第九篇:On Meeting the Celebrated 论见名人
On Meeting the Celebrated
I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated. The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account. The celebrated develop a technique to deal with the persons they come across. They show the world a mask, often an impressive on, but take care to conceal their real selves. They play the part that is expected from them, and with practice learn to play it very well, but you are stupid if you think that this public performance of theirs corresponds with the man within.
I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men in general not for their own sakes, but for the sake of my work. I have not, as Kant enjoined, regarded each man as an end in himself, but as material that might be useful to me as a writer. I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous. They are more often themselves. They have had no need to create a figure to protect themselves from the world or to impress it. Their idiosyncrasies have had more chance to develop in the limited circle of their activity, and since they have never been in the public eye it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal. They display their oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd. And after all it is with the common run of men that we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates are from our point of view very unsatisfactory. To write about them is a venture that has often tempted writers, but the failure that has attended their efforts shows that such beings are too exceptional to form a proper ground for a work of art. They cannot be made real. The ordinary is the writer s richer field. Its unexpectedness, its singularity, its infinite variety afford unending material. The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you. For my part I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson73
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson97
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson33
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson83
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson77
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson21
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson23
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson31
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson43
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson39
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson59
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson91
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson99
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson71
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson25
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson63
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson19
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson69
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson65
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson95
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson55
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson79
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson81
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson9
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson61
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson75
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson29
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson47
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson7
新概念英语青少版第一册 lesson11
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |