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Heroes and Hero Worship-Part5_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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in the world, to some of them;--to Hrolf's of Normandy, for instance!



Hrolf, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in

governing England at this hour.



Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling,

through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was the



_strongest_ kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the

Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the title _Wood-cutter_;



Forest-felling Kings. Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of them

were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk mainly of



the latter,--misleading certain critics not a little; for no nation of men

could ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough come out



of that! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also the right good

forest-feller,--the right good improver, discerner, doer and worker in



every kind; for true valor, different enough from ferocity, is the basis of

all. A more legitimate kind of valor that; showing itself against the



untamed Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer Nature for us.

In the same direction have not we their descendants since carried it far?



May such valor last forever with us!

That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice and heart, as with an



impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the infinite importance of

Valor, how man thereby became a god; and that his People, feeling a



response to it in their own hearts, believed this message of his, and

thought it a message out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it them:



this seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, from which

all manner of mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, allegories,



songs and sagas would naturally grow. Grow,--how strangely! I called it a

small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet



the darkness itself was _alive_; consider that. It was the eager

inarticulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to



become articulate, to go on articulating ever farther! The living doctrine

grows, grows;--like a Banyan-tree; the first _seed_ is the essential thing:



any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root; and so,

in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the



parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse Religion, accordingly, in some

sense, what we called "the enormous shadow of this man's likeness"?



Critics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of the Creation and

such like, with those of the Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla, "licking the rime



from the rocks," has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into

frosty countries. Probably enough; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these



things will have a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest

times. Thought does not die, but only is changed. The first man that



began to think in this Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And

then the second man, and the third man;--nay, every true Thinker to this



hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men _his_ way of thought, spreads a shadow

of his own likeness over sections of the History of the World.



Of the distinctivepoeticcharacter or merit of this Norse Mythology I have

not room to speak; nor does it concern us much. Some wild Prophecies we



have, as the _Voluspa_ in the _Elder Edda_; of a rapt, earnest, sibylline

sort. But they were comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men who



as it were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds; and it is _their_

songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I suppose, they would go



on singing, poetically symbolizing, as our modern Painters paint, when it

was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This



is everywhere to be well kept in mind.

Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give one no notion of



it;--any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace

of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us:



no; rough as the North rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a

heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humor and robust mirth in the



middle of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not go upon

theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I like much their



robustsimplicity; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor "draws

down his brows" in a veritable Norse rage; "grasps his hammer till the






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