One
In Copenhagen's Seaside Park, the mermaid, daughter of the sea, had been sitting alone on the large round rock that rose out of the water for nearly a century, and would continue to do so for years to come. Half turned on her side, she gazed out over the deep waters, letting the long hours pass her by. Though someone had stolen her tiny head in the night, cut off one of her arms, painted her naked body in a bikini swimsuit, dyed her hair blood red, and even blackened her entire body, her posture was the same as it had always been, and it would never change. No matter what kind of wind blows in the four seasons, no matter what kind of cloud floats above her head, she is so persistent to let her fish-tailed lower body climb on the boulder, and keep the same posture, just as she sacrificed her beautiful tongue and beautiful voice to obtain "an immortal soul", and became a mute who could not speak and sing; in order to hold on to her heart, she sacrificed her beautiful tongue, and became a mute who could not speak and sing; and in order to hold on to her heart, she sacrificed her beautiful tongue, and turned into a mute who could not speak and sing. In order to keep the love in her heart, she would rather sacrifice her life and become a foam in the sea. Every day, tourists from all over the world recklessly touch her with their eyes and peer at her with cameras and video cameras; many people know this is the character in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, and very few people remember her dreams and her resolute soul.
When I came with a group of tourists to the embankment where the mermaid was located, I could not help but feel a kind of nervousness in my heart, a kind of trembling. Looking at the mermaid's small brown body, I felt that she is definitely not just a lifeless bronze statue, which must contain an immortal, puffing soul. In the poetic fairy tale, Hans Christian Andersen gave her - the little mermaid - the life of a noble spirit, and I felt that this life flowed in the copper body in front of me. In an extremely secularized world, life has long since become the last sacred thing; and the reverence for life is, in a way, the reverence for divinity. However, excited tourists face this bronze statue of life, pointing and pointing while holding up cameras and video recorders to take pictures. Some tourists even climbed up to the big round stone to touch her chilled skin and take a not-so-false photo with her. No one cared how lonely she was, no one thought that she might need to face the sea, her home, quietly and alone. I don't know how many tourists come to see her as if she were a world-famous rare animal, satisfied with the tourist mentality of "I've been here, I've seen it," not realizing what a blasphemy it would be to do so to her noble and lonely soul.
Autumn seawater is as blue as ink and as hard as ice, making the mermaid's figure more and more lonely and gloomy. Standing on the embankment, it was hard to really see her eyes as she turned toward the sea. In order to get a better look at her eyes, I attempted to jump onto a small rock that peeked out of the water not far in front of her. However, I slipped and landed one foot in the cold water, only glancing at her eyes for a brief moment. I hastily withdrew to the embankment. Another tourist, who harbored the same mentality as mine, did not learn my lesson, and also jumped onto that rock, with even worse results than mine; he slipped on both feet, and the sea water instantly spread over his knees. Maybe she could not bear to let us remember her eyes forever! But what eyes they were, full of melancholy and sadness! It's heartbreakingly realistic. In The Daughter of the Sea, Hans Christian Andersen said, as a mermaid under the sea, she and her kind have no tears. In order to obtain the love of the prince, so as to obtain the immortal soul, the smallest mermaid at any cost to the tail of the fish into a human-like legs can walk, and as a result, must be endured all day long, like a knife cut tearing pain; when the love has become hopeless, the dream turned into a bubble, she did not have tears to flow; because she has already given up their own tongues and voices, and she can not through the language and song to tell their own desires and pain. So all the pain and sorrow, all the dreams and hopelessness, could only be forever deposited in her eyes, in her side-turned figure.
Two
When the little mermaid was fifteen years old, her grandmother gave her permission to float to the surface of the sea and see the human world. It was like a rite of passage for her, and her destiny and future unfolded to her from then on: first, she met the handsome prince who was shipwrecked in a boat, and saved his life; then she understood that although human life is shorter than that of a mermaid at the bottom of the sea, it does not turn into foam in the water like a mermaid at the end of its life, but rather it rises to the mysterious and beautiful sky after its death to the sparkling stars; because mermaids do not have an indestructible soul, whereas "Man has a soul; it lives forever, and even when the body is turned to dust, it is still alive." And so, in order not to die like the other mermaids and turn into foam in the water, and never hear the music of the waves again, and never see the beautiful flowers and the bright red sun again, the little mermaid resolved to live at all costs for the sake of having an immortal soul, even if it was only for a mere day on earth, as a human being does.
September 1819, when the fourteen-year-old thin as a bamboo pole like Andersen carrying a small bag (just like many of the characters he later described in the story, the shoulder of the small parcel is all his possessions in the world), said goodbye to his hometown - the small town of Odense, to the capital of Copenhagen, he also went through the a rite of passage similar to that of the little mermaid. As the day drew on, he stood on the hillock of Frederiksborg, and looked out over the vast and strange city of Copenhagen, stretching out before him, with its imposing palaces, its lofty church spires, and its variety of majestic buildings and spacious streets; and for a moment he must have felt faint; he found himself so small and alone, and a multitude of feelings rolled and undulated uncontrollably in his heart; and his eyes even welled up bitter tears. He was the son of a poor shoemaker and washerwoman; his grandfather was a madman, and his grandmother tended the garden in a poorhouse and lunatic asylum. At that moment he must have thought of his poor birth and all the fantasies he had had, and the figure of his mother, who washed clothes for the rich by the river from morning till night, regardless of the cold or the heat, came into his mind. But he held back his feelings of loneliness and his tears; he told himself: for the sake of his happiness and the future he dreamed of, he must be brave, he must venture out into the wide and strange world of Copenhagen with confidence, and he must do something extraordinary. His rock-solid determination was no different from that of the little mermaid he would later create in his persistent quest for an immortal soul.
However, the reality of the human world is definitely not as simple and beautiful as the little mermaid dreamed of, and the human soul is definitely not as ugly and dirty as she imagined. When Andersen, who didn't know the depths of the human world, held the dream of becoming a stage actor and singer, and dove headlong into the behemoth Copenhagen, he soon tasted the coldness and warmth of human feelings and the sweet and sour of the world. Those who are attached to the elegant upper-class people, with contempt, suspicious eyes measured this two-legged slender, like a tall stork teenager. He brought a dozen dollars from Odense, soon like the spring snowflakes, all spent, the only thing left is the courage and determination of the future is not clear. He persistently knocked on the doors of famous and noble people, seeking patronage and protectors everywhere. His first official appearance on stage - as an insignificant dwarf in a dance drama - made him ecstatic, as if he saw a brilliant future. However, he was not born to be an actor, and his once-proud voice changed in his second year in Copenhagen, putting his dreams of becoming a singer to shame. So he resolved to become a writer, a poet. He remembered the tragedies of Shakespeare, which he had read in Odense; he began to read as hard as he could without sleep or food, and the books often made him forget cold and hunger, and immersed him in a world of color and light. Though not yet able to spell completely correctly and regularly, he began to work on his own plays and to write his own poetry. He seized every opportunity to enter and leave the salons of celebrities and to make friends with Copenhagen's leading poets and writers. In the parlors of wealthy merchants and aristocrats, he reaped the scorn and ridicule of others. But when he had a goal, he never retreated. When he left his hometown Odense and prepared to venture into the world, he once said: it would be a great misfortune to give up his vocation. After all these difficulties, he found his vocation, became a poet, and became the "Diktor" (Danish for poet) admired by the world. A play and novel, a piece of poetry and fairy tales, constantly born from his pen; he dreamed from childhood that he would have a wonderful castle of his own in the future, and now he began to use his own works to build up a colorful literary country, he himself also from the initial cold eyes of the world suffered from the world's contempt and lessons of "ugly duckling "He has become a "white swan" that soars in the literary sky.
However, although Andersen got rid of the material difficulties, he always lived a lonely bachelor life. He had fallen in love several times, but none of them was successful, and the trauma brought to him by each emotional impulse was unforgettable for a lifetime, just as the little mermaid failed to get the prince's love although she y loved him. In Andersen's life, the deepest impact on his love, he was infatuated with the "Swedish nightingale" reputation of the opera singer Yanni Linder. Linder. He and Yanni Linde had many love affairs. He had many heart-to-heart conversations with Yanni Linder; for some time, he fell y in love with the nightingale of the North despite the indecency of his own looks; at that time, he felt that everything around him had been eclipsed, and his heart was filled with the face, body and soul of Yanni Linder, who was the most famous nightingale in Sweden. He felt that everything around him had been eclipsed, and his heart was filled with Yanni Linde's face, figure, and song. However, Yanni? Linder only extended to him a brotherly and friendly hand, simple and easy to treat him, but never accepted his fiery love. He could only bury his feelings in the bottom of his heart; in order to get rid of loneliness, he spent most of his time traveling abroad. During the trip, he licked the scars of his emotions alone, and then he kept brewing and conceptualizing them, and finally sublimated them into a beautiful piece of work. In fact, all the women he once fell in love with eventually became the beautiful, kind and noble-spirited protagonists of his works, just as he depicted Yanni Linde as a singing bird in The Nightingale. Linde as a bird whose song is as beautiful and moving as a clear spring.
Three
On the side of Copenhagen's New Harbor, there is a small, very plain, white, four-story building squeezed between two large buildings. Between the first and second floors of the building is a bronze plaque indicating that Hans Christian Andersen lived on the third floor of this bachelor pad from 1846 to 1865. It is said that this is the only remaining Andersen residence in Copenhagen, but it is not usually open to the public. In front of the building was once a canal dock built in the 17th century, the busy scene of masts and masts has long been deposited into historical memory; although there are still some sailboats moored to the shore, but only as the city's history and no longer play a role in the navigation of the scenery placed there for visitors to see, but on October 11, 2004, I have been in this place with admiration for Hans Christian Andersen. The door to the first floor of the small building was quietly locked, as if the owner had just left a short time ago to travel to a faraway place. I stood on the shore of the pier, looking at this unassuming little building: the hustle and bustle of the pier in Andersen's time is gone, just as the bustle of many eras has disappeared, but his writings are still circulating, and the living fairy tale characters he created are still roaming in the hearts of people all over the world.
A short walk from the Newport Pier is the new Danish Royal Palace. The guards there wear towering bearskin hats and the kind of uniforms seen in the opera, with loaded lances in their hands. They stood at attention, as solid as a rock. When Hans Christian Andersen strolled to the New Palace Square, he must have looked at these guards many times with awe and appreciation. Later, he portrayed them as a "determined tin soldier". His tin soldier has only one leg because the maker's tin is not enough, but this tin soldier is determined, although through all the difficulties and dangers, still always stick to the love of the paper dancer in the paper-cut palace. In fact, many of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales are overflowing with praise for such noble qualities as loyalty, kindness, perseverance, and even self-sacrifice, like the tin soldier. Many years have passed, and I still always remember the pure and poor woman he depicted in The Mother's Tale. Death took away her only child; she braved the wind and snow in the vast darkness of the night to find her child. In order to ask for the way, she warmed a bush of thorns that was about to freeze to death with her own chest, so that the thorns would grow fresh green leaves; in order to cross a big lake, she kept shedding tears, and gave her bright eyes to the big lake, so that the lake would become more green; in order to enter the magical garden of Death and save her child, she exchanged her beautiful black hair with the old woman who was guarding the grave, and exchanged it for a head of snow-white silver hair. How can such a selfless and resolute soul, which can give everything for love, not make people shocked and marveled? The power it exudes travels through the years and always maintains a rolling heat. I believe that when Hans Christian Andersen wrote this fairy tale, his lonely single life and his infinite nostalgia and attachment to his mother must have pierced his heart, causing his imagination to explode with infinite energy.
In his later years, Andersen loved to walk the streets of Copenhagen. At that time, he was already a world celebrity with a high reputation, his beautiful and touching fairy tales have been from the small kingdom of Denmark to the hearts of readers from all over Europe and the rest of the world, from the past people on his physical appearance defects and his ambition to become a poet to mock the scene has long since been turned into a memory of the past. Whenever he tromps through the streets of Copenhagen in his nineteenth-century bowler hat, overcoat and crutches, a few pedestrians greet him with reverence and watch him walk off into the distance.
That afternoon in October 2004, I was on the street side of Copenhagen's City Hall, where I admired a bronze statue of Hans Christian Andersen with reverence. Holding a cane in his left hand, a notebook in his right, and wearing a bowler hat, he sat on a square stone pedestal; it was as if he were taking a short break from his travels. His head is turned to the upper left, and his eyes, full of hope and relief, look across the street to Tivoli Park. The main entrance to the park is built like the magical castle in his fairy tale; the park was built in 1843 as a place for people to meet, dance, watch shows and listen to music, but today it also contains playgrounds that mimic the plots and characters of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Hans Christian Andersen, who spent his life looking out over the world of fairy tales, literally lived next to the world he dreamed of! The Danish imagination and way of honoring the illustrious poet is truly admirable.
The square in front of the town hall, flocks of pigeons sometimes coaxed up, circling over the square, and sometimes gracefully down, pecking at pedestrians or people staying in the square scattered birdseed. The blue sky was filled with a few white clouds, and the bright sunshine was very pleasant. I sat on a bench at the edge of the square and lit a cigarette, ready to enjoy this tranquil scene. However, it wasn't long before a ragged young black man approached me from a distance. At first, he did not attract my special attention. But he suddenly took off one of his shoes and threw it at a group of pigeons pecking only five or six meters away from me. One of the tame pigeons splashed its feathers, fluttered a few times, and stopped moving. The guy, on the other hand, bent down as if nothing had happened, picked up his shoe and picked up the pigeons he had killed. I was stunned. Was he going to make pigeons his dinner? Who could have imagined such a tragedy in the town hall square? It must have been hard for that pigeon to believe, too, that this was its fate in broad daylight. On the bench next to me were two middle-aged women and a little girl of eight or nine years old. The girl cried out in fear of the barbaric murder that had taken place in front of her; the two adults accused the black man while leading the terrified little girl away. In the fairy tale atmosphere everywhere in the heart of the Kingdom of Denmark, but there is such a desecration of life, the destruction of life of barbaric acts, I think, if sitting next to the town hall Andersen saw this scene, he will be deplorable, sadness, pain, and even hate the look will be overflowing with his eyes, right.
--March 22, 2007
neruda Posted on >2007-3-24 11:00:48 [Full Text] [Comments] [Quotes] [Recommended] [Archive] [Push to Friends] [Bookmark to Weblog]
2007-3-7
Pondering Prince Hamlet
neruda Posted on >2007-3-7 13:26:08 [Full text] [Comment] [Citation] [Recommended] [Archive] [Push to friends] [Bookmark to Weblog]
2007-3-7
Pilgrimage to Shakespeare's Hometown
(Without the author's permission, please do not reproduce!)
Pilgrimage to Shakespeare's Hometown
In the villages and towns of England in late March, the chill of winter has long since fled without a trace, although the sky is still unavoidably cloudy. The warm winds of the Atlantic Ocean blowing from the west of the British Isles have clothed the land in lush green; dotted with colorful, vibrant buds and flowers, which are exuding a rich fragrance, making people feel that the season of warmth and pleasantness has arrived.
It was at this time that I came to Shakespeare's hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon, to make a pilgrimage to the Renaissance master of literature, enjoying the "emperor of the theater" known as the birth of the giant and lived in the place.
Stratford is located in the British industrial town of Manchester and Oxford University between the city, more than two hours by car from Manchester to. The British call this small town "Shakespeare's World" because there is Shakespeare's home, the Shakespeare Exhibition Center, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Shakespeare Society, Shakespeare's bookstore, the church where Shakespeare is buried, and so on. The small town is said to have a local population of only 60,000, but because of Shakespeare's grandiose name, about two million tourists come from all over the world every year to make a pilgrimage to this giant of European Renaissance England.
Shakespeare's home is located on Henry Street in the small town of Stratford. It is an ordinary two-story building with an attic, typical of the sixteenth-century English style, wooden frame of the house, sloping tile roof, the original color of the clay facade, projecting out of the walls of the windows and door outlines. In the street of the extremely ordinary, even seemingly small home door hangs a wooden sign, there is the English "William Shakespeare's Home". Shakespeare's Home". Shakespeare's home on the right is a modern luxury building, which is the Shakespeare Exhibition Center. Visitors who come to Shakespeare's home first visit the exhibition center before entering the former residence of the literary giant. In the exhibition center, you are greeted by a huge portrait of Shakespeare, the dramatic poet's bright forehead and wise eyes make people stand in awe. The glass cases in the exhibition center display a large number of Shakespeare's manuscripts, pictures and letters, as well as a cluster of wax figures based on his dramatic characters. I paused in front of the yellowed and precious manuscripts with Shakespeare's ink, wondering how the dramatic poet won the favor of his muse and wrote immortal dramas with a quill pen under the oil lamp 400 years ago, such as the vengeful Prince Hamlet, the mad King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, who celebrated youth and love with their deaths, and so on.
Outside the exhibition center is the backyard of Shakespeare's home, a small Elizabethan-style garden. Through the stone brick paved path, from the right side of the house on the mountain wall opened a small door into the Shakespeare was born in the house, grew up in the house interior, a kind of awe immediately captured me, as if the great man's breath through the centuries, still pervading the surrounding. On the ground floor of the house, there is a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom and a workshop where Shakespeare's father processed wool and leather, all of which appear simple and unadorned, with no sign of extravagance. Along the creaky stairs to the second floor, the first thing you see is the master bedroom, which has a double bed with red and green curtains and a wooden crib; on April 23, 1564, Shakespeare was born here. Next to the master bedroom is a hut with a small writing desk against the wall, which is said to be where Shakespeare read and wrote before he left his homeland to live in London. On the other side of the master bedroom is a spacious exhibition room, displaying Shakespeare's family tree, Shakespeare's handwriting and his suicide note before his death; there is also a square table with a large autograph book, where tourists from all over the world line up to write their messages or names on it, expressing their sincere admiration for the great dramatic poet in such a common but simple and touching way. In this common but simple and touching way, they expressed their heartfelt admiration for the great dramatic poet. Not wanting to be exempted, I wrote in neat Chinese characters, "A peasant's son from the far east, a pilgrimage across time and space," and signed my name, while praying in my heart, dreaming that I would ask this immortal king, who had insight into human nature, for a little bit of inspiration to enter the door of literature. I wandered inside the former residence, while looking at the relics left by the literary giant, while thinking about: I have looked at the Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey, his original body of standing statues, but also in the Danish Hamlet Castle walls to examine his bust bas-reliefs, I think, Shakespeare was born in this building is not luxurious and opulent, but at the beginning of Shakespeare, surely did not think that he would later become a great man of the world's admiration. I think Shakespeare, who was born in this building, certainly did not think that he would become a great man.
Shakespeare's former residence in the backyard of the small garden planted with bluebells, violets, rosemary, marigolds and other flowers, and a few mulberry trees, walnuts, as well as an umbrella-shaped crown of the pine tree - it is said to be Shakespeare's own hand-planted pine tree. The lush garden seems to symbolize Shakespeare's evergreen life. Standing next to Shakespeare's bust in one corner of the garden, I stubbornly turned over a thought in my mind: although this small garden is colorful, the world of literature created by Shakespeare is even more colorful and all-encompassing. When I was in college, I read a sentence in an English book that has stuck in my mind: Everything in human is in Shakespeare.
