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man and superman-第26部分

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illusion; a convention; deathless; ageless: in a word; bodiless。
There are no social questions here; no political questions; no
religious questions; best of all; perhaps; no sanitary questions。
Here you call your appearance beauty; your emotions love; your
sentiments heroism; your aspirations virtue; just as you did on
earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you; no
ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions; no human
comedy; nothing but a perpetual romance; a universal melodrama。
As our German friend put it in his poem; 〃the poetically
nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us
ever upward and on〃without getting us a step farther。 And yet
you want to leave this paradise!

ANA。 But if Hell be so beautiful as this; how glorious must
heaven be!

The Devil; the Statue; and Don Juan all begin to speak at once in
violent protest; then stop; abashed。

DON JUAN。 I beg your pardon。

THE DEVIL。 Not at all。 I interrupted you。

THE STATUE。 You were going to say something。

DON JUAN。 After you; gentlemen。

THE DEVIL。 'to Don Juan' You have been so eloquent on the
advantages of my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice
to the drawbacks of the alternative establishment。

DON JUAN。 In Heaven; as I picture it; dear lady; you live and
work instead of playing and pretending。 You face things as they
are; you escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and
your peril are your glory。 If the play still goes on here and on
earth; and all the world is a stage; Heaven is at least behind
the scenes。 But Heaven cannot be described by metaphor。 Thither I
shall go presently; because there I hope to escape at last from
lies and from the tedious; vulgar pursuit of happiness; to spend
my eons in contemplation

THE STATUE。 Ugh!

DON JUAN。 Senor Commander: I do not blame your disgust: a picture
gallery is a dull place for a blind man。 But even as you enjoy
the contemplation of such romantic mirages as beauty and
pleasure; so would I enjoy the contemplation of that which
interests me above all things namely; Life: the force that ever
strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself。 What
made this brain of mine; do you think? Not the need to move my
limbs; for a rat with half my brains moves as well as I。 Not
merely the need to do; but the need to know what I do; lest in my
blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself。

THE STATUE。 You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts
to fence but for my foot slipping; my friend。

DON JUAN。 Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous
boredom before morning。

THE STATUE。 Ha ha! Do you remember how I frightened you when I
said something like that to you from my pedestal in Seville? It
sounds rather flat without my trombones。

DON JUAN。 They tell me it generally sounds flat with them;
Commander。

ANA。 Oh; do not interrupt with these frivolities; father。 Is
there nothing in Heaven but contemplation; Juan?

DON JUAN。 In the Heaven I seek; no other joy。 But there is the
work of helping Life in its struggle upward。 Think of how it
wastes and scatters itself; how it raises up obstacles to itself
and destroys itself in its ignorance and blindness。 It needs a
brain; this irresistible force; lest in its ignorance it should
resist itself。 What a piece of work is man! says the poet。 Yes:
but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of organization
yet attained by life; the most intensely alive thing that exists;
the most conscious of all the organisms; and yet; how wretched
are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and cruel by the realities
learnt from toil and poverty: Imagination resolved to starve
sooner than face these realities; piling up illusions to hide
them; and calling itself cleverness; genius! And each accusing
the other of its own defect: Stupidity accusing Imagination of
folly; and Imagination accusing Stupidity of ignorance: whereas;
alas! Stupidity has all the knowledge; and Imagination all the
intelligence。

THE DEVIL。 And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between
them。 Did I not say; when I was arranging that affair of Faust's;
that all Man's reason has done for him is to make him beastlier
than any beast。 One splendid body is worth the brains of a
hundred dyspeptic; flatulent philosophers。

DON JUAN。 You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been
tried。 Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but
brain have existed and perished。 The megatherium; the
icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven…league steps and
hidden the day with cloud vast wings。 Where are they now? Fossils
in museums; and so few and imperfect at that; that a knuckle bone
or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the lives of a
thousand soldiers。 These things lived and wanted to live; but for
lack of brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose;
and so destroyed themselves。

THE DEVIL。 And is Man any the less destroying himself for all
this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the
earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful
inventions。 And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents
nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself; and
produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague;
pestilence and famine。 The peasant I tempt to…day eats and drinks
what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years
ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a
thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score
of weeks。 But when he goes out to slay; he carries a marvel of
mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the
hidden molecular energies; and leaves the javelin; the arrow; the
blowpipe of his fathers far behind。 In the arts of peace Man is a
bungler。 I have seen his cotton factories and the like; with
machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted
money instead of food。 I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling
locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the
Maxim gun; the submarine torpedo boat。 There is nothing in Man's
industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his
weapons。 This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a
force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness。
What is his religion? An excuse for hating ME。 What is his law?
An excuse for hanging YOU。 What is his morality? Gentility! an
excuse for consuming without producing。 What is his art? An
excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter。 What are his
politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can
kill; or parliamentary cockfighting。 I spent an evening lately in
a certain celebrated legislature; and heard the pot lecturing the
kettle for its blackness; and ministers answering questions。 When
I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery saying〃Ask no
questions and you will be told no lies。〃 I bought a sixpenny
family magazine; and found it full of pictures of young men
shooting and stabbing one another。 I saw a man die: he was a
London bricklayer's laborer with seven children。 He left
seventeen pounds club money; and his wife spent it all on his
funeral and went into the workhouse with the children next day。
She would not have spent sevenpence on her children's schooling:
the law had to force her to let them be taught gratuitously; but
on death she spent all she had。 Their imagination glows; their
energies rise up at the idea of death; these people: they love
it; and the more horrible it is the more they enjoy it。 Hell is a
place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of
it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived; an Italian and
an Englishman。 The Italian described it as a place of mud; frost;
filth; fire; and venomous serpents: all torture。 This ass; when
he was not lying about me; was maundering about some woman whom
he saw once in the street。 The Englishman described me as being
expelled from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day
every Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the
Bible。 What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long
poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading
through。 It is the same in everything。 The highest form of
literature is the tragedy; a play in which everybody is murdered
at the end。 In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and
pestilences; and are told that these showed the power and majesty
of God and the littleness of Man。 Nowadays the chronicles
describe battles。 In a battle two bodies of men shoot at one
another with bullets and explosive shells until one body runs
away; when the others chase the fugitives on horseback and cut
them to pieces as they fly。 And this; the chronicle concludes;
shows the greatness and majesty of empires; and the littleness of
the vanquished。 Over such battles the people run about the
streets yelling with delight; and egg their Governments on to
spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter; whilst the
strongest Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound
against the poverty and pestilence through which they themselves
daily walk。 I could give you a thousand instances; but they all
come to the same thing: the power that governs the earth is not
the power of Life but of Death; and the inner need that has
nerved Life to the effort of organizing itself into the human
being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient
engine of destruction。 The plague; the famine; the earthquake;
the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and
crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough:
something more constantly; more ruthlessly; more ingeniously
destructive was needed; and that something was Man; the inventor
of the rack; the stake; the gallows; and the electrocutor; of the
sword and gun; above all; of justice; duty; patriotism and all
the other isms by which even those who are clever enough to be
humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of
all the destroyers。

DON JUAN。 Pshaw! all this is old。 Your weak side; my diabolic
friend; is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his
own 
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