(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
"Invisible Man." The book is about a nameless black man's search for his identity and place in society.
Ralph Ellison's novel, "Invisible Man", was published in nineteen fifty-two. Ellison was at once called a major new writer. The book won the National Book Award, a high and rare honor for a first novel.
Since then millions of copies have been printed. The book is still used in many universities and other schools. One professor said that he has used the book in his teaching for twenty-five years. He said that each time he returns to "Invisible Man" he finds new ideas in it. Ellison writes in the beginning of his book:
"I am an invisible man ... I am a man of substance, flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me...When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me."
From the start, "Invisible Man" was a book that changed the way white Americans thought about black Americans. It also changed the way black Americans thought about themselves. And it caused major disputes among both black and white critics.
Black critics said the book was too difficult to read. One black critic said that the black man needed "Invisible Man" like he needed a knife in his back. Another black writer dismissed Ellison because Ellison demanded that writing skills must be learned before political ideas can be expressed.
Some white critics refused to accept a black writer who did not write from direct anger at whites. They seemed to want him not to write from his mind, but from the color of his skin. Yet the book continues to live long after most people have forgotten the disputes.
Ralph Ellison was born in nineteen fourteen, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His father died when Ralph was three. His mother supported herself and her son by cleaning other people's houses.
She also supported her son's interest in music and writing. She would take home old music recordings and magazines from the houses where she worked. Ralph liked jazz, and played trumpet in his high school band. He dreamed of writing serious music.
In nineteen thirty-three, Ralph entered a black university, Tuskegee Institute, in the state of Alabama. He wanted to study music. He moved to New York City in nineteen thirty-six. He still planned to study music and art. However, that same year he ran out of money and could no longer attend school.
The nineteen thirties in America were difficult economic times. There were not many jobs to be found, and even fewer for black men. Ellison worked at many things. He shined people's shoes. He played trumpet in a jazz band. He worked for the Young Men's Christian Association. He worked in factories. He worked for a brief time taking pictures. Lack of money was an important reason for Ralph Ellison becoming a writer. He said:
"I have always read a lot, and I began to realize I had a certain talent for it. It was not easy to be the kind of musician I wanted to be: I did not have enough money to go to Juilliard [school of music]. So I stuck with what I had."
In New York City, Ellison joined the Federal Writers Project. This was a program created during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency to keep writers employed at writing.
He met two important black writers, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. Wright soon would publish "Native Son," the book that made him famous.
Later, during World War Two, Ellison served as a cook in the United States Merchant Marine. Merchant marine ships carried war supplies to American and allied soldiers. For Ellison, the war was a time of learning and trying to write.
He read books by the American writers T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. And he read books by foreign writers like the Irish writer James Joyce.
Ralph Ellison's stories were first published during World War Two. When the war was over, he visited a friend in the state of Vermont. Ellison said:
"One day I wrote, 'I am an invisible man.' I did not know what those words represented at the start, and I had no thought about what gave me the idea."
The book that started with those words took almost seven years to write.
Like many other novels, Ellison's story is a series of experiences as the storyteller learns to deal with life. Yet, unlike other novels, "Invisible Man" takes place in a dream-like atmosphere in the United States. It is a world where dreams come close to reality, and the real world looks like a frightening dream.
The man telling his story in "Invisible Man" lives in a hidden underground space. But to prove that he exists, at least to himself, he has lit his underground room with one thousand three hundred sixty-nine lights. They remain lit with power he has stolen from the electric company.
In much of Ellison's novel the person telling the story is a victim, usually of white people, but also of some blacks. He both loves and hates the world. He plans some day to leave his underground shelter. He says that as a man he is willing to believe that "even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all."
The man telling the story says that as a boy, white men covered his eyes with a cloth. The white men tell the boy to blindly fight other black boys. The blacks are forced to fight each other to please whites.
At the end of the novel the story has moved from the American South to the North. There are riots in Harlem, the black area of New York City. Instead of ten black children fighting each other blindly, grown black men are battling each other to the death. Blacks still are having their strength turned upon themselves.
Critics said "Invisible Man" was well written. But some critics called this a weakness. They said the writing seemed to hide the book's ideas and make them less a product of black life.
One critic said that he found it difficult to call "Invisible Man" an African-American novel. He said that the main person in the book is a southern black man. But, the critic said, he is all of us, no matter where we were born or the color of our skin.
After "Invisible Man" was published in nineteen fifty-two, Ralph Ellison taught at a number of universities. He retired from New York University in nineteen eighty. While he was alive, he published only two other books. They were books of criticism and essays, called "Shadow and Act" and "Going to the Territory."
Ralph Ellison died in nineteen ninety-four, at the age of eighty. After his death, a book of his stories, "Flying Home," was published. Shortly before his death, Ellison had told someone that his second novel was almost finished. He had worked on the novel for forty years without finishing it.
Parts of the book had appeared in magazines during the nineteen sixties and seventies. Ellison had to rewrite the novel after a large part of it was burned in a fire at his home in nineteen sixty-seven. The novel was said to be two thousand pages long. Finally, his friend John Callahan put the book together after Ellison died. The novel was published in nineteen ninety-nine. It was called "Juneteenth."
Since "Invisible Man" was published, many American writers have said how much Ellison influenced them.
In nineteen ninety, another black writer, Charles Johnson, was given the National Book Award. In receiving the prize, Johnson thanked Ralph Ellison for leading the way for black writers. Ellison was present at the ceremony. He thanked Johnson. Then he expressed his belief that black writers should not be influenced only by other black writers. He said:
"You do not write out of your skin. You write out of your ideas and the quality of your mind. "
重点解析
1.dream of梦想
I did once dream of becoming the first woman to captain an ocean liner.
我确实曾经梦想过成为首位远洋客轮的女船长。
2.run out of用光
Fears that the world was about to run out of fuel proved groundless.
事实证明对于世界燃料即将耗尽的担忧毫无根据。
3.stick with坚持
If you're in a job that keeps you busy, stick with it...
如果你所做的工作能让你很忙，那要坚持下去。
4.serve as用作；充当
Several painters were working on a huge piece of canvas which would serve as the scenery.
几位画家正在一块用作舞台布景的巨大帆布上作画。
5.start with以...开始
I'll start with some generalities and then examine a few specific examples
我首先进行概述，然后会分析几个实例。
6.be responsible for对...负责
I sometimes find it a strain to be responsible for the mortgage.
我有时觉得背负这笔抵押贷款很有压力。
参考译文
我是费丝·拉皮德斯，我是史蒂夫·恩贝尔。这里是VOA慢速英语栏目《美国人物志》。今天我们讲述拉尔夫·埃里森和他的著名小说《隐形人》的故事。这本书讲了一个无名黑人在社会中寻找他的身份和位置的故事。
拉尔夫·埃里森的小说《隐形人》于1952年发表。埃里森立刻被称为一名重要的新作家。这本书获得了国家图书奖。这对处女作来说是很高和很罕见的奖项。
自那之后这本书印刷了数百万本。这本书现在仍在很多大学和其他学校使用。一名教授表示，他在自己25年的教学中一直在使用这本书。他表示，每次自己重读《隐形人》这本书都有新发现。埃里森在书的开头这样写道：
我是个隐形人...我是一个有资产、有骨肉、有纤维、有液体的人——甚至可以说我有头脑。我是透明的，明白吗，仅仅是因为人们拒绝看到我...当他们靠近我的时候，他们只看到我周围的事物，他们自己。或者他们想象的事物，真的，每件事物，除了我。”
从一开始，《隐形人》就是一部改变美国白人看待美国黑人方式的书。它也改变了美国黑人看待他们自己的方式。而且该书也在黑人和白人评论家之间引起了重大争论。
黑人评论家说这本书太难读了。一位黑人评论家说，黑人需要《隐形人》，就像他背后需要一把刀一样。另一位黑人作家否定了埃利森，因为埃利森要求在表达政治观点之前必须先学习写作技巧。
一些白人评论家拒绝接受一个不是直接出于对白人的愤怒而写作的黑人作家。他们似乎不想让他用自己的脑子写作，而是凭借他的肤色来写作。然而在多数人忘记了这些争论后，这本书继续流传了下来。
拉尔夫·埃里森于1914年出生于俄克拉荷马城。拉尔夫三岁时，他的父亲就去世了。他的母亲靠打扫别人的房子来养活自己和儿子。
她也支持了儿子对音乐和写作的兴趣。她会从工作的地方把旧唱片和杂志带回家。拉尔夫喜欢爵士乐，在他的高中乐队里吹小号。他梦想创作严肃的音乐。
1933年，拉尔夫进入了阿拉巴马州的塔斯基吉黑人大学。他想学音乐。他在1936年搬到纽约市。他仍然打算学习音乐和艺术。然而，同年他的钱花光了，不能再上学了。
20世纪30年代是美国经济困难时期。人们找不到多少工作，黑人就更少了。埃里森做过很多工作。他给别人擦过鞋。他在一个爵士乐队吹过小号。他为青年基督教协会工作过。他在工厂工作。他做了一小段时间拍摄照片的工作。缺钱是拉尔夫·埃里森成为作家的一个重要原因。他说：
我读过很多书，我发现自己肯定有写作天赋。成为我想成为的音乐家并不容易：我没有足够的钱去上茱莉亚音乐学院。所以我就靠自己有的东西。”
在纽约市，埃里森加入了联邦作家计划。这是富兰克林·罗斯福总统任期内为保持作家就业而制定的一项计划。
他遇到了两位重要的黑人作家，兰斯顿·休斯和理查德·赖特。赖特很快就出版了《原住民之子》，这本书让他一举成名。后来，在二战期间，埃里森埃里森在美国商船队当厨师。商船向美国和盟国士兵运送战争物资。对埃里森来说，战争是一个学习和写作的时期。
他阅读了美国作家艾略特、海明威和福克纳的作品。他还阅读外国作家的作品，比如爱尔兰作家詹姆斯·乔伊斯的作品。拉尔夫·埃里森的小说第一次出版是在二战期间。战争结束后，他参观了佛蒙特州的一个朋友。
埃里森说：“有一天我写道，‘我是个隐形人’。在一开始，我不知道这些词汇意味着什么，我不知道自己是如何想到这个的。”
以这几个词开始的书花了差不多七年的时间才写作完成。
像很多其他的小说一样，埃里森的故事讲述的是故事讲述者学会生活时的一系列经历。然而，与其他小说不同的是，《隐形人》发生在美国的梦幻般的氛围中。那是一个梦想接近现实的世界，而真实的世界则像一个可怕的梦。
《隐形人》中讲述他的故事的人住在一个隐藏的地下空间。但是为了证明他的存在，至少证明给他自己，他已经用1369盏灯点亮了他的地下房间。它们仍然用他从电力公司偷来的电力照明。
在多数埃里森的小说中，讲述故事的人通常是白人的受害者，有时候也是黑人的受害者。他对这个世界既爱又恨。他打算有一天离开他的地下避难所。他说，作为一个人，他愿意相信“即使看不见的受害者也得为所有人的命运负责。”
讲述这个故事的人表示，当他是小男孩的时候，白人会用一个布盖上他的眼睛。白人让男孩蒙着眼睛和其他黑人男孩打架。黑人被迫和彼此打架来取悦白人。
在小说的结尾，故事已经从美国南部到了北部。纽约的黑人聚集区哈莱姆区出现了暴乱。不是十个黑人小孩蒙着眼睛打架，而是成年黑人往死里决斗。黑人的力量仍然集中在他们自己身上。
评论家称，《隐形人》写的很棒。但是一些评论家称这本书很软弱。他们说，这些文字似乎隐藏了这本书的思想，使它们不再是黑人生活的产物。
一位评论家说，他觉得很难把《看不见的人》称为一部非裔美国人的小说。他说书中的主要人物是一位南方黑人。但是，这位评论家说，他是我们所有人，无论我们出生在哪里，无论我们的肤色如何。
在1952年《隐形人》出版后，拉尔夫·埃里森在一些大学教课。他于1980年从纽约大学退休。他在世时只出版了另外两本书。这两本书分别为评论和散文的书籍，书名分别为《影子和行动》，《走向领地》。
拉尔夫·埃里森于1994年去世，享年80岁。在他死后，他的故事书《飞回家》出版了。埃里森去世前不久曾告诉一个人，他的第二本小说就要完成了。这本小说他写了四十年还没完成。
这本书的一部分在20世纪六七十年代曾刊登在杂志上。1967年，这部小说的大部分内容在埃里森家中的一场大火中被烧毁，他不得不重写这部小说。据说这本小说有两千页长。最后，他的朋友约翰·卡拉汉在埃里森死后把这本书整理好。这部小说于1999年出版。它名为《六月庆典》。
自《隐形人》出版后，很多美国作家都表示他们深受埃里森的影响。
1990年，另一位黑人作家查尔斯·约翰逊获得了国家图书奖。领奖时，约翰逊感谢拉尔夫·埃里森为黑人作家指引了道路。埃里森出席了那次典礼。他感谢了约翰逊。然后他表达了他的信念，黑人作家不应该只受其他黑人作家的影响。他说：
你不能凭借你的皮肤写作。你凭借自己的想法和你的思考质量写作。
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