酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Robert Louis Stevenson-Part1_Walter Raleigh(1861-1922)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
among the immortals. The decorativepainter, whose pencil runs so

freely in limning these half-human processions of outlined fauns



and wood-nymphs, is asked at last to paint an easel picture.

Stevenson is best where he shows most restraint, and his peculiarly



rich fancy, which ran riot at the suggestion of every passing whim,

gave him, what many a modern writer sadly lacks, plenty to



restrain, an exuberant field for self-denial. Here was an

opportunity for art and labour; the luxuriance of the virgin



forests of the West may be clipped and pruned for a lifetime with

no fear of reducing them to the trim similitude of a Dutch garden.



His bountiful and generous nature could profit by a spell of

training that would emaciate a poorer stock. From the first, his



delight in earth and the earth-born was keen and multiform; his

zest in life



'put a spirit of youth in everything,

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him;'



and his fancy, light and quick as a child's, made of the world

around him an enchanted pleasance. The realism, as it is called,



that deals only with the banalities and squalors of life, and

weaves into the mesh of its story no character but would make you



yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a railway-carriage,

might well take a lesson from this man, if it had the brains.



Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an average suburb of London.

The long rows of identical bilious brick houses, with the



inevitable lace curtains, a symbol merely of the will and power to

wash; the awful nondescript object, generally under glass, in the



front window - the shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre

invariable citizen, whose garb gives no suggestion of his



occupation or his tastes - a person, it would seem, only by

courtesy; the piano-organ the music of the day, and the hideous



voice of the vendor of half-penny papers the music of the night;

could anything be less promising than such a row of houses for the



theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these

streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants' wages,



latch-keys and Sunday avocations, and come back with a tale of

small meannesses and petty respectabilities, written in the



approved modern fashion. Yet Stevenson, it seems likely, could not

pass along such a line of brick bandboxes without having his pulses



set a-throbbing by the imaginative possibilities of the place. Of

his own Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich he says:



'The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the lieutenant's

imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in



that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of

four million private lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled



what was passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked

into face after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown



interest, criminal or kindly.'

It was that same evening that Prince Florizel's friend, under the



name of Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the houses of West

Kensington. In one at least of the houses of that brick wilderness



human spirits were being tested as on an anvil, and most of them

tossed aside. So also, in, THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND, it was a quiet



suburban garden that witnessed the sudden apparition of Mr. Harry

Hartley and his treasures precipitated over the wall; it was in the



same garden that the Rev. Simon Rolles suddenly, to his own

surprise, became a thief. A monotony of bad building is no doubt a



bad thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities or frustrate the

agonies of the mind of man.



To a man with Stevenson's live and searching imagination, every

work of human hands became vocal with possible associations.



Buildings positively chattered to him; the little inn at

Queensferry, which even for Scott had meant only mutton and currant



jelly, with cranberries 'vera weel preserved,' gave him the

cardinal incident of KIDNAPPED. How should the world ever seem



dull or sordid to one whom a railway-station would take into its

confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the pavement told their






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号