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1、在19世纪50年代，西部领土开发高潮到来之前，辽阔的密西西比河流域占美国已开发领土的四分之三。Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos. He participated abundantly in this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds, piracies

2、, lynchings ,medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his books, together with the colorful language that he soaked up with a memory that seemed phonographic 1857年，少年马克?吐温作为蒸汽船上的一名小领航员踏人了这片天地。在这个新的工作岗位上，他接触到的是各式各样的人物，看到的是一个多姿多彩的大干世界。他完全地投身到这种生活之中，经常在操舵室里听着人们谈论民间争斗、海盗抢劫、私刑案件

3、、游医卖药以及河边的一些化外民居的故事。所有这一切，连同他那像留声机般准确可靠的记忆所吸收的丰富多彩的语言，后来都有机会在他的作品中得以再现。Steamboat decks teemed not only with the main current of pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of hustlers, gamblers, and thugs as well. From them all Mark Twain gained a keen perception of the human race, of the difference betwee

4、n what people claim to be and what they really are. His four and a half year s in the steamboat trade marked the real beginning of his education, and the most lasting part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged that the river had acquainted him with every possible type of human nature. Those acquai

5、ntanceships strengthened all his writing, but he never wrote well than when he wrote of the people a-long the great stream.蒸汽船的甲板上不仅挤满了富有开拓精神的人们，而且也载着一些娼妓、赌棍和歹徒等社会渣滓。从所有这些形形色色的人身上，马克?吐温敏锐地认识了人类，认识了人们的言与行之间的差距。他在蒸汽船上工作的四年半时间是他真正接受教育的开端，而且也是最具有深远意义的教育。到了晚年，马克?吐温还声言是密西西比河使他了解了各种各样的人的本性。这种生活体验对他的全部创作都起了

6、促进作用，然而他描写得最为成功的还是那些密西西比河上的人物。When railroads began drying up the demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War halted commerce, Mark Twain left the river country. He tried soldiering for two weeks with a motley band of Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy. Twain quit

7、 after deciding, . I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating. 随着铁路运输的发展，社会上对汽船领航员的需求日渐减少，而内战的爆发又阻碍了商业贸易的发展。这时，马克?吐温便离开了密西西比河流域。他在南方邦联游击队的一支杂牌队伍里当了两个星期的兵。那支队伍想方设法避免与敌军交战。在确信“我比发明撤退的人更精通撤退”之后，马克?吐温离开了那支队伍。He went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the epidemic of gold and sil

8、ver fever in Nevadas Washoe region. For eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth available to the lucky and the persistent, and was rebuffed. Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, to literatures enduring gratitude.他乘驿站马车来到西部，在内华达州

9、的华苏地区受到当时正流行的淘金热的诱惑。同那只有既幸运而又锲而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大财富三心二意地打了八个月交道之后，他遭到了失败。在破产和灰心之余，他接受了为弗吉尼亚市领土开发报当记者的工作，这一行动将获得文学界永久的感激。From the discouragement of his mining failures, Mark Twain began digging his way to regional fame as a newspaper reporter and humorist. The instant riches of a mining strike would not b

10、e his in the reporting trade, but for making money, his pen would prove mightier than his pickax. In the spring of 1864, less than two years after joining the Territorial Enterprise, he boarded the stagecoach for San Francisco, then and now a hotbed of hopeful young writers.自从他因淘金失败而感到心灰意冷之后，马克?吐温便开

11、始努力博取作为一名报社记者和幽默作家的地区性声望。从事新闻报道工作当然不能使他像淘金成功者一样立成巨富，但在挣钱方面他的笔杆却比他的锄镐要有效得多。1864年春季，在他加盟领土开发报还不足两年之时，他又乘驿站马车前往旧金山，那儿在当时和现在都是有前途的年轻作家成长的摇篮。Mark Twain honed and experimented with his new writing muscles, but he had to leave the city for a while because of some scathing columns he wrote. Attacks on the c

