You ransack your budget of historic facts much as you would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag-bag. You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top—you saw it there the other day when you were looking up the beginnings of the Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds and ends of knowledge—revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of government; but Huss—where is he? You are amazed at all the things you know which are not on the examination paper. In desperation you seize the budget and dump everything out, and there in a corner is your man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious of the catastrophe which he has brought upon you.
于是,在你储备的历史事件中,你上下求索,其过程好似在一个塞满碎布头的口袋中寻找一小块丝绸。你确信这个信息就在距你思维阶梯顶端不远的地方——你曾在查找“宗教改革运动”初期历史时见到过它。但是现在它究竟藏在哪里?于是,你翻出所有零零碎碎的知识储备——宗教革命,教会分裂,集体屠杀,政权体制——可是“哈斯”这个人在哪里呢?你会惊奇地发现,你所了解的那些事件并没有在试卷上表现出来。失望之余,你只得攫取知识储备,还要把你所学过的每一样东西悉数查验,终于,你要找的人就躲藏在一个角落里——他静静地沉浸在自己的思绪之中,全然没有意识到加负在他人身上的精神磨难。
Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.
就在这时,监考官却通知你考试结束时间已到。于是,怀着满腔愤懑,你一脚把思维的残片踢到角落里;你的头脑里塞满了革命性的计划——你想废除教授们的神圣特权,为什么他们能随意提问而无须经过被提问者的同意?
It comes over me that in the last two or three pages of this chapter I have used figures which will turn the laugh against me. Ah, here they are—the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting about before me, pointing to the bull in the china shop assailed by hailstones and the bugbears with pale looks, an unanalyzed species! Let them mock on.
在这一章的最后两三页里,我已经隐约提到了几个人物——他们一定会转过身来嘲笑我。哈,这正是他们的风格——在我面前趾高气扬,用混合了种种隐喻的言辞冷嘲热讽;他们用手指着那头因遭受冰雹袭击而闯进瓷器店的公牛,以及各种面色惨白的怪物,说这是一些未经鉴别的物种!让他们嘲笑去吧。
来源:可可英语 //m.moreplr.com/Article/201709/523438.shtml