《瓦尔登湖·第十六章·冬天的湖·The Pond in Winter》第3节
Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here,—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven. waldenpondmap
注释摘要
梭罗在这里突然转入一段近乎狂喜的礼赞，对象是瓦尔登湖的狗鱼。狗鱼在新英格兰的湖中并不罕见，但他偏要把它写得仿佛来自另一个存在秩序。“foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life”——两层递进：先与村庄的街道拉开距离，继而连树林也不配做它的背景…