It was an evening paper, and I had nearly as much time for reading and study as I had at home. But now society began to claim a share of this leisure, which I by no means begrudged4 it. Society was very charming in Columbus then, with a pretty constant round of dances and suppers, and an easy cordiality, which I dare say young people still find in it everywhere. I met a great many cultivated people, chiefly young ladies, and there were several houses where we young fellows went and came almost as freely as if they were our own. There we had music and cards, and talk about books, and life appeared to me richly worth living; if any one had said this was not the best planet in the universe I should have called him a pessimist5, or at least thought him so, for we had not the word in those days. A world in which all those pretty and gracious women dwelt, among the figures of the waltz and the lancers, with chat between about the last instalment of ‘The Newcomes,’ was good enough world for me; I was only afraid it was too good. There were, of course, some girls who did not read, but few openly professed6 indifference7 to literature, and there was much lending of books back and forth8, and much debate of them. That was the day when ‘Adam Bede’ was a new book, and in this I had my first knowledge of that great intellect for which I had no passion, indeed, but always the deepest respect, the highest honor; and which has from time to time profoundly influenced me by its ethics9.
I state these things simply and somewhat baldly; I might easily refine upon them, and study that subtle effect for good and for evil which young people are always receiving from the fiction they read; but this its not the time or place for the inquiry10, and I only wish to own that so far as I understand it, the chief part of my ethical11 experience has been from novels. The life and character I have found portrayed12 there have appealed always to the consciousness of right and wrong implanted in me; and from no one has this appeal been stronger than from George Eliot. Her influence continued through many years, and I can question it now only in the undue13 burden she seems to throw upon the individual, and her failure to account largely enough for motive14 from the social environment. There her work seems to me unphilosophical.
It shares whatever error there is in its perspective with that of Hawthorne, whose ‘Marble Faun’ was a new book at the same time that ‘Adam Bede’ was new, and whose books now came into my life and gave it their tinge15. He was always dealing16 with the problem of evil, too, and I found a more potent17 charm in his more artistic18 handling of it than I found in George Eliot. Of course, I then preferred the region of pure romance where he liked to place his action; but I did not find his instances the less veritable because they shone out in
“The light that never was on sea or land.”
I read the ‘Marble Faun’ first, and then the ‘Scarlet19 Letter,’ and then the ‘House of Seven Gables,’ and then the ‘Blithedale Romance;’ but I always liked best the last, which is more nearly a novel, and more realistic than the others. They all moved me with a sort of effect such as I had not felt before. They veers20 so far from time and place that, although most of them related to our country and epoch21, I could not imagine anything approximate from them; and Hawthorne himself seemed a remote and impalpable agency, rather than a person whom one might actually meet, as not long afterward22 happened with me. I did not hold the sort of fancied converse23 with him that I held with ether authors, and I cannot pretend that I had the affection for him that attracted me to them. But he held me by his potent spell, and for a time he dominated me as completely as any author I have read. More truly than any other American author he has been a passion with me, and lately I heard with a kind of pang24 a young man saying that he did not believe I should find the ‘Scarlet Letter’ bear reading now. I did not assent25 to the possibility, but the notion gave me a shiver of dismay. I thought how much that book had been to me, how much all of Hawthorne’s books had been, and to have parted with my faith in their perfection would have been something I would not willingly have risked doing.
Of course there is always something fatally weak in the scheme of the pure romance, which, after the color of the contemporary mood dies out of it, leaves it in danger of tumbling into the dust of allegory; and perhaps this inherent weakness was what that bold critic felt in the ‘Scarlet Letter.’ But none of Hawthorne’s fables26 are without a profound and distant reach into the recesses27 of nature and of being. He came back from his researches with no solution of the question, with no message, indeed, but the awful warning, “Be true, be true,” which is the burden of the Scarlet Letter; yet in all his books there is the hue28 of thoughts that we think only in the presence of the mysteries of life and death. It is not his fault that this is not intelligence, that it knots the brow in sorer doubt rather than shapes the lips to utterance29 of the things that can never be said. Some of his shorter stories I have found thin and cold to my later reading, and I have never cared much for the ‘House of Seven Gables,’ but the other day I was reading the ‘Blithedale Romance’ again, and I found it as potent, as significant, as sadly and strangely true as when it first enthralled30 my soul.
In those days when I tried to kindle31 my heart at the cold altar of Goethe, I did read a great deal of his prose and somewhat of his poetry, but it was to be ten years yet before I should go faithfully through with his Faust and come to know its power. For the present, I read ‘Wilhelm Meister’ and the ‘Wahlverwandschaften,’ and worshipped him much at second-hand32 through Heine. In the mean time I invested such Germans as I met with the halo of their national poetry, and there was one lady of whom I heard with awe33 that she had once known my Heine. When I came to meet her, over a glass of the mild egg-nog which she served at her house on Sunday nights, and she told me about Heine, and how he looked, and some few things he said, I suffered an indescribable disappointment; and if I could have been frank with myself I should have owned to a fear that it might have been something like that, if I had myself met the poet in the flesh, and tried to hold the intimate converse with him that I held in the spirit. But I shut my heart to all such misgivings34 and went on reading him much more than I read any other German author. I went on writing him too, just as I went on reading and writing Tennyson. Heine was always a personal interest with me, and every word of his made me long to have had him say it to me, and tell me why he said it. In a poet of alien race and language and religion I found a greater sympathy than I have experienced with any other. Perhaps the Jews are still the chosen people, but now they bear the message of humanity, while once they bore the message of divinity. I knew the ugliness of Heine’s nature: his revengefulness, and malice35, and cruelty, and treachery, and uncleanness; and yet he was supremely36 charming among the poets I have read. The tenderness I still feel for him is not a reasoned love, I must own; but, as I am always asking, when was love ever reasoned?
I had a room-mate that winter in Columbus who was already a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, and who read Browning as devotedly37 as I read Heine. I will not say that he wrote him as constantly, but if that had been so, I should not have cared. What I could not endure without pangs38 of secret jealousy39 was that he should like Heine, too, and should read him, though it was but an arm’s-length in an English version. He had found the origins of those tricks and turns of Heine’s in ‘Tristram Shandy’ and the ‘Sentimental Journey;’ and this galled40 me, as if he had shown that some mistress of my soul had studied her graces from another girl, and that it was not all her own hair that she wore. I hid my rancor41 as well as I could, and took what revenge lay in my power by insinuating42 that he might have a very different view if he read Heine in the original. I also made haste to try my own fate with the Atlantic, and I sent off to Mr. Lowell that poem which he kept so long in order to make sure that Heine had not written it, as well as authorized43 it.
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1
metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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2
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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4
begrudged
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| 嫉妒( begrudge的过去式和过去分词 )； 勉强做； 不乐意地付出； 吝惜 | |
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pessimist
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| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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8
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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13
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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veers
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| v.（尤指交通工具）改变方向或路线( veer的第三人称单数 )；（指谈话内容、人的行为或观点）突然改变；（指风） （在北半球按顺时针方向、在南半球按逆时针方向）逐渐转向；风向顺时针转 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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27
recesses
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| 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 | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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30
enthralled
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| 迷住，吸引住( enthrall的过去式和过去分词 )； 使感到非常愉快 | |
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kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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35
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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devotedly
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| 专心地； 恩爱地； 忠实地； 一心一意地 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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40
galled
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| v.使…擦痛( gall的过去式和过去分词 )；擦伤；烦扰；侮辱 | |
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41
rancor
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| n.深仇，积怨 | |
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42
insinuating
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| adj.曲意巴结的，暗示的v.暗示( insinuate的现在分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
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43
authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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