To the people who do not write it must seem odd that men and women should be willing to sacrifice their lives in the endeavour to find new arrangements and combinations of words with which to express old thoughts and older emotions, yet that is not an unfair statement of the task of the literary artist. Words — symbols that represent the noises that human beings make with their tongues and lips and teeth — lie within our grasp like the fragments of a jig-saw puzzle, and we fit them into faulty pictures until our hands grow weary and our eyes can no longer pretend to see the truth. In order to illustrate1 an infinitesimal fraction of our lives by means of this preposterous2 game we are willing to sacrifice all the rest. While ordinary efficient men and women are enjoying the promise of the morning, the fulfilment of the afternoon, the tranquillity3 of evening, we are still trying to discover a fitting epithet4 for the dew of dawn. For us Spring paves the woods with beautiful words rather than flowers, and when we look into the eyes of our mistress we see nothing but adjectives. Love is an occasion for songs; Death but the overburdened father of all our saddest phrases. We are of those who are born crying into the world because they cannot speak, and we end, like Stevenson, by looking forward to our death because we have written a good epitaph. Sometimes in the course of our frequent descents from heaven to the waste-paper basket we feel that we lose too much to accomplish so little. Does a handful of love-songs really outweigh5 the smile of a pretty girl, or a hardly-written romance compensate6 the author for months of lost adventure? We have only one life to live, and we spend the greater part of it writing the history of dead hours. Our lives lack balance because we find it hard to discover a mean between the triolet we wrote last I night and the big book we are going to start tomorrow, and also because living only with our heads we tend to become top-heavy. We justify7 our present discomfort8 with the promise of a bright future of flowers and sunshine and gladdest life, though we know that in the garden of art there are many chrysalides and few butterflies. Few of us are fortunate enough to accomplish anything that was in the least worth doing, so we fall back on the arid9 philosophy that it is effort alone that counts.
Luckily — or suicide would be the rule rather than the exception for artists — the long process of disillusionment is broken by hours when even the most self-critical feel nobly and indubitably great; and this is the only reward that most artists ever have for their labours, if we set a higher price on art than money. On the whole, I am inclined to think that the artist is fully10 rewarded, for the common man can have no conception of the Joy that is to be found in belonging, though but momentarily and illusively, to the aristocracy of genius. To find the just word for all our emotions, to realise that our most trivial thought is illimitably creative, to feel that it is our lot to keep life’s gladdest promises, to see the great souls of men and women, steadfast11 in existence as stars in a windless pool — these, indeed, are no ordinary pleasures. Moreover, these hours of our illusory greatness endow us in their passing with a melancholy12 that is not tainted13 with bitteress. We have nothing to regret; we are in truth the richer for our rare adventure. We have been permitted to explore the ultimate possibilities of our nature, and if we might not keep this newly-discovered territory, at least we did not return from our travels with empty hands. Something of the glamour14 lingers, something perhaps of the wisdom, and it is with a heightened passion, a fiercer enthusiasm, that we set ourselves once more to our life-long task of chalking pink salmon15 and pinker sunsets on the pavements of the world.
I once met an Englishman in the forest that starts outside Brussels and stretches for a long day’s journey across the hills. We found a little café under the trees, and sat in the sun talking about modern English literature all the afternoon. In this way we discovered that we had a common standpoint from which we judged works of art, though our judgments16 differed pleasantly and provided us with materials for agreeable discussion. By the time we had divided three bottles of Gueze Lambic, the noble beer of Belgium, we had already sketched17 out a scheme for the ideal literary newspaper. In other words, we had achieved friendship.
When the afternoon grew suddenly cold, the Englishman led me off to tea at his house, which was half-way up the hill out of Woluwe. It was one of those modern country cottages that Belgian architects steal openly and without shame from their English confreres. We were met at the garden gate by his daughter, a dark-haired girl of fifteen or sixteen, so unreasonably18 beautiful that she made a disillusioned19 scribbler feel like a sad line out of one of the saddest poems of Francis Thompson. In my mind I christened her Monica, because I did not like her real name. The house, with its old furniture, its library, where the choice of books was clearly dictated20 by individual prejudices and affections, and its unambitious parade of domestic happiness, heightened my melancholy. While tea was being prepared Monica showed me the garden. Only a few daffodils and crocuses were in bloom, but she led me to the rose garden, and told me that in the summer she could pick a great basket of roses every day. I pictured Monica to myself, gathering21 her roses on a breathless summer afternoon, and returned to the house feeling like a battened version of the Reverend Laurence Sterne. I knew that I had gathered all my roses, and I thought regretfully of the chill loneliness of the world that lay beyond the limits of this paradise.
