Impressions of America （1882）——Oscar Wilde

                
                
I fear I cannot picture America as altogether an Elysium—perhaps, from the ordinary standpoint I know but little about the country. I cannot give its latitude or longitude; I cannot compute the value of its dry goods, and I have no very close acquaintance with its politics. These are matters which may not interest you, and they certainly are not interesting to me.
我恐怕不能把美国描绘成十足的天堂 -- 从一般的角度来说，也许我对这个国家所知甚少。我说不出它的经、纬度；我算不来它出产谷物的价值；我对它的政治也不十分熟悉。这些东西可能不会使你们感兴趣，它们当然也不会让我感兴趣。
  The first thing that struck me on landing in America was that if the Americans are not the most well-dressed people in the world, they are the most comfortably dressed. Men are seen there with the dreadful chimney-pot hat, but there are very few hatless men; men wear the shocking swallow-tail coat, but few are to be seen with no coat at all. There is an air of comfort in the appearance of the people which is a marked contrast to that seen in this country, where, too often, people are seen in close contact with rags.
  在美国上岸后得到的第一个深刻印象，就是美国人可能算不上是世界上穿得最漂亮的,但却是穿得最舒服的民族。那里看得到头顶不堪入目的烟囱式高顶礼帽的男人，但很少有不戴帽子的男人；还看到穿着难看至极的燕尾服的男人，但很少有不穿外套的男人。美国人的穿戴透露着舒适，这和在我国常可以看到的人们衣衫褴褛的情形形成了鲜明的对比。
  The next thing particularly noticeable is that everybody seems in a hurry to catch a train. This is a state of things which is not favourable to poetry or romance. Had Romeo or Juliet been in a constant state of anxiety about trains, or had their minds been agitated by the question of return-tickets, Shakespeare could not have given us those lovely balcony scenes which are so full of poetry and pathos.
  我特别注意到的第二个特点，是似乎每个人都在急着赶火车。这种情形对诗歌和浪漫爱情是不利的。要是罗密欧和朱丽叶老是为乘火车而担心，或是在为返程车票而烦恼，莎士比亚就不可能写出那几幕如此富有诗意与伤感情调的阳台戏了。
  America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle. It is surprising that the sound practical sense of the Americans does not reduce this intolerable noise. All Art depends upon exquisite and delicate sensibility, and such continual turmoil must ultimately be destructive of the musical faculty.
  美国是世界上最嘈杂的国家。在早晨，不是夜莺的歌唱，而是汽笛的鸣叫把人们叫醒。美国人讲求实际的头脑这么健全；却没有想到要降低这种令人难以忍受的噪音，真叫人吃惊。所有艺术都依赖于精细微妙的敏锐感觉，这样持续不断的喧嚣，最终一定会损害人的音乐天赋。
  There is not so much beauty to be found in American cities as in Oxford, Cambridge, Salisbury or Winchester, where are lovely relics of a beautiful age; but still there is a good deal of beauty to be seen in them now and then, but only where the American has not attempted to create it. Where the Americans have attempted to produce beauty they have signally failed. A remarkable characteristic of the Americans is the manner in which they have applied science to modern life.
  美国城市没有牛津、剑桥、索尔兹伯里和温切斯特那么美丽，那些地方有优雅的时代的美好遗迹；虽然不时还是可以看到许多美的东西，但只能在美国人没有存心创造美的地方。在美国人有意创造美的地方，他们显然遭到了惨败。美国人的突出特点，便是他们把科学应用于现代生活的那种态度。
  This is apparent in the most cursory stroll through New York. In England an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth. There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
  在纽约走马观花地一走，这一点就一目了然了。在英国人们常把发明家视作狂人，发明带采的是失望与穷困的例子简直不胜枚举。在美国发明家受到尊重，他随时可以得到人们的帮助。在那里心灵手巧，把科技应用于人类的劳动，是致富的捷径。没有一个国家比美国更爱机器的了。
  I have always wished to believe that the line of strength and the line of beauty are one. That wish was realised when I contemplated American machinery. It was not until I had seen the water-works at Chicago that I realised the wonders of machinery; the rise and fall of the steel rods, the symmetrical motion of the great wheels is the most beautifully rhythmic thing I have ever seen.[3] One is impressed in America, but not favourably impressed, by the inordinate size of everything. The country seems to try to bully one into a belief in its power by its impressive bigness.
  我一直期望相信，力的线条也是美的线条。在我注视着美国的机器的时候，这一期望得到了实现。直到我见识了芝加哥的供水系统，我才意识到机器的奇妙；钢铁连杆的起落，巨大轮子的对称运动，是我见过的节奏最美的东西。美国的所有东西都大得过分，这给人以深刻的却不是好的印象。这个国家似乎想以其令人敬畏的巨大，来胁迫别人认可其力量。
  I was disappointed with Niagara—most people must be disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life. One sees it under bad conditions, very far away, the point of view not showing the splendour of the water. To appreciate it really one has to see it from underneath the fall, and to do that it is necessary to be dressed in a yellow oil-skin, which is as ugly as a mackintosh—and I hope none of you ever wears one. It is a consolation to know, however, that such an artist as Madame Bernhardt has not only worn that yellow, ugly dress, but has been photographed in it.
  我对尼亚加拉大瀑布感到失望——多数人都会对尼亚加拉大瀑布感到失望。所有美国新娘都'被带到那里，所以这一大而无当的瀑布景观，即便不是美国人婚姻生活中最刻骨铭心的失望，也是最早的失望之一。人们总是从远处，在不利的条件下看到这一瀑布，从这一角度看不到水流的壮观。要真正地欣赏到它，人们必须从瀑布的下面去看，要这样做的话就必须穿上一件和马金托什雨衣一样难看的黄色油布雨衣 -- 我希望你们永远不要穿它。但是，像贝尔娜尔女士这样的艺术家不仅穿过这种黄颜色的丑陋衣服，还穿着它拍过照，知道这一点对人实在是一种慰藉。
  Perhaps the most beautiful part of America is the West, to reach which, however, involves a journey by rail of six days, racing along tied to an ugly tin-kettle of a steam engine. I found but poor consolation for this journey in the fact that the boys who infest the cars and sell everything that one can eat—or should not eat—were selling editions of my poems vilely printed on a kind of grey blotting paper, for the low price of ten cents.[4] Calling these boys on one side I told them that though poets like to be popular they desire to be paid, and selling editions of my poems without giving me a profit is dealing a blow at literature which must have a disastrous effect on poetical aspirants. The invariable reply that they made was that they themselves made a profit out of the transaction and that was all they cared about.
  美国最美丽的地方也许是西部，但去那里要坐六天火车，被如同一只丑陋的马口铁水壶的蒸汽引擎牵引着飞驰。这次旅行令我不快，因为那些出没于车厢中兜售各种可以吃 -- 或是不能吃 -- 的东西的男孩们在卖我的诗集，它们被糟糕地印在像灰色的吸水纸那样的纸上、每份只卖十便士的低价。我把这些男孩叫到一边，告诉他们说尽管诗人喜欢出名，但也想拿到钱。出售我的诗集却不分给我一份利润，这是对文学的打击，对有抱负成为诗人的人会有灾难性的后果。他们的答复千篇一律：他们自己能从这桩生意上有利可图，别的也就管不了这么多了。
  It is a popular superstition that in America a visitor is invariably addressed as “Stranger.” I was never once addressed as “Stranger.” When I went to Texas I was called “Captain”; when I got to the centre of the country I was addressed as “Colonel,” and, on arriving at the borders of Mexico, as “General.” On the whole, however, “Sir,” the old English method of addressing people is the most common.
  人们普遍错误地以为，在美国来访者总是被称作“陌生人”。我从来没有被人称作过“陌生人”。我在得克萨斯时被人称作“上尉”；在这个国家的中部地区时被称作“上校”，而当我到达墨西哥边境时，又被称作“将军”了。但总的来说，英国人以前对人的称呼“先生”是最常用的。
  It is, perhaps, worth while to note that what many people call Americanisms are really old English expressions which have lingered in our colonies while they have been lost in our own country. Many people imagine that the term “I guess,” which is so common in America, is purely an American expression, but it was used by John Locke in his work on “The Understanding,” just as we now use “I think.”[5]
  也许，值得指出的是，被许多人指为美国式英语的其实是老的英国式表达，它们在我国已经消失，却在我们的殖民地里留存下来。许多人以为美国人常说的“我猜”纯粹是一种美国式表达，但约翰·洛克在他的《理解论》中就用过这种说法，就像我们现在用“我想”一样。
  It is in the colonies, and not in the mother country, that the old life of the country really exists. If one wants to realise what English Puritanism is—not at its worst (when it is very bad), but at its best, and then it is not very good—I do not think one can find much of it in England, but much can be found about Boston and Massachusetts. We have got rid of it. America still preserves it, to be, I hope, a short-lived curiosity.
  一个国家过去的生活真正地存在于它的殖民地里，而不是在母国中。如果人们想了解什么是英国清教主义——不是它最糟的形态（这时它确实很糟糕），而是它最佳的形态，但这时它也好不到那里去——我觉得在英国找不到多少清教主义，在波士顿和马萨诸塞州却可以找到许多。美国人仍保留着它，但我希望不过是把它当作一件短命的古董。
  San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artistic town I have ever come across. The people—strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call common, and they are certainly very poor—have determined that they will have nothing about them that is not beautiful. In the Chinese restaurant, where these navvies meet to have supper in the evening, I found them drinking tea out of china cups as delicate as the petals of a rose-leaf, whereas at the gaudy hotels I was supplied with a delf cup an inch and a half thick. When the Chinese bill was presented it was made out on rice paper, the account being done in Indian ink as fantastically as if an artist had been etching little birds on a fan.
  旧金山是一座真正美丽的城市。聚居着中国劳工的唐人街是我见过的最富有艺术韵味的街区。这些古怪、忧郁的东方人，许多人会说他们下贱，他们肯定也很穷，但他们打定主意，身边不能有任何不美的东西。在那些苦工们晚上聚集在一起吃饭的中国餐馆里，我发现他们用如同玫瑰花瓣一样纤巧的瓷杯喝茶，而那些俗丽的宾馆给我用的陶杯足有一英寸半厚。中国人的菜单拿上来的时候是写在宣纸上的，帐目是用墨汁写出来的，漂亮得就像艺术家在扇面上蚀刻的小鸟一样。
  Salt Lake City contains only two buildings of note, the chief being the Tabernacle, which is in the shape of a soup-kettle. It is decorated by the only native artist, and he has treated religious subjects in the naive spirit of the early Florentine painters, representing people of our own day in the dress of the period side by side with people of Biblical history who are clothed in some romantic costume.
  盐湖城只有两座值得一看的建筑，主要是那座外形像一只汤锅的礼拜堂。当地仅有的一位艺术家装饰了这座礼拜堂，而他是用早期佛罗伦萨画家的那种天真精神来处理宗教主题的，把穿着当代服装的当代人物和穿着出于想象的服装的（圣经）历史人物并列。
  The building next in importance is called the Amelia Palace, in honour of one of Brigham Young’s wives. When he died the present president of the Mormons stood up in the Tabernacle and said that it had been revealed to him that he was to have the Amelia Palace, and that on this subject there were to be no more revelations of any kind!
  其次的建筑被称作阿米利亚宫，是为纪念布赖汉姆·扬的一个妻妾而建造的。扬一死，摩门教徒的现任会长在礼拜堂里站起来说，上帝启示他说他应拥有阿米利亚宫，而且关于这一问题不会再有其他神示了!
  From Salt Lake City one travels over the great plains of Colorado and up the Rocky Mountains, on the top of which is Leadville, the richest city in the world. It has also got the reputation of being the roughest, and every man carries a revolver. I was told that if I went there they would be sure to shoot me or my travelling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing that they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me. They are miners—men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. I read them passages from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and they seemed much delighted. I was reproved by my hearers for not having brought him with me. I explained that he had been dead for some little time which elicited the enquiry “Who shot him”? They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice:—
     
   PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE PIANIST.
                   HE IS DOING HIS BEST.
     
  The mortality among pianists in that place is marvellous. Then they asked me to supper, and having accepted, I had to descend a mine in a rickety bucket in which it was impossible to be graceful. Having got into the heart of the mountain I had supper, the first course being whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky.
  从盐湖城我们穿过科罗拉多大平原，爬上落基山脉，上面有一座世上最富有的城市里德维尔。它还以世上最野蛮的城市闻名，那里每个人随身带着一支左轮手枪。有人对我说，如果我去那里的话，他们一定会把我或是我的随行经纪人打死。我写信告诉他们，不论他们对我的随行经纪人干出什么来，都不会把我吓倒。他们都是矿工，与金属打交道的人，于是我跟他们谈了艺术道德。我从本维路托，切利尼的自传中选了一些段落读给他们听，他们似乎很欣赏。我的听众责备我，为什么不和他一起来。我解释说他死了有些时候了，这时有人发问：“是谁打死他的?” 随后他们带我去舞厅，在那里我看到了我所见过的唯一合理的艺术批评方法。在钢琴上方写着这样一条告示：
┌─────────────┐
│ 请别打死钢琴师。 │
│ 他已竭尽所能。 │
└─────────────┘
那里钢琴师的死亡率真是高得惊人。随后他们请我吃晚饭。接受邀请之后，我只得站在一只摇摇晃晃的筐子里被放下矿井，在这只筐子里人不可能显得优雅。进入山的中心后我进了晚餐，第一道菜是威士忌，第二道菜又是威士忌，第三道菜还是威士忌。
  I went to the Theatre to lecture and I was informed that just before I went there two men had been seized for committing a murder, and in that theatre they had been brought on to the stage at eight o’clock in the evening, and then and there tried and executed before a crowded audience. But I found these miners very charming and not at all rough.
  我去剧院讲演的时候，有人告诉我说就在我去之前，有两个人因为谋杀被抓了起来。就在那座剧院里，他们在晚上八点被带到舞台上，在拥挤的观众前当场受到审判并被处决。但我觉得这些矿工十分可爱，一点也不野蛮。
  Among the more elderly inhabitants of the South I found a melancholy tendency to date every event of importance by the late war. “How beautiful the moon is to-night,” I once remarked to a gentleman who was standing next to me. “Yes,” was his reply, “but you should have seen it before the war.”
  我发现南方的那些年纪较大的居民，有把所有重要的事都和最近的那场战争联系起来的可悲习惯。有次我对一个站在我身边的绅士感慨道：“今晚的月亮多美啊。”“是啊，”他说，“可惜你没能在战前看见它。”
  So infinitesimal did I find the knowledge of Art, west of the Rocky Mountains, that an art patron—one who in his day had been a miner—actually sued the railroad company for damages because the plaster cast of Venus of Milo, which he had imported from Paris, had been delivered minus the arms. And, what is more surprising still, he gained his case and the damages.
  我发现在落基山脉以西，人们关于艺术的知识是如此贫乏，以至一位艺术爱好者——他在年轻时也做过矿工，竟然起诉铁路公司要求赔偿，因为他从巴黎进口的米洛的维纳斯石膏像运来时没有了双臂。但更叫人吃惊的是，他打赢了官司，获得了赔偿。
  Pennsylvania, with its rocky gorges and woodland scenery, reminded me of Switzerland. The prairie reminded me of a piece of blotting-paper.
  宾夕法尼亚州有多岩伪山谷和茂密的森林，令我想起了瑞士。那儿的草原我觉得像一张吸水纸。
  The Spanish and French have left behind them memorials in the beauty of their names. All the cities that have beautiful names derive them from the Spanish or the French. The English people give intensely ugly names to places. One place had such an ugly name that I refused to lecture there. It was called Grigsville. Supposing I had founded a school of Art there—fancy “Early Grigsville.” Imagine a School of Art teaching “Grigsville Renaissance.”
  西班牙人和法国人以他们所起的美丽地名，使自己常受后人的纪念。那些有漂亮名字的城市都是西班牙人或法国人创建的。英国人老是起极难听的地名。有一个地方的地名实在太难听，结果我拒绝去那里演讲。它的名字叫格里格兹维尔。万一我在那里开创了一个艺术流派 -- 真难想象“早期格里格兹维尔时代”这样一个名词。很难想象艺术学校会讲授“格里格兹维尔艺术复兴”。
  As for slang I did not hear much of it, though a young lady who had changed her clothes after an afternoon dance did say that “after the heel kick she shifted her day goods.”
  至于俚语我听到的倒是不多，只是有一位在参加了下午的舞会后换了衣服的年轻女士确实说过“在蹦了一阵之后她换了行头”。
  American youths are pale and precocious, or sallow and supercilious, but American girls are pretty and charming—little oases of pretty unreasonableness in a vast desert of practical common-sense.
  美国的年轻男子不是面色苍白发育得早，就是肤色灰黄而态度倨傲，但美国的姑娘是美丽而迷人的——就像注重实际的广阔沙漠中的一块块任性的美丽绿洲。
  Every American girl is entitled to have twelve young men devoted to her. They remain her slaves and she rules them with charming nonchalance.
  每个美国姑娘都配有十二个年轻男子迷恋于她，他们一直做她的奴仆，而她则以迷人的满不在乎的态度驱使着他们。
  The men are entirely given to business; they have, as they say, their brains in front of their heads. They are also exceedingly acceptive of new ideas. Their education is practical. We base the education of children entirely on books, but we must give a child a mind before we can instruct the mind. Children have a natural antipathy to books—handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
  男人都只关心生意，用他们的话来说，他们确实是精明过人。他们还特别容易接受新思想。他们接受的教育是实用的。我们对儿童的教育完全基于书本，但我们必须允许儿童有自己的头脑，然后才能教育这个头脑。儿童天生反感书本——手工艺应该成为教育的基础。我们应该教育男孩子和女孩子如何用他们的手来制作某样东西，这样他们就不会这么好破坏，好调皮了。
  In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilisation. There at any rate is a country that has no trappings, no pageants and no gorgeous ceremonies. I saw only two processions—one was the Fire Brigade preceded by the Police, the other was the Police preceded by the Fire Brigade.
  只要去过美国，人们就会意识到，贫困未必伴随着文明。这个国家至少没有豪华的服饰、盛大的游行和壮观的仪式。我只见过两次游行，一次是警察走在消防队的前面，还有一次是消防队走在警察的前面。
  Every man when he gets to the age of twenty-one is allowed a vote, and thereby immediately acquires his political education. The Americans are the best politically educated people in the world. It is well worth one’s while to go to a country which can teach us the beauty of the word FREEDOM and the value of the thing LIBERTY.
  每个男人到了二十一岁就有权投票，由此马上获得了他的政治教育。美国人是世界上受到最好政治教育的人民。这个国家实在值得一去，它可以使我们懂得“自由”这个词的美丽和“开放”这样东西的价值。
[3]. In a poem published in an American magazine on February 15th, 1882, Wilde wrote
“And in the throbbing engine room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.”
[4]. Poems by Oscar Wilde. Also his Lecture on the English Renaissance. The Seaside Library, Vol. lviii. No. 1183, January 19th, 1882. 4to. Pp. 32. New York: George Munro, Publisher.
A copy of this edition was sold by auction in New York last year for eight dollars.
[5]. See An Essay concerning Human Understanding, IV. xii. 10.
A still more striking instance of the use of this expression is to be found in the same writer’s Thoughts concerning Education, s. 28, where he says:—“Once in four and twenty hours, I think, is enough; and nobody, I guess, will think it too much.”
（谈瀛洲 译 ）