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

Melmoth Reconciled-Part6_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same

insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend



at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it

were all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a



despot; a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its

fruits. The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain,



and diversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so

completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the



limits of pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and

suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary



pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master

of all the women that he could desire, knowing that his power was



irresistible, he did not care to exercise it; they were pliant to his

unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a



horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to

give.



The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and

consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a



horrible position.

The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul



and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being;

but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of



the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity

of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on



outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to

other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and



hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and

thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for



which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned

with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.



The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its

working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the



profound scorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx

who knows everything and says nothing, and sees all things with an



unmoved countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his

knowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,



with one effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches and

power were meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of



omnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise

of infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier



had not, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and

malice; he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not



yet come, while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being

damned beyond redemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dung



heap, with his triple fork and to thwarttherein the designs of God.

But Castanier, for his misfortune, had one hope left.



If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a bird

springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,



he has crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond

it. That vision of the Infinite left him for ever unable to see



humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools

who long for the power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a



human standpoint; they do not see that with the Devil's power they

will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to



remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The

Nero unknown to history who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his



private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the

boards of a theatre, does not suspect that if he had the power, Paris



would become for him as little interesting as an ant-heap by the

roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for



Castanier something like a logogriph for a man who does not know the

key to it. Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His



great debauch had been in some sort a deplorablefarewell to his life

as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal



gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and

foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in



all languages under the sun; he could no longer think of heaven.

Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the



drying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by the




文章总共2页
文章标签:翻译  译文  翻译文  

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