:
as like as a toad¹⁹³
to a glittering fish.

There is excellent reason for accompanying the third line with the "Smithing" motive that so often characterises Mime; but what reason can there be for accompanying the fourth line with the "Waves" motive from the prelude to the Rhinegold? As it is not in the Rhine but in a brook that Siegmund has seen his reflection, the motive here can only be taken as symbolising not the waves of a particular and already familiar river—a procedure for which there might be some excuse—but waves in general, which is quite illegitimate. Wagner goes too far, as Bach used to go too far, in importing into the line a pictorial allusion that is not already there, and that we can only put there by an effort. For Bach also was in the habit of making his music argue, as it were, from one external fact to another. We can permit this within certain limits, but both Bach and Wagner sometimes go beyond all limits. When Bach has to set to music a stanza¹⁹⁴ in which the faithful are spoken of as Christ's sheep (Beglückte Herde, Jesu Schafe, in the cantata¹⁹⁶ Du Hirte Israel) he obviously aims at creating a pastoral atmosphere by the use of the oboes; and our imagination here is quite willing to accept the na?f translation of the religious idea into a pictorial image. But when Bach, possessed¹⁹⁷ by the image of Jesus calling His disciples to be fishers of men (in the cantata Siehe, ich will viel Fischer aussenden), makes use of a motive of a type that he always employs to symbolise waves, we can only say, with all respect, that we had rather he did not ask us to deduce the necessity of waves from the fact that there are fish. So with this passage from Siegfried: we should be quite satisfied with the mere comparison between the toad and the fish; to lay it down with such portentous gravity that where there are fish there must necessarily be water is to reduce pictorialism to an absurdity¹⁹⁸.

There is no lack of examples of this process of illegitimate inference and illegitimate association. After Mime has answered the first of the Wanderer's three questions, the latter congratulates him in this wise (Siegfried, vocal score, p. 74):

Right well the name
of the race dost thou know:
sly, thou rascal¹⁹⁹, thou seemest!

—to the same phrase that is often used in the Rhinegold to suggest the trickiness²⁰⁰ of Loge in particular, but also, apparently²⁰¹, to suggest deceit in general. It accompanies, for example, Fafner's remark to Fasolt, à propos of the attempt of Wotan to evade²⁰² the promised payment for Valhalla—

My trusty brother,
seest thou, fool, his deceit?

(V. S. 89, 90); and again the words in which Wotan tries to calm the apprehensions²⁰³ of Fricka—

Where simple strength serves,
of none ask I assistance:
but to force the hate
of foes²⁰⁴ to help me,
needs such craft and deceit
as Loge the artful employs.

(V. S. 82, 83). That is to say, a purely arbitrary musical figure is to be taken as symbolising not merely the slyness of a particular person, but slyness in the abstract—a length to which we must decline to go with Wagner.

And as with his waves and his moral qualities, so with his animals; they too are both particular and universal. When Alberich, at the urging of Loge, turns himself into a serpent (Rhinegold, p. 182), it is to the accompaniment of a motive that is itself admirably pictorial. But in Siegfried, (p. 7, etc.), and the G?tterd?mmerung (p. 34, etc.), the same motive is always used to characterise Fafner, after he has turned himself into a dragon. One need not enlarge upon the confusion this is bound to create.

We are willing again, to accept the "Swan" motive in Lohengrin as a purely conventional symbol; but the same motive strikes rather oddly on our ears when it is used to particularise the swan in Parsifal. If in Lohengrin it typifies that particular swan, it is obviously not right to employ it for a totally different bird in another opera; for there is nothing in the outline of the theme that can be said to bear the remotest resemblance to a swan in the way that an arpeggio theme may be said to resemble waves, or a crepitating theme to suggest fire. Again, Wagner only confuses us when he uses the motive that accompanies Kundry's ride in the first scene of Parsifal to accompany Parsifal's description of the horsemen he had once seen in the wood:

And once upon the fringe of the wood,
on glorious creatures mounted,
men all glittering went by me;
fain had I been like them:
with laughter they swept on their way.
And then I ran,
but never again I saw them;
through deserts wide I wandered,
o'er hill and dale;
oft fell the night,
then followed day: etc.

(vocal score, p. 54); afterwards to accompany Kundry's account of the death of Herzeleide:

As I rode by I saw her dying,
and, Fool, she sent thee her greeting;

(V. S. p. 57); after that, again, to accompany Kundry as she hastens to the spring in the wood to get water for the fainting Parsifal (V. S. p. 58); after that to describe the rush of Klingsor's warriors²⁰⁵ to the ramparts (V. S. p. 120); after that to accompany the thronging²⁰⁶ of the Flower Maidens to the scene (V. S. p. 156); again to give point to Parsifal's words:

And I, the fool, the coward,
to deeds of boyish wildness hither fled—

(V. S. p. 203); and to accompany—for what reason it is difficult to say—Kundry's threat that she will call the spear against Parsifal if he continues to repulse²⁰⁷ her (V. S. p. 222); and finally, as an accompaniment to her last words to Parsifal:

For fleddest thou from here,
and foundest all the ways of the world,
the one that thou seek'st,
that path thy foot shall find never;

(V. S. p. 225). No ingenuity can justify the employment of the same motive for so many different purposes. As a matter of fact, after we have once become conscious of it as accompanying Kundry's ride in the first scene of the opera, it is inevitable that we should associate it with her at each subsequent recurrence of it.

Another peculiarity of Wagner's use of the leit-motive may be noted²⁰⁸; once or twice he gives a meaning to a theme in the later stages of the Ring that we cannot be sure of it possessing at first. The most striking instance of this is the "Reflection" motive. In Siegfried it is exclusively employed in connection with Mime, and the manner of its employment leaves no room for doubt that the commentators²⁰⁹ are right in giving it this title. The prelude to Siegfried commences with it; it is used there to suggest to us Mime pondering over the problem of the forging of the sword. It frequently recurs²¹⁰ with the same significance in the scene that follows. It is used again all through the scene of questions and answers between the Wanderer and Mime, to suggest the dwarf²¹¹ putting his considering cap on after or during each of the Wanderer's posers. Yet on its first appearance in the Rhinegold (vocal score, p. 151) there is nothing whatever to indicate that the theme is to be taken as symbolical²¹³ of reflection. It accompanies Mime's plaint to Wotan and Loge—

What help for me?
I must obey
the commands of my brother,
who holds me bondsman to him.

By evil craft fashioned Alberich
from the ravished Rhinegold a yellow ring: etc.

(Vocal score, p. 151.) From the words one would be a priori inclined to associate the music with Alberich rather than with Mime; and as it is not employed again in the Rhinegold, the meaning we are suddenly asked to attach to it at the opening of Siegfried seems a little far-fetched.

7

Wagner was not long in realising that however thrilling the timbre²¹⁴ of the human voice may be, and useful as it is for making clear the course of the action and the sentiments of the characters, the orchestra is the most powerful and most resourceful of all the instruments at the disposal of the operatic composer. More and more the main current of his thinking goes into this. In the Rhinegold the orchestral texture is by no means continuous; frequently it merely punctuates²¹⁵ or supports the vocal declamation²¹⁶ by means of a detached chord or two, much in the way that it used to sustain the older recitative. As the Ring proceeds, pages of this kind become rarer: the orchestra thrusts itself more and more to the centre of the picture. It would be impossible to make the tissue of the Rhinegold intelligible without the voices: but the orchestral part of the G?tterd?mmerung would flow on with hardly a break if the vocal part were omitted; so also would large sections of Tristan and the Meistersinger. It was inevitable that under these circumstances the vocal writing should occasionally become a little perfunctory. It is frequently said that the balance between the vocal and orchestral parts is most perfectly²¹⁷ maintained in Tristan; but the most cursory²¹⁸ examination of the score shows that even there Wagner could not always find, or would not take the trouble to find, a vocal line of equal melodic interest with that of the orchestra, in the opening scene, for instance, it is transparently²¹⁹ clear that the really expressive voice is the orchestra, and that the vocal parts have been inserted, sometimes rather carelessly and unskilfully, after the orchestral tissue has been completed. The vocal writing in Tristan falls into four main categories. The first is that to which I have already referred; wholly absorbed in the orchestral working out of a theme, Wagner seems to pay the minimum of attention to the vocal line, which sometimes has as little real relevance²²¹ to the music as a whole as if it had been added by another person. As a specimen²²² of this kind of writing we may cite the music to the words of Brangaene at the commencement of the opera—

Bluish strips
are stretching along the west;
swiftly the ship
sails to the shore:
if restful the sea by eve
we shall readily set foot on land.

(Vocal score, pp. 7, 8.)

To the second category belong passages in which the voice is frankly²²³ in the forefront of the picture and the orchestra is merely a background—as in the colloquy between Tristan and Brangaene (vocal score, pp. 18 ff.), or in the music to Isolde's words shortly after the beginning of the second Act—

BRANGAENE. I still hear the sound of horns.
ISOLDE.No sound of horns
were so sweet;
yon fountain's soft
murmuring current
moves so quietly hence;
if horns yet brayed²²⁴
how could I hear that?

(Vocal score, pp. 90, 91.)

To the third category belong the passages in which the voice simply sings the same melody as the orchestra, as on p. 177 of the vocal score ("Thy kingdom thou art showing," etc.); and to the fourth, those in which it sings a real counterpoint to the orchestra—not a mere piece of padding like the passage I have cited from pp. 7, 8 of the score, but a vocal line of genuine melodic interest—as in a good deal of the scene of the third Act through which there runs the melancholy²²⁵ cor anglais melody.

Tristan, in fact, in spite of the splendour of its orchestral polyphony, by no means exhibits Wagner's symphonic powers in their full evolution. The most wonderful of his works in this respect is the G?tterd?mmerung, the stupendous strength of which is beyond words and almost beyond belief. The world had not seen a musical brain working at such tremendous and long-sustained pressure since the days when the B minor Mass and the "Matthew Passion" were written; and even those masterpieces have not the continuity of texture of the G?tterd?mmerung, nor do they show so giant a hand at its work of unification. Turn almost where you will, the course of the drama is told with absolute clearness in the orchestra itself. Yet in spite of his concentrating so largely on the orchestra, the vocal parts have an extraordinary aptness; it would be hard to find a passage in the score as perfunctory as some that might be quoted from Tristan. The voice, it is true, is often used simply as another counterpoint among those of the orchestra; but as a counterpoint it generally has a dramatic appositeness and a melodic beauty of its own.

In Parsifal this tendency to make the orchestra the principal dramatic speaker goes so far that very frequently the vocal writing is thoroughly²²⁶ bad. Some writers have attributed this to a decline of mental power in Wagner's old age. I do not think that this is the correct explanation. I can see no general decadence²²⁷ of musical invention in the music of Parsifal: I am willing to believe that the peculiar¹⁷⁶ emotional and intellectual world of the opera makes no appeal to many people; but the style as a whole is as admirably suited to that world as the styles of Tristan and the Meistersinger are to their respective subjects, and I for one see no failure of inspiration except in some of the choral writing in the first Act, where there is occasionally an undeniable touch of commonplace. Part of the admitted colourlessness of some of the vocal passages is to be accounted for, I think, by the utterly unmusical quality of the words. The defect is not in Wagner the musician but in Wagner the poet, who has forgotten for the moment several of the principles he had laid down in his prose works and put into successful practice in the six great operas of his prime. The text of Parsifal contains a large amount of quite unmusical matter, especially at the commencement. Many of the lines have evidently not roused the slightest interest in the composer. He knew that the orchestral part was alive, and always developing the emotional possibilities of the situation; and when he comes to an obviously impossible verbal patch,—necessary for the telling of the story, but containing no stimulus²³⁰ for the musician—he simply refuses to waste time or trouble upon it. Take as an example one of the very worst passages for the voice in the whole opera—the words of Parsifal just before the beginning of the transformation music in the first Act—

PARSIFAL. I hardly stir, and yet I move apace.

Granting that the words are unfit for music, it is incredible that Wagner could not have found a more interesting musical outline for them than this, if it had occurred to him to try. But I take it that he would not try, or saw no necessity for trying; his mind was wholly bent²³² on working out his orchestral picture, which, after all, is the only thing that really matters here as in so many other places. In other passages, such as the long recital²³³ of Kundry to Parsifal commencing "I saw the babe upon its mother's breast" (vocal score, p. 187), the orchestral part is a sort of small symphonic movement in itself, in which the voice mostly sings the same melody as the orchestra. Where it does not do this in the symphonic passages the vocal writing again becomes a trifle careless, as in the Good Friday music. The self-contained completeness of the orchestral part here is conclusively²³⁴ shown by its perfect adaptation to the concert room; and I take it that, feeling that virtually all he had to say had been said by the orchestra, Wagner worked out the mood of the scene with complete satisfaction to himself in that medium, and then added the vocal part as best he could—sometimes quite well, sometimes by no means well. He had largely given up, indeed, thinking simultaneously²³⁵ in terms of both voice and orchestra, as in the best parts of Tristan, the Meistersinger and the G?tterd?mmerung. Those who will may put this down to a decline of his musical powers. To me it seems more probable that as a musician he came to rely more and more on his most eloquent instrument, the orchestra. It may even be that his carelessness with regard to the text of Parsifal, his inclusion of a number of episodes that he must have known were essentially foreign to his own ideal of music, can be accounted for by his belief that he could rely on the expressiveness²³⁶ and the continuity of the orchestral web to see him through all the inevitable difficulties. As one looks at the score of Parsifal one can readily understand his desire to try his hand at a symphony in the last years of his life.

8

It is open to doubt, indeed, whether Wagner ever attained²³⁷ the homogeneity of form that was his ideal. His most homogeneous work is probably Lohengrin; after his developing imagination and technique had made him dissatisfied with the style of that opera, and pointed²³⁸ him on to more difficult achievements, he does indeed paint pictures of magnificent scope and exquisite fineness of detail, but he hardly attains²³⁹ the perfect balance of all the factors and the perfect consistency²⁴⁰ of style that make Lohengrin flow so smoothly²⁴¹. The reason, I think, is that while he was urged on to this reform and that by the logical quality of his mind, he was never quite logical enough—which is only another way of saying that even the greatest minds cannot create a new form of their own in art. All they can do is to add something to the structure they have inherited from their predecessors²⁴², and pass the transformed product on to their successors as something to be transformed still further. An ideal like that of Wagner—to create an art form that should be musical through and through, a continuous, endlessly varied²⁴³ web of melody,—is realisable in instrumental music pure and simple, but hardly in connection with the stage. Concentrate the dramatic action as he would, so as to provide the musician with a framework that should be musical in every fibre, the poet was still compelled to retain a certain amount of non-musical matter in order to tell his story clearly to the audience. The concision²⁴⁴ of Tristan is wonderful; but even in the first Act of Tristan there are verse-passages the pedestrian quality of which the composer has not been able to disguise. The style of all his later works fluctuates in character because he is divided between a desire to keep the actors in the forefront and the necessity for relegating²⁴⁵ them to the background in order to give the orchestra an absolutely free course. We feel with Wagner, as we do with certain others of the most fertile minds in art—with Goethe, with Leonardo, with Hokusai—that one human life-time was too pitifully short for the realisation of everything of which the great brain was capable; that the body broke down while the mind was still capable of adding to its store of knowledge and feeling. All Wagner's greatest works, regarded from the standpoint of the twentieth century, are hardly more than magnificent attempts to find a compromise between drama and music. At times the compromise worked admirably; at others there is perceptible friction²⁴⁶. His dilemma²⁴⁷ was the one that has confronted every composer of opera since the day when opera was invented. Poetry and music are not the loving sisters that the fancy of the literary man would make them out to be; they are rival goddesses, very jealous and intolerant of each other. The poet, in proportion as his work is genuine, faultless poetry, has no need of the musician. Music is cruel, ravenous²⁴⁸, selfish, overbearing with poetry; it deprives it, for its own ends, of almost everything that makes it poetry, altering its verbal values, disregarding its rhymes, substituting another rhythm for that of the poet. It has no need of anything but the poetic idea, and to get at that kernel²⁴⁹ it ruthlessly tears away all the delicacies²⁵⁰ of tissue that enclose it. Wagner himself, however much he might theorise about poetry, was never a poet; he was simply a versifier who wrote words for music, sometimes admirably adapted for this purpose, sometimes exceedingly ill adapted. In Tristan, which he himself regarded as the one of all his poems that was best suited for music, what he writes is generally not poetry at all. Who would give that title to lines that scorn all grace of rhythm, all variety of cadence²²⁸, all the magic that comes of the perfect fusion⁷⁵ of speech and expression: lines like those of the final page, for example:

Heller schallend
mich umwallend,
sind es Wellen
sanfter Lüfte?
Sind es Wogen
wonniger Düfte?
Wie sie schwellen
mich umrauschen,
soll ich atmen,
soll ich lauschen?
Soll ich schlürfen,
untertauchen?
Süss in Düften
mich verhauchen?
In dem wogenden Schwall,
in dem t?nenden Schall,
in des Welt-Atems
wehendem All,—
ertrinken,—
versinken,—
unbewusst,—
h?chste Lust⁴³!

or those at the meeting of Tristan and Isolde in the second Act—

TRISTAN. Isolde! Geliebte!
ISOLDE. Tristan! Geliebter!
Bist du mein?
TRISTAN. Hab' ich dich wieder?
ISOLDE. Darf ich dich fassen?
TRISTAN. Kann ich mir trauen?
ISOLDE. Endlich! Endlich!
TRISTAN. An meine Brust!
ISOLDE. Fühl' ich dich wirklich?
TRISTAN.Seh' ich dich selber?
ISOLDE. Dies deine Augen?
TRISTAN. Dies dein Mund?
ISOLDE. Hier deine Hand?
TRISTAN. Hier dein Herz?
ISOLDE. Bin¹⁸⁸ ich's? Bist du's?
Halt' ich dich fest?
TRISTAN. Bin ich's? Bist du's?
Ist es kein Trug?
BOTH. Ist es kein Traum?
O Wonne der Seele,
o süsse, hehrste,
kühnste, sch?nste,
seligste Lust!
TRISTAN. Ohne Gleiche!
ISOLDE. überreiche!
TRISTAN. überselig!
ISOLDE. Ewig!

If this telegraphic style, as Emil Ludwig calls it, is poetry, then we shall have to give that word a meaning it has never yet had.

But if the Tristan order of verse is not poetry, it is magnificently adapted to the needs of the symphonic musician. It is unobtrusive; it is pliant²⁵¹; it serves to préciser the musical emotion without fettering²⁵² the orchestral composer either melodically or rhythmically²⁵³. Compare now with the previous extracts one or two from Parsifal—
Denn ihm, da wilder Feinde List und Macht
des reinen Glaubens Reich bedrohten,
ihm neigten sich in heilig ernster Nacht
dereinst des Heilands sel'ge Boten:
(To him, when 'gainst the savage²⁵⁵ foeman's might
this realm of faith he had defended,
oh wonder rare! in solemn, holy night
from heaven the Saviour²⁵⁶'s messengers descended)
Des eig'nen sündigen Blutes Gewell'
in wahnsinniger Flucht
muss mir zurück dann fliessen,
in die Welt der Sündensucht
mit wilder Scheu sich ergiessen:
von neuem sprengt es das Tor,
daraus es nun⁴⁶ str?mt hervor,
hier durch die Wunde, der seinen gleich,
geschlagen von desselben Speeres Streich,
der dort dem Erl?ser die Wunde stach,
aus der mit blut'gen Tr?nen
der G?ttliche weint' ob der Menschheit Schmach
in Mitleid's heiligem Sehnen,—
und aus der nun mir, an heiligster Stelle,
dem Pfleger g?ttlichster Güter,
des Erl?sungsbalsams Hüter,
das heisse Sündenblut entquillt,
ewig erneut aus des Sehnens Quelle,
das, ach! keine Büssung je mir stillt!
(In maddest tumult²⁵⁸, by sin defiled²⁵⁹,
my blood back on itself
doth turn and rage within me;
to the world where sin is lord
in frenzied²⁶⁰ fear is it surging;
again it forces the door,
in torrents²⁶¹ it poureth forth²⁶²,
here through the spear-wound, alike to His,
and dealt me by the self-same deadly spear
that once the Redeemer pierced with pain,
and, tears of blood outpouring,
the Holy One wept for the shame of man,
in pity's god-like yearning,—
and from this my wound, the Grail's own chosen,
the holy relics²⁶³' guardian²⁶⁴,
of redemption's balm the warder,
the sinful fiery flood wells forth,
ever renewed from the fount of longing
that, ah! never penance²⁶⁵ more may still!)
So hofft sein sündenreu'ger Hüter,
da er nicht sterben kann,
wann je er ihn erschaut,
sein Ende zu erzwingen,
und mit dem Leben seine Qual zu enden.
(Thus hopes its sin-repentant²⁶⁶ guardian,
since he can perish not
while on it he doth gaze,
by force to draw death to him,
and with his life to end his cruel torment²⁶⁷.)

