Unit5THEMONSTER课文翻译大学英语六

1、Unit 5 THE MONSTER He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body - a sickly little man. His nerves were had. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had seclusions of grandeur. He was a monster of conceit. Never for on

2、e minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers,

3、and one of the greatest composers. To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to

4、 a monologue. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did. He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the

5、 most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for house, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with him, for the sake of peace. It never occurred to him that

6、he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He had theories about almost any subject under the sun, including vegetarianism, the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote pamphlets, le tters, books ? thous

7、ands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages. He not only wrote these things, and published them - usually at somebody elses expense - but he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family. He wrote operas, and no sooner did he have the synopsis of a story, b

8、ut he would invite - or rather summon - a crowed of his friends to his house, and read it aloud to them. Not for criticism. For applause. When the complete poem was written, the friends had to come again, and hear that read aloud. Then he would publish the poem, sometimes years before the music that

9、 went with it was written. He played the piano like a composer, in the worst sense of what that implies, and he would sit down at the piano before parties that included some of the finest pianists of his time, and play for them, by the hour, his own music, needless to say. He had a composers voice.

10、And he would invite eminent vocalists to his house and sing them his operas, taking all the parts. He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhis

11、t wonk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and heartless to a degree that would have made a Roman e

12、mperor shudder. He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under ay obligation to do so. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from eve

13、rybody who was good for a loan - men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame, at other loftily offering his intended benefactor the privilege of contributing to his support, and being mortally offended if the recipient declined the hono

14、r. I have found no record of his ever paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it. What money he could lay his hands on he spent like an Indian rajah. The mere prospect of a performance of one of his operas was enough to set him to running up bills amounting to ten time

15、s the amount of his prospective royalties. No one will ever know -certainly he never knew - how much money he owed. We do know that his greatest benefactor gave him $6,000 to pay the most pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later had to give him $16,000 to enable him to live in another cit

16、y without being thrown into jail for debt. He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer, from who

17、m he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman - any wealthy woman - whom he could marry for her money. He was completely selfish in his other personal relationships. His liking

18、 for his friends was measured solely by the completeness of their devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him, whether financial or artistic. The minute they failed him - even by so much as refusing dinner invitation - or began to lessen in usefulness, he cast them off without a second thought. A

19、t the end of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he had known even in middle age. The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything that I have said about him you can find on record - in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew him, in his own letters, betwee

20、n the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesnt matter in the least. Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time. The joke was on us. He was one of the worlds greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he

21、was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living. When you consider what he wrote - thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the worlds great musi

22、co-dramatic masterpieces - when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him dont seem much of a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who ruined France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you will agre

23、e that a few thousand dollars worth of debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring trilogy. What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise with what he belie

24、ved, with what be dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner. There is greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may no

25、t have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that his poor brain and body didnt burst under the torment of the demon of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him to write the music that

26、 was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had no time to be a man? 怪才 他身材矮小，同他的身体相比，头却很大 他是一个常生病的小个子。 他的神经有毛病， 他的皮肤也有病。 要是贴身穿的衣服比丝绸粗糙一点的话， 他就会非常痛 苦。而且他还患有狂想症。 他是个自负的怪才。他是一刻都没有正眼看过世界和

27、世人。除了和自己和关在他看来， 他不仅是世界上最伟大的剧作家之一、 最伟大的思想家之一、 最伟大的作曲家之一。 听他谈 话，他就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬、柏拉图于一身。你如果听他谈话并不会有什么困难。他是 人世间最健谈的人之一。你如果听他谈话并不会有什么困难。他是人世间最健谈的人之一。 如果和他在一起呆上一个晚上， 就等于花一个晚上听他一人独讲。 他有时讲得很精彩， 有时 却让人讨厌。不过无论是精彩还是让人讨厌， 他的话题只有一个， 那就是他自己， 他和所想 和他所为。 他有一种癖号， 就是认为自己总是对的。 对于来自任何人的一点点不同的意见， 在这最 不起眼的观点上， 很可能使他夸夸其谈几个钟头

28、。 用各种方法来证明自己是正确的。 和尽力 流利的证明最后他的听众目瞪口呆，为了息事宁人，只好同意他的观点。 他从来都没有想过，他和他所做的事对于同他有联系的人来说并不是最令人感兴趣的。 他对天底下差不多作何事情都有自己的观点。 无论是素食主义、戏剧、 政治还是音乐。 为了 证明自已的观点，他写了小册子信，书，和成千上万的字。共数百页。通常是靠别人资助 而且总是坐着把这些东西大声的读。一念就是几个小时，给他的朋友和家人。 他写歌剧，一有了故事的概要，他就邀请 说得更准确一点是召唤 他那一帮朋友 去他家，听他念故事概要。他请他们来不是听他们批评意见的，而是听他们赞扬的。当歌剧 的词全部写完后，

29、他的朋友们还得再来听他读整部戏的歌词。 而后你就拿去发表， 可有时歌 词写好了， 数年后其配乐才完成。他弹钢琴象一个作曲家，一样弹得糟糕透顶，而且他还总 是坐在钢琴傍， 面对有他同时代的最优秀的钢琴家在场的一群人， 数小时地为他们演奏； 不 用说， 他演奏的都是自己写的音乐作品。 他有作曲家的嗓子。 他总是邀请杰出的声乐家到家 里，给他们演唱自己写的歌剧，一个人演所有的角色。 他的感情就象 6 岁孩子那样极不稳定。只要感到不舒服，他总是乱骂一通，直跺脚， 要么就情绪极其低落， 伤心地说要去东方当和尚， 度过余生。 十分钟后如果有什么事让他高 兴的话，他就会冲出门，在花园里跑来跑去，或者在沙发上

30、跳上跳下，或头朝下倒立着。一 只爱犬死了他会痛不欲生，可他要是冷酷起来，连罗马皇帝也会发抖的。 他简直缺乏任何责任感。 他不仅好象没有能力养活自己， 而且他也从来没有想到有这么 做的责任。他坚信人们该养活自己。由于是这样认为的，他向所有的人 无论是男人还是 女人，无论是朋友还是陌生人 谁有能力拿出钱来，他就向谁借。他写信向别人乞讨，一 写就是二十封； 有时奴颜婢膝， 毫无羞耻， 有时却非常傲慢地把别人给他的特权赏给他心目 中的捐助人， 如果领受者拒绝接受， 他就会万分愤怒。 我没有找到他把钱付给或还给没有法 律依据的借款人的任何记录。 只要弄得到钱， 他就象印度王公那样花销。 一旦他的某部歌剧有望演出， 就足以使他欠 下的帐单十倍于预计给他的版税。无人会知道 他本人也一定不曾知道 他欠别人多