Whistling in the dark?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Whistling in the dark?

Don’t people often say that there is nothing to fear but fear itself?

At any rate you get the idea. We whistle to spur ourselves on, to be optimistic even without solid good reason.

Hence, when people say someone is whistling in the dark when he does something, such as making certain informed judgments, they mean to say that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. He’s merely speculating, making wild guesses or, in the encouragement department, just trying to remain optimistic for optimism’s sake.

Okay. Here are old as well as recent media examples of people who “whistle in the dark” or are suspected of doing so:

1. SOON after Gustav Mahler died, on May 18, 1911, at the age of fifty, it became known that he had been working on a new symphony at the time of his death. It was clear that he had been unable to complete the work, but there were conflicting reports as to the state in which he had left it, and therefore as to whether it might someday be performed.

...

It is surely right to say that the serene and consolatory ending of the Tenth is different from the endings of Mahler’s two other late symphonic works. But to say that the Tenth thereby invalidates the popular image of Mahler as an egocentric, death-obsessed neurotic is to accord that image more attention than it deserves. For it has been transmitted to us not through Mahler’s works but rather through Alma’s memoirs. As even Kennedy argues, this image never did stand up well against the evidence of Mahler’s letters, of other people’s memories of him, or of his busy and highly successful conducting career. Its invalidation does not require the discovery (or invention) of anything so high-toned as an assertion of man’s spiritual victory.