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Heroes and Hero Worship-Part3_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl



it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; they cry out, "Have a care,

there is the _Eager_ coming!" Curious; that word surviving, like the peak



of a submerged world! The _oldest_ Nottingham bargemen had believed in the

God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in good part is Danish, Norse; or



rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a

superficial one,--as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over



our Island we are mingled largely with Danes proper,--from the incessant

invasions there were: and this, of course, in a greater proportion along



the east coast; and greatest of all, as I find, in the North Country. From

the Humber upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the common people is



still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar

Norse tinge. They too are "Normans," Northmen,--if that be any great



beauty!--

Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so much;



what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a

recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal



Agencies,--as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant

Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous



Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very

great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from



the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this

Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude,



earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and

heart-to-heart inspection of the things,--the first characteristic of all



good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the

Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great



rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful

Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse Gods



"brewing ale" to hold their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jotun; sending out

Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jotun country; Thor, after many



adventures, clapping the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off

with it,--quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels!



A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, characterizes that

Norse system; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking



helpless with large uncertain strides. Consider only their primary mythus

of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made



by "warm wind," and much confused work, out of the conflict of Frost and

Fire,--determined on constructing a world with him. His blood made the



Sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones; of his eyebrows they

formed Asgard their Gods'-dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of



Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a

Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike,



enormous;--to be tamed in due time into the compactgreatness, not

giantlike, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the Shakspeares, the



Goethes!--Spiritually as well as bodily these men are our progenitors.

I like, too, that representation they have of the tree Igdrasil. All Life



is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its

roots deep down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk reaches up



heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe: it is the Tree of

Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit Three _Nornas_,



Fates,--the Past, Present, Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well.

Its "boughs," with their buddings and disleafings?--events, things



suffered, things done, catastrophes,--stretch through all lands and times.

Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its



boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human

Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human



Passion rustling through it;--or storm tost, the storm-wind howling through

it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence.



It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing,

what will be done; "the infinite conjugation of the verb _To do_."



Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with

all,--how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila the



Moesogoth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,--I

find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether



beautiful and great. The "_Machine_ of the Universe,"--alas, do but think

of that in contrast!






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