《瓦尔登湖·第十一章·更高的法则·Higher Laws》第11节
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day’s work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him,—Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.—But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.
注释摘要
这段落在意象上完成了一次剧烈的抬升：从饮食的净与不净、肉食的粗鄙与素食的清简，突然跃入一个将身体等同于庙宇的隐喻。梭罗说，每个人都在为自己所敬拜的神祇建造一座殿宇，这座殿宇就是他的身体。风格无可推诿地属于建造者自己，他不能靠雕凿大理石来逃避这项义务——大理石在这里指的是外在的、不属于自身血肉的材料，也许暗指那些试图通过外在的宗教形式或社会装饰来装扮自己的人…