作者：侯毅凌
出版社：外语教学与研究出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
《英语学习》三刊精选2013年第03期(图文版)试读：
缤纷世界
Sense and Nonsense阡陌 选编"Those same countries [the old superpowers], who had traditionally used numbers of immigrants to do the labor work see their own population leave to do the same in China… The shoe is on the other foot."——生活在中国的法籍摄影师Benoit Cezard在网上发布了一组非常有趣的摄影集“中国2050”，描绘了在中国的老外们未来的“洋民工”生活，令众多网友们都禁不住莞尔一笑。照片中，老外们正做着现在贫苦中国老百姓所干的工作：搬砖、蹬三轮车、扫地、摆地摊儿等。他解释道，随着欧美各国经济的衰败以及中国经济的崛起，以前传统的发达国家将会迎来一股新的移民热潮，只不过这次移民目的地是中国。“在那些传统强国里，许许多多的移民都沦为苦力工作者，这回他们将看到自己的人民在中国从事同样的工作······看，这就是30年河东，30年河西。”
"Together with the Mona Lisa, it's the most famous and recognized image in art history."——享有世界声誉的挪威画家爱德华·蒙克（Edvard Munch）是表现主义（expressionism）绘画的先锋人物，他的旷世名作《尖叫》（The Scream）创下了拍卖世界纪录，以近1.2亿美元的价格在苏富比拍卖行（Sotheby's）拍出，成为拍卖价格最高的艺术品（the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction）。伦敦一家艺术品咨询公司的顾问迈克尔·弗拉姆（Michael Frahm）说：“《尖叫》与《蒙娜丽莎》一起，成为了艺术史上最知名、最受认可的形象。”他认为《尖叫》如今已是流行文化的一部分。可以说，这幅经典杰作是体现当代人焦虑的一种象征（a modern symbol of human anxiety），它能让人们产生强烈的情感共鸣。该画作的卖家是挪威商人Petter Olsen，他在谈及拍卖这幅珍藏的决定时说：“The moment has come to offer the rest of the world the chance to own and appreciate this remarkable work... I have lived with this work all my life, and its power and energy have only increased with time.”
"There are a number of things we can do. This is just one of them. We've got to also address the culture of violence that we've got in this country."——洛杉矶警方日前开展了用购物卡换枪支的枪支回收活动。警察向那些上交自动武器的人分发价值200美元的百货商店购物卡，向那些上交手枪、步枪或猎枪的人分发价值100美元的购物卡。市长安东尼奥·维拉戈沙宣布这一活动是为了应对康涅狄格州疯狂致命枪击事件而采取的抗击犯罪的举措，去年12月14日发生的这起枪击事件导致20名儿童和六名成年教职员丧生。维拉戈沙在CNN电视台上说：“我们能做的事情有很多。这只是其中一件。我们还必须对这个国家的暴力文化采取应对措施。”
"I apologize if my remarks reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect of my colleagues and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity of which I have been blessed. I never intended that."——大热美剧《好汉两个半》（Two and a Half Men）中的主演之一安格斯·琼斯日前在一个网络短片中说：“如果你还在看《好汉两个半》，请不要再看了。我是该剧演员之一，我也不想再演了。（If you watch Two and a Half Men, please stop watching. I'm on Two and a Half Men and I don't want to be on it.）” 他表示，该剧所表现的低俗幽默与自己所受的《圣经》教导有悖。不过，在该视频发布24小时后，琼斯便发表了一份道歉声明称“如果我的言论让同事感到我的冷漠和不尊重，感到我没有对这一有幸获得的非凡（工作）机会心怀感激，那么我道歉。我从来没有过任何不敬的想法。”琼斯自10岁起开始参演《好汉两个半》，19岁的他现在每集片酬已达35万美元，是美国电视剧领域收入最高的童星。
"As you know, Washington is a contact sport."——希拉里·克林顿是当之无愧的女强人，2012年她再度荣登年度百强女性第二名。她一直是政坛的焦点人物，多年来活跃在美国政坛的台前幕后。她曾作为第一夫人入住白宫，支持丈夫比尔·克林顿指点江山。2009年她就任美国国务卿一职。作为一个外交大国的形象代言人，已经65岁的希拉里不辱使命，出访频繁度创历任国务卿之首。据统计，希拉里自上任后的四年内，出访总行程达到95万英里（约153万千米），在飞机上的总时间就达到了400天。然而，去年12月份希拉里的健康亮起红灯，因血栓住进医院。好在有惊无险，重返办公室的当天，她的员工们为她精心准备了一份礼物—— 一个印有美国国务院徽章的橄榄球头盔和一件橄榄球服。球服后面印着希拉里的名字，前面印着数字112，代表希拉里四年内出访的112个国家。副国务卿汤姆·奈兹（Thomas Nides）将礼物交给希拉里时开玩笑说,“你知道的，华盛顿的工作是一项（身体）接触很多的运动。”
汉玉精雕：
影视文化笔记：
∷宋云峰寓言、信仰和现实——《少年派的奇幻漂流》∷宋云峰英语小说《少年派的奇幻漂流》（Life of Pi）在2001年出版后广受好评，2002年获得英国布克小说奖。2012年，由李安执导的改编电影也于11月感恩节档期上映，在评论和票房上获得丰收。究竟是什么因素使小说和电影均获得成功呢？本文旨在从各方评论中寻找答案。小说长篇英语小说《少年派的奇幻漂流》（Life of Pi）出版于2001年，作者是加拿大人杨·马特尔（Yann Martel），讲述印度少年派（“Pi”）在举家乘船前往加拿大途中因遭遇风暴和沉船而不得不独自在救生艇上与一只叫理查德·帕克（Richard Parker）的孟加拉虎一起漂流227天而幸存下来的奇幻历险故事。小说在加拿大出版（Knopf Canada）之前曾遭到至少五家英国出版社的退稿，但在英国出版（Mariner Books）后的第二年就获得了享有盛誉的“布克小说奖”(Man Booker Prize for Fiction)，也受到主流媒体的普遍好评。《泰晤士报》（Times）对该书的评语是：“Every page offers something of tension, humanity, surprise, or even ecstasy.”《金融时报》（Financial Times）的评论将该小说与康拉德、海明威、拉什迪等名家的作品相提并论：“Absurd, macabre (恐怖的), unreliable and sad, deeply sensual (愉悦感官的) in its evoking (唤起) of smells and sights, the whole trip and the narrator's insanely curious voice suggests Joseph Conrad and Salman Rushdie hallucinating (使产生幻觉) together over the meaning of The Old Man and the Sea and Gulliver's Travels (《格列佛游记》).”