精读5第二版课文翻译

2021年1月29日发(作者：minor是什么意思)

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Lesson 1

Who Are you and what are you doing here

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Lesson 2 Two kinds

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Lesson 3 Goods move. People move. Ideas move. And cultures change

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Lesson 4 Professions foe women

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Lesson 5 Love is a fallacy

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Lesson 6 The way to rainy mountain

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Lesson 7 Rewriting American history

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Lesson 8 The Merely very good

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Lesson 9 Al gore

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s Nobel peace prize acceptance speech

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Lesson10 The Bluest Eye

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Lesson 11 How News becomes opinion off- limits

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Lesson 12 The Indispensable opposition< /p>

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Lesson 1 Who Are you and what are you doing here

Welcome and congratulations: Getting to the first day of college is a major achievement. You’re to be

commended, and not just you, but the parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts who helped get you

here.

It’s been said that raising a child effectively takes a village: Well, as you may have noticed, our American

village is not in very good shape. We’ve got guns, drugs, two wars, fanatical religions, a slime

-based

popular culture, and some politicians who

—

a little restraint here

—aren’t what they might be. To merely

survive in this American village and to win a place in the entering class has taken a lot of grit on your part.

So, yes, congratulations to all.

You now may thin

k that you’ve about got it made. Amidst the impressive college buildings, in company

with a high-powered faculty, surrounded by the best of your generation, all you need is to keep doing

what you’ve done before: W/b436ae4d256db091cd1

k hard, get

good grades, listen to your teachers, get along with the people around you, and you’ll emerge in four

years as an educated young man or woman. Ready for life.

Do not believe it. It is not true. If you want to get a real education i

n America you’re going to have to

fight

—and I don’t mean just fight against the drugs and the violence and against the slime

-based culture

that is still going to surround you. I mean something a little more disturbing. To get an education, you’re

probably going to have to fight against the institution that you find yourself in

—

no matter how prestigious

it may be. (In fact, the more prestigious the school, the more you’ll probably have to push.) You can get a

terrific education in America now

—

there are astonishing opportunities at almost every college

—

but the

education will not be presented to you wrapped and bowed. To get it, you’ll need to struggle and strive, to

be strong, and occa/onally even to piss off

some admirable people.

I came to college with few resources, but one of them was an understanding, however crude, of how I

might use my opportunities there. This I began to develop because of my father, who had never been to

college

—in fact, he’d barel

y gotten out of high school. One night after dinner, he and I were sitting in our

kitchen at 58 Clewley Road in Medford, Massachusetts, hatching plans about the rest of my life. I

was about to go off to college, a feat no one in my family had accomplished

in living memory. “I think I

might want to be pre-

law,” I told my father. I had no idea what being pre

-law was. My father compressed

his brow and blew twin streams of smoke, dragon-

like, from his magnificent nose. “Do you want to be a

lawyer?” he asked. My

father had some experience with lawyers, and with policemen, too; he was not

1 / 102

well-

disposed toward either. “I’m not really sure,” I told

h/, “but lawyers make pretty good money,

right?”

My father detonated. (That was not uncommon. My father detonated a lot.) He told me that I was going to

go to college only once, and that while I was there I had better study what I wanted. He said that when

rich kids went to school, they majored in the subjects that interested them, and that my younger brother

Philip and I were as good as any rich kids. (We were rich kids minus the money.) Wasn’t I interested in

literature? I confessed that I was. Then I had better study literature, unless I had inside information to the

effect that reincarnation wasn’t just hype, and I’d be able to attend college thirty or forty times. If I had

such info, pre- law would be fine, and maybe even a tour through invertebrate biology could also be

tossed in. But until I had the reincarnation stuff from a solid source, I better get to work and pick out some

English classes from the course :///

“How about the science requirements?”

“

Take ’em later,” he said, “you never know.”

My father, Wright Aukenhead Edmundson, Malden High School Class of 1948 (by a hair), knew the score.

What he told me that evening at the Clewley Road kitchen table was true in itself, and it also contains the

germ of an idea about what a university education should be. But apparently almost everyone

else

—

students, teachers, and trustees and parents

—

sees the matter much differently. They have it

wrong.

Education has one salient enemy in present-day America, and that enemy is education

—

university

education in particular. To almost everyone, university education is a means to an end. For students, that

end is a good job. Students want the credentials that will help them get ahead. They want the certificate

that will give them access to Wall Street, or entrance into law or medical or business school. And how

can we blame them? /erica values power

and money, big players with big bucks. When we raise our children, we tell them in multiple ways that

what we want most for

them is success

—

material success. To be poor in America is to be a failure

—it’s to be without decent

health care, without basic necessities, often without dignity. Then there are those back- breaking student

loans

—

people leave school as servants, indentured to pay massive bills, so that first job better be a good

one. Students come to college with the goal of a diploma in mind

—

what happens in between, especially

in classrooms, is often of no deep and determining interest to them.

In college, life is elsewhere. Life is at parties, at clubs, in music, with friends, in sports. Life is what

celebrities have. The idea that the courses you take should be the primary objective of going to college is

tacitly considered absurd. In terms of their work, students live in the future

and/ not the present; they live with their

prospects for success. If universities stopped issuing credentials, half of the clients would be gone by

tomorrow morning, with the remainder following fast behind.

The faculty, too, is often absent: Their real lives are also elsewhere. Like most of their students, they aim

to get on. The work they are compelled to do to advance

—

get tenure, promotion, raises, outside

offers

—

is, broadly speaking, scholarly work. No matter what anyone says this work has precious little to

do with the fundamentals of teaching. The proof is that virtually no undergraduate students can read and

understand their professors’ scholarly publications. The public senses

this disparity and so thinks of the

professors’ work as being silly or beside the point. Some of it is. But the public also senses that because

professors don’t pay full

-

bore attention to teaching they don’t have to work very hard—they’ve created

2 / 102

/ massive feather bed for themselves and

called it a university.

This is radically false. Ambitious professors, the ones who, like their students, want to get ahead in

America, work furiously. Scholarship, even if pretentious and almost unreadable, is nonetheless

labor-intense. One can slave for a year or two on a single article for publication in this or that refereed

journal. These essays are honest: Their footnotes reflect real reading, real assimilation, and real

dedication. Shoddy work

—

in which the author cheats, cuts corners, copies from others

—

is quickly

detected. The people who do this work have highly developed intellectual powers, and they push

themselves hard to reach a certain standard: That the results have almost no

practical relevance to the students, the public, or even, frequently, to other scholars is a central element

in the tragicomedy that is often academia.

The students and the profes/rs have

made a deal: Neither of them has to throw himself heart and soul into what happens in the classroom.

The students write their abstract, over-intellectualized essays; the professors grade the students for their

capacity to be abstract and over- intellectual

—

and often genuinely smart. For their essays can be brilliant,

in a chilly way; they can also be clipped off the Internet, and often are. Whatever the case, no one wants

to invest too much in them

—

for life is elsewhere. The professor saves his energies for the profession,

while the student saves his for friends, social life, volunteer work, making connections, and getting in

position to clasp hands on the true grail, the first job.

No one in this picture is evil; no one is criminally irresponsible. It’s

just that smart people are prone to look

into matters to see how they might go about buttering their toast. Then they butter their toast.

As for the admin/trators, their relation to

the students often seems based not on love but fear. Administrators fear bad publicity, scandal, and

dissatisfaction on the part of their customers. More than anything else, though, they fear lawsuits.

Throwing a student out of college, for this or that piece of bad behavior, is very difficult, almost impossible.

The student will sue your eyes out. One kid I knew (and rather liked) threatened on his blog to mince his

dear and esteemed professor (me) with a samurai sword for the crime of having taught a boring class.

(The class was a little boring

—

I had a damned cold

—

but the punishment seemed a bit severe.) The dean

of students laughed lightly when I suggested that this behavior might be grounds for sending the student

on a brief vacation. I was, you might say, discomfited, and showed up to class for a while with my

cellphone jiggered to dial 911 with one touch.

Still, this was small potatoes. Co/eges are

even leery of disciplining guys who have committed sexual assault, or assault plain and simple. Instead

of being punished, these guys frequently stay around, strolling the quad and swilling the libations, an

affront (and sometimes a terror) to their victims.

You’ll find that cheating is common as well. As far as I can disce

rn, the student ethos goes like this: If the

professor is so lazy that he gives the same test every year,

it’s okay to go ahead and take advantage—you’ve both got better things to do. The Internet is amok with

services selling term papers and those services exist, capitalism being what it is, because people

purchase the papers

—

lots of them. Fraternity files bulge with old tests from a variety of courses.

Periodically the public gets exercised about this situation, and there are articles in the national news. But

then interest dwindles and matters go back to normal.

On/ of the reasons professors sometimes

look the other way when they sense cheating is that it sends them into a world of sorrow. A friend of mine

3 / 102

had the temerity to detect cheating on the part of a kid who was the nephew of a well-placed official in an

Arab government complexly aligned with the U.S. Black limousines pulled up in front of his office and

disgorged decorously suited negotiators.

Did my pal fold? Nope, he’s not the type. But he did not enjoy

the process.

What colleges generally want are well-rounded students, civic leaders, people who know what the

system demands, how to keep matters light, not push too hard for an education or anything else; people

who get their credentials and leave the professors alone to do their brilliant work, so they may rise and

enhance the rankings of the university. Such students leave and become donors and so, in their own turn,

contribute immeasurably to

the university’s standing.

T/y’ve done a fine job skating on surfaces

in high school

—

the best way to get an across-the-board outstanding record

—and now they’re on campus

to cut a few more figure eights.

In a culture where the major and determining values are monetary, what else could you do? How else

would you live if not by getting all you can, succeeding all you can, making all you can?

The idea that a university education really should have no substantial content, should not be about what

John Keats was disposed to call Soul- making, is one that you might think professors and university

presidents would be discreet about. Not so. This view informed an address that Richard Brodhead gave

to the senior class at Yale before he departed to become president of Duke. Brodhead, an impressive,

articulate man, seems to take as his educational touchstone the Duke of Wellington’s precept that the

Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of

Eto/. Brodhead suggests that the content of

the courses isn’t really what matters. In five years (or five months,

or minutes), the student is likely to have forgotten how to do the problem sets and will only hazily recollect

what happens in the ninth book of Paradise Lost. The legacy of their college years will be a legacy of

difficulties overcome. When they face equally arduous tasks later in life, students will tap their old

resources of determination, and they’ll win

.

All right, there’s nothing wrong with this as far as it goes—

after all, the student who writes a brilliant

forty- page thesis in a hard week has learned more than a little about her inner resources. Maybe it will

give her needed confidence in the future.

But doesn’t the content of the courses matter at all?

On the evidence of this talk, no. Trying to figure out whether the stuff you’re reading is true or false and

being open to having your lif/ changed is a

fraught, controversial activity. Doing so requires energy from the professor

—

which is better spent on

other matters. This kind of perspective-altering teaching and learning can cause the things which

administrators fear above all else: trouble, arguments, bad press, etc. After the kid- samurai episode, the

chair of my department not unsympathetically suggested that this was the sort of incident that could

happen when you brought a certain intensity to teaching. At the time I found his remark a tad detached,

but maybe he was right.

So, if you want an education, the odds aren’t with you: The professors are off doing what they call their

own work; the other students, who’ve doped out the way the place runs, are busy leaving the professors

alone and getting themselves in position for bright and shining futures; the student-services people are

trying to keep everyone content, offering plenty of entertainment and

bu/ding another state-of-the-art workout

facility every few months. The development office is already scanning you for future donations. The

4 / 102

primary function of Yale University, it’s recently been said, is to create prosperous alumni so as to enrich

Yale University.

So why make trouble? Why not just go along? Let the profs roam free in the realms of pure thought, let

yourselves party in the realms of impure pleasure, and let the student-services gang assert fewer

prohibitions and newer delights for you. You’ll get a good job, you’ll have plenty of friends, you’ll have a

driveway of your own.

You’ll also, if my father and I are right, be truly and righteously screwed. The reason for this is simple.

The quest at the center of a liberal-

arts education is not a luxury quest; it’s a necessity quest. If you

do

not undertake it, you risk leading a life of desperation

—

maybe quiet, maybe, in time, very loud

—

and I

/ not exaggerating. For you risk trying to

be someone other than who you are, which, in the long run, is killing.

By the time you come to college, you will have been told who you are numberless times. Your parents

and friends, your teachers, your counselors, your priests and rabbis and ministers and imams have all

had their say. They’ve let you know

how they size you up, and they’ve let you know what they think you

should value. They’ve given you a sharp and protracted taste of what they feel is good and bad, right and

wrong. Much is on their side. They have confronted you with scriptures

—

holy books that, whatever their

actual provenance, have given people what they feel to be wisdom for thousands of years. They’ve given

you family traditions

—you’ve learned the ways of your tribe and your community. And, too, you’ve been

tested, probed, looked at up and down and through. The coach knows what your athletic prospects are,

th/ guidance office has a sheaf of test

scores that relegate you to this or that ability quadrant, and your teachers have got you pegged. You are,

as Foucault might say, the intersection of many evaluative and potentially determining discourses: you

boy, you girl, have been made.

And

—

contra Foucault

—that’s not so bad. Embedded in all of the major religions are profound truths.

Schopenhauer, who despised belief in transcendent things, nonetheless thought Christianity to be of

inexpressible worth. He couldn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, or in the afterlife, but to Schopenhauer, a

deep pessimist, a religion that had as its central emblem the figure of a man being tortured on a cross

couldn’t be entirely misleading. To the Christian, Schopenhauer said, pain was at the center of the

understanding of life, and that was just as it should be.

One does not need to be as harsh as Schopenhauer to understand the use of

rel/ion, even if one does not believe in an

otherworldly god. And all of those teachers and counselors and friends

—

and the prognosticating uncles,

the dithering aunts, the fathers and mothers with their hopes for your fulfillment

—

or their

fulfillment in you

—

should not necessarily be cast aside or ignored. Families have their wisdom. The

question “Who do they think you are at home?” is never an idle one.

The major conservative thinkers have always been very serious about what goes by the name of

common sense. Edmund Burke saw common sense as a loosely made, but often profound, collective

work, in which humanity has deposited its hard-earned wisdom

—

the precipitate of joy and tears

—

over

time. You have been raised in proximity to common sense, if you’ve been raised at all, and common

sense is something to respect, though not quite

—

peace unto the formidable Burke

—

to revere.

You may be all that the good people who/

raised you say you are; you may want all they have shown you is worth wanting; you may be someone

who is truly your father’s son or your mother’s daughter. But then again, you may not be.

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For the power that is in you, as Emerson suggested, may be new in nature. You may not be the person

that your parents take you to be. And

—

this thought is both more exciting and more dangerous

—

you may

not be the person that you take yourself to be, either. You may not have read yourself aright, and college

is the place where you can find out whether you have or not. The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and

Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated, or more articulate, or to be someone who, at a

cocktail party, is never embarrassed (or who can embarrass others). The best reason to read them is to

see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected

thoughts flowing back to you with/ an

“alienated majesty.” Reading the great writers, you may have the experience that Longinus associated

with the sublime: You feel that you have actually created the text yourself. For somehow your

predecessors are more yourself than you are.

This was my own experience reading the two writers who have influenced me the most, Sigmund Freud

and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They gave words to thoughts and feelings that I had never been able to

render myself. They shone a light onto the world and what they saw, suddenly I saw, too. From Emerson

I learned to trust my own thoughts, to trust them even when every voice seems to be on the other side. I

need the wherewithal, as Emerson did, to say what’s on my mind and to take the

inevitable hits. Much more I learned from the sage

—

about character, about loss, about joy, about writing

and its secret sources, but Emerson most centrally preaches the gospel of self-reliance and that

is/ what I have tried most to take from him. I

continue to hold in mind one of Emerson’s most memorable passages: “Society is a joint

-stock company,

in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the

liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self- reliance is its aversion. It

loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Emerson’s greatness lies not only in showing you how powerful names and customs can be, but also in

demonstrating how exhilarating it is to buck them. When he came to Harvard to talk about religion, he

shocked the professors and students by challenging the divinity of Jesus and the truth of his miracles. He

wasn’t invited back for decades.

From Freud I found a great deal to ponder a

s well. I don’t mean Freud the aspiring scientist, but the

Freud who was a speculative essayist and interpreter of the human

c/dition like Emerson. Freud challenges

nearly every significant human ideal. He goes after religion. He says that it comes down to the longing for

the father. He goes after love. He calls it “the overestimation of the erotic object.” He attacks our desire

for charismatic popular leaders. We’re drawn to them because we hunger for

absolute authority. He

declares that dreams don’t predict the future and that there’s nothing benevolent about them. They’re

disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes.

Freud has something challenging and provoking to say about virtually every human aspiration. I learned

that if I wanted to affirm any consequential ideal, I had to talk my way past Freud. He was

—

and is

—

a

perpetual challenge and goad.

Never has there been a more shrewd and imaginative cartographer of the psyche. His separation of the

self into three parts, and his sense of the fraught, anxious, but often negotiable

relations/ among them (negotiable when you

come to the game with a Freudian knowledge), does a great deal to help one navigate experience.

(Though sometimes

—

and this I owe to Emerson

—

it seems right to let the psyche fall into civil war,

accepting barrages of anxiety and grief for this or that good reason.)

6 / 102

The battle is to make such writers one’s own, to winnow them out and to find

their essential truths. We

need to see where they fall short and where they exceed the mark, and then to develop them a little, as

the ideas themselves, one comes to see, actually developed others. (Both Emerson and Freud live out of

Shakespeare

—

but only a giant can be truly influenced by Shakespeare.) In reading, I continue to look for

one thing

—

to be influenced, to learn something new, to be thrown off my course and onto another, better

way.

My father knew that he was dissatisfied with life. He knew that none of the descriptions people had for

h/ quite fit. He understood that he was

always out-of-joint with life as it was. He had talent: My brother and I each got about half the raw ability

he possesse

d and that’s taken us through life well enough. But what to do with that talent—

there was the

rub for my father. He used to stroll through the house intoning his favorite line from Groucho Marx

’

s ditty

“Whatever it is, I’m against it.” (I recently asked my

son, now twenty-one, if he thought I was mistaken in

teaching him this particular song when he was six years old. “No!” he said, filling the air with an invisible

forest of exclamation points.) But what my father never managed to get was a sense of who he might

become. He never had a world of possibilities spread before him, never made sustained contact with the

best that had been thought and said. He didn’t get to revise his understanding of himself, figure out what

he’d do best that might give the world

some profit.

:///My father was a gruff man, but also a

generous one, so that night at the kitchen table at 58 Clewley Road he made an effort to let me have the

chance that had been denied to him by both fate and character. He gave me the chance to see what I

was all about, and if it proved to be different from him, proved even to be something he didn’t like or

entirely comprehend, then he’d deal with it.

Right now, if you’re going to get a real education, you

may have to be aggressive and assertive.

Your professors will give you some fine books to read, and they’ll probably help you understand them.

What they won’t do, for reasons that perplex me, is to ask you if the books contain truths you could live

your li

ves by. When you read Plato, you’ll probably learn about his metaphysics and his politics and his

way of conceiving the

soul. But no one will ask you if his ideas are good enough to believe in. No one will ask

yo/b436ae4d256db091cd1a

, in the words of Emerson’s disciple

William James, what their “cash value” might be. No one will suggest that you might use Plato as your

bible for a week or a year or longer. No one, in short, will ask you to use Plato to help you change your

life.

That will be up to you. You must put the question of Plato to yourself. You must ask whether reason

should always rule the passions, philosophers should always rule the state, and poets should inevitably

be banished from a just commonwealth. You have to ask yourself if wildly expressive music (rock and rap

and the rest) deranges the soul in ways that are destructive to its health. You must inquire of yourself if

balanced calm is the most desirable human state.

Occasionally

—

for you will need some help in fleshing-out the answers

—

you may have to prod your

professors to see if they take the text at hand

—

in this case the divine and disturbing Plato

—

to be true.

And you wil/ have to be tough if the

professor mocks you for uttering a sincere question instead of keeping matters easy for all concerned by

staying detached and analytical. (Detached analysis has a place

—but, in the end, you’ve got to speak

from the heart and pose the question of truth.) You’ll be the one who pesters his teachers. You’ll ask your

history teacher about whether there is a design to our history, whether we’re progressing or declining, or

7 / 102

whether, in the words of a fine recent play, The History Boys, history’s “just one fuckin’ thing

after

another.” You’ll be the one who challenges your biology teacher about the intellectual conflict between

evolution and creationist thinking. You’ll not only question the statistics teacher about what numbers can

explain but what they can’t.

Because every subject you study is a language and since you may adopt one of these languages as your

own, you’ll want to know how to speak it

exper/y and also how it fails to deal with

those concerns for which i

t has no adequate words. You’ll be looking into the reach of every metaphor

that every discipline offers, and you’ll be trying to see around their corners.

The whole business is scary, of course. What if you arrive at college devoted to pre-med, sure that

nothing will make you and your family happier than a life as a physician, only to discover that

elementary-school teaching is where your heart is?

You might learn that you’re not meant to be a doctor at all. Of course, given your intellect and discipline,

you can still probably be one. You can pound your round peg through the very square hole of medical

school, then go off into the profession. And society will help you. Society has a cornucopia of resources

to encourage you in doing what society needs done

but that you don’t much like doing and are not cut out

to do. To ease your grief, society offer/

alcohol, television, drugs, divorce, and buying, buying, buying what you don’t need. But all those too ha

ve

their costs.

Education is about finding out what form of work for you is close to being play

—

work you do so easily that

it restores you as you go. Randall Jarrell once said that if he were a rich man, he would pay money to

teach poetry to students. (I w

ould, too, for what it’s worth.) In saying that, he (like my father) hinted in the

direction of a profound and true theory of learning.

Unit2

Two Kinds

——

Amy Tan

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant.

You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no

money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous.

“

Of course, you can be a prodigy1, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “Y

ou can be best anything.

What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”

America was where all my mother’s hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing

everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby

girls. But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.

We didn’t immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese

Shirley Temple2. We’d watch Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother

would poke my arm and say, “Ni watch.” And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a

sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying “Oh, my goodness.”

“

Ni kan,” my mother said, as Shirley’s eyes flooded with tears. “You already know how. Don’t need

talent for crying!”

Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to the beauty training school in the

Mission District and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking.

Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz3. My mother dragged

me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.

“

You look like a Ne

gro Chinese,” she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.

8 / 102

The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off4 these soggy clumps to make my hair even

again. “Peter Pan5 is very popular these days” the instructor assured my mother. I now had b

ad hair the

length of a boy’s, with curly bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows. I liked the haircut,

and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.

In fact, in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy

part of me as many different images, and I tried each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing

by the curtain, waiting to hear the music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ

child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella6 stepping from her

pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.

In all of my imaginings I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect: My mother and father

would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk, or to clamor for

anything. But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of

here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned. “And then you’ll always be nothing.”

Every night after dinner my mother and I would sit at the Formica7 topped kitchen table. She would

present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children that she read in Ripley’s Believe

It or Not or Good Housek

eeping, Reader’s digest, or any of a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in

our bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she

cleaned many houses each week, we had a great assortment. She would look through them all,

searching for stories about remarkable children.

The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states

and even the most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying that the little boy could

also pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly. “What’s the capital of Finland?” my mother

asked me, looking at the story.

All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento8 was the name of the street we lived on in

Chin

atown9. “Nairobi10!” I quessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if

that might be one way to pronounce “Helsinki11” before showing me the answer.

The tests got harder - multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards,

trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los angeles,

New York, and London.

One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and then report everything I could

reme

mber. “Now Jehoshaphat had riches12 and honor in abundance and that’s all I remember, Ma,” I

said.

And after seeing, once again, my mother’s disappointed face, something inside me began to die. I hated

the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Before going to bed that night I looked in the mirror

above the bathroom sink, and I saw only my face staring back---and understood that it would always be

this ordinary face ---I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal,

trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.

And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me---a face I had never seen before. I looked at

my reflection, blinking so that I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful.

She and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts or rather, thoughts filled with lots of won’ts.

I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not.

So now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I

pretended to be bored. And I was. I got so bored that I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out on

the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas. The sound was comforting and reminded me of the

9 / 102

cow jumping over the moon. And the next day I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would

give up on me before eight bellows. After a while I usually counted ony one bellow, maybe two at most. At

last she was beginning to give up hope.

Two or three months went by without any mention of my being a prodigy. And then one day my mother

was watching the Ed Sullivan Show13 on TV. The TV was old and the sound kept shorting out. Every

time my mother got halfway up from the sofa to adjust the set, the sound would come back on and

Sullivan would be talking. As soon as she sat down, Sullivan would go silent again. She got up, the TV

broke into loud piano music. She sat down, silence. Up and down, back and forth, quiet and loud. It was

like a stiff, embraceless dance between her and the TV set. Finally, she stood by the set with her hand on

the sound dial.

She seemed entranced by the music, a frenzied little piano piece with a mesmerizing quality, which

alternated between quick, playful passages and teasing, lilting ones.

“

Ni kan,” my mother said, calling me over with hurried hand gestures. “Look here.”

I could see why my mother was fascinated by the music. It was being pounded out by a little Chinese girl,

about nine years old, with a Peter Pan haircut. The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple. She was

proudly modest, like a proper Chinese Child. And she also did a fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy

skirt of her white dress cascaded to the floor like petals of a large carnation.

In spite of these warning signs, I wasn’t worried. Our family had no piano and we couldn’t afford to buy

one, let alone reams of sheet music and piano lessons. So I could be generous in my comments when

my mother badmouthed14 the little girl on TV.

“

Play note right, but doesn’t sound good!” my mother complained “No singing sound.”

“

What are you picking on her for?” I said carelessly. “She’s pretty good. Maybe she’s not the best, but

she’s trying hard.” I knew almost immediatel

y that I would be sorry I had said that.

“

Just like you,” she said. “Not the best. Because you not trying.” She gave a little huff as she let go of

the sound dial and sat down on the sofa.

The little Chinese girl sat down also, to play an encore of “Anitra’s Tanz,” by Grieg15. I remember the

song, because later on I had to learn how to play it.

Three days after watching the Ed Sullivan Show my mother told me what my schedule would be for piano

lessons and piano practice. She had talked to Mr. Chong, who lived on the first floor of our apartment

building. was a retired piano teacher, and my mother had traded housecleaning services for

weekly lessons and a piano for me to practice on every day, two hours a day, from four until six.

When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell. I wished and then kicked my foot a

little when I couldn”t stand it anymore.

“

Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano. And even if I could, I

wouldn’t go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!” I cried.

My mother slapped me. “Who ask you be genius.”she shouted. “Only ask you be your best. For you sake.

You think I want you be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!”

“

So ungrateful,”I heard her mutter in chinese. “If

she had as much talent as she had temper, she would

be famous now.”

Mr. Chong, whom I secretly nicknamed Old Chong, was very strange, always tapping his fingers to the

silent music of an invisible orchestra. He looked ancient in my eyes. He had lost most of the hair on top of

his head and he wore thick glasses and had eyes that always thought, since he lived with his mother and

was not yet married.

10 / 102

I met Old Lady Chong once, and that was enough. She had a peculiar smell, like a baby that had done

something

in its pants, and her fingers felt like a dead person’s, like an old peach I once found in the back

of the refrigerator: its skin just slid off the flesh when I picked it up.

I soon found out why Old Chong had retired from teaching piano. He was deaf

. “Like Beethoven!” he

shouted to me “We’re both listening only in our head!” And he would start to conduct his frantic silent

sonatas16.

Our lessons went like this. He would open the book and point to different things, explaining, their

purpose: “Key! Treble! Bass! No sharps or flats! So this is C major! Listen now and play after me!”

And then he would play the C scale a few times, a simple cord, and then, as if inspired by an old

unreachable itch, he would gradually add more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the

music was really something quite grand.

I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then just play some nonsense that

sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans. Old Chong would smile and applaud

and say “Very good! Bt now ou must learn to keep time!”

So that’s how I discovered that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I

was playing. He went through the motions in half time. To help me keep rhythm, he stood behind me and

pushed down on my right shoulder for every beat. He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so that I

would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios17. He had me curve my hand around an

apple and keep that shame when playing chords. He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger

dance up and down, staccato18 like an obedient little soldier.

He taught me all these things, and that was how I also learned I could be lazy and get away with

mistakes, lots of mistakes. I

f I hit the wrong notes because I hadn’t practiced enough, I never corrected

myself, I just kept playing in rhythm. And Old Chong kept conducting his own private reverie.19

So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might

have become a good pianist at the young age. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody

different, and I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

Over the next year I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother

and her friend Lindo Jong both after church, and I was leaning against a brick wall, wearing a dress with

stiff white petticoats. Auntie Linds daughter, Waverly, who was my age, was standing farther down the

wall, about five feet away. We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters,

squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most part, we hated each other. I thought she

was snotty. Waverly Jong had

gained a certain amount of fame as “Chinatown’s Littlest Chinese Chess

Champion.”

“She bring home too many trophy.” Auntie Lindo lamented that Sunday. “All day she play chess. All

day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings.” She threw a sc

olding look at Waverly, who

pretended not to see her.

“You lucky you don’t have this problem,” Auntie Lindo said with a sigh to my mother.

And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged “our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jing

-mei

wash dish, s

he hear nothing but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.”

And right then I was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride.

A few weeks later Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show that was to be

held in the church hall. But then my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano, a

black Wurlitzer spinet with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room.

11 / 102

For the talent show I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child” from Schumann’

s Scenes From

Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to

memorize the whole thing. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see

what notes followed. I never really listed to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere

else, about being someone else.

The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a

pointed foot, sweep to the side, bend left leg, look up, and smile.

My parents invited all the couples from their social club to witness my debut. Auntie Lindo and Uncle

Tin were there. Waverly and her two older brothers had also come. The first two rows were filled with

children either younger or older than I was. The littlest ones got to go first. They recited simple nursery

rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins, and twirled hula hoops20 in pink ballet tutus21, and

when they bowed or curtsied, the audience would sigh in unison, “Awww,” and the

n clap enthusiastically.

When my turn came, I was very confident. I remember my childish excitement. It was as if I knew,

without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. I

remember thinking, This is it! This is it! I loo

ked out over the audience, at my mother’s blank face, my

father’s yawn, Auntie Lindo’s stiff

-

lipped smile, Waverly’s sulky expression. I had on a white dress,

layered with sheets of lace, and a pink bow in my Peter Pan haircut. As I sat down, I envisioned people

jumping to their feet and Ed Sullivan rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV.

And I started to play. Everything was so beautiful. I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that I

wasn’t worried about how I would sound. So I was surprised when I hit the first wrong note. And then I hit

another and another. A chill started at the

top of my head and began to trickle down. Yet I couldn’t stop

playing, as though my hands were bewitched. I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back,

like a train switching to the right track. I played this strange jumble through to the end, the sour notes

staying with me all the way.

When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking. Maybe I had just been nervous, and the

audience, like Old Chong had seen me go through the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at

all. I swept my right foot out, went down on my knee, looked up, and smiled. The room was quiet, except

fot Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting “Bravo! Bravo! Well done!” By then I saw my mother’s

face, her stricken face. The audience clapped weakly, and I walked back to my chair, with my whole face

quivering as I tried not to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother. “That was awful,” and

mother whispered “Well, she certainly tried.”

And now I realized how many people were in the audience, the whole world, it seemed. I was aware

of eyes burning into my back. I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly through the rest

of the show.

We could have escaped during intermission. Pride and some strange sense of honor must have

anchored my parents to their chairs. And so we watched it all. The eighteen-year-old boy with a fake

moustache who did a magic show and juggled flaming hoops while riding a unicycle. The breasted girl

with white make up who sang an aria from Madame Butterfly22 and got an honorable mention. And the

eleven-year- old boy who was first prize playing a tricky violin song that sounded like a busy bee.

After the show the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs, from the Joy Luck Club, came up to my

mother and father.

“Lots of talented kids,” Auntie Lindo said vaguely, smiling broadly. “That was something else,” my

father said, and I wondered if he was referring to me in a humorous way, or whether he even

remembered what I had done.

12 / 102

Waverly looked at me and shrugged

her shoulders. “You aren’t a genius like me,” she said

matter-of-

factly. And if I hadn’t felt so bad, I would have pulled her braids and punched her stomach.

But my mother’s expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost

everything. I felt the same way, and everybody seemed now to be coming up, like gawkers at the scene

of an accident to see what parts were actually missing. When we got on the bus to go home, my father

was humming the busy-bee tune and my mother kept silent. I kept thinking she wanted to wait until we

got home before shouting at me. But when my father unlocked the door to our apartment, my mother

walked in and went straight to the back, into the bedroom. No accusations, No blame. And in a way, I felt

disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so that I could shout back and cry and blame

her for all my misery.

I had assumed that my talent- show fiasco meant that I would never have to play the piano again. But two

days later, after school, my mother came out of the kitchen and saw me watching TV.

“Four clock,” she reminded me, as if it were any other day. I was stunned, as though she were

asking me to go through the talent-show torture again. I planted myself more squarely in front of the TV.

“Turn off TV,” she called from the kitchen five minutes later. I didn’t budge. And then I decided, I

didn’t have to do what mother said anymore. I wasn’t her slave. This wasn’t China. I had listened to her

before, and look what happened she was the stupid one.

She came out of the kitchen and stood in the arched entryway of the living room. “Four clock,” she

said once again, louder.

“I’m not going to play anymore,” I said nonchalantly23. “Why should I? I’m not a genius.”

She stood in front of the TV. I saw that her chest was heaving up and down in an angry way.

“No!” I said, and I now felt stronger, as if my true self had finally emerged. So this was what had been

inside me all along.

“No! I won’t!” I screamed. She snapped off the T

V, yanked me by the arm and pulled me off the floor.

She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me towards the piano as I kicked the throw rugs

under my feet. She lifted me up onto the hard bench. I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly. Her

chest was heaving even more and her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased that I was

crying.

“You want me to be something that I’m not!” I sobbed. “I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me

to be!”

“Only two kinds of daughters,” she shouted in Chinese. “Those who are obedient and those who

follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”

“Then I wish I weren’t your daughter, I wish you weren’t my mother,” I shouted. As I sa

id these things

I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good,

that this awful side of me had surfaced, at last.

“Too late to change this,” my mother said shrilly.

And I could sense her

anger rising to its breaking point. I wanted see it spill over. And that’s when I

remembered the babies she had lost in China, the ones we never talked about. “Then I wish I’d never

been born!” I shouted. “I wish I were dead! Like them.”

It was as if I had said magic words. Alakazam!-her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went

slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin,

brittle, lifeless.

13 / 102

It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her many

times, each time asserting my will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didn’t get straight As24. I didn’t

become class president. I didn’t get into Stanford. I dropped out of college.

Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me.

And for all those years we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible delarations

afterward at the piano bench. Neither of us talked about it again, as if it were a betrayal that was now

unspeakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure

was inevitable.

And even worse, I never asked her about what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?

For after our struggle at the piano, she never mentioned my playing again. The lessons stopped The lid

to the piano was closed shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams.

So she surprised me. A few years ago she offered to give me the piano, for my thirtieth birthday. I

had not played in all those years. I saw the offer as a sign of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed.

“Are you sure?” I asked shyly. “I mean, won’t you and Dad miss it?” “No, this your piano,” she said firmly.

“Always your piano. You only one can play.”

“Well, I probably can’t play anymore,” I said. “It’s been years.” “You pick up fast,” my mother said, as

if she knew this was certain. “You have natural talent. You could be a genius if you want to.”

“

No, I couldn’t.”

“

You just not trying,” my mother said. And she was neither angry nor sad. She said it as if announcing a

fact that could never be disproved. “Take it,” she said.

But I didn’t at f

irst. It was enough that she had offered it to me. And after that, everytime I saw it in my

parents’living room, standing in front of the bay window, it made me feel proud, as if it were a shiny trophy

that I had won back.

Last week I sent a tuner over to

my parent’s apartment and had the piano reconditioned, for purely

sentimental reasons. My mother had died a few months before and I had been bgetting things in order for

my father a little bit at a time. I put the jewelry in special silk pouches. The sweaters I put in mothproof

boxes. I found some old chinese silk dresses, the kind with little slits up the sides. I rubbed the old silk

against my skin, and then wrapped them in tissue and decided to take them hoe with me.

After I had the piano tuned, I opened the lid and touched the keys. It sounded even richer that I

remembered. Really, it was a very good piano. Inside the bench were the same exercise notes with

handwritten scales, the same sedcondhand music books with their covers held together with yellow tape.

I opened up the Schumann book to the dark little piecce I had played at the recital. It was on the left-hand

page, “Pleading Child” It looked more difficult than I remembered. I played a few bars, surprised at how

easily the notes came back to me.

And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the piece on the right-

hand side, It was called “Perfectly

Contented” I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but with the same flowing rhythm and

turned out to be quite easy. “Pleading Child” was shorter but slower; “Perfectly Contented” was longer but

faster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

第二课

Two

Kinds

1.< /p>

妈相信，在美国，任何梦想都能成为事实。你可以做一切你想做的：开家餐馆，

< p>

或者在政府部门工

作，以期得到很高的退休待遇 。你可以不用付一个子儿的现金，

就可以买到一幢房子。你有 可能发财，也

有可能出人头地，反正，到处是机会。

2.

在我九岁时，妈就对我说：

“你也能成为天才。你会样样事都应付得很出色的。

琳达姨算什么？

她那女儿，只不过心眼多一点而已。

”

14 / 102

3.

妈将一切未遂的心愿、希望，都寄托在美国这片土地上。她是在

1949

年来到美

国的。在中国，她

丧失了一切：双亲，家园，她的前夫和一对孪生女儿。但她对过

去的一切，从不用悲恸的目光去回顾，眼

前，她有太多的打算，以便将 生活安排得

更好。

二

4.

至于 我将成为哪方面的天才，妈并不急于立时拍板定案。起初，她认为我完全

可以成为个中国

的秀兰

?

邓 波儿。

我们不放过电视里的秀兰

?

邓波 儿的旧片子，

每

每这时，

< p>
妈便会抬起我的手臂往屏幕频频

挥动：

“你——看，

”这用的是汉语。而

我，也确实看见 秀兰摆出轻盈的舞姿，或演唱一支水手歌，有

时，则将嘴唇撅成个

圆圆的“０”字，说一声“哦，我的上帝”

。

5.

当屏 幕上的秀兰双目满噙着晶莹的泪珠时，妈又说了：

“你看，你早就会哭了。

哭不需要什么天

才！

”

6.< /p>

立时，妈有了培养目标了。她把我带去我们附近一家美容培训班开办的理发店，

< p>

把我交到一个学员

手里。这个学生，甚至连剪刀 都拿不像，经她一番折腾，我的头

发，成了一堆稀浓不均的鬈 曲的乱草堆。

妈伤心地说：

“你看着，像个中国黑人了。

”

美容培训班的指导老师不得不亲自 出马，再操起剪刀来修

理我头上那湿漉漉的

一团。

7.< /p>

“彼得

?

潘的式样，近日是非常时行的。

”那位指导老师向妈吹嘘着。

我的头发，已剪成个男孩子

样，前面留着浓密的、直至眉毛的刘海。 我挺喜欢

这次理发，它令我确信，我将前途无量。

8.

确实刚开始，我跟妈一样兴奋，或许要更兴奋。我憧憬着自己种 种各不相同的

天才形象，犹如一位

已 在天幕侧摆好优美姿势的芭蕾舞演员，

只等着音乐的腾起，

< /p>

即踮起足尖翩然起舞。我就像降生在马槽里

的圣婴，是从南瓜马车 上下来的灰姑娘……

9.< /p>

反正我觉得，我立时会变得十分完美：父母会称赞我，我再不会挨骂，我会应

有尽有，不用为着没

有能得到某样心想的东西而赌 气不快。

10.

然 而看来，天才本身对我，颇有点不耐烦了：

“你再不成才，我就走了，再也

不来光顾你了，

”

它警告着，

“这一来，你就什么也没有了。

”

11.

每 天晚饭后，我和妈就坐在厨房桌边，她每天给我作一些智力测试，这些测试

< p>
题目，是她从《信

不信由你》《好管家》《读者文摘》等杂志里收罗来的。 在

、

、

家里洗澡间里，我们有一大堆这样 的旧

杂志，那是妈从她做清洁工的那些住户家里

要来的。每周，她为好几户住户做清洁工。因此这里有各式各

样的旧杂志，她 从中

搜寻着各种有关天才孩子的智力培养和他们成才的过程。

12.

开始这种测试的当晚，她就给 我讲了一个三岁神童的故事，他能诸熟地背出各

州的首府，甚 至大

部分欧洲国家的名字。另一位教师证明，这小男孩能正确无误地

拼出外国城市的名字。

13.

“芬兰的首都是哪？”于是，母亲当场对我开始测试了。

14.

天呀，我只知道加州的首府！ 因为我们在唐人街上住的街名，就叫萨克拉曼多。

“乃洛比！

”我

冒出一个莫名其妙的，所能想象得出的最奇特的外国字。

15.

测试的题目越来越复杂了：

心算乘法，

在一叠扑克牌里抽出红心皇后，

做倒立

动作，

预测洛杉矶、

纽约和伦敦的气温。

16.

还有一次，妈让我读三分钟《圣经》

，然后说出我所读过的内容。

“现在，耶

和华非有丰富的

财富和荣誉……妈，我只记得这一句。

”

17.

再次看到妈失望的眼神之后，我内心对成才的激动和向往，也消遁了。我开始

< p>

憎恨这样的测试，

每一次都是以满怀希望开始， 以失望而告终。那晚上床之前，我

站在浴室的洗脸盆镜子前， 看到一张普普

通通，毫无出众之处的哭丧着的脸——我

哭了。我尖叫着，跺脚，就像一只发怒的小兽，拼命去抓镜中那

个丑女 孩的脸。

18.

随后，忽然我似乎这才发现了真正的天才的自己，镜中的女孩，闪眨着聪明强

< p>

硬的目光看着我，

一个新的念头从我心里升起： 我就是我，我不愿让她来任意改变

我。我向自己起誓，我要永 远保持原来的

我。

19.

所以后来，每当妈再要我做什么测试时，我便做出一副无精打 采的样子，将手

肘撑在桌上，头懒

懒 地倚在上面，装出一副心不在焉的样子。事实上，我也实在无

法专心。当妈又开始她的测试课时，我便

15 / 102

开始专心倾听迷雾茫茫的海湾处的浪涛声，

< br>那沉闷的声响，颇似一条在气喘吁吁奔跑的母牛。几次下来，

妈放弃了对我的测试 。

20.

两 三个月安然无事地过去了，其间，再没提一个有关“天才”的字眼了。一天，

妈在看电视，那

是艾德

?

索利凡的专题节目，

一个小女孩正在表演钢琴独奏。

这是

台很旧的电视机，

发出的声音时响时轻，

有时甚至还会停顿。

每每它哑巴的时候，

妈就要起身去调整它，

待她还没走到电视机前，

< p>
电视机又讲话了，

于是就像故意要

作弄她一番似的，反正她一离沙发，电视就出声了，她一坐下，艾德就变哑巴。最

后，

妈索性守在电视机边，将手按在键盘上。

< p>

21.

电视里的琴声似令她着迷了， 只见演奏者既有力，又柔和地敲着琴键，突地，

一阵密切铿锵 的琶

音倾泻而下，犹如决堤的洪水，翻江倒海地奔腾起来，只见她手

腕一抬，那激动急骤的旋律顿时烟消云散

了，那含有诗意 、温存的音符，从她手指

尖下飘逸出来。

22.

“你——看！

”我妈说着，急促地把我叫到电视机前。

23.

我马上领会了，妈为什么这样深深地被琴声迷住。原来，那个 正在向观众行屈

膝礼的演奏者，不

过 只八九岁的光景。而且同样是一个留着彼得

?

潘发式的中国女< /p>

孩子。她穿着蓬松的白色短裙，就像一朵

含苞欲放的康乃馨。在她优雅地行礼时，

既有秀兰

?

邓波儿的活泼，又持典型的中国式的谦和。

24.

我们家反正没有钢琴，也没有 钱买钢琴，所以，当妈一再将这个小钢琴家作话

题时，我竟失 却了

警惕，大咧咧地说起大话了。

“弹倒弹得不错，就是怎么她自己不跟着唱。

”我妈对我批评着那个女孩

子。

25.

“你要求太高了，

”我一不小心说溜了嘴！

“她弹得蛮不错了。虽然说不上最

好，但至少，她

已很下过一番苦功了。

”话一出口我就后悔了。

26.

果然，妈抓住我小辫子了。

“所以呀，

”她说，

“可你，连一点苦功都不肯下。

”

她有点愠

怒地拉长着脸，又回到沙发上去。

27.

电视里的那个中国女孩子，也重番坐下再弹了一曲《安尼托拉的舞蹈》

< br>

，是由

格林卡作曲的。我< /p>

之所以印象这么深，是因为后来，我花了很大功夫去学习弹奏它。

28.

三天后，妈给我制定了一张钢琴课和练琴的课程表。原来，她 已跟我们公寓里

一楼的一位退休钢

琴 教师商量妥，妈免费为他做清洁工，作为互惠，他则免费为我

教授钢琴，而且每天下午的四点到六点，

将他的琴供我练习。

29.

当妈把她的计划告诉我时，我 即感头皮发麻，有一种被送进炼狱的感觉。

30.

“我现在这样不是很好嘛！我本来就不是神童，我永远也成不 了天才！我不会

弹钢琴，学也学不

会 。哪怕你给我一百万元，我也永远上不了电视！

”我哭着嚷着，

跺着脚。

31.

妈当即给了我一个巴掌。

“谁要你做什么天才，

”她厉声叱责着我，

“只要你

尽力就行了。还

< p>
不都是为了要你好！难道是我要你做什么天才的？你成了天才，我

有什么好处！哼，我这样操心，到底是

为的什么呀！

< br>

”

32.

“没有良心！

”我听见她用汉语狠狠地嘟哝了一句，

“要是她的天分有她脾气

这般大就好 了，

她早就可以出人头地了！

”

33.

那个钟先生，我私下称他为老钟，是个很古怪的老头。他似已很老很老了，头

< p>

顶秃得光光的，戴

着副啤酒瓶底一样厚的眼镜，

在层层叠叠的圈圈里，

一双眼睛整

< /p>

日像昏昏欲睡的样子。他常常会悠然地对

着一支看不见的乐队，指 挥着听不见的音

乐。但我想，他一定没我想象的那般老朽，因 为他还有个妈妈。

而且，

他还没有结

婚吧。

那钟老太，

< br>可真让我够受了。

她身上带有一股怪味，

那种……尿骚味 。

她的手

指

看着就像是烂桃子的感觉。一次我在冰箱后边摸到过一只这样的烂桃子，当我捡

起它时，那层皮，就滑漉

漉地脱落了下来。

34.

我很快就明白了，老钟为什么只好退休。原来他是个聋子。< /p>

“像贝多芬一样，

”

他常常喜欢扯

大嗓门说话，

“我们俩都是只用心来倾听！

”他如此自诩着，说毕，

依旧陶醉在 对无人无声乐队的指挥

中，如痴如醉地挥动着他的手臂。

16 / 102

35.

我 们的课程是这样进行的。他先打开琴谱，指着各种不同的标记，向我解释着

它们各自代表的意

义：

“这是高音谱号！低音谱号！没有升号和降号的，就是

C

调。

喏，跟着我。

”

36.

随后他弹了几个

C

调音阶，

一组简单的和弦，

然后似受一种无法抑制的渴望所激

动，

他的手指在

琴键上按了更多的和弦，仿佛是感情的迸发和泛滥，他弹 出了令人

神魂震荡、形销骨立的颤音，接着又加

进了低音，整个气氛，颇有一种豪迈的，雷

霆万钧的浑厚气概。

37.

我就跟着他，先是简单的音阶和和弦，接着，就有点胡闹了， 只是些杂乱的噪

声，那声音，活像

一 只猫在垃圾洞顶上窜蹦不停。老钟却大声叫好：

“好！非常好，

但要学会掌握弹奏的速度。

”

38.

他这一说，倒让我发现了，他的目力也不行了，来不及对照谱子来核准我有无

< p>

按出正确的音符。

他的目光要比我弹奏的速度慢 半拍。

他在教我弹奏琶音时，

便在

< /p>

我手腕处放上几个硬币，以此训练我的手

腕保持平衡。在弹奏和弦 时，则要求我的

手握成个空圆弧状，有如手心里握着一只苹果 。然后，他又示范

给我看，如何令每

一个手指，都像一个独立的小兵似的，服从大脑的指挥。

39.

在他教会我这一整套技巧时，

我也学 会了如何偷懒，

并掩盖自己的失误。

如果

我按错了一个琴键，

我从来不去纠正，只是坦然地接着往下 弹。而老钟，则自顾往

下指挥着他自己的无声的音乐。

40.

或许，我确实没有好好地下过功夫，否则，我想我极有可能在这方面有所作为

< p>

的；或许我真的会

成为一个少年钢琴家。就我这 样学钢琴，也很快地掌握了基本的

要领和技巧。可我实在太执 拗，那么顽固

地拒绝与众不同，所以我只学会弹震耳欲

聋的前奏曲和最最不和谐的赞美诗。

41.

我就这样我行我素地学了一年。一天礼拜结束后，听到妈和琳达姨正在互相用

< p>

一种炫耀的口气吹

嘘着各自的女儿。

“

薇弗莱与我同年。我俩从小一起玩 耍，就像姐妹一样，我们也吵架，也争夺过

彩色

蜡笔和洋娃娃。换句话说，我们并不太友好。我认为她太傲慢了。薇弗莱的名

气很大，有“唐人街最小的

棋圣”之称。

42.

哎，薇弗莱捧回来的奖品实在太多了，

< br>

”琳达姨以一种似是抱怨，实在是夸

耀的口吻说，

“她

< br>自己整天只顾着下棋，我可忙坏了。每天，就光擦拭她捧回的那

些奖品，就够我忙的了。

”

43.

琳 达姨得意地抱怨了一番后，长长地嘘了一口气，对妈说：

“你真福气，你可

没这种烦心事。”

44.

“谁说呀，

”妈妈高高地耸起了双肩，以一种得意的无奈说，

“我可比你还要

烦心呢。我们的

精美，满耳只有音乐，叫她洗盆子，你叫哑了嗓子她也听不见。有

啥办法，她天生这样一副对音乐失魂落

魄的模样！

”

45.

就是这时，我萌生出个报复的念头，以制止她这种令人可笑的 攀比。

46.

几星期后，老钟和我妈试图要 我在一次联谊会上登一次台，这次联谊会将在教

堂大厅里举行 。那

阵，父母已储足钱为我买了架旧钢琴，那是一架黑色的乌立兹牌，

< br>

连带一张有疤痕的琴凳。它也是我们起

居室的摆设。< /p>

47.

在那次联谊会上，我将演奏舒 曼的《请愿的孩童》

。这是一首忧郁的弹奏技巧

简单的曲 子，但听

起来还是像很有点难度的。我得把它背出来，然后在重复部分连

弹两次，以令它听起来可以显得长一点。

可我在弹的 时候，经常偷工减料，跳过好

几节。我从不仔细听一听自己弹 出的那些音符，弹琴时，我总有

点心不在焉。

48.

我最愿意练习的，要算那个屈膝礼，我已可以把它行得十分漂 亮了。

49.

爸 妈兴致勃勃地将喜福会的朋友全部请来为我捧场，连薇弗莱和她两个哥哥也

< p>
来了。表演者以年

龄为序，由小至大上台表演。有朗诵诗歌的，跳芭蕾舞的 ，还有，

在儿童小提琴上奏出鸭叫一样的声音。

每一个表演的结束，都得到热烈的掌声。

50.

待轮到我上阵时，我很兴奋。那纯粹是一种孩子气的自信，我还不懂得害怕和

< p>

紧张。记得当时，

我心里一个劲这样想：就这么 回事，就这么回事！我往观众席瞥

了一眼，看到妈那张茫然的 脸，爸在打呵

欠，琳达姨的有如刻上去的微笑，薇弗莱

的拉长的脸。我穿着一条缀着层层花边的白短裙，在彼得

?

< p>
潘式

的头发上，扎着一

只粉色的大蝴蝶结。当我在钢琴边坐下时，我想象着，艾德

?

索 利凡正把我介绍给

电视

机屏幕前的每 一位观众，而台下的听众，都激动得连连跺脚。

17 / 102

51.

我的手触到了琴键。多好呀， 我看上去那么可爱！对于我手下按出的音阶将是

怎样，我却毫 不担

心。因此，当我按错了第一个音阶时，我自己都有点吃惊，我以

为我会弹得十分出色。不对了，又是一个

错的，怎么搞的 ？我头顶开始冒凉气了，

然后慢慢弥散开来。但我不能停下不 弹呀。我的手指似着了魔，

有点自说自话，尽

管我一心想将它们重新调整一番，好比将火车重新拨回到正确的轨道上，可手指就

是

不听指挥。反正从头到尾，就是这么杂乱刺耳的一堆！< /p>

52.

待我终于从凳子上站起身时， 我发现自己两腿直打哆嗦，大概是太紧张了。四

周一片默然， 唯有

老钟笑着大声叫好。

在人群中，

我 看到妈一张铁青的脸。

观众们

稀稀拉 拉地拍了几下手。

回到自己座位上，

我整个脸抽搐了，我尽力克 制自己不哭

出声。这时，一个小男孩轻声对他妈说：

“她弹得糟透了！

”他

母亲忙轻声阻止他：

“嘘！可她已经尽最大努力了。

”

53.

一下子我觉得，

似乎全世界的人都坐在观众席上。

我只觉得千万双眼睛在后边

盯着我，

热辣辣的。

我甚至感觉到那直挺挺地硬支撑着看节目的父母，他们那份难

堪和丢脸。

54.

其实我们可以趁幕间休息时溜走，但出于虚荣和自尊，爸妈硬 是坐到节目全部

结束。

55.

表演结束后，喜福会的许家、龚家和圣克莱尔家的人都来到父 母跟前：

56.

“不错呀，多有本事的小朋友！

”琳达姨只是含糊地敷衍着，显出一抹刻上去

般的微笑。

57.

“当然。文章是自己的好，孩子是人家的好。

”父亲苦笑着说。

58.

薇弗莱则看着我，再耸耸肩，干脆地说：

“你不行呀，还不及我呢！

”要不是

我有自知之明，

< p>
确实觉得自己表演得实在不怎样，我准会上去扯她辫子的。

59.

但最令我惊然的，是妈。她满脸的冷漠和晦败，那就是说，她 已灰心丧气了。

我也觉得灰心丧气

了 。

现在大家都这么团团地围着我们，

似车祸中看热闹的人一样，

一心要看看那倒霉的压在车轮底下的家

伙，到底压成个什么样子！直到我们乘上公

共汽车回家时， 妈一路上还是一言不发。我心想妈只须一踏进

家门，

就会冲着我 大

大发作一场。

然而当爸打开家门时 ，

妈便径自走进卧室，

还是没有一声叱责，

一声

埋

怨。我很失望。否则，我 正好可以借机大哭一场，以宣泄郁积的那份窝囊气。

60.

我原以为，这次的惨败，从此可以让我从钢琴边解脱出来，我 不用再练琴了。

岂料两天后，当妈

从 厨房里出来，见我已在笃悠悠地看电视时，便又催我去练琴：

61.

“四点啦。

< br>”她如往常一样提醒我。我一震，好像她这是在叫我再去经历一番

那场联谊会上的出

丑似的。我牢牢地把住椅子背。

62.

“关掉电视！

”五分钟后，她从厨房里伸出头警告我。

63.

我不吭声。但我打定主意，我 再也不听她摆布了。我不是她的奴隶，这里不是

中国。我以前 一味

由她摆布着，结果呢？她这样做太笨了！

64.

她噎噎地从厨房走出来，站在起居室门口的过道上。

“四点啦！

”她再一次重

复了一遍，音量

提高了几度。

65.

“我再也不弹琴了，

”我平静地说，

“为什么我非要弹琴呢？我又没这天分。

”

66.

她 移步到电视机前站住，气得胸部一起一伏，像台抽水机似的。

67.

“不。

”我觉得更坚决了，觉得终于敢表示自己真正的意愿。

68.

“不！

”我尖声叫着。

69.

妈拎着我双臂，啪一声关了电视，把我悬空拎到钢琴前，她的 力气大得吓人，

我拼命踢着脚下的

地 毯，挣扎着、呜咽着、痛苦地望着她。她的胸部起伏得更剧烈

了，咧着嘴，失却理智般地痴笑着，仿佛

我的嚎哭令她很高兴。

70.

“我成不了你希望的那样，

”我呜咽着说，

“我成不了你希望的那样的女儿。

”

71.

“世上从来只有两种女儿，

”她用中国话高声说，

“听话的和不听话的。在我

家里，只允许听

话的女儿住进来！

”

72.

“那末，我希望不做你的女儿，你也不是我的母亲！

”我哭着，当这些话从我

嘴里吐出来 时，我

只觉得，癞蛤蟆、蜥蜴和蝎子这种令人作恶的东西，也从我胸里

< br>

吐了出来。这样也好，令我看到了自己那

可怕的一面。

18 / 102

73.

“可是，要改变既成的事实，你来不及了！

< br>

”妈激怒地喊着。

74.

我感觉到，她的怒火已升至极限了，我要看着它爆炸。我一下子想到了她的失

< p>

散在中国的那对双

胞胎。关于她们，我们谈话中 ，从来不提及的。这次，我却大声

地对着她嚷嚷着：

“那么，我希望我 没

有出世，希望我已经死了，就跟桂林的那对

双胞胎一样！

”

75.

好 像我念了什么咒似的，顿时，她呆住了，她放开了手，一言不发地，蹒跚着

< p>
回到自己房里，就

像秋天一片落叶，又薄又脆弱，没有一点生命的活力。< /p>

三

76.

这 并不是唯一的一次使母亲对我失望。多年来，我让她失望了好多次。为着我

< p>
的执拗，我对自

己权利的维护，我的分数达不到

A

级，我当不上班长，我进不了斯坦

福大学，我后来的辍学……

77.

跟妈相反，我从不相信，我能成为任何我想成为的人。我只可能是我自己。

78.

以 后的那么些年，我们再也不谈及那场倒霉的联谊会上的灾难，及后来在钢琴

< p>
前我那番可怕的抗

争。所有这一切，我们都再也不提及，就像对一件已作了 结论的

谋反案一样。因此，我也老找不到话题问

她，为什么，她会对我怀这么大的希望。

80.

还有，我也从未问过她，那令我最最百思不得其解的，为什么 ，她终于又放弃

了那份希望？

81.

自那次为了练琴争执后，她就 此再也不叫我练琴了。再也没有钢琴课。琴盖上

了锁，紧紧地 合闭

着，唉，我的灾难，她的梦想！

82.

几年前，她又做了一件让我吃惊的事。在我三十岁生日时，她 将这架钢琴送给

了我。多年来，我

碰 都没碰过那架钢琴。现在，她却把它作为我的生日礼物。我想，

这是一种原谅的表示，那长年压着我的

负疚感，终于释然。

83.

“噢，你真把它送给我了？”我讪讪地说，

< br>

“你和爸舍得吗？”

84.

“不，这本来就是你的钢琴，”她毫不含糊地说，

< p>

“从来就是你的。只有你会

弹琴。

”

85.

“哦，我怕我大概已不会弹了，

”我说，

“那么多年了！

”

86.

“你会很快又记起来的，

”妈说，非常肯定地，

“你在这方面很有天分，其实

如果你 肯下点功

夫，本来你真可以在这方面有所作为的。

”

87.

“不，不可能。

”

88.

“你就是不肯试一下。

”妈继续说着，既不生气，也不懊丧，那口气，似只是

在讲述一件永远无

法得到核准的事实。

“拿去吧！

”她说。

89.

但 是，起先我并没马上把琴拉走。它依旧静静地置在妈妈家起居室里，那个回

< p>
窗框前。打这以后

每次看到它，总使我有一种自豪感，好像它是我曾经赢得 的一个

荣誉的奖品。

90.

上星期，我请了个调音师到我 父母公寓去，那纯粹是出于一种感情寄托。数月

前，妈去世了 。爸

交给我一些她的遗物，我每去一次，便带回去一点。我把首饰放

在一只缎锦荷包里，还有，她自己编织的

毛衣：有黄的、 粉红的、橘黄的——恰恰

都是我最不喜欢的颜色。我一一把它 们置放在防蛀的箱子里。我

还发现几件旧的绸

旗袍，那种边上镶滚条两边开高叉的。我把它们挨到脸颊上轻轻摩挲着，心中有一

阵

温暖的触动，然后用软纸把它们小心包起来带回家去。< /p>

91.

钢琴调校好，那音色比我记忆 中的，还要圆润清丽，这实在是一架上乘的钢琴。

琴凳里，我 的练

习记录本和手写的音阶还在。一本封皮已脱落的旧琴谱，被小心地

< br>

用黄缎带扎捆着。

92.

我将琴谱翻到舒曼的那曲《请愿的孩童》，就是那次联谊会上 让我丢丑的。它

似比我记忆中更有

难 度。我摸索着琴键弹了几小节，很惊讶自己竟这么快就记起了乐谱，应付自如。

93.

似是第一次，

我刚刚发现这首曲子的右 边，

是一曲

《臻美》

，

它的旋律更活泼

< br>轻快，

但风格和

《请

愿的孩童》 很相近，这首曲子里，美好的意境得到更广阔无垠

的展现，充 满慰藉与信心，流畅谐美，很容

易弹上手。

《请愿的孩童》比它要短一

点，但节奏要缓慢一点。

《臻美》要 长一点，节奏轻快一点。在

我分别将这两首曲

子弹了多次后，忽然悟出，这两首曲子，其实是出于同一主题的两个变奏。

Unit3

Good Move. People Move. Ideas Move. And Cultures Change.

Good Move. People Move. Ideas Move. And Cultures Change.

19 / 102

Today we are in the throes of a worldwide reformation of cultures, a tectonic shift of habits and drea

ms called, in the curious argot of social scientists,

nt of changes in politics, business, health, entertainment.

arket. All old- established national industries are dislodged by new industries whose products are consu

med, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants we find new wants, re

quiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.

ote this 150 years ago in The Communist Manifesto. Their statement now describes an ordinary fact of li

fe.

How people feel about this depends a great deal on where they live and how much money they hav

e. Yet globalization, as one report stated,

ercial and cultural connections since before the first camel caravan ventured afield. In the 19th century t

he postal service, newspapers, transcontinental railroads, and great steam- powered ships wrought fund

amental changes. Telegraph, telephone, radio, and television tied tighter and more intricate knots betwe

en individuals and the wider world. Now computers, the Internet, cellular phones, cable TV, and cheaper

jet transportation have accelerated and complicated these connections.

Still, the basic dynamic remains the same: Goods move. People move. Ideas move. And cultures c

hange. The difference now is the speed and scope of these changes. It took television 13 years to acqui

re 50 million users; the Internet took only five.

Not everyone is happy about this. Some Western social scientists and anthropologists, and not a fe

w foreign politicians, believe that a sort of cultural cloning will result from what they regard as the

al assault

—

more than a

fifth of all the people in the world now speak English to some degree. Whatever their backgrounds or ag

endas, these critics are convinced that Western

—

often equated with American

—

influences will flatten e

very cultural crease, producing, as one observer terms it, one big

Popular factions sprout to exploit nationalist anxieties. In China, where xenophobia and economic a

mbition have often struggled for the upper hand, a recent book called China can say no became the bes

t-seller by attacking what it considers the Chinese willingness to believe blindly in foreign things, advisin

g Chinese travelers to not fly on a Boeing 777 and suggesting that Hollywood be burned.

There are many Westerners among the denouncers of Western cultural influences, but James Wats

on, a Harvard anthropologist, isn't one of them.

now than they were 30 years ago,

nds of ordinary people. They want to become part of the world

—

I would say globalism is the major force

for democracy in China. People want refrigerators, stereos, CD players. I feel it's a moral obligation not

to say:

?Those

people out there should continue to live in a museum while we will have showers that wor

k.'

Westernization, I discovered over months of study and travel, is a phenomenon shot through with in

consistencies and populated by very strange bedfellows. Critics of Western culture blast Coke and Holly

wood but not organ transplants and computers. Boosters of Western culture can point to increased effort

s to preserve and protect the environment. Yet they make no mention of some less salubrious aspects o

f Western culture, such as cigarettes and automobiles, which, even as they are being eagerly adopted in

the developing world, are having disastrous effects. Apparently westernization is not a straight road to h

ell, or to paradise either.

But I also discovered that cultures are as resourceful, resilient, and unpredictable as the people wh

o compose them. In Los Angeles, the ostensible fountainhead of world cultural degradation, I saw more

20 / 102

diversity than I could ever have supposed

—

at Hollywood High School the student body represents 32 di

fferent languages. In Shanghai I found that the television show Sesame Street has been redesigned by

Chinese educators to teach Chinese values and traditions.

e,

strict religions, McDonald's serves mutton instead of beef and offers a vegetarian menu acceptable to e

ven the most orthodox Hindu.

The critical mass of teenagers

—

800 million in the world, the most there have ever been

—

with time

and money to spend is one of the powerful engines of merging global cultures. Kids travel, they hang ou

t, and above all they buy stuff. I'm sorry to say I failed to discover who was the first teenager to put his b

aseball cap on backward. Or the first one to copy him. But I do know that rap music, which sprang from t

he inner-city ghettos, began making big money only when rebellious white teenagers started buying it. B

ut how can anyone predict what kids are going to want? Companies urgently need to know, so consulta

nts have sprung up to forecast trends. They're called

and one morning to explain how it works.

Amanda, who is 22, works for a New York-based company called Youth Intelligence and has come

to Los Angeles to conduct one of three annual surveys, whose results go to such clients as Sprint and M

TV. She has shoulder-length brown hair and is wearing a knee- length brocade skirt and simple black wr

ap top. Amanda looks very cool to me, but she says no.

have to be cool to do it,

We go to a smallish

?50s

-style diner in Los Feliz, a slightly seedy pocket east of Hollywood that has

just become trendy. Then we wander through a few of the thrift shops.

Amanda remarks,

What trends does she see forming now?

travel's huge right now

—

you go to a place and bring stuff back.

Amanda, who is 22, works for a New York-based company called Youth Intelligence and has come

to Los Angeles to conduct one of three annual surveys, whose results go to such clients as Sprint and M

TV. She has shoulder-length brown hair and is wearing a knee-length brocade skirt and simple black wr

ap top. Amanda looks very cool to me, but she says no.

have to be cool to do it,

We go to a smallish

?50s

-style diner in Los Feliz, a slightly seedy pocket east of Hollywood that has

just become trendy. Then we wander through a few of the thrift shops.

Amanda remarks,

What trends does she see forming now?

travel's huge right now

—

you go to a place and bring stuff back.

gs that already exist. Fusion is going to be the huge term that everybody's going to use,

—

things that are so unrelated.

Los Angeles is fusion central, where cultures mix and morph. Take Tom Sloper and mah-jongg. To

m is a computer geek who is also a mah-jongg fanatic. This being America, he has found a way to marry

these two passions and sell the result. He has designed a software program, Shanghai: Dynasty, that e

nables you to play mah-jongg on the Internet. This ancient Chinese game involves both strategy and luc

k, and it is still played all over Asia in small rooms that are full of smoke and the ceaseless click of the ch

unky plastic tiles and the fierce concentration of the players. It is also played by rich society women at c

21 / 102

ountry clubs in Beverly Hills and in apartments on Manhattan's Upper West Side. But Tom, 50, was playi

ng it at his desk in Los Angeles one evening in the silence of a nearly empty office building.

Actually, he only appeared to be alone. His glowing computer screen showed a game already in pro

gress with several habitual partners:

a Chinese-American who lives in Edina, Minnesota. Tom played effortlessly as we talked.

ose whose true connection is with machines.

ca. We usually play Chinese mah-jongg.

I watched the little tiles, like cards, bounce around the screen. As Tom played, he and his partners c

onversed by typing short comments to each other.

Does he ever play with real people?

“Oh

yeah,”

Tom replied.

“

Once a week at the office in the even

ing, and Thursday at

lunch.”

A new name appeared on the screen.

“There?s

Fred?s

mother.

Can?t

be, th

ey?

re in Vegas. Oh, it must be his sister.

TJ?s

online too,

she?s

the one from Wales-a real night owl. Sh

e?s

getting married soon, and she lived with her fiance, and sometimes he gets up and says

?

Get off tha

t damn

computer!?”

Tom played on into the night. At least it was night where I was. He , an american playing a Chinese

game with people in Germany, Wales, Ohio, and Minnesota, was up in the cybersphere far above the le

vel of time zones. It is a realm populated by individuals

he?s

never met who may be more real to him tha

n the people who live next door.

If it seems that life in the West has become a fast-forward blur, consider China. In just 20 years, sin

ce market forces were unleashed by economic reforms begun in 1978, life for many urban Chinese has

changed drastically. A recent survey of 12 major cities showed that 97 percent of the respondents had t

elevisions, and 88 percent had refrigerators and washing machines. Another study revealed that farmers

are eating 48 percent more meat each year and 400 percent more fruit. Cosmopolitan magazine, plungi

ng necklines and all, is read by 260,000 Chinese women every month.

I went to Shanghai to see how the cultural trends show up in the largest city in the world's most pop

ulous nation. It is also a city that has long been open to the West. General Motors, for example, set up it

s first Buick sales outlet in Shanghai in 1929; today GM has invested 1.5 billion dollars in a new plant th

ere, the biggest Sino-American venture in China.

Once a city of elegant villas and imposing beaux arts office buildings facing the river with shoulders

squared, Shanghai is currently ripping itself to ribbons. In a decade scores of gleaming new skyscrapers

have shot up to crowd and jostle the skyline, cramp the narrow winding streets, and choke the parks an

d open spaces with their sheer soaring presence (most are 80 percent vacant). Traffic crawls, even on t

he new multilane overpasses. But on the streets the women are dressed in bright colors, and many carr

y several shopping bags, especially on the Nanjing Road, which is lined with boutiques and malls. In its f

irst two weeks of business the Gucci store took in a surprising $$100,000.

se edition of the French fashion magazine Elle.

wearing this blouse.

?

How long will it last?' A housewife knew that most of the monthly salary would be spent on food, and no

w it's just a small part, so she can think about what to wear or where to travel. And now with refrigerator

s, we don't have to buy food every day.

22 / 102

As for the cultural dislocation this might bring:

a young German businessman.

—?It'

s very different, but it's OK, so, so what?'

Potential: This is largely a Western concept. Set aside the makeup and skyscrapers, and it's clear t

hat the truly great leap forward [in Shanghai] is at the level of ideas. To really grasp this, I had only to wit

ness the local performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth by the Hiu Kok Drama Association from Macau.

There we were at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, some 30 professors and students of literature an

d drama from all over china and I, on folding chairs around a space ont alike half of a basketball court.

“

I?m

not going to be much

help,”

murmured Zhang Fang, my interpreter.

“I

don?t

understand the Cantone

se language, the most of these people don't

either.”

I thought I knew what to watch for, but the only characters I recognized were the three witches. Oth

erwise the small group spent most of an hour running in circles, leaping, and threatening to beat each ot

her with long sticks. The lighting was heavy on shadows, with frequent strobelike flashes. Language was

n't a problem, as the actors mainly snarled and shrieked. Then they turned their backs to the audience a

nd a few shouted something in Cantonese. The lights went out, and for a moment the only sound in the

darkness was the whirring of an expensive camera on auto-rewind.

This is China? It could have been a college campus anywhere in the West: the anguished students,

the dubious adults, the political exploitation of the massacred classic. Until recently such a performance

was unthinkable. It strained imagination that this could be the same country where a generation ago the

three most desired luxury items were wristwatches, bicycles, and sewing machines.

Early on I realized that I was going to need some type of compass to guide me through the wilds of

global culture. So when I was in Los Angeles, I sought out Alvin Toffler, whose book Future Shock was

published in 1970. In the nearly three decades since, he has developed and refined a number of interest

ing ideas, explained in The Third Wave, written with his wife, Heidi.

What do we know about the future now, I asked, that we didn't know before?

der grows out of chaos,

he scale of Russia or China, without conflict. Not conflicts between East and West, or North and South,

but

?wave'

conflicts between industrially dominant countries and predominantly agrarian countries, or co

nflicts within countries making a transition from one to the other.

Waves, he explained, are major changes in civilization. The first wave came with the development o

f agriculture, the second with industry. Today we are in the midst of the third, which is based on informati

on. In 1956 something new began to happen, which amounts to the emergence of a new civilization. Tof

fler said.

orkers. In 1957 Sputnik went up. Then jet aviation became commercial, television became universal, an

d computers began to be widely used. And with all these changes came changes in culture.

om, smokestack countries in between, and knowledge- based economies on top.

countries

—

Brazil, for example

—

where all three civilizations coexist and collide.

and Fijian TV in your own language.

e channels, may be used by smaller groups to foster their separate, distinctive cultures and languages.

?Can

we become third wave and still remain Chinese?' Yes,

ve a unique culture made of your core culture. But you'll be the Chinese of the future, not of the past.

23 / 102

Linking: This is what the spread of global culture ultimately means. Goods will continue to move

—

fr

om 1987 to 1995 local economies in California exported 200 percent more products, businesses in Idah

o 375 percent more. People move: It is cheaper for businesses to import talented employees than to trai

n people at home. Ideas move: In Japan a generation of children raised with interactive computer game

s has sensed, at least at the cyber level, new possibilities.

this,”

wrote in Ke

nichi Ohmac,

“is

that it is possible to actively take control of one's situation or circumstances and, thereb

y, to change one's fate. For the Japanese, this is an entirely new way of thinking.

Change: It's a reality, not a choice. But what will be its true driving force? Cultures don't become mo

re uniform; instead, both old and new tend to transform each other. The late philosopher Isaiah Berlin be

lieved that, rather than aspire to some utopian ideal, a society should strive for something else:

we agree with each other,

In Shanghai one October evening I joined a group gathered in a small, sterile hotel meeting room. It

was the eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and there were diplomats, teachers, and bus

inessmen from many Western countries. Elegant women with lively children, single men, young fathers.

Shalom Greenberg, a young Jew from Israel married to an American, was presiding over his first High H

oly Days as rabbi of the infant congregation.

eceived a lot from local cultures, but they also kept their own identity.

The solemn liturgy proceeded, unchanged over thousands of years and hundreds of alien cultures:

or Chinese, but sitting there I didn't feel foreign

—

I felt at home. The penitence may have been Jewish, b

ut the aspiration was universal.

Global culture doesn't mean just more TV sets and Nike shoes. Linking is humanity's natural impuls

e, its common destiny. But the ties that bind people around the world are not merely technological or co

mmercial. They are the powerful cords of the heart.

第三课商品流通、人员流动、观念转变、文化变迁

埃拉?兹温格尔

1

．今天我们正经历着一种世界范围文化巨变的阵痛，一种习俗与追 求的结构性变化

,

用社会学家奇特

的词 汇来称呼这种变化，就叫“全球化”。对于政治、商贸、保健及娱乐领域的巨大变化，这个词并不贴

切。“现代工业已建立了世界市场。已建立的所有旧的国民工业被其产品不仅在国内而且在世界各地范 围

内销售的新兴工业所取代。人们用新的需求取代原有的需求，用外地的产品满足自己的 需求。”卡尔

.

马克

思和弗雷德里希? 恩格斯早在

150

年前就在《共产党宣言》中写下了这些。他们 那时的陈述描绘了现在生

活中的普遍事实。

2

．

对此人们有何感受很大程度上取决于他 们的生活所在地和所拥有的金钱数。

然而，

正如某篇报道所

述，全球化“是一种事实，而不是一种选择”。早在第一批骆驼商队冒险出外经商前至今，人 们一直在编

织着商贸和文化相互间的交往。

在

< br>19

世纪，邮政服务、

报纸、

横 跨大陆的铁路及巨大的蒸汽轮船带来了根

本变化。电报、电话、收音机和电视把个人和外 部世界更紧密地连在一起，这种联系更为复杂、不那么直

接也不易察觉。现在，计算机、 互联网、移动电话、有线电视和相对便宜的喷气式飞机空运加速了这种联

系并使这种联系 更加复杂。

3

．然而 ，产生这种变化的动力是一致的：商品流通、人员流动、观念转变、文化变迁。不同的是这些

变化的速度和范围。电视机拥有

5,000

万用户用了

13

年时间，互联网只用了

5

年时间。

4

．对这 种变化并不是人人满意。一些西方社会学家、人类学家和为数不少的外国政治家认为文化．克

隆是他们所认为的麦当劳、可口可乐、迪斯尼、耐克和

MTV

“文化轰炸”的结果，也是英语语言本身的结

果，因为现在全球多于五分之一人口都或 多或少地讲英语。不管他们的背景和纲领如何

,

这些对全球化持

24 / 102

反对态度的人深信西方的影响…往往等同于美国的影响

...

会把文化上的差异—一压平。

就像一位观察家所

说的，最终产生一个麦当劳世界，一个充斥美国货和体现美国价值观的世界。

5

．反映公众情绪

(

或得到公众支持

)

的派别不断滋生以便利用持此观点的国民的 焦虑和不安。在闭关锁

国和发展经济两种政策并存并争取其主控地位的中国，《中国可以 说不》这本新书成为畅销书，这本书对

中国人的盲目崇洋媚外心理进行了，批驳，建议中 国游客不要乘坐波音

777

飞机，还建议烧掉进口的好莱

坞大片。

6

．对西 方文化影响持斥责态度的人中有许多西方人．而哈佛人类学家詹姆斯?沃森并不是其中一员。

他说：

“我知道现在中国农村人的生活比

30

年前的好多了。

中国越来越开放，

部分原因是出于中 国老百姓

的要求。

他们想成为世界的一部分

---

我要说全球观念在中国是民主的重要动力。

人们需要 冰箱、

音响和

CD

机。‘远在中国的那 些人应该继续过着落后的生活，而我们却可以使用淋浴器，过着舒适的现代生活’。

我认 为不说这种话是一种道义。”

7

．

经过几个多月的研究和旅行，

我发现西方化是一种内部充满矛盾的现 象，

在特别怪异之人中占有一

席之地。西方文化批评家斥责可乐 和好莱坞，却不斥责器官移植和计算机。西方文化支持者指出继续努力

保护环境，但他们 不提西方文化中不那么健康的一面，譬如香烟和汽车，就在发展中国家急切地接纳这些

东 西时，它们已带来很坏的后果。显然，西方化既不会直达地狱，也不会直通天堂。

8

．

不过我也发现文化就如同构成文化的民 族一样，

善于随机应变，

富有弹性而且不可预测。

在洛杉矶，

世界文化堕落明显的源头，我看到的差异要比我想像的多——在好 莱坞高中学生说

32

种完全不同的语言。

在上海，

我发现

“芝麻街”

这一电视 节目已被中国教育家重新改组，

用以传授中国人的价值观和传统习惯。

< br>一位教育家对我说：“我们借用美国盒子，装进去的是中国内容。”在有

400< /p>

多种语言和几种纪律严明的

宗教的印度，麦当劳供应的是羊肉汉堡 而不是牛肉汉堡，还为那些最正统的印度人提供素食菜谱。

9

．

许多既有时间又有钱的青少年

---

全世界共有

8

亿

- --

是融合全球文化的关键及主要力量之一。

孩子们

< p>
爱旅行、闲逛，重要的是他们买东西。很遗憾我没能发现哪个青少年第一个倒戴垒球帽，哪个青少年 第一

个模仿他，但是我确实知道最先出现在市内黑人区的说唱乐就是在有叛逆精神的白人 青少年开始买票观看

时才开始赚大钱的。

然而，

人们又会如何预测孩子们需要什么呢

?

许多公司迫切想 要了解孩子们的需要，

因

此出现了顾问，他们预测将来的趋势， 被称之为“猎酷者”。阿曼达?弗里德曼一天上午向我讲述了其中的

奥秘。

10

．阿曼达

22

岁，在其基地设在纽约的一家叫作“青年情报”的公司工作，她到洛杉矶进行调查 ，

调查的结果要通报给公司很多重要的客户。

她留着披肩的棕发 ，

穿着一条长及膝盖的织锦短裙。

在我看来，

< br>阿曼达打扮得很酷，但她自己并不这样认为。她说：“我的工作有趣之处就在于做此工作你不必扮酷，你< /p>

得有眼光。”

11< /p>

．我们去了一家小一点的、

50

年代式样 的餐馆，这家餐馆位于好莱坞东面一个比较破落的区域，这

个区域刚刚成为时尚聚集点。 然后我们去逛了几家旧货店。阿曼达说：“如果人们买不起，那它就不会流

行起来。”< /p>

12

．现在她看到将要形成的流行趋 势了吗

?

“家正在成为一个社交的地方，眼下旅行正热——人们 到

某地去，买回来许多东西。”

13< /p>

．她最后说：“现今创新极为困难，因此最容易的办法就是把现存的东西捏在一起，拿出一 个新玩

意儿来。融合将会成为人人都要使用的大词，将来会有越来越多的毫不相关的东西 融合在一起，如西班牙

乐和蓬克乐。”

14

．洛杉矶是融合中心，

各种文化在这里 交汇并有所改变。以汤姆?斯洛珀和麻将为例：汤姆是个计算

机怪才，同时还是个麻将迷 。由于这是美国，所以他找到了把这两种爱好结合在一起的方式并把自己的成

果出售。他 设计了一个人们可以在互联网上玩麻将的软件程序，这个程序叫做“上海：帝国”。玩这种老

式中国麻将既需要技巧又需要运气。亚洲人仍然在小屋子里玩麻将，屋子里弥漫着烟雾，到处都能听到麻

将牌相互撞击所发出的不绝于耳的喀哒声。玩家们精神高度集中。居住在比弗利山

< p>
(

美国加利福尼亚州西南

25 / 102

部城市，好莱坞影星集居地

)

和曼哈顿上西 城公寓里的有钱女人们也在俱乐部里玩麻将。然而，一天晚上，

在洛杉矶，

50

岁的汤姆一个人坐在办公桌旁，在寂静、空旷的办公大楼里玩麻将。

15

．事实上，他只是看上去是一个人。 他那亮着的计算机屏幕表明麻将已经玩起来了，其他几个参与者都

是老牌友。他们是德国 人“蓝鲸”、俄亥俄州的拉斯和住在明尼苏达州的美籍华人弗雷迪。我们一边谈着

话，汤 姆一边毫不费力地在玩麻将。

16

． 汤姆对我的态度很友好，但那是那种超然的友好，他的兴趣在连线的计算机上。他对我说：“我已掌

握了

11

种麻将的玩法。在美国有几种不同麻将的玩 法。我们常打中国式麻将。”

17

． 我看着小小麻将牌像纸牌一样在屏幕上弹来弹去。汤姆边玩边打字，和牌友简短交流牌局情况。

< br>

18

．他和真人打过麻将吗

?

他回答说：“打过。一周一次，晚上在办公室，周四中午。”这时，屏幕上出

< p>
现一个新名字。

“是弗雷迪的母亲。不可能是，他们在维加斯。噢

!

一定是他姐姐。

TJ

也在线，她是威尔士

人，一个真正的夜猫子。她快结婚了，现在与她未婚夫一起生活。有 时她未婚夫起床对她说：‘离开那讨

厌的电脑

!

’”

19

．汤姆继续玩，一 直到深夜。至少我所在的地方是深夜。他

---

一个美国人， 和德国人、威尔士人、俄亥

俄人还有明尼苏达人一起玩中国游戏，他在网络世界活动，这 种活动超越时区。这是他从未谋面的那些人

的王国，对他来说，那些人要远比他的左邻右 舍更真实。

20

．如果说西方的生活 太超前了，已经看不清轮廓了。那么就看看中国。从

1978

年 经济改革搞活市场至

今的

20

年时间， 许多中国城市居民的生活有了极大的改善。最近对

12

个主要城 市进行了，调查，数据显

示

97

％的调 查对象拥有电视机，

88

％拥有电冰箱和洗衣机。

另一项调查显示农民每年的食肉量增加了

48

％，< /p>

水果增加了

400

％。

< br>26

万中国妇女每个月都在阅读《时尚》杂志，那些开领袒胸的画页及其他内容。

21

．我到上海去调查在世界人口最 多国家的最大城市里文化趋势如何出现。上海也是对西方开放最久的城

市，

譬如通用汽车公司早在

1929

年就在上海设立。< /p>

如今，

通用汽车投资

1.5

亿美元在上海建立了中国最大

的中美合资新厂。

< /p>

22

．上海曾是一座建有雅致的别墅和庄严的办公大楼的城市，但 现在却是一座带状城市。

10

年中，几十座

闪闪发亮的新的高层建筑拔地而起，挤压空间，使人张目不能远眺，使原本狭窄弯曲的街道更显压抑。而

这些高耸大楼的存在也使公园和空地感到憋闷。即使是在多车道的高架桥上，车辆也在爬行。 然而，街上

的妇女着装色彩艳丽，

特别是在街道两边布满精品店 和时装店的南京路上，

许多妇女手里拎着多个购物袋。

在刚开业 的两周时间里，古奇专卖店的营业额为十万美元，令人惊讶不已。

23

．法国时装杂志

Elle

中国 版的总编吴颖说：

“也许现在的年轻女性不了解过去。

10

年前我决不会想到我

会穿这样的衬衫

(

那是一件红白相间的紧身圆点花纹衬衫

)

。 那时人们买衣服时考虑的是它能穿多久，家庭

主妇把每月的工资主要用来买食品。而现在 买食品只需一小部分工资，因此她会考虑着装和旅行。现在有

冰箱，我们也不必天天买食 品。”

24

．至于由此可能带来的文 化错位问题，一位年轻的德国商人说：“上海人认为这不是问题。中国人是很

善于应对多 种可能性的。人们接受了它。‘很难，但还可以。那有什么

?

” ’

25

．潜力：这主要是西方概念。 不谈古奇专卖店和摩天大楼，真正的巨大飞跃体现在观念上。我只有在亲

眼目睹了澳门的 休考克戏剧协会在当地上演的莎土比亚戏剧《麦克白》时才真正领会了这一点。

26

．在上海戏剧学院，我和来自全中国文学与戏剧专业的大约

30

名教授和学生一起坐在折叠椅上观看演

出 ，演出场地大约有半个垒球场那么大。翻译张芳小声对我说：“我帮不了什么忙；我不懂广东话，这里

< p>
许多人都不懂。”

27

．

我原以为自己能看个八九不离十，

结果却只能辨认出三个女巫 。

这几个人用了近一个小时的时间转圈、

跳来跳去、用长棍子相 互威胁打来打去。灯光集中在鬼影上，常常夹着闪电。语言不是问题，因为演员主

要是在 咆哮和尖叫。后来他们背对观众，一些人用广东话叫喊着。灯光熄灭，有一阵子，黑暗中惟一的声

音就是一部价格昂贵的照相机自动倒卷时所发出的声音。

28

．这是中国吗

?

这可以是西方 的任何一所大学校园。这样的表演即使是现在也难以想像。令人难以想像

的是就是在这个 国家，

20

年前人们最想要的一种奢侈品是手表、自行车和缝纫 机。

26 / 102

29

．

许久以来我认识到我需要某种指南针来指引我穿越全球文化的荒原。

因此在洛杉矶时，

我找到阿尔文?

托夫 勒．

1970

年他的《未来的冲击》一书出版。此后近

30

年，他提出并完善了一些有趣的想法，他在与

夫人海蒂合著的《第三次浪潮》一书中详述了这些想法。

3 0

．我问他人们对以前并不知道的将来现在又了解多少呢

?

他马上就做出了回答：“人们都知道秩序产生

于混乱。没有冲突就不 可能有大的改变。尤其是在俄罗斯或中国这样的国家。不是东方和西方的冲突，也

不是南 北之间的冲突。

而是以

1

：

< p>
业为主和以农业为主的国家间的冲突，

或处在转型期的国家间的冲突。

”

31

．他进一步解释说，浪潮就是文明的重大变化。第一次浪潮指的是农业发展，第二次指

_

丁业。今天我

们正处在第三次浪潮之中．主要 指信息业。

1956

年开始产生新事物，就是出现了新文明。托 夫勒说：“就

是在那一年美国服务业和信息业的工人超过了蓝领工人。

< br>1957

年苏联人造地球卫星升空。

随后航空商业化、< /p>

电视普及、计算机开始被广泛应用，随之而来的就是文化变迁。”

32

．他继续说到：

“现在世界权利正在发生三等分变化。农业国在底层，工业国在中间，发展知识经济的

< br>国家在上面。”在有些国家，如巴西，三种文明并存，相互冲撞。

33

．托大勒说：

< br>“我们会看到文化上有很大变化。你一打开电视，就能收看用母语播放的尼日利亚和斐济

< br>电视节日。”一些专家还预测未来电视有

500

个有线频 道，少数群体可以用这种电视发展自己独立的、与

众不同的文化和语言。

34

．托夫勒还说：“人 们要问。我们会经历第三次浪潮而继续保持中国特色吗

?

会的 ，会有由自己核心

文化构成的独特文化，但那是未来的中国文化，而不是过去的中国文化 。”

35

．相互联系：全球文化传播最终就意味着相互联系。商品会继续流动

从

1987

年剑

1995

年，加利

福尼哑州经济部¨多出口了

200

％的产品，爱达荷商业部多出口了

375

％。人员流动 ：从国外引进商业雇

员比在国内培训工人便宜。观念转变：在日本，玩互动电子游戏长大 的一代至少在网络世界体验到了新的

可能性。大前研一在一本书中写道：“玩这种游戏向 人们传递着一个模糊的信息，就是人们有可能主动操

纵自己的处境，因此就会改变自己的 命运。对日本人来说．这完全是一种新的思维方式。”

36

．变化：变化是一个事实，而不是一种选择。那么真正的驱动力 是什么呢

?

各种文化并没有更加一致；

相反。

新趋势和旧趋势相互转变。

已故的哲学家以赛亚?柏林认 为一个社会应该追求一些别的东西，而不是

某种乌托邦式的理想。他在自传中写道：“不 是我们持一致意见，而是我们相互理解。”

37

．

10

月的某个晚

L

。

在上海，

我和一 群人在一间又小又闷的宾馆会议室里相聚。

那是犹太赎罪日前夜。

参加聚会的有许多西方国家的外交官、教师和商人，还有携带可爱孩子的漂亮女士、单身男士和年轻的父

亲。夏勒姆?格林伯格是位年轻的以色列犹太人，娶了个美国太太。他是第一次作为拉比

(

犹太教巾负责执

行教规、律法并主持宗教仪 式的人

)

主持这种刚刚开始定期举行的新年宗教集会。

38

．

< p>
格林伯格拉比说：

“犹太人遍布世界各地，

这是犹 太历史的一部分。

他们从当地文化吸收了不少东西，

但仍然保持 了自己的本色。”

39

< p>
．庄严的礼拜仪式在继续，经过几千年和上百种外同文化的影响都未曾改变。他吟诵：“啊，上帝啊

!

给我一颗纯净的心，恢复我健康的心灵

!

”我既不是犹太人也不是中国人，但坐在这里我一点都不觉得陌

生．感觉就像在家里一样。忏悔可能具有犹太特色，但是渴望得到上帝的原谅却是普遍的。

< br>

40

．

全球文化并不仅仅意味着拥有更多的电视机和耐克鞋。

相互联系是人类自然的欲望，

是其共同的命运。

但是连接全球人类的纽带并不只是技术或商业 ，这种连接靠的是强有力的心灵的纽带。

Unit4

Professions for Women

女人的职业

Born in England, Virginia Woolf was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, a well-known scholar. She was

educated primarily at home and attributed her love of reading to the early and complete access she was

given to her father’s library. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she founded the Hogarth Press and

became known as member of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals, which included economist John

Maynard Keynes, biographer Lytton Strachey, novelist E. M. Forster, and art historian Clive Bell.

Although she was a central figure in London literary life, Woolf often saw herself as isolated from the

mains stream because she was a woman. Woolf is best known for her experimental, modernist novels,

27 / 102

including Mrs. Dalloway(1925) and To the Lighthouse(1927) which are widely appreciated for her

breakthrough into a new mode and technique--the stream of consciousness. In her diary and critical

essays she has m

uch to say about women and fiction. Her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own documents

her desire for women to take their rightful place in literary history and as an essayist she has occupied a

high place in 20th century literature. The common Reader (1925 first series; 1932 second series) has

acquired classic status. She also wrote short stories and biographies. “Professions for Women” taken

from The collected Essays Vol 2. is originally a paper Woolf read to the Women’s Service League, an

organization for professional women in London.

When your secretary invited me to come here, she told me that your Society is concerned with the

employment of women and she suggested that I might tell you something about my own professional

experiences. It is true that I am a woman; it is true I am employed; but what professional experiences

have I had? It is difficult to say. My profession is literature; and in that profession there are fewer

experiences for women than in any other, with the exception of the stage --fewer, I mean, that are peculiar

to women. For the road was cut many years ago---by Fanny Burney, by Aphra Behn, by Harriet

Martineau, by Jane Austen, by George Eliot

—

many famous women, and many more unknown and

forgotten, have been before me, making the path smooth, and regulating my steps. Thus, when I came to

write, there were very few material obstacles in my way. Writing was a reputable and harmless

occupation. The family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen. No demand was made upon the

family purse. For ten and sixpence one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare--if

one has a mind that way. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, masters and mistresses, are not

needed by a writer. The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have

succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in the other professions.

But to tell you my story-- it is a simple one. You have only got to figure to yourselves a girl in a bedroom

with a pen in her hand. She had only to move that pen from left to right--

from ten o’clock to one. Then it

occurred to her to do what is simple and cheap enough after all--to slip a few of those pages into an

envelope, fix a penny stamp in the corner, and drop the envelope into the red box at the corner. It was

thus that I became a journalist; and my effort was rewarded on the first day of the following month--a very

glorious day it was for me--by a letter from an editor containing a check for one pound ten shillings and

sixpence. But to show you how little I deserve to be called a professional woman, how little I know of the

struggles and difficulties of such lives, I have to admit that instead of spending that sum upon bread and

butter, rent, shoes and stockings, or butcher’s bills, I went out and bought

a cat--a beautiful cat, a Persian

cat, which very soon involved me in bitter disputes with my neighbors.

What could be easier than to write articles and to buy Persian cats with the profits? But wait a moment.

Articles have to be about something. Mine, I seem to remember, was about a novel by a famous man.

And while I was writing this review, I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do

battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I

called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come

between me an my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time

and so tormented me that at last I killed her. You who come off a younger and happier generation may

not have heard of her--you may not know what I mean by The Angel in the House. I will describe her as

shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish.

She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took

the leg; if there was a draft she sat in it--in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a

wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all--I

28 / 102

need not say it--she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty--her blushes, her great

grace. In those days --the last of Queen Victoria--every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I

encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of

her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous

man, she slipped behind me and w

hispered:“My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a

book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the art and wiles

of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of our own. Above all, be

pure.” And she made

as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit

rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money--shall we say

five hundred pounds a year? --so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living.

I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, If I were to be had up

in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She

would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot

review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth

about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House,

cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must

—

to

put it bluntly-

—

tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the

radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious

nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always

creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the

struggle was severe; it took much time that had better have been spent upon learning Greek grammar; or

in roaming the world in search of adventures. But it was a real experience; It was an experience that was

bound befall all women writers at that time. Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a

woman writer.

But to continue my story. The Angel was dead; what then remained? You may say that what remained

was a simple and common object --a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that

she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is “herself”? I

mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that

anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

That indeed is one of the reasons why I have come here --out of respect for you, who are in process of

showing us by your experiments what a woman is, who are in process of providing us, by your failures

and succeeded, with that extremely important piece of information.

But to continue the story of my professional experiences. I made one pound ten and six by my first review;

and I bought a Persian cat with the proceeds. Then I grew ambitious. A Persian cat is all very well, I said;

but a Persian cat is not enough. I must have a motorcar. And it was thus that I became a novelist--for it is

a very strange thing that people will give you a motorcar if you will tell them a story. It is a still stranger

thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It is far pleasanter than writing

reviews of famous novels. And yet, if I am to obey your secretary and tell you my professional

experiences as a novelist, I must tell you about a very strange experience that befell me as a novelist.

And to understand it you must try first to imagine a novelist’s state of mind. I hope

I am not giving away

professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to

induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and

regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day,

month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living--so that

29 / 102

nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings round, darts, dashes, and sudden

discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination. I suspect that this state is the same both

for men and women. Be that as it may, I want you to imagine me writing a novel in a state of trance. I

want you to figure to yourselves a girl sitting with a pen in her hand, which for minutes, and indeed for

hours, she never dips into the inkpot. The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the

image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water.

She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies

submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience that I believe to be far

comm

oner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl’s fingers. Her imagination

had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber.

And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion. The imagination

had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state

of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure, she had thought of something, something

about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told

her, would be shocked. The consciousness of what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about

her passions had roused her from her artist’s state o

f unconsciousness. She could write no more. The

trace was over. Her imagination could work no longer. This I believe to be a very common experience

with women writers--they are impeded by the extreme conventionality of the other sex. For though men

sensibly allow themselves great freedom in these respects, I doubt that they realize or can control the

extreme severity with which they condemn such freedom in women.

These then were two very genuine experiences of my own. These were two of the adventures of my

professional life. The first--killing the Angel in the House--I think I solved. She died. But the second,

telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has

solved it yet. The obstacles against her are still immensely powerful--and yet they are very difficult to

define. Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman

rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she has still many ghosts to fight, many

prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a

book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the

freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time

entering?

Virginia Woolf

四、女性的职业

弗吉尼亚?伍尔夫

l.

你们的秘书邀请我时对我说你们妇女服务团关注的是女性就业问题，她提议 我讲一讲我就业的亲身体验。

我是女性，

这是事实；

< p>
我有工作，

这也是事实。

但我又有什么职业体验呢

?

这很难讲。

我从事的是文学职业，< /p>

与其他职业相比，当然不包括戏剧行业，在文学职业里几乎没有什么女性体验，我的意思是 几乎没有女性

特有的体验。多年前，路已开辟出来。许多知名的女性

---

范妮?伯尼、阿芙拉

.

贝恩 、哈丽雅特?马蒂诺、简

?奥斯汀、

乔治?艾略特

---

和许多不知名以及已被人忘记的女性在我之前铺平了道路并指导我向前 走。

因此，

在我从事写作时，几乎没有物质障碍。写作这个职业 既受人尊敬又没有危险。写字的沙沙声不会打破家庭

的和平，

写 作也不需要什么家庭开销。

花

16

便士 买的纸足够用来写莎士比亚的所有戏剧

---

要是你有那样的< /p>

才智的话。作家不需要钢琴和模特，不用去巴黎、维也纳和柏林，也不需要家庭教师。当然 ，廉价的写作

用纸是女性作为作家成功而先于其他职业的原因。

2

．我讲讲我的故事，那只是个平常的故事。你们自己设想一个 姑娘，手里握着一支笔坐在卧室里。从十点

钟到一点钟她只是不停地由左向右写，然后她 想到做一件既省钱又省力的事

---

把那些纸张放进信封，在信

封的一角贴上一张一便士的邮票，把信封投进拐角的一个红色邮筒。我就是这样成了一名 撰稿人。我的努

30 / 102

力在下个月的第一天得到了 回报

---_

那是我一生中非常快乐的一天。

< br>我收到了编辑寄来的一封信，

里面装有

一张一英镑十先令 六便士的支票。为了让你们了解我不值得被称作职业女性，对人生的艰难和奋斗知之甚

少 ，我得承认我没用那笔钱买食物、付房租、买袜子和肉，而是出去买了一只猫，一只漂亮的波斯猫，这

< p>
只猫不久就引起了我和邻居间的激烈争端。

3< /p>

．什么会比写文章并用赚得的钱买波斯猫来得更容易

?

< p>
但再想一想，文章得有内容。我好像记得我的文章

是评论一部名人写的小说 。在写那篇评论时，我发现要想写书评我就必须和某个鬼怪做斗争。这个鬼怪是

个女子， 在我逐渐对她有进一步了解后，我用一个有名的诗歌里的女主人公的名字“家里的天使”来称呼

< br>她。就是她，在我写评论时，总是在我和我的写作之间制造麻烦。就是她总是打扰我，浪费我的时间，如< /p>

此地折磨我，最终我杀死了她。你们年轻快乐的这一代人可能没听说过她

< br>---

你们可能不知道我说的“家里

的天使”是什么意思 。我要简单地讲一讲。她有极强的同情心，非常有魅力，一点都不自私，做高难度的

家务 非常出色，天天作自我牺牲。如果有只鸡，她就吃鸡腿，如果屋里通风，她就坐在风口。总之，她就

是这样的人，没有自己的想法和期望，总是准备为他人的想法和期望作出牺牲。首要的是

---

我不需要这么

说

-- -

她纯洁。纯洁被认为是她的最美之处

---

她爱脸红，典雅大方。在那时，维多利亚时代后期，每个家庭

都有天使。我刚一 提笔写字就会遇见她。她那翅膀的影子映在纸上，在屋子里我能听到她裙子沙沙作响。

也 就是说，我一拿起笔写那位名人的书评，她就会悄悄地溜到我身后悄声对我说：“亲爱的，你是个年轻

< p>
姑娘，你在给男人写的书写评论。要有同情心，要温柔，要奉承，要说假话，要使用女性全部的小伎 俩。

不要让任何人看出你有自己的见解。首要的是要纯洁。”她就这样引导我的写作。下 面我要说说多少是我

自己决定做的一件事情，当然做此事的功劳主要还应归功于我那了不 起的祖先，是他们给我留下了一笔财

产

---

< br>比如说每年

500

英镑吧

---

这样我就不必完全靠女人的魅力去谋生了。我对她发起突然进攻，扼住她的

喉咙。我尽最大努力杀死她。要是因此被带上法庭的话，我的辩护词就是我是自卫，如果我不杀死她， 她

就会杀死我，她会拔掉我进行写作的心。因为我发现在写作时，要是没有自己的见解， 不能真实表达人与

人之间的关系、道德和性的话，你一本小说的评论都写不出来。依照“ 家里的天使”，所有这些问题女性

都不能公开和自由地讨论。

她 们必须使用魅力，

必须作出让步，

更直接地说，

她们想要成功就必须说假话。

因此，无论何时在纸上感到有她的翅膀或光晕的影 子，我就会拿起墨水瓶，向她砸去。她不容易死去，她

那非真实的特性对她是极大的帮助 。杀死鬼怪要比杀死真实的人艰难多了。在我认为我已杀死她时，她就

会悄悄地溜回来。 尽管我自己确信我最终杀死了她，但搏斗得很激烈，消耗的时间要比学希腊语语法或周

游 世界体验冒险经历的时间多多了。

但是，

这是真实的体验，

这种经历在那时会降临到所有女作家的头上。

杀死“家里的天使”是 女作家职业中的一部分。

4

．

继续讲我的故事。

天使死后，

还有什么东西留 下来了呢

?

你们会说留下的是一个简单又普通的物体

< p>
---

一

个年轻姑娘坐在有墨水瓶的卧室里。换 句话说，既然她已经摆脱掉说假话的错误观念，那么这个年轻姑娘

可以做回自己了。噢， 什么是“她自己”呢

?

我的意思是什么是妇女。我向你们保证我 不知道，我相信你们

也不知道。我相信，只有妇女在人类知识所涉及的全部文艺艺术和专 业领域中用创造形式表达自己的情感

后，她们才知道什么是妇女。这就是我来这里的原因 之一，出于对你们的敬重。你们通过实验在向我们展

示什么是妇女；你们通过自己的成功 与失败在为我们提供重要的信息。

5

．下面接着讲我的职业体验。我的第一篇评论赚了一英镑十先令六便土，我用那笔钱买了一只波斯猫。接

下来我雄心勃勃，我说，波斯猫不错，但还不够，我一定要有一辆汽车。我就这样成为一名小说家

---

要是

你给人们讲故事他们就会给 你一辆汽车，这可是很奇怪的事情。更奇怪的事情是世界上没有比讲故事更令

人快乐的事 情了，讲故事远比写评论有趣。然而，如果听从秘书的建议，讲述我作为小说家的职业体验的

话，我必须告诉你们我的一个很奇怪的经历。要想明白这一点，你们必须想像小说家的意识状态。如果我

说小说家的重要愿望是尽量处于无意识状态，我希望我没有泄露行业秘密。他得使自己处于持 久的昏睡状

态，他想要过一种最安静、最有规律的生活。他希望在他写作时，每天见的人 、读的书、做的事都是相同

的，这样任何事物都不会打破他生活的幻想，也不会扰乱他的 四处探求以及对那令人难以捉摸的东西即想

像力的突然发现。我认为这种状态对于男人和 女人是一样的。尽管如此，我请你们想像我在迷睡的状态中

写小说。请你们想像一个女孩 坐在桌旁，手里握着笔，几分钟甚至几小时都未曾动过墨水瓶。当我想到这

31 / 102

女孩时，脑海里浮现出一个形象：一个深深的湖边有一位钓鱼者，他手握鱼竿， 沉浸在梦境中。她在让想

像力自由自在地在位于无意识的最深层的世界的各个角落畅游。 现在这种体验来了，我认为这种体验发生

在女人身上要比发生在男人身上平常得多。鱼竿 在女孩的手指间快速地转动，她的想像力被冲跑了。想像

力搜寻了池塘、池塘的最深处以 及最大的鱼生活的暗处。就在这时传来了猛烈撞击声、爆炸声，出现了水

花，一片混乱。 想像力撞到了坚硬的东西。那个女孩从睡梦中惊醒，她陷入了一种最深刻、最艰难的痛苦

状态。不用修辞手段、直截了当地说，她想到了一件事情，一件不适合女人讲的有关身体和激情的事情。

她的理智告诉她，男人会感到震惊的。她意识到男人们会如何议论一个敢讲有关激情真话的女人， 这使她

从艺术家的无意识状态中惊醒了。她再也写不下去了，迷睡结束了，想像力也不再 起作用。我认为这是女

作家非常普遍的切身体验

---

另一性别非常传统的观念阻碍着她们。尽管男人们理智上在这些方面给自己极

大的自由，我认为他们未必会认识或控制他们谴责女人这种自由时的猛烈程度。

< /p>

6

．

这些就是我自己的两种真实体验，< /p>

我职业生涯中的两个异乎寻常的经历。

第一个

---

杀死

“家里的天使”

，

我认为我已经解决了，她死了。但第二个

---

真实地讲述我的身体和激情，我认为还没有解决。我认为任何

女性都还没有解决这个 问题。不利于她的那些障碍还有很强大的力量，也很难给它们下定义。从外表看，

什么比 写书更容易呢

?

从外表看，

有什么障碍 会阻碍女人而不是男人呢

?

从内心精神方面看，

情况颇为不同。

妇女还要与许多鬼怪展开斗争。还有许多偏见需要克服。当然， 我认为，女人不用杀死鬼怪，不用击碎岩

石就能够坐下来专心写书还需要很长时间。如果 在文学领域

---

女性最自由的职业里情况如此的话，那么在< /p>

你们第一次从事的新职业里情况又会如何呢

?

< br>7

．

如果有时间，

这些就是我要 问你们的问题。

当然，

如果我重点强调我的职业体验的话，

那是因为我相信，

尽管方式不同，它们也是你们的体验。即使道路名 义上是宽阔的

---

没有任何事情可以阻碍妇女成为医生、< /p>

律师和公务员，但我相信前面仍有许多鬼怪和障碍若隐若现。讨论和界定这些障碍是十分重 要的。因为只

有如此我们才能共同努力克服困难。除此之外。还有必要讨论我们为之奋斗 ，为之与难以克服的障碍作斗

争的目的。那些目的是什么，对这个问题我们不能想当然， 而要不断地提出疑问和进行审视。在我看来，

在这里，在这个被有史以来第一次从事这么 多种不同职业的妇女所包围的大厅里，整个状况都非常耐人寻

味，而且还有重要意义。在 这个迄今为止专门由男人控制的房子里，你们已经赢得了自己的房间。尽管不

可能不付出 很大的劳动和努力，你们能够自己付房租了，能够每年挣自己的

500

< br>英镑。但是，这种自由才

刚刚开始，房间是你的，但里面空无一物。房间还需要置 办家具，需要装饰物，需要有人与你分享。你准

备置办什么样的家具，

< br>准备进行什么样的装修，

准备和谁一起合用这个房间，

有 什么条件

?

我认为这些问题

非常重要，

非常耐人寻味，

因为有史以来你们第一次提出这些问题，

第一次自己能够决定这些问题的答案。

我非常愿意留下来和你们一起讨 论这些问题并找到答案。但今晚不行，我的时间到了，就讲到这里吧。

(

国永荣译．边娜审校

)

is a Fallacy

Max Shulman

1 Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a month of Sundays,

unfettered the informal essay with his memorable Old China and Dream's Children. There follows an

informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb's frontier, indeed,

word to describe this essay;

2 Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay. It develops an argument; it cites instances;

it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle do more? Could Ruskin ?

3 Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry,

pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion, and trauma --Author's Note

4 Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious , acute and astute--I was all of these. My

brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel.

And--think of it! --I was only eighteen.

32 / 102

5 It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my

roommate at the University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice

enough young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable.

Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze

that come, s along, to, surrender y, , , , , , ourself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it--this, to

me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.

6 One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I

immediately diagnosed appendicitis.

7

8

9

10 I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental.

11

back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can't get

a raccoon coat.

12

13

14

15 He leaped from the bed and paced the room,

passionately.

16

They weight too much. They're unsightly. They--

17

the swim?

18

19

20 My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear.

narrowly.

21

22 I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to set my hands on a raccoon

coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also

happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on

it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.

23 I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not

emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions but I was not one to let my heart

rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.

24 I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of the

importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer's career. The successful lawyers I had observed

were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one omission,

Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

25 Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions but I felt sure that time would supply the

lack She already had the makings.

26 Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease

of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding, At table her manners were exquisite. I had

33 / 102

seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house--a sandwich that contained scraps

of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut--without even getting her fingers moist.

27 Intelligent she was not. in fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my

guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful

dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.

28

29

30

anything like that?

31

32

33

34 I nodded with satisfaction.

Is that right?

35

36

37

38

39

from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?

40

41

the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.

42

face.

43

44

do you want for it?

45

46

47

48 He flung the coat from him.

49 I shrugged.

50 I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept watching

Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at a bakery window.

Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more longing

in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head

swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning . Finally he didn't turn away at all; he just stood and stared

with mad lust at the coat.

51

52

53

54

55

34 / 102

56

57 He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe tops.

He looked like a mound of dead raccoons.

58 I rose from my chair.

59 He swallowed.

60 I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey; I wanted to

find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her first to

dinner.

（< /p>

=delicious

）

dinner,

to a movie.

her home.

61 I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task. This

girl's lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her with information First

she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was tempted

to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abundant physical charms and about the

way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an effort.

62 I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave her a course in logic. It happened that I, as a

law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my finger tips.

her when I picked her up on our next date,

63

so agreeable

“

s

64 We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she

looked at me expectantly.

65

66 She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it.

67

must first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up tonight.

68

69 I winced, but went bravely on.

70

71,

Exercise is good. Therefore everybody should exercise.

72

everything.

73

For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not good. Many people are ordered by their

doctors not to exercise. You must qualify the generalization. You must say exercise is usually good, or

exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have committed a Dicto Simplioiter. Do you see?

74

75

speak French. Petey Burch can't speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the University

of Minnesota can speak French.

76

35 / 102

77 I hid my exasperation.

too few instances to support such a conclusion.

78

79 I fought off a wave of despair. I was getting nowhere with this girl absolutely nowhere. Still, I am

nothing if not persistent. I continued.

80

with us, it rains.

81

never falls. Every single time we take her on a picnic--

82

with the rain. You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame Eula Becker.

83

84 I sighed deeply.

85

86

87

88 I frowned, but plunged ahead.

anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won't be able to lift it?

89

90

91

92

93 She scratched her pretty, empty head.

94

be no argument. If there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object. If there is an

immovable object, there can be no irresistible force. Get it?

95

96 I cousulted my watch.

all the things you've learned. We'll have another session tomorrow night.

97 I deposited her at the girls' dormitory, where she assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif

evening, and I went glumly to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the raccoon coat huddled like a

great hairy beast at his feet. For a moment I considered waking him and telling him that he could have his

girl back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure. The girl simply had a logic-proof head.

98 But then I reconsidered. I had wasted one evening: I might as well waste another. Who knew?

Maybe somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind, a few embers still smoldered. Maybe somehow I

could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was not a prospect fraught with hope, but I decided to give it one

more try.

99 Seated under the oak the next evening I said,

Misericordiam.

100 She quivered with delight.

101

are, he replies that he has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless cripple, the children

have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in

the cellar, and winter is coming.

36 / 102

102 A tear rolled down each of Polly's pink cheeks.

103

about his qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss's sympathy. He committed the fallacy of Ad

Misericordiam. Do you understand?

104

105 I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from screaming while she wiped her eyes.

I said in a carefully controlled tone,

be allowed to look at their textbooks during examinations. After all, surgeons have X-rays to guide them

during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide them during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide

them when they are building a house. Why, then, shouldn't students be allowed to look at their textbooks

during an examination?

106

107

test to see how much they have learned, but students are. The situations are altogether different, and

you can't make an analogy between them.

108

109

110

111

chunk of pitchblende (n.

沥青油矿

), the world today would not know about radium .

112

That Walter Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fractures me.

113

statement is a fallacy. Maybe Madame Curie would have discovered radium at some later date. Maybe

somebody else would have discovered it. Maybe any number of things would have happened. You can't

start with a hypothesis that is not true and then draw any supportable conclusions from it.

114

more.

115 One more chance, I decided. But just one more. There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear.

116

117

‘

My opponent is a notorious liar.

You can't believe a word that he is going to say. '... Now, Polly, think. Think hard. What's wrong?

118 I watched her closely as she knit her creamy brow in concentration. Suddenly, a g1immer of

intelligence

—

the first I had seen--came into her eyes.

fair. What chance has the second man got if the first man calls him a liar before he even begins talking?

119

the well before anybody could drink from it. He has hamstrung his opponent before he could even

start.

…

Polly, I

’

m proud of you.

120

121

Think-- examine

—

evaluate. Come now, let's review everything we have learned.

”

122

37 / 102

123 Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not altogether a cretin , I began a long, patient

review of all I had told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances pointed out flaws, kept

hammering away without let-up. It was like digging a tunnel. At first everything was work, sweat, and

darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the light, or even if I would. But I persisted. I pounded and

clawed and scraped, and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and

the sun came pouring in and all was bright.

124 Five grueling nights this took, but it was worth it. I had made a logician out of Polly; I had taught

her to think. My job was done. She was worthy of me at last. She was a fit wife for me, a proper hostess

for my many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-heeled children.

125 It must not be thought that I was without love for this girl. Quite the contrary, Just as Pygmalion

loved the perfect woman he had fashioned, so I loved mine. I determined to acquaint her with my feeling

at our very next meeting. The time had come to change our relationship from academic to romantic.

126

127

128

“

we have now spent five evenings together. We

have gotten along splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched.

”

129

“

Hasty Generalization,

”

said Polly brightly.

130

“

I beg your pardon,

”

said I.

131

“

Hasty Generalization,

”

she repeated.

“

How can you say that we are well matched on the

basis of only five dates?

”

132 I chuckled with amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons well.

Patting her hand in a tolerant manner,

know it's good.

133

”

, said Polly promptly.

”

134 I chuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons perhaps too

well. I decided to change tactics. Obviously the best approach was a simple, strong, direct declaration of

love. I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose the proper words. Then I began:

135

constellations of outer space. Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if you will not,

life will be meaningless. I will languish (vi.

憔悴

). I will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth,

a shambling (

摇摇晃晃地走

), hollow-eyed hulk.

136 There, I thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.

137

”

Said Polly.

138 I ground my teeth. I was not Pygmalion; I was Frankenstein, and my monster had me by the

throat. Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me. At all costs I had to keep cool.

139

140

’

re darn right,

141

142

143

never would have learned about fallacies.

144

38 / 102

145 I dashed perspiration from my brow.

literally. I mean this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn in school don't have

anything to do with life.

146

147 That did it. I leaped to my feet, bellowing like a bull.

148

149

150

151 I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it. After he promised, after he made a deal, after he

shook my hand!

liar. He's a cheat. He's a rat.

152

153 With an immense effort of will, I modulated my voice.

look at this thing logically. How could you choose Petey Burch over me? Look at me--a brilliant student, a

tremendous intellectual, a man with an assured future. Look at Petey--a knothead, a jitterbug, a guy

who'll never know where his next meal is coming from. Can you give me one logical reason why you

should go stead with Petey Burch?

154

”

(from Rhetoric in a Modern Modeby James K. Bell and Adrian A. Cohn)

课文

5

译文

爱情就是谬误

马克斯?舒尔曼

1

．查尔斯

.

兰姆 是个世所罕见的性情欢快、富有进取心的人，他笔下的散文《古瓷器》和《梦中的孩

子》 无拘无束、自由奔放，实在令人难忘。下面这篇文章比兰姆的作品更加自由奔放。事实上，用“自由

奔放”的字眼来形容这篇文章并不十分贴切，或许用“柔软”、

“轻松”或“ 轻软而富有弹性”更为恰当。

2

．尽管 很难说清这篇文章属于哪一类，但可以肯定它是一篇散文小品文。它提出了论点，引用了许多

例证，并得出了结论。卡里尔能写得更好吗

?

拉斯金呢

?

3

．这篇文章意在论证逻辑学非但不 枯燥乏味，而且活泼、清新，富于美感和激情，并给人以启迪。诸

位不妨一读。

---

作者注

4

．我这个人头脑冷静，逻辑思维能力强。敏锐、慎重、深刻、机智

----

这些就是我的特点。我的大脑

像发电机一样发达，像化学家的天平一样精确，像手术刀一样锋利。

---

你知道吗

?

我才

18

岁。

5

．年纪 这么轻而智力又如此非凡的人并不常有。就拿在明尼苏达大学和我同住一个房间的皮蒂

.

伯奇

来说吧，他和我年龄相仿，经历一样，可他笨得像头驴。小 伙子长得年轻漂亮，可惜脑子里却空空如也。

他易于激动，情绪反复无常，容易受别人的 影响。最糟糕的是他爱赶时髦。在我看来，赶时髦就是最缺乏

理智的表现。见到一种新鲜 的东西就跟着学，以为别人都在这么干，自己也就卷进去傻干

---

我认为这简直

是愚蠢至极，但皮蒂却不以为然。

6

．

一天下午，

我 看见皮蒂躺在床上，

脸上露出一副痛苦不堪的表情，

我立刻断定 他是得了阑尾炎。

“别

动，”我说，“别吃泻药，我就请医生来 。”

7

．“浣熊．”他咕哝着。

8

．“浣熊

?

”我 停下来问道。

9

．“我 要一件浣熊皮大衣，”他痛苦地哭叫着。

10< /p>

．我明白了，他不是身体不舒服，而是精神上的问题。“你为什么要浣熊皮大衣

< p>
?

”

11< /p>

．“我早该知道，”他哭叫着，用拳头捶打着太阳穴，“我早该知道查尔斯登舞再度流行时 ．浣熊

皮大衣也会时兴起来的。我真傻，钱都买了课本，弄得现在不能买浣熊皮大衣了。 ”

12

．我带着怀疑的眼神问道：“你 是说人们真的又要穿浣熊皮大衣了吗

?

”

13

．“校园里有身份的人哪个不穿

?

你刚从哪儿来

?

”

39 / 102

14

．“ 图书馆，”我说了一个有身份的人不常去的地方。

15< /p>

．他从床上一跃而起，在房间里踱来踱去。“我一定要弄到一件浣熊皮大衣，”他激动地说 ，“非

弄到不可

!

”

< br>

16

．“皮蒂，你怎么啦

< p>
?

冷静地想一想吧。浣熊皮大衣不卫生、掉毛、味道难闻、既笨重又不好看 ，

而且……”

17< /p>

．“你不懂，”他不耐烦地打断我的话，“这就叫时髦。难道你不想赶时髦吗

?

”

18

．“不想，”我坦率地回答。

19

．“好啦，我可想着呢

!

”他肯定地说，“弄到浣熊皮大衣让我干什么都行。”

20

．我的大脑

---

这件精密的仪器

---

立刻运转 起来。我紧盯着他，问道：“什么都行

?

”

21

．“什么都行

!

< br>”他斩钉截铁地说。

22

．我 若有所思地抚着下巴。好极了，我知道哪儿能弄到浣熊皮大衣。我父亲在大学读书期间就穿过

一件，现在还放在家里顶楼的箱子里。恰好皮蒂也有我需要的东两。尽管他还没有弄到手，但至少他有优

先权。我说的是他的女朋友波莉

.

埃斯皮。

23

．

我早 已钟情于波莉?埃斯皮了。

我要特别说明的是我想得到这妙龄少女并不是由于感情的驱使 。

她

的确是个易于使人动情的姑娘。可我不是那种让感情统治理 智的人，我想得到波莉是经过慎重考虑的，完

全是出于理智上的原因。

< br>

24

．我是法学院一年级的学生，过 不了几年就要挂牌当律师了。我很清楚，一个合适的妻子对于一个

律师来说是非常重要的 。我发现大凡有成就的律师几乎都是和美丽、文雅、聪明的女子结婚的。波莉只差

一条就 完全符合这些条件了。

25

．< /p>

她漂亮。

尽管她的身材还没有挂在墙上的照片上的美女那么苗条，

但我相信时间会弥补这个不足。

她已经大致不差了。

< p>

26

．她温文尔稚

< br>---

我这里是指她很有风度。她亭亭玉立、落落大方、举手投足都尽显她出身高 贵。她

进餐时，动作是那样的优美。我曾看见过她在“舒适的校园一角”吃名点

---

一块夹有几片带汁的炖肉和碎

核桃仁的三 明治，还有一小杯泡菜

---

手指居然一点儿也没有沾湿。

27

．她不聪明，实际上恰恰相反。但我相信在我的指导下，她 会变聪明的。无论如何可以试一试，使一个

漂亮的笨姑娘变得聪明比使一个聪明的丑姑娘 变得漂亮毕竟要容易些。

28

．“波 莉

,

”我说．“你在跟波莉?埃斯皮谈恋爱吧

< br>?

”

29

．“我觉得她是一个讨人喜欢的姑娘，”他回答说，“但我不知道这是不是就叫做爱情。你问这个干什

么

?

”

< p>
30

．“你和她有什么正式的安排吗

?

< p>
我是说你们是不是经常约会，或者有诸如此类的事情

?

，我问。

31

．“没有，我们常 常见面。但我们俩各自有别的约会。你问这个干什么

?

”

32

．“还有没有别人令她特别喜欢呢

?

”我问道。

3 3

．“那我可不知道。怎么了

?

”

34

．我满意地点点头说：“这就是说， 如果你不在，场地就是空着的。你说是吧

?

”

< br>

35

．“我想是这样的。你这话是什么意思

< p>
?

”

36

．“没什么，没什么，”我若无其事地说，接着把手提皮箱从壁橱里拿了出来。

37

．“你去哪儿

?

”皮蒂问。

38

．“回家 过周末。”我把几件衣服扔进了皮箱。

39

< br>．

“听着，

”

他焦急地抓住我的 胳膊说，

“你回家后，

从你父亲那儿弄点钱来借给我买一件浣熊 皮大衣，

好吗

?

”

40

．“也许还不只是这样呢，”我神秘地眨着眼睛说， 随后关上皮箱就走了。

41

．星期一 上午我回到学校时对皮蒂说：“你瞧

!

