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开会,不会玩儿牌,所以没带电脑,随便拿了一本小书——书名很吸引人:Wind, Sand and Stars,原来是从旧书摊儿捡来的,那会儿还不知道它那么有名。
作者Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,名字难记。他的另一个身份是,《小王子》的作者——这就好记了。如今小王子的中译本很多,中英文也多,还有中英法对照的。
原书的法文本名是Terre des Hommes,意思好像是Man and His World,不过这个英译名是作者认可的,所以不同英译本都用它了。英译名很有诗意,而原名则更有广告的意味,有点儿像“同一个世界同一个梦”——实际上,1963年蒙特利尔世博会就用它做主题。
Antoine是飞行员,他的书写的是一次死里逃生的飞行历险——我这会儿产生感想的是下面的一段话:
I imagined the immense white pitfall spread beneath me. Below it reigned not what one might think -- not the agitation of men, not the living tumult and bustle of cities, but a silence even more absolute than in the clouds, a peace even more final. This viscous whiteness became in my mind the frontier between the real and the unreal, between the known and the unknowable. Already I was beginning to realize that a spectacle has no meaning except it be seen through the glass of a culture, a civilization, a craft. Mountaineers too know the sea of clouds, yet it does not seem to them the fabulous curtain it is to me.
是啊,看风景也需要文化的镜片——这话有点儿像我那天给同学说的:如果一个自然现象我们看过千百遍都没感觉,我就不信能从模拟那个现象的“实验”里看出什么东西来。如果脑子里不多装点儿东西,只想等着靠实验来发现什么的,大概要等到沙哈拉变成鄱阳湖。(Antoine写小王子也喜欢写沙漠,可能与他在这本书里写的沙哈拉历险有关。)
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