1
Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile1 beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and I have found myself with the teeming2 interests of the life I have abandoned still buzzing like a swarm3 of homeless bees in my head. My mind has been full of confused protests and justifications4. In any case I should have found difficulties enough in expressing the complex thing I have to tell, but it has added greatly to my trouble that I have a great analogue5, that a certain Niccolo Machiavelli chanced to fall out of politics at very much the age I have reached, and wrote a book to engage the restlessness of his mind, very much as I have wanted to do. He wrote about the relation of the great constructive6 spirit in politics to individual character and weaknesses, and so far his achievement lies like a deep rut in the road of my intention. It has taken me far astray. It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long drives into the mountains behind us and a memorable7 sail to Genoa across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince." I sat up late last night with the jumbled8 accumulation; and at last made a little fire of olive twigs9 and burnt it all, sheet by sheet--to begin again clear this morning.
But incidentally I have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting those scandalous letters of his to Vettori, and it seems to me, now that I have released myself altogether from his literary precedent10, that he still has his use for me. In spite of his vast prestige I claim kindred with him and set his name upon my title-page, in partial intimation of the matter of my story. He takes me with sympathy not only by reason of the dream he pursued and the humanity of his politics, but by the mixture of his nature. His vices11 come in, essential to my issue. He is dead and gone, all his immediate12 correlations13 to party and faction14 have faded to insignificance15, leaving only on the one hand his broad method and conceptions, and upon the other his intimate living personality, exposed down to its salacious corners as the soul of no contemporary can ever be exposed. Of those double strands16 it is I have to write, of the subtle protesting perplexing play of instinctive17 passion and desire against too abstract a dream of statesmanship. But things that seemed to lie very far apart in Machiavelli's time have come near to one another; it is no simple story of white passions struggling against the red that I have to tell.
The state-making dream is a very old dream indeed in the world's history. It plays too small a part in novels. Plato and Confucius are but the highest of a great host of minds that have had a kindred aspiration18, have dreamt of a world of men better ordered, happier, finer, securer. They imagined cities grown more powerful and peoples made rich and multitudinous by their efforts, they thought in terms of harbours and shining navies, great roads engineered marvellously, jungles cleared and deserts conquered, the ending of muddle19 and diseases and dirt and misery20; the ending of confusions that waste human possibilities; they thought of these things with passion and desire as other men think of the soft lines and tender beauty of women. Thousands of men there are to-day almost mastered by this white passion of statecraft, and in nearly every one who reads and thinks you could find, I suspect, some sort of answering response. But in every one it presents itself extraordinarily21 entangled22 and mixed up with other, more intimate things.
It was so with Machiavelli. I picture him at San Casciano as he lived in retirement23 upon his property after the fall of the Republic, perhaps with a twinge of the torture that punished his conspiracy24 still lurking25 in his limbs. Such twinges could not stop his dreaming. Then it was "The Prince" was written. All day he went about his personal affairs, saw homely26 neighbours, dealt with his family, gave vent27 to everyday passions. He would sit in the shop of Donato del Corno gossiping curiously28 among vicious company, or pace the lonely woods of his estate, book in hand, full of bitter meditations29. In the evening he returned home and went to his study. At the entrance, he says, he pulled off his peasant clothes covered with the dust and dirt of that immediate life, washed himself, put on his "noble court dress," closed the door on the world of toiling31 and getting, private loving, private hating and personal regrets, sat down with a sigh of contentment to those wider dreams.
I like to think of him so, with brown books before him lit by the light of candles in silver candlesticks, or heading some new chapter of "The Prince," with a grey quill32 in his clean fine hand.
So writing, he becomes a symbol for me, and the less none because of his animal humour, his queer indecent side, and because of such lapses33 into utter meanness as that which made him sound the note of the begging-letter writer even in his "Dedication34," reminding His Magnificence very urgently, as if it were the gist35 of his matter, of the continued malignity36 of fortune in his affairs. These flaws complete him. They are my reason for preferring him as a symbol to Plato, of whose indelicate side we know nothing, and whose correspondence with Dionysius of Syracuse has perished; or to Confucius who travelled China in search of a Prince he might instruct, with lapses and indignities37 now lost in the mists of ages. They have achieved the apotheosis38 of individual forgetfulness, and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, that bust39 of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled40 with his tradition. They have passed into the world of the ideal, and every humbug42 takes his freedoms with their names. But Machiavelli, more recent and less popular, is still all human and earthly, a fallen brother--and at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly dreaming writer at the desk.
