What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature? There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. The recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature very much alive. They are forever making new researches, forever practicing on themselves. They learn to understand themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few? This is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humor, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not really carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the first and last. It is all very well for Keats in his airy manner to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that that is all he knows or needs to know. I, for one, need to know a lot more. And I never shall know. Nobody, not even Hazlitt nor Sainte Beuve, has ever finally explained why he thought a book beautiful. I take the first fine lines that come to hand—
是什么让这些狂热的少数人对文学如此热衷？答案只有一个：他们能从文学中获得强烈而持久的乐趣。他们痴迷于文学，就像有些人沉醉于啤酒。这种乐趣的反复重现自然而然地维系着他们对于文学的热情。他们总是孜孜不倦地开展新研究，并身体力行去展开实践。他们学着理解自我，明确自己真正想要什么。随着经验的增长，他们对文学的鉴赏越发可靠。他们不会去欣赏一部未来可能使他们感到无趣的作品。当他们发现一本书索然无味时，任何舆论的喧嚣都不能使他们认为此书富有一丝乐趣。相反，当他们发觉那本书趣味盎然时，任何来自众人的冷漠都无法改变他们对此书的永久认可。他们对自己的鉴赏力充满了信心。什么样的文学作品会为少数人带来那强烈而持久的乐趣呢？这个问题难以回答，到现在都没人能给出确切的答案。你可能会轻率地认为应该是作品中的真理、洞见、智慧、幽默和美感。但是这些美辞并不能使你体会到那种乐趣，因为每个词都需要有确切的含义，尤其是何为“真理”，何为“美感”。不错，济慈用他轻快的文风证明了真理即是美感，美感即是真理，而这也正是他所了解或需要了解的全部。但对我而言，我需要了解更多。即便如此，我也很难真正理解它们的含义。任何人，包括黑兹利特和圣伯夫，到最后都没能解释为什么一本文学作品可以被称优美。我手头有两句文学作品中的诗句——
The woods of Arcady are dead,
阿卡狄的森林已然死亡，And over is their antique joy—
它们那古朴的欢乐也已结束。
and I say that those lines are beautiful because they give me pleasure. But why? No answer! I only know that the passionate few will broadly agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from these lines. I am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause the majority to believe, by faith, that W. B. Yeats is a genius. The one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate few are passionate about the same things. A continuance of interest does, in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments. There is only the difference in width of interest. Some of the passionate few lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is confined to one narrow channel; they have none left over. These men help specially to vitalize the reputations of the narrower geniuses, such as Crashaw. But their active predilections never contradict the general verdict of the passionate few; rather they reënforce it.
我认为这两句诗十分优美，因为它们让我心情愉悦。但为什么会这样？没有答案。我只知道，那些痴迷于文学作品的少数人大体上能与我达成共识，他们能从这些诗行中获得神秘的快乐。我们从同一个作家的这些诗行和其他诗行中体会到的快乐，会使得大众坚信威廉·巴特勒·叶芝是一个文学巨匠，对此我深信不疑。令人欣慰的是，这些少数文学爱好者所表现出来的志趣始终如一。在实践中，坚持一类兴趣的可以最终形成具有共性的观点，不同的只是兴趣的广度。这些少数人中，有些人的兴趣由于缺乏广泛性，常常局限于某一狭窄领域内，从而所剩寥寥。因此他们对作家声誉的促进作用也仅能作用于更有局限性的作家，如克拉肖。但是，这些人的文学偏好并不会和其他少数文学爱好者的文学主张相违背，相反，是对他们文学主张的巩固。
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