How incredibly careless is the construction here—the long, involved sentences, the parentheses²⁶⁸, the separation of substantive²⁶⁹ and verb by several lines! It is this absence of poetic concentration that makes Parsifal a trifle langweilig at times; for no matter how expressive Wagner may make the orchestral music, he cannot quite reconcile us to the frequent flatness of the vocal writing and the difficulty we often have in getting the sense, or even the grammatical construction, of the words. That Wagner at the end of his life could put together a text like Parsifal after having made the poems of Tristan and the Ring is not in the least a proof of mental collapse²⁷⁰, but only of the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of finding a perfect compromise between music and dramatic poetry. He was fortunate enough, in the case of Tristan, to hit upon a subject that was comparatively easy to concentrate. Two duties, it must be remembered, an operatic poem has to perform: it has to provide the composer with opportunities for emotional expression, and it has to make a story clear to the spectator. The ideal text would be that in which the action was implicit²⁷² in the emotion, that is to say, one in which there was no need for any explanation, through the mouth of this or that actor, of events that were happening off the stage or that had occurred before the drama began. It is when the composer has to interrupt his purely emotional outpouring in order to allow the poet to become explanatory that he realises the difficulty of making his opera musical throughout. Even in Tristan Wagner could not wholly dispense¹⁵¹ with a certain amount of explanation, in the first act, of the events in Ireland and Cornwall that have led up to the situation in which Tristan and Isolde now find themselves. The music in consequence halts decidedly at times; all the art of the composer cannot disguise the fact that he is momentarily being held up by the exigencies²⁷³ of the stage poet. In the Ring, as it was first drafted, Wagner was faced with the same problem, but he solved it in another way. Siegfried's Death was to be merely the climax of a long sequence of tragic events. Without some knowledge of these events, however, the spectator would be unable to understand the final tragedy. So Wagner resorted to the device of making the characters themselves recapitulate²⁷⁴ the earlier stages of the story, in much the same way that Isolde, in the first act of Tristan, tells Brangaene—for the benefit of the audience, of course—all about the coming of Tristan to Ireland, his slaying of Morold, her nursing of the wounded Cornish hero, his wooing her as bride for King Marke, and so on. In the opening scene of Siegfried's Death the Norns tell each other—again for the benefit of the audience—how Alberich ravished the gold from the Rhine, made a ring from it, and enslaved the Nibelung race; how the ring was stolen, and Alberich himself became a thrall²⁷⁵; how the giants built Valhalla for the gods, and, denied their promised reward, got possession of the ring that the gods had stolen from Alberich; how there was born a free hero, destined to redeem the gods from their bondage²⁷⁶; how Siegfried slew²⁷⁷ the dragon and wakened Brynhilde from her sleep. Having made all this clear in an introductory scene, Wagner raises the curtain upon Siegfried and Brynhilde. Later, Hagen tells Gunther,—all for the sake of the audience—how Wotan begot²⁷⁸ the Volsung race; how the twin-born Volsung pair Siegmund and Sieglinde had for son the mighty hero, Siegfried, who "closed the ravenous maw" of the dragon with his "conquering sword." In the next scene Siegfried explains to the audience—via Hagen and Gunther—how he came into possession of the tarnhelm and the ring, whereupon Hagen describes the virtues²⁸⁰ of the former. In the third scene the Valkyries[409] fly to the solitary²⁸¹ Brynhilde and learn of her awakening²⁸² by Siegfried, and of the intervention²⁸³ of Wotan in the combat between Siegmund and Hunding. In the first scene of the second Act Alberich tells Hagen how he won the gold and forged the ring, and compelled Mime to make the tarnhelm for him; how the ring was ravished from him by the gods and given to the giants; how one of the latter guarded it in the form of a dragon; how Siegfried slew the latter and Mime. In the second scene of the third Act Siegfried tells the Gibichungs—the audience overhearing—how Mime tended the dying Sieglinde in the wood, saved her child, and brought him up to his own craft of smith; how he (Siegfried) forged his father's sword anew and did the dragon to death; how the bird warned him of Mime's plot against his life, told him of the powers of the ring and tarnhelm, and sent him to rouse Brynhilde from her sleep on the fire-girt rock.

Wagner must have felt the clumsiness of this method of constant explanation, and anticipated that it would impede²⁸⁴ the free flow of his music; while in any case the audience would probably still not be quite clear as to certain points. So, as all the world knows, he first of all prefixed to Siegfried's Death another drama—The Young Siegfried—designed to put the bearing of all the stages of the action beyond the possibility of misunderstanding. But again the fear haunts him that there may still be some things insufficiently²⁸⁵ accounted for; so even The Young Siegfried has to have a certain number of pages of explanation. The fact of Siegfried being there at all has to be explained by Mime, as well as the further facts of the death of Siegmund in battle and the perishing of Sieglinde in giving birth to Siegfried. In the next scene, almost the whole story of what afterwards became the Rhinegold and the Valkyrie is told afresh in the competition of questions and answers between the Wanderer and Mime. In the first scene of the third Act, we have the completion of the story of the Valkyrie given to the audience in the dialogue between the Wanderer and Erda—how the earth-goddess bore a daughter, Brynhilde, to Wotan, how she flouted²⁸⁶ the god's will, and for punishment was doomed²⁸⁷ to sleep on the fiery fell. Not content with all this, Wagner afterwards stages, in a third opera, the Valkyrie, the whole of the action that has been told and told again in Siegfried and the G?tterd?mmerung, from the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde down to the punishment of Brynhilde. Even here he has to find room for explanations; in the first scene of the second Act Wotan tells the audience—via Brynhilde—the whole story of the rape²⁸⁸ of the gold by Alberich and all the events that followed from it. Finally Wagner comes to the conclusion that the whole action, from its beginning in the depths of the Rhine, had better be put visibly upon the stage; and so the Rhinegold, the story of which has been already told more than once, is prefixed to the Valkyrie. But in spite of his having shown everything so completely that nothing remains to be explained by word of mouth, he still retains all the explanations he had inserted in the three other dramas of the tetralogy. No doubt he was aware of their superfluity, but shrank, as he might well do, from the enormous task of reconstructing the whole work yet again. He may have argued, too, that as each of the operas would have to stand by itself on the particular occasion of its performance, it would be no disadvantage to have the events of the preceding evening fully explained, even at the cost of some otherwise needless repetition.

I have not gone over this long familiar ground merely to tell again a thrice-told tale, but to bring into higher relief the fundamental difficulty of the musical dramatist who is working along the Wagnerian lines—the difficulty of taking up the whole of the poet's work into the being of music, when the poet, in order to leave no room for misunderstanding on the part of the audience of the reason for the visible actions and the audible sentiments of the actors, has to pad out his poem with a certain amount of matter that is explanatory of the past rather than emotional in the present. So desperate a device as the visible representation in three or four evenings of every stage of a dramatic action was obviously not to be resorted to again. It was equally impossible to reduce the story of Parsifal to the highly concentrated form into which he had managed to cast Tristan. So he had to do what it had been his first impulse to do in the Ring—elucidate the visible action of the moment by a narrative²⁹⁰ of all that had happened before the action, or that particular stage of the action, began, and trust to the orchestra to maintain the musical interest by means of the interplay of leit-motives. Hence the lumbering²⁹¹ stage technique of the first Act of Parsifal, and the raison d'être for the endless garrulity of Gurnemanz. That venerable worthy²⁹² is not a character; he is merely a walking and talking guide book; he stands outside the real drama, somewhat in the style of the compère in a revue; and the proof of his almost complete nullity is that Wagner has been utterly unable to characterise him musically. Every other character in his operas—even the minor personages, such as Kurvenal and David and Gutrune—exists for us as a definite personality, someone drawn in the round in music as effectively as a painter or sculptor²⁹³ could have shown him forth. But even Wagner has been unable to invent a single phrase that shall be characteristic of Gurnemanz and Gurnemanz alone. He is the one Wagnerian character who simply does not exist for musicians. As far as his music is concerned he has neither mental characteristics nor bodily form; we remember him solely²⁹⁴ for his interminable talk.

9

If Wagner failed in his struggle with the musical-dramatic form, it was the failure of a Titan in a struggle that only a Titan would have ventured upon. Form and the perfection of form are simple enough matters for the smaller musical intelligences, for whom form means merely a symmetrical mould to be filled. It is for the greater minds that the problem of form is always a torture, for their ideas are perpetually outgrowing²⁹⁵ the mould. In sheer fertility of idea Wagner was probably the greatest musician the world has ever seen. It was of the very essence of his work that there should be no repetition either of mood or of procedure. Without, indeed, making the necessarily futile²⁹⁶ attempt to decide which is per se the finer order of musical mind, the dramatic or the symphonic, it may be confidently said that to a dramatist—or at all events a dramatist like Wagner—there is permitted no such easy returning upon his own tracks, no half-mechanical manipulation of the same order of ideas time after time, as is possible to the worker in the stereotyped²⁹⁷ instrumental forms. Great as is the inventive power of a Bach, a Beethoven or a Brahms, it cannot be denied that much of their work is simply a varied exploitation of a relatively small number of formulas,—that a very small amount of thematic invention can be made to go a very long way under the guidance of an established pattern. Nor, broadly speaking, is the same intensity²⁹⁸ of imagination, or the same scope of imagination, required to invent a hundred ordinary fugal or symphonic themes as to find a hundred themes that are the veritable musical counterparts of as many human beings. The family resemblance between "subjects" that is permitted to a Bach or a Beethoven is not permitted to a Wagner: the dramatist's work must be a perpetual re-creation—and a definite, unmistakable re-creation—of the life around him in all its multiformity. In this sense Wagner is without an equal among composers; never has there been a brain so apt at limning²⁹⁹ character and suggesting the milieu in music. We can speak of the Wagnerian imagination as we can speak of the Shakespearean imagination; Wagner's is the only imagination in music that can be compared with Shakespeare's in dramatic fertility and comprehensiveness. It pours itself over the whole surface of a work, into every nook and cranny of it. It is a vast mind, infinite in its sympathies, protean³⁰⁰ in its creative power. For sheer drastic incisiveness³⁰¹ of theme he has not his equal in all music; each vision instinctively, without an effort, finds its own inevitable utterance³⁰². In the works of his great period every motive has a physiognomy as distinct from all others as the face of any human being is distinct from all other faces. The motives are unforgettable once we have heard them. They depict their subject once for all: who to-day, enormously as the apparatus³⁰³ of musical expression has developed since Wagner's time, would dare to try to find better symbols than those he has invented for the tarnhelm, the fire, the Rhine, the sword, the dragon, the potion that brings oblivion to Siegfried; or for any of the men and women of the operas—for Wotan, for Siegfried, for Mime, for the "reine Thor," for Herzeleide, for Hagen, for Gutrune, for Brynhilde, and for a dozen others? To hear any of these themes to-day, after a generation or more of daily familiarity with them, is like looking at a medallion of a hundred years ago in which not a point of the outline or a single plane of the relief has been blurred³⁰⁴, nor a single grain of its first sharp milling been lost. They are what they are because they combine in the fullest measure and in impeccable proportion the two great preservatives³⁰⁵ of all artistic work,—a luminous¹⁴ personal vision and consummate³⁰⁶ style.

10

In the operas of his prime, every one of his characters is musically alive, down to the smallest. Tristan is not more real to us than Kurvenal, nor Walther more real than David, nor Brynhilde than Gutrune. His fiery imagination saw over the whole field of the drama with the same intensity. In this respect, as in so many others, not one of his successors can compare with him. Strauss, for instance, has always failed to give reality to any but the leading characters of his operas. His Faninal in the Rosenkavalier is decidedly not alive, nor is his Chrysothemis in Elektra. There is not a single truly characteristic phrase by which the musician can recall the former to his memory in the way that he can recall David or Kurvenal or Mime; the only piece of music by which he can recall Chrysothemis is an atrocious rag-time waltz that he would prefer to forget. Strauss's minor characters are known to us through the poem rather than the music; while Wagner's minor characters are clear-cut personalities³⁰⁷ to thousands of opera-goers who have never read the poem. And like the true dramatist, Wagner has no moral prejudices; for the time being he puts himself into the skin of each of his characters and looks at the world solely through his eyes. Nowhere is the author to be detected in the work, just as Shakespeare is nowhere to be detected in his; each of the characters sees the world from his own standpoint, and while he is talking we are for the moment bound to see the world precisely³⁰⁸ as he sees it. In any one else's hands Alberich would have been a mere conventional villain³⁰⁹ of melodrama³¹⁰. As Wagner draws him he is as real as Iago,—an enemy of the light and all that live in the light, but their enemy by reason of the very nature of his being, following his own instincts with perfect naturalness and perfect consistency. So it comes about that we invariably believe in Alberich and the justice of his cause when he is speaking for himself; nowhere is he a mere foil or relief to characters with whom we may have more moral sympathy. No one can fail to be moved, for instance, by his appeal to Hagen in the second Act of the G?tterd?mmerung—the genuine heart-hunger of this, repulsive³¹¹ gnome³¹², lusting³¹³ for power with all the passion and all the sincerity³¹⁴ of his narrow soul. How vast and terrible a force of evil, again, is Hagen, but at the same time how natural, how inevitable. Even Mime is always right from Mime's point of view: the spectator can for the moment no more turn against him than against Alberich.

It is one of the mysteries of human psychology, indeed, how the mind that could be so incurably³¹⁵ egoistic in the ordinary affairs of life, so incapable³¹⁶ of seeing people as they really were, and not merely as they were in relation to the gratification or frustration of his own desires, should be capable of such universal sympathy in his artistic creation. The crowning wonder of Wagner's artistic psychology is his treatment of Beckmesser. We have seen what a deadly and unreasoning hatred³¹⁷ he had for Hanslick, and that it was Hanslick he had in view in the later poetical⁷⁹ drafts of the character. Yet in the opera, though Beckmesser is made appropriately ridiculous, he is handled almost throughout without a touch of the malice³¹⁸ one might have expected when one knows that the character is meant as a satire³¹⁹ upon a detested³²⁰ enemy. I say "almost throughout," for it has always seemed to me that there is just a shade of unnecessary harshness in Sachs's words after Beckmesser has left the house with the manuscript of Walther's song in his pocket:
A heart more base I never have known,
Ere long he'll be paid for his spite:
Though men cast reason down from its throne
They cannot deny it quite:
Some day the net is spread before them:
In it they fall, and we triumph o'er them.

Beckmesser, for all his wiles³²¹, has not hitherto struck us as being base (boshaft). We laugh at him, but we love him, as we love all the fools and rogues³²² of pure comedy. I fancy I can detect in this passage the last angry flash of the eye and the snap of the jaw³²³ as Wagner thought of Hanslick. But apart from this little lapse²⁷¹ it is wonderful with what detachment the composer has been able to see his personal enemy. The artist in him was too strong, too infallible, to permit of his fouling³²⁴ the ideal world of his art with any breath from the bitter, muddy world of real life. Mr. Bernard Shaw is of the opinion that Strauss, in Ein Heldenleben, gives "an orchestral caricature of his enemies which comes much closer home than Wagner's medi?vally disguised Beckmesser." I hardly think the musical world as a whole will agree with Mr. Shaw. The "Adversaries³²⁵" section of Ein Heldenleben always strikes me as a mere outburst of rather stupid bad temper: the humour is as ill-conditioned as the psychology is crude and the expression commonplace. We have long since ceased to bestow³²⁶ on it the compliment of even as much thin laughter as we gave it when it was quite new. It is bad art for this reason if for no other,—that the petty, snappy hero shown in this section is inconsistent with the sort of super-man who figures in the rest of the work; who can believe that the hero of the noble ending, set high above earth and all its littlenesses, is the same individual as the small bundle of wounded vanity and irritated nerves whose reply to his critics takes the form of putting out his tongue and "talking back" like a street urchin³²⁷? Wagner's caricature is at once deeper, truer, kindlier, more universal and more enduring. He could be little enough in his life: in his art the gods took care that he should never be anything but magnanimity itself.

And if there has never been a brain in music that saw so deeply into the springs of character, there has never been a musical brain with such a grasp of a drama as a whole. It was the mighty, tireless synthetic³²⁸ engine that we meet with only some score of times, perhaps, in the whole history of human thought,—in two or three great military commanders, a few great architects, and half-a-dozen philosophers. It is becoming more and more evident each year that since his death there has been no single composer of anything like his bigness, no single composer capable of work at once so new and so coherently wrought³²⁹. His was the last truly great mind to find expression in music. That statement is not at all inconsistent with the admission that modern composers have said many hundreds of things that Wagner could never have thought of: I simply mean that the brains of Strauss and Debussy or any two others put together would not equal Wagner's in range, in depth, in staying power. There has not been a musician since his time who can "think in continents" as he did. The more we study him, indeed, the more wonderful do this sweep of vision and tenacity³³⁰ of hold become to us. There is nothing in all other men's music comparable to Wagner's feat³³¹ of keeping the vast scheme of the Ring in his head for more than a quarter of a century, and actually laying it aside completely for eleven years during that time, without relaxing his grip for a moment upon the smallest limb of the great drama. It is in virtue²⁷⁹ of this fiery and unceasing play of the imagination and this stupendous synthetic power that he takes his place among the half-dozen most comprehensive minds that have ever worked in art.

In music there are only two brains—those of Bach and Beethoven—to compare with his in breadth of span. Say what we will about the repetitions and the longueurs of the Ring, there is nothing in all music, and very little else in any other art, to compare with that wonderful work for combined scope and concentration of design. Wagner had in abundance the rarest of all artistic gifts,—the faculty³³², as a great critic has put it, of seeing the last line in the first, of never losing sight of the whole through all the tangle³³³ of detail. One might almost say that no other modern brain except Napoleon's and Herbert Spencer's has been able to keep all the minuti? of a gigantic problem so unfailingly within the one sphere of vision. Wagner forgot nothing in his work: at any stage of it he could summon up at a moment's notice not only any figure he wanted, in all its natural warmth of life, but the very atmosphere that surrounded it, the very mood it induced in others. To me one of the most marvellous instances of this has always been the passage in Waltraute's recital in the third scene of the G?tterd?mmerung, in which, in the midst of that extraordinary picture of the frustrated³³⁴ Wotan brooding among the joyless gods in Valhalla, she speaks of the god remembering his favourite and banished³³⁵ child:

Then soft grew his look:
He remembered, Brynhilde, thee!

It is a far cry at this stage from the parting of the god and his daughter in the Valkyrie; but at the mere mention of it there wells up in Wagner, after twelve years or more, all the emotion of the wonderful union between them, and the gloomy, careworn³³⁶ music melts for a bar or two into a tear-compelling tenderness. Another magnificent illustration of this gift of his of looking before and after may be had in the third Act of the Meistersinger, just after the greeting of Sachs by the populace of Nuremberg. That reception is surely the most overwhelming thing of its kind the earth has ever seen or heard; it has always been a mystery to me how any merely human singer can find a voice in which to respond to it. But it is precisely here that we realise the subtlety³³⁷ of Wagner's conception of Sachs, the profoundly imaginative way in which he saw him, and his ever-present sense of the fundamentals of the character through apparently the most distracting vicissitudes³³⁸. Any other operatic librettist³³⁹ and composer, after that million-throated outburst, would have set a strutting³⁴⁰ Sachs on his feet, smilingly and condescendingly accepting the homage³⁴² of the multitude. Wagner makes his Sachs realise nothing but his own unworthiness and the sense of something hollow and fleeting in all this vociferation; and there is hardly an effect in all music to compare for subtlety, for poetry, for the profundity³⁴³ of its humanity, with the instantaneous melting of the crimson³⁴⁴ and purple strains of the folk into the quiet grey theme of Sachs' sorrow in the strings³⁴⁵. It was the only possible outlet³⁴⁶ from what any other sincere composer would have instinctively felt to be an emotional impasse³⁴⁷; and it was only Wagner who could have found the outlet. He is great in many ways, but in no way greater than in this faculty of keeping the burning vision of the moment always in touch with those that have passed and those that are to come; in all contemporary music there is not to be found a brain with a third of his power in this respect. In the latest operas of Strauss, strewn with fine things as they are, there is no such unity³⁴⁸ of style, no such ardour of conception, no such unrelaxing hold upon every character in every phase of it; and of course no purely orchestral work can compare with even a single opera of Wagner's for combined sweep of design and closeness of texture.