《爱尔兰时报》（Irish Times）认为：“Life of Pi is black magic and reality, a subtle and sophisticated fable about belief in its many guises (外表，伪装).”《星期日苏格兰报》（Scotland on Sunday）认为：“Life of Pi is a great adventure story, the sort that comes along rarely and enters a select canon (精品集，真作集) at once. This would be enough to justify its existence, but it is also rich in metaphysics (形而上学，玄学), beautifully written, moving and funny.”《旧金山纪事报》（San Francisco Chronicle）这样评价该小说：“Life of Pi is a real adventure: brutal, tender, expressive, dramatic, and disarmingly funny…It's difficult to stop reading when the pages run out.”美国总统奥巴马也曾致信作者马特尔，称赞《少年派的奇幻漂流》为：“an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling.”综上所述，《少年派的奇幻漂流》之所以成功得益于三个方面的因素——宗教信仰、漂流历险以及虚幻现实。这些因素可以从小说的三段结构看出来。小说的开头部分涉及少年派名称的由来以及他对宗教信仰的态度。“He was named Piscine Molitor Patel after a swimming pool in France. He changes his name to 'Pi' when he begins secondary school, because he is tired of being taunted (嘲笑，奚落) with the nickname'Pissing (撒尿，小便) Patel'. His father owns a zoo in Pondicherry, providing Pi with a relatively affluent lifestyle and some understanding of animal psychology.”“Pi is raised a Hindu, but as a fourteen-year-old he is introduced to Christianity and Islam, and starts to follow all three religions as he'just wants to love God.'He tries to understand God through the lens of each religion and comes to recognize benefits in each one.”第二部分故事的主干，即少年派的奇幻漂流，也是最引人入胜的部分。“In the second part of the novel, Pi's family embarks (登船，上船) on a Japanese freighter (货轮) to Canada carrying some of the animals from their zoo, but a few days out of port, the ship meets a storm and capsizes (翻沉), resulting in his parents' death. After the storm, Pi regains consciousness in a small lifeboat with a spotted hyena (鬣狗), an injured zebra, and an orangutan (猩猩).”“As Pi strives to survive among the animals, the hyena kills the zebra, then the orangutan, much to Pi's distress. At this point, it is discovered that a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker had been hiding under the boat's tarp; it kills and eats the hyena. Eventually, Richard Parker learns to tolerate Pi's presence and they both live in the boat. After 227 days, the lifeboat washes up onto the coast of Mexico and Richard Parker immediately escapes into the nearby jungle.”这一部分既展示了信仰对战胜厄运的强大精神作用，也暗示了人与整个生物链和大自然相互依存的辩证关系。最后，小说的结尾将故事的虚幻与现实以及寓意留给读者来判断。“In the third part of the novel, two officials from the Japanese Ministry of Transport speak to Pi to ascertain (弄清，确定) why the ship sank. When they do not believe his story, he tells an alternate story of human brutality, in which Pi was adrift on a lifeboat with his mother, a sailor with a broken leg, and the ship's cook, who killed the sailor and Pi's mother and cut them up to use as bait (诱饵) and food. Parallels to Pi's first story lead the Japanese officials to believe that the orangutan represents his mother, the zebra represents the sailor, the hyena represents the cook, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. After giving all the relevant information, Pi asks which of the two stories they prefer. Since the officials cannot prove which story is true and neither is relevant to the reasons behind the shipwreck, they choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says, 'and so it goes with God'.”电影2012年，美籍华人导演李安（Ang Lee）将《少年派的奇幻漂流》搬上了银幕，采用3D技术拍摄。影片上映后受到好评，截至2012年12月全球票房已达近两亿四千万美元，轻松收回投资。影片分别在印度（外景）和中国台湾（特技）拍摄，其中摄制组在台中市和李安的出生地屏东县的国家公园拍摄了五个半月。影片中大多数海上历险镜头都是在一个巨型冲浪池里拍摄制作的。鉴于去年美国电影大师马丁·斯克塞斯（Martin Scosese）类似题材影片《雨果》（Hugo）在票房上的失败，一些评论家在影片上映之前做出了不太乐观的预测。