Countries Of The Mind (John Middlestone Murray)

2013年6. 3重讀 真想好好讀此書之三分之二. 不過仍弄不清楚"很麻煩的電子檔"

http://www.archive.org/details/CountriesOfTheMind

2008.3.22
Countries Of The Mind (1922/1931) 此書名被後人襲用多次

Author: John Middlestone Murray



這本書在錢鍾書先生的”談藝錄”一書中共引三次，作者姓都拼成Murry 並有兩種不同的翻譯。
主要問題是不同時間的筆記：最明顯的是Milton 可以有四種中文：彌（密）爾頓（敦）。




Prefatory Mote

TO THE FIRST EDITION (1922)

THE majority of these essays originally appeared in
The Times Literary Supplement, others in the Nation
and Athenaeum, the London Mercury, the Dial, and the
New Republic. I have to thank the editors of these
periodicals for permission to reprint them.

Many of them were written on the occasion of anni-
•versaries. - There is something arbitrary, therefore, in
grouping them in a single volume; and yet perhaps
their association is not really quite so accidental as may
at first sight appear. The year 1821, in which Dostoevsky,
Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Amiel were born, was ob-
viously a crucial moment in the spiritual history of the
nineteenth century; and these four men, animated by
a similar spirit of disillusion, are best understood in
relation to one another. Dostoevsky, it is true, is treated
only incidentally in this volume: but I may be allowed
to refer the reader to my earlier book, Fyodor Dostoevsky:
A Critical Study.

The two essays on Shakespeare, the one as general as
the other is particular, deal with what is essentially the
same subject; while the two essays on Clare and Collins
are complementary, as exhibiting two directly con-
trasted types of poetic sensibility.

Underlying all the essays in this volume is a theory of
the psychology of literary creation, which is expounded
in greater detail in a series of lectures on 'The Problem
of Style3, recently published. A few shorter essays are
included, either because they are examples of the appli-
cation of this theory or because they make clear my
conviction that a theory of this kind, whether mine or
another, is necessary to literary criticism, if it is not to
be incoherent and spasmodic.

Two objections were frequently made by reviewers to
the volume of essays, Aspects of Literature, to which this
is the successor: first, that the principles on which it was
based were not more elaborately and philosophically
expounded; second, that it contained relatively little
criticism of contemporary writers. The answer to both
these objections is the same. A professional critic is
almost entirely at the mercy of occasion. There are
many things he would like to do which he cannot afford
to do; instead, he spends a great deal of his life writing
brief criticisms in which he is forced to mutilate his
own opinions, theories, and ideals. This condition of
things may easily seem more deplorable than it actually
is; for, though it is pleasant to dream of a time when
the exhaustive discussion of literary theory and practice
will find an eager and appreciative audience, when the
critic's tacit assertion that fine books and fine poems are
not produced every week will no longer be thought to
prove that he is lacking in sympathy, or even in common
human kindness, the fact remains that compulsion has
produced far more good literary work of every kind than
the unembarrassed pursuit of an artistic ideal has ever
done, And though it would be extravagant to urge that
the struggle against arbitrary limitations in which a
modern critic is engaged is the same as that exhilarating
contest with a stringent literary form which is the con-
dition of some of the greatest triumphs of literature, the
likeness between them is sufficient to enable the critic
to feel that, on the whole, he gains more than he loses
by the effort.



Contents

I. SHAKESPEARE AND LOVE i

II. A NEGLECTED HEROINE OF SHAKESPEARE 18

III. BURTON'S 'ANATOMY5 .... 33

IV. THE POETRY OF WILLIAM COLLINS . 54
V. THE POETRY OF JOHN CLARE ... 69

VI. THE POETRY OF WALTER DE LA MARE . 83

VII. 'ARABIA DESERTA' . . . . .94

VIII. CHARLES MONTAGU DOUGHTY . . 104

IX. BAUDELAIRE.......115

X. AMIEL........ 137

XL AMIEL'S LOVE STORY . . . . .151
XII. GUSTAVE FLAUBERT.....158

XIII. STENDHAL . . . . . . .174

XIV. A CRITICAL CREDO . . , . . 183
NOTES . . ' . . . . . .190