The Longest Journey经典读后感有感

《The Longest Journey》是一本由E. M. Forster著作，Penguin Classics出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 14.00，页数：416，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《The Longest Journey》读后感(一)：珍藏的幸福

看到最后，原来是一个幸福的故事，谢谢Foster。

虽然曾经有过无数的悲伤和痛心，但也有过很多小小的喜悦和幸福，一点一滴地记录下来，珍藏在那个地方。共同走过困境，面向未来。

看这部书就好像在猜谜，坐在Foster灵魂的对面，面对着一个巨大的谜面，顺着他给的线索，一点一点地猜，慢慢地看出他要与我分享的人生里的喜怒哀乐，忧伤与幸福。

书里有不少有趣的对话，非常珍贵。当然也有深情，悲伤的部分。有很多隐喻，在与Foster斗智的过程中还是很有意思的。

这本书的谜面谜底的设置还不是很成熟，但是一贯非常地真诚。对于愿意为Foster做福尔摩斯的读者来说，是一个珍贵的宝藏。对我来说，是Foster与我分享的珍藏在心底的幸福吧。小心翼翼，又浪漫至极。

与后期成熟的作品比起来，这是一块尚未经娴熟手法雕琢的美丽宝石吧。也正因此，书中的象征性手法解开后，不论悲伤还是喜悦，都显得无比的打动人吧。

Foster这部作品的译者就好像是坐在读者身边的帮手，在看不懂的时候，译者提供不少意见和帮助。 然后再用我自己的推理和理解，和译者一起去拨开英文版的层层迷雾，去看看隐藏在众多谜面包裹下的美丽的原石。

《The Longest Journey》读后感(二)：A house (if it could speak), its lodger, and his teacup

"I am not quite like other houses, yet I am perfectly comfortable. I contain works of art and a microscope and books. But I do not live for any of these things or suffer them to disarrange me. I live for myself and for the greater houses that shall come after me. Yet in me neither the cry of money nor the cry for money shall ever be heard."

An owner, or a lodger:

"I don’t want anything but food, lodging, clothes, and now and then a railway fare. I haven’t any tastes. I don’t collect anything or play games. Books are nice to have, but after all there is Mudie’s, or if it comes to that, the Free Library. Oh, my profession! I forgot I shall have a profession. Well, that will leave me with more to spare than ever.”

They are full of the wine of life. But they have not tasted the cup—let us call it the teacup—of experience…

Oh, that teacup! To be taken at prayers, at friendship, at love, till we are quite sane, efficient, quite experienced, and quite useless to God or man. We must drink it, or we shall die. But we need not drink it always. Here is our problem and our salvation. There comes a moment—God knows when—at which we can say, “I will experience no longer. I will create. I will be an experience.” But to do this we must be both acute and heroic. For it is not easy, after accepting six cups of tea, to throw the seventh in the face of the hostess.

《The Longest Journey》读后感(三)：You don’t have to sacrifice yourself

我粗略浏览了一下原版和中译本的书评和短评，我发现很多读者都没有读懂这篇故事。It’s fine, really. 阅读本身是一件私人化的事情 — 如果把书比作是万花筒，那每个人看到的也许是万分之一的小碎片，即便是如此也不影响它的美丽… 但看到有人说读到结尾原来是个幸福的故事，我觉得有必要多说几句，因为我很生气作者用主人公的牺牲去换另一个人的美满生活，就因为主人公Rickie有身体缺陷，他不值得拥有其他人理应拥有的一切吗？包括正常的生活、包括对理想的追求…. 我想这可能也是我打了两星的原因之一 I’m furious, and angry at him.

After I finished the story the other day, there’s this little voice springing from my mind, begging me to give it a second chance: “Come a little closer, you didn’t give me your full attention earlier. Give me a second chance. I am better than what you think.” Hence I dig out the volume I already put back into the box - I decided I was finished with the book, would have none of it, afterword/memoir/intro/reference, whatever there is left unread or rather half read. So I think, maybe this time I’ll read it with less scrutinized eye.

Let’s just sway aside those long-listed definition from Afterword, shall we？ Those philosophy, Greek mythology, Wagner… those rhythms, symbolism, religious terms… they go on and on and on, are just a bunch of senseless mentions that editor think must be included to reflect it’s a proper essay on literature. Let’s just ignore that for a while, and look at what Forster was trying to say…

Rickie在剑桥度过了他的本科时光，和Agnes订婚之后，由于没有足够的钱结婚，答应了Agnes的哥哥Herbert给他安排的在寄宿学校的工作。Herbert在来年可能会取代现任的校长担任学校的负责人，校长给他的建议是，家长们希望新任的校长是个结了婚的人，校长夫人可以帮忙照顾孩子们的起居，会相对细心。Herbert在求偶失败后，觉得让Rickie和自己的妹妹一起搬过来学校住可以解决问题，一来妹妹Agnes可以帮忙打理学校照顾学生，Rickie也可以到时候担任助理院长一职。

在寄宿学校谋职并不是Rickie内心想要的人生，他喜欢写作，但进行得并不顺利。之前和Agnes聊天的时候他提到说'Don’t you think there are two great things in life that we ought to aim at—truth and kindness？ Let’s have both if we can, but let’s be sure of having one or the other.' Agnes看出他对接受职位的犹豫，提醒他说至少担任院长可以有很多机会做对社会有益的事。这一点说到了Rickie心里——

'To do good! For what other reason are we here？ Let us give up our refined sensations, and our comforts, and our art, if thereby we can make other people happier and better.'

