作者：王佐良
出版社：外语教学与研究出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
欧洲文化入门试读：
Introduction
1. Uses of the Subject
Why should Chinese students of English bother about European culture? Well, English culture is a part of European culture and language cannot be learned without some knowledge of the culture behind it.
Further, European culture itself is a part of world culture. Some knowledge of it is necessary to us as citizens of the world, particularly so when our country is going ahead with modernization and taking an active part in world affairs.
2. Two Major Elements in European Culture
European culture is made up of many elements, which have gone through changes over the centuries. Two of these elements are considered to be more enduring and they are: the Greco-Roman element, and the Judeo-Christian element.
However, there has been a complex interplay between the two, which adds to the richness of the culture.
DIVISION ONE GREEK CULTURE AND ROMAN CULTURE
Ⅰ. Greek Culture
1. The Historical Context
In a remote period of Greek history, probably around 1200 B.C., a war was fought between Greece and Troy, a city on the Asiatic side of the Aegean, ending in the destruction of Troy. This is the war that Homer refers to in his epics.
Greek culture reached a high point of development in the 5th century B.C. This was marked by the successful repulse of the Persian invasion early in the century, the establishment of democracy and the flourishing of science, philosophy, literature, art and historical writing in Athens.
The century closed with civil war between Athens and Sparta.
In the second half of the 4th century B.C., all Greece was brought under the rule of Alexander, King of Macedon. His armies went out to conquer large areas of Europe, Asia and Africa, spreading Greek culture wherever they found themselves.
In 146 B.C. the Romans conquered Greece. By that time Greek culture had firmly established itself in much of eastern and western Europe and northern Africa, with flourishing centres of Greek learning, such as Alexandria with its famous library, around the Mediterranean.
2. Social and Political Structure
Athens was a democracy. Democracy means "exercise of power by the whole people", but by "the whole people" the Greeks meant only the adult male citizens, and citizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. Women, children, foreigners and slaves were excluded. They had no rights.
The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of slave labour. Slaves worked on farms and in workshops and mines owned by their masters. There was harsh exploitation in Greek society.
The Greeks loved sports. Once every four years, they had a big festival on Olympus Mount which included contests of sports. Thus began the Olympic Games. Revived in 1896, the Games have become the world's foremost amateur sports competition.
3. Homer
Ancient Greeks considered Homer to be the author of their epics. He probably lived around 700 B.C. Two such epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, have survived. They are not about events of Homer's own time, but about great men and wars of a remoter age, probably in the period 1200—1100 B.C.
The Iliad deals with the alliance of the states of the southern mainland of Greece, led by Agamemnon in their war against the city of Troy. The heroes are Hector on the Trojan side and Achilles and Odysseus on the Greek. In the final battle, Hector was killed by Achilles and Troy was sacked and burned by the Greeks.
The Odyssey deals with the return of Odysseus after the Trojan war to his home island of Ithaca. It describes many adventures he ran into on his long sea voyage and how finally he was reunited with his faithful wife Penelope. Extracts from the Odyssey:
Odysseus' Reunion with Penélopê
(Odysseus, after ten years of war and another ten years of voyaging, has now reached his home island, Ithaca. He finds his own house full of evil people pressing his wife Penélopê to remarry. Disguised as a stranger, he contrives to see and speak with Penélopê, who does not immediately recognize him to be her husband.)
Willing hands
brought a smooth bench, and dropped a fleece upon it.
Here the adventurer and king sat down;
then carefully Penélopê began:
"Friend, let me ask you first of all:
who are you, where do you come from, of what nation
and parents were you born?"
And he replied:
"My lady, never a man in the wide world
should have a fault to find with you. Your name
has gone out under heaven like the sweet
honour of some god-fearing king, who rules
in equity over the strong: his black lands bear
both wheat and barley, fruit trees laden bright,
new lambs at lambing time — and the deep sea
gives great hauls of fish by his good strategy,
so that his folk fare well.
O my dear lady,
this being so, let it suffice to ask me
of other matters — not my blood, my homeland.
Do not enforce me to recall my pain.
My heart is sore; but I must not be found
sitting in tears here, in another's house:
it is not well forever to be grieving.
One of the maids might say — or you might think —
I had got maudlin over cups of wine."
And Penélopê replied:
"Stranger, my looks,
my face, my carriage, were soon lost or faded1
when the Akhaians crossed the sea to Troy,
Odysseus my lord among the rest.
If he returned, if he were here to care for me,
I might be happily renowned!
But grief instead heaven sent me — years of pain.
Sons of the noblest families on the islands,
Doulikhion, Samê, Wooded Zakуnthos,
with native Ithakans, are here to court me,
against my wish; and they consume this house.
Can I give proper heed to guest or suppliant
or herald on the realm's affairs?
How could I?
wasted with longing for Odysseus, while here
they press for marriage.
Ruses served my turn
to draw the time out — first a close-grained web
I had the happy thought to set up weaving
on my big loom in hall. I said, that day:
'Young men — my suitors, now my lord is dead,
let me finish my weaving before I marry,
or else my thread will have been spun in vain.2
It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laērtês
when cold Death comes to lay him on his bier.
The country wives would hold me in dishonour
if he, with all his fortune, lay unshrouded.
I reached their hearts that way, and they agreed.
So every day I wove on the great loom,
but every night by torchlight I unwove it;
and so for three years I deceived the Akhaians.
But when the seasons brought a fourth year on,
as long months waned, and the long days were spent,
through impudent folly in the slinking maids
they caught me — clamored up to me at night;
I had no choice then but to finish it.
And now, as matters stand at last,
I have no strength left to evade a marriage,
cannot find any further way; my parents
urge it upon me, and my son
will not stand by while they eat up his property.
He comprehends it, being a man full grown,
able to oversee the kind of house3
Zeus would endow with honor.
But you too
confide in me, tell me your ancestry.
You were not born of mythic oak or stone."
And the great master of invention answered:
"O honorable wife of Lord Odysseus,
must you go on asking about my family?
Then I will tell you, though my pain
be doubled by it: and whose pain would not
if he had been away as long as I have
and had hard roving in the world of men?
But I will tell you even so, my lady.
One of the great islands of the world
in midsea, in the winedark sea, is Krete:
spacious and rich and populous, with ninety
cities and a mingling of tongues.
Akhaians there are found, along with Kretan
hillmen of the old stock, and Kydonians,
Dorians in three blood-lines, Pelasgians —
and one among their ninety towns is Knossos.
Here lived King Minos whom great Zeus received
every ninth year in private council — Minos,
the father of my father, Deukalion.
Two sons Deukalion had; Idomeneus,
who went to join the Atreidai before Troy
in the beaked ships of war; and then myself,
Aithon by name — a stripling next my brother.
But I saw with my own eyes at Knossos once Odysseus.
Gales had caught him off Cape Malea,
driven him southward on the coast of Krete,
when he was bound for Troy. At Amnisos,
hard by the holy cave of Eileithuía,
he lay to, and dropped anchor, in that open
and rough roadstead riding out the blow.
Meanwhile he came ashore, came inland, asking
after Idómeneus: dear friends he said they were;
but now ten mornings had already passed,
ten or eleven, since my brother sailed.
So I played host and took Odysseus home,
saw him well lodged and fed, for we had plenty;
then I made requisitions — barley, wine,
and beeves for sacrifice — to give his company
abundant fare along with him.
Twelve days
they stayed with us, the Akhaians, while that wind
out of the north shut everyone inside —
even on land you could not keep your feet,
such fury was abroad. On the thirteenth,
when the gale dropped, they put to sea.
Now all these lies he made appear so truthful
she wept as she sat listening. The skin
of her pale face grew moist the way pure snow
softens and glistens on the mountains, thawed
by Southwind after powdering from the West,
and, as the snow melts, mountain streams run full:
so her white cheeks were wetted by these tears
shed for her lord — and he close by her side.
Imagine how his heart ached for his lady,
his wife in tears; and yet he never blinked;
his eyes might have been made of horn or iron
for all that she could see. He had this trick —
wept, if he willed to, inwardly.
Well, then,
as soon as her relieving tears were shed
she spoke once more:
"I think that I shall say, friend,
give me some proof, if it is really true
that you were host in that place to my husband
with his brave men, as you declare. Come, tell me
the quality of his clothing, how he looked,
and some particular of his company."
Odysseus answered, and his mind ranged far:
"Lady, so long a time now lies between,
it is hard to speak of it. Here is the twentieth year
since that man left the island of my father.
But I shall tell what memory calls to mind.
A purple cloak, and fleecy, he had on —
a double thick one. Then, he wore a brooch
made of pure gold with twin tubes for the prongs,
and on the face a work of art: a hunting dog
pinning a spotted fawn in agony
between his forepaws — wonderful to see
how being gold, and nothing more, he bit
the golden deer convulsed, with wild hooves flying,
Odysseus' shirt I noticed, too — a fine
closefitting tunic like dry onion skin,
so soft it was, and shiny.
Women there,
many of them, would cast their eyes on it.
But I might add, for your consideration,
whether he brought these things from home, or whether
a shipmate gave them to him, coming aboard,
I have no notion: some regardful host
in another port perhaps it was. Affection
followed him — there were few Akhaians like him.
And I too made him gifts: a good bronze blade,
a cloak with lining and a broidered shirt,
and sent him off in his trim ship with honor.
A herald, somewhat older than himself,
he kept beside him; I'll describe this man:
round-shouldered, dusky, woolly-headed.
Eurbtes, his name was — and Odysseus
gave him preferment over the officers.
He had a shrewd head, like the captain's own."
Now hearing these details — minutely true —
she felt more strangely moved, and tears flowed
until she had tasted her salt grief again.
Then she found words to answer:
"Before this
you won my sympathy, but now indeed
you shall be our respected guest and friend.
With my own hands I put that cloak and tunic
upon him — took them folded from their place —
and the bright brooch for ornament.
Gone now,
I will not meet the man again
returning to his own home fields. Unkind
the fate that sent him young in the long ship4
to see that misery at Ilion , unspeakable!"
And the master improviser answered:
"Honorable
wife of Odysseus Lartiadês,
you need not stain your beauty with these tears,
nor wear yourself out grieving for your husband.
Not that I can blame you. Any wife
grieves for the man she married in her girlhood,
lay with in love, bore children to — though he
may be no prince like this Odysseus,
whom they compare even to the gods. But listen:
weep no more, and listen:
I have a thing to tell you, something true.
I heard but lately of your lord's return,
heard that he is alive, not far away,
among Thesprótians in their green land
amassing fortune to bring home. His company
went down in shipwreck in the winedark sea
off the coast of Thrinkia. Zeus and Hêlios
held it against him that his men had killed
the kine of Hêlios. The crew drowned for this.
He rode the ship's keel. Big seas cast him up
on the island of Phaikians, godlike men
who took him to their hearts. They honored him
with many gifts and a safe passage home,
or so they wished. Long since he should have been here,
but he thought better to restore his fortune
playing the vagabond about the world;
and no adventurer could beat Odysseus
at living by his wits — no man alive.
I had this from King Phaidn of Thesprótia;
and, tipping wine out, Phaidn swore to me
the ship was launched, the seamen standing by
to bring Odysseus to his land at last,
but I got out to sea ahead of him
by the king's order — as it chanced a freighter
left port for the grain bins of Doulíkhion
Phaidn, however, showed me Odysseus' treasure.
Ten generations of his heirs or more
could live on what lay piled in that great room.
The man himself had gone up to Dodona
to ask the spelling leaves of the old oak
what Zeus would have him do — how to return to Ithaka
after so many years — by stealth or openly.
You see, then, he is alive and well, and headed
homeward now, no more to be abroad
far from his island, his dear wife and son.
Here is my sworn word for it. Witness this,
god of the zenith, noblest of the gods,
and Lord Odysseus' hearthfire, now before me:
I swear these things shall turn out as I say.
Between this present dark and one day's ebb,
after the wane, before the crescent moon,
Odysseus will come."
(from the Odyssey, ⅩⅠⅩ, translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
4. Lyric Poetry
Homer's epics were not the only form of poetry the Greeks had written. There were other forms, such as lyrics. Of the many lyric poets of the time, two are still admired by readers today: Sappho and Pindar.
