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考研英语翻译素材: 压马路吸引力日渐下降
A number of recent books have lauded the connection between walking - just
for its own sake - and thinking. But are people losing their love of the
purposeless walk?
Walking is a luxury in the West. Very few people, particularly in cities,
are obliged to do much of it at all. Cars, bicycles, buses, trams, and trains
all beckon.
Instead, walking for any distance is usually a planned leisure activity. Or
a health aid. Something to help people lose weight. Or keep their fitness. But
there's something else people get from choosing to walk. A place to think.
Wordsworth was a walker. His work is inextricably bound upwith tramping in
the Lake District. Drinking in the stark beauty. Getting lost in his
thoughts.
Charles Dickens was a walker. He could easily rack up 20 miles, often at
night. You can almost smell London's atmosphere in his prose. Virginia Woolf
walked for inspiration. She walked out from her homeat Rodmell in the South
Downs. She wandered through London's parks.
Henry David Thoreau, who was both author and naturalist, walked and walked
and walked. But even he couldn't match the feat of someone like Constantin
Brancusi, the sculptor who walked much of the way between his home village in
Romania and Paris. Or indeed Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose walk from the Hook of
Holland to Istanbul at the age of 18 inspired several volumes of travel writing.
George Orwell, Thomas De Quincey, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Bruce Chatwin, WG Sebald and Vladimir Nabokov are just some of the others who
have written about it.
From recent decades, the environmentalist and writer John Francis has been
one of the truly epic walkers. Francis was inspired by witnessing an oil tanker
accident in San Francisco Bay to eschew motor vehicles for 22 years. Instead he
walked. And thought. He was aided by a paral
llel pledge not to speak which lasted 17 years.
But you don't have to be an author to see the value of walking. A
particular kind of walking. Not the distance between porch and corner shop. But
a more aimless pursuit.
In the UK, May is National Walking Month. And a new book, A Philosophy of
Walking by Prof Frederic Gros, is currently the object of much discussion. Only
last week, a study from Stanford Universityshowed that even walking on a
treadmill improved creative thinking.
Across the West, people are still choosing to walk. Nearly every journey in
the UK involves a little walking, and nearly a quarter of all journeys are made
entirely on foot, according to one survey. But the same study found that a mere
17% of trips were "just to walk". And that included dog-walking.
It is that "just to walk" category that is so beloved of creative
thinkers.
"There is something about the pace of walking and the pace of thinking that
goes together. Walking requires a certain amount of attention but it leaves
great parts of the time open to thinking. I do believe once you get the blood
flowing through the brain it does start working more creatively," says Geoff
Nicholson, author of The Lost Art of Walking.
"Your senses are sharpened. As a writer, I also use it as a form of problem
solving. I'm far more likely to find a solution by going for a walk than sitting
at my desk and 'thinking'."
Nicholson lives in Los Angeles, a city that is notoriously car-focused.
There are other cities around the world that can be positively baffling to the
evening stroller. Take Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. Anyone planning to
walk even between two close points should prepare to be patient. Pavements
mysteriously end. Busy roads need to be traversed without the aid of crossings.
The act of choosing to walk can provoke bafflement from the residents.
"A lot of places, if you walk you feel you are doing something
self-consciously. Walking becomes a
radical act," says Merlin Coverley, author of The Art of Wandering: The
Writer as Walker.
But even in car-focused cities there are fruits for those who choose to
ramble. "I do most of my walking in the city - in LA where things are spread
out," says Nicholson. "There is a lot to look at. It's urban exploration. I'm
always looking at strange alleyways and little corners."
Nicholson, a novelist, calls this "observational"walking. But his other
category of walking is left completely blank. It is waiting to be filled with
random inspiration.
Not everybody is prepared to wait. There are many people who regard walking
from place to place as "dead time" that they resent losing, in a busy schedule
where work and commuting takes them away from home, family and other pleasures.
It is viewed as "an empty space that needs to be filled up", says Rebecca
Solnit, author of Wanderlust: A History of Walking.
Many now walk and textat the same time. There's been an increase in
injuries to pedestriansin the US attributed to this. One study suggested texting
even changed the manner in which people walked.
It's not just texting. This is the era of the "smartphone map zombie"-
people who only take occasional glances away from an electronic routefinder to
avoid stepping in anything or being hit by a car.
"You see people who don't get from point A to point B without looking at
their phones," says Solnit. "People used to get to know the lay of the
land."
People should go out and walk free of distractions, says Nicholson. "I do
think there is something about walking mindfully. To actually be there and be in
the moment and concentrate on what you are doing."
And this means no music, no podcasts, no audiobooks. It might also mean
going out alone.
CS Lewis thought that even talking could spoil the walk. "The only friend
to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the
countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a n
udge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared."
The way people in the West have started to look down on walking is
detectable in the language. "When people say something is pedestrian they mean
flat, limited in scope," says Solnit.
Boil down the books on walking and you're left with some key tips:
Walk further and with no fixed route
Stop texting and mapping
Don't soundtrack your walks
Go alone
Find walkable places
Walk mindfully
Then you may get the rewards. "Being out on your own, being free and
anonymous, you discover the people around you," says Solnit. 查看译文
最近许多书都赞扬走路这一行为本身和思考的联系。但是人们是否正逐渐对漫无目的的行走失去兴趣?
走路在西方是件奢侈事。少有人会去步行，尤其是在城市里。汽车、自行车、公交车、电车和火车，这些都更吸引人。
走路反而通常是一种有计划的休闲活动，或者是保健运动，是有助于减肥或保持健康的活动。但是人们还可以从步行中得到其它一些东西，一种思考的环境。
华兹华斯(Wordsworth)喜欢步行。他的工作让他不可避免地要经常在湖区行走，在纯粹质朴的美景中饮酒，沉浸到思考之中。
查尔斯•狄更斯(Charles
Dickens)也喜欢走路。他可以很轻松地走完20英里，而且经常是在夜里。从他的文章中你几乎可以嗅到伦敦的气息。弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫(Virginia
Woolf)为寻求灵感而行走，她从家乡南唐斯的罗德麦尔出发，在伦敦的公园里漫步。
自然主义者、作家亨利•大卫•梭罗(Henry David Thoreau)则每天都在行走。但即使是他也无法做到康斯坦丁•布朗库西(Constantin
Brancusi)那样的壮举。布朗库西是一位雕塑家，从罗马尼亚的农村老家到巴黎这一路，他几乎都是走着去的。更厉害的是帕特里克•莱斯•法莫(Patrick
Leigh Fermor)，他18岁时从荷兰角港徒步到伊斯坦布尔，旅程给了他灵感，让他写出了好几卷游记。乔治•奥威尔(George
Orwell)、托马斯•德•昆西(Thomas De Quincey)、纳西姆•尼古拉斯•塔勒布(Nassim Nicholas
Taleb)、弗里德里希•尼采(Friedrich Nietzsche)、布鲁斯•查特文(Bruce Chatwin)、 温弗里德•格奥尔格•泽巴尔德(WG
Sebald)、弗拉基米尔•纳博科夫(Vladimir Nabokov)也都写过关于行走的文章。
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发表于 2017-8-6 15:38:22