他接受了这份工作，想象着六个月前自己还在剑桥的草地上无忧无虑的闲暇时光，现在即将成为一个有用的机器——

'Now he was at Sawston, preparing to work a beneficent machine. No man works for nothing, and Rickie trusted that to him also benefits might accrue; that his wound might heal as he laboured, and his eyes recapture the Holy Grail. '

但他其实并不喜欢像Herbert这样的人，眼里只有成功，仿佛成功是他们在现实生活和精神生活中唯一追求的东西。其他能够触动人的比如Humanity，他们应该不太在乎——

'And Herbert’s contempt for such efforts revolted him. He saw that for all his fine talk about a spiritual life he had but one test for things—success: success for the body in this life or for the soul in the life to come.'

但学校里发生的同学间打架斗殴的事件让他和Agnes发生了争吵，这让他想起了剑桥的时光和他在剑桥学到的good-fellowship(brotherhood or something of the sort i think)，他觉得寄宿学校不会有未来，因为学生之间不互相友爱，不会形成好的友谊。但一方面他又觉得自己不该多嘴，毕竟自己不是学校的负责人，他在接受的这份工作时就下定决心只管自己该做的事情，不评价不抱怨(我理解为：甘愿当一个工作机器)

'The truth is, he was suddenly ashamed. He had been carried away on a flood of his okd emotions. Cambridge and all that it meant had stood before him passionately clear, and beside it stood his mother and the sweet family life which nurses up a boy until he can salute his equals. He was ashamed, for he remembered his new resolution—to work without criticizing, to throw himself vigorously into the machine, not to mind if he was pinched now and then by the elaborate wheels.'

这里就要说到其实主人公Rickie并不喜欢他的父亲，书中给出的原因是他觉得自己和他父亲一样是跛脚(lameness)，并且自己不会和其他正常人一样有美满的婚姻生活，不是因为不能，而是这样一种身体缺陷会遗传，他不想把这样的痛苦传承给下一代(这里lameness有可能是Forster用来指代自己的homosexuality 因为这在当时被认为是有遗传因素的)

相反Rickie却很喜欢自己的母亲，所以当他知道他的弟弟Stephen是他母亲的私生子而不是源于他父亲时，他对弟弟多了一份认同(不知道是不是因为弟弟是正常人而他不是)

书中描述了Rickie母亲的一些背景以及和情人私奔后的幸福生活——

She had suffered terribly. She had asked for bread, and had been given not even a stone. People talk of hungering for the ideal, but there is another hunger, quite as divine, for facts. She had asked for facts and has been given 'views', 'emotional standpoints', 'attitudes towards life'. To a woman who believed that facts are beautiful, that the living world is beautiful beyond the laws of beauty, that manure is neither gross nor ludicrous, that a fire, not eternal, glows at the heart of the earth, it was intolerable to be put off with what the Elliots(Rickie的父亲一家) called 'philosophy'.

It had sounded so splendid, for she was a penniless child with nothing to offer, and the Elliots held their heads high. For what reason？ What had they ever done, except say sarcastic things, and limp, and be refined？ … these were grave faults, but they were human ones: she could even imagine them in a man she loved. What she could never love was a dilettante.

可见Rickie的母亲Mrs Elliots不喜欢她丈夫一家趾高气昂只会满嘴所谓高知思想的“哲学”理论，而她的情人Robert是个干农活的农夫，会给她送花，和她讨论化肥的混合和作用，也许她觉得这样的人比较实际，在她的认知里一草一木都是美丽的。也许她喜欢能够深刻接触大自然，和自然融为一体的人，所以和Robert在一起后，生活也还算安定—— They both cared for work and living in the open, and for not speaking unless they had got something to say. Their love of beauty, like their love for each other, was not dependent on detail: it grew not from the nerves but from the soul.

但好景不长，一次在海里游泳时她的情人溺水了，于是Mrs Elliots带着和情人的孩子回到丈夫身边，对外宣称这是Rickie姨夫朋友的孩子。Stephen就这样一直和Rickie的姨妈Aunt Emily住在一起。

Rickie心里是喜欢甚至羡慕像Stephen这样的人的，没有条条框框，像个粗人一样活在世界上，直白，像运动员那样一言不合就以拳头示人(也许Rickie觉得那样很有男子气概？？ 毕竟他自己性格比较软弱)，他觉得这样的人很真实，不会藏着掖着，更不会有那些害人的想占便宜的小心思。所以当Stephen终于因为酗酒和暴力问题被Aunt Emily赶出家时，他找到Rickie的学校，想要有一个落脚的地方、想要有一个兄弟、想要…有一个真正的家人吧。Rickie的妻子却以为他是来要钱的，想要他签一份协议不干扰Rickie继承他姨妈的遗产。Rickie为此非常厌恶妻子的行为，Stephen也觉得受到侮辱夺门而出……

之后两兄弟再见面，Rickie已经能直面自己不爱妻子，Stephen想要把他带离那个他觉得快把Rickie淹没的学校；Rickie让弟弟答应不再酗酒，可弟弟没有遵守诺言，为了救醉倒在铁轨上的弟弟，Rickie被压断了腿(这里不知道是不是有什么含义 也许是指代Rickie终于被世俗给压垮？ 还是他用自己的牺牲换来弟弟正常的生活？)

Rickie死后，Stephen搬去了学校和Agnes, Hebert一起住，还有了一个可爱的女儿(没有跛脚，是正常人)。Stephen过上了他之前没曾想过的生活，他—— 因为Rickie的关系，有了一个家，有了传承的血脉。他感叹

'What am I to do？' he thought. 'Can he notice the things he gave me？ A parson would know. But what’s a man like me to do, who works all his life put of doors？'

其实故事的主旨并不是很清晰，我也只是依靠一些线索和自己的理解拼凑起这么一篇解读 can’t say I actually understand what he’s trying to say, but at least, i’m gonna sleep soundly tonight (the urge of writing this all out has been haunting me even since i finish the book✍