一首挽歌 高级英语.docx

1、一首挽歌 高级英语Take a sheet of paper. Better still, take a whole sheaf; writing prospers with comfort and cushioning. The paper may be deliciously thick, with ragged edges and a surface capillaried with tiny fibres of the rags that made it. It may be thin, blank, industrial A4, one of a thousand in a cut-

2、price pack from Staples. It may be wove paper, vellum-smooth and shiny, or a bit of scrap, torn not quite straight, with a palimpsest of typed meeting-minutes showing through. But write. 拿出一张纸，最好是一整沓纸，倚着一个靠垫舒舒服服地大写特写。这张纸可能有些厚实，边缘有些毛糙，纸面隐约露出细小的纤维，也可能是廉价的史泰博包装袋里一张薄薄的标准A4纸；还可能是如羊皮纸般顺滑闪亮的布纹纸，也许有些破损，甚至还留

3、有涂抹过会议记录的痕迹。然而不管怎样，下笔吧！The instrument matters but, for the moment, seize anything. The old fountain pen, so familiar that it nestles like a warm fifth finger in the crook of the thumb, its clip slightly shaky with over-use; the pencil, its lead half-blunt and not quite steady in that smooth cone of

4、wood; the ultra-fine felt tip from the office cupboard, with its no-nonsense simplicity, or the ancient mapping pen, nibbed like a birds claw, which surely writes only in copperplate, scratching fiercely as it goes. Seize even a ball-point, though its line is mean and thin, and though teachers will

5、tell you that nothing ruins writing faster. Dip, fill or shake vigorously; and write. 笔的选择固然重要，不过暂且随手拿一支吧。老式的钢笔握在手里，感觉是如此熟稔，幻化成温暖的“第六指”依偎在弯曲的拇指中，笔帽上用旧了的别针稍稍有些松动；如果是一只铅笔，细腻木质笔杆包裹下的笔头有些钝了，还有些松动。还有办公室橱柜里的超细毡尖，简洁得没有一丝多余；抑或是那古董般的绘图笔，笔尖犹如鸟的爪子般锋利，只能用于在铜版上写字，下笔时还伴随着尖锐的刮擦声；或是拿一款圆珠笔，写出来的线条又细又不美观，老师告诉你写快了不会漏油。

6、现在我们蘸一蘸，灌一灌，用力甩一甩，然后落笔吧。For most adults the skill is an instinctive one. Yet cursive handwriting takes a while to master. At primary school our small, wide writing books opened on a forbidding grid of lines, red ones an inch apart, blue ones set close together between them. These cradled the bodies

7、of the letters, while the descenders and ascenders made for the reds like pegs for a washing line. So easily, almost showily, Teacher formed the letter with her black pen: clumsily, with our large sharpened pencils, we tried to follow. It was hard. An “m”, “n” or “u” settled cosily between the lines

8、; but “a”, with its one flat side, was tricky, and “e” rocked over on its back. Tall letters looked simple, but when one leaned all the rest sloped off towards disaster. The tail of a “p” groped fearfully as it descended through empty space. When a whole line succeeded it looked splendid, like a mar

9、ching battalion with faint band-music playing, and a gold star shining at the end. If I half-closed my eyes, flicking fast through the pages, the rhythms and patterns arranged themselves in fascinating ways. But once the scaffolding was removed the letters collapsed alarmingly. They still do, unless

10、 they have a line to aim for. 对于大多数成年人来说，书写是一项与生俱来的技能，而要想写好一手好的手写体就要花点功夫了。上小学时，我们又小又宽的练字本上画着一道道刻板的横线。两条红线相隔一英寸，中间两条蓝线夹在红线之间，用来规范字母的摆放，而红线上的升部笔画和降部笔画就像是晾衣绳上的挂钩。老师在台上潇洒地用黑笔做示范。而我们只能攥着削得很尖的铅笔笨拙地一笔一画模仿。临摹是很困难的，字母“m”、“n”、“u”还能规规矩矩地呆在横线之间，但像“a”这种一面是平的字母就有些棘手了，“e”甚至像翻了个跟头似的。“个子高大”的字母看上去写起来很容易，而一旦第一个字母写歪了，后

11、面的字母也就要灾难性地一边倒了。字母“p”则怯生生地在下面空白的地方伸出尾巴。当一整行都写完时，看上去相当壮观，就像军队伴着微弱的背景音乐在行军，结尾处还有一颗金色的星星在闪耀。如果眯着眼，飞快地翻过一页页，这些字母便极有节奏感地变换着图案。但是一旦把“脚手架”撤走，字母便稀里哗啦地倒下，歪歪扭扭的，除非有一条线给它们作参考。At secondary school, surprisingly, we had to learn to write all over again. The teachers found fault with our plain rounded hand; we had

12、 to move up to italic now, together with oblique-nibbed pens and dangerously abundant blue ink. Italic was all thicks and thins, diagonal joins and elegant serifs, imposed by nuns who could flick a ruler quicker than an upstroke when faced with a careless piece of work. I came to like the new style

13、for its angularity and boldness, and the way you could dot your “i” with a perfect diamond if you held your pen just right; though it took years to make my backward-sloping letters stand up straight and then lean forward, as both the manuals and the nuns required. All this took far more effort than

14、tapping a computer keyboard. 出乎意外的是在中学里我们还得再全部学写一遍。老师把着我们白白胖胖的手给我们挑错，开始学写斜体字时，我们要准备斜尖的钢笔和相当充足的蓝墨水。斜体字写出来又细又密，呈对角状又要有修女所强调的优美衬线，当看到一份马虎的作业时，她挥舞尺子要比用笔划的动作要迅猛得多。我渐渐喜欢上这种新风格字体，棱角分明且十分大气，如果握笔姿势正确的话，就可以在字母“i”上点上一个完美的菱形的小点。尽管要练上几年才可以扶正我的字体并使之前倾，但最后还是达到了手册上规定的和修女所的要求那样，但这比我练习打字要辛苦得多。Writing involves not onl

15、y the hand and wrist but also the arm, the shoulder, sometimes the whole body. Quill-users were well aware of this, and would choose from the right wing or the leftideally the third or fourth feather of a goose-wing, but possibly the finest feathers of swans, or ravens, or crowsto make the quill cur

16、ve towards the hand or away from it, whichever felt more natural. Words could fly that way. Left-handers especially demonstrate the exertion of writing, curling their entire bodies round their pens as they write, smearing their words as they go. Children forming letters sit hunched with concentratio

17、n, small fingers clenched round crayons, little pink tongues darting out of mouths. After a page or three of writing against the clock, the ablest college student flaps his wrist to ease the ache in it. A script like italic or copperplate is explicitly formed from the shapes made in engraving; pens

18、as they write not only impress the paper, but dig into it, as surely as Sumerians dug their cuneiform letters into tablets of damp clay, or as Roman masons chiselled their magisterial capitals, ancestors of all ours, into the base of Trajans column. This can be hard physical work; which is perhaps w

19、hy Gutenberg, when he devised his printing press, was especially keen to boast that no labouring pen had made his blackletter, but a smoothly oiled machine. 写字不仅会用到手和手腕，还会用到胳膊和肩膀，有时甚至全身都要用上。那些用羽毛笔写字的人深谙此道，因而在制作时会选取鹅左翼或右翼上第三或第四根羽毛。天鹅、渡鸦或乌鸦的羽毛最好，可以做成正反不同朝向的羽毛笔，满足不同人群的习惯要求，而且书写更加顺手、自如，这样写起字来才能健“笔”如飞。左撇

20、子写字时尤其用力，他们写字时全身的重量都压在写字的那支笔上，而且会蹭脏刚刚写完的字。小孩子写字时总是集中精力，弓着背，小手紧紧地攥着蜡笔，不时地吐吐舌头。写了一段时间后，哪怕是最棒的大学生也要甩甩手腕以缓解长时间书写造成的酸痛感。像斜体字和铜板字这种字体都是从雕刻的图形中演变出来的；用钢笔写字时不仅要用力地按压笔头，甚至要力透纸壁，正如苏美尔人将楔形文字雕刻在泥板上，或那些罗马的石匠们，将历史的功绩雕刻在图拉真功柱上，成为现在圆柱顶端的早期雏形。这是一项非常耗体力的工程，这也是为什么古腾堡在发明了印刷机后迫不及待地夸耀没有任何一只笔能写出他那样的黑体字，因为只有运转良好的机器才能够“写”出如此

21、水准。Printing did not harm handwriting, though it gradually replaced the calligraphic uncial and gothic of silent, patient monks in their scriptoria. In fact, because it encouraged literacy, printing helped writing to become a more universal skill. Typewriters (though greeted with jeremiads much like

22、this one) did not hurt handwriting too much, because they were used mostly in offices or by sweating beat journalists whose cigarette ash powdered the keys. The rot started when keyboards were allowed, then required, in schools, and when they became small and light enough to slip in a pocket, replac

23、ing the notebook and even the jotted to-do listmilk, bread, call garagewhich remains, for many people, the greatest boon of writing. 虽然寺院藏经阁里那些心如止水的僧侣笔下的安色尔字体和哥特字体正逐渐被印刷术所取代，但这并没有影响到手写体的生存。事实上，由于印刷术的发展，人们的读写能力得到了提高，也使得这一技能在生活中被广泛运用。打字机（尽管像这玩意儿一样遭到了声讨）并没有过多地威胁到手写体的地位，是因为它们多数是在办公室，或在那些焦头烂额的记者那儿才会见到，他们

24、键盘上总是撒满了掉落的香烟灰。当键盘可以在学校里携带，并上升成为“必需品”的时候，也就是（用笔）书写文字这种文化衰落的开端，尤其是当键盘变得小巧轻便便于携带，取代了笔记本甚至是那些用来写待办事项（买牛奶、面包，给汽修厂打电话等）的便条的时候对许多人来说，能有机会让他们秀下优美的字，是给予他们最大的恩赐！Handwriting is still taught in schools, but in America over the past 50 years the time spent teaching it has fallen dramatically. Though private and

25、 charter schools may still make a point of it (as of discipline, and uniforms), many public-school systems are abandoning cursive altogether. Even where taught, it is so soon replaced by typing, for all assignments, that the skill never sets. Teachers tend to agree that most schoolchildrens writing

26、may now be graded “terrible”, and is better avoided. From this year the writing test of Americas National Assessment of Educational Progress requires composition not on paper, but on a computer. 至今，学校里仍旧有手写字体这门课程，不过在美国过去50年里，教授这门课程的课时已经大大减少了。尽管私立学校和特许学校可能仍很重视此课程（就像重视校规和校服一样），但很多公立学校的教育系统完全将手写体字体请上了冷

27、板凳。即使是那些教授手写体字体的学校，所有的练习也很快通过用键盘输入代替“手写”完成，以至于这种书写技巧永远也无法形成气候。老师们都觉得学生们写的字可以用一塌糊涂来形容，还不如不写。也正是从今年起，美国国家教育进展评估要求进行作文机考，取消笔试。Pupils remember capitals because they tap at them all day on keyboards; many now write with them, unjoined, ungainly and loud as they are, forgetting that the Romans soon abando

28、ned majuscule as laborious and impractical, and that a letter entirely in capitals still bears the mark of the seriously deranged. In 2006 in America, 85% of those who took the handwritten-essay SAT test for college entry preferred to print their letters. Young people are swiftly losing cursive, usi

29、ng it only to sign their names or write the odd cheque. Most signatures, with long use, develop into ciphers or symbols; some of the young, though, now start off that way, appending their personal signs in the form of a spiral or a heart. 小学生们整天在键盘上敲打，便牢牢记住了这些大写字母，所以手写时也都用大写字母。不过他们写出来的字母既不连贯又不美观，有多大

30、写多大，他们却忘了罗马人因费力不讨好而放弃用大写字母书写的历史，忘却了在信中完全是大写字母，仍旧意味着这人脑子一定是严重坏掉了。06年的美国，有85%的SAT参考学生在交入学考试写作部分时会选用打印来替代手写。写手写体的年轻人正急剧减少，只有在签名或签发小额支票时才会用上手写体字体。签名签多了，就会逐渐产生花押字或符号，可如今的一些年轻人也开始那么做，签上螺旋状字符或者小桃心。Typing (or, now, horribly, “keyboarding”) is more convenient. Typing is what we do, all the time, on the marve

31、llous little gizmos we keep in our pockets. Typing is how love is written now, rather than on perfumed notepaperand presumably that tell-tale e-mail address causes the same leap of the heart as that backward-slanting hand, with its careful serifs and looped “d”s, ever used to do. With typing we can

32、copy, and paste, and search, and deliver a piece of work as polished as if second thoughts and errors had never occurred to us. And, perhaps most important, we can read what we, or others, intended to say. 相比起来，或者说得难听点无处不在的“键盘输入”要更加方便些。而如今“键盘输入”取代了散发幽香的信纸传递爱意，而且普遍认为显示屏上冒出的邮箱地址与手握着笔，同以往一样小心翼翼地画上衬线，完成字母“d”的收尾之笔，最终大功告成时一样让人心潮澎湃。而且通过搜索、复制、粘贴，打出来的作品是如此完美，就好像是我们一蹴而就，无需修改之作。最重要的也许是我们可以顺利读懂自己或是他人所想要表达的。In my days as a medieval historian, I spent much of my time deciphering handwriting. This was where treasure lay, as surely as miniatures nestled like jewels in their orderly setting of black or gothi