That was in 1807. Coleridge was already incapable14 of movement. The Kendal black drop had robbed him of his will. “You bid me rouse myself — go, bid a man paralytic15 in both arms rub them briskly together.” The arms already hung flabby at his side; he was powerless to raise them. But the disease which paralysed his will left his mind unfettered. In proportion as he became incapable of action, he became capable of feeling. As he stood at the gate his vast expanse of being was a passive target for innumerable arrows, all of them sharp, many of them poisoned. To confess, to analyse, to describe was the only alleviation16 of his appalling17 torture — the prisoner’s only means of escape.
Thus there shapes itself in the volumes of Coleridge’s letters an immense mass of quivering matter, as if the swarm had attached itself to a bough18 and hung there pendent. Sentences roll like drops down a pane19, drop collecting drop, but when they reach the bottom, the pane is smeared20. A great novelist, Dickens for preference, could have formed out of this swarm and diffusion21 a prodigious22, an immortal23 character. Dickens, could he have been induced to listen, would have noted24 — perhaps this:Deeply wounded by very disrespectful words used concerning me, and which struggling as I have been thro’ life, and still maintaining a character and holding connections no way unworthy of my FamilyOr again:
The worst part of the charges were that I had been imprudent enough and in the second place gross and indelicate enough to send out a gentleman’s servant in his own house to a public house for a bottle of brandy . . .
Or again:
What joy would it not be to you or to me, Miss Betham! to meet a Milton in a future stateAnd again, on accepting a loan:I can barely collect myself sufficiently25 to convey to you — first, that I receive this proof of your filial kindness with feelings not unworthy of the same . . . but that, whenever (if ever) my circumstances shall improve, you must permit me to remind you that what was, and FOREVER under ALL conditions of fortune will be, FELT as a GIFT, has become a Loan — and lastly, that you must let me have you as a frequent friend on whose visits I may rely as often as convenience will permit you . . .
The very voice (drastically cut short) of Micawber himself!
But there is a difference. For this Micawber knows that he is Micawber. He holds a looking-glass in his hand. He is a man of exaggerated self-consciousness, endowed with an astonishing power of self-analysis. Dickens would need to be doubled with Henry James, to be trebled with Proust, in order to convey the complexity26 and the conflict of a Pecksniff who despises his own hypocrisy27, of a Micawber who is humiliated28 by his own humiliation29. He is so made that he can hear the crepitation of a leaf, and yet remains30 obtuse31 to the claims of wife and child. An unopened letter brings great drops of sweat to his forehead; yet to lift a pen and answer it is beyond his power. The Dickens Coleridge and the Henry James Coleridge perpetually tear him asunder32. The one sends out surreptitiously to Mr. Dunn the chemist for another bottle of opium33; and the other analyses the motives34 that have led to this hypocrisy into an infinity35 of fine shreds36.
Thus often in reading the “gallop scrawl” of the letters from Highgate in 1820 we seem to be reading notes for a late work by Henry James. He is the forerunner37 of all who have tried to reveal the intricacies, to take the faintest creases38 of the human soul. The great sentences pocketed with parentheses39, expanded with dash after dash, break their walls under the strain of including and qualifying and suggesting all that Coleridge feels, fears and glimpses. Often he is prolix40 to the verge41 of incoherence, and his meaning dwindles42 and fades to a wisp on the mind’s horizon. Yet in our tongue-tied age there is a joy in this reckless abandonment to the glory of words. Cajoled, caressed43, tossed up in handfuls, words yield those flashing phrases that hang like ripe fruit in the many-leaved tree of his immense volubility. “Brow-hanging, shoe-contemplative, STRANGE”; there is Hazlitt. Of Dr. Darwin: “He was like a pigeon picking up peas, and afterwards voiding them with excremental44 additions.” Anything may tumble out of that great maw; the subtlest criticism, the wildest jest, the exact condition of his intestines45. But he uses words most often to express the crepitations of his apprehensive46 susceptibility. They serve as a smoke-screen between him and the menace of the real world. The word screen trembles and shivers. What enemy is approaching? Nothing visible to the naked eye. And yet how he trembles and quivers! Hartley, “poor Hartley . . . in shrinking from the momentary47 pain of telling the plain truth, a truth not discreditable to him or to me, has several times inflicted48 an agitating49 pain and confusion”— by what breach50 of morality or dereliction of duty?—“by bringing up Mr. Bourton unexpectedly on Sundays with the intention of dining here.” Is that all? Ah, but a diseased body feels the stab of anguish51 if only a corn is trod upon. Anguish shoots through every fibre of his being. Has he not himself often shrunk from the momentary pain of telling the plain truth? Why has he no home to offer his son, no table to which Hartley could bring his friends uninvited? Why does he live a stranger in the house of friends, and be (at present) unable to discharge his share of the housekeeping expenses? The old train of bitter thoughts is set in motion once more. He is one hum and vibration52 of painful emotion. And then, giving it all the slip, he takes refuge in thought and provides Hartley with “in short, the sum of all my reading and reflections on the vast Wheel of the Mythology53 of the earliest and purest Heathenism.” Hartley must feed upon that and take a snack of cold meat and pickles54 at some inn.
