介绍:
2021年7月26日 星期一《古大叔小木屋》（57）直播实况录制 私人定制
时间：晚间9：00——10:00
中英文文本
3. Reading
[9] The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred[bred和bread同] and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible[əkˈsesɪbl] to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them./// I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. //This is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading/ perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse[ˈkɒnvɜːs] about it?\ Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it.// Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader;// and as for the sacred [ˈseɪkrɪd] Scriptures['skrɪptʃəz], or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth[wɜːθ] the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; - and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books,// which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies[ˈpɪɡmɪz] and manikins[ˈmænɪkɪns].
最好的书，甚至还没有被那些称作好读者的人们读过。我们康科德的文化是由什么组成的呢？在这个镇子很少有例外，对于最好的或特别好的书/没胃口，甚至英语文学，那些字儿倒是谁都能读能拼。即便是受过大学教育和所谓开明教育的人们，这里或其他地方/都少有或不熟悉/英语的经典；至于说人类智慧的记录，古代的经典和圣书，那本来只要了解它们价值的人是可以得到的，但到处都是为了熟悉它们/只做过微乎其微的努力。我认识一个伐木人，他看一份法文报纸，说不是为了看新闻，他的水平更高，也只是为了“保持和练习法文”。他是一个土生土长的加拿大人；当我问他，什么是他认为他在这个世界能做的最好的事情，他说，除了这个以外，就是保持和增加他的英语。这也充其量就是现在的大学生出身的人通常做的或鼓励去做的，他们拿起一份英语报纸就是干这个。一个刚刚读完也许是最好的英语书籍的人将会发现他有多少人可以与yù之探讨呢？或者设想他刚刚读过一部希腊或拉丁文经典原著，对那书的赞赏甚至所谓的文盲都熟悉；他会发现找不到一个人可以去说，必须保持沉默。真的，在我们的大学几乎难得有/教授/在他假如掌握了语言的困难之后，还能相应掌握智慧的难点/和一个希腊诗人的诗歌，并少有同情心把它们向警觉和英雄的读者传递。至于说到那些圣谕和人类经典，这个镇子，谁能哪怕给我/说说/它们名称？大多数人甚至不知道除了希伯来有一部圣经/其他国家还有经典。一个男人，任何男人/都愿意从自己的路上跑开/煞有介事地去捡一枚银币，但这里/就有黄金的字，是古代最聪慧的人表述的，它的价值每一个后来岁月的智者都已经向我们保证过——可是我们却只会去读简易读物，初级读物和教材，而当我们离开学校，“小读物”和故事书又开始了，那都是给孩子们和初学者准备的；而我们的阅读，我们的谈话和思维，处chǔ于一个极低的水平，只配做矮子和侏儒。
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