英语听力 学英语,练听力,上听力课堂! 注册 登录
> 在线听力 > 有声读物 > 世界名著 > 译林版·月亮与六便士 >  第18篇

双语·月亮与六便士 第十八章

所属教程:译林版·月亮与六便士

浏览:

2022年04月21日

手机版
扫描二维码方便学习和分享

In point of fact, I met Strickland before I had been a fortnight in Paris.

I quickly found myself a tiny apartment on the ffth foor of a house in the Rue des Dames, and for a couple of hundred francs bought at a second-hand dealer's enough furniture to make it habitable. I arranged with the concierge to make my coffee in the morning and to keep the place clean.Then I went to see my friend Dirk Stroeve.

Dirk Stroeve was one of those persons whom, according to your character, you cannot think of without derisive laughter or an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders. Nature had made him a buffoon.He was a painter, but a very bad one, whom I had met in Rome, and I still remembered his pictures.He had a genuine enthusiasm for the commonplace.His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the models who hung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza di Spagna, undaunted by their obvious picturesqueness;and his studio was full of canvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyed peasants in peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and women in bright petticoats.Sometimes they lounged at the steps of a church, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against a cloudless sky;sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head, and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the side of an ox-wagon.They were carefully drawn and carefully painted.A photograph could not have been more exact.One of the painters at the Villa Medici had called him Le Ma?tre de la Bo?te à Chocolats.To look at his pictures you would have thought that Monet, Manet, and the rest of the Impressionists had never been.

“I don't pretend to be a great painter,”he said.“I'm not a Michael Angelo, no, but I have something. I sell.I bring romance into the homes of all sorts of people.Do you know, they buy my pictures not only in Holland, but in Norway and Sweden and Denmark?It's mostly merchants who buy them, and rich tradesmen.You can't imagine what the winters are like in those countries, so long and dark and cold.They like to think that Italy is like my pictures.That's what they expect.That’s what I expected Italy to be before I came here.”

And I think that was the vision that had remained with him always, dazzling his eyes so that he could not see the truth;and notwithstanding the brutality of fact, he continued to see with the eyes of the spirit an Italy of romantic brigands and picturesque ruins. It was an ideal that he painted-a poor one, common and shop-soiled, but still it was an ideal;and it gave his character a defnite charm.

It was because I felt this that Dirk Stroeve was not to me, as to others, merely an object of ridicule. His fellow-painters made no secret of their contempt for his work, but he earned a fair amount of money, and they did not hesitate to make free use of his purse.He was generous, and the needy, laughing at him because he believed so na?vely their stories of distress, borrowed from him with effrontery.He was very emotional, yet his feeling, so easily aroused, had in it something absurd, so that you accepted his kindness, but felt no gratitude.To take money from him was like robbing a child, and you despised him because he was so foolish.I imagine that a pickpocket, proud of his light fingers, must feel a sort of indignation with the careless woman who leaves in a cab a vanity-bag with all her jewels in it.Nature had made him a butt, but had denied him insensibility.He writhed under the jokes, practical and otherwise, which were perpetually made at his expense, and yet never ceased, it seemed wilfully, to expose himself to them.He was constantly wounded, and yet his good nature was such that he could not bear malice:the viper might sting him, but he never learned by experience, and had no sooner recovered from his pain than he tenderly placed it once more in his bosom.His life was a tragedy written in the terms of knock-about farce.Because I did not laugh at him he was grateful to me, and he used to pour into my sympathetic ear the long list of his troubles.The saddest thing about them was that they were grotesque, and the more pathetic they were, the more you wanted to laugh.

But though so bad a painter, he had a very delicate feeling for art, and to go with him to picture galleries was a rare treat. His enthusiasm was sincere and his criticism acute.He was catholic.He had not only a true appreciation of the old masters, but sympathy with the moderns.He was quick to discover talent, and his praise was generous.I think I have never known a man whose judgement was surer.And he was better educated than most painters.He was not, like most of them, ignorant of kindred arts, and his taste for music and literature gave depth and variety to his comprehension of painting.To a young man like myself his advice and guidance was of incomparable value.

When I left Rome I corresponded with him, and about once in two months received from him long letters in queer English, which brought before me vividly his spluttering, enthusiastic, gesticulating conversation. Some time before I went to Paris he had married an Englishwoman, and was now settled in a studio in Montmartre.I had not seen him for four years, and had never met his wife.

事实上,我到巴黎十四天后,就遇到了斯特里克兰。

我很快就在达姆路一所房子的五层楼上租到一小间公寓,然后又花几百法郎在二手货市场买了足够的家具,使房间满足了居住的需要。我安排门房每天早上帮我煮咖啡,这样可以保证房间的整洁。安顿下来之后,我就去拜访我的老朋友迪尔柯·斯特罗伊夫。