例如，鉴于影片中没有名角以及要与其他同期上映的大片竞争，《福布斯》（Forbes）评论员Dorothy Pomerantz说：“It looks like chances are very slim that the film will earn back its production and marketing costs let alone turn a profit.”洛杉矶时报（The Los Angeles Times）评论员John Horn和Ben Fritz也将该片与2011年感恩节档期上映的3D效果大片《雨果》相比，预测结果会类似——由于“failing to connect with moviegoers”而成为“financial failure”。其它媒体也做出了类似的预测。然而结果却有些出人意外。《少年派的奇幻漂流》上映一个月以来，在票房和影评方面均获得令人满意的结果。Rotten Tomatoes平均影评打分为88分（其中153篇正面评价，20篇负面评价）。Metacritic上的影评平均打分则为78分。普遍的共识认为，李安比较忠实地再现了原著的奇幻故事神韵，虽然在哲学寓意上有所弱化。流畅的故事剪辑和3D技术的使用使原著的奇幻色彩更加浓厚，给电影加分不少。《芝加哥太阳时报》（Chicago Sun-Times）著名影评人Roger Ebert高度评价该片的叙事和特效：“a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery”。他尤其赞扬该片对3D技术的使用是”deepen[ing] the film's sense of places and events.”《滚石》（Rolling Stone）著名影评人Peter Travers同样对该片的3D效果赞赏有加：“like Hugo, from Martin Scorsese, Life of Pi puts 3D in the hands of a worldclass film artist. [Ang] Lee uses 3D with the delicacy(微妙) and lyricism(抒情风格) of a poet. You don't just watch this movie, you live it.”《洛杉矶时报》（Los Angeles Times）影评人Betsy Sharkey则视该片为李安诗意美学的“杰作”：“There is always a poetic aesthetic that Lee brings to his best work—the brutal martial arts ballet of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the homophobic hatred against the backcountry grandeur (壮丽) of Brokeback Mountain, which would win him an Oscar for directing in 2006. In Life of Pi, certainly given its technological achievements, the filmmaker has raised the bar. Not since James Cameron's breathtaking blue Avatar in 2009 has 3D had such impact.”在接受《洛杉矶时报》采访时，数码和3D电影大师詹姆斯·卡梅隆（James Cameron）也强调了流畅故事和3D技术的运用对该片成功所起的作用：“Life of Pi breaks the paradigm that 3D has to be some big, action fantasy spectacle, superhero movie [....] The movie is visually amazing, inventive, and it works on you in ways you're not really aware of. It takes you on a journey, and unless you've read the book—which I hadn't—you have no idea where that journey is going. It does what good 3D is supposed to do, which is, it allows you to forget you're watching a 3D movie.”一位法国记者认为李安将有趣的故事、视觉的效果以及哲学的意味有机地结合起来：“a philosophical tale where Noah's Ark metamorphoses into ‘The Raft of the Medusa（美杜莎，希腊神话中的三个蛇发女怪之一）’”，“a visual masterpiece” in which “Ang Lee proves, once again, his talent as a universal storyteller”.原著作者Yann Martel也高度认可李安对小说的改编：“I'm happy it works so well as a film. Even if the ending is not as ambiguous as the book's, the possibility that there might be another version of Pi's story comes at you unexpectedly and raises the same important questions about truth, perception and belief.”综上所述，《少年派的奇幻漂流》小说与电影的成功主要在于作者和导演充分利用文学与电影这两种不同媒体的特点，扬长避短地发挥了各自的长处（小说的不受时空限制与电影的奇幻效果），但同时又遵从了“好故事”的流畅有趣，真正做到了“寓教于乐”。❖经典文选
【A】Experience (II) 经历 （下）By Arthur Benson∷禾沐 译I have a man in mind who has a simple taste for books. He has a singularly pure and fine power of selecting and loving what is best in books. There is no self-consciousness about him, no critical contempt of the fancies of others; but his own love for what is beautiful is so modest, so perfectly natural and unaffected, that it is impossible to hear him speak of the things that he loves without a desire rising up in one's mind to taste a pleasure which brings so much happiness to the owner. I have often talked with him about books that I had thought tiresome and dull; but he disentangles so deftly the underlying idea of the book, the thought that one must be on the look-out for the motive of the whole, that he has again and again sent me back to a book which I had thrown aside, with an added interest and perception. But the really notable thing is the effect on his own immediate circle. I do not think his family are naturally people of very high