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旅行的艺术:动机 Ⅲ 异国情调-3

所属教程:旅游英语大全

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2020年08月09日

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在阿姆斯特丹,我住在佐旦区的一个小旅馆。在一家快餐店吃过午饭后(夹着鲱鱼和葱头的全麦面包),我在城西各处散散步。在亚历山大,异域的色彩体现在骆驼、悠闲垂钓的阿拉伯人和粗嗄的叫喊声等方面。阿姆斯特丹同样有异域情调,只是表现在不同的方面:很多用淡粉色长形砖和奇怪的白色灰浆搭建成的房屋(同英国和北美以砖材为材料的建筑相比较,这里的建筑要规则得多;而从外观看,它们也不同于法国或德国的建筑);很多排狭长的公寓楼,建于20世纪早期,底楼有宽大的窗户;每家或每幢门口都停着自行车(让人联想到大学城);街道上的设施较陈旧,大众化;看不到华丽宏伟的建筑;街道笔直,点缀着一些小的公园,可以看出规划者试图建造社会主义花园城市的用心。有一条街,每幢公寓看来都一模一样,我在一户人家的红色大门口驻足,突然产生了一种强烈的愿望——希望自己能在那里度过余生。头顶上的2楼,是一间有3个大窗户的房间,窗户都没有窗帘。房间的内墙都刷成白色,墙上挂着一幅画,画面上只是许多小的蓝色和红色的点。靠着一边墙,摆着一张橡木书桌,房间里还有一个很大的书架,一张扶手椅。在这样的环境里的生活便是我梦寐以求的生活。我想有一辆自行车。我想每天晚上将自己的钥匙塞进这红色大门的锁孔里。我想在黄昏时分站在没有窗帘的窗前,看着对面一样没有窗帘的房间,在这铺有白色床单的白色调的房间里,在我躺到床上看书之前,我会吃点夜宵(一碗汤、培根和全麦面包)。

In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel in the Jordaan district and, after lunch in a café (roggebrood met haring en uitjes) , went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert's Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern-day Amsterdam provided different, but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale pink bricks put together with curiously white mortar (far more regular than English or North American brickwork and exposed to view unlike the bricks on French or German buildings); long rows of narrow apartment buildings from the early twentieth century with large ground-floor windows; bicycles parked outside every house or block (recalling university towns); a democratic scruffiness to street furniture; an absence of ostentatious buildings; straight streets interspersed with small parks, suggesting the hand of planners with ideas of a socialist garden city. In one street lined with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oak desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle. I wanted to put my key through the red front door every evening. I wanted to stand by the curtainless window at dusk looking out at an identical apartment opposite and snack my way through an erwentsoep met roggebrood en spek before retiring to read in bed in a white room with white sheets.

为什么会在异国被公寓前门这样微不足道的东西诱惑?为什么仅仅因为那里的有轨电车,因为那里的人们几乎不在家里装窗帘,我就深深地陷入对它的爱恋?不管这些由异国的细小(和无声)的事物所引发的强烈反应看上去是多么荒谬,这情形至少同我们的私人生活有相通之处。在个人生活中,我们也会因为一个人给面包抹黄油的方式而喜欢上他,也可能因为他对鞋子的品位而憎恶他。如果我们因注重这些细节的东西而自责,那么我们必将忽视生活中的细节本身所具有的丰富含义。

Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from personal life. There too we may find ourselves anchoring emotions of love to the way a person butters bread or turning against them because of their taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be.

我对公寓房子情有独钟,因为这样的建筑让我感受到节制之美。它舒适,但不招摇。从这种楼房可以看出,这是个在财富上偏好中庸的社会。在建筑设计方面,也透出一种淳朴来。在伦敦,建筑物的前门通常倾向于模仿古典庙宇的外观,但在阿姆斯特丹,人们坦然面对生活,他们避免在建筑中采用石柱和石膏,选择的是整齐且不加任何装饰的砖石。这里的建筑最好地体现了现代意识,予人以整饬,干净,明亮的感觉。

My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable, but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to a financial mean. There was an honesty in the design. Whereas front doorways in London were prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accepted their status, they avoided pillars and plaster, they settled on neat undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, it spoke of order, cleanliness and light.

异国情调一词包含有一些更细微、更让人捉摸不定的意义,异域的魅力源发于新奇与变化,譬如在异域你看到的是骆驼,而在家乡,你看到的是马匹;在异域你看到的是不加粉饰的公寓房,而在家乡,你看到的是带有装饰性石柱的公寓房。但除此之外,这一切还可能为我们带来更深层次的快乐,因为我们看重这些域外特质,不仅仅是因为它们新奇,而且还因为它们更符合我们的个性,更能满足我们的心愿,相反,我们的故土并不能做到这一切。

In the more fugitive, trivial association of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change: from finding camels where at home there had been horses; from finding unadorned apartment buildings where at home they had had pillars. But there may be a more profound pleasure: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new, but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland could provide.

我之所以对阿姆斯特丹表现出如此的热情,是和我对本国的不满相关的。在我自己的国家里,缺乏这种现代性,也没有这里素朴单纯的美感,有的只是对都市生活的抗拒和封闭保守的心态。

My enthusiasms in Amsterdam were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, with its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, with its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality.

我们在异域发现的异国情调可能就是我们在本国苦求而不得的东西。

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.


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