第一章｜E07 文字何以寿？神采千年生

第一章｜E07 文字何以寿？神采千年生

课程导读

在前六节课中，我们感受到林语堂对苏东坡的喜爱之情溢于言表。接下来，我们将正式进入本书的第一章“文忠公”，跟随林先生一起跨越千年时光，感受苏东坡的无穷魅力。为何苏东坡如此让人偏爱？

英文原文

Chapter One

LITERARY PATRIOTIC DUKE

It is really not so difficult to know a man dead a thousand years ago.

Considering how incomplete our knowledge usually is of people who live in the same city with us, or even of the private life of the mayor, it seems sometimes easier to know a dead man than a living one.

For one thing, the living man's life is not completed, and one never knows what he is going to do next when a crisis comes.

The drunkard reforms, the saint falls, and the pastor runs away with a choir girl.

A living man has always so many "possibilities."

Then, too, the living man has secrets, and some of the best secrets usually come out long after the man is dead.

That is why it is so difficult usually to judge a contemporary, whose life is too close to us.

Not so with a dead poet like Su Tungpo. I read his journals, his seventeen hundred poems, and his eight hundred private letters.

The question of knowing or not knowing a man has nothing to do with being his contemporary.

It is a matter of sympathetic understanding.

After all, one knows only those whom one really understands, and one completely understands only those whom one really likes.

I think I know Su Tungpo completely because I understand him, and I understand him because I like him.

The question of liking a poet is always a question of taste.

I think Li Po reached a greater height of sublimity and Tu Fu reached a greater stature in his total impression as a poet great by all the standards of greatness in poetry—freshness, naturalness, technical skill, and compassions. But without any apology, my favorite poet is Su Tungpo.