Hippopotamus Post

第八章  1 VIII. The Mildness of the Yellow Press There is a great deal of protest made from one quarter or another nowadays against the influence of that new journalism which is associated with the names of Sir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson. But almost everybody who attacks it attacks on the ground that it is very sensational, very violent and vulgar and startling. I am speaking in no affected contrariety, but in the simplicity of a genuine personal impression, when I say that this journalism offends as being not sensational or violent enough. The real vice is not that it is startling, but that it is quite insupportably tame. The whole object is to keep carefully along a certain level of the expected and the commonplace; it may be low, but it must take care also to be flat. Never by any chance in it is there any of that real plebeian pungency which can be heard from the ordinary cabman in the ordinary street. We have heard of a certain standard of decorum which demands that things...

第七章 9 Pater's mistake is revealed in his most famous phrase. He asks us to burn with a hard, gemlike flame. Flames are never hard and never gem-like— they cannot be handled or arranged. So human emotions are never hard and never gem-like; they are always dangerous, like flames, to touch or even to examine. There is only one way in which our passions can become hard and gemlike, and that is by becoming as cold as gems. No blow then has ever been struck at the natural loves and laughter of men so sterilizing as this carpe diem of the aesthetes. For any kind of pleasure a totally different spirit is required; a certain shyness, a certain indeterminate hope, a certain boyish expectation. Purity and simplicity are essential to passions—yes even to evil passions. Even vice demands a sort of virginity. 佩特的錯誤在他的名言中昭然若揭。他要我們以堅硬、寶石般的火焰燃燒。但火焰從不堅硬，也從不像寶石，無法被拿起或雕琢。人的情感也從不堅硬或像寶石，而總是如同火焰般，要小心觸碰，甚至小心檢視以防危險。只有在一種狀況下我們的情感才會變得堅硬如寶石，就是當我們變得冷酷如石頭般時。對人類天性的情愛與歡笑的攻擊，從未有比這些唯美主義詩人所提出的把握當下哲學更具殺傷力的。不同的樂趣需要全然不...