马克吐温傻子出国记innocent abroad
Mark Twain: An American's View of Europe from Innocents Abroad (1869) 题破山寺后禅院翻译
bother
Throughout its early history Americans suffered from ambivalent feelings about Europe. As ttlers in the New World, they claimed to have begun civilization afresh on a fairer footing than the corrupt culture of old
Europe, and often took some pleasure in boasting about the superior
attractions of their native land. However, they also had to acknowledge
that the United States lacked the long historical traditions and great
加薪artistic achievements of a country like France. Having founded their
nation on a rejection of monarchy they were often fascinated by the actual
monarchs they encountered. As many writers such as Henry James and Edith
Wharton were to do later, Mark Twain was fascinated by the splendors and
wretchedness he encountered on this first trip to Europe, where he had
been nt by a newspaper to report on a grand tour mostly populated with
pious travelers who main interest was in the culminating exploration
of sacred sites in Palestine. Twain was lf-consciously a rowdy westerner
and a scoffer, but he was also a Victorian in his attitudes toward x,
好听的圣诞节歌曲
which reveals itlf in his account of the popular French can-can. He
appreciated little of the art he saw, and many of the pictures in the Louvre
highresolutionoffended his democratic instincts. Although there are many lavish 唐突是什么意思
onlyyou歌词portraits of nobles in that muum, he may have been reacting even more 大学四级
to the numerous pictures which depict titled lords and ladies familiarly .
posing with Mary and the infant Jesusmedia center
What is his reaction when he encounters a real-life monarch in the Bois de Boulogne? What contrast in attitudes toward history does he suggest
between the U.S. and Europe in the final paragraph?
The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple (1). Within it was 发型师培训
a drinking-saloon; and all around it was a broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty ts formed, the music struck up, and then--I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing the renowned Can-can. A handsome girl in the t before me tripped forward lightly to meet the opposite gentleman--tripped back again, grasped her dress vigorously on both sides with her hands, raid them pretty high, danced an extraordinary jig that had more activity and exposure about it than any jig I ever saw before, and then, drawing her clothes still higher, she advanced gaily to the cent
er and launched a vicious kick full at her vis_a_vis (2) that must infallibly have removed his no if he had been ven feet high. It was a mercy he was only six.
That is the Can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily, as furiously as you can; expo yourlf as much as possible if you are a woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which x you belong to. There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid, respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth of that statement. There were a good many such people prent. I suppo French morality is not of that strait-laced description which is shocked at trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the Can-can. Shouts, laughter, furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms, stormy jerking and snatching of gay dress, bobbing heads, flying arms, lightning flashes of white-stockinged calves and dainty slippers in the air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub, and a wild stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been en on earth since trembling
Tam O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies that stormy night in Alloway's
auld haunted kirk (3).
We visited the Louvre . . . and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about them of the cringing spirit of tho great men that we found small pleasure in examining them. Their nauous adulation of princely patrons was more prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures. Gratitude for kindness is well, but it ems to me that some of tho artists carried it so far that it cead to be gratitude, and became worship. If there is a plausible excu for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive Rubens and his brethren.
