Hippopotamus Post

第四章 第6段 Now, it is undoubtedly true that if a man asked a waiter in a restaurant for a bottle of yellow wine and some greenish-yellow grapes, the waiter would think him mad. It is undoubtedly true that if a Government official, reporting on the Europeans in Burmah, said, "There are only two thousand pinkish men here" he would be accused of cracking jokes, and kicked out of his post. But it is equally obvious that both men would have come to grief through telling the strict truth. That too truthful man in the restaurant; that too truthful man in Burmah, is Mr. Bernard Shaw. He appears eccentric and grotesque because he will not accept the general belief that white is yellow. He has based all his brilliancy and solidity upon the hackneyed, but yet forgotten, fact that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. 毋庸置疑的，若有人在餐廳裡跟服務生要一瓶黃酒，或是綠黃色的葡萄，服務生會以為他腦筋有問題。若政府官員彙報提及緬甸的歐洲人時說：「在那裡僅有兩千個粉紅人...

 第四章 第3段 There is another man in the modern world who might be called the antithesis of Mr. Chamberlain in every point, who is also a standing monument of the advantage of being misunderstood. Mr. Bernard Shaw is always represented by those who disagree with him, and, I fear, also (if such exist) by those who agree with him, as a capering humorist, a dazzling acrobat, a quick-change artist. It is said that he cannot be taken seriously, that he will defend anything or attack anything, that he will do anything to startle and amuse. All this is not only untrue, but it is, glaringly, the opposite of the truth; it is as wild as to say that Dickens had not the boisterous masculinity of Jane Austen. The whole force and triumph of Mr. Bernard Shaw lie in the fact that he is a thoroughly consistent man. So far from his power consisting in jumping through hoops or standing on his head, his power consists in holding his own fortress night and day. He puts the Shaw test rapidly and rigorously ...

第四章  第1段 IV. Mr. Bernard Shaw In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities, when genial old Ibsen filled the world with wholesome joy, and the kindly tales of the forgotten Emile Zola kept our firesides merry and pure, it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood. It may be doubted whether it is always or even generally a disadvantage. The man who is misunderstood has always this advantage over his enemies, that they do not know his weak point or his plan of campaign. They go out against a bird with nets and against a fish with arrows. There are several modern examples of this situation. Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, is a very good one. He constantly eludes or vanquishes his opponents because his real powers and deficiencies are quite different to those with which he is credited, both by friends and foes. His friends depict him as a strenuous man of action; his opponents depict him as a coarse man of business; when, as a fact, he is neither one nor the o...

第三章 第9段 Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kipling is naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examples in the British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or, indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army; that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing, in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of his best work. 他對責任這概念的多元觀點，證明吉卜齡是道地的世界主義者（譯註：cosmopolitan，我真心想直接翻成都會人，但深恐這無法表達Chesterton 的意思，但我最大的困境是，我其實也不確定他想要表達的意涵到哪個程度…只是他常常字面之下藏有其他意思…）。他碰巧在大英帝國找到支持他論點的例子，但幾乎任何其他帝國，或應說任何其他高度文明的國家，都有相對應的例子。英國軍隊中讓他激賞的事物，他可以在德國軍隊中找到更為明顯的事例；英國警政讓他感到欣喜的做法，他可以在法國警隊中找到施行更完美的範例。紀律這理想不是生命的全部，但散佈到世界各地。而對紀律的崇敬，證明吉卜齡擁有世界的智慧，有...