济慈诗歌和书信选(英文版)08 To George and Tom Keats. Hampstead, Sunday 21st

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　My dear Brothers;

　　I must crave¹ your pardon for not having written ere this.

　　I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke yesterday &

　　today; and I am at this moment just come from him and feel in the humour to go on with this, began in the morning. I spent Friday evening with Wells and went the next morning to see Death on the Pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West’s age is considered. But there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling² into reality the excellence³ of every Art is its intensity⁴, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth-Examine King Lear and you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous⁵ depth of speculation⁶ excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness⁷.

　　Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement enormously—I mean Negative Capability⁸, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties⁹, Mysteries , doubts, without any irritable¹⁰ reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated¹¹ verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable¹² of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates¹³ all consideration.

　　Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate brother.

分享到：