intelligence or ability. But his mind and heart seem to have permeated theirs, so that I know no group of persons who seem to have imbibed so simply, without strain or effort, a delight in what is good and profound. There is no sort of dryness about the atmosphere. It is not that they keep talk resolutely on their own subjects; it is merely that their outlook is so fresh and quick that everything seems alive and significant. One comes away from the house with a horizon strangely extended, and a sense that the world is full of live ideas and wonderful affairs.I despair of describing an effect so subtle, so contagious. It is not in the least that everything becomes intellectual; that would be a rueful consequence; there is no parade of knowledge, but knowledge itself becomes an exciting and entertaining thing, like a varied landscape. The wonder is, when one is with these people, that one did not see all the fine things that were staring one in the face all the time, the clues, the connections, the links. The best of it is that it is not a transient effect; it is rather like the implanting of a seed of fire, which spreads and glows, and burns unaided.It is this sacred fire of which we ought all to be in search. Fire is surely the most wonderful symbol in the world! We sit in our quiet rooms, feeling safe, serene, even chilly, yet everywhere about us, peacefully confined in all our furniture and belongings, is a mass of inflammability, stored with gases, which at a touch are capable of leaping into flame. I remember once being in a house in which a pile of wood in a cellar had caught fire; there was a short delay, while the hose was got out, and before an aperture into the burning room could be made. I went into a peaceful dining-room, which was just above the fire, and it was strangely appalling to see little puffs of smoke fly off from the kindled floor, while we tore the carpets up and flew to take the pictures down, and to know the room was all crammed with vehement cells, ready to burst into vapour at the fierce touch of the consuming element.I saw once a vast bonfire of wood kindled on a grassy hill-top; it was curiously affecting to see the great trunks melt into flame, and the red cataract pouring so softly, so unapproachably into the air. It is so with the minds of men; the material is all there, compressed, welded, inflammable; and if the fire can but leap into our spirits from some other burning heart, we may be amazed at the prodigal force and heat that can burst forth, the silent energy, the possibility of consumption.I hold it to be of supreme value to each of us to try to introduce this fire of the heart into our spirits. It is not like mortal fire, a consuming, dangerous, truculent element. It is rather like the furnace of the engine, which can convert water into steam—the softest, feeblest, purest element into irresistible and irrepressible force. The materials are all at hand in many a spirit that has never felt the glowing contact; and it is our business first to see that the elements are there, and then to receive with awe the fiery touch. It must be restrained, controlled, guarded, that fierce conflagration; but our joy cannot only consist of pure, clear, lambent, quiescent elements. It must have a heart of flame.❖亚瑟·本森（1862—1925），英国散文家、诗人、教育家。父亲是19世纪末坎特伯雷大主教爱德华·怀特·本森，叔叔是19世纪哲学家亨利·西奇维克。曾就读于伊顿公学和剑桥大学，后来又分别在这两个地方教学。1915年到1925年担任剑桥大学莫德林学院的院长。他的诗歌和散文在当时享有美名，他还写了很多广受欢迎的鬼故事，并留下了长达400万字的日记。他的代表作有：《日落岛》（The Isles of Sunset）、《曙光中的少年》（The Child of the Dawn）、《无所畏惧》（Where No Fear Was）、《剑桥教育论文集》（Cambridge Essays on Education）等。
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