瓦尔登湖
Susan著 小哭译
今年的ELA课，威尔基女士说我们要读许多哲学书，很难的哲学书。还说其实这么多的哲学书会让我们在学年末厌倦哲学的。我不相信她说的话。我喜欢哲学，我喜欢思考。我相当地确信，不管我们在初中读什么，我都能理解。可是我错了。
我们读的第一本书是亨利.大卫.梭罗写的《瓦尔登湖》。《瓦尔登湖》是相当著名的一本书。现在很多人读它，并且他们觉得这本书是本世纪人们应该读的最重要的书之一。从根本上来说，《瓦尔登湖》是关于梭罗进行的人生体验的一本书。梭罗是19世纪早期到中期的一个哲学家。他相信生活的真谛和意义存在于自然之中，大自然是关于我们这个世界的唯一的纯粹的事情。因此，他进行了两年的体验，想去看看住在瓦尔登湖旁边的瓦尔登森林里会如何。住在那里的时候，他写了流水账日记，然后用这些记录写了一本有关他的这些体验的书。
威尔基女士没有让我们把全本书都读完，只让我们读最重要的章节（有差不多半本书吧）。开始，我相当激动地去读这本书。但是当我读得越来越多后，就越来越觉得无聊。刚开始读这本书时，我非常地喜欢梭罗，但是随着时间的推移，我对他的评价掉到了谷底。有独特的思想很好，但是他的想法也有点太特别了。
就算是他的观点和我的非常不同，读起来也是有趣儿的。然而，听他无数次地重复着自己的观点就完全地无趣了。他的写作风格非常地复杂，这就使得读者很辛苦。他说着“简单，简单，简单”。然而，他的写作却一点也不简单，甚至他用的句子也是复杂的。“因为希望生活得从容不迫，我去了森林，去面对仅仅是生活所绝对必需的真相，去看看是否我不能学会它不得不教导的部分，如果不能的话，当我濒临死亡时，发现我并没有活过”。为什么他不能把这句话分成两到三个小句子，使人更容易理解呢？而这还是其中最简单的句子之一。
除了他措辞的风格外，我也还有一个关于这本书的真正内容的问题。他所写的大部分东西要么是对他已经写过内容的重复、对一个并不需要更多支持的观点的支持、对他早期写作的否定，要么是和我根本没有任何关系的东西。对于最后一点我没有太多的问题，因为我知道他并不是为我写的这本书，并且我确信别人可能会非常有兴趣去读那二十页关于湖的内容：梭罗在湖边做了什么、梭罗喜欢哪种湖、谁到了湖边、湖看来象什么、湖闻起来怎么样、湖听起来怎么样，以及这个湖有多么地美妙等等。
然而，我没有兴趣去读上面所列那些。当他写这本书时，主要是为他自己写的。如果他知道全世界的人们将要像读一本宗教课本一样地读这本书的话，他将会极为震惊的。大概那就是为什么他的写作风格如此地复杂和枯燥吧。他写的思想非常地有趣儿，但是别的所有内容，比如那些关于他在森林里做了什么的章节，或者那些有着过多关于他的所见/所听/所嗅/等等细节的章节，就枯燥无聊了。他的写作风格提醒了我托尔金的《指环王》三部曲，托尔金在书中把一个有趣的故事弄得听起来很乏味，就差更糟了。
《瓦尔登湖》除去难以理解、啰嗦、让我不只一次地想睡觉这一事实之外，这本书还是有许多有趣的想法的。我能理解为什么当代有这么多的人认为这本书非常重要。《瓦尔登湖》不只是梭罗在森林里体验的一本日记。它也承载了许多梭罗的思想。即使它把那几个思想重复了几百次，也没有让那些思想有任何贬值。《瓦尔登湖》提醒了我们的一件事情是我们这个社会的危险性。它提到我们这个社会总是为着毫无用处和毫无意义的事情忙得团团转。事业、工作、新闻、玩具、金钱、财富…….它们在最后都毫无价值。我们都会死，那些东西将一文不值。然而，找到生活的真正意义则有价值得多，所以，我们应该找出生命的真正意义，不要对小事情关注太多。
我同意这部分内容。然而，接下来的我就不同意了。梭罗认为社会本身是邪恶的。他认为我们从社会中什么也学不到，我们能做的最好的事情是抛弃它，然后象他一样地住在森林里。他认为大部人所过的生活毫无意义并且庸俗，而为了过一种最充实的生活，我们必须回归自然，必须断绝与其它所有事情的关系。他认为那种被庸俗地接受的“正常”
的生活里面没有调料，而任何一个认为他们目前生活很精彩的人都是被邪恶所蒙蔽了。然而对此我有着完全相反的看法。
我认为我们可以从其它的人身上学习很多。我确实承认我们的社会有点失控于所有的这些技术和政治辩论，也承认世界充满了邪恶。然而，我也认为世界充满了许多好东西。我们可以从中学习很多。还有，我不认为我现在的生活毫无意义。我认为很有意义。我不认为过一种写实的生活的唯一办法就是让我自己被大自然所包围。我相当地喜欢我的生活。梭罗是一个被蒙骗的人。他是一个眼睛失明的人，因为他不能看到我们现在这个世界上的精华和美好。我同意自然是精彩的，不时地，我们需要在森林里散散步。然而，我认为社会和人们也是好的。
梭罗绝对是一个很怪诞的人，精神不太好。我同情他。他没有学会欣赏这个世界和享受生活。因为他不能，所以他错过了很多。他错过了生活的一个本质部分，他甚至根本都不知道！他实际上是一个孤独者。通过将他自己从社会中分离，他在精神上得到了一种多数人无法获得的东西，但是他也错过了生活中非常快乐的一部分。
总体上来讲，《瓦尔登湖》是一个非常有趣的体验。它让我想到了一些否则我可能绝不会想到的事情，将我置于一种新的思想之中。不仅如此，它也超乎想像地做到了让我感到厌烦。书的一半像是梭罗的个人日记或什么，而我并不想读他所做的每一件细小的事情。我喜欢《瓦尔登湖》中提到的一些思想，可我也不同意一些其它的。尽管如此去读读也是有趣的。如果你不介意结构复杂的书，就去读它；但是如果你介意，我建议你去网上查一下书评，跳过那些枯燥的部分。
【小哭介绍背景】自从Susan八年级开学，我就一天到晚地都在听她讲这本书。基本上没有什么正面的评价，主要就是说难读，不爱读，读不懂，读不快。不过她们关于这本书的大作业，她的分数不低，听说别的同学也是如此。仔细一问，老师考核的方式，类似于开卷，事先已经将问题摆出来了，同学可以早早地就思考，但是要现场写出来。比如说书中提到了几个**方面的问题，同学们就要将这些方面在试卷上列出来。那这样给书的内容归归类，基本上还是能够明了梭罗在书中都讲了什么的。只是，了解书的主题，并不等于是能够理解，更不等于是会认同作者的观点。看看Susan的评论吧，相当地负面！
除了同意梭罗的类似于应该“淡泊名利”的一些观点之外，Susan发表的都是对这本书的批评。先是批评句型太长，措辞复杂，还和梭罗所倡导的“简约”进行了对照，“以子以矛攻子之盾”，可见对梭罗的不满不是一星半点；接着又批评书中内容过于罗嗦，写了太多她所不关心的细节；最后又批评作者的观点其实也不正确。不但说作者是一个孤独者，还说作者精神有问题！
以Susan目前的信仰和生活状态来讲，她不赞同梭罗是正常的。在我眼里，她整篇文章中可贵的部分真的有不少。首先是她独立思考；其次是她不畏权威；再有她不偏执，她提到了最大的收获并不是看到了不同的看法，而是这本书让她置身于一个从来不曾有过的思考角度之中，这一点应该算是对作者的赞美。她已经尽她所能去评价了一本她其实并不感兴趣的书。
我和她说，也许高中或大学期间，她就会有不同的评价。她说她毫无怀疑这一点，并说很有可能高中的老师还会要求他们重读此书。我说那到时候再写个书评吧，写完再回头看看你当年曾经写过了什么吧。她同意了。
这本书，或说这类书，我觉得它们来到Susan的生活中正是时候！Susan说梭罗住的房子、体验的森林都是爱默生提供的，他们马上就要开始读爱默生的书了。而我，才把《Walden》借回来，不知道跟着她的脚步，还能跟上多少了。不管怎么样，想和孩子一起成长，想和他们交流思想，也只能这样了，尽力而为吧。深深地为自己没有读过多少书而遗憾……
另：椰子，我现在有点自己的时间了，但还是全职主妇。你曾经说过，希望全职的妈妈们写写她们的生活，现在小宝上学了，我终于可以动笔了：）
附上英文原文：
Walden
For ELA class this year, Ms. Wilkie said we would be reading a lot
of philosophy, hard philosophy. In fact, so much philosophy that we would be sick
of it by the end of the year. I didn’t believe her. I like philosophy, and I
like thinking. I was pretty sure that whatever we will read in middle I will be
able to understand. I was wrong.
The first book we read was Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Walden
is a pretty famous book. Many people nowadays love it, and they feel that it is
one of the most important books people need to read in the century. Basically,
Walden is about an experiment Thoreau conducted. Thoreau was a philosopher from
the early to mid 1800’s. He believed that the truth and purpose of life lies in
nature, and that nature is the only thing that is pure about our world.
Therefore, he conducted an experiment to see what it would be like to spend two
year living in the Walden woods, beside Walden pond.
He wrote journal entries while he was there, and later used those entries to
write a book about his experiences.
Ms. Wilkie didn’t make us read the whole book, just the most
important chapters (that’s about half the book). At first, I was pretty excited
about reading it. But as I read more and more of the book, I got more and more
bored. When I first started reading the book, I liked Thoreau a lot, but as
time wore on, my opinion on him dropped a notch. It’s good to have unique
thoughts, but his thoughts are a bit too
special.
It was interesting to read about his opinions, even though they were
very different from mine. However, it was definitely not interesting to hear
him repeat his opinion a million times. His writing style is very complicated,
making it hard for the reader to read. He said “Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity.” Yet his writing was anything but simple. Even his sentences were
complicated. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Why
couldn’t he have split this up into two or three smaller sentences that would
be way easier to understand? And this was one of the easier sentences.
Apart from the way he phrased his words, I’ve also got a problem
with the actual content of the book. Most of the things he wrote about were
either repeating what he had already written, supporting an idea that does not
need any more supports, contradicting his earlier writings, or were about
things that are not related to me at all. I don’t have too many problems with
that last one, because I know he did not write the book for me to read, and I’m
sure others will be very interested to read twenty pages about ponds, what
Thoreau did at the pond, what kind of ponds Thoreau liked, who goes to ponds,
what ponds look like, what ponds smell like, what ponds sound like, and how
wonderful ponds are.
However, I have no interest in reading about all of that above. When
he wrote this book, it was mainly for himself. If he knew that people all over
the world would be reading it like a religious textbook, he would be extremely
shocked. Maybe that was why his writing style was so complicated and boring.
The ideas he wrote about were very interesting, but all the other stuff, like
those chapters about what he did at the woods, or those chapters that had
super-detailed descriptions of what he saw/heard/smelled/etc., were boring. His
writing style reminded me of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, where
Tolkien made an interesting story sound boring, except worse.
Aside from the fact that Walden was confusing, repetitive,
and made my mind go to sleep more than once, it also held many interesting
ideas. I can understand why so many people in this time period would think this
book is very important. Walden wasn’t all a diary of Thoreau’s
experiences at the woods. It also held many of Thoreau’s ideas. And even though
it repeated those few ideas hundreds of times, that doesn’t make those ideas
any less valuable. One thing Walden reminds us of is the dangers of our
society. It talked about how our society is always busy and buzzing with
useless and meaningless things. Work, jobs, news, toys, money, wealth… they’re
all worthless in the end. We’re all going to die, and those won’t be worth
anything. However, finding out the true meaning of life is worth a lot, so we
should seek out the true meaning of life, and not care too much about the
little things.
I agree with that part. However, what came next I did not agree on.
Thoreau thought that society itself is evil. He thought that there is nothing
we can learn from society, and the best thing we can do is abandon it and go
live in the woods like him. He thought that the life that most people lead are
meaningless and tasteless, and that in order to live life out of its fullest,
we must turn to nature, and disown everything else. He thought that the sort of
life commonly accepted as “normal” has no flavor to it, and that anyone who
thinks their current life is wonderful has been decieved by the devil. I have
the exact opposite thought.
I think there is a lot we can learn from other people. I do agree
that our society has gotten a bit out of hand with all the technology and
political arguments, and that the world is full of evil. However, I also think
that it is also full of a lot of good things. We can learn a lot from it. Also,
I don’t think my current life is meaningless. There’s a lot of meaning. And I don't
think that the only way to live a true life is to surround myself in nature. I
like my life perfectly fine. Thoreau’s the one who’s decieved. He’s the one who’s
eyes are blinded, because he cannot see the wonder and goodness of our world
right now. I agree that nature is wonderful, and that now and then, we need to
take a walk in the woods. However, I also think that society and people is good
too.
Thoreau is definitely sort of weird, and in a bad way. I pity him.
He did not learn to enjoy the world and enjoy people, and by not being able to
do that, he has missed out on a lot. He has missed an essential part of life,
and he didn’t even know! He really was a loner. By separating himself from
society, he has gained a spiritual something that most people would never achieve,
but he has also missed out on some very pleasurable parts of life.
Walden was overall an interesting
experience. It made me think of things I otherwise would not have thought of,
and exposed me to new ideas. Not only that, it also managed to bore me out of
my mind. Half of it was like Thoreau’s personal diary or something, and I have
no desire to read about every little thing he did. I like some of the ideas
mentioned in Walden, and I disapproved with others. But it was
interesting to read all the same. If you don’t mind complicated books, go ahead
and read it, but if you do, I suggest you just go online and search up an
analysis of the book and skip the boring parts.