Sappho (about 612 — 580 B.C.), woman poet of Lesbos, is noted for her love poems of passionate intensity, some of which are addressed to women. She was considered the most important lyric poet of ancient Greece. Many Greek and Latin writers know nearly all her poems by heart. But in the 10th century the Christian church burned her works. Only fragments remain. Two samples:
(1)
I could not hope
to touch the sky
with my two arms
(2)
In gold sandals
dawn like a thief
fell upon me.
(translated by Willis Barnstone)
Pindar (about 518—438 B.C.) is best known for his odes celebrating the victories at the athletic games, such as the 14 Olympian odes. These were chanted by a chorus in a procession. They are marked by an elevated tone and stirring sound effects. Pindar, too, had imitators, such as the 17th-century English poet John Dryden.
5. Drama
Early in their remote past, the Greeks started to perform plays at religious festivals. Out of these origins a powerful drama developed in the 5th century B.C.
Performances were given in open-air theatres, with the audience sitting on stone benches and looking down at the stage from three sides. Actors wore masks.a. Aeschylus (525—456 B.C.)
He wrote such plays as Prometheus Bound, Persians, and Agamemnon. In these plays there are only two actors and a chorus. Yet they manage to stir and move the audience deeply by showing heroes and heroines in complicated human situations, out of which there is no escape but death. The plays are written in verse. Aeschylus is noted for his vivid character portrayal and majestic poetry.
This is what the chorus says about the difficult choice faced by Agamemnon the Greek commander in the play named after him:
The king, the leader, spoke aloud:
"A hard fate, to disobey the seer;
a hard fate, if I must slay my child,
light of my house,
and at the altar stain a father's hands
with virgin daughter's blood.
Here are no ways that do not lead to ill.
Can I desert,
failing my allies?
Why should they not desire,
with passion above all passion,
a virgin's blood, a sacrifice
to stop this wind?
Well ... may good come of it!"
And when the overmastering yoke was on him,
his spirit veering,
blowing foul, impose, unholy,
then his mind was set on course
to the unthinkable.
For mortal men grow bold
when shame is overturned within their thoughts
by evil madness,
lighting a train of suffering.
And he — yes, he sacrificed his daughter
to speed a war about a stolen wife
and ply the battle-fleet to sea.
She begged, she cried her father's name.
The leaders brushed aside her pleas,
a girl's life;
their verdict was for battle.
Her father spoke the prayer of sacrifice.
She clung upon his robes despairingly.
He told the servants
to lift her like a kid above the altar,
high, facing down,
and damp a guard upon her lovely lips,
a bit to make her dumb
to check by force
a cry imperilling his house.
Her yellow skirt was billowing to the ground.
Her eyes, in search of pity,
were piercing, one by one, her slaughterers,
a beauty in a painting
yearning to call their names;
for often had she sung within the palace
when men were gathered at her father's feasts,
in pure voice of a girl unpierced,
honouring the god, asking for future blessings
upon the offering of wine
by the father whom she loved.
What happened then, I did not see,
nor do I tell it.
(Agamemnon 192-248, translated by Kenneth Dover)b. Sophocles (496—406 B.C.)
Author of plays like Oedipus the King, Electra, and Antigone. Contributed greatly to tragic art. He added a third actor and decreased the size of the chorus.
Oedipus the King has a perfect plot. It is the story of a man who unknowingly committed terrible sin. An oracle said that the child Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. So the parents asked a shepherd to leave him on a hillside, but he was rescued and brought up as the son of the king of Corinth. Hearing the oracle, Oedipus ran away from Corinth. While travelling, he met and killed Laius, king of Thebes, without recognizing that the man was really his father. After ridding Thebes of the Sphinx, he married the queen of the country, Jocasta, knowing not that she was his own mother. Thus, unwittingly, he fulfilled the oracle. Later, realizing the truth of his birth, he stabbed out his eyes, while Jocasta hanged herself.
Antigone is about what happened to a girl by that name, who was the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. She had defied the king's order by performing funeral rites over her brother, executed by the state for treason, and was condemned to death on that account. It is thus a play with an important theme — about the difficult choice one has to make between public duty and private feeling.
Sophocles has had a strong impact on European literature. Some of his plots were taken over and adopted by later writers. The Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's term "the Oedipus complex" was also derived from Sophocles's play.c. Euripides (484—406 B.C.)
Euripides wrote mainly about women in such plays as
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