Concerning Life
The Inn of Tranquillity2
Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the cypresses3 and olives of that Odyssean4 coast, we came one afternoon on a pink house bearing the legend: “Osteria di Tranquillita,”; and, partly because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a house at all in those goat-haunted groves5 above the waves, we tarried for contemplation. To the familiar simplicity6 of that Italian building there were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been formed, and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies7 of a cock and hen. The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth8 into the air, as it were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan9 mind. And, lost in admiration10, we became conscious of the odour of a full-flavoured cigar. Yes — in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing11 who wore a bowler12 hat, a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow boots. His head was round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips red and full under a black moustache, and he was regarding us through very thick and half-closed eyelids13.
Perceiving him to be the proprietor14 of the high and cosmopolitan mind, we accosted15 him.
“Good-day!” he replied: “I spik English. Been in Amurrica yes.”
“You have a lovely place here.”
Sweeping16 a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff17 of smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air of one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he smiled, and spoke18.
“Too-quiet!”
“Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests ——”
“I change all that — soon I call it Anglo-American hotel.”
“Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already.”
He closed one eye and smiled.
Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted19 and walked on; and, coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme and the crumbled20 leaf-dust. All the small singing birds had long been shot and eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves swimming in on a gentle south wind. The wanton creatures seemed stretching out white arms to the land, flying desperately21 from a sea of such stupendous serenity22; and over their bare shoulders their hair floated back, pale in the sunshine. If the air was void of sound, it was full of scent23 — that delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled24 gum, and herbs, and sweet wood being burned somewhere a long way off; and a silky, golden warmth slanted25 on to us through the olives and umbrella pines. Large wine-red violets were growing near. On such a cliff might Theocritus have lain, spinning his songs; on that divine sea Odysseus should have passed. And we felt that presently the goat-god must put his head forth from behind a rock.
It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan. One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: “O God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!” But soon the infinite incongruity26 of this juxtaposition27 began to produce within one a curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began to seem too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the gramophone wedded28 to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the evening wind; to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with this wild incense29; to read that enchanted30 name, “Inn of Tranquillity,” and hear the bland31 and affable remark of the gentleman who owned it — such were, indeed, phenomena32 to stimulate33 souls to speculation34. And all unconsciously one began to justify35 them by thoughts of the other incongruities36 of existence — the strange, the passionate37 incongruities of youth and age, wealth and poverty, life and death; the wonderful odd bedfellows of this world; all those lurid38 contrasts which haunt a man’s spirit till sometimes he is ready to cry out: “Rather than live where such things can be, let me die!”
Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one’s meditation39 wandered on, following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became spiritually luminous40. That Italian gentleman of the world, with his bowler hat, his skittle-alley, his gramophone, who had planted himself down in this temple of wild harmony, was he not Progress itself — the blind figure with the stomach full of new meats and the brain of raw notions? Was he not the very embodiment of the wonderful child, Civilisation41, so possessed42 by a new toy each day that she has no time to master its use — naive43 creature lost amid her own discoveries! Was he not the very symbol of that which was making economists44 thin, thinkers pale, artists haggard, statesmen bald — the symbol of Indigestion Incarnate45! Did he not, delicious, gross, unconscious man, personify beneath his Americo-Italian polish all those rank and primitive46 instincts, whose satisfaction necessitated47 the million miseries48 of his fellows; all those thick rapacities which stir the hatred49 of the humane50 and thin-skinned! And yet, one’s meditation could not stop there — it was not convenient to the heart!
A little above us, among the olive-trees, two blue-clothed peasants, man and woman, were gathering51 the fruit — from some such couple, no doubt, our friend in the bowler hat had sprung; more “virile” and adventurous52 than his brothers, he had not stayed in the home groves, but had gone forth to drink the waters of hustle53 and commerce, and come back — what he was. And he, in turn, would beget54 children, and having made his pile out of his ‘Anglo-American hotel’ would place those children beyond the coarser influences of life, till they became, perhaps, even as our selves, the salt of the earth, and despised him. And I thought: “I do not despise those peasants — far from it. I do not despise myself — no more than reason; why, then, despise my friend in the bowler hat, who is, after all, but the necessary link between them and me?” I did not despise the olive-trees, the warm sun, the pine scent, all those material things which had made him so thick and strong; I did not despise the golden, tenuous55 imaginings which the trees and rocks and sea were starting in my own spirit. Why, then, despise the skittle-alley, the gramophone, those expressions of the spirit of my friend in the billy-cock hat? To despise them was ridiculous!
And suddenly I was visited by a sensation only to be described as a sort of smiling certainty, emanating56 from, and, as it were, still tingling57 within every nerve of myself, but yet vibrating harmoniously58 with the world around. It was as if I had suddenly seen what was the truth of things; not perhaps to anybody else, but at all events to me. And I felt at once tranquil1 and elated, as when something is met with which rouses and fascinates in a man all his faculties59.