11

The clarity and unity of Wagner's vision are evident again in the pictorial element that plays so large a part in his works. He was often pictorial without intending it, and was himself probably unconscious of many of the effects of light, colour, and atmosphere that delight us in his music. Mr. Runciman has done well to insist upon the gift, exhibited as early as Die Feen, for not only visualising a scene or a character for us but giving it us in its natural tints³⁵⁰. We have happily got past the day when old-fashioned theorists used to lay it down that "pure" music was "concerned with nothing but itself," and that whoever made it concern itself with appearances of the visible world was at the best no more than half a musician. As I have argued in an earlier chapter of this book, we cannot parcel off the human consciousness into psychology-tight bulkheads in this way. The various faculties³⁵¹ are always crossing over into each other's territories for a moment, and coming back with spoils that they refuse to surrender for the rest of their days. The theorists have always been telling us that music cannot "paint." The composers, knowing much more about the matter than the theorists, have always gone on painting to their heart's content,—Bach, for example, being incorrigibly³⁵² realistic. The three minds with the most pronounced bias³⁵³ towards tone-painting were probably those of Bach, Schubert (in his songs), and Wagner. But between the musician-painters there are as many differences of vision and of manner as there are between "pure" musicians or "pure" painters; and Wagner, in this regard as in every other, brought certain new elements into music, and still stands in a class by himself.

The curious thing about him is that while no other man's music gives us such an impression of being bound up at almost every point with the visible world in which we live and move, actual realism of the ordinary kind is comparatively rare with him, and it is certainly the least important factor in this impression. Now and again, of course, he does "paint" the concrete in the realistic way made familiar to us by the modern symphonic poem-writers. But this way is not at all a new way. The music of Schubert and that of Bach, as has been said, is full of realism of this order,—Schubert's spinning-wheel and Bach's serpents, to give merely two well-known instances. To this category belong Wagner's Rhine, and his fire music, and the whinnying of the Valkyries' horses. But there is really not much realism of that sort in Wagner's music. He objected to it in Berlioz and others unless there was a very good reason for it, and never employed it himself except where it complied with the dual¹⁴⁰ condition of being thoroughly justified by the scene and unquestionably within the scope of musical expression. Wagner does comparatively little tone-painting of the purely realistic kind, but of course he does it always with superb certainty, profiting by a hundred years of evolution of technique since Bach, and by the gorgeous instrument that the modern orchestra places at his disposal.

A subtler sort of pictorialism,—subtler because it is unpremeditated and unconscious,—is that to which Mr. Runciman has drawn attention. No one except Hugo Wolf has ever approached Wagner in the capacity for bathing each scene, each character, in a light and an atmosphere of its own. (Wolf's achievements in this line were of course on a much smaller scale than Wagner's, but some of them are hardly less wonderful if we take into consideration the limitations of the black-and-white medium in which he worked.) This is surely one of the most baffling mysteries in music,—how the same few dozen tones and colours can be made to suggest such differently coloured aspects of the visible world, a world, we must remember, from which music is utterly cut off by the very nature of its medium. But whatever the explanation, the fact is indubitable; though it is a comparatively new thing in music, and indeed would not be possible without our modern developments of harmony, colour and technique. It is virtually unknown in pre-Wagnerian music. I do not mean that no previous composer ever gave a specially²²⁹ appropriate tint³⁴⁹ to a particular scene. That was frequently done; but it was done more or less by a convention, by the use of instruments having a particular association in the minds of the audience, as when the oboe or the cor anglais would be used for suggesting a pastoral scene, or the horns,—as in the beautiful passage at the commencement of the Freischütz overture—for suggesting a wood. The Wagnerian and Wolfian method to which I am now referring is something quite different from this. The term "method," indeed, is inappropriate, for it is impossible to reduce it to any rules or to trace the secret of its effect, as we can in the two other general instances I have cited. It is possible to say that the cold, bare effect of Wolf's Das verlassene M?gdlein comes from the peculiar harmonies he uses, and the pitch at which they are used,—just as the pastoral effect of the "Scène aux champs" in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique comes from the use of the cor anglais. But the difference is this,—that you can standardise, as it were, the pastoral effects of the oboe or the cor anglais, whereas you cannot standardise the effects of Das verlassene M?gdlein. Even in the hands of a fifth-rate composer the oboe may be made to suggest a shepherd: but give Wolf's harmonies to a second-rate musician and tell him to "paint" with them as Wolf has done, and he will soon realise that the "painting" is really not separable from the music as a whole, even though we may be able to say analytically³⁵⁴ that it is due to one factor more than another. The truth is that the scene has been perceived with such intensity of vision by the composer that, unknown to him, and without any volition²⁹ on his part, the vision has made its own idiom for itself, incarnated³⁵⁵ itself in lines and colours that are expressive of it and it alone.

It is this subtle faculty that is always unconsciously operative in Wagner. It first comes to light in Die Feen. It gave parts of the Flying Dutchman their strange salt tang. It makes the peculiar white light of Lohengrin. And after that opera, when Wagner had attained full command of his powers, it did astounding things for him. There is a different light, a different air, in each of the four dramas of the Ring; and this broad difference between any two of the four is maintained in spite of there being minor differences of colour between the various scenes of each of them. How mysterious and infallible this faculty is in its workings is best seen from the fact that when Wagner took up the second half of Siegfried, in 1869, after having suspended work upon it in 1857, he did what no other musician before him or since could have done—spontaneously, unconsciously reverted³⁵⁶ to the idiom of twelve years before. Between those two dates he had travelled an incredibly long path as a musician; he had written Tristan and the Meistersinger, two works with as many differences of idiom between themselves as there are between either of them and the Ring. Yet the wonderful brain could sweep itself clear of all the new impressions that had fed it during those twelve years, and, though the new acquisitions of technique of course remained, he thinks himself back in a flash to the very centre of the souls of the Ring characters and the very colour and temperature of the scenes he had parted from so long ago.

This is the pictorial instinct of Wagner seen in its totality. In its detail it is equally marvellous. Each scene is so bathed in its own appropriate light and colour, and strewn with its own peculiar shadows, that the music itself, apart from the scenic³⁵⁷ setting, is eloquent of the place and the hour of the action. In Wagner's music, as in Wolf's, one is conscious not only of the locality and the person and the race: one can almost tell the time of day. Music like that at the awakening of Brynhilde would go with nothing but a mountain height in blinding sunlight. Hunding is not physically³⁵⁸ darker to the eye than he is to the ear in that marvellous tuba motive that accompanies his first entry in the Valkyrie. The gait of Siegfried's music is as rapid as Mime's; but the differing stature³⁵⁹ of the two men is unmistakable from the music alone. One might multiply instances by the hundred of effects of realistic differentiation³⁶⁰ obtained not merely by orchestral colour, but by something subtly inter⁷⁸ wrought into the very texture of the music. (The Hunding theme, for example, is "black" and sinister³⁶¹ even on the pianoforte.) It is just this faculty of seeing everything with the most precise of painter's eyes, and then finding the infallibly right musical correlative of it, that enables Wagner to achieve such variety among pictures that are in essence the same. How many and how different woodlands there are in his music, how many degrees of sunlight, how many shades and qualities of darkness! The storm that maddens Mime after the exit of Siegfried is a very different storm from the one through which Siegmund rushes to the house of Hunding. What other man could have written two Rhine-Maidens' trios like those in the Rhinegold and the G?tterd?mmerung, each so liquid, so mobile, so sweet with the primal innocence³⁶² of the world, and therefore so alike in many respects, yet so absolutely different?

So it comes about that without any tone-painting in the ordinary acceptation of the word, Wagner succeeds in bringing the visible universe before our eyes in a way and to an extent that no other musician has done. Of tone-painting pure and simple there is practically none in Tristan. Wagner is here concerned solely with a man and woman; yet how actual he makes every scene in which they move, and this without a single realistic stroke. In the garden scene he uses none of the conventional musical recipes—there is no obvious rustling³⁶³ of leaves, no sighing of the breeze, no purling of the brooks,—yet how the magic of the garden and of the hour steals through us and intoxicates³⁶⁴ us! How hot and dry the air has become in the third Act,—as dry to us as to the parched³⁶⁵ tongue of the wounded man alone on the castle walls, with the mid-day sun turning the blue sea beyond to a vibrating, blinding haze³⁶⁶. And—to me the most wonderful of all—how sinister is the atmosphere he creates through virtually the whole of the G?tterd?mmerung; how, though indeed it is mostly set in the daylight, one feels that here among these Gibichungs, with gaunt, grim Hagen for weaver³⁶⁷ of the web of fate, the very earth has lost the radiant smile it had in Siegfried's forest and on Brynhilde's mountain top. The sun no longer warms, the Rhine no longer laughs and glints and gladdens. And finally, how exquisitely adapted is the melodic and harmonic idiom of Parsifal,—so smoothly flowing, so full of melting and caressing³⁶⁸ tenderness,—to that static world from which, with the purging³⁶⁹ from it of so much human passion, so much even of the ordinary physical energy of humanity too has gone. For this, as for everything else, he found the right, the only musical equivalent, without seeking for it. His visions painted themselves.

12

Even the best of Wagnerians to-day become a little impatient at the occasional longueurs in his operas. Not merely does he plan them on a scale that makes it almost impossible to give some of them in their entirety under ordinary conditions, but he sometimes lapses³⁷⁰ into a prolixity³⁷¹ that is regrettable or maddening according to the frame of mind we happen to be in at the moment. Most of his prolixity is to be accounted for by that bad text-construction to which I have drawn attention. Music, let it be said again and again, is primarily an emotional art, and the less it has to do with mere dramatic explanation the better. We can never tire of Wotan pouring out his heart in loving farewell to his child; but we can hear Wotan tell the long story of his financial and matrimonial troubles once too often. We could listen as often to Kundry's story of Herzeleide as to the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony or the "Kleine Nacht-Musik" of Mozart; but wild horses would not drag us to the theatre to listen to old Gurnemanz's too-often-told tale of Amfortas and Klingsor, and how the sacred spear was lost. Yet though the poet Wagner is generally answerable for the occasional tedious quarters-of-an-hour in the operas, the musician Wagner is not wholly free from blame. He never managed to get quite rid of the slow-footedness that was characteristic of his music from the first; to the very end he sometimes takes rather longer to drive his points home than is absolutely necessary; and in these more rapid and impatient days that goes against him sorely. He is often reproached with rhythmical²⁵⁴ monotony. There is some truth in the charge, which as a whole he himself would probably not have taken the trouble to repel³⁷². There is a passage in one of his letters in which he recognises that his music is not so rhythmical as it might be, but he holds that some lack of rhythmical variety is inseparable from an ideal of dramatic music such as his. As I have attempted to show, he relied much more on harmonic effect than on rhythm, the latter being more peculiarly the instrument of the symphonic composer, while harmonic change is more suited to depict the varying aspects of a dramatic action. But against the comparative regularity³⁷⁴ of his rhythms is to be set his sense of style. He had an intuitive knowledge of how and when to break up a melodic line that was in danger of becoming too uniform. One of the simplest illustrations of this may be seen in the Parsifal Prelude (vocal score, p. 5, lines 1 and 2); just at the moment when we are beginning to suspect that the theme of "Faith" has been repeated quite often enough and to dread³⁷⁵ the further repetition that has already got under weigh, he alters the signature from 6/4 to 9/4, and gives a new rhetorical turn to the familiar melody. In Wotan's Abschied, again, we are unconscious of the uniformity of the rhythm in phrase after phrase, so consummate is the art with which the interest is always being transferred from one part of the combined vocal and orchestral tissue to another, and so beautifully planned is not only each section in itself but what may be called the exposition and development and cadence of the whole scene. Wagner could afford to dispense with the smaller rhythmical man?uvring of individual musical phrases; he had the much greater faculty of endowing long scenes and even whole operas with a vast dramatic rhythm of their own. Hundreds of smaller composers can give this page or that of their music a rhythmic piquancy³⁷⁶ that Wagner could never have attained on the same small scale; but not one of them could achieve such a rhythm as that of the second Act of Tristan, with its slow, steady, imperceptible transition from night and its rapture³⁷⁷ to daylight and its cruel disillusioning³⁷⁸ glare.

Wagner's prolixity, again, is not the flabby dulness of a mind that is merely maundering on and on from sheer incompetence³⁷⁹ to get to grips with the essentials of an emotion, but the over-copiousness of an inexhaustibly rich brain. And if this quality of his has its occasional bad side, we do well to remember that it is accountable also for some of his most gigantic achievements in expression. Were it not for the endless inventive power and the never-failing sense of beauty in it, a work like Tristan, that never pauses till the last drop of bitter-sweet juice has been squeezed out of the theme, would be hardly bearable. Like Bach, Wagner could never conceive any emotion without intensifying³⁸⁰ it to the utmost. The barest hint of joy in one of Bach's texts will set him carolling like a lark³⁸¹; the barest hint of mortality will bedim his music with all the tears of all the universe for its dead. Wagner has the same insatiable hunger for expression. In Tristan in particular every emotion is developed to its furthest limit of poignancy. The passion of love becomes almost delirium³⁸²; when Tristan, in the third Act, sings of the thirst caused by his wound, our very mouths, our very bones, seem dried as if by some burning sirocco blowing from the desert; when the sick man praises Kurvenal for his devotion it is a cosmic p?an to friendship that he sings. In hundreds of other cases it is not by elaboration of speech that he makes his overwhelming effect, but by a sort of volcanic³⁸³ concentration. Mingled³⁸⁴ rage and grief and despair have never found such colossal³⁸⁵ expression anywhere, in any art, as in those few bars given to the frustrated and maddened Wotan after Fricka has foiled his plan for the protection of Siegmund in the fight (the Valkyrie, vocal score, pp. 118, 119). Pathos³⁸⁶ will never find more touching³⁸⁷ accents than those of Brynhilde in her last great scene with Wotan (Valkyrie, pp. 292, 293); few things in all music convey such a sense of tears as the strange salt tones of the oboe and cor anglais here. For concentrated fury there is nothing to compare with the outburst of the bound and impotent Alberich as he dismisses the Nibelungs who have witnessed his shame (the Rhinegold, pp. 199-201); technically³⁸⁸ this is one of the most effective crescendi³⁸⁹ in all Wagner's works. His imagination always takes fire at a single touch, a single suggestion, and there is no staying it until the fire has burnt itself completely out. In the Siegfried Idyl he has only to think of the child whose coming meant so much to him, and all the fountains of human tenderness are unsealed; this is not an individual father musing³⁹⁰ over his child's cradle, but all nature crooning a song of love for its little ones. It is this intensification of every emotion he has to express that makes each of his characters, like Shakespeare's, seem the epitome³⁹¹ of that particular phase of human nature. Tristan and Isolde are the world's most passionate³⁹² and most tragic lovers: the opera is the very quintessence of the egoism of sexual love. So with a score of other characters. The last word—for our own day at any rate—in god-like majesty³⁹³ has been uttered in Wotan; the last word of womanly gentleness and sweetness in Eva and Gutrune; the last word of tragic womanhood in Sieglinde; the last word of superb womanhood in Brynhilde; the last word of mellow³⁹⁴ and kindly middle age in Hans Sachs; the last word of scheming feebleness in Mime; the last word of elemental savagery³⁹⁵ in the Valkyries; the last word of youthful irresponsibility in the Meistersinger apprentices³⁹⁶; the last word of human grimness in Hagen; the last word of dog-like devotion in Kurvenal. The character-drawing is endless in its variety and infallible in its touch.

13

Parsifal stands in a class apart from all the other works of Wagner. Its characterisation is not individual but symbolic²¹²; Amfortas and Parsifal and Kundry and Klingsor are not men and women whom we might meet any day in the flesh, but simply types of human aspiration³⁹⁷ or failure. We have outgrown³⁹⁸ the mental world of the work; the religious symbolism of it, qua religious symbolism, leaves many of us unimpressed; yet the basic emotional stuff of it all is enduring, and we must not allow ourselves to be set against the opera because the forms in which Wagner has embodied a durable³⁹⁹ philosophy are themselves of a time instead of all time. Evidently the symphonist in him was at this stage overpowering the dramatist. The symphonist can safely deal with types or abstractions; the dramatist can only deal with individuals. Wagner has made the blunder of trying to translate the most delicate, the most esoteric perceptions into the language of the theatre, of setting symbols upon the stage. The force of a poetic symbol lies wholly in the imagination: as soon as a dramatist or a painter tries to set it visibly before us, the free flight of the imagination is curbed⁴⁰⁰ by the physical obviousness, the physical limitations, of the figure that is put before the eye; the universal cannot be perceived for the particular. Wagner's root idea in Parsifal was to show us, in Kundry, a living symbol of the dual nature of woman, half-angel and half-beast, in turns sensual and repentant, the destroyer and the saviour of man. But it is precisely symbols of this kind, cutting down to the obscurest depths of human psychology, that cannot retain their vast suggestiveness after they have been narrowed down to the personality of a single actor. We no longer see the eternal and infernal womanly; it is only a German prima-donna, stout⁴⁰¹ of build and heavy of movement, that we see upon the stage. So with Parsifal himself. Mr. Huneker has called him "that formidable imbecile." So might we style St. Francis of Assisi, or the Buddha⁴⁰², or any other of the simple wise ones of the world, if we persist in looking at them through unsympathetic and unimaginative eyes. The conception of Parsifal is fine enough in itself—an unstained soul made divinely wise by its very simplicity⁴⁰³, its love, its pity. But a character of this kind should be left to the imagination, or to music to suggest to the imagination: it is impossible to realise it behind the footlights in the person of an actor. A Parsifal is a figure for the quiet of one's chamber⁴⁰⁴, not for a crowded theatre lying the other side of the box office. Hundreds of people must have felt, as I have done for twenty years, that a good deal of Parsifal affects us more deeply at home than it ever does in the theatre, the loss of the orchestral colour being more than made up for by the gain in imaginative intensity. And the difficulty of making such a character vital and credible²³¹ upon the stage is increased when he is made the centre of a quasi-religious ritual that has long ceased to have a meaning for many people.

But in spite of it all, Parsifal is a masterpiece. The story of it seems to arouse a violent antipathy⁴⁰⁵ in some people, who apparently regard it as an immoral⁴⁰⁶ work. The pleasant little game of Parsifal-baiting began with Nietzsche, who said that he despised everyone who did not regard the opera as an outrage⁴⁰⁷ on morals.

Like most philosophers, Nietzsche had the charming failing of imagining that the only right way for the world to go was his way. He was singularly taken with that notion of his of the super-man—a mythical⁴⁰⁸ and unidentifiable mammal about which we have never been able to get any definite information, either from Nietzsche or from any of his disciples. Now Nietzsche found this ideal of his in Siegfried, and he loathed⁴⁰⁹ Parsifal because it preached the negation⁴¹⁰ of life, the denial of the Will to Power. Later writers, like Mr. Runciman and Mr. Huneker, who are not, I think, Nietzscheans, agree with him in seeing something peculiarly weak in the philosophy—to call it by that name—of Parsifal. They see in the opera not merely moral weakness but moral nastiness. I remember one of the simpler adherents⁴¹¹ of this theory telling me, in awe-stricken tones, that this "sexless" opera was the resort of a set of men who were mixed up in a German scandal of a few years ago that sent its unwholesome odour through the civilised world: and he obviously thought that this discredited⁴¹² Wagner's Parsifal, whereas it struck me as being very like asking us to give up having breakfast because Dr. Crippen and Charles Peace liked bacon and eggs.

