英美散文讲义(4)

Worship of the 19th century, in addition to a legion of critical essays, academic essays, book reviews, etc. are all such impersonal essays.

On the other hand, Montaigne’s familiarity has been taken over as an established tradition by a host of English essayists, all big names, such as Samuel Pepys (as in Diary), Jonathan Swift (as in A Modest Proposal), Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (as in numerous Tatler essays), Charles Lamb (as in Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia), Hazlitt (as in On Prejudice),Charles Dickens (as in Sketches by Boz), William Thackery (as in Yellowplush Correspondence). What first and foremost distinguishes a familiar essay or a personal essay from the impersonal is a persistent egotism, the stubborn ―I‖. In such writings oftentimes ―what‖ is less important than ―how‖ and usually its purpose, avowed or unsaid, is not to inform but to help feel, brood or meditate -- in short, to share in the essayist’s mood or humor as Montaigne called it. If you accuse an essayist of egotism, it’s pleasing egotism, not hard-sold but inviting by its own inherent charm or covert magic. Usually the essayist has a quick ear or a quick eye, an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things and common people. The essay may touch on a great variety of subjects (chatty discursiveness being a hallmark). None the less, there is always a central mood. As we shall presently see in Max Beerbohm’s Seeing People Off, now a classic. At least two different stories are told in the essay, apparently totally unconnected. But a central mood has persisted, i.e., the essayist’s own cynicism about human nature.

On the other side of the Atlantic the essay largely follows the same patterns of evolvement. For details we’ll begin by looking at Phillip Lopate’s I mentioned above. Again, photocopying parts of the book or more preferably in its entirety is strongly recommended.

4）

由远及近，娓娓道来

凸显自我，诚实袒露

以枉求直，详而毋尽

思无定契，笔随心至

亦庄亦谐，妙语连珠

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