THIS novel, which is here re-issued with many small additions and some substantial cuts, lost me such esteem1 as I once enjoyed among my contemporaries and led me into an unfamiliar2 world of fan-mail and press photographers. Its theme - the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters - was perhaps presumptuously3 large, but I make no apology for it. I am less happy about its form, whose more glaring defects may be blamed on the circumstances in which it was written.
In December 1943 1 had the good fortune when parachuting to incur4 a minor5 injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed6 until June 1944 when the book was finished. I wrote with a zest7 that was quite strange to me and also with impatience8 to get back to the war. It was a bleak9 period of present privation and threatening disaster - the period of soya beans and Basic English - and in consequence the, book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental10 language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful. I have modified the grosser passages but have not obliterated11 them because they are an essential part of the book.
I have been in two minds as to the treatment of Julia’s outburst about mortal sin and Lord Marchmain’s dying soliloquy. These passages were never of course, intended to report words actually spoken. They belong to a different way of writing from, say, the early scenes between Charles and his father. I would not now introduce them into a novel which elsewhere aims at verisimilitude. But I have retained them here in something near their original form because, like the Burgundy (misprinted in many editions) and the moonlight they were essentially12 of the mood of writing; also because many readers liked them, though that is not a consideration of first importance. It was impossible to foresee, in the spring of 1944, the present cult13 of the English country house. It seemed then that the ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic14 achievement were doomed15 to decay and spoliation like the monasteries16 in the sixteenth century. So I piled it on rather, with passionate17 sincerity18. Brideshead today would be open to trippers, its treasures rearranged by expert hands and the fabric19 better maintained than it was by Lord Marchmain. And the English aristocracy has maintained its identity to a degree that then seemed impossible. The advance of Hooper has been held up at several points. Much of this book therefore is a panegyric20 preached over an empty coffin21. But it would be impossible to bring it up to date without totally destroying it. It is offered to a younger generation of readers as a souvenir of the Second War rather than of the twenties or of the thirties, with which it ostensibly deals. Combe Florey 1959 E.W.
1 esteem | |
n.尊敬,尊重;vt.尊重,敬重;把…看作 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 unfamiliar | |
adj.陌生的,不熟悉的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 presumptuously | |
adv.自以为是地,专横地,冒失地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 incur | |
vt.招致,蒙受,遭遇 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 unemployed | |
adj.失业的,没有工作的;未动用的,闲置的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 zest | |
n.乐趣;滋味,风味;兴趣 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 impatience | |
n.不耐烦,急躁 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 bleak | |
adj.(天气)阴冷的;凄凉的;暗淡的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 ornamental | |
adj.装饰的;作装饰用的;n.装饰品;观赏植物 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 obliterated | |
v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 );涂去;擦掉;彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 cult | |
n.异教,邪教;时尚,狂热的崇拜 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 doomed | |
命定的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 monasteries | |
修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 sincerity | |
n.真诚,诚意;真实 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 panegyric | |
n.颂词,颂扬 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 coffin | |
n.棺材,灵柩 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |