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
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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.
In the village of Borris, in County Carlow, there is a pub, O’Shea’s, which is a more immediate exhibition of constancy. It has been run by members of the O’Shea family since 1934, and began as one of those small emporiums--saloon, grocer and hardware store all in one--that used to be characteristic of the Irish country town.¹⁷ The O’Shea business has never been disconcerted by progress. It has developed into a minisupermarket, but is true as ever to its origins: behind the bar counter are stacked¹⁸ ancient packets of nails, or wire, or candles, which look as if they have been there since the store began, but which are still for sale, so the present Mr. O’Shea assures me, "If any customer asks." Children merrily sit on bar stools, and if you happened to look in uninformed, you might think nothing much had changed in Ireland since the 1950’s.
Not that nostalgia is rampant in this country.¹⁹ No one has spoken to me about any good old days. In the country towns especially, nevertheless, one feels the presence of the past.²⁰ The suburbs spread out all around, but in the town square the shops are still family concerns. And in the hotel, middle-aged women in flowered frocks still gossip hilariously over their coffee, below portraits of the heroes who lodged there long ago.²¹
In Dublin, the Protestant Church of St. Andrew has been turned into a tourist office, for the remains have almost vanished of the Protestant ascendancy.²² If you want a last taste of it, try the village of Castletownshend, down on the Cork coast. There, from the 17th to the 20th centuries, three or four landed Anglo-Irish families were dominant, and their church, St. Barrahane’s, is redolent of their presence: enormous plaques commemorate admirals, Etonians, light dragoons, generals of the Bombay Army or aides-de-camp to Queen Victoria.²³
Yet wander this island for a week or two, through its legendary haze²⁴ of mist and sunshine, fact and fiction, and you will find the old Ireland living on. They are still singing, talking, drinking and playing the fiddle in the pubs of Galway²⁵--and if the weather is fine, still smoking on the sidewalks outside. They are still making grand fruitcake and marmalade to sell at the village hall.²⁶
Thrift in Ireland used to mean a bag of coins under the bed, or a miser in a short story, it is now expressed in equities and mortgage rates, and the foreign money that pours into Ireland comes because it is expected to be safe and multiply.²⁷
I went back to the Dublin Spire before I left, and asked a passer-by what she thought of the monument, and whether she considered it better represented the soil or the soul of Ireland. I had chosen her well, for she replied fluently: "It’s a meaningless device, that’s what it is, an awful waste of public money, a disgrace, so it is. And if I may say so, my dear, as to your second question, about the soil and the soul, that’s a foolish thing to ask--what would the one be without the other?" And away she briskly stepped, swinging her shopping bag, in the direction of the General Post Office.
You’ve made that woman up, I hear you saying, that woman is pure invention.²⁸ Ah yes, and so she is, so she is--but only just²⁹.■
1. brash: 充满新鲜活力的。
2. 爱尔兰现在是一个不折不扣的富裕国家，不仅是欧元区内的第二大高消费国（仅次于芬兰），而且，据经济学家预测，在人均财富方面，爱尔兰最有可能赶上美国。
3. Dublin: 都柏林，爱尔兰共和国首都；swarm (into): 涌入；cranny: 不引人注意的角落；rearview mirror: （车辆上的）后视镜。
4. backwater: （与世隔绝、未经开发）的地方；weigh down: 压弯，压倒。
5. 每个城镇的住房都布局有致，里面住着的人们已脱离了旧式的乡村生活方式；小屋和别墅点缀其中，这是拥有更大志向的人们居住的。regiment: 使标准化；swath: 细长的列；bungalow: 平房，小屋；villa: 别墅。
6. one and all: 个个都，全都。
7. spanking: 〈口〉好看的；whitewash: 白色涂料；burglar alarm: 防盗报警器。
8. nouveau riche: （复数：nouveaux riches)〈法〉暴发户。
9. 这更像是一次解放——更像二战后因为欧洲大陆移民的到来而民风陡变的澳大利亚。mores: 民德，风俗。
10. 像克里环这样的地方，在维多利亚时代就曾挤满了敞篷马车，如今则被旅游巴士堵得水泄不通；上了年纪的民间乐手流连于那些水彩画家曾钟爱的场所；不过，在爱尔兰，不堪旅游重负的地方还寥寥无几。Ring of Kerry: 克里环，爱尔兰呈环状的西海岸风景区；beset: 阻塞；jaunting car: （爱尔兰的）双轮敞篷轻马车；congest: 拥塞，挤满；touristy: 游客熙熙攘攘的。
11. preoccupation: 使人全神贯注的事物；Aughrim: 奥赫里姆，位于爱尔兰著名的旅游风景区威克洛郡 (County Wicklow)南部。
12. skulk: 偷偷摸摸地走；pint: 一杯啤酒。
13. benediction: 祝福，幸事。
14. 这是难得的神仙显灵：对于一个长期为恶劣环境所害的国家来说，最终把握自己的历史、重新来过的时刻到了。epiphany: 神灵的显现。
15. Dublin Spire: 2003年建成，呈针形，高120米，底部只有3米宽，是为了替代1966年被爱尔兰共和军炸毁的纳尔逊纪念柱（Nelson Pillar）而建。纳尔逊（1758—1805，即Horatio Nelson），英国海军上将，曾任地中海舰队司令，在特拉法尔加角海战中大败法国—西班牙联合舰队，本人受重伤阵亡。
16. Georgian: （建筑、艺术等）乔治王朝时期风格的。
17. emporium: 市场，商店；saloon: 酒馆；hardware store: 五金店。
18. stack: 堆放。
19. 这个国家的人们并非都那么怀旧。rampant: 猖獗流传的。
20. 不过，尤其在乡村小镇，你会感觉到过去的存在。
21. 旅馆里，身穿印花连衣裙的中年妇女依然喝着咖啡，兴高采烈地闲聊，她们头顶上方挂着很久以前曾在这里住宿过的英雄们的画像。
22. 在都柏林，新教占据优势地位的痕迹几乎消失殆尽，新教的圣安德鲁教堂已变成了一个旅游办事处。Protestant: 新教徒的。新教徒指不受天主教或东正教控制的其他任何基督教徒。
23. 从17世纪到20世纪，三、四个拥有土地的盎格鲁—爱尔兰家族在那里占据着统治地位，他们的教堂——圣巴拉恩教堂——使人想起他们的存在：教堂里有纪念海军上将、伊顿公学校友、轻骑兵、孟买军将领或维多利亚女王副官的巨大匾额。redolent: 使人联想起……的；aide-de-camp: 副官。
24. haze: 烟雾。
25. fiddle: 小提琴；Galway: 高威郡，在爱尔兰西部。
26. marmalade: 橘子酱，果子酱；village hall: 乡村公所，是人们集会、活动的场所。
27. 过去在爱尔兰，节俭意味着床底下的一袋硬币，或者是短篇小说里的守财奴，而现在则表现为股票和按揭贷款利率，外资涌入爱尔兰的原因在于人们认为这里保险并能获得增值。equities: 股票。
28. make up: 杜撰，捏造；invention: 虚构。
29. only just: 刚好，恰好。