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the origins of contemporary france-1-第104章

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child; a boy even to the day of his death; and who 〃gambols on his own

tombstone。〃 He is fond of caricature; exaggerating the features of

faces; bringing grotesques on the stage;'26' walking them about in all

lights like marionettes; never weary of taking them up and of making

them dance in new costumes; in the very midst of his philosophy; of

his propaganda and polemics; he sets up his portable theater in full

blast; exhibiting oddities; the scholar; the monk; the inquisitor;

Maupertuis; Pompignan; Nonotte; Fréron; King David; and countless

others who appear before us; capering and gesticulating in their

harlequin attire。  … When a farcical talent is thus moved to tell the

truth; humor becomes all…powerful; for it gratifies the profound and

universal instincts of human nature: to the malicious curiosity; to

the desire to mock and belitte; to the aversion to being in need or

under constraint; those sources of bad moods which task convention;

etiquette and social obligation with  wearing the burdensome cloak of

respect and of decency; moments occur in life when the wisest is not

sorry to throw this half aside and even cast it off entirely。  … On

each page; now with the bold stroke of a hardy naturalist; now with

the quick turn of a mischievous monkey; Voltaire lets the solemn or

serious drapery fall; disclosing man; the poor biped; and in which

attitudes!'27'  Swift alone dared to present similar pictures。  What

physiological crudities relating to the origin and end of our most

exalted sentiments! What disproportion between such feeble reason and

such powerful instincts! What recesses in the wardrobes of politics

and religion concealing their foul linen! We laugh at all this so as

not to weep; and yet behind this laughter there are tears; he ends

sneeringly; subsiding into a tone of profound sadness; of mournful

pity。  In this degree; and with such subjects; it is only an effect of

habit; or as an expedient; a mania of inspiration; a fixed condition

of the nervous machinery rushing headlong over everything; without a

break and in full speed。  Gaiety; let it not be forgotten; is still a

incentive of action; the last that keeps man erect in France; the best

in maintaining the tone of his spirit; his strength and his powers of

resistance; the most intact in an age when men; and women too;

believed it incumbent on them to die people of good society; with a

smile and a jest on their lips'28'。



When the talent of a writer thus accords with public inclinations

it is a matter of little import whether he deviates or fails since he

is following the universal tendency。  He may wander off or besmirch

himself in vain; for his audience is only the more pleased; his

defects serving him as advantageously as his good qualities。  After

the first generation of healthy minds the second one comes on; the

intellectual balance here being equally inexact。  〃Diderot;〃 says

Voltaire; 〃is too hot an oven; everything that is baked in it getting

burnt。〃 Or rather; he is an eruptive volcano which; for forty years;

discharges ideas of every order and species; boiling and fused

together; precious metals; coarse scorioe and fetid mud; the steady

stream overflows at will according to the roughness of the ground; but

always displaying the ruddy light and acrid fumes of glowing lava。  He

is not master of his ideas; but his ideas master him; he is under

submission to them; he has not that firm foundation of common

practical sense which controls their impetuosity and ravages; that

inner dyke of social caution which; with Montesquieu and Voltaire;

bars the way to outbursts。  Everything with him rushes out of the

surcharged crater; never picking its way; through the first fissure or

crevice it finds; according to his haphazard reading; a letter; a

conversation; an improvisation; and not in frequent small jets as with

Voltaire; but in broad currents tumbling blindly down the most

precipitous declivities of the century。  Not only does he descend thus

to the very depths of anti…religious and anti…social doctrines; with

logical and paradoxical rigidity; more impetuously and more

obstreperously than d'Holbach himself; but again he falls into and

sports himself in the slime of the age; consisting of obscenity; and

into the beaten track of declamation。  In his leading novels he dwells

a long time on salacious equivocation; or on a scene of lewdness。

Crudity with him is not extenuated by malice or glossed over by

elegance。  He is neither refined nor pungent; is quite incapable; like

the younger Crébillon; of depicting the scapegrace of ability。  He is

a new…comer; a parvenu in standard society; you see in him a commoner;

a powerful reasoner; an indefatigable workman and great artist;

introduced; through the customs of the day; at a supper of fashionable

livers。  He engrosses the conversation; directs the orgy; or in the

contagion or on a wager; says more filthy things; more 〃gueulées;〃

than all the guests put together'29'。  In like manner; in his dramas;

in his 〃Essays on Claudius and Nero;〃 in his 〃Commentary on Seneca;〃

in his additions to the 〃Philosophical History〃 of Raynal; he forces

the tone of things。  This tone; which then prevails by virtue of the

classic spirit and of the new fashion; is that of sentimental

rhetoric。  Diderot carries it to extremes in the exaggeration of tears

or of rage; in exclamations; in apostrophes; in tenderness of feeling;

in violences; indignation; in enthusiasms; in full…orchestra tirades;

in which the fire of his brains finds employment and an outlet。   …

On the other hand; among so many superior writers; he is the only

genuine artist; the creator of souls; within his mind objects; events

and personages are born and become organized of themselves; through

their own forces; by virtue of natural affinities; involuntarily;

without foreign intervention; in such a way as to live for and in

themselves; safe from the author's intentions; and outside of his

combinations。   The composer of the 〃Salons;〃 the 〃Petits Romans;〃 the

〃Entretien;〃 the 〃Paradoxe du Comédien;〃 and especially the 〃Rêve de

d'Alembert〃 and the〃 Neveu de Rameau 〃is a man of an unique species in

his time。  However alert and brilliant Voltaire's personages may be;

they are always puppets; their action is derivative; always behind

them you catch a glimpse of the author pulling the strings。  With

Diderot; the strings are severed; he is not speaking through the lips

of his characters; they are not his comical loud…speakers or puppets;

but independent and detached persons; with an action of their own; a

personal accent; with their own temperament; passions; ideas;

philosophy; style and spirit; and occasionally; as in the 〃Neveu de

Rameau;〃 a spirit so original; complex and complete; so alive and so

deformed that; in the natural history of man; it becomes an

incomparable monster and an immortal document。  He has expressed

everything concerning nature;'30' art morality and life
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