chalpin

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So violently did the vulgar clasp him to its unclean bosom that the cultured upper classes reacted to any mention of his name as they would to a bathroom joke—they saw the point, but would not be caught laughing at it. This son of moonlight and custard pie crust was a green pea off the knives of the intelligentsia until statements of his began to appear in the public press to the effect that "Solitude is my only relief. ... I live with abstract thinkers, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Walter Pater. . . . Human contact makes me ill. ... I resolve to retire to some Italian lake with my beloved Shelley, Keats, and violin. ... I am too tragic by nature. ... I don\'t give a damn about anybody. ..." Critics took him up. On the strength of his avowed penchant for philosophical thought, they decided that he was a genius. H. G. Wells was proud to meet him. George Bernard Shaw gave him a couple of hundred well-chosen words. Meanwhile, Genius Chaplin continued to put one foot in front of the other much as before. He sat down in eggs. He held babies in his lap. His salary became $1,000,000 a year.

The complicated misanthropy which enabled him, his interpreters declared, to love the public and spurn humanity, did not preclude certain trifling investigation of the tenderer emotions. One such investigation—attempted in 1918 with Mildred Harris—ended in a divorce. She charged that he starved her, got drunk, hit hard. To down the scurrile rumor that he had been seared by the red-hot lips of Actress Pola Negri, he last year married (in Mexico) his leading lady, Lita Grey, aged 16.

In these slight ruffles he retained both his composure and his reticence. Grave, deliberate, costly, he has gone on utilizing the genius with which few who deify him as a thinker, apotheosize him as a tragedian, credit him the genius for being funny.

• Chosen for their parts by Chaplin out of carloads of assorted tramps.

1925年TIMES最佳封面——卓别林(3/3）

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平民们将他和他电影中表达含糊不清的思想过度曲解，以致受过良好教育的上层阶级开始视他和他的作品为饭后茶余的消遣。不过他们这是这样认为，并没有嘲笑他的恶意。这位月光之子和奶油蛋羹派外皮就像无需知识分子餐刀切割的绿豌豆，这种情况一直持续到他在公共媒体上宣布“孤独是我唯一的信仰……我和那些抽象的思想家独处：斯宾诺莎、叔本华、尼采、瓦尔特 帕特……与人类接触令我难受……我决定和雪莱、济慈、还有小提琴一起隐居于意大利的湖畔……我天生就是个悲剧……我不在意别人的想法……”评论家们借此又把他捧了起来。凭借他自己透露的对哲学思想的强烈偏爱，评论家们断定他是个天才。H. G. Wells *1以和他见面为荣，George Bernard Shaw （萧伯纳）对他有很高赞誉，字字珠玑。同时，和过去一样天才卓别林继续领先于其它人的脚步。他坐在鸡蛋上，把孩子放在腿上。他的年薪已经是100万美金。

卓别林的发言人说复杂的厌世情绪使他热爱公众而弃绝人性，但是这并不排除他会涉猎一点点爱情。这样的浅尝辄止在1918年发生了，他娶了Mildred Harris，不过最后以离婚告终。她谴责他不给她饭吃，让她酗酒、还打她。为了澄清他已被那长着一张烈焰红唇的女演员 Pola Negri吮骨吸髓的恶意谣言，去年他又和16岁的Lita Grey在墨西哥成婚。

面对这些轻微滋扰，他沉着冷静、保持沉默。他依然用他的才华精雕细琢、斥资庞大。而因很少人看到他的这些才华，也没有多少人尊称他为思想家、将他神化为悲剧演员、或是把他誉为喜剧天才。

*卓别林的电影中大多数人物形象来自形形色色的流浪汉。

译注1：Herbert George Wells, 1866-1946, 英国科幻小说作家，著有《时间机器》THE TIME MACHINE (1895)等等，他的很多作品都被无数次的翻拍成电影，如2000年《世界大战/世界之战》War of the Worlds。