英语听书《白鲸记》第541期
日期:2016-09-18 18:03

(单词翻译:单击)

Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swartvisage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reapingin a Christian corn-field, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.
他象玛克·安东尼一样,天天循着他那铺满草皮,饰遍香花似的尼罗河,懒散地驾着一叶扁舟,公开地跟他那双颊赤红的克莉奥佩屈拉(克莉奥佩屈拉——埃及女皇,恺撒的情妇,恺撒死后又与罗马另一执政安东尼相爱。这里的“双颊赤红”指她有印第安血统和太阳所晒的缘故。)调情,在阳光洋溢的甲板上把他的大腿晒成杏色。可是,一上了岸,所有这种柔弱气质就全告消失。运河船的水手那么洋洋得意地夸示出来的强盗风度,他那花哨地镶了边的垂边帽子就显示出了他的堂皇的相貌。当他划船泛过村庄的时候,可教那些嬉笑无邪的村人大吃一惊,他那副黑黝黝的相貌和冒冒失失、昂首阔步的姿态,也不是不会使城里人望而生畏的。有一回,我流浪在他们的运河上,我领承了其中一个运河船的水手的好意;我真衷心感激;可真是并不是不领情的;不过你们这些好使暴力的人,却往往有一种最为可取的特质,那就是,济危扶弱和劫富济贫,往往都得使用铁腕。总的说起来,诸位先生,这种运河生活究竟是狂暴到什么程度,从这一点就可获得有力的证明了;在我们的野蛮的捕鲸业中,就有这么许多运河人的最优秀的毕业生,但是,除了悉特尼人以外,从来没有任何一个人种,曾受到我们的捕鲸船船长们那么不信任。不过,这并不完全会减少这事情的稀奇性,因为在我们成千上万的、在这一带生长的农村男女看来,大运河的见习性的生活,就是在基督徒的麦田里太太平平地收割,和在最蛮荒的海里不顾一切地耕耘这两件事情间起了唯一的桥梁作用。

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