“For,” I thought, “if it is ridiculous in me to despise my friend — that perfect marvel60 of disharmony — it is ridiculous in me to despise anything. If he is a little bit of continuity, as perfectly61 logical an expression of a necessary phase or mood of existence as I myself am, then, surely, there is nothing in all the world that is not a little bit of continuity, the expression of a little necessary mood. Yes,” I thought, “he and I, and those olive-trees, and this spider on my hand, and everything in the Universe which has an individual shape, are all fit expressions of the separate moods of a great underlying62 Mood or Principle, which must be perfectly adjusted, volving and revolving63 on itself. For if It did not volve and revolve64 on Itself, It would peter out at one end or the other, and the image of this petering out no man with his mental apparatus65 can conceive. Therefore, one must conclude It to be perfectly adjusted and everlasting66. But if It is perfectly adjusted and everlasting, we are all little bits of continuity, and if we are all little bits of continuity it is ridiculous for one of us to despise another. So,” I thought, “I have now proved it from my friend in the billy-cock hat up to the Universe, and from the Universe down, back again to my friend.”
And I lay on my back and looked at the sky. It seemed friendly to my thought with its smile, and few white clouds, saffron-tinged like the plumes67 of a white duck in sunlight. “And yet,” I wondered, “though my friend and I may be equally necessary, I am certainly irritated by him, and shall as certainly continue to be irritated, not only by him, but by a thousand other men and so, with a light heart, you may go on being irritated with your friend in the bowler hat, you may go on loving those peasants and this sky and sea. But, since you have this theory of life, you may not despise any one or any thing, not even a skittle-alley, for they are all threaded to you, and to despise them would be to blaspheme against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny Eternity68. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt is — for you — the sovereign idiocy69, the irreligious fancy!”
There was a bee weighing down a blossom of thyme close by, and underneath70 the stalk a very ugly little centipede. The wild bee, with his little dark body and his busy bear’s legs, was lovely to me, and the creepy centipede gave me shudderings; but it was a pleasant thing to feel so sure that he, no less than the bee, was a little mood expressing himself out in harmony with Designs tiny thread on the miraculous71 quilt. And I looked at him with a sudden zest72 and curiosity; it seemed to me that in the mystery of his queer little creepings I was enjoying the Supreme73 Mystery; and I thought: “If I knew all about that wriggling74 beast, then, indeed, I might despise him; but, truly, if I knew all about him I should know all about everything — Mystery would be gone, and I could not bear to live!”
So I stirred him with my finger and he went away.
“But how”— I thought “about such as do not feel it ridiculous to despise; how about those whose temperaments75 and religions show them all things so plainly that they know they are right and others wrong? They must be in a bad way!” And for some seconds I felt sorry for them, and was discouraged. But then I thought: “Not at all — obviously not! For if they do not find it ridiculous to feel contempt, they are perfectly right to feel contempt, it being natural to them; and you have no business to be sorry for them, for that is, after all, only your euphemism76 for contempt. They are all right, being the expressions of contemptuous moods, having religions and so forth, suitable to these moods; and the religion of your mood would be Greek to them, and probably a matter for contempt. But this only makes it the more interesting. For though to you, for instance, it may seem impossible to worship Mystery with one lobe77 of the brain, and with the other to explain it, the thought that this may not seem impossible to others should not discourage you; it is but another little piece of that Mystery which makes life so wonderful and sweet.”
The sun, fallen now almost to the level of the cliff, was slanting78 upward on to the burnt-red pine boughs79, which had taken to themselves a quaint80 resemblance to the great brown limbs of the wild men Titian drew in his pagan pictures, and down below us the sea-nymphs, still swimming to shore, seemed eager to embrace them in the enchanted groves. All was fused in that golden glow of the sun going down-sea and land gathered into one transcendent mood of light and colour, as if Mystery desired to bless us by showing how perfect was that worshipful adjustment, whose secret we could never know. And I said to myself: “None of those thoughts of yours are new, and in a vague way even you have thought them before; but all the same, they have given you some little feeling of tranquillity.”
And at that word of fear I rose and invited my companion to return toward the town. But as we stealthy crept by the “Osteria di Tranquillita,” our friend in the bowler hat came out with a gun over his shoulder and waved his hand toward the Inn.
“You come again in two week — I change all that! And now,” he added, “I go to shoot little bird or two,” and he disappeared into the golden haze81 under the olive-trees.
A minute later we heard his gun go off, and returned homeward with a prayer.
1910.
收听单词发音 |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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cypresses
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| n.柏属植物，柏树( cypress的名词复数 ) | |
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odyssean
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| adj.（荷马史诗）（式）的，（似）奥德修斯的，（似）奥德修斯历程的 | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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effigies
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| n.（人的）雕像，模拟像，肖像( effigy的名词复数 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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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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bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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accosted
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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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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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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juxtaposition
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| n.毗邻，并置，并列 | |
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wedded
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| adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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bland
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| adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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incongruities
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| n.不协调( incongruity的名词复数 )；不一致；不适合；不协调的东西 | |
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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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lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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42
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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naive
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| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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economists
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| n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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incarnate
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| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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necessitated
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| 使…成为必要，需要( necessitate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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50
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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53
hustle
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| v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌) | |
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beget
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| v.引起；产生 | |
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tenuous
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| adj.细薄的，稀薄的，空洞的 | |
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emanating
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| v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的现在分词 )；产生，表现，显示 | |
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tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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harmoniously
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| 和谐地，调和地 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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marvel
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| vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异；n.令人惊异的事 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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revolve
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| vi.(使)旋转；循环出现 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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idiocy
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| n.愚蠢 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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wriggling
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的现在分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等）；蠕蠕 | |
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75
temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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euphemism
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| n.婉言，委婉的说法 | |
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lobe
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| n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶 | |
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78
slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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79
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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80
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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81
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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