谎言的衰落英文王尔德Word格式.docx

1、Persons: Cyril and Vivian. Scene: the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire. CYRIL （coming in through the open window from the terrace）. My dear Vivian, dont coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods like

2、 the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass, and smoke cigarettes, and enjoy Nature. VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and tha

3、t after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Mature. What Art really reveals to us is Natures lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolute

4、ly unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is

5、 our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her. CYRIL. Well, you need not lo

6、ok at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk. VIVIAN. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and dumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before th

7、e furniture of the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name, as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I dont complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportio

8、ns. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. Ones individuality absolutely leaves one. And then Nature is

9、 so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world

10、, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to

11、 come; but I am afraid that we are beginning to be overeducated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching-that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to. In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome, uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correc

12、t my proofs. CYRIL. Writing an article! That is not very consistent after what you have just said. VIVIAN Who wants to be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like E

13、merson, I write over the door of my library the word Whim. Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new Renaissance of Art. CYRIL. What is the subject? VIVIAN. I intend to call it The Decay of Lying: A Protest.CYRIL. Lying! I should hav

14、e thought that our politicians kept up that habit. VIVIAN. I assure you that they do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb res

15、ponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians wont do. Something

16、may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. The mantle of the Sophist has fallen on its members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are delightful. They can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant ju

17、ries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out. Newspapers, even, have degen

18、erated. They may now be absolutely relied upon. One feels it as one wades through their columns. It is always the unreadable that occurs. I am afraid that there is not much to be said in favour of either the lawyer or the journalist. Besides what I am pleading for is Lying in art. Shall I read you w

19、hat I have written? It might do you a great deal of good. CYRIL. Certainly, if you give, me a cigarette. Thanks. By the way, what magazine do you intend it for?VIVIAN. For the Retrospective Review. I think I told you that the elect had revived it. CYRIL. Whom do you mean by the elect?VIVIAN. Oh, The

20、 Tired Hedonists of course. It is a club to which I belong. We are supposed to wear faded roses in our buttonholes when we meet, and to have a sort of cult for Domitian. I am afraid you are not eligible. You are too fond of simple pleasures. CYRIL. I should be blackballed on the ground of animal spi

21、rits, I suppose?VIVIAN. Probably. Besides, you are little too old. We dont admit anybody who is of the usual age. CYRIL. Well, I should fancy you are all a good deal bored with each other. VIVIAN. We are. That is one of the objects of the club. Now, if you promise not to interrupt too often, I will

22、read you my article. CYRIL. You will find me all attention. VIVIAN （reading in a very clear, musical voice）. THE DECAY OF LYING: A PROTEST.-One of the chief causes that can be assigned for the curiously commonplace character of most of the literature of our age is undoubtedly the decay of Lying as a

23、n art, a science, and a social pleasure. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. The BlueBook is rapidly becoming his ideal both for method and manner. He has his tedious document humain, his m

24、iserable little coin de la creation, into which he peers with his microscope. He is to be found at the Librairie Nationale, or at the British Museum, shamelessly reading up his subject. He has not even the courage of other peoples ideas, but insists on going directly to life for everything and ultim

25、ately, between encyclopaedias and personal experience, he comes to the ground, having drawn his types from the family circle or from the weekly washerwoman, and having acquired an amount of useful information from which never, even in his most meditative moments, can he thoroughly free himself. The

26、loss that results to literature in general from this false ideal of our time can hardly be overestimated. People have a careless way of talking about a born liar, just as they talk about a born poet. But in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts-arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with

27、 each other-and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion. Indeed, they have their technique, just as the more material arts of painting and sculpture have, their subtle secrets of form and. colour, their craft mysteries, their deliberate artistic methods. As one knows the

28、 poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection. But in modern days while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and sh

29、ould, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute. Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great

30、and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy CYRIL. My dear fellow!VIVIAN. Please dont interrupt in the middle of a sentence. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the wellinformed

31、. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, as indeed they would be fatal to the imagination of anybody, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truthtelling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting people who are muc

32、h younger than himself, and often ends by writing novels which are so like life that no one can possibly believe in their probability. This is no isolated instance that we are giving. It is simply one example out of many; and if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and Beauty will pass away from the land. Even Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson,