发布时间 : 星期一 文章（学）课外翻译练习材料更新完毕开始阅读60fe00250722192e4536f6e9
Passage 1
On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self recovery, and a fatal disservice is done. Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence. The literature of every nation bears me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two hundred years.
Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar?s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men?s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must—when the sun is hid, and the stars withdraw their shining—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again. The Arabian proverb says, “A fig tree, looking on a fig tree, becometh fruitful.” It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction, that one nature wrote and the same reads. We read the verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Marvell, of Dryden, with the most modern joy—with a pleasure, I mean, which is in great part caused
by the abstraction of all time from their verses. There is some awe mixed with the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago , says that which lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh thought and said. But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores for their future wants, who lay up food before death for the young grub they shall never see. Passage 2
I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great and heroic men have existed who had almost no other information than by the printed page. I only would say that it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an inventor to read well. As the proverb says, “He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the wealth of the Indies.” There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor the invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes
luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer?s hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare, only that least part—only the authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato?s and Shakespeare?s.
Of course, there is a portion of reading quite indispensable to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather form far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable or wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whist they grow rich every year. Passage 3
The maple smoke of autumn bonfires is incense to Canadians.
Bestowing aroma for the nose, chroma for the eye, sweetness for the spring tongue, the sugar maple prompts this sharing of a favorite myth and an original etymology of the world maple.
The maple looms large in Ojibwa folk tales. The time of year for sugaring-off is “in the Maple Moon.” Among Ajibwa, the primordial female figure is Nokomis, a wise grandmother. In one tale about seasonal change, cannibal wendigos—creatures of evil—chased old Nokomis through the autumn countryside. Wendigos throve in icy cold. When they entered the bodies of humans, the human heart froze solid. Here wendigos represent oncoming winter. They were hunting to kill and eat poor Nokomis, the warm embodiment of female fecundity who, like the summer, has grown old.
Knowing this was a pursuit to the death. Nokimis outsmarted the cold devils. She hid in s stand of maple trees, all red and orange and deep yellow. This maple grove grew beside a waterfall whose mist blurred the trees? outline. As they peered throught the mist, slavering wendigos thought they saw a raging fire in which their prey was burning. But it was only old Nokomis being hidden by the right red leaves of her friends, the maples. And so, drooling ice and huffing frost, the wendigos left her and sought easier prey. For their service in saving the earth mother?s life., these maples were given a special gift: their water of life would be forever sweet, and humans would