《伊利亚随笔》书评

Essays of Elia

The humorists, according to the best theory I can form of, is composed of 2 distinct clusters, those from the most humorous countries, and those from the least. Chieftain of the former, Roberto Benigni from Italy, a country of romance and sunshine, who gamboled like a boy when the movie he directed and acted in, ‘Life Is Beautiful’, won 3 Academy Awards, wears a typical face of a comedian, even a glance of which may bring about a transport of laughter, like a valve of N2O. The humor of the latter, however, arises from the sharp contrast between their mannerism and our anticipation based on the countries they come from, and the people they live with. Joseph Haydn, for instance, was a jocular Kapellmeister to Duke Esterhazy, one of the richest and most influential figures among the Hungarian nobility. Notwithstanding his social status and big salary, he was a very unlucky fellow. At his time, music was a mere symbol of aristocracy. A full chamber could always be expected, yet few of the humorless dignitaries were really interested in the rhythms. Thus the symphony ‘Surprise’ was composed: a sudden loud chord in the theme of the second movement after a tranquil opening. The bolt from the blue was supposed to wake up the audience who had started to doze off. What’s worse, his marriage was a complete calamity, particularly in a country where divorce was banned. Haydn married not the girl he was in love with, but her sister named Anna Maria. Unfortunately, Maria had neither rhyme nor reason in her composition. She even committed the incredible crime of using the composer’s manuscript scores for curling paper, as underlays for pastry, and similar things! When Haydn left home one time and another, she would send him the most cheerful little notes. ‘Should you die today or tomorrow,’ ran one of these missives, ‘there isn’t enough money left in the house to bury you.’ Pleasant reading this for the genial composer! In this case he wrote, without a trace of anger: ‘Should this be so, take my manuscripts to the music publisher. I guarantee you that they will be worth money enough to defray my funeral expenses.’The humor which belongs to the most humorous countries is to be wished; but the humor that belongs to the least humorous countries is to be admired.Likewise, any flower is a miracle on the barren land of humor named England. Revered as the pioneer of modern football, Team England was too conceited to play the adult vs kid games in the first 3 World Cup Finals. It eventually got off its high horse to make an ‘inspection tour’ around the 4th, and suffered a discreditable loss by 0:1 to the U.S.A., a virgin soil of this game. A correspondent at London headquarters found it totally inconceivable. He humorously added the number ‘1’ to the front of ‘0’, and cooked up a 10:1 victory for the Union Jack, a score he considered as reasonable.This is England, a nation with a glorious past from which everything in future seems to have an answer.As a true son of England, Charles Lamb was engrossed in everything with an age----old actors, old benchers, old china, old schoolmaster, old Margate Hoy, time-honored South-Sea House, artificial comedy of the last century, newspapers thirty-five years ago, etc. ‘Antiquity! Thou wondrous charm, what art thou? That, being nothing, art everything!’On the flip side, he confessed that he did feel the differences of mankind to an unhealthy excess. He had been trying all his life to like Scotchmen, Jews, Negroes as well as Quakers, and was obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. As a bachelor, he had spent a good deal of time in noting down the infirmities of married people, and what strengthened him in those anti-social resolutions wasn’t the quarrels of men and their wives, but that they were too loving! Even an affluent senectitude went against the grain. Through the harangue of Bridget, he wished the good old times would come again. ‘A purchase is but a purchase, now that you’ve money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph.’The humor of Charles Lamb is also incarnated in his discursive style of writing. To think the title, ‘Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading’, would lead to the cover and binding of folios rather than his commentary on authors and masterpieces! And on such deafening words as ‘I’ve no ear’, the readers couldn’t help imagining that he was by nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and handsome volutes to the human capital, but what he actually meant was for music.