Nor can any moral flabbiness, I think, be discovered in Parsifal except by people who make the mistake of thinking that the "philosophy" of any musical work matters very much. Mr. Runciman detests⁴¹³ Parsifal and calls him a perfect idiot—that epithet⁴¹⁴ being Mr. Runciman's playful intensification of Wagner's "pure [i.e. stainless] fool"—"fool" being unfortunately the only monosyllable we have in English for the translation of "Thor." But even supposing Parsifal were an idiot—which I dispute—would it greatly matter? Mr. Runciman has launched his full battery against the Siegfried of Wagner's poem—a swaggering, quarrelsome, ungrateful young noodle; but, as Mr. Runciman's own eloquent description of the opera shows, the Siegfried of Wagner's music is a vastly more interesting and sympathetic person than the Siegfried of Wagner's verse. Similarly, even if I could think, when reading the libretto, that Parsifal is an idiot, I could never think so when listening to the music. The truth is that a good many of Wagner's characters and dramatic motives seem rather foolish to us nowadays. For my part I do not know or care whether or how Parsifal is to "redeem" the world. The word redemption has no meaning for me in the sense in which Wagner and the theologians use it. I can believe that redemption is a concrete reality in the pawnbroking⁴¹⁵ business; but if any one tells me that men's souls are to be bought and sold, or lost and found again, without any volition of their own, I can only say that all this conveys about as much to my intelligence as talk about a quadrilateral triangle would do. But to appreciate a work of art it is not in the least necessary to subscribe⁴¹⁶ to its author's philosophical or religious opinions; a rationalist can be as deeply thrilled by the Matthew Passion as any Christian⁴¹⁷ can be. The "thesis" of a work of art is the one thing in it that does not concern us as artists. Who is to decide between rival philosophies or sociologies? Personally I believe that one philosophy is just as good as another, and worse, as the Irishman would say; but if an artist chooses to set forward a character as the embodiment of some philosophy that possesses him at the moment, I am willing to listen to him so long as he can talk interestingly about it, without my wishing either to subscribe to the philosophy or to dissent⁴¹⁸ from it. Mr. Runciman thinks there is something frightful⁴¹⁹ in the thesis—let us call it that—of Parsifal. I do not see anything frightful in it. I do not believe in it as the only rule of life; but then I do not believe—in that sense—in Senta's "redemption" of the Dutchman, or Elisabeth's "redemption" of Tannh?user, or that Lohengrin was right in withholding⁴²⁰ his name from Elsa and then going off in a huff when she asked for it. But all these fantastic motives, in which I have no belief, no more affect my appreciation⁴²¹ of the operas than my disbelief in ghosts affects my appreciation of Hamlet. I do not want any of my friends to be like Parsifal, Amfortas, or Klingsor—especially Klingsor: but neither do I want any of them to be like Lohengrin or Elsa or Senta or the Flying Dutchman. A real world run on the lines of Parsifal would probably drive normal men mad in a month: but then who could live in a world in which Senta-sentimental maidens insisted on jumping into the sea to "redeem" master mariners⁴²², taking no account of the able seamen⁴²³ and the stokers and the stewards⁴²⁴, who, from anything I can gather to the contrary in the text of the Flying Dutchman, all go to Davy Jones's locker⁴²⁵ in a state of pure damnation what time the captain and the girl ascend⁴²⁶ to glory? No, we had better leave alone the question of what the world would be like if we were to try to model it on Parsifal. We know very well that nothing of the sort will ever happen, just as we know that Little Red Riding Hood's wolf will not gobble up little Phyllis on her way to the High School next week, or the door of the safe fly open when the burglar says "Sesame." These be but fairy tales. We can still sleep in our beds o' nights: and we can still go to Parsifal without either having our morals corrupted⁴²⁷ or feeling that we are encouraging race suicide.

I listen to Parsifal, then—and I imagine most other people do the same—as I would to any other outpouring of a great man's spirit on a world of ideas that fascinated him for the moment, and without any more impulse to translate it all into terms of reality than when I am listening to the Flying Dutchman or Lohengrin. The opera is in no sense the work of an exhausted⁴²⁸ old man. It has been alleged⁴²⁹ that the plot is "the work of Wagner's tired-out old age." But Parsifal was sketched as early as 1857, worked out in detail in 1864 (when Wagner was only fifty-one), and turned into verse in 1877. Further, the central ideas of the drama are to be found both in the sketches⁴³⁰ of Jesus of Nazareth (1848) and The Victors (1856); while in 1855 it was Wagner's intention to bring Parsifal on the stage in the final scene of Tristan, opposing him, as a symbol of renunciation, to Tristan as a symbol of passion. At almost any time of Wagner's life, indeed, he might have written a Parsifal. All his life through he fluctuated between intense eroticism and an equally intense revulsion from the erotic. One may say, in truth, that such a man had to write a Parsifal before he died. "Il est à remarquer, mon fils," says the excellent Abbé Coignard in Anatole France's La R?tisserie de la Reine Pédauque, "que les plus grands saints sont des pénitents, et, comme le repentir se proportionne à la faute, c'est dans les plus grands pêcheurs que se trouve l'étoffe des plus grands saints. La matière première de la sainteté est la concupiscence, l'incontinence, toutes les impuretés de la chair et de l'esprit. Il importe seulement, après avoir amassé cette matière, de la travailler selon l'art théologique et de la modeler, pour ainsi dire⁵, en figure de pénitence, ce qui est l'affaire de quelques années, de quelques jours et parfois d'un seul instant, comme il se voit dans le cas de la contrition⁴³¹ parfaite."

In the great book of sex there are many chapters, and Parsifal is simply the last of them for some people. For others it is a chapter that they turn to again and again in moments of revulsion from the illusions of passion. Wagner's insight was clear enough: the Parsifals are no more denials of the Life-Force than the Tristans are; they are simply another phase of the Life-Force. When we disengage the central idea of Parsifal from its rather unskilful operatic setting, the work is simply an artist's dream of an ideally innocent world, purged⁴³² of the lust, the hatred, the cruelty that deface the world we live and groan⁴³³ in. This is the world the music paints for us—

"Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless⁴³⁴ sea";

and the cumbrous, old-fashioned stage framework upon which the drama is constructed means no more to me than a clumsily-drafted programme to a great symphonic poem,—it detracts no more from my musical enjoyment⁴³⁵ than that would do. The music itself, apart from a few commonplaces in the first Act, is marvellous. It is indeed an old man's music, but only in the sense that it opens windows for us upon regions of the soul to which only the old and emotionally wise have access. Swinburne somewhere speaks of Blake's face having the look of being lit up from the inside. I see a similar luminous transfiguration in the later portraits of Wagner[410]—they have the look of a man who has penetrated⁴³⁶ to the great underlying⁴³⁷ simplicities⁴³⁸ of things; and I find in the music of Parsifal the same subtle, searching simplicity, the same almost unearthly illumination. Nowhere does the great master seem to me more truly powerful than in these quiet strains, whose suggestiveness, as is the case with the last Italian songs of Hugo Wolf, is inexplicably⁴³⁹ out of proportion to the quiet economy of their tissue. To the last the wonderful brain kept growing. He makes a new musical idiom, a new texture, for Parsifal as he had done for every other of his works; above all a harmonic language of incomparable subtlety, a gliding⁴⁴⁰, melting chromaticism⁴⁴¹ that searches us through and through. It is from this novel chromaticism—a very different one from that of Tristan—that the harmony of César Franck has come, and all the modern harmony that builds upon Franck.
last-photo
WAGNER: THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH.

14

Wagner saw his own work as a transmutation and amplification⁴⁴² of the speech of Beethoven—infinitely changeful, but controlled in every bar by a never-sleeping sense of the organic unity of the whole; but it is clear to us now that many features in his work derive⁴⁴³ from Bach, or are a re-discovery of certain principles of form that Bach affected⁴⁴⁴. It is from Bach, rather than from Beethoven, that such things as the Tristan Prelude come, with their incessant evolution of new life out of a single thematic germ, and their adoption⁴⁴⁵ of a conical form of slow ascent⁴⁴⁶ to a climax and descent from it, in place of the square symphonic form of return and re-start. In Bach, again, will be found the basis both of Wagner's realism and of the Wagnerian system of allusive⁴⁴⁷ "motives." The towering greatness of Wagner is nowhere more strikingly shown than in the failure of all his successors to handle his form—or, indeed, any other—with anything like the same power, freedom and consistency; both the opera and symphonic music are waiting for someone big enough to build afresh upon the foundations Wagner has laid, and with the materials he has left. At present the most that any of his successors can do is to fit a few of the more manageable of the stones together, with a deplorable quantity of waste and confusion all around and in between. Salome and the Rosenkavalier may be taken as instructive examples. There is not a living man big enough to occupy more than a room or two at a time of the vast house that Wagner reared about him. It is true that in certain details—in the furnishing and decoration of one or two of the rooms, let us say—modern music has gone beyond him. Strauss's orchestration has an eloquence—not merely a colour, but a soul and a voice—of which Wagner probably never suspected the possibility. Strauss, Wolf, and others have shaken off the rhythmic fetters⁴⁴⁸ that sometimes hampered⁴⁴⁹ the movement both of Wagner's poetry and of his music. Wolf and Strauss have shown us the possibilities of what may be called a prose style in music—a more continuous and less formal style than that of verse, with the rhythmic joints⁴⁵⁰ and pivots⁴⁵¹ more skilfully²²⁰ concealed⁴⁵². Superb examples of it are to be found in the later scene between Octavian and the Princess in the first Act of the Rosenkavalier, and in the great trio in the third Act. Wagner, it is safe to say, would have flatly pronounced it impossible to make rhythmic music of a piece of frank prose like the latter, in which there is not a suspicion of a pretext⁴⁵³ for any of the staple⁴⁵⁴ rhythmic formulas.

But though the Wagnerian apparatus has been improved upon at these and other points—Strauss, for example, has subtilised the employment of the leit-motive—no one has been great enough to manipulate the apparatus as a whole with anything like Wagner's power, scope and freedom, and opera is still waiting for its new redeemer. Even an anti-Wagnerian work like Pelleas and Melisande is, in a sense, a tribute to the Titan: the very sharpness and thoroughness of its recoil⁴⁵⁵ from everything that hints at Wagner is an admission of the impossibility of continuing his work on its own lines. And after all, Pelleas and Melisande is only a beautiful and wonderful tour de force—a sort of glorified⁴⁵⁶ musical mule⁴⁵⁷, without pride of ancestry⁴⁵⁸ or hope of posterity⁴⁵⁹. Its idiom is too small for the expression of great things; we might as well try to build a city out of nothing but mother-of-pearl and opals.

Like Bach and like Beethoven, Wagner closes a period, and exhausts a form. And as with Bach and Beethoven to-day, it is indirectly⁴⁶⁰ rather than directly that his best influence is being exerted; there is no room for imitation of him, but his speech and his vision are eternal stimuli⁴⁶¹ to our imaginations. It is inevitable that in some quarters a reaction should have set in against his music and his influence. He has been too overpowering a force. His music has been performed with such fatal frequency that the merest amateur can hardly remain unconscious of the weak points in it; and for a whole generation he made all but the very strongest minds among composers a mere shadow and echo of himself. Music, as was only to be expected, has now gone beyond him in certain respects, and the erstwhile anarch is now one of the greatest of the forces that conservatism claims for its own. The French and some of the Russians have revolted against what is less a Wagnerian than a German domination of all European music. A number of our very newest young men are delightfully⁴⁶² contemptuous of him: every puny⁴⁶³ whipster now raises his little hand to deal the reeling colossus another blow. But the colossus will easily right himself. There are moments when one is tempted³⁷³ to say that he and Bach and Beethoven have expressed between them almost all that is essentially original and great in the music of the last two centuries. When a composer is so mighty of body as this, he can well afford to lose a drop or two of blood on his pilgrimage through the ages.

"In music, as in nature," says Vincent d'Indy, "there are mountains and valleys; there are artists of genius who raise their art to such heights that the herd¹⁹⁵ of second-rank creators, unable to breathe in these altitudes, is forced to descend²⁵⁷ again to more temperate⁴⁶⁴ levels (which, however, are often sown with charming flowers), until the eruption⁴⁶⁵ of a new genius heaves up a new mountain peak.

"Such were Bach, Haydn, Beethoven and César Franck in the symphonic order; and in the dramatic order, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Rameau, Gluck and Wagner. At the present moment we are descending³⁴¹ the slope created by the Wagnerian upheaval⁴⁶⁶, and we are hastening gently towards the hopeful presage⁴⁶⁷ of a new summit. But all our drama—even that of the composers who most energetically deny the imputation—comes from the spring which rises at the feet of the titanic⁴⁶⁸ Wagner.

"Richard Wagner still casts his great shadow over all our musico-dramatic production. But it is certain that the latent work that is going on in the souls of creative artists is to favour the ascent towards a distant height, of which we cannot yet foresee either the glaciers⁴⁶⁹ or the precipices⁴⁷⁰."

His work, in truth, will flower afresh some day in some great composer who will sum up in himself, as Wagner did, all the finest impulses of the music of his day,—who will have absorbed the essential, durable part of the spirit of his predecessors, and who will have at his command an idiom, a vocabulary and a technique competent to express every variety of human emotion. But we may hazard the conjecture⁴⁷¹ that the new flowering will be in instrumental music rather than in the opera. It seems to be a law of musical evolution that at the end of a period of crisis the seminal force that has exhausted itself in one genre⁴⁷² passes over to, and finds a new life in, a wholly different genre. Beethoven left no real successors in the classical symphony,—for great as Schumann and Brahms are, they are in this field no more than epigones of Beethoven. It is in the Wagnerian opera that the new expressive, half-poetic power of Beethoven's music finds its further logical development. All the opera writers that have followed in Wagner's tracks—Strauss included—are to Wagner simply what Brahms was to Beethoven. As Beethoven fertilised not the symphony but the music-drama, so Wagner has fertilised not the music-drama but poetic instrumental music,—the innumerable symphonic poems and programme symphonies of the last fifty years. The idea of the new form may have been Liszt's as much as Wagner's, or even more; but Liszt's music was not rich enough to do the full work of fertilisation. Now, apparently, we are nearing the end of a period of transition. Already there are signs that the formal programme was little more than a crutch⁴⁷³ for poetic music in the days of its hesitating growth. Composers are beginning to master the art of suggesting the dramatic inner conflicts of the soul without needing to rely on any outer apparatus of suggestion. We are probably developing towards a form of symphonic music that shall be to the art of its own day what the Beethoven symphony of the middle period was to the art of his time,—a musical drama-without-words, and perfectly lucid²⁸⁹ without words. When the new instrumental music has assimilated all the finest spirit and mastered the full harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary and the best technique of the new day, some future Wagner will perhaps turn the mighty stream into a fresh dramatic channel, the nature of which it is almost impossible to anticipate. So the great series of cross-cycles will no doubt go on and on, into a day when dramatic music shall no more resemble Wagner's than Wagner's music resembles that of Palestrina. In that distant day he may be no more to mankind than Monteverdi is to us; but music will still be something different from what it would have been had he never been born; and of only some half-dozen composers in the whole history of the art can that be said.

1 climax   

n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点

参考例句：

• The fifth scene was the climax of the play.第五场是全剧的高潮。
• His quarrel with his father brought matters to a climax.他与他父亲的争吵使得事态发展到了顶点。

2 jumble   

vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆

参考例句：

• Even the furniture remained the same jumble that it had always been.甚至家具还是象过去一样杂乱无章。
• The things in the drawer were all in a jumble.抽屉里的东西很杂乱。

3 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

4 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

5 dire   

adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的

参考例句：

• There were dire warnings about the dangers of watching too much TV.曾经有人就看电视太多的危害性提出严重警告。
• We were indeed in dire straits.But we pulled through.那时我们的困难真是大极了，但是我们渡过了困难。

6 falters   

（嗓音）颤抖( falter的第三人称单数 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃

参考例句：

• He never falters in his determination. 他的决心从不动摇。
• The plan never falters; the design never changes. It is all ordered. 大自然从不步履蹒跚，从不三心二意，一切都是有条不紊。

7 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

8 adaptability   

n.适应性

参考例句：

• It has a wide range of adaptability.它的应用性广。

9 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

10 vehement   

adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的

参考例句：

• She made a vehement attack on the government's policies.她强烈谴责政府的政策。
• His proposal met with vehement opposition.他的倡导遭到了激烈的反对。

11 garrulity   

n.饶舌，多嘴

参考例句：

• She said nothing when met you,changing the former days garrulity.见了面她一改往日的喋喋不休，望着你不说话。
• The morning is waning fast amidst my garrulity.我这么一唠叨不要紧，上午的时间快要过去了。

12 partisans   

游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙

参考例句：

• Every movement has its partisans. 每一运动都有热情的支持者。
• He was rescued by some Italian partisans. 他被几名意大利游击队员所救。

13 akin   

adj.同族的，类似的

参考例句：

• She painted flowers and birds pictures akin to those of earlier feminine painters.她画一些同早期女画家类似的花鸟画。
• Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.听他的人生故事犹如阅读一本精彩的冒险小说。

14 luminous   

adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的

参考例句：

• There are luminous knobs on all the doors in my house.我家所有门上都安有夜光把手。
• Most clocks and watches in this shop are in luminous paint.这家商店出售的大多数钟表都涂了发光漆。

15 portentous   

adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的

参考例句：

• The present aspect of society is portentous of great change.现在的社会预示着重大变革的发生。
• There was nothing portentous or solemn about him.He was bubbling with humour.他一点也不装腔作势或故作严肃，浑身散发着幽默。

16 disciples   

n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一

参考例句：

• Judas was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. 犹大是耶稣十二门徒之一。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "The names of the first two disciples were --" “最初的两个门徒的名字是——” 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

17 smacks   

掌掴（声）( smack的名词复数 )； 海洛因； （打的）一拳； 打巴掌

参考例句：

• His politeness smacks of condescension. 他的客气带有屈尊俯就的意味。
• It was a fishing town, and the sea was dotted with smacks. 这是个渔业城镇，海面上可看到渔帆点点。

18 sentimental   

adj.多愁善感的，感伤的

参考例句：

• She's a sentimental woman who believes marriage comes by destiny.她是多愁善感的人，她相信姻缘命中注定。
• We were deeply touched by the sentimental movie.我们深深被那感伤的电影所感动。

19 infinitely   

adv.无限地，无穷地

参考例句：

• There is an infinitely bright future ahead of us.我们有无限光明的前途。
• The universe is infinitely large.宇宙是无限大的。

20 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

21 justify   

vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护

参考例句：

• He tried to justify his absence with lame excuses.他想用站不住脚的借口为自己的缺席辩解。
• Can you justify your rude behavior to me?你能向我证明你的粗野行为是有道理的吗？

22 unconditionally   

adv.无条件地

参考例句：

• All foreign troops must be withdrawn immediately and unconditionally. 所有外国军队必须立即无条件地撤出。
• It makes things very awkward to have your girls going back unconditionally just now! 你们现在是无条件上工，真糟糕！ 来自子夜部分

23 conceal   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽

参考例句：

• He had to conceal his identity to escape the police.为了躲避警方，他只好隐瞒身份。
• He could hardly conceal his joy at his departure.他几乎掩饰不住临行时的喜悦。

24 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。

25 adoration   

n.爱慕，崇拜

参考例句：

• He gazed at her with pure adoration.他一往情深地注视着她。
• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。

26 redeem   

v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等）

参考例句：

• He had no way to redeem his furniture out of pawn.他无法赎回典当的家具。
• The eyes redeem the face from ugliness.这双眼睛弥补了他其貌不扬之缺陷。

27 yearning   

a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的

参考例句：

• a yearning for a quiet life 对宁静生活的向往
• He felt a great yearning after his old job. 他对过去的工作有一种强烈的渴想。

28 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

29 volition   

n.意志；决意

参考例句：

• We like to think that everything we do and everything we think is a product of our volition.我们常常认为我们所做和所想的一切都出自自己的意愿。
• Makin said Mr Coombes had gone to the police of his own volition.梅金说库姆斯先生是主动去投案的。

30 volitional   

adj.意志的，凭意志的，有意志的

参考例句：

• The image consists in our rational,volitional,affective faculties,and in our bodies.神的形象存在于我们的理性、意志，和情感的能力中，也存在于我们的身体内。
• The endurance of setbacks is a standard mat can evaluate the volitional character of a person.挫折承受能力是衡量人的意志品质的一个重要指标。

31 yearns   

渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Every man yearns for sympathy in sorrow. 每个遇到不幸的人都渴望得到同情。
• What I dread is to get into a rut. One yearns for freshness of thought and ideas. 我害怕的就是墨守成规。人总是向往新思想和新观念的。

32 redeemed   

adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She has redeemed her pawned jewellery. 她赎回了当掉的珠宝。
• He redeemed his watch from the pawnbroker's. 他从当铺赎回手表。

33 appalling   

adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的

参考例句：

• The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions.恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
• Nothing can extenuate such appalling behaviour.这种骇人听闻的行径罪无可恕。

34 manifestation   

n.表现形式；表明；现象

参考例句：

• Her smile is a manifestation of joy.她的微笑是她快乐的表现。
• What we call mass is only another manifestation of energy.我们称之为质量的东西只是能量的另一种表现形态。

35 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

36 libretto   

n.歌剧剧本，歌曲歌词

参考例句：

• The printed libretto was handsomely got up.这本印刷的歌剧剧本装帧得很美观。
• On the other hand,perhaps there is something to be said for the convenience of downloading a libretto in one's own home rather than looking for it in a library or book store.但是反过来看，或许尤为重要的是如果网

37 ingratitude   

n.忘恩负义

参考例句：

• Tim's parents were rather hurt by his ingratitude.蒂姆的父母对他的忘恩负义很痛心。
• His friends were shocked by his ingratitude to his parents.他对父母不孝，令他的朋友们大为吃惊。

38 fatuousness   

n.愚昧，昏庸，蠢

参考例句：

39 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

40 scout   

n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索

参考例句：

• He was mistaken for an enemy scout and badly wounded.他被误认为是敌人的侦察兵，受了重伤。
• The scout made a stealthy approach to the enemy position.侦察兵偷偷地靠近敌军阵地。

