首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin troubl
He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin troubl
admin
2012-12-01
27
问题
He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.
He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was the only most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.
He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might exhausting volubility, and that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with, for the sake of peace.
It never occurred to him that he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He had theories about almost any subject under the sun, including vegetarianism, the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote pamphlets, letters, books...thousands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages. He not only wrote these things, and published them — usually at somebody else’s expense — but he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family.
He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist monk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head.
He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under any obligation to do so. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from everybody who was good for a loan — men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame, at others loftily offering his intended benefactor the privilege of contributing to his support, and being mortally offended if the recipient declined the honor. I have found no record of his ever paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it.
The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything that I have said about him you can find on record: in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew him, in his own letters, between the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesn’t matter in the least. Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time. The joke was on us. He was one of the world’s greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living.
When you consider what he wrote — thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the world’s great musical-dramatic masterpieces — when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him don’t seem much of a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who mined France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you will agree that a few thousand dollars’ worth of debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring trilogy.
Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that poor brain and body didn’t burst under the torment of the demon of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could not have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is there any wonder that he had no time to be a man?
We know from the passage that Richard Wagner was NOT a man of
选项
A、arrogance.
B、knowledge.
C、consideration.
D、ambivalence.
答案
C
解析
事实细节题。文章通篇没有提到瓦格纳具有体贴的特点,且由文章可以看出他是个极度自我,不顾别人感受的人,故答案为[C]。第二段首句说他是个极度自负的怪人,且整个第二段都在阐述他的自大,可见arrogance是他的特征之一,故排除[A]。第四段第二句指出“他几乎对所有的领域都有自己的理论…”.故[B]“富有智慧”也是其特征之一,可排除。第五段二、三句说到,“心情不好时,他要么用力跺脚,口出狂言,要么陷入极度的忧郁,阴沉地说要去东方当和尚,了此残生。十分钟后,假如有什么事情使他高兴了,他就会冲出门去,绕着花园跑个不停,或者在沙发上跳上跳下或做倒立。”可见[D]“充满矛盾”也是他的特征之一,可排除。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/12aO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Arapidmeansoflong-distancetransportationbecameanecessityfortheUnitedStatesassettlementspreadfartherwestward.Fo
DavidLandes,authorofTheWealthandPovertyofNations:WhySomeAreSoRichandSomeSoPoor,creditstheworld’seconomics
Itishardformodempeopletoimaginethelifeonehundredyearsago,Notelevision,noplastic,noATMs,noDVDs.Illnessesli
TheoldestnewspaperinAustraliais
Imagineachartthatbeginswhenmanfirstappearedontheplanetandtrackstheeconomicgrowthofsocietiesfromthenforward.
_____wasaleaderoftheModernistMovementinEnglishpoetryandagreatinnovatorofversetechnique.
Extraordinarycreativeactivityhasbeencharacterizedasrevolutionary,flyinginthefaceofwhatisestablishedandproducing
WheredomostofFrenchCanadiansliveinCanada?
"Toerrishuman,toforgive,divine","Alittlelearningisadangerousthing"aretakenfromthepoemswrittenby______
A"scientistic"viewoflanguagewasdominantamongphilosophersandlinguistswhoaffectedtodevelopascientificanalysisof
随机试题
简述现代营销哲学面临的阻力。
()是会计产生和发展的基础。
由于内燃机是一种热能动力机械,因此在满足其动力性和经济性要求的前提下,必须保证具有足够的()。
A公司2009年1月1日起开始执行新会计准则体系,将所得税核算方法由应付税款法改为资产负债表债务法核算,适用的所得税税率为25%,考虑到技术进步因素。自2009年1月1日起将一套管理设备的使用年限由12年改为8年;同时将折旧方法由平均年限法改为年数总和法。
某市阀门公司在生产过程中排出的污水致孙某经营的鱼塘受损。为此,该市环保局经调查取证后拟对该公司作出罚款5万元、责令停产停业的决定。在作出决定之前,市环保局告知阀门公司作出决定的事实、理由及依据,并告知其有陈述申辩和要求组织听证的权利。市环保局应阀门公司的要
设A,B,C都是规阶方阵,且ABC=0,则()
PC机的串行通信接口(COM1、COM2)采用异步通信。异步通信的一帧信息包括起始位、数据位、奇偶校验位(可选)和______。
在考生文件夹下创建文件夹FRISBY,并将属性设置为“只读”。
十进制数18转换成二进制数是()。
A、Thenumberofthemdecreasesdramatically.B、Theymainlymovefromsouthstates.C、TheycometoChicagowithoutworkvisa.D、T
最新回复
(
0
)