Letter-writing was in its way a substitute for opium. In his letters he could persuade others to believe what he did not altogether believe himself — that he had actually written the folios, the quartos, the octavos that he had planned. Letters also relieved him of those perpetually pullulating ideas which, like Surinam toads55, as he said, were always giving birth to little toads that “grow quickly and draw off attention from the mother toad56.” In letters thoughts need not be brought to a conclusion. Somebody was always interrupting, and then he could throw down his pen and indulge in what was, after all, better than writing — the “insemination” of ideas without the intermediary of any gross impediment by word of mouth into the receptive, the acquiescent57, the entirely58 passive ear, say, of Mr. Green who arrived punctually at three. Later, if it were Thursday, in came politicians, economists59, musicians, business men, fine ladies, children — it mattered not who they were so long as he could talk and they would listen.
Two pious60 American editors have collected the comments of this various company,* and they are, of course, various. Yet it is the only way of getting at the truth — to have it broken into many splinters by many mirrors and so select. The truth about Coleridge the talker seems to have been that he rapt some listeners to the seventh heaven; bored others to extinction61; and made one foolish girl giggle62 irrepressibly. In the same way his eyes were brown to some, grey to others, and again a very bright blue. But there is one point upon which all who listened are agreed; not one of them could remember a single word he said. All, however, with astonishing unanimity63 are agreed that it was “like”— the waves of the ocean, the flowing of a mighty64 river, the splendour of the Aurora65 Borealis, the radiance of the Milky66 Way. Almost all are equally agreed that waves, river, Borealis, and Milky Way lacked, as Lady Jerningham tersely67 put it, “behind.” From their accounts it is clear that he avoided contradiction; detested68 personality; cared nothing who you were; only needed some sound of breathing or rustle69 of skirts to stir his flocks of dreaming thoughts into motion and light the glitter and magic that lay sunk in the torpid70 flesh. Was it the mixture of body and mind in his talk that gave off some hypnotic fume71 that lulled72 the audience into drowsiness73? He acted as he talked; now, if he felt the interest flag, pointing to a picture, or caressing74 a child, and then, as the time to make an exit approached, majestically75 possessed76 himself of a bedroom candlestick and, still discoursing77, disappeared. Thus played upon by gesture and voice, brow and glittering eye, no one, as Crabb Robinson remarks, could take a note. It is then in his letters, where the body of the actor was suppressed, that we have the best record of the siren’s song. There we hear the voice that began talking at the age of two —“Nasty Doctor Young” are his first recorded words; and went on in barracks, on board ship, in pulpits, in stage coaches — it mattered not where he found himself or with whom, Keats it might be or the baker’s boy — on he went, on and on, talking about nightingales, dreams, the will, the volition78, the reason, the understanding, monsters, and mermaids79, until a little girl, overcome by the magic of the incantation, burst into tears when the voice ceased and left her alone in a silent world.
* COLERIDGE THE TALKER. Edited by Richard W. Armour80 and Raymond F. Howes.
We too, when the voice stops only half an hour before he passed that July day in 1834 into silence, feel bereft81. Is it for hours or for years that this heavily built man standing in a gate has been pouring forth82 this passionate83 soliloquy, while his “large soft eyes with a peculiar expression of haze or dreaminess mixed in their light” have been fixed84 upon a far-away vision that filled a very few pages with poems in which every word is exact and every image as clear as crystal?
