The value of the story is rather documentary than literary. It contains several graphic1 scenes descriptive of the great Irish famine. Trollope observed carefully, and on the whole impartially2, though his powers of discrimination were not quite fine enough to make him an ideal annalist.
Still, such as they were, he has used them here with no inconsiderable effect. His desire to be fair has led him to lay stress in an inverse3 ratio to his prepossessions, and his Priest is a better man than his parson.
The best, indeed the only piece of real characterization in the book is the delineation4 of Abe Mollett. This unscrupulous blackmailer5 is put before us with real art, with something of the loving preoccupation of the hunter for his quarry6. Trollope loved a rogue7, and in his long portrait gallery there are several really charming ones. He did not, indeed, perceive the aesthetic8 value of sin—he did not perceive the esthetic9 value of anything,—and his analysis of human nature was not profound enough to reach the conception of sin, crime being to him the nadir10 of downward possibility—but he had a professional, a sort of half Scotland Yard, half master of hounds interest in a criminal. "See," he would muse11, "how cunningly the creature works, now back to his earth, anon stealing an unsuspected run across country, the clever rascal12;" and his ethical13 disapproval14 ever, as usual, with English critics of life, in the foreground, clearly enhanced a primitive15 predatory instinct not obscurely akin16, a cynic might say, to those dark impulses he holds up to our reprobation17. This self-realization in his fiction is one of Trollope's principal charms. Never was there a more subjective18 writer. Unlike Flaubert, who laid down the canon that the author should exist in his work as God in creation, to be, here or there, dimly divined but never recognized, though everywhere latent, Trollope was never weary of writing himself large in every man, woman, or child he described.
The illusion of objectivity which he so successfully achieves is due to the fact that his mind was so perfectly19 contented20 with its hereditary21 and circumstantial conditions, was itself so perfectly the mental equivalent of those conditions. Thus the perfection of his egotism, tight as a drum, saved him. Had it been a little less complete, he would have faltered22 and bungled23; as it was, he had the naive24 certainty of a child, to whose innocent apprehension25 the world and self are one, and who therefore cannot err26.
ALGAR THOROLD.
点击收听单词发音
1 graphic | |
adj.生动的,形象的,绘画的,文字的,图表的 | |
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2 impartially | |
adv.公平地,无私地 | |
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3 inverse | |
adj.相反的,倒转的,反转的;n.相反之物;v.倒转 | |
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4 delineation | |
n.记述;描写 | |
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5 blackmailer | |
敲诈者,勒索者 | |
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6 quarry | |
n.采石场;v.采石;费力地找 | |
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7 rogue | |
n.流氓;v.游手好闲 | |
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8 aesthetic | |
adj.美学的,审美的,有美感 | |
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9 esthetic | |
adj.美学的,审美的;悦目的,雅致的 | |
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10 nadir | |
n.最低点,无底 | |
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11 muse | |
n.缪斯(希腊神话中的女神),创作灵感 | |
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12 rascal | |
n.流氓;不诚实的人 | |
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13 ethical | |
adj.伦理的,道德的,合乎道德的 | |
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14 disapproval | |
n.反对,不赞成 | |
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15 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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16 akin | |
adj.同族的,类似的 | |
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17 reprobation | |
n.斥责 | |
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18 subjective | |
a.主观(上)的,个人的 | |
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19 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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20 contented | |
adj.满意的,安心的,知足的 | |
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21 hereditary | |
adj.遗传的,遗传性的,可继承的,世袭的 | |
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22 faltered | |
(嗓音)颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 ); 支吾其词; 蹒跚; 摇晃 | |
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23 bungled | |
v.搞糟,完不成( bungle的过去式和过去分词 );笨手笨脚地做;失败;完不成 | |
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24 naive | |
adj.幼稚的,轻信的;天真的 | |
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25 apprehension | |
n.理解,领悟;逮捕,拘捕;忧虑 | |
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26 err | |
vi.犯错误,出差错 | |
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