Reading 20160616181301

Reading by Henry David Thoreau from Walden The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. 译文 阅读 作者：亨利.大卫.梭罗 翻译：古卫东 英文诵读：古卫东 一个阅读希腊文荷马或埃斯库罗斯的学生，可以免于放荡或奢侈的危险，因为成就那阅读暗示了要仿效那英雄们，并把晨光对那些书页献上。英雄之书即便印成我们的母语文字也永远不会随时间而衰败；我们必须努力，集合起比平时更多的智慧、勇敢和慷慨来推断，才能找到字里行间的奥义。当代那廉价臃肿的媒介和它所有的翻译，对我们去靠近那些古代英雄式的作者，都贡献甚微。他们仿佛还很落寞，那些被印刷出来的文字还和从前一样稀有和惊奇。在青春的日子花费一点宝贵的时光哪怕仅仅学一种古代语言某些单词，是值得的。它们来自穷街陋巷却有着永久的启示和激励。一个农夫记住并能重复他听到的几个拉丁语词并非徒劳。人们有时候谈及经典仿佛它最终会让位于更时髦和实际的研究，但是喜欢冒险的学生将会永远研究经典，不管它们是哪种语言写的，也无论它们出自多么古老年代。因为经典若非人类最高贵思想的记录，它们又是什么？它们是唯一不会衰败的神谕，在其中总有着最现代问询的答案，那是戴尔菲和多多纳神庙从来没给过的。我们甚至可以省去研究大自然，因为她已经老了。【译者注：梭罗心目中的大自然是女性，这点颇似我国圣贤的天人观。】读得好，就意味着以真正的精神读真正的书，是一种高贵的练习，一种超越任何日常习俗所要求的必要劳作的练习。它要求一种类似于职业运动员所从事工作的训练，几乎是终生对这一目标持续的专注。书籍必须这样慎重和保守地来读，一如它们被写下来的时候。甚至会讲被写下的那国语言还不够，因为口说的语言和写下的语言之间还有一段值得记起的间歇，就是那听觉的语言和阅读的语言。前一种通常是变动的，一种声响，一个舌头，一种方言而已，近乎野蛮，是我们下意识学会的，像禽兽，是属于我们母亲的。而后一种就意味着前一种的成熟和经验；如果前一种是我们的母语，那么这后一种就是我们的父语，一种凝练和精选的表达，意义过于巨大，耳朵听到不够，为了说它我们得重生一次。 感谢收听,期待你对本期节目的评论留言哦～