41 grandeur   

n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华

参考例句：

• The grandeur of the Great Wall is unmatched.长城的壮观是独一无二的。
• These ruins sufficiently attest the former grandeur of the place.这些遗迹充分证明此处昔日的宏伟。

42 illustrates   

给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
• Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生，他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分

43 lust   

n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望

参考例句：

• He was filled with lust for power.他内心充满了对权力的渴望。
• Sensing the explorer's lust for gold, the chief wisely presented gold ornaments as gifts.酋长觉察出探险者们垂涎黄金的欲念，就聪明地把金饰品作为礼物赠送给他们。

44 kindled   

（使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光

参考例句：

• We watched as the fire slowly kindled. 我们看着火慢慢地燃烧起来。
• The teacher's praise kindled a spark of hope inside her. 老师的赞扬激起了她内心的希望。

45 fiery   

adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的

参考例句：

• She has fiery red hair.她有一头火红的头发。
• His fiery speech agitated the crowd.他热情洋溢的讲话激动了群众。

46 nun   

n.修女，尼姑

参考例句：

• I can't believe that the famous singer has become a nun.我无法相信那个著名的歌星已做了修女。
• She shaved her head and became a nun.她削发为尼。

47 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：

• The British were formerly dominant in India.英国人从前统治印度。
• She was a dominant figure in the French film industry.她在法国电影界是个举足轻重的人物。

48 motive   

n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的

参考例句：

• The police could not find a motive for the murder.警察不能找到谋杀的动机。
• He had some motive in telling this fable.他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

49 motives   

n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to impeach sb's motives 怀疑某人的动机
• His motives are unclear. 他的用意不明。

50 frustration   

n.挫折，失败，失效，落空

参考例句：

• He had to fight back tears of frustration.他不得不强忍住失意的泪水。
• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration.他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。

51 antitheses   

n.对照，对立的，对比法；对立( antithesis的名词复数 )；对立面；对照；对偶

参考例句：

• There are many antitheses in this poem. 这首诗里含有大量的流水对。 来自互联网
• Method: The test was performed by grouping antitheses. 方法：采用分组对照的方式进行试验。 来自互联网

52 sketch   

n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述

参考例句：

• My sister often goes into the country to sketch. 我姐姐常到乡间去写生。
• I will send you a slight sketch of the house.我将给你寄去房屋的草图。

53 sketched   

v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The historical article sketched the major events of the decade. 这篇有关历史的文章概述了这十年中的重大事件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He sketched the situation in a few vivid words. 他用几句生动的语言简述了局势。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

54 lamed   

希伯莱语第十二个字母

参考例句：

• He was lamed in the earthquake when he was a little boy. 他还是小孩子时在地震中就变跛了。
• The school was lamed by losses of staff. 学校因教职人员流失而开不了课。

55 redeeming   

补偿的，弥补的

参考例句：

• I found him thoroughly unpleasant, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. 我觉得他一点也不讨人喜欢，没有任何可取之处。
• The sole redeeming feature of this job is the salary. 这份工作唯其薪水尚可弥补一切之不足。

56 renounces   

v.声明放弃( renounce的第三人称单数 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃

参考例句：

• Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores. 日本放弃对福尔摩沙（台湾）及澎湖的一切权利，主张（名称）及所有权。 来自互联网
• He renounces Christianity, temporarily straining his relationship with his parents. 他放弃了基督教信仰，从而与父母的关系暂时变得紧张。 来自互联网

57 salvation   

n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困

参考例句：

• Salvation lay in political reform.解救办法在于政治改革。
• Christians hope and pray for salvation.基督教徒希望并祈祷灵魂得救。

58 slaying   

杀戮。

参考例句：

• The man mimed the slaying of an enemy. 此人比手划脚地表演砍死一个敌人的情况。
• He is suspected of having been an accomplice in the slaying,butthey can't pin it on him. 他有嫌疑曾参与该杀人案，但他们找不到证据来指控他。

59 blithe   

adj.快乐的，无忧无虑的

参考例句：

• Tonight,however,she was even in a blithe mood than usual.但是，今天晚上她比往常还要高兴。
• He showed a blithe indifference to her feelings.他显得毫不顾及她的感情。

60 exuberant   

adj.充满活力的；（植物）繁茂的

参考例句：

• Hothouse plants do not possess exuberant vitality.在温室里培养出来的东西，不会有强大的生命力。
• All those mother trees in the garden are exuberant.果园里的那些母树都长得十分茂盛。

61 joyously   

ad.快乐地, 高兴地

参考例句：

• She opened the door for me and threw herself in my arms, screaming joyously and demanding that we decorate the tree immediately. 她打开门，直扑我的怀抱，欣喜地喊叫着要马上装饰圣诞树。
• They came running, crying out joyously in trilling girlish voices. 她们边跑边喊，那少女的颤音好不欢快。 来自名作英译部分

62 joyous   

adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的

参考例句：

• The lively dance heightened the joyous atmosphere of the scene.轻快的舞蹈给这场戏渲染了欢乐气氛。
• They conveyed the joyous news to us soon.他们把这一佳音很快地传递给我们。

63 victoriously   

adv.获胜地，胜利地

参考例句：

• Our technical revolution is blazing its way forward through all the difficulties and advancing victoriously. 我们的技术革命正在披荆斩棘，胜利前进。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Ignace victoriously ascended the stairs and knocked on Kessler's door. 伊格内斯踌躇满志地登上楼梯，敲响了凯斯勒的房门。 来自辞典例句

64 solitariness   

n.隐居；单独

参考例句：

65 irresistibly   

adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地

参考例句：

• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside. 她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He was irresistibly attracted by her charm. 他不能自已地被她的魅力所吸引。 来自《简明英汉词典》

66 intelligible   

adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的

参考例句：

• This report would be intelligible only to an expert in computing.只有计算机运算专家才能看懂这份报告。
• His argument was barely intelligible.他的论点不易理解。

67 primal   

adj.原始的；最重要的

参考例句：

• Jealousy is a primal emotion.嫉妒是最原始的情感。
• Money was a primal necessity to them.对于他们，钱是主要的需要。

68 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

69 rendering   

n.表现，描写

参考例句：

• She gave a splendid rendering of Beethoven's piano sonata.她精彩地演奏了贝多芬的钢琴奏鸣曲。
• His narrative is a super rendering of dialect speech and idiom.他的叙述是方言和土语最成功的运用。

70 materialism   

n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上

参考例句：

• Idealism is opposite to materialism.唯心论和唯物论是对立的。
• Crass materialism causes people to forget spiritual values.极端唯物主义使人忘掉精神价值。

71 wrung   

绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水）

参考例句：

• He has wrung the words from their true meaning. 他曲解这些字的真正意义。
• He wrung my hand warmly. 他热情地紧握我的手。

72 astounding   

adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词)

参考例句：

• There was an astounding 20% increase in sales. 销售量惊人地增加了20%。
• The Chairman's remarks were so astounding that the audience listened to him with bated breath. 主席说的话令人吃惊，所以听众都屏息听他说。 来自《简明英汉词典》

73 audacity   

n.大胆，卤莽，无礼

参考例句：

• He had the audacity to ask for an increase in salary.他竟然厚着脸皮要求增加薪水。
• He had the audacity to pick pockets in broad daylight.他竟敢在光天化日之下掏包。

74 breach   

n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破

参考例句：

• We won't have any breach of discipline.我们不允许任何破坏纪律的现象。
• He was sued for breach of contract.他因不履行合同而被起诉。

75 fusion   

n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接

参考例句：

• Brass is formed by the fusion of copper and zinc. 黄铜是通过铜和锌的熔合而成的。
• This alloy is formed by the fusion of two types of metal.这种合金是用两种金属熔合而成的。

76 reign   

n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势

参考例句：

• The reign of Queen Elizabeth lapped over into the seventeenth century.伊丽莎白王朝延至17世纪。
• The reign of Zhu Yuanzhang lasted about 31 years.朱元璋统治了大约三十一年。

77 kindly   

adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地

参考例句：

• Her neighbours spoke of her as kindly and hospitable.她的邻居都说她和蔼可亲、热情好客。
• A shadow passed over the kindly face of the old woman.一道阴影掠过老太太慈祥的面孔。

78 inter   

v.埋葬

参考例句：

• They interred their dear comrade in the arms.他们埋葬了他们亲爱的战友。
• The man who died in that accident has been interred.在那次事故中死的那个人已经被埋葬了。

79 poetical   

adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的

参考例句：

• This is a poetical picture of the landscape. 这是一幅富有诗意的风景画。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• John is making a periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion. 约翰正在对陈腐的诗风做迂回冗长的研究。 来自辞典例句

80 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。

81 poetically   

adv.有诗意地，用韵文

参考例句：

• Life is poetically compared to the morning dew. 在诗歌中，人生被比喻为朝露。 来自辞典例句
• Poetically, Midsummer's Eve begins in flowers and ends in fire. 仲夏节是富有诗意的节日，它以鲜花领航，在篝火旁完美落幕。 来自互联网

82 unripe   

adj.未成熟的；n.未成熟

参考例句：

• I was only ill once and that came of eating an unripe pear.我唯一一次生病是因为吃了未熟的梨。
• Half of the apples are unripe.一半的苹果不熟。

83 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

84 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

85 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

86 attain   

vt.达到，获得，完成

参考例句：

• I used the scientific method to attain this end. 我用科学的方法来达到这一目的。
• His painstaking to attain his goal in life is praiseworthy. 他为实现人生目标所下的苦功是值得称赞的。

87 luminousness   

透光率

参考例句：

88 penetration   

n.穿透，穿人，渗透

参考例句：

• He is a man of penetration.他是一个富有洞察力的人。
• Our aim is to achieve greater market penetration.我们的目标是进一步打入市场。

89 enveloped   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She was enveloped in a huge white towel. 她裹在一条白色大毛巾里。
• Smoke from the burning house enveloped the whole street. 燃烧着的房子冒出的浓烟笼罩了整条街。 来自《简明英汉词典》

90 leisurely   

adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的

参考例句：

• We walked in a leisurely manner,looking in all the windows.我们慢悠悠地走着，看遍所有的橱窗。
• He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.他从容的吃了早餐，高兴的开车去工作。

91 spun   

v.纺，杜撰，急转身

参考例句：

• His grandmother spun him a yarn at the fire.他奶奶在火炉边给他讲故事。
• Her skilful fingers spun the wool out to a fine thread.她那灵巧的手指把羊毛纺成了细毛线。

92 elastic   

n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的

参考例句：

• Rubber is an elastic material.橡胶是一种弹性材料。
• These regulations are elastic.这些规定是有弹性的。

93 milieu   

n.环境；出身背景；(个人所处的)社会环境

参考例句：

• Foods usually provide a good milieu for the persistence of viruses.食品通常为病毒存续提供了一个良好的栖身所。
• He was born in a social milieu where further education was a luxury.他生在一个受较高教育就被认为是奢侈的社会环境里。

94 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

95 murky   

adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗

参考例句：

• She threw it into the river's murky depths.她把它扔进了混浊的河水深处。
• She had a decidedly murky past.她的历史背景令人捉摸不透。

96 serene   

adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的

参考例句：

• He has entered the serene autumn of his life.他已进入了美好的中年时期。
• He didn't speak much,he just smiled with that serene smile of his.他话不多，只是脸上露出他招牌式的淡定的微笑。

97 exultation   

n.狂喜，得意

参考例句：

• It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with exultation. 听了这个名字，他屏住呼吸，乐得脸上放光。
• He could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. 他一点都激动不起来。

98 terser   

（说话、文笔等）精练的，简洁的，扼要的( terse的比较级 )

参考例句：

99 rhythmic   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• Her breathing became more rhythmic.她的呼吸变得更有规律了。
• Good breathing is slow,rhythmic and deep.健康的呼吸方式缓慢深沉而有节奏。

100 prelude   

n.序言，前兆，序曲

参考例句：

• The prelude to the musical composition is very long.这首乐曲的序曲很长。
• The German invasion of Poland was a prelude to World War II.德国入侵波兰是第二次世界大战的序幕。

101 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

102 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

103 unify   

vt.使联合，统一；使相同，使一致

参考例句：

• How can we unify such scattered islands into a nation?我们怎么才能把如此分散的岛屿统一成一个国家呢？
• It is difficult to imagine how the North and South could ever agree on a formula to unify the divided peninsula.很难想象南北双方在统一半岛的方案上究竟怎样才能达成一致。

104 unifying   

使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一

参考例句：

• In addition, there were certain religious bonds of a unifying kind. 此外，他们还有某种具有一种统一性质的宗教上的结合。
• There is a unifying theme, and that is the theme of information flow within biological systems. 我们可以用一个总的命题，把生物学系统内的信息流来作为这一研究主题。

105 unreasonable   

adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的

参考例句：

• I know that they made the most unreasonable demands on you.我知道他们对你提出了最不合理的要求。
• They spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothes.他们花在衣服上的钱太多了。

106 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

107 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

108 minor   

adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修

参考例句：

• The young actor was given a minor part in the new play.年轻的男演员在这出新戏里被分派担任一个小角色。
• I gave him a minor share of my wealth.我把小部分财产给了他。

109 expressive   

adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的

参考例句：

• Black English can be more expressive than standard English.黑人所使用的英语可能比正式英语更有表现力。
• He had a mobile,expressive,animated face.他有一张多变的，富于表情的，生动活泼的脸。

110 winding   

n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈

参考例句：

• A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
• The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。

111 seminal   

adj.影响深远的；种子的

参考例句：

• The reforms have been a seminal event in the history of the NHS.这些改革已成为英国国民保健制度史上影响深远的一件大事。
• The emperor's importance as a seminal figure of history won't be diminished.做为一个开创性历史人物的重要性是不会减弱的。

112 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

113 vow   

n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓

参考例句：

• My parents are under a vow to go to church every Sunday.我父母许愿，每星期日都去做礼拜。
• I am under a vow to drink no wine.我已立誓戒酒。

114 avenge   

v.为...复仇，为...报仇

参考例句：

• He swore to avenge himself on the mafia.他发誓说要向黑手党报仇。
• He will avenge the people on their oppressor.他将为人民向压迫者报仇。

115 vocal   

adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目

参考例句：

• The tongue is a vocal organ.舌头是一个发音器官。
• Public opinion at last became vocal.终于舆论哗然。

116 vengeance   

n.报复，报仇，复仇

参考例句：

• He swore vengeance against the men who murdered his father.他发誓要向那些杀害他父亲的人报仇。
• For years he brooded vengeance.多年来他一直在盘算报仇。

117 dooms   

v.注定( doom的第三人称单数 )；判定；使…的失败（或灭亡、毁灭、坏结局）成为必然；宣判

参考例句：

• The ill-advised conceit of the guardian angel dooms the film from the start. 对守护天使的蹩脚设计弄巧成拙，从一开始就注定这部电影要失败。
• The dooms of the two are closely linked. 一条线拴俩蚂蚱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

118 conspirators   

n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The conspirators took no part in the fighting which ensued. 密谋者没有参加随后发生的战斗。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The French conspirators were forced to escape very hurriedly. 法国同谋者被迫匆促逃亡。 来自辞典例句

119 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

120 avenged   

v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复

参考例句：

• She avenged her mother's death upon the Nazi soldiers. 她惩处了纳粹士兵以报杀母之仇。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Indians avenged the burning of their village on〔upon〕 the settlers. 印第安人因为村庄被焚毁向拓居者们进行报复。 来自《简明英汉词典》

121 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

122 modification   

n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻

参考例句：

• The law,in its present form,is unjust;it needs modification.现行的法律是不公正的，它需要修改。
• The design requires considerable modification.这个设计需要作大的修改。

123 melodic   

adj.有旋律的，调子美妙的

参考例句：

• His voice had a rich melodic quality.他的音色浑厚而优美。
• He spoke with a soft husky voice in a melodic accent.他微微沙哑的声音带着一种悠扬的口音。

124 melodically   

参考例句：

• The leader has also learned to play more melodically. 这位领导人也学会了演奏得更加优美动听。 来自柯林斯例句

125 recur   

vi.复发，重现，再发生

参考例句：

• Economic crises recur periodically.经济危机周期性地发生。
• Of course,many problems recur at various periods.当然，有许多问题会在不同的时期反复提出。

126 marvels   

n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The doctor's treatment has worked marvels : the patient has recovered completely. 该医生妙手回春，病人已完全康复。 来自辞典例句
• Nevertheless he revels in a catalogue of marvels. 可他还是兴致勃勃地罗列了一堆怪诞不经的事物。 来自辞典例句

127 persistence   

n.坚持，持续，存留

参考例句：

• The persistence of a cough in his daughter puzzled him.他女儿持续的咳嗽把他难住了。
• He achieved success through dogged persistence.他靠着坚持不懈取得了成功。

128 knight   

n.骑士，武士；爵士

参考例句：

• He was made an honourary knight.他被授予荣誉爵士称号。
• A knight rode on his richly caparisoned steed.一个骑士骑在装饰华丽的马上。

129 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

130 destined   

adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的

参考例句：

• It was destined that they would marry.他们结婚是缘分。
• The shipment is destined for America.这批货物将运往美国。

131 permissible   

adj.可允许的，许可的

参考例句：

• Is smoking permissible in the theatre?在剧院里允许吸烟吗？
• Delay is not permissible,even for a single day.不得延误，即使一日亦不可。

132 invert   

vt.使反转，使颠倒，使转化

参考例句：

• She catch the insect by invert her cup over it.她把杯子倒扣在昆虫上，将它逮住了。
• Invert the cake onto a cooling rack.把蛋糕倒扣在冷却架上。

133 instinctively   

adv.本能地

参考例句：

• As he leaned towards her she instinctively recoiled. 他向她靠近，她本能地往后缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He knew instinctively where he would find her. 他本能地知道在哪儿能找到她。 来自《简明英汉词典》

134 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

135 maturity   

n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期

参考例句：

• These plants ought to reach maturity after five years.这些植物五年后就该长成了。
• This is the period at which the body attains maturity.这是身体发育成熟的时期。

136 maidens   

处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球

参考例句：

• stories of knights and fair maidens 关于骑士和美女的故事
• Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens. 花儿移栽往往并不成功，少女们换了环境也是如此。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

137 twilight   

n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期

参考例句：

• Twilight merged into darkness.夕阳的光辉融于黑暗中。
• Twilight was sweet with the smell of lilac and freshly turned earth.薄暮充满紫丁香和新翻耕的泥土的香味。

138 ensembles   

整体( ensemble的名词复数 )； 合奏； 乐团； 全套服装（尤指女装）

参考例句：

• I love to play in all types of ensembles. 我喜欢参与吹奏各种各样的合奏曲。
• The 5th Brigade is now taking 895 Land Warrior ensembles to Afghanistan. 第五旅现在携带895套陆地勇士装备去阿富汗。

139 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

140 dual   

adj.双的；二重的，二元的

参考例句：

• The people's Republic of China does not recognize dual nationality for any Chinese national.中华人民共和国不承认中国公民具有双重国籍。
• He has dual role as composer and conductor.他兼作曲家及指挥的双重身分。

141 depict   

vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述

参考例句：

• I don't care to see plays or films that depict murders or violence.我不喜欢看描写谋杀或暴力的戏剧或电影。
• Children's books often depict farmyard animals as gentle,lovable creatures.儿童图书常常把农场的动物描写得温和而可爱。

142 pompous   

adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的

参考例句：

• He was somewhat pompous and had a high opinion of his own capabilities.他有点自大，自视甚高。
• He is a good man underneath his pompous appearance. 他的外表虽傲慢，其实是个好人。

143 concise   

adj.简洁的，简明的

参考例句：

• The explanation in this dictionary is concise and to the point.这部词典里的释义简明扼要。
• I gave a concise answer about this.我对于此事给了一个简要的答复。

144 ingenuous   

adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的

参考例句：

• Only the most ingenuous person would believe such a weak excuse!只有最天真的人才会相信这么一个站不住脚的借口！
• With ingenuous sincerity,he captivated his audience.他以自己的率真迷住了观众。

145 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

146 reverting   

恢复( revert的现在分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还

参考例句：

• The boss came back from holiday all relaxed and smiling, but now he's reverting to type. 老板刚度假回来时十分随和，满面笑容，现在又恢复原样了。
• The conversation kept reverting to the subject of money. 谈话的内容总是离不开钱的事。

147 justified   

a.正当的，有理的

参考例句：

• She felt fully justified in asking for her money back. 她认为有充分的理由要求退款。
• The prisoner has certainly justified his claims by his actions. 那个囚犯确实已用自己的行动表明他的要求是正当的。