That vision of the strengthened and perfected state is protagonist43 in my story. But as I re-read "The Prince" and thought out the manner of my now abandoned project, I came to perceive how that stir and whirl of human thought one calls by way of embodiment the French Revolution, has altered absolutely the approach to such a question. Machiavelli, like Plato and Pythagoras and Confucius two hundred odd decades before him, saw only one method by which a thinking man, himself not powerful, might do the work of state building, and that was by seizing the imagination of a Prince. Directly these men turned their thoughts towards realisation, their attitudes became--what shall I call it?--secretarial. Machiavelli, it is true, had some little doubts about the particular Prince he wanted, whether it was Caesar Borgia of Giuliano or Lorenzo, but a Prince it had to be. Before I saw clearly the differences of our own time I searched my mind for the modern equivalent of a Prince. At various times I redrafted a parallel dedication to the Prince of Wales, to the Emperor William, to Mr. Evesham, to a certain newspaper proprietor44 who was once my schoolfellow at City Merchants', to Mr. J. D. Rockefeller--all of them men in their several ways and circumstances and possibilities, princely. Yet in every case my pen bent45 of its own accord towards irony46 because--because, although at first I did not realise it, I myself am just as free to be a prince. The appeal was unfair. The old sort of Prince, the old little principality has vanished from the world. The commonweal is one man's absolute estate and responsibility no more. In Machiavelli's time it was indeed to an extreme degree one man's affair. But the days of the Prince who planned and directed and was the source and centre of all power are ended. We are in a condition of affairs infinitely47 more complex, in which every prince and statesman is something of a servant and every intelligent human being something of a Prince. No magnificent pensive48 Lorenzos remain any more in this world for secretarial hopes.
In a sense it is wonderful how power has vanished, in a sense wonderful how it has increased. I sit here, an unarmed discredited49 man, at a small writing-table in a little defenceless dwelling50 among the vines, and no human being can stop my pen except by the deliberate self-immolation of murdering me, nor destroy its fruits except by theft and crime. No King, no council, can seize and torture me; no Church, no nation silence me. Such powers of ruthless and complete suppression have vanished. But that is not because power has diminished, but because it has increased and become multitudinous, because it has dispersed51 itself and specialised. It is no longer a negative power we have, but positive; we cannot prevent, but we can do. This age, far beyond all previous ages, is full of powerful men, men who might, if they had the will for it, achieve stupendous things.
The things that might be done to-day! The things indeed that are being done! It is the latter that give one so vast a sense of the former. When I think of the progress of physical and mechanical science, of medicine and sanitation52 during the last century, when I measure the increase in general education and average efficiency, the power now available for human service, the merely physical increment53, and compare it with anything that has ever been at man's disposal before, and when I think of what a little straggling, incidental, undisciplined and uncoordinated minority of inventors, experimenters, educators, writers and organisers has achieved this development of human possibilities, achieved it in spite of the disregard and aimlessness of the huge majority, and the passionate54 resistance of the active dull, my imagination grows giddy with dazzling intimations of the human splendours the justly organised state may yet attain55. I glimpse for a bewildering instant the heights that may be scaled, the splendid enterprises made possible.
But the appeal goes out now in other forms, in a book that catches at thousands of readers for the eye of a Prince diffused56. It is the old appeal indeed for the unification of human effort, the ending of confusions, but instead of the Machiavellian57 deference58 to a flattered lord, a man cries out of his heart to the unseen fellowship about him. The last written dedication of all those I burnt last night, was to no single man, but to the socially constructive passion--in any man....
There is, moreover, a second great difference in kind between my world and Machiavelli's. We are discovering women. It is as if they had come across a vast interval59 since his time, into the very chamber60 of the statesman.
2
In Machiavelli's outlook the interest of womanhood was in a region of life almost infinitely remote from his statecraft. They were the vehicle of children, but only Imperial Rome and the new world of to-day have ever had an inkling of the significance that might give them in the state. They did their work, he thought, as the ploughed earth bears its crops. Apart from their function of fertility they gave a humorous twist to life, stimulated61 worthy62 men to toil30, and wasted the hours of Princes. He left the thought of women outside with his other dusty things when he went into his study to write, dismissed them from his mind. But our modern world is burthened with its sense of the immense, now half articulate, significance of women. They stand now, as it were, close beside the silver candlesticks, speaking as Machiavelli writes, until he stays his pen and turns to discuss his writing with them.
It is this gradual discovery of sex as a thing collectively portentous63 that I have to mingle41 with my statecraft if my picture is to be true which has turned me at length from a treatise64 to the telling of my own story. In my life I have paralleled very closely the slow realisations that are going on in the world about me. I began life ignoring women, they came to me at first perplexing and dishonouring65; only very slowly and very late in my life and after misadventure, did I gauge66 the power and beauty of the love of man and woman and learnt how it must needs frame a justifiable67 vision of the ordered world. Love has brought me to disaster, because my career had been planned regardless of its possibility and value. But Machiavelli, it seems to me, when he went into his study, left not only the earth of life outside but its unsuspected soul.
3
Like Machiavelli at San Casciano, if I may take this analogy one step further, I too am an exile. Office and leading are closed to me. The political career that promised so much for me is shattered and ended for ever.
