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1705006370 “You must remember that at Winchester the boys are a selected group, with a very special kind of training to which they are well adapted. In that groove they acquire astonishing proficiency, but they would be quite ignorant out of it. They would know a great deal about Roman customs in the period of the Punic Wars, but very little, perhaps nothing, about urgent problems of their own land and time. They do well at the universities and make names in the professions and as colonial administrators and civil servants. The creative arts? I do not think you will find many of them excelling there. They write very well, but not very imaginatively. American students are less well-informed but more eager to learn; English boys are less eager but more informed. The American boy knows less about what interests him more, the English boy knows more about what seems to interest him less.” He said this with a laughing twinkling in his bright blue eyes.

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1705006372 ● 本段怀德海讨论英美两国青年的知识程度。Price曾去参观英国有名的Winchester College（中学），发现高班中学生都能阅读希腊名著的原文，可是美国哈佛大学的学生都不一定有这样高的程度。怀德海即就此点发表意见。

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1705006374 ● selected group：经过挑选的一群人，优秀分子。adapted连前面的to which。这辈青年很能适应于这种训练。

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1705006376 ● groove：原意为“沟”或“槽”，转作“故辙”、“规定的路子”、“刻板文章”。这里指英国中学的训练方法。proficiency：精通、熟练。是动词acquire（获得）的宾语。would be：虚拟式动词，说话的人不敢说定。out of it=out of the groove。在规定课程范围之内，他们知道得非常之多；在这范围之外，他们的知识可能很浅陋。

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1705006378 ● Roman customs：罗马人的风俗习惯。Punic Wars：罗马与迦太基之战。（Punic就是腓尼基，迦太基是腓尼基人所建立的）。urgent problems：迫切的问题。他们对于本国目前的大问题，可能知道得很少，甚至一无所知。

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1705006380 ● do well：成绩很好。make names：扬名，露头角。excelling：出人头地。他们干律师、医生、牧师等（所谓professions）行业，到殖民地去做官，或者在本国做公务员（civil servants），成绩都很好，但是他们在创造性的艺术方面，却很少有人能有杰出的成绩。

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1705006382 ● They write very well：训练严格，故写作技巧很好；但思想可能窒塞，想象力不够活泼。eager to learn：求知欲旺盛。informed：学识丰富。less…more：美国学生对于学问（what）所知不多，但是兴趣较浓。

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1705006384 ● twinkling：闪光。

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1705006386 “It strikes me that our writers don’t know enough.”

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1705006388 “It is true that most great writers did know quite a lot. But it is possible to know too much. What is wanted is an immense feeling for things. And the danger in old civilizations is that the teaching may be too good. It damps students down. They know too much about what has been done, they write well, but without freshness. It is so fatally easy for a good period in art to die in scholasticism and pedantry, for the life to go out of it. Oxford has taught the classics for centuries, and for centuries Cambridge virtually refused to teach literature and taught mathematics, and yet twice as many poets came out of Cambridge as out of Oxford.”

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1705006390 ● our writers：美国作家。这一段又是Price发问。

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1705006392 ● did know：过去式，did用以加重语气。过去大作家学识的确是丰富的。

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1705006394 ● to know too much：若从充实学识着手，可能中了书毒，对于艺术创作反有妨害。

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1705006396 ● an immense feeling for things：学识并不重要，重要的是对于万事万物，有一种极大的“体会的能力”。

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1705006398 ● old civilizations：civilizations可以解作“国家”。在文明古国，教书先生过分道地，这是有危险的。

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1705006400 ● damps：使潮湿；挫折学生的锐气，打消学生的热诚。

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1705006402 ● what has been done：前人的作品。

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1705006404 ● scholasticism：（中世纪的）烦琐哲学。对于枝节问题，不惮辞费地讨论不休。pedantry：卖弄学问，掉书袋子。这两种现象，都是“遗神取貌，买椟还珠”，有害于艺术创作。一个艺术上有成就的时代，假如发生了这种现象，它的生命就算完结了。

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1705006406 ● fatally easy：非常容易，因此也是非常之不幸。本句结构仿照下列形式：It is easy for (someone) to do (something)。本句前后两节：前节是for a period to die，后节是for the life to go out of it，末一个it代表period。

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1705006408 ● virtually：事实上（虽不一定如此，也相差不远）。Cambridge：剑桥大学教育不以文学为主，反而诗人辈出。剑桥出身的大诗人有Spenser，Milton，Wordsworth，Coleridge，Tennyson等；人数比牛津出身的多一倍（twice as many）。

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1705006410 “How about the possibility of one or two great artists exhausting an epoch or an art-form? The Renaissance takes a drop after Michelangelo, and grand opera since Wagner has been a ‘Tristan, Junior’.”

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1705006412 “That does happen. Such figures come at the end of an epoch. The danger is when the great themes have been superlatively well done, and the later workers come to secondary themes or refinements or niceties, and art or thought gets down off into shallows. That is fatally easy. I mean such themes as a mother’s love for her child, something so universal that to express it sounds trite, and yet the medieval sculptors and Renaissance painters could express it with unbelievable beauty: but it is no good trying to imitate them.”

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1705006414 ● exhausting：用尽，汲干。一两个大艺术家可以把一个时代（epoch）的才气吸干；或者使用某一种艺术形式（art-form），达到尽美的境地，使后人难以企及。这种艺术形式就算给“用绝”了。

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1705006416 ● Michelangelo（1475—1564）：意大利画家、雕刻家、文学家、科学家。他是文艺复兴时代的大师，他死以后，文艺复兴稍呈衰状（takes a drop）。

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1705006418 ● grand opera：纯正歌剧。Wagner以后，纯正歌剧即少伟大作品，只有轻松歌剧（light opera）点缀门面。“Tristan, Junior”照字面上讲应该是“Tristan之子”，出典不详。Wagner的名著为Tristan und Isolde，“Tristan之子”应该比不上Tristan的。

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