148 infinity   

n.无限，无穷，大量

参考例句：

• It is impossible to count up to infinity.不可能数到无穷大。
• Theoretically,a line can extend into infinity.从理论上来说直线可以无限地延伸。

149 eloquence   

n.雄辩；口才，修辞

参考例句：

• I am afraid my eloquence did not avail against the facts.恐怕我的雄辩也无补于事实了。
• The people were charmed by his eloquence.人们被他的口才迷住了。

150 eloquent   

adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• These ruins are an eloquent reminder of the horrors of war.这些废墟形象地提醒人们不要忘记战争的恐怖。

151 dispense   

vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施

参考例句：

• Let us dispense the food.咱们来分发这食物。
• The charity has been given a large sum of money to dispense as it sees fit.这个慈善机构获得一大笔钱，可自行适当分配。

152 dispenses   

v.分配，分与；分配( dispense的第三人称单数 )；施与；配（药）

参考例句：

• The machine dispenses a range of drinks and snacks. 这台机器发售各种饮料和小吃。
• This machine dispenses coffee. 这台机器发售咖啡。 来自《简明英汉词典》

153 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

154 transformation   

n.变化；改造；转变

参考例句：

• Going to college brought about a dramatic transformation in her outlook.上大学使她的观念发生了巨大的变化。
• He was struggling to make the transformation from single man to responsible husband.他正在努力使自己由单身汉变为可靠的丈夫。

155 dour   

adj.冷酷的，严厉的；（岩石）嶙峋的；顽强不屈

参考例句：

• They were exposed to dour resistance.他们遭受到顽强的抵抗。
• She always pretends to be dour,in fact,she's not.她总表现的不爱讲话，事实却相反。

156 irreconcilable   

adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的

参考例句：

• These practices are irreconcilable with the law of the Church.这种做法与教规是相悖的。
• These old concepts are irreconcilable with modern life.这些陈旧的观念与现代生活格格不入。

157 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

158 poignancy   

n.辛酸事，尖锐

参考例句：

• As she sat in church her face had a pathos and poignancy. 当她坐在教堂里时，脸上带着一种哀婉和辛辣的表情。
• The movie, "Trains, Planes, and Automobiles" treats this with hilarity and poignancy. 电影“火车，飞机和汽车”是以欢娱和热情庆祝这个节日。

159 fleeting   

adj.短暂的，飞逝的

参考例句：

• The girls caught only a fleeting glimpse of the driver.女孩们只匆匆瞥了一眼司机。
• Knowing the life fleeting,she set herself to enjoy if as best as she could.她知道这种日子转瞬即逝，于是让自已尽情地享受。

160 exquisite   

adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的

参考例句：

• I was admiring the exquisite workmanship in the mosaic.我当时正在欣赏镶嵌画的精致做工。
• I still remember the exquisite pleasure I experienced in Bali.我依然记得在巴厘岛所经历的那种剧烈的快感。

161 condensation   

n.压缩，浓缩；凝结的水珠

参考例句：

• A cloud is a condensation of water vapour in the atmosphere.云是由大气中的水蒸气凝结成的。
• He used his sleeve to wipe the condensation off the glass.他用袖子擦掉玻璃上凝结的水珠。

162 fidelity   

n.忠诚，忠实；精确

参考例句：

• There is nothing like a dog's fidelity.没有什么能比得上狗的忠诚。
• His fidelity and industry brought him speedy promotion.他的尽职及勤奋使他很快地得到晋升。

163 alteration   

n.变更，改变；蚀变

参考例句：

• The shirt needs alteration.这件衬衣需要改一改。
• He easily perceived there was an alteration in my countenance.他立刻看出我的脸色和往常有些不同。

164 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

165 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

166 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

167 exquisitely   

adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地

参考例句：

• He found her exquisitely beautiful. 他觉得她异常美丽。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He wore an exquisitely tailored gray silk and accessories to match. 他穿的是做工非常考究的灰色绸缎衣服，还有各种配得很协调的装饰。 来自教父部分

168 trumpet   

n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘

参考例句：

• He plays the violin, but I play the trumpet.他拉提琴，我吹喇叭。
• The trumpet sounded for battle.战斗的号角吹响了。

169 colloquy   

n.谈话，自由讨论

参考例句：

• The colloquy between them was brief.他们之间的对话很简洁。
• They entered into eager colloquy with each other.他们展开热切的相互交谈。

170 intensification   

n.激烈化，增强明暗度；加厚

参考例句：

• The intensification of the immunological response represents the body's natural defense. 增强免疫反应代表身体的自然保卫。 来自辞典例句
• Agriculture in the developing nations is not irreversibly committed, to a particular pattern of intensification. 发展中国家的农业并没有完全为某种集约化形式所束缚。 来自辞典例句

171 undoubtedly   

adv.确实地，无疑地

参考例句：

• It is undoubtedly she who has said that.这话明明是她说的。
• He is undoubtedly the pride of China.毫无疑问他是中国的骄傲。

172 zeal   

n.热心，热情，热忱

参考例句：

• Revolutionary zeal caught them up,and they joined the army.革命热情激励他们，于是他们从军了。
• They worked with great zeal to finish the project.他们热情高涨地工作，以期完成这个项目。

173 incessant   

adj.不停的，连续的

参考例句：

• We have had incessant snowfall since yesterday afternoon.从昨天下午开始就持续不断地下雪。
• She is tired of his incessant demands for affection.她厌倦了他对感情的不断索取。

174 recurrence   

n.复发，反复，重现

参考例句：

• More care in the future will prevent recurrence of the mistake.将来的小心可防止错误的重现。
• He was aware of the possibility of a recurrence of his illness.他知道他的病有可能复发。

175 peculiarity   

n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖

参考例句：

• Each country has its own peculiarity.每个国家都有自己的独特之处。
• The peculiarity of this shop is its day and nigth service.这家商店的特点是昼夜服务。

176 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

177 curiously   

adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地

参考例句：

• He looked curiously at the people.他好奇地看着那些人。
• He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold.他迈着悄没声息的大步。他的双手出奇地冷。

178 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

179 phenomena   

n.现象

参考例句：

• Ade couldn't relate the phenomena with any theory he knew.艾德无法用他所知道的任何理论来解释这种现象。
• The object of these experiments was to find the connection,if any,between the two phenomena.这些实验的目的就是探索这两种现象之间的联系，如果存在着任何联系的话。

180 pictorial   

adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报

参考例句：

• The had insisted on a full pictorial coverage of the event.他们坚持要对那一事件做详尽的图片报道。
• China Pictorial usually sells out soon after it hits the stands.《人民画报》往往一到报摊就销售一空。

181 incongruity   

n.不协调，不一致

参考例句：

• She smiled at the incongruity of the question.面对这样突兀的问题，她笑了。
• When the particular outstrips the general,we are faced with an incongruity.当特别是超过了总的来讲，我们正面临着一个不协调。

182 legitimately   

ad.合法地；正当地，合理地

参考例句：

• The radio is legitimately owned by the company. 该电台为这家公司所合法拥有。
• She looked for nothing save what might come legitimately and without the appearance of special favour. 她要的并不是男人们的额外恩赐，而是合法正当地得到的工作。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

183 veracity   

n.诚实

参考例句：

• I can testify to this man's veracity and good character.我可以作证，此人诚实可靠品德良好。
• There is no reason to doubt the veracity of the evidence.没有理由怀疑证据的真实性。

184 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

185 ingenuity   

n.别出心裁；善于发明创造

参考例句：

• The boy showed ingenuity in making toys.那个小男孩做玩具很有创造力。
• I admire your ingenuity and perseverance.我钦佩你的别出心裁和毅力。

186 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

187 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

188 bin   

n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件

参考例句：

• He emptied several bags of rice into a bin.他把几袋米倒进大箱里。
• He threw the empty bottles in the bin.他把空瓶子扔进垃圾箱。

189 diverge   

v.分叉，分歧，离题，使...岔开，使转向

参考例句：

• This is where our opinions diverge from each other.这就是我们意见产生分歧之处。
• Don't diverge in your speech.发言不要离题。

190 allusion   

n.暗示，间接提示

参考例句：

• He made an allusion to a secret plan in his speech.在讲话中他暗示有一项秘密计划。
• She made no allusion to the incident.她没有提及那个事件。

191 mime   

n.指手画脚，做手势，哑剧演员，哑剧；vi./vt.指手画脚的表演，用哑剧的形式表演

参考例句：

• Several French mime artists will give some lectures this afternoon.几位法国哑剧表演艺术家将在今天下午做几场讲座。
• I couldn't speak Chinese,but I showed in mime that I wanted a drink.我不会讲汉语，但我作摹拟动作表示要一杯饮料。

192 brook   

n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让

参考例句：

• In our room we could hear the murmur of a distant brook.在我们房间能听到远处小溪汩汩的流水声。
• The brook trickled through the valley.小溪涓涓流过峡谷。

193 toad   

n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆

参考例句：

• Both the toad and frog are amphibian.蟾蜍和青蛙都是两栖动物。
• Many kinds of toad hibernate in winter.许多种蟾蜍在冬天都会冬眠。

194 stanza   

n.（诗）节，段

参考例句：

• We omitted to sing the second stanza.我们漏唱了第二节。
• One young reporter wrote a review with a stanza that contained some offensive content.一个年轻的记者就歌词中包含有攻击性内容的一节写了评论。

195 herd   

n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• He had no opinions of his own but simply follow the herd.他从无主见，只是人云亦云。

196 cantata   

n.清唱剧，大合唱

参考例句：

• The music of the song has been rearranged for the cantata.这支歌改编已成大合唱。
• The choral society sang the new cantata composed by its leader.该合唱队演唱了他们领队编写的大合唱。

197 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

198 absurdity   

n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论

参考例句：

• The proposal borders upon the absurdity.这提议近乎荒谬。
• The absurdity of the situation made everyone laugh.情况的荒谬可笑使每个人都笑了。

199 rascal   

n.流氓；不诚实的人

参考例句：

• If he had done otherwise,I should have thought him a rascal.如果他不这样做，我就认为他是个恶棍。
• The rascal was frightened into holding his tongue.这坏蛋吓得不敢往下说了。

200 trickiness   

n.欺骗；狡猾；棘手；微妙

参考例句：

• These puzzles are famous for their trickiness. 这些智力游戏以其机巧而闻名。 来自互联网

201 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

202 evade   

vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避

参考例句：

• He tried to evade the embarrassing question.他企图回避这令人难堪的问题。
• You are in charge of the job.How could you evade the issue?你是负责人，你怎么能对这个问题不置可否？

203 apprehensions   

疑惧

参考例句：

• He stood in a mixture of desire and apprehensions. 他怀着渴望和恐惧交加的心情伫立着。
• But subsequent cases have removed many of these apprehensions. 然而，随后的案例又消除了许多类似的忧虑。

204 foes   

敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They steadily pushed their foes before them. 他们不停地追击敌人。
• She had fought many battles, vanquished many foes. 她身经百战，挫败过很多对手。

205 warriors   

武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I like reading the stories ofancient warriors. 我喜欢读有关古代武士的故事。
• The warriors speared the man to death. 武士们把那个男子戳死了。

206 thronging   

v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Architects from around the world are thronging to Beijing theacross the capital. 来自世界各地的建筑师都蜂拥而至这座处处高楼耸立的大都市——北京。 来自互联网
• People are thronging to his new play. 人们成群结队地去看他那出新戏。 来自互联网

207 repulse   

n.击退，拒绝；vt.逐退，击退，拒绝

参考例句：

• The armed forces were prepared to repulse any attacks.武装部队已作好击退任何进攻的准备。
• After the second repulse,the enemy surrendered.在第二次击退之后，敌人投降了。

208 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

209 commentators   

n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员

参考例句：

• Sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 体育解说员翻来覆去说着同样的词语，真叫人腻烦。
• Television sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 电视体育解说员说来说去就是那么几句话，令人厌烦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

210 recurs   

再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• This theme recurs several times throughout the book. 这一主题在整部书里出现了好几次。
• Leap year recurs every four years. 每四年闰年一次。

211 dwarf   

n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小

参考例句：

• The dwarf's long arms were not proportional to his height.那侏儒的长臂与他的身高不成比例。
• The dwarf shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. 矮子耸耸肩膀，摇摇头。

212 symbolic   

adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的

参考例句：

• It is symbolic of the fighting spirit of modern womanhood.它象征着现代妇女的战斗精神。
• The Christian ceremony of baptism is a symbolic act.基督教的洗礼仪式是一种象征性的做法。

213 symbolical   

a.象征性的

参考例句：

• The power of the monarchy in Britain today is more symbolical than real. 今日英国君主的权力多为象徵性的，无甚实际意义。
• The Lord introduces the first symbolical language in Revelation. 主说明了启示录中第一个象徵的语言。

214 timbre   

n.音色，音质

参考例句：

• His voice had a deep timbre.他嗓音低沉。
• The timbre of the violin is far richer than that of the mouth organ.小提琴的音色远比口琴丰富。

215 punctuates   

v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的第三人称单数 )；不时打断某事物

参考例句：

216 declamation   

n. 雄辩，高调

参考例句：

• Declamation is a traditional Chinese teaching method.诵读教学是我国传统的语文教学方法。
• Were you present at the declamation contest of Freshmen?大一的朗诵比赛你参加了没有？

217 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

218 cursory   

adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的

参考例句：

• He signed with only a cursory glance at the report.他只草草看了一眼报告就签了名。
• The only industry mentioned is agriculture and it is discussed in a cursory sentence.实业方面只谈到农业,而且只是匆匆带了一句。

219 transparently   

明亮地，显然地，易觉察地

参考例句：

• "Clearly plots,'said Jacques Three. "Transparently!" “显然是搞阴谋，”雅克三号说，“再清楚不过了。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• All design transparently, convenient for the file identification inside the bag. 全透明设计，方便袋内文件识别。

220 skilfully   

adv. (美skillfully)熟练地

参考例句：

• Hall skilfully weaves the historical research into a gripping narrative. 霍尔巧妙地把历史研究揉进了扣人心弦的故事叙述。
• Enthusiasm alone won't do. You've got to work skilfully. 不能光靠傻劲儿，得找窍门。

221 relevance   

n.中肯，适当，关联，相关性

参考例句：

• Politicians' private lives have no relevance to their public roles.政治家的私生活与他们的公众角色不相关。
• Her ideas have lost all relevance to the modern world.她的想法与现代社会完全脱节。

222 specimen   

n.样本，标本

参考例句：

• You'll need tweezers to hold up the specimen.你要用镊子来夹这标本。
• This specimen is richly variegated in colour.这件标本上有很多颜色。

223 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

224 brayed   

v.发出驴叫似的声音( bray的过去式和过去分词 )；发嘟嘟声；粗声粗气地讲话（或大笑）；猛击

参考例句：

• He brayed with laughter. 他刺耳地大笑。
• His donkey threw up his head and brayed loudly. 他的驴扬起头大声叫。 来自《简明英汉词典》

225 melancholy   

n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• All at once he fell into a state of profound melancholy.他立即陷入无尽的忧思之中。
• He felt melancholy after he failed the exam.这次考试没通过，他感到很郁闷。

226 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

227 decadence   

n.衰落，颓废

参考例句：

• The decadence of morals is bad for a nation.道德的堕落对国家是不利的。
• His article has the power to turn decadence into legend.他的文章具有化破朽为神奇的力量。

228 cadence   

n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫

参考例句：

• He delivered his words in slow,measured cadences.他讲话缓慢而抑扬顿挫、把握有度。
• He liked the relaxed cadence of his retired life.他喜欢退休生活的悠闲的节奏。

229 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

230 stimulus   

n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物

参考例句：

• Regard each failure as a stimulus to further efforts.把每次失利看成对进一步努力的激励。
• Light is a stimulus to growth in plants.光是促进植物生长的一个因素。

231 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？

232 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

233 recital   

n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会

参考例句：

• She is going to give a piano recital.她即将举行钢琴独奏会。
• I had their total attention during the thirty-five minutes that my recital took.在我叙述的35分钟内，他们完全被我吸引了。

234 conclusively   

adv.令人信服地，确凿地

参考例句：

• All this proves conclusively that she couldn't have known the truth. 这一切无可置疑地证明她不可能知道真相。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• From the facts,he was able to determine conclusively that the death was not a suicide. 根据这些事实他断定这起死亡事件并非自杀。 来自《简明英汉词典》

235 simultaneously   

adv.同时发生地，同时进行地

参考例句：

• The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
• The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。

236 expressiveness   

n.富有表现力

参考例句：

• His painting rose to a fresh expressiveness and revealed a shrewder insight. 他的画富有一种新的表达力，显示出更敏锐的洞察力。
• The audiences are impressed by the expressiveness of the actors. 演员们的丰富表情给观众留下了深刻的印象。

237 attained   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• She has attained the degree of Master of Arts. 她已获得文学硕士学位。
• Lu Hsun attained a high position in the republic of letters. 鲁迅在文坛上获得崇高的地位。

238 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

239 attains   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的第三人称单数 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• This is the period at which the body attains maturity. 这是身体发育成熟的时期。
• The temperature a star attains is determined by its mass. 恒星所达到的温度取决于它的质量。

240 consistency   

n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度

参考例句：

• Your behaviour lacks consistency.你的行为缺乏一贯性。
• We appreciate the consistency and stability in China and in Chinese politics.我们赞赏中国及其政策的连续性和稳定性。

241 smoothly   

adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地

参考例句：

• The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
• Just change one or two words and the sentence will read smoothly.这句话只要动一两个字就顺了。

242 predecessors   

n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Will new plan be any more acceptable than its predecessors? 新计划比原先的计划更能令人满意吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

243 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

244 concision   

n.简明，简洁

参考例句：

• As concision agent, we do business on commission basis. 作为佣金代理人，我们是在佣金的基础上做生产的。
• For example, commonweal establishment is a definite epitome and abstract with concision. 比如公益设施，就是对事物性质的明确概括和提炼，简洁明了、言简意赅。

245 relegating   

v.使降级( relegate的现在分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类

参考例句：

246 friction   

n.摩擦，摩擦力

参考例句：

• When Joan returned to work,the friction between them increased.琼回来工作后，他们之间的摩擦加剧了。
• Friction acts on moving bodies and brings them to a stop.摩擦力作用于运动着的物体，并使其停止。

247 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

248 ravenous   

adj.极饿的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• The ravenous children ate everything on the table.饿极了的孩子把桌上所有东西吃掉了。
• Most infants have a ravenous appetite.大多数婴儿胃口极好。

249 kernel   

n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心

参考例句：

• The kernel of his problem is lack of money.他的问题的核心是缺钱。
• The nutshell includes the kernel.果壳裹住果仁。

250 delicacies   

n.棘手( delicacy的名词复数 )；精致；精美的食物；周到

参考例句：

• Its flesh has exceptional delicacies. 它的肉异常鲜美。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• After these delicacies, the trappers were ready for their feast. 在享用了这些美食之后，狩猎者开始其大餐。 来自英汉非文学 - 民俗

251 pliant   

adj.顺从的；可弯曲的

参考例句：

• She's proud and stubborn,you know,under that pliant exterior.你要知道，在温顺的外表下，她既自傲又固执。
• They weave a basket out of osiers with pliant young willows.他们用易弯的柳枝编制篮子。

252 fettering   

v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Following general observations on timetable and relative emphasis may assist without fettering you freedom of action. 以下关于进度和相关侧重点的总的设想可能对你有所帮助，而不致妨碍你的行动自由。 来自辞典例句

253 rhythmically   

adv.有节奏地

参考例句：

• A pigeon strutted along the roof, cooing rhythmically. 一只鸽子沿着屋顶大摇大摆地走，有节奏地咕咕叫。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Exposures of rhythmically banded protore are common in the workings. 在工作面中常见有韵律条带“原矿石”。 来自辞典例句

254 rhythmical   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• His breathing became more rhythmical.他的呼吸变得更有节奏了。
• The music is strongly rhythmical.那音乐有强烈的节奏。

255 savage   

adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人

参考例句：

• The poor man received a savage beating from the thugs.那可怜的人遭到暴徒的痛打。
• He has a savage temper.他脾气粗暴。

256 saviour   

n.拯救者，救星

参考例句：

• I saw myself as the saviour of my country.我幻想自己为国家的救星。
• The people clearly saw her as their saviour.人们显然把她看成了救星。

257 descend   

vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降

参考例句：

• I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
• We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。

258 tumult   

n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹

参考例句：

• The tumult in the streets awakened everyone in the house.街上的喧哗吵醒了屋子里的每一个人。
• His voice disappeared under growing tumult.他的声音消失在越来越响的喧哗声中。

