He walked into a broad Western thoroughfare famous for cheap books. Embedded1 among the more substantial warehouses2 was an open stall which Peter had frequently noticed. The books in this shop were always new, always cheap, very strangely assorted3, and mostly by people of whom Peter had never heard. There were plays, pamphlets, studies in economy and hygiene4, in mysticism and the suffrage5, trade-unionism and lyric6 poetry, Wagner and sanitation7. Peter looked curiously8 at an inscription9 in gold lettering above the door: "The Bomb Shop."
The keeper of the stall came forward as Peter lingered. He was tall, with disordered hair, neatly10 dressed in tweeds. He looked at Peter in a friendly way—obviously accessible.
"You are reading the inscription?" he said politely.
"What does it mean?" Peter asked.
"Have you looked at any of the books?"
"They seemed to be mixed."
"They are in one way all alike."
[Pg 89]
"How is that?"
"Explosive."
The keeper of the stall looked curiously at Peter, and began to like his ingenuous11 face.
"Come into the shop," he said, and led the way into its recesses12.
"This is not an ordinary shop," he explained, as Peter began to read some titles. "I am a specialist."
"What is your subject?" Peter formally inquired.
"Revolution. Every book in this establishment is a revolutionary book. All my books are written by authors who know that the world is wrong, and that they can put it right."
"Who know that the world is wrong?" Peter echoed.
"That's the idea."
"I know that the world is wrong," said Peter wearily. "I want to know the reason."
"It's a question of temperament," said the bookman. "Some like to think it is a matter of diet or hygiene. Here is the physiological13, medical, and health section. Some think it is a question of beauty and ugliness. The art section is to your right. Or perhaps you are an economist15?"
Peter, who had not yet compassed irony16, looked curiously at his new friend.
"Seriously?" he said at last, and paused irresolutely17.
[Pg 90]
"You want me to be serious?"
"I've been in London for five days. Last night I was at a theatre. Then a woman spoke18 to me in the street. I don't understand it."
"What don't you understand?"
"I don't understand anything."
The bookman began to be interested.
"Have you any money?" he briefly19 inquired.
Peter pulled out a bundle of notes. "Are these any good?" he asked.
The bookman looked at the notes, and at Peter with added interest.
"This is remarkable," he decided20. "You seem to be in good health, and you carry paper money about with you as if it were rejected manuscript. Yet you want to know what's wrong with the world. Have you read anything?"
"I have read Aristotle's Ethics21, Grote's History of Greece, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I'm a Gamaliel man," said Peter.
The bookman's eyes were dancing.
"Can you spend five pounds at this shop?"
"Yes," said Peter dubiously22.
"Very well. I'll make you up a parcel. You shall know what is wrong with the world. You will find that most of the violent toxins23 from which we suffer are matched with anti-toxins equally violent. This man, for instance," said the bookman, reaching down a volume, "explains that liberty is the cause of all our misfortunes."
[Pg 91]
He began to put together a heap of books on the counter.
"Nevertheless," he continued, adding a volume to the heap, "a too rigid24 system of State control is equally to blame. Here, on the other hand, is a book which tells us that London is unhappy because the sex energy of its inhabitants is suppressed and discouraged. Here, again, is a book—Physical Nirvana—which condemns25 sex energy as the root of all human misery26. You tell me that last night a woman spoke to you in the street. Here is a writer who explains that she is a consequence of long hours and low wages. But she is equally well explained by her own self-indulgence and love of pleasure."
He broke off, the books having by this time grown to a pile.
"There is a lot to read," said Peter.
"It seems a lot," the bookman reassured27 him. "But these modern people are easy thinkers."
Peter looked suspiciously at the bookman. "You don't take these books very seriously yourself."
"But I've read them," said the bookman. "You'd better read them too. It's wise to begin by knowing what people are writing and thinking. It saves time. Read these books, and burn them—most of them, at any rate."
Peter left the shop wondering why he had wasted five pounds. He drifted towards [Pg 92]Trafalgar Square and met a demonstration28 of trade-unionists with flying banners and a brass29 band that played a feeble song for the people. He followed them into the square, and joined a crowd which collected about the foot of the Monument.
