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阿姗 wrote:
新的一年快到了。我想建议，每个咖啡客都来推荐一本书，让大家明年有个读书单，多读书，少上网ADD。咖啡常客也好，过客也好，都来推荐。
在看the Autocrat of The Breakfast Table (早餐桌上的霸王), Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894),
一本无比风趣而认真的对话体的书, Holmes在餐桌上谈笑间罢黜百家, 最后赢得美人归^^" 十分理想的精神状态("the classical republican ideal of civic virtue")以及这种精神状态指引下的现实幸福归宿.
excerpt 为证：
1. "a nice young man"
I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs, give it an intellectual shake, and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.
2. "The three Johns and the three peaches"--
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here that there are at least 6 personalities distinctly to be recognised as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas:
Three Johns:
a. The real John, known only to his maker
b.John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him
c.Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either
Three Thomases:
a. The real Thomas
b.Thomas' ideal Thomas
c.John's ideal Thomas
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weigned on a platform balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose that the real John to be old, dull and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful,witty and fascinating, and talk from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is,so far as Thomas' attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least 6 persons engaged in every dialogue between the two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all the same time.
[ A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at the table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered Johnnes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one piece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches.]
3.Should the power of making analogies and similitudes be called a miraculous gift?
If all that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that maddening narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women-if the dreams of colleges and convents and boarding schools-if every human feeling that sighs ,smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or groans, should bring all the innumerable images, such as come with every hurried heart-beat, the epic which hold them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would be but a cupful t the ocean of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the universe.
4.My last walk with the schoolmistress
The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all that this planetary life can offer, hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labour and the loneliness of almost friendless city life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talk about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love--unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.
dropin