On the opposite side of the street from Shakespeare's former residence, there is a Shakespeare bookstore, which displays a wide range of Shakespeare's works in various editions, stills from Shakespeare's plays performed all over the world, picture albums, and photographs of some of the famous Shakespearean actors and actresses, and so on. Everyone who dreams of achieving something in the world of literature will feel the pressure from the classical masters while admiring and excited, as if these classical masters are the gods on Mount Olympus, the brilliant stars in the sky of human spirit, and you are just an insignificant mortal. So I didn't dare to stay too long in this bookstore, and hurriedly retreated.
A short distance southeast along Henley Street, beside the quietly flowing River Ewen, lies the Royal Shakespeare Theater. The theater's facade is built of crisp brown brick, and from a distance it looks like a fortified castle. Behind the theater, across the River Ewen, the steeple of a church stands tall. There is the Church of the Holy Trinity, both the place where Shakespeare was baptized after his birth, and the last stop of his life, his true burial place. In his later years, the dramatic poet returned from the London stage, where he had spent most of his life, to enjoy a few years of peace and quiet, and then finally, on his birthday in 1616, said goodbye to the troubled and sordid world. Shakespeare's grave is on the solemn altar of Holy Trinity Church. In the niche above the grave is a bust of Shakespeare, said to have been constructed shortly after his death, which is an exact replica of the man himself; his slightly protruding forehead seems to tell the world that there was indeed a great deal of talent and creativity in it. At Shakespeare's burial place there is also a flattened monument engraved with four lines of verse, allegedly Shakespeare's own epitaph for himself:
Jesus above, good friend, do not do it,
Do not dig up the mound where the remains are buried.
Blessed is the tombstone that loves this place,
Cursed is the one who moves my remains.
The lines of the epitaph did serve a purpose, and it is said that at one time there were attempts to exhume the poet's remains from here and remove them for burial at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, and that this inscription deterred them from doing so. So, to this day, the emperor of drama sleeps undisturbed, making it seem as if this church on the banks of the River Avon were his sacred burial ground alone.
The River Avon, which fed the great poet, flows gently between Holy Trinity Church and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; the never-ending sound of the gurgling water is like a long elegy for the immortal soul of the poet. Willows line the banks of the river, and white geese and gray ducks float leisurely in the serene, mirror-like waters. David Garrick, the famous English actor of the 18th century, was a great admirer of the river when he roamed here. Garrick roamed here, once left a moving poem:
Silver glitter of the River Ewing, you in the slow flow,
On the banks of your river, Shakespeare often dreamed of immortality;
By the light of the moon, the nymphs danced around his green bed,
Because his headrest of the meadow is a piece of sacred fertile land.
At the front of the Royal Shakespeare Theater, across the River Ewen, there is a large garden called Bancroft. There are bronze statues of Shakespeare and famous characters from his plays. The king of humanity, who needs no crown or scepter, clad in medieval robes, holding paper in his left hand and a pen in his right, sits in an awe-inspiring pose on a chair at the top of a monument surrounded by a bronze laurel crown. Surrounding the monument are four representative characters of his creation: Prince Hamlet, contemplating life and death with a skull in his hand; Lady Macbeth, who is dark and loves her husband; Sir John Falstaff, who is a glutton for wine, a braggart, and a man with a big belly; and the energetic Sir John Falstaff, who is a man with a big heart and a big head, and a man with a big heart. Sir John Falstaff, and Prince Harry, who is so energetic that he holds the crown in both hands. I stroked these statues, at once thrilled to be suddenly so close to these famous characters from Shakespeare's gallery, and ashamed of the old-fashioned, narrow-minded, narcissistic and even arrogant English. Shakespeare wrote thirty-nine plays in his lifetime, many of which, with the exception of the history plays, were written using exotic material; but in this sun-drenched, vibrant garden, overlooked by a distant church steeple, none of the four figures that surround Shakespeare's statue, with the exception of Prince Hamlet, who hails from the northern country of Denmark, are from any other country than England itself. Still, I suppose the characters Shakespeare created didn't care about being made into a few stiff statues, because they have long lived, and will always live, in the hearts of millions of people around the world.
