我的生活海伦凯勒摘抄 海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第60期

海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第60期  

Then
too
there is in German literature a fine reserve which I like; but its chief glory is the recognition I find in it of the redeeming potency of woman's self-sacrificing love. This thought pervades all German literature and is mystically expressed in Goethe's "Faust":
All things transitory
But as symbols are sent.
唯其意象绵绵不绝。
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event.
The indescribable
Here it is done.
The Woman Soul leads us upward and on!
Of all the French writers that I have read
I like Moli鑢e and Racine best. There are fine things in Balzac and passages in M閞im闲 which strike one like a keen blast of sea air. Alfred de Musset is impossible! I admire Victor Hugo—I appreciate his genius
his brilliancy
his romanticism; though he is not one of my literary passions. But Hugo and Goethe and Schiller and all great poets of all great nations are interpreters of eternal things
and my spirit reverently follows them into the regions where Beauty and Truth and Goodness are one.
I am afraid I have written too much about my book-friends
and yet I have mentioned only the authors I love most; and from this fact one might easily suppose that my circle of friends was very limited and undemocratic
which would be a very wrong impression. I like many writers for many reasons—Carlyle for his ruggedness and scorn of shams; Wordsworth
who teaches the oneness of man and nature; I find an exquisite pleasure in the oddities and surprises of Hood
in Herrick's quaintness and the palpable scent of lily and rose in his verses; I like Whittier for his enthusiasms and moral rectitude. I knew him
and the gentle remembrance of our friendship doubles the pleasure I have in reading his poems. I love Mark Twain—who does not? The gods
too
loved him and put into his heart all manner of wisdom; then
fearing lest he should bee a pessimist
they spanned his mind with a rainbow of love and faith. I like Scott for his freshness
dash and large honesty. I love all writers whose minds
like Lowell's
bubble up in the sunshine of optimism—fountains of joy and good will
with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.
In a word
literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet
gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance pared with their "large loves and heavenly charities."