音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.77]Passage 18. The Props to Help Man Endure (II)

[00:06.79]Until he does so, he labors under a curse.

[00:12.26]He writes not of love, but of lust,

[00:15.11]of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value,

[00:19.15]of victories without hope, and most of all, without pity or compassion.

[00:24.73]His grief weaves on no universal bone, leaving no scars.

[00:30.31]He writes not of the heart, but of the glands.

[00:33.81]Until he relearns these things,

[00:36.88]he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man.

[00:41.15]I decline to accept the end of man.

[00:44.43]It’s easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure:

[00:50.12]that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged

[00:54.38]and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tireless in the last red and dying evening,

[01:00.84]that even then, there will still be one more sound:

[01:05.22]that of his puny and inexhaustible voice, still talking.

[01:10.57]I refuse to accept this.

[01:12.99]I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.

[01:17.69]He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice,

[01:23.92]but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion,and sacrifice, and endurance.

[01:32.35]The poets’, the writers’ duty is to write about these things.

[01:37.50]It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart,

[01:41.98]by reminding him of the courage,and honor

[01:45.38]and hope and compassion and pity

[01:48.48]and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

[01:52.63]The poets' voice need not merely be the record of man,

[01:56.79]it can be one of the props,

[01:59.30]the pillars to help him endure and prevail.