Book iv. The Quest of the Fair Medusa

George took Randy’s advice and moved. He did not know where to go. All he wanted was to get away as far as possible from Park Avenue, from the aesthetic¹ jungles of the lion hunters, from the half-life of wealth and fashion that had grown like a parasite² upon the sound body of America. He went to live in Brooklyn.

He had made a little money from his book, so now he paid his debts and quit the job he held as a teacher at the School for Utility Cultures. From this time on, he earned his precarious³ living solely⁴ by what he wrote.

For four years he lived in Brooklyn, and four years in Brooklyn are a geologic⁵ age — a single stratum⁶ of grey time. They were years of poverty, of desperation, of loneliness unutterable. All about him were the poor, the outcast, the neglected and forsaken⁷ people of America, and he was one of them. But life is strong, and year after year it went on round him in all its manifold complexity⁸, rich with its unnoticed and unrecorded little happenings. He saw it all, be took it all in hungrily as part of his experience, he recorded much of it, and in the end he squeezed it dry as he tried to extract its hidden meanings.

And what was he like inside while these grey years were slipping by? What was he up to, what was he doing, what did he want?

That’s rather hard to tell, because he wanted so many things, but the thing he wanted most was Fame. Those were the years of his concentrated quest of that fair Medusa. He had had his little taste of glory, and it was bitter in his mouth. He thought the reason was that he had not been good enough — and he had not been good enough. Therefore he thought that what be had had was not Fame at all, but only a moment’s notoriety. He had been a seven-day wonder — that was all.

Well, he had learned some things since he wrote his first book. He would try again.

So he lived and wrote, and wrote and lived, and lived there by himself in Brooklyn. And when he had worked for hours at a stretch, forgetting food and sleep and everything, he would rise from his desk at last and stagger forth⁹ into the night-time streets, reeling like a drunkard with his weariness. He would eat his supper at a restaurant, and then, because his mind was feverish¹⁰ and he knew he could not sleep, he would walk to Brooklyn Bridge and cross It to Manhattan, and ferret out the secret heart of darkness in all the city’s ways, and then at dawn come back across the Bridge once more, and so to bed in Brooklyn.

And in these nightly wanderings the old refusals dropped away, the old avowals stood. For then, somehow, it seemed to him that he who had been dead was risen, be who had been lost was found again, and be who in his brief day of glory bad sold the talent, the passion, and the belief of youth into the keeping of the fleshless dead, until his heart was corrupted¹¹ and all hope gone, would win his life back bloodily¹², in solitude¹³ and darkness. And be felt then that things would be for him once more as they had been, and he saw again, as be bad once seen, the image of the shining city. Far-flung, and blazing into into tiers of jewelled light, it burned forever in his vision as he walked the Bridge, and strong tides were bound round it, and the great ships called. So he walked the Bridge, always be walked the Bridge.

And by his side was that stern friend, the only one to whom be spoke¹⁴ what in his secret heart he most desired. To Loneliness he whispered: “Fame!”— and Loneliness replied: “Aye, brother, wait and see."

1 aesthetic   

adj.美学的，审美的，有美感

参考例句：

• My aesthetic standards are quite different from his.我的审美标准与他的大不相同。
• The professor advanced a new aesthetic theory.那位教授提出了新的美学理论。

2 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

3 precarious   

adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的

参考例句：

• Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
• He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家，他过得是朝不保夕的生活。

4 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。

5 geologic   

adj.地质的

参考例句：

• The Red Sea is a geologic continuation of the valley.红海就是一个峡谷在地质上的继续发展。
• Delineation of channels is the first step of geologic evaluation.勾划河道的轮廓是地质解译的第一步。

6 stratum   

n.地层，社会阶层

参考例句：

• The coal is a coal resource that reserves in old stratum.石煤是贮藏在古老地层中的一种煤炭资源。
• How does Chinese society define the class and stratum?中国社会如何界定阶级与阶层？

7 Forsaken   

adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词

参考例句：

• He was forsaken by his friends. 他被朋友们背弃了。
• He has forsaken his wife and children. 他遗弃了他的妻子和孩子。

8 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

9 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。

10 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

11 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。

12 bloodily   

adv.出血地；血淋淋地；残忍地；野蛮地

参考例句：

• The war goes bloodily on. 战争血淋淋地继续着。 来自互联网
• It isn't every day that you see your husband bloodily murdered in the living room. 在起居室里目击丈夫被血腥地谋杀，这可不是你每天都能碰到的情景。 来自互联网

13 solitude   

n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方

参考例句：

• People need a chance to reflect on spiritual matters in solitude. 人们需要独处的机会来反思精神上的事情。
• They searched for a place where they could live in solitude. 他们寻找一个可以过隐居生活的地方。

14 spoke   

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

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。