259 defiled   

v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进

参考例句：

• Many victims of burglary feel their homes have been defiled. 许多家门被撬的人都感到自己的家被玷污了。
• I felt defiled by the filth. 我觉得这些脏话玷污了我。 来自《简明英汉词典》

260 frenzied   

a.激怒的；疯狂的

参考例句：

• Will this push him too far and lead to a frenzied attack? 这会不会逼他太甚，导致他进行疯狂的进攻？
• Two teenagers carried out a frenzied attack on a local shopkeeper. 两名十几岁的少年对当地的一个店主进行了疯狂的袭击。

261 torrents   

n.倾注；奔流( torrent的名词复数 )；急流；爆发；连续不断

参考例句：

• The torrents scoured out a channel down the hill side. 急流沿着山腰冲刷出一条水沟。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Sudden rainstorms would bring the mountain torrents rushing down. 突然的暴雨会使山洪暴发。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

262 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

263 relics   

[pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸

参考例句：

• The area is a treasure house of archaeological relics. 这个地区是古文物遗迹的宝库。
• Xi'an is an ancient city full of treasures and saintly relics. 西安是一个有很多宝藏和神圣的遗物的古老城市。

264 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

265 penance   

n.（赎罪的）惩罪

参考例句：

• They had confessed their sins and done their penance.他们已经告罪并做了补赎。
• She knelt at her mother's feet in penance.她忏悔地跪在母亲脚下。

266 repentant   

adj.对…感到悔恨的

参考例句：

• He was repentant when he saw what he'd done.他看到自己的作为，心里悔恨。
• I'll be meek under their coldness and repentant of my evil ways.我愿意乖乖地忍受她们的奚落，忏悔我过去的恶行。

267 torment   

n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠

参考例句：

• He has never suffered the torment of rejection.他从未经受过遭人拒绝的痛苦。
• Now nothing aggravates me more than when people torment each other.没有什么东西比人们的互相折磨更使我愤怒。

268 parentheses   

n.圆括号，插入语，插曲（ parenthesis的名词复数 ）

参考例句：

• Irregular forms are given in parentheses . 不规则形式标注在括号内。
• Answer these questions, using the words in parentheses. Put the apostrophe in the right place. 用句后括号中的词或词组来回答问题，注意撇号的位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》

269 substantive   

adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体

参考例句：

• They plan to meet again in Rome very soon to begin substantive negotiations.他们计划不久在罗马再次会晤以开始实质性的谈判。
• A president needs substantive advice,but he also requires emotional succor. 一个总统需要实质性的建议，但也需要感情上的支持。

270 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

271 lapse   

n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效

参考例句：

• The incident was being seen as a serious security lapse.这一事故被看作是一次严重的安全疏忽。
• I had a lapse of memory.我记错了。

272 implicit   

a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的

参考例句：

• A soldier must give implicit obedience to his officers. 士兵必须绝对服从他的长官。
• Her silence gave implicit consent. 她的沉默表示默许。

273 exigencies   

n.急切需要

参考例句：

• Many people are forced by exigencies of circumstance to take some part in them. 许多人由于境况所逼又不得不在某种程度上参与这种活动。
• The people had to accept the harsh exigencies of war. 人们要承受战乱的严酷现实。

274 recapitulate   

v.节述要旨，择要说明

参考例句：

• Let's recapitulate the main ideas.让我们来概括一下要点。
• It will be helpful to recapitulate them.在这里将其简要重述一下也是有帮助的。

275 thrall   

n.奴隶；奴隶制

参考例句：

• He treats his wife like a thrall.他把妻子当作奴隶看待。
• He is not in thrall to the media.他不受制于媒体。

276 bondage   

n.奴役，束缚

参考例句：

• Masters sometimes allowed their slaves to buy their way out of bondage.奴隶主们有时允许奴隶为自己赎身。
• They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。

277 slew   

v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多

参考例句：

• He slewed the car against the side of the building.他的车滑到了大楼的一侧，抵住了。
• They dealt with a slew of other issues.他们处理了大量的其他问题。

278 begot   

v.为…之生父( beget的过去式 )；产生，引起

参考例句：

• He begot three children. 他生了三个子女。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Cush also begot Nimrod who was the first man of might on earth. 卡什还生了尼姆罗德，尼姆罗德是世上第一个力大无穷的人。 来自辞典例句

279 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

280 virtues   

美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处

参考例句：

• Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
• She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。

281 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

282 awakening   

n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的

参考例句：

• the awakening of interest in the environment 对环境产生的兴趣
• People are gradually awakening to their rights. 人们正逐渐意识到自己的权利。

283 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

284 impede   

v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止

参考例句：

• One shouldn't impede other's progress.一个人不应该妨碍他人进步。
• The muddy roads impede our journey.我们的旅游被泥泞的道路阻挠了。

285 insufficiently   

adv.不够地，不能胜任地

参考例句：

• Your insurance card is insufficiently stamped. 你的保险卡片未贴足印花。 来自辞典例句
• Many of Britain's people are poorly dressed, badly housed, insufficiently nourished. 许多英国人衣着寒伧，居住简陋，营养不良。 来自互联网

286 flouted   

v.藐视，轻视( flout的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• North Vietnam flouted the accords from the day they were signed. 北越从签字那天起就无视协定的存在。 来自辞典例句
• They flouted all our offers of help and friendship. 他们对我们愿意提供的所有帮助和友谊表示藐视。 来自辞典例句

287 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

288 rape   

n.抢夺，掠夺，强奸；vt.掠夺，抢夺，强奸

参考例句：

• The rape of the countryside had a profound ravage on them.对乡村的掠夺给他们造成严重创伤。
• He was brought to court and charged with rape.他被带到法庭并被指控犯有强奸罪。

289 lucid   

adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的

参考例句：

• His explanation was lucid and to the point.他的解释扼要易懂。
• He wasn't very lucid,he didn't quite know where he was.他神志不是很清醒，不太知道自己在哪里。

290 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

291 lumbering   

n.采伐林木

参考例句：

• Lumbering and, later, paper-making were carried out in smaller cities. 木材业和后来的造纸都由较小的城市经营。
• Lumbering is very important in some underdeveloped countries. 在一些不发达的国家，伐木业十分重要。

292 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

293 sculptor   

n.雕刻家，雕刻家

参考例句：

• A sculptor forms her material.雕塑家把材料塑造成雕塑品。
• The sculptor rounded the clay into a sphere.那位雕塑家把黏土做成了一个球状。

294 solely   

adv.仅仅，唯一地

参考例句：

• Success should not be measured solely by educational achievement.成功与否不应只用学业成绩来衡量。
• The town depends almost solely on the tourist trade.这座城市几乎完全靠旅游业维持。

295 outgrowing   

长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的现在分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过

参考例句：

• Vibrant colors last year around without wilting, watering, or outgrowing their pots early, quantities are limited. 它高贵优雅，不容易萎蔫，不用经常浇水，也不会长出花盆之外。

296 futile   

adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的

参考例句：

• They were killed,to the last man,in a futile attack.因为进攻失败，他们全部被杀，无一幸免。
• Their efforts to revive him were futile.他们对他抢救无效。

297 stereotyped   

adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的

参考例句：

• There is a sameness about all these tales. They're so stereotyped -- all about talented scholars and lovely ladies. 这些书就是一套子，左不过是些才子佳人，最没趣儿。
• He is the stereotyped monster of the horror films and the adventure books, and an obvious (though not perhaps strictly scientific) link with our ancestral past. 它们是恐怖电影和惊险小说中的老一套的怪物，并且与我们的祖先有着明显的（虽然可能没有科学的）联系。

298 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

299 limning   

v.画( limn的现在分词 )；勾画；描写；描述

参考例句：

• Evaluating the system, the traditional method is limning it's five accuracy index. \" 对测量系统的评价，传统的方法只是使用五个精度指标来描述，这不符合国际规范。 来自互联网

300 protean   

adj.反复无常的；变化自如的

参考例句：

• Sri Lanka is a protean and wonderful paradise.斯里兰卡是一个千变万化和精彩万分的人间天堂。
• He is a protean stylist who can move from blues to ballads and grand symphony.他风格多变，从布鲁斯、乡村音乐到雄壮的交响乐都能驾驭。

301 incisiveness   

n.敏锐，深刻

参考例句：

• He never quarreled with the directness and incisiveness of Cowperwood's action. 他对柯帕乌举动的直截了当，锋利无比，从不表示异议。 来自辞典例句
• A few candidates stood out for the incisiveness of their arguments. 几个候选人因他们犀利的观点出众。 来自互联网

302 utterance   

n.用言语表达，话语，言语

参考例句：

• This utterance of his was greeted with bursts of uproarious laughter.他的讲话引起阵阵哄然大笑。
• My voice cleaves to my throat,and sob chokes my utterance.我的噪子哽咽，泣不成声。

303 apparatus   

n.装置，器械；器具，设备

参考例句：

• The school's audio apparatus includes films and records.学校的视听设备包括放映机和录音机。
• They had a very refined apparatus.他们有一套非常精良的设备。

304 blurred   

v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离

参考例句：

• She suffered from dizziness and blurred vision. 她饱受头晕目眩之苦。
• Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears. 他们那种慢吞吞、含糊不清的声音在他听起来却很悦耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

305 preservatives   

n.防腐剂( preservative的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The juice contains no artificial preservatives. 这种果汁不含人工防腐剂。
• Meat spoils more quickly without preservatives. 不加防腐剂，肉会坏得快。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

306 consummate   

adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle

参考例句：

• The restored jade burial suit fully reveals the consummate skill of the labouring people of ancient China.复原后的金缕玉衣充分显示出中国古代劳动人民的精湛工艺。
• The actor's acting is consummate and he is loved by the audience.这位演员技艺精湛，深受观众喜爱。

307 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

308 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

309 villain   

n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因

参考例句：

• He was cast as the villain in the play.他在戏里扮演反面角色。
• The man who played the villain acted very well.扮演恶棍的那个男演员演得很好。

310 melodrama   

n.音乐剧；情节剧

参考例句：

• We really don't need all this ridiculous melodrama!别跟我们来这套荒唐的情节剧表演！
• White Haired Woman was a melodrama,but in certain spots it was deliberately funny.《白毛女》是一出悲剧性的歌剧，但也有不少插科打诨。

311 repulsive   

adj.排斥的，使人反感的

参考例句：

• She found the idea deeply repulsive.她发现这个想法很恶心。
• The repulsive force within the nucleus is enormous.核子内部的斥力是巨大的。

312 gnome   

n.土地神；侏儒，地精

参考例句：

• The Swedes do not have Santa Claus.What they have is Christmas Gnome.瑞典人的圣诞节里没有圣诞老人，但他们却有一个圣诞守护神。
• Susan bought a garden gnome to decorate her garden.苏珊买了一个土地神像来装饰她的花园。

313 lusting   

贪求（lust的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Is your husband lusting after the au pair? 你的丈夫是否正对来家打工的留学女生暗送秋波？
• He is lusting after you. 他在追求你。

314 sincerity   

n.真诚，诚意；真实

参考例句：

• His sincerity added much more authority to the story.他的真诚更增加了故事的说服力。
• He tried hard to satisfy me of his sincerity.他竭力让我了解他的诚意。

315 incurably   

ad.治不好地

参考例句：

• But young people are incurably optimistic and women have a special knack of forgetting their troubles. 可是青年人，永远朝着愉快的事情想，女人们尤其容易忘记那些不痛快。
• For herself she wanted nothing. For father and myself she was incurably ambitious. 她为她自己并无所求，可为父亲和我，却有着无法遏制的野心。

316 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

317 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

318 malice   

n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋

参考例句：

• I detected a suggestion of malice in his remarks.我觉察出他说的话略带恶意。
• There was a strong current of malice in many of his portraits.他的许多肖像画中都透着一股强烈的怨恨。

319 satire   

n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品

参考例句：

• The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
• Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。

320 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

321 wiles   

n.（旨在欺骗或吸引人的）诡计，花招；欺骗，欺诈( wile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• All her wiles were to persuade them to buy the goods. 她花言巧语想打动他们买这些货物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The woman used all her wiles to tempt him into following her. 那女人用尽了自己的诱骗本领勾引着他尾随而去。 来自《用法词典》

322 rogues   

n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽

参考例句：

• 'I'll show these rogues that I'm an honest woman,'said my mother. “我要让那些恶棍知道，我是个诚实的女人。” 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛
• The rogues looked at each other, but swallowed the home-thrust in silence. 那些恶棍面面相觑，但只好默默咽下这正中要害的话。 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛

323 jaw   

n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训

参考例句：

• He delivered a right hook to his opponent's jaw.他给了对方下巴一记右钩拳。
• A strong square jaw is a sign of firm character.强健的方下巴是刚毅性格的标志。

324 fouling   

n.（水管、枪筒等中的）污垢v.使污秽( foul的现在分词 )；弄脏；击球出界；（通常用废物）弄脏

参考例句：

• He was sent off for fouling the other team's goalkeeper. 他因对对方守门员犯规而被罚出场。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A basketball player is allowed five personal fouls before fouling out. 篮球运动员侵人犯规五次即被罚下场。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

325 adversaries   

n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• That would cause potential adversaries to recoil from a challenge. 这会迫使潜在的敌人在挑战面前退缩。 来自辞典例句
• Every adversaries are more comfortable with a predictable, coherent America. 就连敌人也会因有可以预料的，始终一致的美国而感到舒服得多。 来自辞典例句

326 bestow   

v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费

参考例句：

• He wished to bestow great honors upon the hero.他希望将那些伟大的荣誉授予这位英雄。
• What great inspiration wiII you bestow on me?你有什么伟大的灵感能馈赠给我？

327 urchin   

n.顽童；海胆

参考例句：

• You should sheer off the urchin.你应该躲避这顽童。
• He is a most wicked urchin.他是个非常调皮的顽童。

328 synthetic   

adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品

参考例句：

• We felt the salesman's synthetic friendliness.我们感觉到那位销售员的虚情假意。
• It's a synthetic diamond.这是人造钻石。

329 wrought   

v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的

参考例句：

• Events in Paris wrought a change in British opinion towards France and Germany.巴黎发生的事件改变了英国对法国和德国的看法。
• It's a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a flower.那是一个金质花形包头的拐杖。

330 tenacity   

n.坚韧

参考例句：

• Tenacity is the bridge to success.坚韧是通向成功的桥。
• The athletes displayed great tenacity throughout the contest.运动员在比赛中表现出坚韧的斗志。

331 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

332 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

333 tangle   

n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱

参考例句：

• I shouldn't tangle with Peter.He is bigger than me.我不应该与彼特吵架。他的块头比我大。
• If I were you, I wouldn't tangle with them.我要是你，我就不跟他们争吵。

334 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

335 banished   

v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was banished to Australia, where he died five years later. 他被流放到澳大利亚，五年后在那里去世。
• He was banished to an uninhabited island for a year. 他被放逐到一个无人居住的荒岛一年。 来自《简明英汉词典》

336 careworn   

adj.疲倦的，饱经忧患的

参考例句：

• It's sad to see the careworn face of the mother of a large poor family.看到那贫穷的一大家子的母亲忧劳憔悴的脸庞心里真是难受。
• The old woman had a careworn look on her face.老妇脸上露出忧心忡忡的神色。

337 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

338 vicissitudes   

n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废

参考例句：

• He experienced several great social vicissitudes in his life. 他一生中经历了几次大的社会变迁。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. 饱经沧桑，不易沮丧。 来自《简明英汉词典》

339 librettist   

n.(歌剧、音乐剧等的)歌词作者

参考例句：

• The musician and the librettist were collaborators. 音乐家与剧作者通力合作。
• Italian-born American composer and librettist whose operas include The Medium(1946) and The Consul(1950). 梅诺蒂，吉安卡洛生于1911意大利裔美国作曲家和歌剧词作者，其歌剧作品包括女巫（1946年）及领事（1950年）

340 strutting   

加固，支撑物

参考例句：

• He, too, was exceedingly arrogant, strutting about the castle. 他也是非常自大，在城堡里大摇大摆地走。
• The pompous lecturer is strutting and forth across the stage. 这个演讲者在台上趾高气扬地来回走着。

341 descending   

n. 下行 adj. 下降的

参考例句：

• The results are expressed in descending numerical order . 结果按数字降序列出。
• The climbers stopped to orient themselves before descending the mountain. 登山者先停下来确定所在的位置，然后再下山。

342 homage   

n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬

参考例句：

• We pay homage to the genius of Shakespeare.我们对莎士比亚的天才表示敬仰。
• The soldiers swore to pay their homage to the Queen.士兵们宣誓效忠于女王陛下。

343 profundity   

n.渊博；深奥，深刻

参考例句：

• He impressed his audience by the profundity of his knowledge.他知识渊博给听众留下了深刻的印象。
• He pretended profundity by eye-beamings at people.他用神采奕奕的眼光看着人们，故作深沉。

344 crimson   

n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色

参考例句：

• She went crimson with embarrassment.她羞得满脸通红。
• Maple leaves have turned crimson.枫叶已经红了。

345 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

346 outlet   

n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄

参考例句：

• The outlet of a water pipe was blocked.水管的出水口堵住了。
• Running is a good outlet for his energy.跑步是他发泄过剩精力的好方法。

347 impasse   

n.僵局；死路

参考例句：

• The government had reached an impasse.政府陷入绝境。
• Negotiations seemed to have reached an impasse.谈判似乎已经陷入僵局。

348 unity   

n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调

参考例句：

• When we speak of unity,we do not mean unprincipled peace.所谓团结，并非一团和气。
• We must strengthen our unity in the face of powerful enemies.大敌当前，我们必须加强团结。

349 tint   

n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色

参考例句：

• You can't get up that naturalness and artless rosy tint in after days.你今后不再会有这种自然和朴实无华的红润脸色。
• She gave me instructions on how to apply the tint.她告诉我如何使用染发剂。

350 tints   

色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹

参考例句：

• leaves with red and gold autumn tints 金秋时节略呈红黄色的树叶
• The whole countryside glowed with autumn tints. 乡间处处呈现出灿烂的秋色。

351 faculties   

n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院

参考例句：

• Although he's ninety, his mental faculties remain unimpaired. 他虽年届九旬，但头脑仍然清晰。
• All your faculties have come into play in your work. 在你的工作中，你的全部才能已起到了作用。 来自《简明英汉词典》

352 incorrigibly   

adv.无法矫正地；屡教不改地；无可救药地；不能矫正地

参考例句：

• He was incorrigibly obstinate, no matter who persuaded him. 不论谁劝他，他都顽固不化。 来自互联网
• Medora is incorrigibly romantic. 梅朵拉很富于幻想，这是不可救药的。 来自互联网

353 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

354 analytically   

adv.有分析地，解析地

参考例句：

• The final requirement,'significant environmental impact", is analytically more difficult. 最后一个规定“重大的环境影响”，分析起来是比较困难的。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• The overwhelming majority of nonlinear differential equations are not soluble analytically. 绝大多数非线性微分方程是不能用解析方法求解的。

355 incarnated   

v.赋予（思想、精神等）以人的形体( incarnate的过去式和过去分词 )；使人格化；体现；使具体化

参考例句：

• Dickens incarnated hypocrisy in his Uriah Heep. 狄更斯把虚伪体现在他塑造的人物赖亚·赫普身上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His ideals were incarnated in his music. 他的理想具体地体现在他的音乐中。 来自辞典例句

356 reverted   

恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还

参考例句：

• After the settlers left, the area reverted to desert. 早期移民离开之后，这个地区又变成了一片沙漠。
• After his death the house reverted to its original owner. 他死后房子归还给了原先的主人。

357 scenic   

adj.自然景色的，景色优美的

参考例句：

• The scenic beauty of the place entranced the visitors.这里的美丽风光把游客们迷住了。
• The scenic spot is on northwestern outskirts of Beijing.这个风景区位于北京的西北远郊。

358 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

359 stature   

n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材

参考例句：

• He is five feet five inches in stature.他身高5英尺5英寸。
• The dress models are tall of stature.时装模特儿的身材都较高。

360 differentiation   

n.区别，区分

参考例句：

• There can be no differentiation without contrast. 有比较才有差别。
• The operation that is the inverse of differentiation is called integration. 与微分相反的运算叫做积分。

361 sinister   

adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的

参考例句：

• There is something sinister at the back of that series of crimes.在这一系列罪行背后有险恶的阴谋。
• Their proposals are all worthless and designed out of sinister motives.他们的建议不仅一钱不值，而且包藏祸心。

362 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

363 rustling   

n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的

参考例句：

• the sound of the trees rustling in the breeze 树木在微风中发出的沙沙声
• the soft rustling of leaves 树叶柔和的沙沙声

364 intoxicates   

使喝醉（intoxicate的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• The prospect of success intoxicates me. 成功的前景令我陶醉。
• This typical local dish which has a special strong taste intoxicates people. 这个风味菜有一种强烈的特殊口味，令人陶醉。

