Chapter 29 Chapter Twenty Nine

Autumn and winter come.Vickers went to Berlin to listen to Paulson, and Hayward began to think about going south.The local theater is putting on a variety of plays.Philip and Hayward went to the theater two or three times a week.The purpose of going to the theater is quite commendable, but to improve their German level.Philip found that learning the language in this way was more lively and interesting than listening to a preacher.They are in the midst of a revival of drama.Several of Ibsen's plays were in the winter repertoire.Suttelman's "Honor" is a new work. After it was staged, this quiet university town was in an uproar. Some praised it highly, and some criticized it bitterly.Other playwrights followed closely and contributed many scripts written under the influence of the new trend of thought.Philip's eyes were wide open. In the series of plays he saw, the evil of human beings was fully exposed.He had never seen a play before (sometimes poor touring troupes come to Blackstable's village hall, but the vicar, partly because of his profession, and partly because he thought going to the theater unrefined, so he never condescended to condescend), he was deeply attracted by the emotions of the characters on the stage.As soon as he entered the poorly lit little theatre, his heart fluttered.It was not long before Philip knew the peculiarities of the little troupe like the back of his hand.Just by looking at the distribution of the actors' parts, one could tell at once the character traits of the characters in the play; but this did not affect Philip's interest.To him the theater was real life, a strange, grim and painful life, in which men and women exposed their inner evils to merciless plain sight: good looks enveloping corrupt souls Gentlemen and ladies use virtue as a mask to hide their ugly privacy; the superficial strong gradually become stern because of their own weaknesses; honest people are not honest;You are in a room like this: the night before, people were drinking and feasting here. In the morning, the windows have not been opened, the air is stale, the wine is stale, the glasses are messy, and the gas lamp is still burning.There is no hearty laughter in the audience, at most it is just a few snickers at those hypocrites or fools: the cruel words used by the people in the play seem to be squeezed out of their hearts under the pressure of shame and pain of.

Philip was fascinated by the depths of evil in this world.He seems to be re-examining the world in another way, and he is also eager to understand the world in front of him thoroughly.After the performance Philip went with Hayward to the tavern, and sat in the bright and warm room, eating a sandwich and drinking a glass of beer.Around them, groups of students chatted and laughed happily.There are also quite a few families visiting the hotel, parents, two or three sons, and a daughter.Sometimes, when the daughter made a harsh one-liner, the father would lean back in his chair and laugh, really, really well.The atmosphere is extremely cordial and pure, and it is a picture of family happiness.However, Philip turned a blind eye to all of this.He was still reminiscing about the scene he had just seen in the theater.

"Don't you think that's life, don't you?" he said excitedly. "You know, I'm not going to stay here long. I'm going to London, and start living the real life. I'm going to see the world. It's tiresome to be preparing for life all the time: I'm going to have a taste of life." taste." Sometimes Hayward left Philip alone to the apartment.He never gave a definite answer to Philip's impatient questions, but talked about it with a vain giggle and oblique remarks.A certain love affair.He also quotes some old Seti verses.Once even showed Philip a sonnet.The poem is full of enthusiasm, gorgeous words, full of mournful mood, and the whole poem is written for a girl named Trude.Heyward puts a glossy poetry on his sordid, vulgar "little adventures", and thinks that his verse has something in the legacy of Pericles and Phidias, because He deliberately chose the word "hetaira" when describing the person he was after, and did not bother to choose one of the straightforward and more appropriate words provided by the English language. Driven by curiosity, Philip once went to I walked around the side street near the old bridge. There were some neat white houses with green shutters, and Miss Trude lived there, according to Hayward. But I walked out the door. The women in the house, all painted, with fierce faces, greeted him with rough voices which could not help terrifying him, and tried to hold Philip back with their thick hands, which made him run away. He especially Eager to gain experience, feel naive and ridiculous, because at this age, he has not yet experienced the so-called "the most important thing in life" that all novels have exaggerated; unfortunately, he was born with the kind of insight into things as they are The ability to aim, the reality that appeared in front of him, and the ideal in his dream, the difference is as big as the world.

He didn't understand that in the journey of life, one has to cross a large area of ​​arid, barren and treacherous wilderness before entering the living reality.The so-called "how happy is youth" is but an illusion, an illusion of those whose youth is gone; and the young know that they are wretched, because they are full of unrealistic fantasies, implanted from without It goes to their minds, and whenever they come into contact with reality, they are always bruised.It seemed as if they had been the victims of a conspiracy, for the books they read (the best that survived the inevitable selection) and the conversations of their elders (whose looking back through the rose-colored haze of forgetfulness), both open up for them a false prospect of life.Young people have to discover by themselves: the books they have read and the words they have heard are lies, lies, lies; Drive another nail into the body.It is unbelievable that everyone who has experienced pain and disillusionment, driven by the irresistible force in their hearts, always consciously or unconsciously adds a layer of illusion to real life.Nothing in the world could be worse for Philip than being in Hayward's company.Hayward was a man who looked at everything around him with a bookish air, without an opinion of his own; he was dangerous because he deceived himself to the point of being sincere.He sincerely mistook his sensuality for romantic love, his indecision for the temperament of the artist, and his idleness for the detachment of the philosopher.He was a mediocre mind, and yet so devoted to magnificence, that everything from his eyes was veiled with a sentimental golden haze, and their outlines were blurred, so that they appeared larger than they really were.He is lying, but he never knows that he is lying; when others point him out, he says that lies are beautiful.He is an idealist.