金融時(shí)報(bào):住巴黎，毀三觀

住巴黎，毀三觀

FT專欄作家Simon Kuper顯然不喜歡巴黎，他用幽默的文筆把巴黎人引以為豪的東西差不多挨個(gè)黑了一遍，而最后的結(jié)尾卻出人意料。

測(cè)試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識(shí)：

hoot[hu?t] n./v.喊叫；鳴響

snooty ['snu?t?];haughty haughty adj.傲慢自大的；目中無(wú)人的

city proper 城市市區(qū)部分

“Hell is other people.” “他人即地獄。”是讓-保爾·薩特在劇作《間隔》中廣為人知的一句臺(tái)詞。其原意簡(jiǎn)單來(lái)說(shuō)：薩特的存在主義哲學(xué)認(rèn)為“存在先于本質(zhì)”，而人如何存在決定于自己的行為，也就是說(shuō)人通過(guò)選擇自己的行為定義自己的本質(zhì)。而現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中，我們常常身不由己地被“他人”的目光所左右，甚至做出本不希望的選擇，劇中主人公就在這種情況下喊出了這句話。

aghast[?'gɑ?st] adj.吃驚的，驚駭?shù)?/p>

all-encompassing adj.無(wú)所不包的

faux pas['f?u'pɑ:] n.（法）失禮，失態(tài)

bona fide[,b?un?'faidi] adj.善意的，真誠(chéng)的

cantankerous [kæn'tæ?k(?)r?s] adj.脾氣壞的；難相處的

When a man is tired of Paris … (840 words)

As we all climbed off the Eurostar on to the platform at the Gare du Nord the other evening, an electric luggage-truck rattled straight at us, hooting angrily. Welcome to Paris.

It’s the eternal paradox of Paris: why is the world’s most charming metropolis also the most unfriendly? As the universal phrase goes, “I love Paris. I just hate Parisians.”

When I moved here in 2002, I rejected that view. I was determined to learn Parisian codes. I knew this city has a complex etiquette. I thought that once I’d learnt the importance of saying bonjour at every encounter, or of not walking into a restaurant demanding dinner at 6pm while wearing shorts, I would gradually break through Parisian rudeness.

It was my mission. More than a decade later, I can say: beneath the snooty unfriendly façade, Paris is a snooty, unfriendly city. I can even explain why.

A good chunk of Parisian service-worker rudeness – exemplified by the luggage-truck driver – comes from the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille culminated in a national motto of liberté, égalité, fraternité, which is understood by many French service staff to mean that they should never be friendly to a customer lest that be fatally misinterpreted as submission.

Overcrowding must take some blame too. More than two million people live in Paris proper, the bit inside the périphérique ringroad. The abyss beyond the périph is vaguely imagined by haughty Parisians as either hell or the void or both, and dismissed as “the suburbs”. Every day, hordes of suburbanites and tourists (Paris is on some measures the most visited city on earth) feed the throng inside the city proper. That was probably what the Parisian Jean-Paul Sartre meant by, “Hell is other people.”

In Paris, the only response is to fight them. Neighbours here seldom regard you as potential members of their circle. You are just people who happen to live in their building, and therefore potential sources of noise and hassle.

But the strongest explanatory variable for Parisian rudeness (and I’m aghast it’s taken me a decade to work this out) is Paris’s very perfection. If you overlay an intellectual capital on an artistic and fashion capital in a former royal capital, all of it in the country that invented how to eat, there are so many codes governing so many behaviours that the demands of sophistication become all-encompassing. No other city makes so many requirements. Every moment of their lives, even at family breakfast or in bed, Parisians must observe the rules that govern eating, talking, thinking, dressing, making love et cetera. There’s even a generally approved life-long pose: never seem surprised; bored is much better.

In Paris, Big Brother (often in the form of oneself or one’s spouse) is always watching to see if you commit a faux pas. Whenever you do, he’ll let you know – perhaps with a silence, or a pained glance away. There is no intimate Paris where you can slob out in old underpants. (Admittedly, Parisian dress codes are less strict than in, say, Italy. Most of the time here it’s OK to look dowdy – though never weird.) In all, Paris is a nightmare of sophistication. Only in one field of local endeavour do no rules apply: driving.

