The idea of winter
冬之思
Aching, shaking, crazy cold
疼痛，颤抖，极度的寒冷
A gorgeous meditation on snow and ice, music and history
有关雪、冰、音乐和历史的华丽冥想
Winter: Five Windows on the Season. By Adam Gopnik.
冬之五景—亚当-戈普尼克著
NO OTHER season quite captures the imagination as winter does. Whether it is the icy landscapes of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings or Franz Schubert’s “Winterreisse” song cycle, the chillier aspects of the year continue to fascinate writers, artists and musicians.
没有哪个季节像冬天一样让人充满想象。不管是威廉-特纳所画的冰雪奇景，还是弗兰兹-舒伯特的“冬”之套曲，每年这个寒冷的季节仍旧继续吸引着作家，艺术家和音乐家们。
Canadian-raised Adam Gopnik, a staff writer at the New Yorker, is a self-proclaimed lover of winter and all its varieties: “Grey skies and December lights are my idea of secret joy.” In “Winter” he traces the differing sides to the season, its romantic and harsher realities. Trawling through the 18th century to the present day, he explores man’s changing relationship to cold in the environment, how “winter started as this thing we had to get through; it has ended as this time to hold on to.”
出生于加拿大的亚当-戈普尼克，是《纽约克》的特约撰稿人，他自称是冬季情人，而且深爱冬季的一切：“灰色的天空，还有十二月里的灯光让我充满着‘秘密’的喜悦。”在《冬之五景》（以下简称—冬）中，他追踪描述着这个季节形态各异的面貌，它的浪漫和严酷的现实。从十八世纪一直到现在，他在查阅资料过程中探索着—人们是怎样改变自己与寒冷环境的关系的，及“当冬天开始时，我们不得不与寒冷抗争，当我们坚持下来的时候，对我们来说，它也就结束了”—这句话的含义是什么，他在思索着。
Divided into five parts, the book ranges over topics as various as the invention of central heating and Mr Gopnik’s love of ice-hockey (“I often go to sleep at night running through great goals I have seen”). In less accomplished hands, “Winter” could seem too sprawling. Mr Gopnik never lets that happen and his conversational tone brings the book together as a whole. With an easiness that belies their complexity, he manages to write about seemingly complicated debates—such as that between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an 18th-century German writer, and his friend Karl Ludwig von Knebel over whether the appearance of hoarfrost (or Eisblumen) on windowpanes was a sign of divine creation or a fluke of nature.
这本书分成五个部分，涉及的方面之广，就像发明中央供暖和戈普尼克先生钟爱的冰上曲棍球一样繁复（“我通常会查阅完我所见到的壮观景象之后才入睡”）。在未完成前，《冬》似乎就有些太复杂，太散乱了。但是，戈普尼克先生是绝不对让这种情况发生的，他在书中描述的语气让整本书看起来就是一个整体。由于很容易隐藏书中情节的复杂性，他想方设法让他的描述似乎充满着复杂的言论—比如，对于窗玻璃上出现的白霜（德语-霜）究竟是神给我们的启示，还是自然界的偶然现象，在18世纪德国作家约翰-沃尔夫冈-冯-歌德和他的朋友卡-路德维希-冯-克内贝尔之间就有着不同的见解。
Two things in particular make this book far more than just a meditation on weather. The first is Mr Gopnik’s attention to overlooked or underappreciated figures—the cartoonist Thomas Nast, who shaped the modern idea of Santa Claus, or the architect of Montreal’s underground city, Vincent Ponte. The second is Mr Gopnik’s apt turn of phrase. The iceberg which sunk the Titanic is described as being like an awkward boy at a dance; the North Pole is “the big blank at the top of the world”.
Not everyone will love the author’s idiosyncratic style. And at times Mr Gopnik’s prose can appear overcrowded with references. He is the first to admit this, “I realise that these chapters…are really a composite list of things that I like and that I don’t.” But his ability to talk about town planning, ice hockey and poetry with the same enthusiasm brings to his subjects, and to winter, a much-needed warmth.
有两件特别的事情让这本书看起来，远远不只是关于一个季节的冥想那么简单。第一，戈普尼克先生的关注忽视了或者未重视这些人物—漫画家托玛斯-纳斯特塑造了现代的圣诞老人，或者蒙特利尔地下城的建造者文森特-蓬。第二，戈普尼克先生描述性短语的适当转折。那座撞沉泰坦尼克号的冰山在他的书中，就像一个舞会上初学跳舞的笨拙小男孩。北极是“世界之巅的一大片空白”。不是每个人都喜欢作者这种怪异风格的。而且，有时，戈普尼克先生的文章中出现的引用太多了，显得太累赘了。他是第一个承认这个问题的，“我意识到，这些章节…实在是一张我喜欢的，我不喜欢的综合目录清单。”但是，他很擅长讨论城市规划，冰上曲棍球和诗，而且把这种热情也带到了他的书中，也带到了冬季—这个很需要热情温暖的季节。
economist
2012-11-28
economist
392次
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