《瓦尔登湖·第十八章·结束语·Conclusion》第6节
I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?
注释摘要
梭罗在这段文字的开头，玩了一个漂亮的偷换概念。他先说“我不以为自己达到了晦涩”，这话看起来是自谦，实际上是在反讽那些指责他作品难懂的批评者。紧接着的“瓦尔登的冰”是一桩真实的经济事件：梭罗当年真的把瓦尔登湖的冰卖给过南方的买家，而后者嫌弃冰是蓝色的，宁可要剑桥出产的白冰。蓝色恰恰是因为冰质纯净、不含杂质，折射了光谱中波长较短的蓝光；白冰虽然好看，却带着水草…