Nor are Parisians allowed to laugh off their codes. My native informant Sophie-Caroline de Margerie – top civil servant, writer, fashionable Parisienne et cetera – says: “I’ve never met a bona fide French eccentric.” There is a right way to do everything in Paris, and it was probably decided before you were born. All the French provincials, Africans and romantics from everywhere who land here battle to adapt, sometimes forever. You try to be Parisian, to meet all the standards of perfection that mark this city, and so you sneer at anyone who falls short – for instance, by sitting down at the next restaurant table wearing the wrong jacket. Paris is a sneer. This attitude was summed up by the definitive Parisian film, Dîner de Cons (“Dinner of Fools”, 1998): a bunch of stylish Parisians hold a weekly dinner to which they each invite an unknowing con, “a fool”, in order to crow over their cons’ appearance, tastes, conversation etc. Parisian life is like a dîner de cons except that nobody would ever really invite the poor cons to dinner.

Especially in this most miserable month, when everyone has flu and you walk the children to school in the dark, you think: well, where else to go? Every city I’ve spent longer periods in has drawbacks. In New York it’s the battle for status that ceases only while you (briefly) sleep.

In Miami it’s the near absence of sentient conversation. Boston’s climate is uninhabitable. London is so big, grimy and unwieldy you often end the day feeling you have just paid a fortune to run a marathon in a coal mine. And so on. So I stay here (Paris has certain redeeming features), and every day I become older, ruder and more cantankerous.

請(qǐng)根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測(cè)題目：

1.The columnist describes "the eternal paradox of Paris", what is it?

A. Paris is the world’s most charming metropolis, also the most unfriendly.

B. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" is understood by many service staff as "never be friendly to a customer".

C. Beneath the snooty unfriendly façade, Paris is actually very charming.

D. Parisians living inside the ringroad believe that "Hell is other people".

答案(1)

2.Why in Paris, are there so many codes governing so many behaviours?

A. Paris is a capital filled with intellectuals.

B. Paris is a capital of artistic lifestyles and fashions.

C. Paris is a former royal capital.

D. All of above combined.

答案(2)

3.What can we learn from the movie "Dinner of Fools" and "the country that invented how to eat"?

A. France is the country that invented cooking.

B. Parisians enjoy provicial cuisine.

C. Parisians have a tradition of inviting the poor to dinner.

D. French people enjoy mocking English food.

答案(3)

4.The columnist describes drawbacks about some cities he has lived in.

Which of the following is correct?

A. Miami's weather is too hot.

B. People in Boston are indifferent.

C. In New York people battle for status everyday.

D. London's price level is high but the air is cleaner.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：A.Paris is the world’s most charming metropolis, also the most unfriendly.

解釋：作者在第二段提出了這個(gè)看法，隨后的文章由此展開(kāi)。B是作者的一句半嚴(yán)肅半玩笑的話，用來(lái)嘲笑那些態(tài)度惡劣的服務(wù)業(yè)人員。C與作者觀點(diǎn)相反，他說(shuō)他花了10年才搞懂，原來(lái)巴黎的傲慢和冷漠的外表下，藏著的確實(shí)是一顆傲慢冷漠的心。D是沒(méi)有根據(jù)的。作者原意是：巴黎市中心的人，本來(lái)就自命清高，對(duì)住市郊的人和外地游客每天成群的涌入市區(qū)更是感到不爽，這也許可以用“他人即地獄”的字面意來(lái)描述吧。

(2) 答案：D.All of above combined.

解釋：ABC都是正確的。Paris is a nightmare of sophistication.因?yàn)樗瑫r(shí)是三種首都，并且是一個(gè)"自認(rèn)為發(fā)明了如何吃飯"的國(guó)家首都。巴黎人每分每秒的生活都要被一些規(guī)矩所支配，eating, talking, thinking, dressing，只有一個(gè)例外，那就是如何開(kāi)車。 作者順便吐槽了巴黎的交通。

(3) 答案：D.French people enjoy mocking English food.

解釋：A顯然是夸張的說(shuō)法，是作者為了嘲笑法國(guó)人的自戀——尤其是在美食上的自戀。——因此D也就可想而知。B在文中并未出現(xiàn)，不過(guò)根據(jù)上下文推斷，巴黎人估計(jì)是只許“外省人”喜歡巴黎的美食，而不大愿意曲下身段去欣賞外地的美食.C也是不存在的，這只是一部電影中描述巴黎人的情景，說(shuō)他們愛(ài)嘲笑各種“沒(méi)有巴黎范兒”的人。

(4) 答案：C.In New York people battle for status everyday.

解釋：AB文中未提到。作者原意是邁阿密人給人一副事不關(guān)己高高掛起的姿態(tài)，波士頓的天氣太差了（虧他還是英國(guó)人）， 紐約人簡(jiǎn)直是《金錢永不眠》，而住在倫敦，就像是傾家蕩產(chǎn)來(lái)參加煤礦中的馬拉松一樣。

在這里作者筆鋒一轉(zhuǎn)，So I stay here (in Paris)…

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