365 parched   

adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干

参考例句：

• Hot winds parched the crops.热风使庄稼干透了。
• The land in this region is rather dry and parched.这片土地十分干燥。

366 haze   

n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊

参考例句：

• I couldn't see her through the haze of smoke.在烟雾弥漫中，我看不见她。
• He often lives in a haze of whisky.他常常是在威士忌的懵懂醉意中度过的。

367 weaver   

n.织布工；编织者

参考例句：

• She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快，而且布的质量很好。
• The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。

368 caressing   

爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的

参考例句：

• The spring wind is gentle and caressing. 春风和畅。
• He sat silent still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. 他不声不响地坐在那里，不断抚摸着鞑靼，它由于获得超常的爱抚而不淌口水。

369 purging   

清洗； 清除； 净化； 洗炉

参考例句：

• You learned the dry-mouthed, fear-purged, purging ecstasy of battle. 你体会到战斗中那种使人嘴巴发干的，战胜了恐惧并排除其他杂念的狂喜。
• Purging databases, configuring, and making other exceptional requests might fall into this category. 比如清空数据库、配置，以及其他特别的请求等都属于这个类别。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

370 lapses   

n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失

参考例句：

• He sometimes lapses from good behavior. 他有时行为失检。 来自辞典例句
• He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. 他可以宽恕突然发作的歇斯底里，惊慌失措，恶劣的莫名其妙的动作，各种各样的失误。 来自辞典例句

371 prolixity   

n.冗长，罗嗦

参考例句：

• As we know prolixity is a big shortcoming to write articles. 众所周知，罗嗦是写文章的大忌。 来自辞典例句
• Otherwise,it will probably make misunderstanding,and make the version prolixity. 否则，就可能造成理解错误，或使译文冗长罗嗦。 来自互联网

372 repel   

v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥

参考例句：

• A country must have the will to repel any invader.一个国家得有决心击退任何入侵者。
• Particles with similar electric charges repel each other.电荷同性的分子互相排斥。

373 tempted   

v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词）

参考例句：

• I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚，但还是没开口。
• I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。

374 regularity   

n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐

参考例句：

• The idea is to maintain the regularity of the heartbeat.问题就是要维持心跳的规律性。
• He exercised with a regularity that amazed us.他锻炼的规律程度令我们非常惊讶。

375 dread   

vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧

参考例句：

• We all dread to think what will happen if the company closes.我们都不敢去想一旦公司关门我们该怎么办。
• Her heart was relieved of its blankest dread.她极度恐惧的心理消除了。

376 piquancy   

n.辛辣，辣味，痛快

参考例句：

• The tart flavour of the cranberries adds piquancy. 越橘的酸味很可口。
• I`ve got a GOOD start,or at least,a piquancy start. 我有了一个好的开始；如果不算好，也至少是个痛快的开始。 来自互联网

377 rapture   

n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜

参考例句：

• His speech was received with rapture by his supporters.他的演说受到支持者们的热烈欢迎。
• In the midst of his rapture,he was interrupted by his father.他正欢天喜地，被他父亲打断了。

378 disillusioning   

使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭( disillusion的现在分词 )

参考例句：

379 incompetence   

n.不胜任，不称职

参考例句：

• He was dismissed for incompetence. 他因不称职而被解雇。
• She felt she had been made a scapegoat for her boss's incompetence. 她觉得，本是老板无能，但她却成了替罪羊。

380 intensifying   

v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的现在分词 )；增辉

参考例句：

• The allies are intensifying their air campaign. 联军部队正加大他们的空战强度。 来自辞典例句
• The rest of the European powers were in a state of intensifying congestion. 其余的欧洲强国则处于越来越拥挤的状态。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史

381 lark   

n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏

参考例句：

• He thinks it cruel to confine a lark in a cage.他认为把云雀关在笼子里太残忍了。
• She lived in the village with her grandparents as cheerful as a lark.她同祖父母一起住在乡间非常快活。

382 delirium   

n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋

参考例句：

• In her delirium, she had fallen to the floor several times. 她在神志不清的状态下几次摔倒在地上。
• For the next nine months, Job was in constant delirium.接下来的九个月，约伯处于持续精神错乱的状态。

383 volcanic   

adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的

参考例句：

• There have been several volcanic eruptions this year.今年火山爆发了好几次。
• Volcanic activity has created thermal springs and boiling mud pools.火山活动产生了温泉和沸腾的泥浆池。

384 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

385 colossal   

adj.异常的，庞大的

参考例句：

• There has been a colossal waste of public money.一直存在巨大的公款浪费。
• Some of the tall buildings in that city are colossal.那座城市里的一些高层建筑很庞大。

386 pathos   

n.哀婉，悲怆

参考例句：

• The pathos of the situation brought tears to our eyes.情况令人怜悯，看得我们不禁流泪。
• There is abundant pathos in her words.她的话里富有动人哀怜的力量。

387 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

388 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

389 crescendi   

n.（声音）渐强( crescendo的名词复数 )

参考例句：

390 musing   

n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• "At Tellson's banking-house at nine," he said, with a musing face. “九点在台尔森银行大厦见面，”他想道。 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
• She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. 她把那件上衣放到一边，站着沉思了一会儿。

391 epitome   

n.典型，梗概

参考例句：

• He is the epitome of goodness.他是善良的典范。
• This handbook is a neat epitome of everyday hygiene.这本手册概括了日常卫生的要点。

392 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

393 majesty   

n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权

参考例句：

• The king had unspeakable majesty.国王有无法形容的威严。
• Your Majesty must make up your mind quickly!尊贵的陛下，您必须赶快做出决定！

394 mellow   

adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟

参考例句：

• These apples are mellow at this time of year.每年这时节，苹果就熟透了。
• The colours become mellow as the sun went down.当太阳落山时，色彩变得柔和了。

395 savagery   

n.野性

参考例句：

• The police were shocked by the savagery of the attacks.警察对这些惨无人道的袭击感到震惊。
• They threw away their advantage by their savagery to the black population.他们因为野蛮对待黑人居民而丧失了自己的有利地位。

396 apprentices   

学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They were mere apprentices to piracy. 他们干海盗仅仅是嫩角儿。
• He has two good apprentices working with him. 他身边有两个好徒弟。

397 aspiration   

n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出

参考例句：

• Man's aspiration should be as lofty as the stars.人的志气应当象天上的星星那么高。
• Young Addison had a strong aspiration to be an inventor.年幼的爱迪生渴望成为一名发明家。

398 outgrown   

长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过

参考例句：

• She's already outgrown her school uniform. 她已经长得连校服都不能穿了。
• The boy has outgrown his clothes. 这男孩已长得穿不下他的衣服了。

399 durable   

adj.持久的，耐久的

参考例句：

• This raincoat is made of very durable material.这件雨衣是用非常耐用的料子做的。
• They frequently require more major durable purchases.他们经常需要购买耐用消费品。

400 curbed   

v.限制，克制，抑制( curb的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Advertising aimed at children should be curbed. 针对儿童的广告应受到限制。 来自辞典例句
• Inflation needs to be curbed in Russia. 俄罗斯需要抑制通货膨胀。 来自辞典例句

402 Buddha   

n.佛；佛像；佛陀

参考例句：

• Several women knelt down before the statue of Buddha and prayed.几个妇女跪在佛像前祈祷。
• He has kept the figure of Buddha for luck.为了图吉利他一直保存着这尊佛像。

403 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

404 chamber   

n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所

参考例句：

• For many,the dentist's surgery remains a torture chamber.对许多人来说，牙医的治疗室一直是间受刑室。
• The chamber was ablaze with light.会议厅里灯火辉煌。

405 antipathy   

n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物

参考例句：

• I feel an antipathy against their behaviour.我对他们的行为很反感。
• Some people have an antipathy to cats.有的人讨厌猫。

406 immoral   

adj.不道德的，淫荡的，荒淫的，有伤风化的

参考例句：

• She was questioned about his immoral conduct toward her.她被询问过有关他对她的不道德行为的情况。
• It is my belief that nuclear weapons are immoral.我相信使核武器是不邪恶的。

407 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

408 mythical   

adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的

参考例句：

• Undeniably,he is a man of mythical status.不可否认，他是一个神话般的人物。
• Their wealth is merely mythical.他们的财富完全是虚构的。

409 loathed   

v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢

参考例句：

• Baker loathed going to this red-haired young pup for supplies. 面包师傅不喜欢去这个红头发的自负的傻小子那里拿原料。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self! 因此，他厌恶不幸的自我尤胜其它！ 来自英汉文学 - 红字

410 negation   

n.否定；否认

参考例句：

• No reasonable negation can be offered.没有合理的反对意见可以提出。
• The author boxed the compass of negation in his article.该作者在文章中依次探讨了各种反面的意见。

411 adherents   

n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙

参考例句：

• He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

412 discredited   

不足信的，不名誉的

参考例句：

• The reactionary authorities are between two fires and have been discredited. 反动当局弄得进退维谷，不得人心。
• Her honour was discredited in the newspapers. 她的名声被报纸败坏了。

413 detests   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• My brother detests having to get up early. 我兄弟极讨厌早起，又不得不早起。 来自辞典例句
• The LORD detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him. 两样的法码，为耶和华所憎恶。诡诈的天平，也为不善。 来自互联网

414 epithet   

n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语

参考例句：

• In "Alfred the Great","the Great"is an epithet.“阿尔弗雷德大帝”中的“大帝”是个称号。
• It is an epithet that sums up my feelings.这是一个简洁地表达了我思想感情的形容词。

415 pawnbroking   

n.典当业

参考例句：

416 subscribe   

vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助

参考例句：

• I heartily subscribe to that sentiment.我十分赞同那个观点。
• The magazine is trying to get more readers to subscribe.该杂志正大力发展新订户。

417 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

418 dissent   

n./v.不同意，持异议

参考例句：

• It is too late now to make any dissent.现在提出异议太晚了。
• He felt her shoulders gave a wriggle of dissent.他感到她的肩膀因为不同意而动了一下。

419 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

420 withholding   

扣缴税款

参考例句：

• She was accused of withholding information from the police. 她被指控对警方知情不报。
• The judge suspected the witness was withholding information. 法官怀疑见证人在隐瞒情况。

421 appreciation   

n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨

参考例句：

• I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to you all.我想对你们所有人表达我的感激和谢意。
• I'll be sending them a donation in appreciation of their help.我将送给他们一笔捐款以感谢他们的帮助。

422 mariners   

海员，水手（mariner的复数形式）

参考例句：

• Mariners were also able to fix their latitude by using an instrument called astrolabe. 海员们还可使用星盘这种仪器确定纬度。
• The ancient mariners traversed the sea. 古代的海员漂洋过海。

423 seamen   

n.海员

参考例句：

• Experienced seamen will advise you about sailing in this weather. 有经验的海员会告诉你在这种天气下的航行情况。
• In the storm, many seamen wished they were on shore. 在暴风雨中，许多海员想，要是他们在陆地上就好了。

424 stewards   

（轮船、飞机等的）乘务员( steward的名词复数 )； （俱乐部、旅馆、工会等的）管理员； （大型活动的）组织者； （私人家中的）管家

参考例句：

• The stewards all wore armbands. 乘务员都戴了臂章。
• The stewards will inspect the course to see if racing is possible. 那些干事将检视赛马场看是否适宜比赛。

425 locker   

n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人

参考例句：

• At the swimming pool I put my clothes in a locker.在游泳池我把衣服锁在小柜里。
• He moved into the locker room and began to slip out of his scrub suit.他走进更衣室把手术服脱下来。

426 ascend   

vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上

参考例句：

• We watched the airplane ascend higher and higher.我们看着飞机逐渐升高。
• We ascend in the order of time and of development.我们按时间和发展顺序向上溯。

427 corrupted   

（使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏

参考例句：

• The body corrupted quite quickly. 尸体很快腐烂了。
• The text was corrupted by careless copyists. 原文因抄写员粗心而有讹误。

428 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

429 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

430 sketches   

n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概

参考例句：

• The artist is making sketches for his next painting. 画家正为他的下一幅作品画素描。
• You have to admit that these sketches are true to life. 你得承认这些素描很逼真。 来自《简明英汉词典》

431 contrition   

n.悔罪，痛悔

参考例句：

• The next day he'd be full of contrition,weeping and begging forgiveness.第二天，他就会懊悔不已，哭着乞求原谅。
• She forgave him because his contrition was real.她原谅了他是由于他的懊悔是真心的。

432 purged   

清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响

参考例句：

• He purged his enemies from the Party. 他把他的敌人从党内清洗出去。
• The iron in the chemical compound must be purged. 化学混合物中的铁必须清除。

433 groan   

vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音

参考例句：

• The wounded man uttered a groan.那个受伤的人发出呻吟。
• The people groan under the burden of taxes.人民在重税下痛苦呻吟。

434 oarless   

adj.无桨的

参考例句：

435 enjoyment   

n.乐趣；享有；享用

参考例句：

• Your company adds to the enjoyment of our visit. 有您的陪同，我们这次访问更加愉快了。
• After each joke the old man cackled his enjoyment.每逢讲完一个笑话，这老人就呵呵笑着表示他的高兴。

436 penetrated   

adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The knife had penetrated his chest. 刀子刺入了他的胸膛。
• They penetrated into territory where no man had ever gone before. 他们已进入先前没人去过的地区。

437 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

438 simplicities   

n.简单，朴素，率直( simplicity的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Her life always run pretty smoothly through the simplicities of joy and sorrow. 她的生活虽然极其单调，有喜有悲，但还算顺利。 来自互联网

439 inexplicably   

adv.无法说明地，难以理解地，令人难以理解的是

参考例句：

• Inexplicably, Mary said she loved John. 真是不可思议，玛丽说她爱约翰。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Inexplicably, she never turned up. 令人不解的是，她从未露面。 来自辞典例句

440 gliding   

v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的

参考例句：

• Swans went gliding past. 天鹅滑行而过。
• The weather forecast has put a question mark against the chance of doing any gliding tomorrow. 天气预报对明天是否能举行滑翔表示怀疑。

441 chromaticism   

n.半音音阶的使用，富有半音音阶的音乐作风

参考例句：

442 amplification   

n.扩大，发挥

参考例句：

• The voice of despair may be weak and need amplification.绝望的呼声可能很微弱，需要扩大。
• Some of them require further amplification.其中有些内容需进一步详细阐明。

443 derive   

v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• We shall derive much benefit from reading good novels.我们将从优秀小说中获得很大好处。

444 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

445 adoption   

n.采用，采纳，通过；收养

参考例句：

• An adoption agency had sent the boys to two different families.一个收养机构把他们送给两个不同的家庭。
• The adoption of this policy would relieve them of a tremendous burden.采取这一政策会给他们解除一个巨大的负担。

446 ascent   

n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高

参考例句：

• His rapid ascent in the social scale was surprising.他的社会地位提高之迅速令人吃惊。
• Burke pushed the button and the elevator began its slow ascent.伯克按动电钮，电梯开始缓慢上升。

447 allusive   

adj.暗示的；引用典故的

参考例句：

• Allusive speech is characterized by allusions.含沙射影的演讲以指桑骂槐为特征。
• Her allusive style is difficult to follow.她引经据典的风格晦涩难懂。

448 fetters   

n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• They were at last freed from the fetters of ignorance. 他们终于从愚昧无知的束缚中解脱出来。
• They will run wild freed from the fetters of control. 他们一旦摆脱了束缚，就会变得无法无天。 来自《简明英汉词典》

449 hampered   

妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions. 恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
• So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. 圣彼德堡镇的那些受折磨、受拘束的体面孩子们个个都是这么想的。

450 joints   

接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语）

参考例句：

• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on gas mains. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在煤气的总管道上了。
• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on steam pipes. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在蒸气管道上了。

451 pivots   

n.枢( pivot的名词复数 )；最重要的人（或事物）；中心；核心v.（似）在枢轴上转动( pivot的第三人称单数 )；把…放在枢轴上；以…为核心，围绕（主旨）展开

参考例句：

• The success of the project pivots on investment from abroad. 这个工程的成功主要依靠外来投资。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The novel pivots around a long conversation between two characters. 这部小说是以两个人物的对话为中心展开的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

452 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

453 pretext   

n.借口，托词

参考例句：

• He used his headache as a pretext for not going to school.他借口头疼而不去上学。
• He didn't attend that meeting under the pretext of sickness.他以生病为借口，没参加那个会议。

454 staple   

n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类

参考例句：

• Tea is the staple crop here.本地产品以茶叶为大宗。
• Potatoes are the staple of their diet.土豆是他们的主要食品。

455 recoil   

vi.退却，退缩，畏缩

参考例句：

• Most people would recoil at the sight of the snake.许多人看见蛇都会向后退缩。
• Revenge may recoil upon the person who takes it.报复者常会受到报应。

456 glorified   

美其名的，变荣耀的

参考例句：

• The restaurant was no more than a glorified fast-food cafe. 这地方美其名曰餐馆，其实只不过是个快餐店而已。
• The author glorified the life of the peasants. 那个作者赞美了农民的生活。

457 mule   

n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人

参考例句：

• A mule is a cross between a mare and a donkey.骡子是母马和公驴的杂交后代。
• He is an old mule.他是个老顽固。

458 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

459 posterity   

n.后裔，子孙，后代

参考例句：

• Few of his works will go down to posterity.他的作品没有几件会流传到后世。
• The names of those who died are recorded for posterity on a tablet at the back of the church.死者姓名都刻在教堂后面的一块石匾上以便后人铭记。

460 indirectly   

adv.间接地，不直接了当地

参考例句：

• I heard the news indirectly.这消息我是间接听来的。
• They were approached indirectly through an intermediary.通过一位中间人，他们进行了间接接触。

461 stimuli   

n.刺激（物）

参考例句：

• It is necessary to curtail or alter normally coexisting stimuli.必需消除或改变正常时并存的刺激。
• My sweat glands also respond to emotional stimuli.我的汗腺对情绪刺激也能产生反应。

462 delightfully   

大喜，欣然

参考例句：

• The room is delightfully appointed. 这房子的设备令人舒适愉快。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The evening is delightfully cool. 晚间凉爽宜人。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

463 puny   

adj.微不足道的，弱小的

参考例句：

• The resources at the central banks' disposal are simply too puny.中央银行掌握的资金实在太少了。
• Antonio was a puny lad,and not strong enough to work.安东尼奥是个瘦小的小家伙，身体还不壮，还不能干活。

464 temperate   

adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的

参考例句：

• Asia extends across the frigid,temperate and tropical zones.亚洲地跨寒、温、热三带。
• Great Britain has a temperate climate.英国气候温和。

465 eruption   

n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作

参考例句：

• The temple was destroyed in the violent eruption of 1470 BC.庙宇在公元前1470年猛烈的火山爆发中摧毁了。
• The eruption of a volcano is spontaneous.火山的爆发是自发的。

466 upheaval   

n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱

参考例句：

• It was faced with the greatest social upheaval since World War Ⅱ.它面临第二次世界大战以来最大的社会动乱。
• The country has been thrown into an upheaval.这个国家已经陷入动乱之中。

467 presage   

n.预感，不祥感；v.预示

参考例句：

• The change could presage serious problems.这变化可能预示着有严重问题将要发生。
• The lowering clouds presage a storm.暗云低沉是暴风雨的前兆。

468 titanic   

adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的

参考例句：

• We have been making titanic effort to achieve our purpose.我们一直在作极大的努力，以达到我们的目的。
• The island was created by titanic powers and they are still at work today.台湾岛是由一个至今仍然在运作的巨大力量塑造出来的。

469 glaciers   

冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Glaciers gouged out valleys from the hills. 冰川把丘陵地带冲出一条条山谷。
• It has ice and snow glaciers, rainforests and beautiful mountains. 既有冰川，又有雨林和秀丽的山峰。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）

470 precipices   

n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Sheer above us rose the Spy-glass, here dotted with single pines, there black with precipices. 我们的头顶上方耸立着陡峭的望远镜山，上面长着几棵孤零零的松树，其他地方则是黑黝黝的悬崖绝壁。 来自英汉文学 - 金银岛
• Few people can climb up to the sheer precipices and overhanging rocks. 悬崖绝壁很少有人能登上去。 来自互联网

471 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

472 genre   

n.(文学、艺术等的)类型，体裁，风格

参考例句：

• My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
• Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看， 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。

473 crutch   

n.T字形拐杖；支持，依靠，精神支柱

参考例句：

• Her religion was a crutch to her when John died.约翰死后，她在精神上依靠宗教信仰支撑住自己。
• He uses his wife as a kind of crutch because of his lack of confidence.他缺乏自信心，总把妻子当作主心骨。