This chapter tells us Su’s family were about to set out for the capital. They took the voyage instead of going by land. It is a journey with beauty and hazards. The author wielded his pen to describe the nature’s wonders concretely, including how rapid the river is and what personality the natives near the bank are.
3 interesting sentences
1.The Yangtse Gorges, majestic in their beauty and exciting in hazards for the travelers, are a stretch of two hundred and twenty miles of the river where the torrents swirl in and out through the rocky precipices, with hidden rocks beneath the water, requiring a great dexterity on the part of the boatman.
这句话高度凝练,概括了Yangtse Gorge的基本情况和主要特征(险、美)。读时有水流湍急的画面出现在眼前,后面的boatman又让人引起了对船夫弄潮的联想,让眼前的画面更生动丰富了。同时句子所含的语法非常丰富,又有节奏感(beauty and hazards;in and out)
2. Any traveler surviving the sudden trip around the Jar Of Human Herrings would feel toward the old boatman as toward his second father.
读这句时笑出来了。经历了前面那么多“一峡更比一峡险”,船只进入风平浪静的水面。这句话既写出了再生父母的意思,同时语气又比较轻松,让人读前文时的那种紧张感一下子放松下来。
3. Su Tungpo felt like a thoroughbred impatiently pawing the ground, ready to break into whirlwind speed to conquer the world.
对这句话印象比较深是因为这篇因为写水、写峡谷用了很多跟旋转有关的词。比如说vortex, swirl, whirlpool等等。这里形容苏东坡也用了whirl 觉得很亲切。跟前面对应了起来。