儒琴英语咀嚼阿兰·德波顿的《旅行的艺术》(The Art of Travel) 英语用词。阿兰·德波顿(Alain de Botton)是一位出生于瑞士的英国哲学家和作家。他写的散文式的书被称为“日常生活哲学”。他的作品涉及爱情、旅行、建筑和文学，包括小说《爱情笔记》（1993）、《爱上浪漫》（1994）、《亲吻与诉说》（1995）及散文作品《拥抱逝水年华》（1997 ）、《哲学的慰藉》（2000）、《旅行的艺术》（2002）、《写给无神论者》（2012）。他的书在30个国家畅销。
Motives : III On the Exotic 2
动机：第3章: 异国情调 第2节
第2节
The word exotic has traditionally been attached to more colourful things than Dutch signs: among them, to snake charmers, harems, minarets, camels, souks and mint tea poured from a great height into a tray of small glasses by a mustachioed servant.
In the first half the nineteenth century, the term became synonymous with the Middle East. When Victor Hugo published his cycle of poems Les Orientates in 1829, he could declare in the preface, “we are all much more concerned with the Orient than ever before. The Orient has become a subject of general preoccupation – to which the author of this book has deferred.”
Hugo’s poems featured the staples of European Orientalist literature: pirates, pashas, sultans, spices, moustaches and dervishes. Characters drank mint tea from small glasses. His work found an eager audience – as did the Arabian Nights, the Orient novels of Walter Scott and Byron’s The Giaour. In January 1832, Eugene Delacroix set off for North Africa to capture the exoticism of the Orient in painting. Within three months of arriving in Tangier, he was wearing local dress and signing himself in letters to his brother as “your African”.
Even European public places were becoming more orient in appearance. On 14 September 1833, a crowd lined the banks of the Seine near Rouen and cheered as a French navy boat, the Louxor, sailed upstream to Paris on its way from Alexandria bearing, in a specially constructed hold, the giant obelisk lifted from the temple complex at Thebes, destined for a traffic island on the Place de la Concorde.
One of those standing in the crowd was a moody twelve-year-old boy named Gustave Flaubert, whose greatest wish was to leave Rouen, become a camel driven in Egypt and lose this virginity in a harem to an olive-skinned.
The twelve-year-old held Rouen – and indeed the whole of France – in profound contempt. As he put it to his schoolfriend Earnest Chevalier, he had disdain for this “good civilization” which prided itself on having produced “railways, poisons, creams tarts, royalty and the guillotine“. His life was sterile, banal and laborious“. “Often I’d like to be able to blow the heads off the passers-by,” he told his diary.”I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.” He returned repeatedly to the them of how boring it was to live in France and especially in Rouen. “Today my boredom was terrible,” he reported at the end of one bad Sunday. “How beautiful are the provinces and how chic are the comfortably off who live there. Their talk is…of taxes and road improvements. The neighbour is a wonderful institution. To be given its full social due, his position should always be written in Capitals: Neighbour”
It was as a source of relief from the prosperous pettiness and civic-mindedness of his surroundings that Flaubert contemplated the Orient. References to the Middle East pervaded his early writings and correspondence. In 《Rage et Impuissance》, a story written in 1836 when he was fifteen ( he was at school and fantasized about killing the Mayor of Rouen), the author projected his Eastern fantasies on to his central character, Monsieur Ohmlin, who longed for: “The Orient with her burning sun, her blue skies, her golden minarets…her caravans through the sands; the Orient!…the tanned olive skin of Asiatic women!”
In 1839 (Flaubert was reading Rabelais and wanted to fart loudly enough for all Rouen to hear). he wrote another storey, Les Memoires de’un fou, whose autobiographical hero looked back on a youth spent yearning for the Middle East: “I dreamt of faraway journeys through the lands of the South；I saw the Orient, her vast sands and her palaces teeming with camels wearing brass bells…I saw blue seas, a pure sky, silvery sand and women with tanned skin and fiery eyes who could whisper to me in the language of the Houris.”
Two years later(by which time Flaubert had left Rouen and was studying law in Paris, in deference to his father’s wishes), he wrote another story, Novembre , whose hero had no time for railways, bourgeois civilization or lawyers – but identified with the traders of the East instead: “Oh! To be riding now on the back of a camel, on the burning horizon, the undulating landscape stretches out into infinity…In the evening, one puts up the tents, waters the dromedaries and lights the fires to scare off the jackals that one can hear wailing far off in the desert; and in the morning, one fills the gourds at the oasis.”
In Flaubert’s mind, the word Happiness became interchangeable with the word Orient. In a moment of despair over his studies, his lack of romantic success, the expectations of his parents, the weather and the accompanying complaints of farmers ( it had been raining for two weeks and several cows had drowned in flooded fields near Rouen), Flaubert wrote to Chevalier, “My life, which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love, will turn out to be like everyone else’s – monotonous, sensible, stupid. I’ll attend law school, be admitted to the bar, and end up as a respectable assistant district attorney in a small provincial town, such as Yvetot or Dieppe…Poor madman, who dreamt of glory, love, laurels, journeys, the Orient.”
The people who lived along the coasts of North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Syria might have been surprised to learn that their land had been grouped by a young Frenchman into a vague synonym for all that was good. “Long live the sun, long live orange trees, palm trees, lotus flowers and cool pavilions paved in marble with wood-panelled chambers that talk of love!” he exclaimed . “Will I never see necropolises where, toward evening, when the camels have come to rest by their wells, hyenas howl from beneath the mummies of kings？”
As it happened, he would, for when Gustave was twenty-four, his father died unexpectedly, leaving him a fortune that allowed him to sidestep the bourgeois career and attendant small-talk about drowned cattle he had seemed destined for. He began at once to plan an Egyptian trip, assisted in the task by his friend Maxime du Camp, a fellow student who shared his passion for the East and combined it with the practical turn of mind that was a necessary requirement for anyone wishing to undertake a journey there.
The two Orient enthusiasts left Paris at the end of October 1849 and after a stormy sea crossing from Marseilles, arrived in Alexandria in the middle of November. “When we were two hours out from the coast of Egypt I went into the bow with the chief quartermaster and saw the seraglio of Abbas Pasha like a black dome on the blue of the Mediterranean,” Flaubert reported to his mother. “The sun was beating down on it. I had my first sight of the Orient through, or rather in, a glowing light that was like melted silver on the sea. Soon the shore became distinguishable, and the first thing we saw on land was a pair of camels led by their driver; then, on the dock, some Arabs peacefully fishing. Landing took place amid the most deafening uproar imaginable: negroes, negresses, camels, turbans, cudgellings to right and left, and ear-splitting guttural cries. I gulped down a whole bellyful colours, like a donkey filling himself with hay.”
重点用词注解
snake charmer： (用奏乐等方式使蛇起舞的)弄蛇人,耍蛇者
harem ：noun [ C ] /ˈher.əm/ （穆斯林住宅中的）闺阁，闺房
minaret：noun [ C ] /ˌmɪn.əˈret/ （清真寺的）宣礼塔
souk： noun [ C ]/suːk/ a market in an Arab country （阿拉伯国家的一种）露天市场
mustachioed：adjective， /məˈstæʃ.i.oʊd/having a large moustache
留髭的；留着小胡子
preoccupation： an idea or subject that someone thinks about most of the time （时常想的）想法、事情
staple：something that forms an important part of something else. 重要部分
pasha ：or pacha (ˈpɑːʃə , ˈpæʃə )noun， (formerly) a provincial governor or other high official of the Ottoman Empire or the modern Egyptian kingdom: placed after a name when used as a title. 帕夏，前称贝萧（土耳其语：paşa）是奥斯曼帝国行政系统里的高级官员，通常是总督、将军及高官。帕夏是敬语，相当于英国的“勋爵”，是埃及前共和时期地位最高的官衔。
dervish : noun [ C ]/ˈdɝː.vɪʃ/, a member of a Muslim religious group that has an energetic dance as part of its worship （伊斯兰教的）托钵僧
Walter Scott: 沃尔特·司各特(1771 – 1832），爵士，英国著名的历史小说家和诗人.
The Giaour: 拜伦写的一系列长篇叙事诗 -《异教徒》. (dʒaur) noun. derogatory (esp. in Turkey) an unbeliever; a non-Muslim
Eugene Delacroixnon: 欧仁·德拉克洛瓦，法国画家1798-1863; 是19世纪法国浪漫主义画派代表画家。
obelisk： noun [ C ] /ˈɑː.bəl.ɪsk/ 方尖碑，是古埃及的杰作之一，是古埃及崇拜太阳的纪念碑，也是除金字塔以外，古埃及文明最富有特色的象征。
the Place de la Concorde： 巴黎协和广场
moody： adjective， /ˈmuː.di/ . 心情多变的，喜怒无常的 One’s feelings and behaviour change frequently, and in particular that they often become depressed or angry without any warning
disdain: noun [ U ]/dɪsˈdeɪn/ 轻视，蔑视，鄙视 a feeling of strong dislike or disapproval of someone or something you think does not deserve respect
guillotine: noun /ˈɡɪl.ə.tiːn/ （法国发明的）断头台 a machine for beheading by means of a heavy blade that slides down in vertical guides.
banal: adjective /bəˈnɑːl/ boring, ordinary, and not original 平庸的，陈腐的
laborious: adjective, /ləˈbɔːr.i.əs/ 耗时费力的；艰巨的，艰难的 characterized by long, detailed elaboration
pettiness: noun [ U ] /ˈpet̬.i.nəs/the fact of lacking importance 琐碎; 不是很重要
civic-minded (civic-mindedness): disposed to look after civic needs and interests 关心公共事务；有公德心的
Rabelais： 弗朗索瓦·拉伯雷（Francois Rabelais，1494 -1553），文艺复兴时期法国人文主义作家之一，同时也是杰出的教育思想家。
dromedary： noun [ C ] /ˈdrɑː.mə.der.i/ a type of camel with one hump on its back 单峰驼
jackal: noun [ C ]/ˈdʒæk.əl/ 豺，胡狼
necropolis: noun [ C ] /nekˈrɑː.əl.ɪs/ an ancient cemetery 古冢，古代坟场
hyena: noun [ C ] /haɪˈiː.nə/ 鬣狗
attendant: adjective, coming with a stated thing or resulting from it 伴随的；随之而产生的
turn of mind: a particular way of thinking 一种特殊的思维方式
seraglio :/səˈraɪ/ (formerly) the harem of a Muslim house or palace;a sultan’s palace, esp in the former Turkish empire 苏丹的宫殿(尤指前土耳其帝国的)
Abbas Pasha: 阿巴斯一世·希里米帕夏（Abbas I），(1813∼1854.7.13，埃及 本哈) 奥斯曼人统治下的埃及总督（1849年起）。他只是名义上臣属于奥斯曼帝国的苏丹，事实上是一名独立统治者(Baidu)
cudgelling: beat with a cudgel 用棍棒殴打 /ˈkʌdʒ.əl/