乔伊斯与莫言
纽约书评，乔伊斯传
More simply, there is the heroism that is utterly lost in all the reverence and martyrology: the fearlessness of Joyce’s comedy. In 1900, the seventeen-year-old Joyce spoke to a university debating society on drama and life: “Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes, men and women as we meet them in the real world…. The great human comedy in which each has a share, gives limitless scope to the true artist….” But these two tasks—to accept men and women as they really are and yet to revel in the “great human comedy”—are not easy to combine. Utter realism generally defeats comedy. Joyce looked more unflinchingly at men and women than anyone had done before—at their follies, betrayals, cruelties, and delusions, their dirty little minds and their inglorious secret impulses. Astonishingly, he managed to find them even more comic—responding not with the cruel laughter of contempt or the bitter laughter of absurdity but with the forgiving laughter of an infinite tolerance.
More simply, there is the heroism that is utterly lost in all the reverence and martyrology: the fearlessness of Joyce’s comedy. In 1900, the seventeen-year-old Joyce spoke to a university debating society on drama and life: “Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes, men and women as we meet them in the real world…. The great human comedy in which each has a share, gives limitless scope to the true artist….” But these two tasks—to accept men and women as they really are and yet to revel in the “great human comedy”—are not easy to combine. Utter realism generally defeats comedy. Joyce looked more unflinchingly at men and women than anyone had done before—at their follies, betrayals, cruelties, and delusions, their dirty little minds and their inglorious secret impulses. Astonishingly, he managed to find them even more comic—responding not with the cruel laughter of contempt or the bitter laughter of absurdity but with the forgiving laughter of an infinite tolerance.