12、ity government, concerning such issues as mistreatment of Chinese, so angered officials that he fled to the goldfields in the Sacramento Valley. His descriptions of the rough-country settlers there ring familiarly in modern world accustomed to trend setting on the West Coast. It was a splendid popul

13、ation for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day an

14、d when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says Well, that is California all over. 马克?吐温磨炼并试验了他的新笔力，但他却因写了一些尖锐的评论文章而被迫暂时离开这座城市。他围绕着虐待华人等一类问题对市政府提出的尖锐批评惹得一些官员大为恼火，因之他只好逃到萨克拉门托山谷的金矿区暂避风头。他对那儿的拓荒者们的描写使西海岸地区富有创新精神的现代人倍感亲切。“这儿的人们真是了不起因为那些笨手笨脚、无精打彩、呆头呆脑的懒汉都呆在家里正是那些人们为加利福尼亚赢得了

15、这样的声誉：当他们着手进行一项宏伟的事业时，他们会不计代价或风险而以一种豪迈的气概和闯劲勇往直前，一千到底。加利福尼亚人至今仍保持着这样的声誉，因而，每当他们发起一项新的惊天动地的壮举时，那些素来稳重的人便会像往常一样微笑着说：看吧，这完全是加利福尼亚的风格。”In the dreary winter of 1864-65 in Angels Camp, he kept a notebook. Scattered among notations about the weather and the tedious mining-camp meals lies an entry noting a

16、story he had heard that day an entry that would determine his course forever: Coleman with his jumping frog bet stranger $50 stranger had no frog, and C. got him one in the meantime stranger filled C. s frog full of shot and he couldnt jump. The strangers frog won. 1864年与1865年之交的那个冬天，马克?吐温是在安吉尔斯矿区度过

17、的。在这段沉闷的日子里，他记了一本笔记。在杂乱无章的有关天气情况和乏味无趣的有关矿区饭食情况的记录条目中夹着一条叙述当天听到的一则故事的记录这条记录决定了他一生事业的发展方向：“科尔曼用他的跳蛙与陌生人赌50美元陌生人没有跳蛙，科尔曼去给他弄来一只陌生人利用这段时间将科的跳蛙肚子塞满铅弹，这样，科的跳蛙跳不起来，陌生人的跳蛙便得以获胜。Retold with his descriptive genius, the story was printed in newspapers across the United States and became known as The Celebrated

18、 Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Mark Twains national reputation was now well established as the wild humorist of the Pacific slope. 经过马克?吐温的生花妙笔改写之后，这个故事登在美国各地的报纸上，成了家喻户晓的“卡拉韦拉斯县有名的跳蛙”。至此，马克?吐温作为“太平洋海岸狂放的幽默大师”的声望已在全国范围内牢固地确立起来了。Two year s later the opportunity came for him to take a distinctly Am

19、erican look at the Old World. In New York City the steamship Quaker City prepared to sail on a pleasure cruise to Europe and the Holy Land. For the first time, a sizable group of United States citizens planned to journey as tourists - a milestone , of sorts, in a countrys development. Twain was assi

20、gned to accompany them, as correspondent 工for a California newspaper. If readers expected the usual glowing travelogue , they were sorely surprised.两年之后，他得到了一个以美国人特有的眼光去观察欧洲旧大陆的机会。在纽约市，“费城号”蒸汽船准备进行一次到欧洲和圣地的观光航行。这是美国人第一次组织较大规模的团体观光旅行也可以看作是一个国家发展史上的某种里程碑。马克?吐温作为加利福尼亚一家报纸的记者被委派随同观光团采访。如果读者们期望能读到有关这次旅行见

21、闻的神采飞扬的描写的话，那他们是要倍感意外的。Unimpressed by the Sultan of Turkey, for example, he reported, “. one could set a trap anywhere and catch a dozen abler men in a night.” Casually he debunked revered artists and art treasures, and took unholy verbal shots at the Holy Land. Back home, more newspapers began prin

22、ting his articles. America laughed with him. Upon his return to the States the book version of his travels, The Innocents Abroad, became an instant best-seller.举例来说，他对于那没有给他留下什么好印象的土耳其君主苏丹是这样报道的，“人们可以任意选择一个地方设一个陷阱，一夜之间准可捕捉到十几个更有能耐的人。”他信口开河地对一些受人景仰的艺术家和艺术珍品加以鄙薄，甚至对宗教圣地也敢于以亵渎性的言辞加以侮蔑。回国以后，越来越多的报纸开始刊登他

23、的文章，整个美国都同他一齐欢笑。他一回到美国，他的旅行杂记傻子出国旅行记立即成为畅销书。At the age of 36 Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His best books were published while he lived there.三十六岁时，马克?吐温开始定居于康涅狄格州哈特福德镇，他的最优秀的作品全是在那段时间里问世的。As early as 1870 Twain had experimented with a story about the boyhood adventures of a lad he named B

24、illy Rogers. Two years later, he changed the name to Tom, and began shaping his adventures into a stage play. Not until 1874 did the story begin developing in ear nest. After publication in 1876, Tom Sawyer quickly became a classic tale of American boyhood. Toms mischievous daring, ingenuity, and th

25、e sweet innocence of his affection for Becky Thatcher are almost as sure to be studied in American schools to-day as is the Declaration of Independence.早在1870年，马克?吐温就试着写了一篇关于一个他名之为比利?罗杰斯的男孩子的童年历险故事。两年后，他又将主人公的名字改为汤姆，并着手将故事改编成剧本。直到1874年他才开始认真地扩展故事情节。汤姆?索亚于1876年出版后，很快成为美国儿童故事的经典之作。这部描写汤姆的顽皮、勇敢、机智以及他对贝

26、琪?莎切尔的天真纯洁的感情的故事几乎像独立宣言一样成了今天美国学校里的必读书本。Mark Twains own declaration of independence came from another character. Six chapters into Tom Sawyer, he drags in the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard. Fleeing a respectable life with the puritanical Widow Douglas, Hu

27、ck protests to his friend, Tom Sawyer:Ive tried it, and it dont work; it dont work, Tom. It aint for me . The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell everythings so awful reglar a body cant stand it.吐温本人的独立宣言却是由另一个人物表达出来的。在汤姆?索亚第六章里，他引出了“村里的流浪少年，镇上酒鬼的儿子哈克贝利?费恩”。哈克不愿在清

28、教徒道格拉斯寡妇家过上等人的体面生活，从那里逃出来后对他的朋友汤姆?索亚发牢骚说：“我试过了，还是不行；不行啊，汤姆。那不是我过的日子那寡妇家吃饭要听钟声，睡觉要听钟声，起床也要听钟声，什么事情都得规规矩矩，简直叫人受不了。Nine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often considered the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with

29、a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.汤姆?索亚风靡美国九年之后，哈克被赋予独立的生命，成为一本被许多人认为是最成功的描写美国人的作品的书中的主人公。他同一个逃跑出来的奴隶一起乘坐木筏沿着密西西比河顺流而下的漂流航程展现了一幅幅揭示美国社会生活全貌的生动画面。 On the river, and especially with Huck Finn, Twain found the ultimate expression of escape from the pace he l

30、ived by and often deplored, from lifes regularities and the energy-sapping clamor for success.通过对密西西比河，尤其是对哈克?费恩这一人物的描写，马克?吐温将自己想从那束缚着自己并常常令自己苦恼的生活步调中摆脱出来，从生活中的各种清规戒律以及为了事业成功而进行的艰苦挣扎中解放出来的愿望表达得淋漓尽致。Mark Twain suggested that an ingredient was missing in the American ambition when he said:What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we woul