《瓦尔登湖·第二章·我居住的地方，我为何而活·Where I Lived, and What I Lived For》第4节
Old Cato, whose “De Re Rusticâ” is my “Cultivator,” says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, “When you think of getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good.” I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last. The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length; for convenience, putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里做了两件事：他先引用了老加图的《农业志》，然后用一连串意象把自己在瓦尔登湖边的居住定义为一次清醒的、对抗昏睡的实验。这段文字处在章节的转折点上，前面几页他一直在半开玩笑地讲自己如何在想象中购买农场却从不真正拥有，到这里他要把话题收束，正式让读者进入他在林中居住的记述。 老加图，也就是罗马共和国时期的政治家与作家老卡托，他的《农业志》是梭罗喜爱…