英文原文

【英文原文】

摘要：我无法表达，当我看见火车在车站喘息时心底那种敬畏以至于惊骇、谦卑得近于崩溃的感觉。

I cannot express the amazed awe, the crushed humility, with which I sometimes watch a locomotive take its breath at a railway station, and think what work there is in its bars and wheels, and what manner of men they must be who dig brown iron-stone out of the ground, and forge it into THAT! What assemblage of accurate and mighty faculties in them; more than fleshly power over melting crag and coiling fire, fettered, and finessed at last into the precision of watchmaking; Titanian hammer-strokes beating, out of lava, these glittering cylinders and timely-respondent valves, and fine ribbed rods, which touch each other as a serpent writhes, in noiseless gliding, and omnipotence of grasp; infinitely complex anatomy of active steel, compared with which the skeleton of a living creature would seem, to a careless observer, clumsy and vile — a mere morbid secretion and phosphatous prop of flesh! What would the men who thought out this— who beat it out, who touched it into its polished calm of power, who set it to its appointed task, and triumphantly saw it fulfil this task to the utmost of their will — feel or think about this weak hand of mine, timidly leading a little strain of watercolour, which I cannot manage, into an imperfect shadow of something else— mere failure in every motion, and endless disappointment; what, I repeat, would these Iron-dominant Genii think of me? And What ought I to think of them?

(From The Cestus of Aglaia, 1865)

中文译文

【中文译文】

我无法表达，当我看见火车在车站喘息时心底那种敬畏以至于惊骇、谦卑得近于崩溃的感觉。我暗自思忖，它的连杆和轮子之间有着怎样了不起的设计；而那些从地下掘出褐色的铁矿石、再用它铸就这般事物的人，又该是怎样了不起的人物！这是蕴聚了怎样精确和强大能力的组合啊：控制熔岩和翻卷火焰的超凡伟力，经由巧妙的控制和运用，最后达到了制表工艺的精确；从熔岩中获取力量的巨锤敲击着这些闪闪发亮的活塞、适时感应的阀门以及精美的肋条似的连杆，这些连杆相互纠缠，如巨蟒翻腾，无声地滑动，所向披靡。这是多么活跃而复杂的钢骨之躯啊，在粗心的观察者看来，生物之躯与之相比显得既笨拙又卑劣，不过是病态的分泌物和磷酸盐撑起的一副肉架子！火车的创造者——他们精心打造它，赋予它蕴藏巨力的沉静，指派给它特定的使命，以成功的心情看它奉他们的最大意愿执行这个使命——他们会怎么想我这只孱弱无力的手？这只手怯懦地用一小抹水彩——而我并不擅此道——试图敷入另样事物并不完美的阴影——每一个动作都不过是失败和无尽的失望。重复一下这个问题吧，这些主宰钢铁的天才到底会怎样看我？而我又该如何看他们呢？

（选自《阿格拉伊亚的腰带》，1865）

作者简介

【作者简介】

约翰·罗斯金（John Ruskin，1819－1900），英国著名作家、批评家和艺术家，对维多利亚时代公众的审美观点有着重大影响。他认为工业革命破坏了艺术美学，对工业革命的许多产物持强烈的批评态度。本段选自他的《阿格拉伊亚的腰带》（The Cestus of Aglaia，阿格拉伊亚为希腊美慧三女神之一），其中也反映了他的这种观点。