【雅思备考IELTS】美文阅读 狄更斯《双城记》A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Reading Materials for IELTS (from books that I love)

Episode 1
2024/7/14
By James Lee

说明： 提高阅读成绩，推荐读狄更斯（Charles Dickens）的作品，他的代表作主要包括：《雾都孤儿Oliver Twist》（1837年）、《圣诞颂歌 A Christmas Carol》（1843年）、《艰难时世Hard Times》（1854年）、《双城记A Tale of Two Cities》（1859年）、《远大前程Great Expectations》（1860年），等等。他作为19世纪古典时期的英国作家，其作品绝对称得上是阅读材料的范本：刻板、一板一眼、没有任何老美可能犯的“习惯性的语法错误”。本次带来一些《双城记A Tale of Two Cities》中的经典、精彩片段。敬请欣赏、品读。值得一提的是，《双城记》中（特别是开头和结尾的部分）的文字被许多读者奉为传世经典，诺兰导演（Christopher Nolan）在他2012年的著名电影《蝙蝠侠：黑暗骑士崛起》（Batman: The Dark Knight Rises）结尾处就直接通过戈登局长（Jim Gordon，由Gary Oldman饰演）之口，复述了主人公西德尼·卡顿（Sydney Carton）的话：

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From: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812~1870)
Book 1: Recalled to Life, Chapter 1: The Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way——in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison（最高级） only.
简单点评： 经典中的经典，全书最开篇，连续运用一组排比句，体现当前时代（注：本书的时代设定为1790年前后的法国大革命（The French Revolution）的荒唐无稽，对比强烈鲜明。

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From: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812~1870)
Book 1: Recalled to Life, Chapter 5: The Wine-shop
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees——BLOOD.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.
简单点评： 狄更斯的场景描写能力，堆叠词汇和排比句。同时通过洒掉的红酒来比喻鲜血，烘托大革命即将来临前，弥漫在巴黎郊区的紧张气氛。

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From: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812~1870)
Book 1: Recalled to Life, Chapter 5: The Wine-shop
Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
简单点评： 同样典型的Dickens式的排比句，这次将饥饿拟人化处理。

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From: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812~1870)
Book 2: The Golden Thread, Chapter 9: The Gorgon’s Head
The Gorgon（神话中的九头蛇女，被她注视会石化） had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow on Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified（石化）. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
“DRIVE HIM FAST TO HIS TOMB. THIS, FROM JACQUES（雅克，法国大革命时期的“同志”叫法）.”
简单点评： 被刺杀，被“石化”。

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From: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1812~1870)
Book 3: The Track of a Storm, Chapter 15: The Footsteps Die Out for Ever
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place——then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement——and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
简单点评： 主人公（Sydney Carton）最后上断头台后，作者以他的口吻做的独白。