Springtime in Shakespeare's hometown is quiet, bright and pleasant. In the land where this giant of literature once lived, I was overwhelmed by a complex sense of age and of immortality in the air and in the ruins that surrounded me. I think of the picturesque countryside of Stratford in the sixteenth century, and I give silent thanks to this sacred place, for it is she who has given the whole world the Shakespeare that will never be read.
March 1, 2007
neruda Posted on >2007-3-7 13:21:35 [Full text] [Comments] [Quotes] [Recommended] [Archive] [Push to Friends] [Bookmark to Weblog]
2007-2-14
Hello, old man Shakespeare!
Shakespeare's portrait at the Shakespeare Exhibition Center
neruda Posted on >2007-2-14 17:01:00 [Full Text] [Comments] [Quotes] [Recommended] [Archive] [Push to Friends] [Bookmark to Weblog]
2007-2-14
The grounds of Shakespeare's former residence
neruda 发表于 >2007-2-14 16:55:55 [全文] [评论] [引用] [推荐] [档案] [推给好友] [收藏到网摘]
2007-2-12
一个人的莎士比亚
(未经作者本人许可，请毋转载)
一、
p>In March 2005, after attending the London Book Fair in the United Kingdom, I visited Shakespeare's hometown, the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon, with a pilgrim's heart. The British call this small town "Shakespeare's World" because there are Shakespeare's home, Shakespeare Exhibition Center, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Shakespeare Society, Shakespeare Bookstore, Shakespeare's burial church, and so on. The small town is said to have a local population of only 60,000, but because of Shakespeare's grandiose name, about 4.8 million tourists come from all over the world each year to make a pilgrimage to this giant of European Renaissance England.
Walking into Shakespeare's home, a mood of solemnity immediately captures you, as if the scent of the great man who was born here in 1564 has traveled through the centuries and still pervades the surroundings. It is an ordinary two-storey building with an attic, typical of sixteenth-century English architecture, with a wooden frame, a sloping tiled roof, clay-colored facades, and windows and doorways projecting out of the walls. On a square table on the second floor was a large autograph book, where tourists from all over the world lined up to write their own messages on it, expressing their heartfelt admiration for the great poet. I wrote in neat Chinese characters: "A peasant's son from the far east has come to worship across time and space"; I prayed in my heart and dreamed that I could ask this king, who understood human nature, for a little inspiration to enter the door of literature. In the backyard of the building is a small Elizabethan-style garden, planted with bluebells, violets, rosemary, marigolds and other flowers, as well as a few mulberry trees, walnuts, and an umbrella-shaped crown of pines - it is said that Shakespeare himself planted this pine tree. The lush garden seems to symbolize Shakespeare's evergreen life. Standing next to Shakespeare's bust in one corner of the garden, I stubbornly tumbled in my mind the thought that although this small garden is colorful, the literary world created by Shakespeare is even more colorful and all-encompassing. When I was in college, I read a sentence in an English book that has been y engraved in my heart: Everything in human is in Shakespeare (everything in human nature exists in Shakespeare).
Not far from Shakespeare's birthplace, beside the still-flowing River Ewen, lies the Royal Shakespeare Theater, where Shakespeare's classic plays are performed every year. Behind the theater, across the River Avon, a church spire stands tall, and Shakespeare's mausoleum is there. At the burial place of our theater emperor stands a flattened monument, said to be in his own hand, with four lines of verse:
For Jesus' sake, good friend, do nothing,
Don't dig up the mound where the remains are buried.
Blessed are those who love the tombstone here,
cursed are those who move my remains.
Perhaps it is the effect of these lines of poetry that the remains of the dramatic emperor sleep here undisturbed, making the church feel to posterity as if it were his tomb alone. The River Ewing, which fed the great poet, gurgles between the church and the theater, its banks lined with green willows and white geese and gray ducks in a serene and tranquil setting