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这次确定OK 了。。。过几天就要二战了，最近心神不宁的~又弄重复了。。抱歉。。。抱歉
‘Rappaccini's Daughter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Part 2
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Now, the Special English program, AMERICAN STORIES.
Today, we complete the story "Rappaccini's Daughter." It was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here is Kay Gallant with the second and final part of "Rappaccini's Daughter."
Many years ago, a young man named Giovanni Guasconti left his home in Naples to study in northern Italy. He took a room in an old house next to a magnificent garden filled with strange flowers and other plants.
The garden belonged to a doctor, Giacomo Rappaccini. He lived with his daughter, Beatrice, in a small brown house in the garden. From a window of his room, Giovanni had seen that Rappaccini's daughter was very beautiful. But everyone in Padua was afraid of her father.
A letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Pietro Baglioni, a professor at the university, warned Giovanni about the mysterious Doctor Rappaccini. "He is a great scientist," Professor Baglioni told the young man. "But he is also dangerous. Rappaccini cares more about science than he does about people. He has created many terrible poisons from the plants in his garden."
One day, Giovanni found a secret entrance to Rappaccini's garden. He went in. The plants all seemed wild and unnatural. Giovanni realized that Rappaccini must have created these strange and terrible flowers through his experiments.
Suddenly, Rappaccini's daughter came into the garden. She moved quickly among the flowers until she reached him. Giovanni apologized for coming into the garden without an invitation. But Beatrice smiled at him and made him feel welcome.
【247】
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"I see you love flowers," she said. "And so you have come to take a closer look at my father's rare collection."
While she spoke, Giovanni noticed a perfume in the air around her. He wasn't sure if this wonderful smell came from the flowers or from her breath.
She asked him about his home and his family. She told him she had spent her life in this garden. Giovanni felt as if he were talking to a very small child. Her spirit sparkled like clear water.
They walked slowly though the garden as they talked. At last they reached a beautiful plant that was covered with large purple flowers. He realized that the perfume from those flowers was like the perfume of Beatrice's breath, but much stronger.
The young man reached out to break off one of the purple flowers. But Beatrice gave a scream that went through his heart like a knife. She caught his hand and pulled it away from the plant with all her strength.
"Don't ever touch those flowers!" she cried. "They will take your life!" Hiding her face, she ran into the house. Then, Giovanni saw Doctor Rappaccini standing in the garden.
That night, Giovanni could not stop thinking about how sweet and beautiful Beatrice was. Finally, he fell asleep. But when the morning came, he woke up in great pain. He felt as if one of his hands was on fire. It was the hand that Beatrice had grabbed in hers when he reached for one of the purple flowers.
【257】
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Giovanni looked down at his hand. There was a purple mark on it that looked like four small fingers and a little thumb. But because his heart was full of Beatrice, Giovanni forgot about the pain in his hand.
He began to meet her in the garden every day. At last, she told him that she loved him. But she would never let him kiss her or even hold her hand.
One morning, several weeks later, Professor Baglioni visited Giovanni. "I was worried about you," the older man said. "You have not come to your classes at the university for more than a month. Is something wrong?"
Giovanni was not pleased to see his old friend. "No, nothing is wrong. I am fine, thank you." He wanted Professor Baglioni to leave. But the old man took off his hat and sat down.
"My dear Giovanni," he said. "You must stay away from Rappaccini and his daughter. Her father has given her poison from the time she was a baby. The poison is in her blood and on her breath. If Rappaccini did this to his own daughter, what is he planning to do to you?"
Giovanni covered his face with his hands. "Oh my God!" he cried. "Don't worry, the old man continued. "It is not too late to save you. And we may succeed in helping Beatrice, too. Do you see this little silver bottle? It holds a medicine that will destroy even the most powerful poison. Give it to your Beatrice to drink."
【255】
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Professor Baglioni put the little bottle on the table and left Giovanni's room. The young man wanted to believe that Beatrice was a sweet and innocent girl. And yet, Professor Baglioni's words had put doubts in his heart.
It was nearly time for his daily meeting with Beatrice. As Giovanni combed his hair, he looked at himself in a mirror near his bed. He could not help noticing how handsome he was. His eyes looked particularly bright. And his face had a healthy warm glow.
He said to himself, "At least her poison has not gotten into my body yet." As he spoke he happened to look at some flowers he had just bought that morning. A shock of horror went through his body.
The flowers were turning brown! Giovanni's face became very white as he stared at himself in the mirror.
Then he noticed a spider crawling near his window. He bent over the insect and blew a breath of air at it. The spider trembled, and fell dead. "I am cursed," Giovanni whispered to himself. "My own breath is poison."
At that moment, a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the garden. "Giovanni! You are late. Come down."
"You are a monster!" Giovanni shouted as soon as he reached her. "And with your poison you have made me into a monster, too. I am a prisoner of this garden."
【232】
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"Giovanni!" Beatrice cried, looking at him with her large bright eyes. "Why are you saying these terrible things? It is true that I can never leave this garden. But you are free to go wherever you wish."
Giovanni looked at her with hate in his eyes. "Don't pretend that you don't know what you have done to me."
A group of insects had flown into the garden. They came toward Giovanni and flew around his head. He blew his breath at them. The insects fell to the ground, dead.
Beatrice screamed. "I see it! I see it! My father's science has done this to us. Believe me, Giovanni, I did not ask him to do this to you. I only wanted to love you."
Giovanni's anger changed to sadness. Then, he remembered the medicine that Professor Baglioni had given him. Perhaps the medicine would destroy the poison in their bodies and help them to become normal again.
"Dear Beatrice," he said, "our fate is not so terrible." He showed her the little silver bottle and told her what the medicine inside it might do. "I will drink first," she said. "You must wait to see what happens to me before you drink it."
She put Baglioni's medicine to her lips and took a small sip. At the same moment, Rappaccini came out of his house and walked slowly toward the two young people. He spread his hands out to them as if he were giving them a blessing.
【248】
自由
"My daughter," he said, "you are no longer alone in the world. Give Giovanni one of the purple flowers from your favorite plant. It will not hurt him now. My science and your love have made him different from ordinary men."
"My father," Beatrice said weakly, "why did you do this terrible thing to your own child?"
Rappaccini looked surprised. "What do you mean, my daughter?" he asked. "You have power no other woman has. You can defeat your strongest enemy with only your breath. Would you rather be a weak woman?"
"I want to be loved, not feared," Beatrice replied. "But now, it does not matter. I am leaving you, father. I am going where the poison you have given me will do no harm. Good bye to you, Giovanni."
Beatrice dropped to the ground. She died at the feet of her father and Giovanni. The poison had been too much a part of the young woman. The medicine that destroyed the poison, destroyed her, as well.
【168】
越障
The LDP shocks Japan and the region with its choice of a new leader
Sep 29th 2012 | TOKYO | from the print edition
Abe reflux
ONCE again, the Japanese public must be wondering whether politics only serves to inflict cruel jokes upon them. On September 26th the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose Shinzo Abe, a nationalist former prime minister, to lead it into the next general election, even though he quit as leader after just a year in 2007 because of political failure and a stress-induced bowel illness.
The election of Mr Abe, 58, came as a shock, not least to the LDP’s own rank and file who were hoping it had a good shot of returning to power within a few months. Their favourite, Shigeru Ishiba, won the most votes, though not a majority, in the first round. Second-round voting was reserved only for LDP members of the Diet (parliament), who ignored the grass roots. Mr Abe will reportedly choose Mr Ishiba, a fellow hawk, as his deputy.
Mr Abe’s 12 months as prime minister in 2006-07 were marked by government ineptitude, scandal and a needless distraction over his views about the women of neighbouring countries forced to serve as sex slaves to the Japanese army during the second world war—he claimed the practice never existed. All the while, he suffered from a stomach disorder, which reached its climax after a state visit to India in August 2007, forcing him to the lavatory so often that he felt he could not govern. A short while later he resigned. Two years after that the LDP itself was out of power.
Mr Abe’s first (and perhaps only) shining act as prime minister had been to rebuild the bridges with South Korea and China that had been casually burned by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. As soon as he came to office, he visited Seoul and Beijing to reassure the two countries that he wished to improve ties. If he intends to do the same again, at a time of Japan’s immensely strained relations with its two neighbours over disputed islands, he gives no clue. On the contrary, he hints at remorse over his earlier conciliation.
As Chinese (and then Taiwanese) ships entered Japanese-controlled waters around the contested Senkaku Islands, which the Chinese call the Diaoyu Islands, Mr Abe pledged to be their staunch defender. “The Senkakus are Japanese,” he said last week, after praising the government’s recent decision to buy three of the islands from their private owner. “We will unambiguously protect our territory.” Mr Abe has made similar pledges in relation to another group of disputed islets that Japan calls Takeshima and South Korea calls Dokdo. He also promises to reverse a key official admission of guilt on the sex slavery, which could have explosive diplomatic consequences around Asia.
The row with China has already cost Japanese companies millions of dollars in lost business. Toyota and Nissan announced this week that they are temporarily shutting at least five plants in China, as local buyers shun Japanese cars in protest at the nationalisation of the Senkakus. All Nippon Airways says 40,000 seats have been cancelled on its China-Japan flights since the row began.
With the stakes so high, the LDP’s decision to appoint a foreign-policy hawk may be because it thinks there has been a rightward shift among ordinary Japanese in recent months. Koichi Nakano of Sophia University in Tokyo says that “the LDP parliamentary group has moved so far to the right they probably think the country has too”. Mostly, however, the return of Mr Abe’s ghost suggests a party bereft of ideas, new talent and principles. It hardly suggests an organisation ready to forge the new path Japan so desperately needs.
In the next election, polls suggest, the LDP cannot win by itself, nor even only with the support of its old ally, New Komeito, a Buddhist-linked party. Mr Abe has already made clear his admiration for the mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, who leads a national political insurrection with his rightist Japan Restoration Party. The two men share many of the same conservative views, especially on history. Mr Abe will be hoping for an alliance with Mr Hashimoto’s party in the next general election, which the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is expected to call in the next few months.
Such an alliance, in theory, would go deeper than just hawkish views on disputed territory. Both men want to decentralise Japan’s Tokyo-dominated politics and cut growth-stifling bureaucracy. But they would also have to reconcile their differences, including over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a regional free-trade grouping which Mr Hashimoto supports but Mr Abe opposes.
Even Mr Hashimoto’s many supporters may find him tarred by association with Mr Abe (see Banyan). Mr Noda will hope that voters prove as fickle as they have been in recent elections. He may be tempted to postpone the election for as long as possible, in the hopes that Mr Abe can snatch defeat for the LDP from the jaws of victory.
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发表于 2012-9-30 23:21:34
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