你好，欢迎来到“英语日食记”品尝美食。
今天奉上一篇介绍亨利·大卫·梭罗最新传记的文章。
梭罗的《瓦尔登湖》可谓美国描写大自然最浪漫的文字，也启迪了后来的全球环保运动思潮。
关于他本人，则褒贬不一。其实也好理解，每个人都有很多面，像他这样的名人更加会被人从不同角度去解读。
古语云：担当生前事， 何计身后评。
钱钟书先生说：鸡不重要，蛋重要。
准备好胃口，开动吧~

Wild American

Henry David Thoreau, a new biography

This compelling study reveals an enigmatic American writer worthy of reappraisal

Henry David Thoreau: A Life. By Laura Dassow Walls. University of Chicago Press; 613 pages; $35 and £26.50.

怪人or圣人？

1. ON AN April night in 1844, a distraught Henry David Thoreau walked through the blackened waste of a forest fire he had accidentally caused only hours before. The fire, near Concord, Massachusetts, surrounded Walden Pond, about which he would write so eloquently a decade later. The woods soon recovered, but Thoreau’s reputation did not. After he died, the Atlantic published a confession from his journal and mocked him: “The icon of woodcraft, so careless he burned down the woods!…The town ne’er-do-well, off fishing when he should have been earning a living!”

distraught: so upset and worried that you cannot think clearly
woodcraft: skill and experience in matters relating to the woods, as hunting, fishing, or camping.

1）1844年4月的一个晚上，心烦意乱的亨利·大卫·梭罗穿过他几个小时以前意外造成的森林火灾的黑色废墟。这场马萨诸塞州康科德附近的火灾包围了瓦尔登湖，十年后他将如此生动地描述这个湖。森林很快恢复了，但梭罗的声誉却没有。他死后，大西洋发表了他日记中的一份自白，并嘲笑他：“山林技艺的代表人物，竟然如此粗心大意地烧毁了树林！...这个城镇无所事事的人，在他本应该赚钱养活自己的时候在外面钓鱼！”

2. Two centuries later Thoreau’s reputation continues to be questioned. He is often derided as an ascetic crank, pond scum, or inversely, revered as a back-to-nature saint. Laura Dassow Walls’s new biography is a compelling study that dispels both these notions, revealing an enigmatic American writer worthy of reappraisal.

deride: to make remarks or jokes that show you think someone or something is silly or useless = mock
dispel: to make something go away, especially a belief, idea, or feeling
e.g. We want to dispel the myth that you cannot eat well in Britain.
reappraisal: the act of examining sth again to see if it needs to be changed
= reassessment

2）两个世纪后，梭罗的声誉继续受到质疑。他经常被嘲笑为一个禁欲怪人，池塘人渣，或相反地被尊为一个回归自然的圣人。劳拉·达索·沃尔斯的新传记是一项令人信服的研究，破除这两种观念，揭示出一个值得重新评估的神秘美国作家（的真实面目）。

3. Much of the animosity towards Thoreau centres on the two years he spent by Walden Pond and the book they inspired. “Walden” is seen by some as a retreat to a false wilderness, interspersed with trips to his family home for hot meals and to do his laundry. Ms Walls argues that Thoreau’s seclusion at Walden Pond should instead be viewed as an inadvertent piece of performance art. “Walden” includes some of the most influential and lyrical nature writing in America and became the foundation for a new generation of environmental thinking. Ms Walls quotes little of it, preferring to focus on the duality of Thoreau’s personality: introspective and intensely private, yet self-certain and boastful.

animosity towards: strong dislike or hatred = hostility
intersperse: to put sth in sth else or among or between other things
e.g. be interspersed with/in sth
inadvertent: An inadvertent action is one that you do without realizing what you are doing.
e.g. an inadvertent error

3）针对梭罗的大部分敌意都集中在他花在瓦尔登湖的两年以及这两年所启发那本书上（即《瓦尔登湖》——译者注）。有些人认为《瓦尔登湖》是一次虚假的荒野隐退，期间他时不时回到家中去吃饭和洗衣服。 沃尔斯女士认为，梭罗在瓦尔登湖的隐居应该被视为无意的表演艺术。《瓦尔登湖》包含着美国最有影响力和最浪漫的描写大自然的文字，并成为新一代环保思维的基础。 沃尔斯女士基本没有引用书中的内容，更愿意专注于梭罗性格的二元性：内向且极其孤僻，但又自信且自夸。

4. While living by Walden Pond, Thoreau harboured a slave who had escaped from the South as part of the “Underground Railroad”. This act of private rebellion led to a very public one a decade later. On November 1st 1859 the professed hermit stood up in front of a crowd in the Tremont Temple in Boston to deliver a lecture in support of Captain John Brown, an abolitionist who was to be hanged for leading an armed attack in what is now West Virginia. Thoreau, thought of as a quiet philosopher, held his audience enthralled and parts of his lecture were reprinted in newspapers around the country.

the Underground Railroad: a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid 19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.
professed: used to describe a belief or a position that sb has publicly made known
e.g. a professed Christian/anarchist
enthral: to make someone very interested and excited, so that they listen or watch something very carefully
e.g. The children were enthralled by the story she was telling

4）在瓦尔登湖生活的同时，梭罗庇护了一名从南部逃离的奴隶，成为“地下铁路”的一部分。这种私人叛乱的行为十年后导致了一次非常公开的行为。在1859年11月1日，这位自称隐士的人在波士顿翠蒙堂的一群人面前举行演讲，以支持约翰·布朗上校，一名废奴主义者，他正要因领导对现在西弗吉尼亚州的武力攻击而被吊死。被认为是一位安静的哲学家的梭罗，使他的观众着迷，而他的演讲部分转载在全国各地的报纸上。

5. One of the pleasures of reading Ms Walls’s book is learning of Thoreau’s many-sided and relentlessly curious nature. As well as his writing and activism, he was an engineer, a surveyor, a lecturer and a meticulous naturalist. Only five weeks after the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, Thoreau was applying evolutionary principles to his own study. The irony of his work as a surveyor was not lost on him. By the time he died, at 44, much of Concord had changed, and the cabin at Walden Pond no longer existed. Thoreau was wary of the unhindered industrialism espoused by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson and asked why not “run the Earth off its track into a new orbit, some summer, and so change the tedious vicissitude of the seasons?” As the effects of climate change take hold, Thoreau’s warning feels prescient.

relentless: not stopping or getting less strong = unrelenting
e.g. her relentless pursuit of perfection
meticulous: paying careful attention to every detail = fastidious, thorough
e.g. meticulous planning/records/research
be lost on sb: if something is lost on someone, they do not understand or want to accept it
espoused: formal to support an idea, belief etc, especially a political one
vicissitude: one of the many changes and problems in a situation or in your life, that you have to deal with
e.g. the vicissitudes of family life
take (a) hold: to start to have a definite effect

5）阅读沃尔斯这本书的乐趣之一是可以了解梭罗的多个侧面和永不停歇的好奇心。除了他的写作和激进主义，他还是一名工程师、一名测量师、一名讲师以及一名一丝不苟的自然主义者。在达尔文《物种起源》出版五周之后，梭罗就将进化原则应用于自己的研究。他并非没注意到他作为一个测量师这个工作的讽刺意味。在他44岁死的时候，康科德的大部分地区改变了，瓦尔登湖的小屋已经不复存在。梭罗对他的朋友及导师拉尔夫·沃尔多•艾默生所支持的无拘无束的工业主义表示警惕，并且问道为什么不让地球脱轨跑到一个新的轨道上，在某一年，来改变季节无趣的变化？”由于气候变化的影响开始明确，梭罗的警告似乎很有预见性。

6. Ms Walls’s book is a timely and revealing study of an eminent American writer and environmentalist. Thoreau’s thinking bound science, politics and nature together in the hope that both the human and the non-human could flourish. This was a novel idea at the time, and should still be heeded today.

heed: to pay careful attention to sb's advice or warning = take notice of

6）沃尔斯的这本书是对一位美国知名作家和环保主义者的及时且揭露性的研究。梭罗的思想把科学、政治和自然结合在一起，希望人类与非人类都能蓬勃发展。这是当时的一个革新的想法，而且到今天仍然应该被倾听。

This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Wild American"

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原文出处：经济学人

翻译：七呵夫

本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文不代表本人立场。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。