英语名篇诵读 怪才（在线收听）

The Monster

怪才

Deems Taylor(迪姆斯·泰勒)

He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man.

His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin

coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.

He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people,

except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself;

in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest

dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To hear

him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had

no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever

lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue . Sometimes he

was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or

dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.

He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on

the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for hours, in

which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility , that in the

end his hearer, stunned and deafened , would agree with him, for the sake of peace.

It never occurred to him that he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating

interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He has theories about almost any subject under

the sun, including the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote

pamphlets, letters, books, thousands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages.

He not only wrote these things, and published them — usually at somebody else's expense — but

he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family.

He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would

rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his

days as a Buddhist monk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of

doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could

be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and heartless to a degree

that would have made a Roman emperor shudder.

He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of

supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under any obligation to do so. He was

convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from

everybody who was good for a loan — men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging

letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame... I have found no record of his ever

paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it.

He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched

through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities . His

second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer, from whom he stole her.

And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend

to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman — any wealthy woman — whom he

could marry for her money.

He was completely selfish in his other personal relationships. His liking for his friends was

measured solely by the completeness of their devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him,

whether financial or artistic. The minute they failed him — even by so much as refusing a dinner

invitation — or began to lessen in usefulness, he cast them off without a second thought. At the

end of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he had known even in middle age.

The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything that I have said about him you

can find on record — in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew

him, in his own letter, between the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this

record is that it doesn't matter in the least.

Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time, the

joke was on us. He was one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one

of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world

did owe him a living.

What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he

was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise

with what he believed, with what he dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been

conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner.

There is greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for

what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb

with wonder that his poor brain and body didn't burst under the torment of the demon of creative

energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at

him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of

seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had no

time to be a man?

他身材矮小，头却很大，与身体不成比例——一个病怏怏的小矮人。他神经兮兮，有

皮肤病。贴身穿任何比丝绸粗糙点的衣料都会使他痛苦不堪。他狂妄自负。

他是个妄自尊大的怪物。对这个世界和芸芸众生，他从来看都不看一眼，除非跟他有

联系。在他看来，他不仅是世界上最重要的人物，而且还是唯一存在的人。他相信自己是

世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一，最伟大的思想家之一，最伟大的作曲家之一。听他讲话，他

就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬和柏拉图于一身。想听他讲话一点也不难。他是有史以来最让人

听得疲惫不堪的健谈者之一。同他待一个晚上就等于花一个晚上听一篇滔滔不绝的独白。

有时候妙语如珠，有时则让人极其厌烦。但是不论他讲得精彩还是乏味，他只讲一个主

题：他自己，他的思想和行为。

他狂热地追求自己永远正确。任何人，哪怕只是对最微不足道的一点表示出丝毫的不

赞成，就会惹得他高声训斥，这训斥可能会持续几个小时，其间，他证明自己在许许多多

方面都是对的，口若悬河，令人疲惫，结果，被训斥的人目瞪口呆，两耳发麻，只好赞成

他的话，以求平息事端。

他从没想过，他和他的行为不会让与他接触的人产生最强烈、最津津有味的兴趣。他

对天底下任何一个专题都有自己的理论，包括戏剧、政治和音乐；为了支持这些理论，他

写了小册子、信函和书，下笔千言，达数百页之多。他不仅写，还把它们出版——通常由

别人出资——而且他还会一连数小时坐着为朋友和家人高声朗读。

他情绪如六岁儿童。心情不佳时，他会胡言乱语，把脚跺得砰砰响，或陷入极度忧郁

中，气呼呼地说着要去东方当和尚，以了残生。十分钟后，有什么东西使他高兴时，他又

会冲出房子，围着花园跑，或在沙发上跳上跳下，或玩倒立。他会为一条爱犬的死而伤心

不已，也会冷漠无情，足以使罗马皇帝战栗。

他几乎没有任何责任感。他似乎不仅不能养活自己，而且从没想到过自己有义务谋

生。他确信这个世界就该养活他。为了证明自己的信念，他从每个能借到钱的人那里借钱

——男人，女人，朋友，抑或陌生人。他写了几十封乞求信，有时候卑躬屈膝，不知廉

耻……我从没发现过如果别人不告上法庭他就会主动付账或还钱的情况。

他在别的方面也同样放荡不羁。无数的女人在他的生活中川流不息。他的首任妻子跟

他过了二十年，忍受着、宽恕着他的不忠。他的第二任妻子是他最忠实的朋友和仰慕者的

妻子，他把她夺了过来。甚至当他竭力劝说她离开她的第一任丈夫嫁给他时，他还正在给

一位朋友写信，询问他能否建议某个有钱的女人——任何有钱的女人——他能够娶她，把

她的钱弄到手。

他在别的私人关系中也极端自私。他对朋友的喜好，完全是以他们对他的忠诚程度或

者对他是否有用来衡量的。无论是钱财方面或艺术方面都是如此。朋友一旦未能如他所愿

——哪怕只是拒绝一次晚宴邀请——或者实用性上有所降低，他会想都不想一脚把他们踢

开。在行将就木时，他只剩下一个在中年时期结识的朋友。

这个怪人的名字叫理查德·瓦格纳。我说的关于他的一切都记录在案——在报纸上，在

警察报告里，在认识他的人的证词中，在他自己的信函里，在他自传的字里行间。奇怪的

是，这些记录对他毫发无损。

因为这个个头矮小、满脸病容、难以相处、让人着迷的人，永远都是对的，可笑的是

我们。他是世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一，是一位伟大的思想家，是目前为止世界上最了不

起的音乐天才之一。这个世界确实应该养活他。

他对朋友和妻子不忠，那又怎样呢？他却有一位至死都忠贞不渝的情侣：音乐。他一

刻都没有动摇过自己的信念和憧憬。他的作品中没有一行乐谱是平庸之辈构想得出的。即

使他有枯燥乏味或极其糟糕的作品，其乏味中仍可见伟大之处。他最糟糕的败笔中也有不

凡之处。听他的音乐，人们并不因他会是什么人或不是什么人才原谅他。这无关原谅。这

是啧啧称羡，万分惊奇：这个不健全的头脑和孱弱的身躯，并没有被创造力的魔鬼折磨得

爆裂掉；这个魔鬼在他体内挣扎着，撕咬着，抓搔着，想要被放出来，撕扯着他，对他尖

声高叫着，要他把内心的乐章谱写出来。令人感到不可思议的是，短短七十年，他居然能

够取得那么大的成就，即使一个伟大的天才，也难以做到。他没有时间过常人的生活，这

又有什么好奇怪的呢？