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

Heroes and Hero Worship-Part1_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_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
Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, say these theorists; a shadowing



forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what

such poetic minds had known and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, add



they, with a primary law of human nature, still everywhere observably at

work, though in less important things, That what a man feels intensely, he



struggles to speak out of him, to see represented before him in visual

shape, and as if with a kind of life and historicalreality in it. Now



doubtless there is such a law, and it is one of the deepest in human

nature; neither need we doubt that it did operate fundamentally in this



business. The hypothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly to this

agency, I call a little more respectable; but I cannot yet call it the true



hypothesis. Think, would _we_ believe, and take with us as our

life-guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport? Not sport but earnest is what



we should require. It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world;

to die is not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was



a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive!

I find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are on the way



towards truth in this matter, they have not reached it either. Pagan

Religion is indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what men felt and knew about



the Universe; and all Religions are symbols of that, altering always as

that alters: but it seems to me a radical perversion, and even inversion,



of the business, to put that forward as the origin and moving cause, when

it was rather the result and termination. To get beautiful allegories, a



perfect poeticsymbol, was not the want of men; but to know what they were

to believe about this Universe, what course they were to steer in it; what,



in this mysterious Life of theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and

to forbear doing. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ is an Allegory, and a



beautiful, just and serious one: but consider whether Bunyan's Allegory

could have _preceded_ the Faith it symbolizes! The Faith had to be already



there, standing believed by everybody;--of which the Allegory could _then_

become a shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say a _sportful_



shadow, a mere play of the Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact and

scientificcertainty which it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory



is the product of the certainty, not the producer of it; not in Bunyan's

nor in any other case. For Paganism, therefore, we have still to inquire,



Whence came that scientificcertainty, the parent of such a bewildered heap

of allegories, errors and confusions? How was it, what was it?



Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend "explaining," in this place, or

in any place, such a phenomenon as that far-distant distracted cloudy



imbroglio of Paganism,--more like a cloud-field than a distant continent of

firm land and facts! It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought



to understand that this seeming cloud-field was once a reality; that not

poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and deception was the origin of



it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's

life on allegories: men in all times, especially in early earnest times,



have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us

try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and



listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumor of the

Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That there was a



kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious and

distracted, but in their own poor way true and sane!



You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had grown to maturity in

some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see



the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight

we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child,



yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by

that sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike, his soul would fall



down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the

primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man






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