摘自《英语学习》2005年第8期
曾经的欧洲小国，如今的经济新军。今天，在市井繁华的爱尔兰，昔日留痕依旧可寻。
By Jan Morris
∷启侃 选注
Ireland is a seriously rich country now, not only the second most expensive within the euro currency zone(after Finland) but also the one most likely, economists say, to catch up with the United States in average personal wealth.2 The cars that fill Dublin fill all the cities of Ireland, and swarm into every last cranny of the countryside, so that wherever you drive, up the remotest mountain lane, down the narrowest track, there is likely to be another car in the rearview mirror.3
Ireland was a poor backwater, weighed down by its history.4 The next year, as it seems, it had become a brilliantly successful young state, a natural leader for all the small and minority nations of the world, and the first in Europe--would you believe it--to ban smoking from all workplaces, including pubs.
Thousands upon thousands of new houses have transformed the look of Ireland. Around every town they lie in regimented swaths, housing the multitudes who have escaped the old rural way of life; speckled all over the landscape are bungalows and villas of grander aspiration.5 One and all6 seem brand-new. Even ancient cottages are spanking with fresh whitewash, plastic window frames and burglar alarms,7 and no new house in the world is half so white, neat and spotless as a new house in Ireland.
It is a social as well as an economic revolution, but it does not strike me as a triumph of the nouveaux riches8. It is more like an emancipation--more like Australia in the years when immigrants from Continental Europe abruptly altered the mores of the country after World War II.9
Tourism, of course, is mighty in Ireland (where isn’t it?), but it hasn’t overwhelmed the place. Sites like the Ring of Kerry, which were beset by jaunting cars in Victorian times, are congested with tour buses now; aging folk musicians haunt the locations once beloved of watercolorists; but few places in Ireland have become unbearably touristy.10
I suspect, all the same, that the Irish care more than they once did about what the world thinks of them. Keeping Ireland Tidy has become such a national preoccupation that when I drove into Aughrim,11 for years the Tidiest Village in County Wicklow, I nearly turned and fled, so terrifyingly tidy was it. When Tidiness is all around you, you have to skulk shamefaced in the street outside the pub if you want to have a smoke with your pint.12
I am not complaining. Plenty of Irish people are, of course, mourning lost traditions, worried about drugs and crime. Nevertheless, to an outsider, what has happened to Ireland seems a 21st-century benediction13. It is a rare kind of epiphany: the moment when an entire nation, for so long a victim of cruel circumstance, is seizing history for itself at last, and starting all over again.14
The Dublin Spire15 breaks every rule of Irish convention except that it stands on the site of the old Nelson Pillar, blown up by Irish republicans in 1966. It is far too tall for its setting, and makes no attempt to blend with its handsome Georgian16 environment. Yet, to my mind, it is absolutely right for its place and its moment.
曾经的欧洲小国，如今的经济新军。今天，在市井繁华的爱尔兰，昔日留痕依旧可寻。
By Jan Morris
∷启侃 选注
Ireland is a seriously rich country now, not only the second most expensive within the euro currency zone(after Finland) but also the one most likely, economists say, to catch up with the United States in average personal wealth.2 The cars that fill Dublin fill all the cities of Ireland, and swarm into every last cranny of the countryside, so that wherever you drive, up the remotest mountain lane, down the narrowest track, there is likely to be another car in the rearview mirror.3
Ireland was a poor backwater, weighed down by its history.4 The next year, as it seems, it had become a brilliantly successful young state, a natural leader for all the small and minority nations of the world, and the first in Europe--would you believe it--to ban smoking from all workplaces, including pubs.
Thousands upon thousands of new houses have transformed the look of Ireland. Around every town they lie in regimented swaths, housing the multitudes who have escaped the old rural way of life; speckled all over the landscape are bungalows and villas of grander aspiration.5 One and all6 seem brand-new. Even ancient cottages are spanking with fresh whitewash, plastic window frames and burglar alarms,7 and no new house in the world is half so white, neat and spotless as a new house in Ireland.
It is a social as well as an economic revolution, but it does not strike me as a triumph of the nouveaux riches8. It is more like an emancipation--more like Australia in the years when immigrants from Continental Europe abruptly altered the mores of the country after World War II.9
Tourism, of course, is mighty in Ireland (where isn’t it?), but it hasn’t overwhelmed the place. Sites like the Ring of Kerry, which were beset by jaunting cars in Victorian times, are congested with tour buses now; aging folk musicians haunt the locations once beloved of watercolorists; but few places in Ireland have become unbearably touristy.10
I suspect, all the same, that the Irish care more than they once did about what the world thinks of them. Keeping Ireland Tidy has become such a national preoccupation that when I drove into Aughrim,11 for years the Tidiest Village in County Wicklow, I nearly turned and fled, so terrifyingly tidy was it. When Tidiness is all around you, you have to skulk shamefaced in the street outside the pub if you want to have a smoke with your pint.12
I am not complaining. Plenty of Irish people are, of course, mourning lost traditions, worried about drugs and crime. Nevertheless, to an outsider, what has happened to Ireland seems a 21st-century benediction13. It is a rare kind of epiphany: the moment when an entire nation, for so long a victim of cruel circumstance, is seizing history for itself at last, and starting all over again.14
The Dublin Spire15 breaks every rule of Irish convention except that it stands on the site of the old Nelson Pillar, blown up by Irish republicans in 1966. It is far too tall for its setting, and makes no attempt to blend with its handsome Georgian16 environment. Yet, to my mind, it is absolutely right for its place and its moment.
