評(píng)論
打印
Mr. Imagination
想象大師
George Kent
喬治·肯特
Back in the 1880s, a big red-bearded man came to call one day on the French Minister of Education. The receptionist looked at the card and his face lighted up. "Monsieur Verne," he said reverently, "pray be seated. With all the traveling you do, you must be tired."
時(shí)間回到19世紀(jì)80年代。一個(gè)留著紅胡子的大個(gè)子來(lái)拜訪法國(guó)教育部長(zhǎng)。接待員看了看他的名片，面露喜色。“凡爾納先生，”他恭敬地說(shuō)，“快請(qǐng)坐。您經(jīng)歷了那么多次的旅行，肯定很累了吧。”
Jules Verne should have been worn out. He had gone around the world 100 times or more—once in eighty days. He had voyaged 60,000 miles under the sea, whizzed around the moon, hitchhiked on comets, explored the center of the earth, chatted with cannibals in Africa and Bushmen in Australia. There was very little of the world's geography that Jules Verne, the writer, had not visited.
儒勒·凡爾納的確應(yīng)該累壞了。憑借想象力，他環(huán)游世界至少有100次了——有一次是在80天內(nèi)完成的。他在海底航行了60000英里，急速掠過(guò)月球，在彗星上搭過(guò)便車，去地心探險(xiǎn)，和非洲的食人族、澳洲的叢林居民交談。世界上幾乎沒(méi)有什么地方是作家儒勒·凡爾納憑著想象力沒(méi)有去過(guò)的。
Jules Verne, the man, was a stay-at-home. If he was tired it was merely writer's cramp. For forty years, he sat in a small room of the red brick tower of his home, in Amiens, turning out, year in, year out, one book every six months—more than 100 altogether. Verne himself had made visits around Europe and North Africa, and one six-week tour of New York State. And that was all. The world's most extraordinary tourist spent less than one of his seventy-seven years on voyage.
儒勒·凡爾納本人卻是個(gè)不愛(ài)出門的人。如果他感到疲倦，那只不過(guò)是長(zhǎng)時(shí)間寫(xiě)作導(dǎo)致的手指抽筋罷了。40年來(lái)，他一直都待在位于亞眠的家中的那個(gè)紅磚樓的一間小屋子里，日復(fù)一日、年復(fù)一年地以每半年出一本書(shū)的速度進(jìn)行著創(chuàng)作——總共出了100多本。凡爾納本人曾游覽過(guò)歐洲和北非，還曾在紐約州玩了六個(gè)星期。這就是他全部的旅行了。這個(gè)世界上最了不起的旅行家活了77歲，真正花在旅行上的時(shí)間卻還不足一年。