This mood lingered with me during tea, and it was not till that meal was over that the miracle happened. I do not know whether it was the Englishman or his wife that wrought22 the magic: or perhaps it was Monica, nibbling23 “speculations” with her sharp white teeth; but at all events I was led with delicate diplomacy24 to talk about myself, and I presently realised that I was performing the grateful labour really well. My words were warmed into life by an eloquence25 that is not ordinarily mine, my adjectives were neither commonplace nor far-fetched, my adverbs fell into their sockets26 with a sob27 of joy. I spoke28 of myself with a noble sympathy, a compassion29 so intense that it seemed divinely altruistic30. And gradually, as the spirit of creation woke in my blood, I revealed, trembling between a natural sensitiveness and a generous abandonment of restraint, the inner life of a man of genius.
I passed lightly by his misunderstood childhood to concentrate my sympathies on the literary struggles of his youth. I spoke of the ignoble31 environment, the material hardships, the masterpieces written at night to be condemned32 in the morning, the songs of his heart that were too great for his immature33 voice to sing; and all the while I bade them watch the fire of his faith burning with a constant and quenchless34 flame. I traced the development of his powers, and instanced some of his poems, my poems, which I recited so well that they sounded to me, and I swear to them also, like staves from an angelic hymn-book. I asked their compassion for the man who, having such things in his heart, was compelled to waste his hours in sordid35 journalistic labours.
So by degrees I brought them to the present time, when, fatigued36 by a world that would not acknowledge the truth of his message, the man of genius was preparing to retire from life, in order to devote himself to the composition of five or six masterpieces. I described these masterpieces to them in outline, with a suggestive detail dashed in here and there to show how they would be finished. Nothing is easier than to describe unwritten literary masterpieces in outline; but by that time I had thoroughly37 convinced my audience and myself, and we looked upon these things as completed books. The atmosphere was charged with the spirit of high endeavour, of wonderful accomplishment38. I heard the Englishman breathing deeply, and through the dusk I was aware of the eyes of Monica, the wide, vague eyes of a young girl in which youth can find exactly what it pleases.
It is a good thing to be great once or twice in our lives, and that night I was wise enough to depart before the inevitable39 anti-climax. At the gate the Englishman pressed me warmly by the hand and begged me to honour his house with my presence again. His wife echoed the wish, and Monica looked at me with those vacant eyes, that but a few years ago I would have charged with the wine of my song. As I stood in the tram on my way back to Brussels I felt like a man recovering from a terrible debauch40, and I knew that the brief hour of my pride was over, to return, perhaps, no more. Work was impossible to a man who had expressed considerably41 more than he had to express, so I went into a café where there was a string band to play sentimental42 music over the corpse43 of my genius. Chance took me to a table presided over by a waiter I singularly detested44, and the last embers of my greatness enabled me to order my drink in a voice so passionate45 that he looked at me aghast and fled. By the time he returned with my hock the tale was finished, and I tried to buy his toleration with an enormous pourboire.
No; I will return to that house on the hill above Woluwe no more, not even to see Monica standing46 on tiptoe to pick her roses. For I have left a giant’s robe hanging on a peg47 in the hall, and I would not have those amiable48 people see how utterly49 incapable50 I am of filling it under normal conditions. I feel, besides, a kind of sentimental tenderness for this illusion fated to have so short a life. I am no Herod to slaughter51 babies, and it pleases me to think that it lingers yet in that delightful52 house with the books and the old furniture and Monica, even though I myself shall probably never see it again, even though the Englishman watches the publishers’ announcements for the masterpieces that will never appear.
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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outweigh
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| vt.比...更重，...更重要 | |
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compensate
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| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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glamour
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| n.魔力，魅力；vt.迷住 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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nibbling
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的现在分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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altruistic
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| adj.无私的，为他人着想的 | |
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ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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immature
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| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
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quenchless
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| 不可熄灭的 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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fatigued
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| adj. 疲乏的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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debauch
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| v.使堕落，放纵 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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peg
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| n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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slaughter
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| n.屠杀，屠宰；vt.屠杀，宰杀 | |
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52
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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