The speeches raised a sleeping echo in Peter's brain, a forgotten ecstasy30 of devotion to his father's cause. The speaker harshly and crudely denounced the luxury of the rich as founded upon the indigence31 of the poor, dwelling32 on just those brutal33 contrasts of London which had already touched Peter. The speaker's bitter eloquence34 moved him, but the narrow vulgarity of his attack was disconcerting. Peter was sure that life was not explained by the simple villainy of a few rich people.
He walked away from the crowd towards Westminster, trying to realise as an ordered whole his distracting vision of London. The dignity of Whitehall was mocked in his memory by eight black stockings, by the provoking eyes of the man at the bookshop, by the fleeting35 shame of a strange woman who had spoken to him in the street.
Peter thought again of his father and of the books they had read. His father had rightly rebelled. All was not well. On the other hand, Peter got no help from his father's books. They had prepared in him a revolutionary temper; but they were clearly not pertinent36 to anything Peter had seen. They dealt with battles that were won already—problems that had passed. Priests and[Pg 93] Kings, Liberty and Toleration, Fraternity and Equality—all these things were historical.
Early that evening, with his window open to the noises of London, he began to struggle through the wilderness37 of modern revolutionary literature. Book after book he flung violently away. His quick mind rejected the slovenly38 thought of the lesser39 quacks40.
At last he came upon a book of plays and prefaces by an author whose name was vaguely41 familiar—a name which had penetrated42 to Oxford43. Peter began to read.
Here at last was—or seemed to be—the real thing. Soon his wits were leaping in pursuit of the most active brain in Europe—a brain, too, which dealt directly with the thronging44 puzzles of to-day. Peter exulted45 in the clean logic14 of this writer—the first writer he had met who wrote of the modern world.
Peter's excitement became almost painful as he found passages directly bearing upon things he had himself observed, giving them coherence46, stripping away pretence47. Peter, vaguely aware that life was imperfect, his mind new-stored with pictures that distressed48 and puzzled him, now came into touch with a keen destructive intelligence which brought society tumbling about his ears in searching analysis, impudent49 and rapid wit, in a rush of buoyant analogy and vivid sense—an intelligence, moreover, with a great gift of literary expression, at the same time eloquent50 and[Pg 94] familiar. It seemed as if the writer were himself present in the room, talking personally to the reader.
Peter hunted from the pile of books all of this author he could find, and sat far into the night, breaking from mood to mood. Many times he audibly laughed as he caught a new glimpse of the human comedy. In turn he was angry, triumphant51, and deeply pitiful. Above all, he was aware in himself of a pleasure entirely52 new—a pleasure in life intellectually viewed. He felt he would never again be the same after his contact with the delicate machinery53 of this modern mind. Once or twice he shut the book he was reading and lay back in his chair. His brain was now alive. It went forward independently, darting54 upon a hundred problems, ideas, and questions, things he had felt and seen.
He even began to criticise55 and to differ from the author whose book had shocked his brain into life. Peter had only needed the spur; and now he answered, passing in review the whole pageant56 of things respectable and accepted. His young intellect frisked and gambolled57 in the Parliament and the Churches; stripping Gamaliel; exploding categories; brandishing58 its fist in the noses of all reverend names, institutions, and systems; triumphantly59 yelling as the firm and ancient world cracked and tumbled.
Tired at last, he shut the last of many volumes and went to bed, not without a look of contempt[Pg 95] towards the corner whither his Oxford studies had previously60 been hurled61. His brain shouted with laughter in despite of his learned University. Derisively62 he shut his eyes, too weary to be quite sure whether he precisely63 knew what he was deriding64.
He woke late in the morning, the winter sun shining brilliantly into his room. Revolutionary literature lay to right and left—the small grey volumes which had precipitated65 his intellectual catastrophe66 quietly conspicuous67 in a small heap by themselves. Peter walked to the window and looked into the street. It was altogether the same, with men of law in shining hats passing under the archway opposite into their quiet demesne68. London stood solidly as before. Peter looked a little dubiously at the grey books. They, too, apparently69 were real.
