-
Mark Twain-the Mirror of
America
Most Americans remember Mark
Twain as the father of Huck Finn's idyllic cruise
through eternal
boyhood
and
Tom
Sawyer's
endless
summer
of
freedom
and
adventure.
In-deed,
this
nation's
best-loved author was every bit as ad-
venturous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as
anyone has
ever
imagined.
I
found
another
Twain
as
well
–
one
who
grew
cynical,
bitter,
saddened
by
the
profound
personal tragedies life dealt him, a man who
became obsessed with the frailties of the
human race, who saw clearly ahead a
black wall of night.
在大多数美国人的心目中，
马克
?
吐温是位伟大作家，
他描写了哈克
?
费恩永恒的童年时代中
充满诗情画意的旅程和汤姆
?
索亚在漫长的夏日里自由自在历险
探奇的故事。的确，这位美
国最受人喜爱的作家的探索精神、
爱
国热情、
浪漫气质及幽默笔调都达到了登峰造极的程度。
但我发
现还有另一个不同的马克
?
吐温——一个由于深受人生悲剧的打
击而变得愤世嫉俗、
尖酸刻薄的马克
?
吐温，一个为人类品质上的弱点而忧心忡忡、明显地看到前途是一片黑暗
的人。
Tramp
printer,
river
pilot
,
Confederate
guerrilla,
prospector,
starry-eyed
optimist,
acid-tongued
cynic: The man who became Mark Twain
was born Samuel
Langhorne Clemens and
he ranged
across the nation for more
than a third of his life, digesting the new
American experience before
sharing it
with the world as writer and lecturer. He adopted
his pen name from the cry heard in his
steamboat days, signaling two fathoms
(12 feet) of water -- a navigable depth. His
popularity is
attested by the fact that
more than a score of his books remain in print,
and translations are still
read around
the world.
印刷工、领航员、邦联游击队员、淘金者、耽于幻想的乐天派、
语言尖刻的讽刺家：马克
?
吐温原名塞缪尔
?
朗赫恩
?
克莱门斯，
他一生之中有超过三分之一的时间浪迹美国各地，
体验
着美国的新生活，
尔后便以作家和演说家的身分将他所感受到的这一切介绍给全世界
。
他的
笔名取自他在蒸汽船上做工时听到的报告水深为两口寻<
/p>
(12
英尺
)
—
—意即可以通航的信号
语。
他的作品中有二十几部至今仍在印行
，
其外文译本仍在世界各地拥有读者，
由此可见他
的享誉程度。
The
geographic core, in Twain's early years, was the
great valley of the Mississippi River, main
artery of transportation in the young
nation's heart. Keelboats
，
flatboats , and large rafts carried
the first major commerce. Lumber, corn,
tobacco, wheat, and furs moved downstream to the
delta
country; sugar, molasses ,
cotton, and whiskey traveled north. In the 1850's,
before the climax of
westward
expansion, the vast basin drained three-quarters
of the settled United States.
在马克
?
吐
温青年时代，美国的地理中心是密西西比河流域，而密西西比河是这个年轻
国家中部的交
通大动脉。
龙骨船、
平底船和大木筏载运着最重要的商品。
木材、
玉米、
烟草、
小麦和皮货通过这些运载工具顺流而下，
运送到河口三角洲地区，
而砂糖、
糖浆、
棉花和威
士忌酒等
货物则被运送到北方。
在
19
世纪
50
年代，
西部领土开发高潮到来之前，<
/p>
辽阔的密
西西比河流域占美国已开发领土的四分之三。
Young
Mark
Twain
entered
that
world
in
1857
as
a
cub
pilot
on
a
steamboat.
The
cast
of
characters
set
before
him
in
his
new
profession
was
rich
and
varied
a
cosmos.
He
participated
abundantly in
this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds,
piracies, lynchings ,medicine shows,
and savage waterside slums. All would
resurface in his books, together with the colorful
language
that he soaked up with a
memory that seemed phonographic
1857
年，少年马克
?
吐温作为蒸汽船上的一名小领航员踏人了这片天地。在这个新的工作
岗位上，
他接触到的是各式各样的人物，
看到
的是一个多姿多彩的大干世界。
他完全地投身
到这种生活之中，
经常在操舵室里听着人们谈论民间争斗、海盗抢劫、
私刑案件、
游医卖药
以及河边的一些化外民居的故事。
所有这一切，
连同他那像留声机般准确可靠的记忆所吸收
的丰富多彩的语言，后来都
有机会在他的作品中得以再现。
Steamboat
decks teemed not only with the main current of
pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of
hustlers, gamblers, and thugs as well.
From them all Mark Twain gained a keen perception
of the
human race, of the difference
between what people claim to be and what they
really are. His four
and a half year s
in the steamboat trade marked the real beginning
of his education, and the most
lasting
part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged that
the river had acquainted him with every
possible type of human nature. Those
acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing,
but he never
wrote well than when he
wrote of the people a-long the great stream.
蒸汽船的甲板上不仅挤满了富有开
拓精神的人们，
而且也载着一些娼妓、
赌棍和歹徒等
社会渣滓。从所有这些形形色色的人身上，马克
?
吐温敏锐地认识了人类，认识了人们的言
与行之间的差距。
他在
蒸汽船上工作的四年半时间是他真正接受教育的开端，
而且也是最具
有深远意义的教育。到了晚年，马克
?
吐温还声言是密西西
比河使他了解了各种各样的人的
本性。
这种生活体验对他的全部
创作都起了促进作用，
然而他描写得最为成功的还是那些密
西西
比河上的人物。
When
railroads
began
drying
up
the
demand
for
steam-
boat
pilots
and
the
Civil
War
halted
commerce,
Mark
Twain
left
the
river
country.
He
tried
soldiering
for
two
weeks
with
a
motley
band of
Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided
contact with the enemy. Twain quit after
deciding,
随着铁路运输的发展，
社会上对汽船领航员的需求日渐减少，
而内战的爆发又阻碍了商
业贸易的发展。这时，马克
?
吐温便离开了密西西比河流域。他在南方邦联游击队的一支杂
牌队伍里当了两个星期的兵。
那支队伍想方设法避免与敌军交战。
在确信
“我比发明撤退的
人更精通撤退”之后，马克
?
吐温离开了那支队伍。
He went west by stagecoach
and succumbed to the epidemic of gold and silver
fever in Nevada's
Washoe region. For
eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth
available to the lucky and the
persistent,
and
was
rebuffed.
Broke
and
discouraged,
he
accepted
a
job
as
reporter
with
the
Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise, to literature's enduring
gratitude.
他乘驿站
马车来到西部，
在内华达州的华苏地区受到当时正流行的淘金热的诱惑。
同那
只有既幸运而又锲而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大财富三心二意地打了八个
月交道之后，
他
遭到了失败。在破产和灰心之余，他接受了为弗
吉尼亚市《领土开发报》当记者的工作，这
一行动将获得文学界永久的感激。
From the
discouragement of his mining failures, Mark Twain
began digging his way to regional
fame
as a newspaper reporter and humorist. The instant
riches of a mining strike would not be his
in the reporting trade, but for making
money, his pen would prove mightier than his
pickax. In the
spring
of
1864,
less
than
two
years
after
joining
the
Territorial
Enterprise,
he
boarded
the
stagecoach for San Francisco, then and
now a hotbed of hopeful young writers.
自从他因淘金失败而感到心灰意冷之后，马克
?
吐温便开始努力博取作为一名报社记者
和幽默作家的
地区性声望。
从事新闻报道工作当然不能使他像淘金成功者一样立成巨富，
但
在挣钱方面他的笔杆却比他的锄镐要有效得多。
1
864
年春季，在他加盟《领土开发报》还
不足两年之时，
他又乘驿站马车前往旧金山，
那儿在当时和现在都是有前途的年轻作
家成长
的摇篮。
Mark Twain honed and experimented with
his new writing muscles, but he had to leave the
city
for
a
while
because
of
some
scathing
columns
he
wrote.
Attacks
on
the
city
government,
concerning
such
issues
as
mistreatment
of
Chinese,
so
angered
officials
that
he
fled
to
the
goldfields
in
the
Sacramento
Valley.
His
descriptions
of
the
rough-country
settlers
there
ring
familiarly
in
modern
world
accustomed
to
trend
setting
on
the
West
Coast.
was
a
splendid
population
–
for
all
the
slow,
sleepy,
sluggish-brained
sloths
stayed
at
home...
It
was
that
population that gave to
California a name for getting up astounding
enterprises and rushing them
through
with a magnificent dash and daring and a
recklessness of cost or consequences, which she
bears unto this day
–
and when she projects a
new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and
says 'Well, that is California all
over. '
马克
?
吐温磨炼并试验了他的新笔力，但他却因写了一些尖锐的评论文章而被迫暂
时离
开这座城市。他围绕着虐待华人等一类问题对市政府提出的尖锐批评惹得一些官员大
为恼
火，
因之他只好逃到萨克拉门托山谷的金矿区暂避风头。<
/p>
他对那儿的拓荒者们的描写使西海
岸地区富有创新精神的现代人倍
感亲切。
“这儿的人们真是了不起——因为那些笨手笨脚、
无精
打彩、呆头呆脑的懒汉都呆在家里……正是那些人们为加利福尼亚赢得了这样的声誉：
当
他们着手进行一项宏伟的事业时，
他们会不计代价或风险而以一种豪迈的气概和闯劲勇往
直前，
一千到底。加利福尼亚人至今仍保持着这样的声誉，因而
，
每当他们发起一项新的惊
天动地的壮举时，那些素来稳重的人
便会像往常一样微笑着说：
‘看吧，这完全是加利福尼
亚的风格
’
。
”
In the dreary winter of 1864-65 in
Angels Camp, he kept a notebook. Scattered among
notations
about the weather and the
tedious mining-camp meals lies an entry noting a
story he had heard
that day
–
an entry that would
determine his course forever:
–
bet
stranger
$$50
–
stranger had no frog,
and C. got him one
–
in the
meantime stranger filled C. 's frog
full of shot and he couldn't jump. The
stranger's frog won.
1864
年与
1865
年之交的那个冬天，马克
?
吐温是在安吉尔斯矿区度过的。在这段沉闷
的日子里，
他记了一
本笔记。
在杂乱无章的有关天气情况和乏味无趣的有关矿区饭食情况的
< br>记录条目中夹着一条叙述当天听到的一则故事的记录——这条记录决定了他一生事业的发
< br>展方向：
“科尔曼用他的跳蛙——与陌生人赌
50
美元——陌生人没有跳蛙，
科尔曼去给他弄
来
一只——陌生人利用这段时间将科的跳蛙肚子塞满铅弹，
这样，
科的跳蛙跳不起来，
陌生
人的跳蛙便得以获胜。
”
Retold with his
descriptive genius, the story was printed in
newspapers across the United States
and
became
known
as
Celebrated
Jumping
Frog
of
Calaveras
County.
Mark
Twain's
national reputation
was now well established as
经过马克
?
吐温的生花妙笔改写之后，
这个故事登在美国各地的报纸上，
成了家喻户晓
的“卡拉韦拉斯县有名的跳蛙”
< br>。至此，马克
?
吐温作为“太平洋海岸狂放的幽默大师”
的声
望已在全国范围内牢固地确立起来了。
Two year s later the opportunity came
for him to take a distinctly American look at the
Old World.
In New York City the
steamship Quaker City prepared to sail on a
pleasure cruise to Europe and
the Holy
Land. For the first time, a sizable group of
United States citizens planned to journey as
tourists -- a milestone , of sorts, in
a country's development. Twain was assigned to
accompany