《瓦尔登湖·第四章·声音·Sounds》第5节
“In truth, our village has become a butt / For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o’er / Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is—Concord.” The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer’s yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here’s your pay for them! screams the countryman’s whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the city’s walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.
注释摘要
这段文字以一段刻意调侃的打油诗开场。梭罗把火车头称为“fleet railroad shaft”，把哨声叫作“soothing sound”，然后又点出它在文本里被替换成了自己家乡的名字“Concord”——既是地名，也暗指“和谐”或“和声”。他其实是把那个时代最喧闹、最具侵犯性的机械声音，强行写成了田园诗里平静的音响。这是一种自嘲式的重新命名，不是真心夸…