点击收听单词发音
1 embedded | |
a.扎牢的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 warehouses | |
仓库,货栈( warehouse的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 assorted | |
adj.各种各样的,各色俱备的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 hygiene | |
n.健康法,卫生学 (a.hygienic) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 suffrage | |
n.投票,选举权,参政权 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 lyric | |
n.抒情诗,歌词;adj.抒情的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 sanitation | |
n.公共卫生,环境卫生,卫生设备 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 inscription | |
n.(尤指石块上的)刻印文字,铭文,碑文 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 neatly | |
adv.整洁地,干净地,灵巧地,熟练地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 ingenuous | |
adj.纯朴的,单纯的;天真的;坦率的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 recesses | |
n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 );(工作或业务活动的)中止或暂停期间;学校的课间休息;某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 );将(墙)做成凹形,在(墙)上做壁龛;休息,休会,休庭 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 physiological | |
adj.生理学的,生理学上的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 logic | |
n.逻辑(学);逻辑性 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 economist | |
n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 irony | |
n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 irresolutely | |
adv.优柔寡断地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 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: |
|
|
19 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 ethics | |
n.伦理学;伦理观,道德标准 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 dubiously | |
adv.可疑地,怀疑地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 toxins | |
n.毒素( toxin的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 rigid | |
adj.严格的,死板的;刚硬的,僵硬的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 condemns | |
v.(通常因道义上的原因而)谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 );宣判;宣布…不能使用;迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 misery | |
n.痛苦,苦恼,苦难;悲惨的境遇,贫苦 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 reassured | |
adj.使消除疑虑的;使放心的v.再保证,恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 demonstration | |
n.表明,示范,论证,示威 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 ecstasy | |
n.狂喜,心醉神怡,入迷 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 indigence | |
n.贫穷 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 dwelling | |
n.住宅,住所,寓所 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 brutal | |
adj.残忍的,野蛮的,不讲理的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 eloquence | |
n.雄辩;口才,修辞 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 fleeting | |
adj.短暂的,飞逝的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 pertinent | |
adj.恰当的;贴切的;中肯的;有关的;相干的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 slovenly | |
adj.懒散的,不整齐的,邋遢的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 lesser | |
adj.次要的,较小的;adv.较小地,较少地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 quacks | |
abbr.quacksalvers 庸医,骗子(16世纪习惯用水银或汞治疗梅毒的人)n.江湖医生( quack的名词复数 );江湖郎中;(鸭子的)呱呱声v.(鸭子)发出嘎嘎声( quack的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 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: |
|
|
43 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 thronging | |
v.成群,挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 exulted | |
狂喜,欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 coherence | |
n.紧凑;连贯;一致性 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 pretence | |
n.假装,作假;借口,口实;虚伪;虚饰 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 distressed | |
痛苦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 impudent | |
adj.鲁莽的,卑鄙的,厚颜无耻的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 eloquent | |
adj.雄辩的,口才流利的;明白显示出的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
51 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
52 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
53 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
54 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
55 criticise | |
v.批评,评论;非难 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
56 pageant | |
n.壮观的游行;露天历史剧 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
57 gambolled | |
v.蹦跳,跳跃,嬉戏( gambol的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
58 brandishing | |
v.挥舞( brandish的现在分词 );炫耀 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
59 triumphantly | |
ad.得意洋洋地;得胜地;成功地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
60 previously | |
adv.以前,先前(地) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
61 hurled | |
v.猛投,用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 );大声叫骂 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
62 derisively | |
adv. 嘲笑地,嘲弄地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
63 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
64 deriding | |
v.取笑,嘲笑( deride的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
65 precipitated | |
v.(突如其来地)使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 );促成;猛然摔下;使沉淀 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
66 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
67 conspicuous | |
adj.明眼的,惹人注目的;炫耀的,摆阔气的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
68 demesne | |
n.领域,私有土地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
69 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |