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“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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“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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● 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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● 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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● 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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● figures：人物。
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● great themes：艺术上重要的题目（如母爱，下文有举例）。superlatively well：好得无以复加。done：（艺术）制作。later workers：以后的艺术工作者，自忖比不上过去的大师，只好挑次要的题目来发挥。refinements or niceties：这两个字都解作“精致”，纤巧而不雄壮，注重小节而忽略精神。（中国诗词的没落，所走的似乎也是这个路子。）
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● gets down off into shallows：驶入浅水，不复有海阔天空的雄风矣。
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● something：同位语，就是“母爱”。universal：人人皆知，四海皆有的。如母爱之类的题目，再要用来作为艺术题材，未免使人觉得（sounds）是陈腐（trite）了。
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● medieval sculptors：中世纪的雕刻家。他们以及文艺复兴时代画家大致喜欢用“圣母和圣婴”作为题材。
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● it is no good中的it代表trying…。模仿那些大师们是没有用的。他们把母爱表现得如是之好，叫以后的艺术家如何下手呢？
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There had been another wartime commencement, and the College Yard, where I crossed it, was being cleared of scaffold timber, which had been put up for the out-of-door ceremonies. The grass plot looked trodden into hard ground. Academic Cambridge, like any other academic town out of term-time, seemed suddenly deserted.
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● 此段开始录自原书1943年6月10日那次谈话。commencement：大学的毕业典礼（这里是指哈佛大学的）。another：珍珠港事变以来，在战争中举行毕业典礼已经不是一次了。There had been：毕业典礼已经举行过。
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● College Yard：哈佛大学部门众多，其大学本科部分称为Harvard College。Yard是校园，别的美国大学大多用Campus一字，哈佛则称Yard。College Yard就是哈佛的“校本部”的原有校园。
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● where I crossed it：我所走过的地方。别的地方未必如此。was being cleared：正在清理卸除。用中文来写，“工人”、“木匠”这种主语大约是省不掉的，英文的被动句法就比较简单了。timber：木材。scaffold：木架，台。put up：架设。ceremonies：毕业典礼是在户外举行的，临时要搭一座台，事过后拆除。
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● plot：一片地。trodden：过去分词作形容词用。毕业典礼参加的人很多，草坪看来都好像践踏成一块硬地了。
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● Academic Cambridge：剑桥（哈佛所在地）的学术地区。academic town：大学城。拥有一所大学的小城。out of term-time：学期终了之后，假期。deserted：人都走完了。
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It was a loury evening with rain in brew and a rising wind. The Whiteheads were alone and seemed more than usual at their ease. In no time at all we were out beyond the harbour jetties and into the conversational open water. It was about the gap between written and spoken language, between literature and vernacular.
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● loury：阴沉沉的。in brew：这个成语和中文“酝酿中”是巧合，brew原意是“酿”。a rising wind：风正起。
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● The Whiteheads：他们这一家人。alone：没有客人。（“我走到他们家里……”这种话是不必说的；这是文章经济之法。）at their ease：优游自得。平常本来如此，今天晚上益见闲散。
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● In no time：很快地。at all用以加强no。harbour jetties：港口边上的码头。conversational open water：码头种种，都是“暗喻”。谈话未开始时，好像船未启碇；开始之后，立刻畅谈无阻，好像驶入汪洋大海。
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● gap：歧异。vernacular：白话，口语。这个字通常作形容词用：口语的。
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“It is quite unlikely,” said Whitehead, “that Cicero spoke to his friends in the language of his letters, to say nothing of his orations.”
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“A slave population complicates it, too,” Mrs. Whitehead added. “No matter how vivid or picturesque the vernacular may be, if it is used by a servile class it is avoided by the educated.”
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● Cicero（160—43 B.C.）是拉丁文文章大家。他的文章流传于世，他的谈话失传。据怀德海看来，Cicero的谈话，不大可能（quite unlikely）像他书札一样的文绉绉的。因为谈话用的是白话，书札可能用的是文言。至于Cicero的演说稿，那更是句法整齐，音调铿锵，和平常谈话差别之大，那更不必说了（to say nothing of…）。
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