14 Human Life a Poem (II)

Lin Yutang

There are sometimes in many of us too many staccatos or impetuosos , and because the tempo is wrong, the music is not pleasing to the ear; we might have more of the grand rhythm and majestic tempo of the Ganges, flowing slowly and eternally into the sea.

No one can say that a life with childhood, manhood and old age is not a beautiful arrangement; the day has its morning, noon and sunset, and the year has its seasons, and it is good that it is so. There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according to its own season. And if we take this biological view of life and try to live according to the seasons, no one but a conceited fool or an impossible idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a poem. Shakespeare has expressed this idea more graphically in his passage about the seven stages of life, and a good many Chinese writers have said about the same thing. It is curious that Shakespeare was never very religious, or very much concerned with religion. I think this was his greatness; he took human life largely as it was, and intruded himself as little upon the general scheme of things as he did upon the characters of his plays. Shakespeare was like nature itself, and that is the greatest compliment we can pay to a writer or thinker. He merely lived, observed life and went away.

难词释义

leitmotif [ˈlaɪtməʊtiːf] n. 主旋律；主题

staccato [stəˈkɑːtəʊ] n. （音乐术语）断音；断奏

impetuoso [ɪmˈpetʃuəsəʊ] n. （音乐术语）强音

tempo [ˈtempəʊ] n. 速度，节奏

conceited [kənˈsiːtɪd] adj. 自负的；骄傲自大的

graphically [ˈgræfɪkli] adv. 形象地；生动地

人生如诗（二）

林语堂

在我们许多人胸中有时会有太多的断奏或强音，那是因为节奏错了，生命的乐曲因此而不再悦耳。我们应该如恒河，学她气势恢宏而豪迈地缓缓流向大海。

人生有童年、壮年和暮年，谁也不能否认这是一种美好的安排，一天要有清晨、正午和日落，一年要有四季之分，如此才好。人生本无好坏之分，只是各个季节有各自的好处。倘若我们持此种生物学的观点，并循着季节去生活，除了狂妄自大的傻瓜和无可救药的理想主义者，谁能说人生不能像诗一般度过呢？莎士比亚在他的一段话中形象地阐述了人生有七个阶段的观点，很多中国作家也说过类似的话。奇怪的是，莎士比亚并不是虔诚的宗教徒，也不怎么关心宗教。我想这正是他的伟大之处，他对人生秉着顺其自然的态度，他对生活之事的干涉和改动很少，正如他对戏剧人物那样。莎翁就像自然一样，这是我们能给作家或思想家的最高褒奖。对人生，他只是一路经历着，观察着，最终离开了。