C-E : 简 . 奥斯丁的小说都是三五户人家居家度日,婚恋嫁娶的小事。因此不少中国读者不理解她何以在西方享有那么高的声誉。但一部小说开掘得深不深,艺术和思想是否有过人之处,的确不在题材大小。有人把奥斯丁的作品比作越咀嚼越有味道的橄榄。这不仅因为她的语言精彩,并小说艺术的发展有创造性的贡献,也因为她的轻快活泼的叙述实际上并不那么浅白,那么透明。史密斯夫人说过,女作家常常试图修正现存的价值秩序,改变人们对 “重要”和“不重要”的看法。也许奥斯丁的小说能教我们学会转换眼光和角度,明察到“小事”的叙述所涉及的那些不小的问题。 E-C : 翻译划线部分 I, by comparison, living in my overpriced city apartment, walking to work past putrid sacks of street garbage, paying usurious taxes to local and state governments I generally abhor, I am rated middle class. This causes me to wonder, do the measurement make sense? Are we measuring only that which is easily measured--- the numbers on the money chart --- and ignoring values more central to the good life? For my sons there is of course the rural bounty of fresh-grown vegetables, line-caught fish and the shared riches of neighbors’’ orchards and gardens. There is the unpaid baby-sitter for whose children my daughter-in-law baby-sits in return, and neighbors who barter their skills and labor. But more than that, how do you measure serenity? Sense if self? I don’t want to idealize life in small places. There are times when the outside world intrudes brutally, as when the cost of gasoline goes up or developers cast their eyes on untouched farmland. There are cruelties, there is intolerance, there are all the many vices and meannesses in small places that exist in large cities. Furthermore, it is harder to ignore them when they cannot be banished psychologically to another part of town or excused as the whims of alien groups --- when they have to be acknowledged as “part of us.” Nor do I want to belittle the opportunities for small decencies in cities --- the eruptions of one-stranger-to-another caring that always surprise and delight. But these are,sadly,more exceptions than rules and are often overwhelmed by the awful corruptions and dangers that surround us.