The Cardinal Virtue of Prose散文的本质特征

By Arthur Clutton-Brock

Prose of its very nature is longer than verse,and the virtues peculiar to it manifest themselves gradually. If the cardinal virtue of poetry is love, the cardinal virtue of prose is justice; and, whereas love makes you act and speak on the spur of moment, justice needs inquiry, patience, and a control even of the noblest passions. By justice here I do not mean justice only to particular people or ideas, but a habit of justice in all the processes of thought, a style tranquillized and a form moulded by that habit.

本质上，散文长于韵文，散文独有的品质逐渐显现。若诗歌的主要品质是爱，那散文的主要品质就是正义;而且，尽管爱会让你一时心血来潮的去动作和表达，但正义则需要质询，耐心和对强烈感情的控制。这里所说的正义，并非专对某些人或思想，正义是所有思想过程中的习惯，以及由此习惯铸就的形态和沉静的风格。

The master of prose is not cold, but will not let any word or image inflame him with a heat irrelevant to his purpose. Unhasting, unresting, he pursues it, subduing all the riches of his mind to it, rejecting all beauties that are not germane to it; making his own beauty out of the very accomplishment of it, out of the whole work and its proportions, so that you must read to the end before you know that it is beautiful.

散文大家并不冷漠，但也不会因头脑发热，让任意与其目的无关的词汇或形象扰乱自己。从容不迫，坚持不懈，他追寻着它，献出自己毕生的智慧，赶走所有与它无关的浮华。成就散文创造自己的美，美渗透于整体和部分，所以你只有把它读完，才能发现它的美。

But he has his reward, for he is trusted and convinces, as those who are at the mercy of their own eloquence do not; and he gives a pleasure all the greater for being hardly noticed. In the best prose, whether narrative or argument, we are so led on as we read, that we do not stop to applaud the writer, nor do we stop to question him.

但他也有所回报，因为人们信任他，他也使人们信服，这正是那些靠口才的人所不能得到的;他不露声色而给人更大的愉悦。最好的散文，无论是叙述或辩论，都使我们着迷，已无心停下来为作者叫好，亦或质询什么。