I look out from this vine-wreathed veranda68 under the branches of a stone pine; I see wide and far across a purple valley whose sides are terraced and set with houses of pine and ivory, the Gulf69 of Liguria gleaming sapphire70 blue, and cloud-like baseless mountains hanging in the sky, and I think of lank71 and coaly steamships72 heaving on the grey rollers of the English Channel and darkling streets wet with rain, I recall as if I were back there the busy exit from Charing73 Cross, the cross and the money-changers' offices, the splendid grime of giant London and the crowds going perpetually to and fro, the lights by night and the urgency and eventfulness of that great rain-swept heart of the modern world.
It is difficult to think we have left that--for many years if not for ever. In thought I walk once more in Palace Yard and hear the clink and clatter74 of hansoms and the quick quiet whirr of motors; I go in vivid recent memories through the stir in the lobbies, I sit again at eventful dinners in those old dining-rooms like cellars below the House--dinners that ended with shrill75 division bells, I think of huge clubs swarming76 and excited by the bulletins of that electoral battle that was for me the opening opportunity. I see the stencilled77 names and numbers go up on the green baize, constituency after constituency, amidst murmurs78 or loud shouting....
It is over for me now and vanished. That opportunity will come no more. Very probably you have heard already some crude inaccurate79 version of our story and why I did not take office, and have formed your partial judgement on me. And so it is I sit now at my stone table, half out of life already, in a warm, large, shadowy leisure, splashed with sunlight and hung with vine tendrils, with paper before me to distil80 such wisdom as I can, as Machiavelli in his exile sought to do, from the things I have learnt and felt during the career that has ended now in my divorce.
I climbed high and fast from small beginnings. I had the mind of my party. I do not know where I might not have ended, but for this red blaze that came out of my unguarded nature and closed my career for ever.
收听单词发音 |
1
futile
|
|
| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
teeming
|
|
| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
swarm
|
|
| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
justifications
|
|
| 正当的理由，辩解的理由( justification的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
analogue
|
|
| n.类似物；同源语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
constructive
|
|
| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
memorable
|
|
| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
jumbled
|
|
| adj.混乱的；杂乱的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
twigs
|
|
| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
precedent
|
|
| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
vices
|
|
| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
immediate
|
|
| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
correlations
|
|
| 相互的关系( correlation的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
faction
|
|
| n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
insignificance
|
|
| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
strands
|
|
| n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
instinctive
|
|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
aspiration
|
|
| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
muddle
|
|
| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
extraordinarily
|
|
| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
entangled
|
|
| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
retirement
|
|
| n.退休，退职 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
conspiracy
|
|
| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
lurking
|
|
| 潜在 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
homely
|
|
| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
vent
|
|
| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
curiously
|
|
| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
meditations
|
|
| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
toil
|
|
| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
toiling
|
|
| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
quill
|
|
| n.羽毛管；v.给（织物或衣服）作皱褶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
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： |
|
|
|
|
34
dedication
|
|
| n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
gist
|
|
| n.要旨；梗概 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
malignity
|
|
| n.极度的恶意，恶毒；（病的）恶性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
indignities
|
|
| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
apotheosis
|
|
| n.神圣之理想；美化；颂扬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
bust
|
|
| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
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： |
|
|
|
|
41
mingle
|
|
| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
humbug
|
|
| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
protagonist
|
|
| n.(思想观念的)倡导者；主角，主人公 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
proprietor
|
|
| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
bent
|
|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
irony
|
|
| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
infinitely
|
|
| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
pensive
|
|
| a.沉思的,哀思的,忧沉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
discredited
|
|
| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
dwelling
|
|
| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
dispersed
|
|
| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
sanitation
|
|
| n.公共卫生，环境卫生，卫生设备 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
increment
|
|
| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
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： |
|
|
|
|
55
attain
|
|
| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
diffused
|
|
| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
machiavellian
|
|
| adj.权谋的，狡诈的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
deference
|
|
| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
interval
|
|
| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
chamber
|
|
| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
stimulated
|
|
| a.刺激的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
worthy
|
|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
portentous
|
|
| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
treatise
|
|
| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
dishonouring
|
|
| 使（人、家族等）丧失名誉（dishonour的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
66
gauge
|
|
| v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
justifiable
|
|
| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
veranda
|
|
| n.走廊；阳台 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
gulf
|
|
| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
sapphire
|
|
| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
lank
|
|
| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
72
steamships
|
|
| n.汽船，大轮船( steamship的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
73
charing
|
|
| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
74
clatter
|
|
| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
75
shrill
|
|
| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
76
swarming
|
|
| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
77
stencilled
|
|
| v.用模板印（文字或图案）( stencil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
78
murmurs
|
|
| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
79
inaccurate
|
|
| adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
80
distil
|
|
| vt.蒸馏；提取…的精华，精选出 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |