placeintroduction英语作文（英语阅读精讲landscapeplace）

It's Not Easy to Make Landscape a Place: You Have to Feel It

有爱的风景是故乡

ByFiona Stafford 棣棠 译注

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中国人相信风水，有地灵人杰之说。一城一地，不仅要看其地理地貌，是否山清水秀，还要看人文地貌，是否人才辈出。但凡福地，自有文人雅士着墨挥毫，书之画之，用“个人秘史”编制出“地方志”，汇聚成这一城一地的灵气。但而今，城墙地界都被一一打破，物理上的隔阂消失了，认知上也更像海纳百川，融会贯通，即使过客，亦能为“地方志”填上有意义的一笔。

There is a big difference between “place” and “landscape”, even though the words are often used interchangeably1. The original meaning of “landscape” came from 17th-century artistic discourse. It referred to “a picture representing natural inland scenery” and the term has continued to be associated with visual perceptions of land. Regardless of the scope of its perspective, whether small or large, landscape includes awareness of how the land has been shaped by human or natural agencies. It is not “wilderness”. It is not “pristine”.2 “Place” is more personal and multidimensional altogether. It is temporal as well as spatial, because it thickens with personal memories, local stories, history and archaeology.3 It’s not just a question of how things look, but of how things feel to those who know it well.

place和landscape之间有很大的区别，尽管这两个词常常可以互换使用。landscape的词源是17世纪的艺术语汇，意为“一幅表现内陆自然风光的画面”，这一词汇一直以来与人们对陆地的视觉感受相关。不论视角范围大小， landscape包含了一种认知，即陆地是如何被人为或者自然之力所塑造的，既不是“荒山野岭”，也不是“未凿之地”。 place总而言之则更私人化，更具层次，与时空相关，随着个人记忆、当地轶事、历史和考古而愈发厚重；问题的核心不是一个地方看起来如何，而是它让那些熟知它的人们感受如何。

1. interchangeably: 可互换地，可交替地。

2. pristine: 未开发的，处于原始状态的。

3. temporal: 暂时的，当时的； spatial:存在于空间的，受空间条件限制的；archaeology: 考古学。

Postcodes and map coordinates offer precise locations, but don’t fully distinguish one place from another. The feelings associated with local stories and histories become attached to particular features—triumph or humiliation on the school sports field; tender trysts beneath the cherry trees; the proud hotel that once opened its doors to celebrity guests; the house wounded by the fatal fire.4 The stories that can cluster around ordinary features usually remain invisible to outsiders, and even events startling enough to hit the national headlines rapidly become yesterday’s news.5 People passing through see little of the life within those streets. For those looking on from a distance, buildings are houses, not homes. They might be architectural gems in stunning surroundings,6 but they won’t possess the intimate associations that transform landscape into place.

邮编和地图坐标虽然能提供准确的位置，但不能详尽区分各地的不同。一些特殊的地点往往承载着与地方轶事和历史相关的感悟：学校运动场上的成败荣辱、樱桃树下的柔情秘会、因接待过名人贵宾而门庭荣光的酒店、遭受大火重创的宅子。这些围绕特定地点展开的故事往往不为外人所见，甚至那些登上全国媒体头条的惊人事件也会迅速沦为昨日旧闻。往来路过的人们几乎窥见不到街头巷尾中的生活。对于那些从远处旁观之人，建筑只是一座座房子，而不是一个个家庭。那些屋宇可能是绝佳环境中的上乘建筑，但并不具备那些将landscape转变为place的亲密关系。

4. triumph: 胜利，成功； humiliation:耻辱；蒙羞； feature: 地形，地貌； tryst: 幽会，约会； fatal: 重大的，毁灭性的。

5. cluster: 使聚集； startling: 令人吃惊的，触目惊心的。

6. gem: 宝石； stunning: 极美的，绝妙的。

威廉·华兹华斯

William Wordsworth7 thought that landscapes should become places. He grew up in the English Lake District8, but it was personal experience and the stories of those who lived there that mattered most to Wordsworth. Many of his poems recreate the hidden lives of those who left their traces on the land; others convey vivid memories of personal experiences that altered the landscape for ever—turning it into a deeply felt place.

威廉·华兹华斯认为， landscape应该变成place。他在英格兰湖区长大，但对他而言个人经历和当地人的故事才是最重要的。他的许多诗作都重现了那些在这片土地上留下痕迹的人们的隐秘生活；还有些传达了个人经历的生动记忆，这些记忆永远地改变了landscape，将其转变成了令人感受至深的place。

7. William Wordsworth: 威廉·华兹华斯（1770—1850），英国浪漫主义诗人，与雪莱、拜伦齐名，代表作有与塞缪尔·柯尔律治合著的《抒情歌谣集》、长诗《序曲》、《漫游》等，被封为桂冠诗人（1843）。8. English Lake District: 英格兰湖区，位于英格兰西北海岸，方圆2300平方公里，因19世纪诗人华兹华斯的作品以及湖畔诗人而著称。

英格兰湖区

But though Wordsworth wrote so passionately about the region he had known since birth, its special meaning dawned on him9 fully only when he wasn’t there. His first substantial poem was written after he left the Lakes to study at Cambridge, while a very cold winter in Germany prompted his later recollections of his Lakeland boyhood in The Prelude(1850).10 It was only after a decade of restless travelling that Wordsworth returned to settle in Grasmere with his sister Dorothy,11 and then poem after poem poured out. Places can require absence, at least to be felt most deeply.

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虽然华兹华斯对那片他从出生起就了解的土地进行了激情澎湃的描写，但只有当他背井离乡时，才幡然领悟到其特殊意义之所在。他实质意义上的第一首诗是在他离开湖区前往剑桥学习时写就的，而后来有关他在湖区童年回忆的《序曲》（1850）则是在德国一个异常寒冷的冬天促成的。经过10年漂泊不定后，华兹华斯才回到格拉斯米尔，与妹妹多萝西同住，此后其诗作一首首涌现。 places有时会需要离别，至少如此才会感受至深。

……

9. dawn on sb.: 理解，意识到。

10. substantial: 实质的，内容充实的；prompt: 促进，激起。11. Grasmere: 英格兰格拉斯米尔湖区，诗人华兹华斯的故乡；Dorothy: Dorothy Wordsworth，多萝西·华兹华斯（1771—1855），英国作家、诗人，威廉·华兹华斯的妹妹。