”我猛地打开皮箱，那件 肥大、毛茸茸、散发着怪味的东

西露了出来，这就是我父亲

19 25

年在施图茨比尔凯特汽车里穿过的那一件浣熊皮大衣。

40 / 102

42

．“太好了< /p>

!

”皮蒂恭敬地说。他把两只手插进那件皮大衣，然后把头也埋了 进去。“太好了

!

”他不断

地重复了一 二十遍。

43

．“你喜欢吗

?

”我问道。

44.

“哦，喜欢

!

”他高声叫着，把那满是 油腻的毛皮紧紧地搂在怀里。接着他眼里露出机警的神色，说，

“你要换什么

< p>
?

”

45

．“你的女朋友，”我毫不讳言地说。

46

．“波莉

?

”他吃惊了，结结巴巴地说，“你 要波莉

?

”

47

．“是的。”

< br>48

．他把皮大衣往旁边一扔，毫不妥协地说：“那可不行。”

< br>

49

．我耸了耸肩膀说：“那好吧，如果你不想赶时髦 ，那就随你的便吧。，，

50.

我在 一把椅子上坐了下来，假装看书，暗暗地瞟着皮蒂。他神情不安，用面包店窗前的流浪儿那种馋涎

欲滴的神情望着那件皮大衣，接着扭过头去，坚定地咬紧牙关。过了一会儿，他又回过头来把目光投向那

件皮大衣，脸上露出更加渴望的神情。等他再扭过头去，已经不那么坚决了。他看了又看 ，越看越喜欢，

慢慢决心也就减弱了。最后他再也不扭过头去，只是站在那里，贪婪地盯 着那件皮大衣。

51

．“我和波莉好 像不是在谈恋爱，”他含含糊糊地说，“也说不上经常约会或有诸如此类的事情。

52

．“好的，”我低声说。

53

．“波莉对我算得了什么

?

我对波莉又算得了什么

?

”

54

．“根本算不了什么，”我说。

55

．“只不过是一时高兴

---

不过是说说笑笑罢了，仅此而已。”

56

．“试试大衣吧。”我说。

57

．

他照办了。

衣领蒙住了他的耳朵，

下摆一直拖到脚跟。

他看起来活像一具浣 熊尸体。

他高兴地说：

“挺

合身的。”

58

．我从椅子上站了起来。“成交 了吗

?

”我说着，把手伸向他。

59.

他轻易地接受了。“算数，”他说，并跟我握了握手。

60

．第二天晚上，我与波莉第一次 约会了。这一次实际上是我对她的考查。我想弄清要做多大的努力

才能使她的头脑达到我 的要求。我首先请她去吃饭。“哈，这顿饭真够意思，”离开餐馆时她说。然后我

请她去 看电影。“嘿，这片子真好看。”走出电影院时她说。最后我送她回家。和我告别时她说：“嘿，

今晚玩得真痛快。”

61

．我 怀着不大痛快的心情回到了房间。我对这任务的艰巨性估计得太低了。这姑娘的知识少得令人

吃惊。光教给她知识还不够。首先得教她学会思考。这可不是一件容易的事，当时我真想把她还给皮蒂算

了。但我一想到她那充满魅力的身材、她进屋时的模样、她那拿刀叉的姿势，我还是决定再做 一番努力。

62

．就 像做其他事情一样，我开始有计划地干了起来。我开始给她上逻辑课。幸好我是一个学法律的

学生，我自己也在学逻辑学，所以对要教的内容我都很熟悉。当我接她赴第二次约会的时候，我对她说：

“今晚咱们去‘小山’谈谈吧。”

63< /p>

．“啊，好极了，”她回答道。对这姑娘我要补充一句，像她这么好商量的人是不多见的。

64

．我们去了“小山”，这是校园 里人们幽会的地方。我们坐在一棵老橡树下，她用期待的目光看着

我。“我们谈些什么呢

?

”她问。

65

．“逻辑。”

66

．她想了一会儿，觉得不错，便说：“好极了。”

67

．“逻辑学，”我清了清嗓子， “就是思维的科学。在我们能正确地思维之前，首先必须学会判别

逻辑方面的常见谬误。 我们今晚就要来谈谈这些。”

68

．“ 哇

!

”她叫了起来，高兴地拍着手。

69

．我打了个寒噤，但还是鼓足勇气讲下去：“首先我们来考究一 下被称为绝对判断的谬误。”

70

．“ 好呀

!

”她眨了眨眼，催促着。

41 / 102

71

．“ 绝对判断指的是根据一种无条件的前提推出的论断。比如说，运动是有益的，因此人人都要运

动。”

72

．“ 不错，”波莉认真地说，“运动是非常有益的。它能增强体质，好处太多了

!

< p>
”

73

．“ 波莉，”我温和地说，“这种论点是谬误。运动有益是一种无条件的前提。比方说，假如你得

了心脏病，运动不但无益，反而有害，有不少人医生就不准他们运动。你必须给这种前提加以限制。你应

该说，一般来说运动是有益的。或者说，对大多数人是有益的。否则就是犯了绝对判断的错误 ，懂吗

?

”

74< /p>

．“不懂，”她坦率地说，“这可太有意思了，讲吧，往下讲吧。”

75

．“你最好别拉我的袖子了，”我对她说。等她松了手，我 继续讲，“下面我们讲一种被称为草率

结论的谬误。你仔细听：你不会讲法语，我不会讲 法语，皮蒂?伯奇也不会讲法语。因此我就会断定在明尼

苏达大学谁也不会讲法语。”< /p>

76

．“真的

?

”波莉好奇地问道．“谁都不会吗

?

”

77

．

我压 住火气。

“波莉，

这是一种谬误，

这是 一种草率的结论。

能使这种结论成立的例证太少了。

”

78

．“你还知道其他的谬误吗

?

”她气喘吁吁地说：“这比跳舞还有意思啦

!

”

79

．我 极力地使自己不灰心。我真拿这姑娘没办法，确实是毫无办法。可是，如果我不坚持下去，我

就太没用了。因此，我继续讲下去。

80< /p>

．“现在听我讲讲被称为牵强附会的谬误。听着：我们不要带比尔出去野餐。每次带他一起 去，天

就下雨。”

81

．“我就见过这样的人，”她感叹地说，“我们家乡有个女孩，名叫尤拉?蓓克尔。从没有例外，每次 我

们带她去野餐……”

82< /p>

．“波莉，”我严厉地说，”这是一种谬误。下雨并不是尤拉?蓓克尔造成的，下雨与她没 有任何关

系。如果你责怿尤拉?蓓克尔，你就是犯了牵强附会的错误。”

83

．“我再也不这样了．”她懊悔 地保证说，“你生我的气了吗

?

”

84

．我深深地叹了一口气：“不，波莉，我没生气。”

< p>

85

．“那么，给我再讲些谬误吧< /p>

!

”

86< /p>

．“好，让我们来看看矛盾前提吧。”

87< /p>

．“行。行，”她叽叽喳喳地叫着，两眼闪现出快乐的光芒。

88

．我皱了皱眉头，但还是接着讲下去。“这里有一个矛盾前提的 例子：如果上帝是万能的，他能造

出一块连他自己也搬不动的大石头吗

< br>?

”

89< /p>

．“当然能，”她毫不犹豫地回答。

90< /p>

．“但是如果他是万能的，他就能搬动那块石头呀。”我提醒她说。

91

．“是嘛

!

”她若有所思地说，“嗯，我想他造不出那样的石头。”

92< /p>

．“但他是万能的啊，”我进一步提醒她。

93

．她用手抓了抓她那漂亮而义空虚的脑袋。“我全搞糊涂了，” 她承认说。

94

．“ 你确实糊涂了。因为如果一种论点的各个前提相互间是矛盾的，这种论点就不能成立，假如有

一种不可抗拒的力量，就不可能有一种不可移动的物体；假如有一种不可移动的物体，就不可能有一种不

可抗拒的力量。懂了吗

?

”

95

．“再给我讲些这类新奇的玩意 儿吧，”她恳切地说。

96

．我 看了看表，说，“我想今晚就谈到这里。现在我该送你回去了。你把所学的东西复习一遍．我

们明晚再上一课吧。”

97

．我 把她送到了女生宿舍，在那里她向我保证说这个晚上她过得非常愉快。我闷闷不乐地回到了我

的房间，皮带正鼾声如雷地睡在床上。那件浣熊皮大衣像一头多毛的野兽趴在他的脚边。当时我真想把他

叫醒，告诉他可以把他的女朋友要回去。看来我的计划要落空了。这姑娘对逻辑简直是一点儿 部不开窍。

42 / 102

98< /p>

．但是我回过头一想，既然已经浪费了一个晚上，不妨还是再花一个晚上看看。天知道，说 不定她

头脑里的死火山口中的什么地方，

还有些火星会喷射出来 呢。

也许我会有办法能把这些火星扇成熊熊烈焰。

当然，成功的 希望是不大的，但我还是决定再试一次。

99< /p>

．第二天晚上我们义坐在那棵橡树下，我说，“今晚我们要谈的第一种谬误叫做文不对题。 ”

100

．她高兴得都发抖了。

101

．“注意听，”我说，“有个人申请

T

作，当老饭问他所具备的条件时，他回答说他家有妻子和

六个 孩子。妻子完全残废了，孩子们没吃的没穿的，睡觉没有床，生火没有煤，眼看冬天就要到了。”

102

．两滴眼泪顺着波莉那粉红的 面颊往下滚。“啊，这太可怕了

!

太可怕了

!

”她抽泣着说。

103

．“是的，是太可怕了，”我赞同地说，“但这可不成其为申请工作的理由。那人根本没 有回答

老板提出的关于他所具备的条件的问题。反而乞求老板的同情。他犯了文不对题的 错误。你懂吗

?

”

104

．“你带手帕了没有

?

”她哭着说。

、

105

．我把手帕递给她。当她擦眼泪时，我极力控制自己的火气。“下面，”我小心地压低声 音说，

“我们要讨论错误类比。这里有一个例子：应该允许学生考试时看课本。既然外科 医生在做手术时可以看

x

光片，律师在审查案件时可以看案情摘 要，木匠在盖房子时可以看图纸，为什么学生在考试时不能看课

本呢

?

”

106

． “这个．”她满怀激情地说，“可是我多少年来听到的最好的主意。”

107

．“波莉，”我生气地说，“这个论点全错了。医生、律师和 木匠并不是以参加考试的方式去测

验他们所学的东西。学生们才是这样。情况完全不同， 你不能在不同的情况之间进行类比。”

108

．“我还是觉得这是个好主意，”波莉说。

109

．“咳

!

” 我嘀咕着，但我还是执意地往下讲，“接下去我们试试与事实相反的假设吧。”

110

．波莉的反应是：“听起来不错。”

111

．“你听着：如果居里夫人不是碰巧把一张照片底片放在装有 一块沥青铀矿石的抽屉里，那么世

人今天就不会知道镭。”

112

．“对，对，”波莉点、头称是。“你看过那部影片吗

?

哦，真好看。沃尔特?皮金演得太好了，

我 是说他让我着迷了。”

113

． “如果你能暂时忘记皮金先生，”我冷冷地说，“我会愿意指出这种说法是错误的。也许居里

夫人以后会发现镭的，也许由别人去发现，也许还会发生其他的事情。你不能从一个不实际的假设出发，

从中得出任何可以站得住脚的结论。”

114

．“人们真应该让沃尔特?皮金多拍些照片，”波莉说，“我几乎再也看不到他了。”< /p>

115

．我决定冉试一次，但只能一 次。一个人的忍耐毕竟是有限度的。我说，“下一一个谬误叫做井

里投毒。”

< p>

116

．“多有趣啊

!

”她咯咯地笑了起来。

117

．“有两个人在进行一场辩论。第一个人站起来说：‘我的论敌是个劣迹昭彰的骗子，他 所说的

每一句话都不可信。’……波莉，现在你想想，好好想一想，这句话错在哪里

?

”

118

．

她眉头紧锁，

我凝视着她。

突然，

一道智慧的光芒

---

这是我从未看到过的

---

闪现在她的眼中。

“这不公平，”她气愤 地说，“一点都不公平。如果第一个人不等第二个人开口就说他是骗子，那么第二

个人还 有什么可说的呢

?

”

119

．“对

!

” 我高兴地叫了起来，“百分之百对，是不公平。第一个人不等别人喝到井水，就在井里

投 毒了。他还不等他的对手开口就已经伤害了他。……波莉，我真为你感到骄傲。”

120

．她轻轻地“哼”了一声，高兴得脸都发红了。

121

．“你看，亲爱的，这些问题 并不深奥，只要精力集中，就能对付。思考

分析

判断 。来，让

我们把所学过的东西再复习一遍。”

122

．“来吧，”她说着，把手往上一晃。

43 / 102

123

． 看来波莉并不很傻，我的劲头上来了。于是，我便开始把对她讲过的一切．长时间耐心地复习

了一遍。我给她一个一个地举例子，指出其中的错误．不停地讲下去。就好比挖掘一条隧道，开始只有劳

累、汗水和黑暗，不知道什么时候能见到光亮，甚至还不知道能否见到光亮。然而，我坚持着 ，凿啊，挖

啊，刮啊．终于得到了回报。我见到了一线光亮，这光亮越来越大，终于阳光 洒进来了，一切都豁然开朗

了。

124

．我辛辛苦苦地花了五个晚上，但总算还是没有白费。我使波莉变成一个逻辑学家了，我 教她学

会了思考。我的任务完成了，她最终还是配得上我的。她会成为我贤惠的妻子。我 那些豪华公馆里出色的

女主人，我那些有良好教养的孩子们的合格母亲。

125

．

不 要以为我不爱这个姑娘了，

恰恰相反。

正如皮格马利翁珍爱他自 己塑造的完美的少女像一样，

我也非常爱我的波莉。我决定下次会面时把自己的感情向她 倾吐。该是把我们师生关系转化为爱情的时候

了。

126

．“波莉，”当我们又坐在我们那棵橡树下时，我说，“今晚 我们不再讨论渗误了。”

127

． “怎么啦

?

”她失望地问道。

128

．“亲爱的，”我友好地对她笑了笑，“我们已经一起度过了五 个晚上，我们相处得很好。显然我们

俩是很相配的。”

129

．“草率结论，”波莉伶俐地说。

130

．“你是说

---?

”我问道。

131

．“草率结论，”她重复了一遍。“你怎么能凭我们仅有的五 次约会就说我们俩很相配呢

?

”

132

．我咯咯一笑，觉得挺有意思。这可爱的小家伙功课学得可真 不错。“亲爱的，”我耐心地拍打

着她的手说，“五次约会就不少了，毕竟你不必把整个 蛋糕吃下去才知道蛋糕的甜味。”

133

． “错误类比，”波莉敏捷地说。“我可不是蛋糕，我是个女孩子。”

134

．我微微一笑，但这次不感到那么有意思了。这可爱的孩子功 课或许是学得太好了。我决定改变

策略。显然，最好的办法就是态度明朗，直截了当地向 她示爱。我沉默了一会儿，用我特别发达的脑袋挑

选着合适的词语。然后我便开始：

135

．“波莉，我爱你。对我来说 ，你就是整个世界，是月亮，是星星，是整个宇宙。亲爱的，请说

你爱我吧。如果你不这 样，我的生活就失去了意义。我将会萎靡不振，茶不饮，饭不思，到处游荡，成为

一个步 履蹒跚、双眼凹陷的躯壳。”

136

． 我双手交叉站在那里，心想这下子可打动她了。

137

．“文不对题，”波莉说。

138

．我咬咬牙。我不是皮格马利翁，我是弗兰肯斯坦，我的喉咙 似乎一下子让魔鬼卡住了。我极力

控制涌上心头的阵阵痛楚。无论如何，我也要保持冷静 。

139

．“好了，波莉，”我强装着 笑脸说，“这些谬误你的确已学到家了。”

140

．“这可说得很对，”她使劲地点了点头说道。

14l_

“可是波莉，这一切是谁教给你的

?

”

142

． “你教的呀

!

”

143

．

“是的，

那你得感谢我。

是吧，

亲爱的

?

要是我不和你在一起，

你永远也不会学到这些谬误的。

”

144

． “与事实相反的假设，”波莉不假思索地说着。

145

．我甩掉

r

前额的汗珠。“波莉，”我用嘶哑的声音说道，“你不要死板地接受这些东两。我 是说那

只是课堂上讲的东西。你知道学校学的东西与现实生活毫不相干。”

146

．“绝对判断，”她说道，嬉 戏地向我摇摇指头。

147

． 这一下可使我恼火了。我猛地跳了起来，向公牛似的吼叫着，“你到底想不想和我谈恋爱

?

”

148

．“我不想，”她答道。

149

．“为什么不想

?

< br>”我追问着。

150

． “因为今天下午我答应了皮蒂?伯奇，我愿意和他相爱。”

44 / 102

151

． 我被皮蒂这一无耻的行径气得一阵眩晕，情不自禁地向后退去。皮蒂答应了我，跟我成了交，

还跟我握了手呢

!

“这个可耻的家伙

!

”我尖声大叫，把一块块草皮踢了起来。“你不能跟他在一起，波莉。

他是一个说谎的人、一个骗子、一个可耻的家伙

!

”

152

．“井里投毒，”波莉说，“ 别叫嚷了，我想大声地叫嚷就是一种谬误。”

153

．我以极大的意志力把语气缓和下来。“好吧，”我说个反复无常的人，一个吃了上顿不 知下顿

的家伙。你能给我一个合乎逻辑的理由来说明你为什么要跟皮蒂好吗

?

”

154

．“当然能，”波莉肯定地说，“他有一件浣熊皮大衣，“你是一个逻辑学家。那就让我 们从逻

辑上来分析这件事吧。你怎么会看得上皮蒂?伯奇，而看不起我呢

?

你看我

---

一个才华横溢 的学生，一个了

不起的知识分子，一个前途无量的人；而皮蒂

- --

一个笨蛋，一

。”

(

崔林译，李丙奎审校

)

Unit6

The Way to Rainy Mountain

——

by N. Scott Momaday

A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the

Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the

world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is

an anvil's edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts

along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a distance in

July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire. Great green and yellow grasshoppers

are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the

red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain

are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon

that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your

imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.

I returned to Rainy Mountain in July. My grandmother had died in the spring, and I wanted to be at her

grave. She had lived to be very old and at last infirm. Her only living daughter was with her when she died,

and I was told that in death her face was that of a child.

I like to think of her as a child. When she was born, the Kiowas were living the last great moment of their

history. For more than a hundred years they had controlled the open range from the Smoky Hill River to

the Red, from the headwaters of the Canadian to the fork of the Arkansas and Cimarron. In alliance with

the Comanches, they had ruled the whole of the southern Plains. War was their sacred business, and

they were among the finest horsemen the world has ever known. But warfare for the Kiowas was

preeminently a matter of disposition rather than of survival, and they never understood the grim,

unrelenting advance of the U.S. Cavalry. When at last, divided and illprovisioned, they were driven onto

the Staked Plains in the cold rains of autumn, they fell into panic. In Palo Duro Canyon they abandoned

their crucial stores to pillage and had nothing then but their lives. In order to save themselves, they

surrendered to the soldiers at Fort Sill and were imprisoned in the old stone corral that now stands as a

military museum. My grandmother was spared the humiliation of those high gray walls by eight or ten

years, but she must have known from birth the affliction of defeat, the dark brooding of old warriors.

Her name was Aho, and she belonged to the last culture to evolve in North America. Her forebears came

down from the high country in western Montana nearly three centuries ago. They were a mountain

people, a mysterious tribe of hunters whose language has never been positively classified in any major

group. In the late seventeenth century they began a long migration to the south and east. It was a journey

toward the dawn, and it led to a golden age. Along the way the Kiowas were befriended by the Crows,

who gave them the culture and religion of the Plains. They acquired horses, and their ancient nomadic

45 / 102

spirit was suddenly free of the ground. They acquired Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, from that

moment the object and symbol of their worship, and so shared in the divinity of the sun. Not least, they

acquired the sense of destiny, therefore courage and pride. When they entered upon the southern Plains

they had been transformed. No longer were they slaves to the simple necessity of survival; they were a

lordly and dangerous society of fighters and thieves, hunters and priests of the sun. According to their

origin myth, they entered the world through a hollow log. From one point of view, their migration was the

fruit of an old prophecy, for indeed they emerged from a sunless world.

Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the immense

landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood. She could tell of the Crows, whom she

had never seen, and of the Black Hills, where she had never been. I wanted to see in reality what she

had seen more perfectly in the mind's eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage.

Yellowstone, it seemed to me, was the top of the world, a region of deep lakes and dark timber, canyons

and waterfalls. But, beautiful as it is, one might have the sense of confinement there. The skyline in all

directions is close at hand, the high wall of the woods and deep cleavages of shade. There is a perfect

freedom in the mountains, but it belongs to the eagle and the elk, the badger and the bear. The Kiowas

reckoned their stature by the distance they could see, and they were bent and blind in the wilderness.

