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Essays and Lectures-Part14_OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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greater sublimity of its loneliness it may be quickened into



loftier utterance and intensified into clearer song. From the mean

squalor of the sordid life that limits him, the dreamer or the



idyllist may soar on poesy's viewless wings, may traverse with

fawn-skin and spear the moonlitheights of Cithaeron though Faun



and Bassarid dance there no more. Like Keats he may wander through

the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the



galley's deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since

passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life;



it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social

man, with man in his relation to God and to Humanity. It is the



product of a period of great national united energy; it is

impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the



age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of

such lofty moral and spiritualardour as came to Greek after the



defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck of

the Armada of Spain.



Shelley felt how incomplete our movement was in this respect, and

has shown in one great tragedy by what terror and pity he would



have purified our age; but in spite of THE CENCI the drama is one

of the artistic forms through which the genius of the England of



this century seeks in vain to find outlet and expression. He has

had no worthy imitators.



It is rather, perhaps, to you that we should turn to complete and

perfect this great movement of ours, for there is something



Hellenic in your air and world, something that has a quicker breath

of the joy and power of Elizabeth's England about it than our



ancient civilisation can give us. For you, at least, are young;

'no hungry generations tread you down,' and the past does not weary



you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with

the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost.



That very absence of tradition, which Mr. Ruskin thought would rob

your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may



be rather the source of your freedom and your strength.

To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance



of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the

sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, has been



defined by one of your poets as a flawless triumph of art. It is a

triumph which you above all nations may be destined to achieve.



For the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain are not

the chosen music of Liberty only; other messages are there in the



wonder of wind-swept height and the majesty of silent deep -

messages that, if you will but listen to them, may yield you the



splendour of some new imagination, the marvel of some new beauty.

'I foresee,' said Goethe, 'the dawn of a new literature which all



people may claim as their own, for all have contributed to its

foundation.' If, then, this is so, and if the materials for a



civilisation as great as that of Europe lie all around you, what

profit, you will ask me, will all this study of our poets and



painters be to you? I might answer that the intellect can be

engaged without direct didactic object on an artistic and



historical problem; that the demand of the intellect is merely to

feel itself alive; that nothing which has ever interested men or



women can cease to be a fit subject for culture.

I might remind you of what all Europe owes to the sorrow of a



single Florentine in exile at Verona, or to the love of Petrarch by

that little well in Southern France; nay, more, how even in this



dull, materialistic age the simple expression of an old man's

simple life, passed away from the clamour of great cities amid the



lakes and misty hills of Cumberland, has opened out for England




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