晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 71. Beauty Is Meaningless
 音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.76]Passage 71. Beauty Is Meaningless[00:08.32]A young man sees a sunset and, [00:12.37]unable to understand or to express the emotion that it rouses in him, [00:16.53]concludes that it must be the gateway to a world that lies beyond. [00:20.69]It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience [00:26.04]to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light [00:29.88]that shines down to us from a different realm of existence,different and, [00:34.25]because the experience is intensively moving, in some way higher. [00:38.30]And, though the gleams blind and dazzle, [00:41.69]yet they do convey a hint of beauty and serenity greater than we have known or imagined. [00:46.50]Greater too than we can describe, for language, [00:50.89]which was invented to convey the meanings of this world, [00:54.60]cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another. [00:57.55]That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable. [01:04.01]In some moods,Nature shares it. [01:06.96]There is no sky in June so blue that it does not point forward to a bluer, [01:12.22]no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty, [01:17.47]a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, [01:20.97]and in passing leaves an indefinable longing and regret. [01:24.58]But, if this world is not merely a bad joke, [01:28.08]life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars, [01:32.35]and existence an empty laugh braying across the mysteries, [01:36.18]if these intimations of something behind and beyond are not evil humor born of indigestion, [01:42.41]or whimsies sent by the devil to mock and madden us, [01:45.59]if, in a word, beauty means something,yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning. [01:51.71]If we glimpse the unutterable,it is unwise to try to utter it, [01:56.53]nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp. [02:01.23]Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless. |