Descending eastward, the highland meadows are a stairway to the plain. In July the inland slope of the

Rockies is luxuriant with flax and buckwheat, stonecrop and larkspur. The earth unfolds and the limit of

the land recedes. Clusters of trees, and animals grazing far in the distance, cause the vision to reach

away and wonder to build upon the mind. The sun follows a longer course in the day, and the sky is

immense beyond all comparison. The great billowing clouds that sail upon it are shadows that move upon

the grain like water, dividing light. Farther down, in the land of the Crows and Blackfeet, the plain is

yellow. Sweet clover takes hold of the hills and bends upon itself to cover and seal the soil. There the

Kiowas paused on their way; they had come to the place where they must change their lives. The sun is

at home on the plains. Precisely there does it have the certain character of a god. When the Kiowas

came to the land of the Crows, they could see the darklees of the hills at dawn across the Bighorn River,

the profusion of light on the grain shelves, the oldest deity ranging after the solstices. Not yet would they

veer southward to the caldron of the land that lay below; they must wean their blood from the northern

winter and hold the mountains a while longer in their view. They bore Tai-me in procession to the east.

A dark mist lay over the Black Hills, and the land was like iron. At the top of a ridge I caught sight of

Devil's Tower upthrust against the gray sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken

through its crust and the motion of the world was begun. There are things in nature that engender an

awful quiet in the heart of man; Devil's Tower is one of them. Two centuries ago, because they could not

do otherwise, the Kiowas made a legend at the base of the rock. My grandmother said:

Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he

trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was

covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified; they ran,

and the bear after them. They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It bade them

climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just

beyond its reach. It reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven

sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper.

From that moment, and so long as the legend lives, the Kiowas have kinsmen in the night sky. Whatever

they were in the mountains, they could be no more. However tenuous their well-being, however much

they had suffered and would suffer again, they had found a way out of the wilderness.

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My grandmother had a reverence for the sun, a holy regard that now is all but gone out of mankind. There

was a wariness in her, and an ancient awe. She was a Christian in her later years, but she had come a

long way about, and she never forgot her birthright. As a child she had been to the Sun Dances; she had

taken part in those annual rites, and by them she had learned the restoration of her people in the

presence of Tai-me. She was about seven when the last Kiowa Sun Dance was held in 1887 on the

Washita River above Rainy Mountain Creek. The buffalo were gone. In order to consummate the ancient

sacrifice--to impale the head of a buffalo bull upon the medicine tree--a delegation of old men journeyed

into Texas, there to beg and barter for an animal from the Goodnight herd. She was ten when the Kiowas

came together for the last time as a living Sun Dance culture. They could find no buffalo; they had to

hang an old hide from the sacred tree. Before the dance could begin, a company of soldiers rode out

from Fort Sill under orders to disperse the tribe. Forbidden without cause the essential act of their faith,

having seen the wild herds slaughtered and left to rot upon the ground, the Kiowas backed away forever

from the medicine tree. That was July 20, 1890, at the great bend of the Washita. My grandmother was

there. Without bitterness, and for as long as she lived, she bore a vision of deicide.

Now that I can have her only in memory, I see my grandmother in the several postures that were peculiar

to her: standing at the wood stove on a winter morning and turning meat in a great iron skillet; sitting at

the south window, bent above her beadwork, and afterwards, when her vision failed, looking down for a

long time into the fold of her hands; going out upon a cane, very slowly as she did when the weight of age

came upon her; praying. I remember her most often at prayer. She made long, rambling prayers out of

suffering and hope, having seen many things. I was never sure that I had the right to hear, so exclusive

were they of all mere custom and company. The last time I saw her she prayed standing by the side of

her bed at night, naked to the waist, the light of a kerosene lamp moving upon her dark skin. Her long,

black hair, always drawn and braided in the day, lay upon her shoulders and against her breasts like a

shawl. I do not speak Kiowa, and I never understood her prayers, but there was something inherently sad

in the sound, some merest hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. She began in a high and descending

pitch, exhausting her breath to silence; then again and again--and always the same intensity of effort, of

something that is, and is not, like urgency in the human voice. Transported so in the dancing light among

the shadows of her room, she seemed beyond the reach of time. But that was illusion; I think I knew then

that I should not see her again.

Houses are like sentinels in the plain, old keepers of the weather watch. There, in a very little while, wood

takes on the appearance of great age. All colors wear soon away in the wind and rain, and then the wood

is burned gray and the grain appears and the nails turn red with rust. The windowpanes are black and

opaque; you imagine there is nothing within, and indeed there are many ghosts, bones given up to the

land. They stand here and there against the sky, and you approach them for a longer time than you

expect. They belong in the distance; it is their domain.

Once there was a lot of sound in my grandmother's house, a lot of coming and going, feasting and talk.

The summers there were full of excitement and reunion. The Kiowas are a summer people; they abide

the cold and keep to themselves, but when the season turns and the land becomes warm and vital they

cannot hold still; an old love of going returns upon them. The aged visitors who came to my

grandmother's house when I was a child were made of lean and leather, and they bore themselves

upright. They wore great black hats and bright ample shirts that shook in the wind. They rubbed fat upon

their hair and wound their braids with strips of colored cloth. Some of them painted their faces and carried

the scars of old and cherished enmities. They were an old council of warlords, come to remind and be

reminded of who they were. Their wives and daughters served them well. The women might indulge

47 / 102

themselves; gossip was at once the mark and compensation of their servitude. They made loud and

elaborate talk among themselves, full of jest and gesture, fright and false alarm. They went abroad in

fringed and flowered shawls, bright beadwork and German silver. They were at home in the kitchen, and

they prepared meals that were banquets.

There were frequent prayer meetings, and great nocturnal feasts. When I was a child I played with my

cousins outside, where the lamplight fell upon the ground and the singing of the old people rose up

around us and carried away into the darkness. There were a lot of good things to eat, a lot of laughter

and surprise. And afterwards, when the quiet returned, I lay down with my grandmother and could hear

the frogs away by the river and feel the motion of the air.

Now there is a funeral silence in the rooms, the endless wake of some final word. The walls have closed

in upon my grandmother's house. When I returned to it in mourning, I saw for the first time in my life how

small it was. It was late at night, and there was a white moon, nearly full. I sat for a long time on the stone

steps by the kitchen door. From there I could see out across the land; I could see the long row of trees by

the creek, the low light upon the rolling plains, and the stars of the Big Dipper. Once I looked at the moon

and caught sight of a strange thing. A cricket had perched upon the handrail, only a few inches away

from me. My line of vision was such that the creature filled the moon like a fossil. It had gone there, I

thought, to live and die, for there, of all places, was its small definition made whole and eternal. A warm

wind rose up and purled like the longing within me.

The next morning I awoke at dawn and went out on the dirt road to Rainy Mountain. It was already hot,

and the grasshoppers began to fill the air. Still, it was early in the morning, and the birds sang out of the

shadows. The long yellow grass on the mountain shone in the bright light, and a scissortail hied above

the land. There, where it ought to be, at the end of a long and legendary way, was my grandmother's

grave. Here and there on the dark stones were ancestral names. Looking back once, I saw the mountain

and came away.

第六课

通往雨山的路

N

?斯科特?莫米蒂

1

．

一座孤零零的小山在俄克拉荷马的草原 上拔地而起，

它的西面和北面是维奇塔山脉。

对于我们克尔

瓦人来说，它是个古老的界标，我们给它取名叫雨山。这里有世界上最恶劣的天气。冬季有大 暴风雪，春

季就刮起了飓风，

到了夏季，

草原热得就像铁砧一样。

草变得又脆又黄。

沿着河流和小溪，

是长长的绿带，

有一排排的山核桃树、柳树和金缕梅。从远望去 ，七八月里的树叶热得冒烟，犹如在火中挣扎。高高的草

地上到处都是大个儿的黄绿色的 蚱蜢．像玉米花一样爆裂开，刺得人痛。乌龟在红土地上爬行，不知要去

何处。寂寞荒凉 是这里的一大特点。草原上的一切都是疏离开来的，所见之物不会混杂在一起让人看不清

楚。要么只是一山，要么只是一树、一人。清晨，太阳在你的背后冉冉升起，此时观看大地，你会失去平

时的比例感。你会张开想像的翅膀，并认定这就是上帝造设宇宙的起始点。

2

．我七月回到了雨山。我祖母于春季去世，我是想去她的墓地 。她活得很老，最后因虚弱而死。她死

的时候，是她现在惟一活着的女儿陪伴着她。听说 她死时的脸像张孩子的脸。

3

．我喜 欢把她看作孩子。她出生时，俄克拉荷马人正生活在其所史上鼎盛时期的最后阶段。一个多世纪以

来，他们掌控着从斯莫克山河到红河那片空旷的山脉，掌控着从加拿大河流的源头到阿肯色河和西马隆河

交汇处的地域。他们与科曼斯人一道，统治着整个南部平原。发动战争是他们神圣的职责 ．他们是世人所

知的最优秀的骑手。然而，对于克尔瓦人来说，作战更多是因为这是他们 的习惯，而非为了生存。他们从

来都不理解美国骑兵残酷的进攻。当最后四分五裂、弹尽 粮绝时，他们便冒着冰凉的秋雨来到斯代克特平

原，陷入了恐慌。在帕罗多罗坎，他们的 弹粮被抢劫一空，只剩下了性命。为了拯救自己，他们在福特西

尔投降，被监禁在一个石 头堆砌的牛马棚。现在，这里已经是个军事博物馆了。我的祖母得以豁免那高高

的灰墙里 的羞辱，因为她是在此事件

8

年或

10

年后出生的。但自出生起，她就已经懂得失败给人带来的

苦难． 这使那些老战士们百思不得其解。

48 / 102

4

．她的名字叫阿荷，属

_

丁北美最后的文化。差不多一个世纪前，她的祖先从蒙大拿两部来到这里。

他们 是一群山民，一个神秘的猎手部落．其语言从未分明地划归任何一个主要语种。

17

世纪晚期，他们开

始了漫长的向南和向东移民。这个通向黎明的漫长 的旅行，使他们达到其黄金时期。一路上，克尔瓦人被

克罗人当作朋友，并给了他们平原 上的文化和宗教。他们有了马，于是他们那古老的游牧精神使他们重新

脱离了地面。他们 拥有了太米，那神圣的太阳舞木偶，自那时起太米就成了他们的崇拜物和象征物。太米

也 是所有崇拜太阳的部落的崇拜物。同样重要的是，他们有着命运感，也有着勇气和荣誉感。当他们开始

< p>
享受南部大平原时，他们已经被改变了。他们不再是为了简单的生活必需品的奴隶，而是一群傲慢危 险的

斗士和小偷、猎人和虔诚的太阳舞宗教徒。有关他们起源的神话告诉我们，他们是通 过一根空心圆木来到

了世上。

从某种程度上说，

他们的迁移是一个古老预言的结果，

因为他们的确来自于一个没有太阳的世界。

5

．

虽然我 的祖母在漫长的生活中从未离开过雨山，

但大平原那广袤的景色却留在她的记忆中，

仿佛她

本人曾经在那里生活过。她能谈一些关于克罗人的事情，尽管 她从未见过他们；她还知道黑山，虽然她从

未去过那里。我想见识她想像当中的完美世界 ，于是走了

1500

英里，开始了我的朝圣。

< br>

6

．对于我来说，黄石是世界上最好 的地方。一个有许多深湖、黑木材、深峡谷和瀑布的地区。虽然黄

石地区很美．但人们可 能有受束缚、被禁锢的感觉。放眼望去，四周天际线近在咫尺，伸手可及。这天际

线是一 道树的高墙和一条条幽深的裂缝。山里有完全的自由，但这只属于老鹰、美洲赤鹿、獾和熊。克尔

瓦人根据他们所能看清的距离来判断他们的位置；在荒野中他们时常弯着腰或者双眼迷茫。

7

．由于位居落基山脉的坡上，向东 看上去高高的草地就像通往平原的台阶。七月，落基山脉面向平原

的内坡上长满了亚麻、 荞麦、景天和翠雀等各种植物。当大地在我们面前展开时，陆地的边缘渐渐退去。

远处的 树木和吃着草的动物开阔了我们的视野，

使人张开想像的翅膀。

白天日照时间很长，

天空宽阔无比。

宛如波浪的大片云彩在天空 中游动，就像一片片船帆。在庄稼地里投下了影子。再往下，在科洛任何黑足

印第安人的 领地，平原是黄色的。苜蓿长满了山丘，她低垂的叶子盖到地上，密密地封住土壤。克罗人在

这里停下了脚步，他们来到了必须改变他们生活的地方。在大平原，太阳感到很舒坦。毫无疑问．这里有

上帝的灵性。克尔瓦人来到克罗人的土地上，他们在黎明时，隔着比格好恩河可以看到山的背 阴处，明媚

的阳光照在层层的庄稼地上。然而，他们并不情愿改变方向，向南到脚下这块 大锅似的土地。因为他们必

须给身体充分的时间适应大平原。他们也不愿这么快就看不见 雨山。他们把太米也带到了东方。

8

．一层 暗淡的雾霭笼罩着黑山，这里的土地贫瘠得像铁。在一座山脊顶上，我看到魔鬼塔高高插入灰

蒙蒙的天空，似乎在时间诞生之时，地核开裂，地壳破裂，宇宙的运动从此开始。实际上有一些事情能使

人们叹为观止。魔鬼塔就是其中之一。两个世纪以前，由于克尔瓦人无法用科学解释魔鬼塔的 形式，冈此

他们惟一能做的就是根据岩石，通过自己的想像编造故事。我祖母说，“八个 孩子在玩耍，七个姐姐和一

个弟弟。

突然间男孩子变得哑巴了。

他颤抖着，

并用手脚爬行。

他的手脚趾 变成了爪子，

身体也长上了毛。

他一下子就变成了一只熊。

姐姐们非常害怕，

于是她们就跑，

熊就跟着 她们跑。

她们来到了一棵大树桩下，

树开始跟她们说话，命令她 们爬上树。当她们爬上树时，树便开始上升。熊赶过来要吃她们．但够不着。

于是熊站了 起来，

用它那尖锐的爪子胡乱抓着树皮。

七个姐姐被运上了天，

变成了大熊座内的北斗七星。

”

从那时 起，只要这一传说还存在，克尔瓦人就跟夜空有一种亲缘关系。在山里，除了山民以外，他们不会

再是别的什么了。

无论他们的福分有多浅，

无论他们的 生活有多艰难，

他们已经从荒原上找到了生存之路。

9

．我的祖母对太阳怀有崇敬之情。然而，现在人们的这种感情已经 没有了。在她身上有一种细致和古

老的敬畏。她晚年时开始信基督教，但在成为基督教徒 之前她改变了许多，她从未忘记自己与生俱来的权

利。孩提时，她跳过太阳舞，也参加过 那些一年一度的仪式，从中她懂得了她的同胞在太米面前的复原。

1887

年

,

当最后一次克尔瓦太阳舞会召开时。她大约七岁 。水牛都没有了。为了完成那古老的祭祀

----

把公

水牛的头穿在驱魔架上

----

一个老人代表团 旅行到了德克萨斯，去乞讨并从古德奈特牧民那里换取水牛。作

为太阳舞文化，克尔瓦人 最后一次聚会那年她十岁。他们没有找到水牛；于是他们就不得不挂上一张旧兽

皮。在舞 会开始以前，福特希尔有人命令一群战士前来驱散这群部落。毫无理由地，关于他们信仰的基本

< br>行为被禁止了。看到野蛮人杀戮他们的同胞，然后把他们的尸体扔在地上慢慢腐烂，克尔瓦人从此永远地< /p>

49 / 102

远离了驱麾架。这事发生在

< br>1890

年

7

月

20

日，维吉塔河拐弯处。我祖母在那。没有感到痛苦，因为只要

她活着，她就能忍受目睹上帝惨遭杀害。

10< /p>

．虽然我只能把祖母留在我的记忆中．我却能够看到她一些特有的姿势：冬季的清晨站在木 炉边翻

烤着铁锅里的肉片；坐在南面窗前，手里捻着念珠，随后，当她看不见的时候，她 就低下头，久久地注视

着自己合在一起的双手；拄着拐杖出门，随着年事增高，走得越来 越慢；她时常祈祷。我记忆最深刻的当

数她的祈祷了。出于痛苦、希望，再加上经历了许 多事情，她总是做长时间的祷告。我从来都不能肯定我

有权利听她的祷告，她的祈祷并不 遵循任何祷告形式的习俗。最后一次见到她时，是在夜间她站在床边祷

告，身体裸到腰部 ，煤油灯光在她黑黑的皮肤上移动。她那白天里总是打成辫子的又长又黑的头发，散落

在 肩膀上，

垂在胸前，

宛如披肩。

我不会 说克尔瓦语，

而且从来都听不懂她的祈祷，

那声音里充满了悲伤 ，

她起调很高，用尽全身力气，直到再也喊不出声音来；然后反复这样

< br>----

总是用同样的气力，而有时像，有

时又不像人类 的声音。她对房屋里的影子间跳跃的光很着迷，这让人觉得她会永远活在世上。然而，这都

是幻觉。那时我已经知道，不久我就不会再见到她了。

11< /p>

．

平原上的房屋就像哨兵。

它们是古老的 天气守卫者。

在那里，

用不了多久，

树 木就会看起来很老。

所有的颜色都会在风吹雨打中褪去，然后树木变灰，长出纹理，钉子 生锈变红。窗户玻璃黑且透明，你可

以想像里面什么都没有，然而确实有许多鬼魂和尸骨 。他们站在不同的地方挡住天空，你会觉得走近他们

所花费的时间比想像的还长。它们属 于远方，那是它们的领地。

12.

在 我祖母的房间里，曾经有过许多声音，许多人来来往往，举行盛会，谈笑风生。夏日里充满了兴

< br>奋与团聚。克尔瓦人夏季很活跃，他们忍受冬日的寒冷，不与外人接触；但当季节变幻，大地变暖，充满< /p>

生机时，他们就会按捺不住；对活动的那种古老的热爱又回到了他们身边。我小的时候，来 我祖母家的那

些年长者都精瘦，但腰板硬朗。他们头戴大黑帽子，肥大的衬衫不断被风吹 起。他们头抹头油，辫子上系

着彩带。一些人把脸涂上色，身上带着旧时征战时落下的伤 疤。他们是一群旧军阀，来这里是为了让自己

和别人都记住他们是谁。他们的妻子和女儿 把他们伺候得很好。而在这种场合，那些通常在家里伺候男人

的女人们，则可以做她们想 做的，或者做她们通常不能做的，比如，闲聊、大声喊叫、开玩笑、讲鬼故事

等等。

走出家门时，

她们披着印花披肩，

带着鲜亮 的珍珠或者镍黄铜首饰。

而在家里，

她们却忙着下厨房，

准备着丰盛的宴席。

13.

经常有祷告性的集会和大型晚餐。小时候，我经常和表兄妹们在户外玩耍，灯总是放在地 上，老人

们的歌声在我们的周围响起，并传到黑暗处。不但有许多好吃的东西，也有许多 笑声和惊喜。后来，当寂

静重新回到我们身边时，我和祖母一起躺下，听着远处河边的蛙 鸣，感受着空气的流动。

14

．现 在，房间里有一种葬礼般的寂静，那是对克尔瓦文化永远的守灵。祖母家的墙封了。当回去奔

丧时，我一生中第一次感到这房子很小。那已是深夜，皎洁的月亮，几乎是满月。我在厨房门边的石阶上

坐了很久。从那儿我能看到对面的大地；我能看到溪边那长长的树排，那起伏的草原上低低的 光，还有那

北斗七星。我曾望着月亮，看到一个怪物。一只蟋蟀歇在栏杆上，近在咫尺。 我当时的视线正好能看到那

只蟋蟀像块化石镶在满月之中。我猜想，那蟋蟀到那里去生活 和死亡，是因为只有在那里它小小的价值才

能变得完整和永恒。一阵暖风吹起，仿佛一种 渴望在我的心中涌动。

15.

次 日清晨，我在黎明时分醒来，踏上了那满是尘土的雨山之路。天气已经很热，蚱蜢已开始四处活

< br>动。依然是清晨，鸟儿在树荫下歌唱着。山上，那长长的黄草地在阳光中闪亮，一只叉尾霸翁鸫从田过。< /p>

在那里，在那长长的充满传奇色彩的路上，有我祖母的坟墓。四周深颜色的石头上刻着祖先 们的名字。在

回首，望着雨山，

(

带着 开始新生活的意念

)

我离开了。

(

崔林译，李丙奎审校

)

Unit 7 Rewriting American History----- Frances FitzGerald

Teaching Tips

“

Rewriting American History” is an exposition. Fitzgerald is making an argument, so it is important

for

the students to find out 1) what the author’s arguments are; 2) on what evidence the author bases her

arguments; 3) how the author makes these arguments. After understanding the author’s arguments, the

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