2015年10月10日 星期六

Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Flush: a biography(1933) Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse



倫敦名街(10 ):Wimpole Street


我們介紹過名醫群集之 London's Harley Street,令外一條類似的為Wimpole Street ,因為該街約200 年設皇家醫學會(The Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) ),其專業圖書館世界有名。

它也是很理想的住宅區,所以蕭伯納的「賣花女 /窈窕淑女/Pygmalion 」的語言專家HIGGINS 就住那兒。 The Beatles 名歌 "Yesterday"就是在 Wimpole 街之女友之公寓一夜美夢之後,所得之靈感。

在文學史上這街的 50號住過名詩人勃朗寧(Robert Browing )夫人伊莉莎白 Barrett,他們不朽的愛情故事上過兩回電影,譬如說, The Barretts of Wimpole Street(1934) 


Elizabeth Barrett Browning died ‪#‎onthisday‬ in 1861.‪#‎DiscoverLiterature‬ to find out how she used poetry to challenge traditional Victorian roles for women. http://bit.ly/1FKk8Y0




他家的寵狗 『紅毛球』(Flush),名作家 V. Woolf 幫其寫過傳記(介於虛構與非虛構之間( Fiction/Non-Fiction cross-over)):Virginia Woolf. Flush: a biography(1933) .— 英文本在網路上很容易找到(中文有數翻譯本,譬如說,『天堂玫瑰』pp.156-214 )

At Wimpole Street Browning spent most of her time in her upstairs room. Her health began to improve, though she saw few people other than her immediate family.[3] One of those she did see was Kenyon, a wealthy friend of the family and patron of the arts. She received comfort from her spaniel named Flush, a gift from Mary Mitford.[16] (Virginia Woolf later fictionalised the life of the dog, making him the protagonist of her 1933 novel Flush: A Biography).


我們看它第一章所寫的 Wimpole街屋,最有門面,最莊重、威風凜凜,最容易讓人在按門鈴時,多少會心生怯步(只可遠觀?),雖然如此,它真是文明之支柱。(『紅毛球』於 1933年才出版 --可能是第一次世界大戰時寫的,所以文中說世局如晦,文明危殆,希望 Wimpole 街之風味永存;願其一磚一石一動不動、窗簾布永不褪色、牛羊等百獸肉品供需無缺 ……Wimpole街,風雨不動安如山乎…… 



Even now perhaps nobody rings the bell of a house in Wimpole Street without trepidation. It is the most august of London streets, the most impersonal. Indeed, when the world seems tumbling to ruin, and civilisation rocks on its foundations, one has only to go to Wimpole Street; to pace that avenue; to survey those houses; to consider their uniformity; to marvel at the window curtains and their consistency; to admire the brass knockers and their regularity; to observe butchers tendering joints and cooks receiving them; to reckon the incomes of the inhabitants and infer their consequent submission to the laws of God and man—one has only to go to Wimpole Street and drink deep of the peace breathed by authority in order to heave a sigh of thankfulness that, while Corinth has fallen and Messina has tumbled, while crowns have blown down the wind and old Empires have gone up in flames, Wimpole Street has remained unmoved and, turning from Wimpole Street into Oxford Street, a prayer rises in the heart and bursts from the lips that not a brick of Wimpole Street may be re-pointed, not a curtain washed, not a butcher fail to tender or a cook to receive the sirloin, the haunch, the breast, the ribs of mutton and beef for ever and ever, for as long as Wimpole Street remains, civilisation is secure.  CHAPTER ONEThree Mile Cross 

(這回學單字 point之一義  To fill and finish the joints of (masonry) with cement or mortar.   継ぎ目にしっくい[セメント]を塗る;

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