点击收听单词发音
1 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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2 gateway | |
n.大门口,出入口,途径,方法 | |
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3 atmospheric | |
adj.大气的,空气的;大气层的;大气所引起的 | |
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4 overflow | |
v.(使)外溢,(使)溢出;溢出,流出,漫出 | |
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5 margins | |
边( margin的名词复数 ); 利润; 页边空白; 差数 | |
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6 reverberate | |
v.使回响,使反响 | |
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7 radius | |
n.半径,半径范围;有效航程,范围,界限 | |
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8 swarm | |
n.(昆虫)等一大群;vi.成群飞舞;蜂拥而入 | |
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9 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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10 labyrinth | |
n.迷宫;难解的事物;迷路 | |
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11 complexion | |
n.肤色;情况,局面;气质,性格 | |
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12 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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13 haze | |
n.霾,烟雾;懵懂,迷糊;vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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14 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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15 paralytic | |
adj. 瘫痪的 n. 瘫痪病人 | |
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16 alleviation | |
n. 减轻,缓和,解痛物 | |
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17 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
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18 bough | |
n.大树枝,主枝 | |
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19 pane | |
n.窗格玻璃,长方块 | |
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20 smeared | |
弄脏; 玷污; 涂抹; 擦上 | |
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21 diffusion | |
n.流布;普及;散漫 | |
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22 prodigious | |
adj.惊人的,奇妙的;异常的;巨大的;庞大的 | |
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23 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
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24 noted | |
adj.著名的,知名的 | |
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25 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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26 complexity | |
n.复杂(性),复杂的事物 | |
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27 hypocrisy | |
n.伪善,虚伪 | |
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28 humiliated | |
感到羞愧的 | |
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29 humiliation | |
n.羞辱 | |
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30 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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31 obtuse | |
adj.钝的;愚钝的 | |
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32 asunder | |
adj.分离的,化为碎片 | |
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33 opium | |
n.鸦片;adj.鸦片的 | |
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34 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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35 infinity | |
n.无限,无穷,大量 | |
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36 shreds | |
v.撕碎,切碎( shred的第三人称单数 );用撕毁机撕毁(文件) | |
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37 forerunner | |
n.前身,先驱(者),预兆,祖先 | |
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38 creases | |
(使…)起折痕,弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 ); (皮肤)皱起,使起皱纹 | |
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39 parentheses | |
n.圆括号,插入语,插曲( parenthesis的名词复数 ) | |
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40 prolix | |
adj.罗嗦的;冗长的 | |
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41 verge | |
n.边,边缘;v.接近,濒临 | |
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42 dwindles | |
v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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43 caressed | |
爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44 excremental | |
adj.排泄物的,粪便的 | |
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45 intestines | |
n.肠( intestine的名词复数 ) | |
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46 apprehensive | |
adj.担心的,恐惧的,善于领会的 | |
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47 momentary | |
adj.片刻的,瞬息的;短暂的 | |
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48 inflicted | |
把…强加给,使承受,遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49 agitating | |
搅动( agitate的现在分词 ); 激怒; 使焦虑不安; (尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而)激烈争论 | |
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50 breach | |
n.违反,不履行;破裂;vt.冲破,攻破 | |
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51 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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52 vibration | |
n.颤动,振动;摆动 | |
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53 mythology | |
n.神话,神话学,神话集 | |
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54 pickles | |
n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 );处于困境;遇到麻烦;菜酱 | |
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55 toads | |
n.蟾蜍,癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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56 toad | |
n.蟾蜍,癞蛤蟆 | |
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57 acquiescent | |
adj.默许的,默认的 | |
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58 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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59 economists | |
n.经济学家,经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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60 pious | |
adj.虔诚的;道貌岸然的 | |
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61 extinction | |
n.熄灭,消亡,消灭,灭绝,绝种 | |
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62 giggle | |
n.痴笑,咯咯地笑;v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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63 unanimity | |
n.全体一致,一致同意 | |
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64 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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65 aurora | |
n.极光 | |
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66 milky | |
adj.牛奶的,多奶的;乳白色的 | |
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67 tersely | |
adv. 简捷地, 简要地 | |
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68 detested | |
v.憎恶,嫌恶,痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69 rustle | |
v.沙沙作响;偷盗(牛、马等);n.沙沙声声 | |
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70 torpid | |
adj.麻痹的,麻木的,迟钝的 | |
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71 fume | |
n.(usu pl.)(浓烈或难闻的)烟,气,汽 | |
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72 lulled | |
vt.使镇静,使安静(lull的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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73 drowsiness | |
n.睡意;嗜睡 | |
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74 caressing | |
爱抚的,表现爱情的,亲切的 | |
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75 majestically | |
雄伟地; 庄重地; 威严地; 崇高地 | |
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76 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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77 discoursing | |
演说(discourse的现在分词形式) | |
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78 volition | |
n.意志;决意 | |
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79 mermaids | |
n.(传说中的)美人鱼( mermaid的名词复数 ) | |
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80 armour | |
(=armor)n.盔甲;装甲部队 | |
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81 bereft | |
adj.被剥夺的 | |
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82 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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83 passionate | |
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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84 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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