迪尔柯·斯特罗伊夫是这样一个人,根据人们的不同性格特点,人们会对他做出不同的判断,有的人会鄙夷地一笑,有的人会尴尬地耸耸肩。造化把他塑造成一个滑稽人物。他是个画家,但是很蹩脚,我在罗马结识的他,他的那些画我至今还记得。他真的甘于平庸,而且乐此不疲。他的灵魂因为热爱艺术而悸动,他描摹悬挂在斯巴格纳广场上贝尼尼[34]式建筑楼梯两旁的画作,一点儿也不怕别人说描摹得明显失真。他的画室里满是各种画布,有的画着头戴尖顶帽、蓄着小胡须、大眼睛的农民群像;有的画着衣服破破烂烂的一群顽童;还有的画着穿鲜艳裙子的女人们。有时他们在教堂的台阶上懒洋洋地躺着,有时在万里无云碧空下的柏树林里嬉戏,有时在文艺复兴时期建筑风格的井栏边谈情说爱,还有时跟在牛车的旁边,慢慢地穿过意大利的田野。他们被仔细地勾勒,认真地上了油彩,一张照片的精确程度也不过如此。一位住在美第奇别墅中的画家把他称为“巧克力盒子画家[35]”,乍一看他的画作,你可能会认为莫奈[36]、马奈[37]以及其他印象派画家在这个世界上压根就没存在过。

“我从不冒充自己是个伟大的画家,”他说,“我不是米开朗琪罗,不,我不是,但我有自己的一套,也有人买我的画。我把浪漫带到了千家万户。你知道,他们不仅在荷兰买我的画,而且在挪威、瑞典和丹麦,都在买我的画。大多数的买家都是商人和有钱的生意人。你无法想象在这些国家,冬天漫长、黑暗和阴冷,他们喜欢我画中意大利的景象,认为意大利就跟我的画一样,也完全符合他们的想象,在我来这儿之前,我想象中的意大利也是这样的。”

我想正是这种景象老是在他的脑海中晃动,让他眼花缭乱,无法看清真实的情况。尽管事实很残酷,他一如既往地用心灵之眼看待意大利,满眼的浪漫侠盗和美丽的废墟。这就是他用他的画所描绘的理想——尽管可怜、庸俗和陈腐,但终究还是理想,这笃定无疑地赋予了他性格中一种讨人喜欢的特质。

也正是因为这一点,我觉得迪尔柯·斯特罗伊夫不仅对我来说,就是对别人来说也一样,仅仅就是一个被挖苦的对象。对他的画,同行们公开蔑视,但是他能挣来大钱,所以他们也毫不犹豫、心安理得地花他的钱。他很慷慨大方,那些手头拮据的人,一方面嘲笑他竟然会幼稚地相信他们困苦的故事,一方面又厚颜无耻地向他借钱。他还多愁善感,很容易动感情,感情中有某种荒唐的东西,所以你可以接受他的好意,但绝不会感恩。从他身上弄钱就像抢劫一个孩子那样容易,你瞧不起他是因为他是个大傻帽。我试想,一个扒手,很为他的手脚麻利而沾沾自喜,可要是一个粗心的女人,竟然会把装满珠宝首饰的花哨钱包落在马车里,让他无用武之地,这会让他愤愤不平的。至于斯特罗伊夫,造化弄人把他塑造成了笑柄,一方面又没有让他变得感觉迟钝。他在各种嘲笑中饱受煎熬,实际的挖苦和善意的取笑都让他痛苦不堪,但是似乎他又很愿意给他们提供这种机会,所以对他的讽刺挖苦就从未停止过。他不断地受到伤害,可天性又是如此的善良,所以从不记恨别人。就像毒蛇咬了他一口,但他从不吸取教训,刚从伤痛中恢复过来,马上又会温柔地把毒蛇揽入怀中。他的生活是场悲剧,但是用打打闹闹的滑稽剧的形式写成的。因为我没有嘲笑过他,所以他对我感激涕零,过去可没少往我富有同情的耳朵里灌输他一长串的烦恼事。最悲惨的是,这些烦恼都是荒诞不经的,所以他讲得越悲惨,你就越忍不住想笑出声来。

然而,虽说他是个蹩脚的画家,但他对艺术的感觉还是非常细腻的,如果有机会跟他一起去画廊,你总会有不少的收获。他对艺术充满热情,而他对艺术的批评又一针见血。他信仰天主教,不仅对古典派大师的作品有真知灼见,对现代派画家的作品也有很强的鉴赏力。他能很快地发现一个天才,而且毫不吝惜他的赞誉之词。我认为在我认识的人中,再没有谁比他的判断更为准确的了。他所受到的艺术熏陶比大多数的画家都要多,他不像这些画家对同源的其他艺术那样无知,他对音乐和文学很有品位,使他对绘画有着深刻和不拘一格的领悟。对于我这样的年轻人,他的意见和指导具有旁人无法比拟的价值。

离开罗马后,我还和他保持着通信联系,每过一两个月就会收到他的长信,用奇怪的英语写成,读他的信,就好像在眼前生动地浮现出他语无伦次、热情四溢、手舞足蹈地说话的样子。在我来巴黎前的一阵子,他娶了一个英国女人,现在定居在蒙特马特尔区,我们有四年未见了,我也从未和他的妻子谋过面。

用户搜索

疯狂英语 英语语法 新概念英语 走遍美国 四级听力 英语音标 英语入门 发音 美语 四级 新东方 七年级 赖世雄 zero是什么意思临沂市北园路农行家属院英语学习交流群

  • 频道推荐
  • |
  • 全站推荐
  • 推荐下载
  • 网站推荐