双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史39 石膏摹制品

 
我认识一个小女孩，她总是在读到精彩之处时用手遮住书上的插图。她说：“因为我想象中的图画要比书上的插图好看得多，我可不愿我心中的图画遭到损害！”那我们能否想象出胜利女神或维纳斯女神当初的风采呢？ 
39 PLASTER CASTS石膏摹制品
 
WHEN I was a boy I used to be taken to a museum which had copies of all the great Greek sculptures, made out of plaster—plaster casts, they are called. The statues that I liked best of all, I learned afterward, were not considered so good as those I’ve told you about in the last chapter. That seems to be the way with boys. They like certain things when they are boys, and different things when they grow up. My special favorite was a statue which the label called “The Dying Gladiator.” 
“What is a gladiator? I asked. 
A gladiator, I was told, was a swordsman, and gladiators were prisoners or slaves who were made to fight each other until one or the other died—just for the amusement of a crowd of people who gathered in a field surrounded with seats, like a football stadium, to watch the sport. 
I didn’t learn till later that the label on the statue was wrong, that it should have been“The Dying Gaul” and not “The Dying Gladiator.” The Gauls were a barbaric people who lived in the country that is now France. The Gauls fought the Greeks and this Gaul was killed in battle. He wore a twisted collar around his neck—a torque, it was called. That’s how we know he was a Gaul, for Gauls wore this particular kind of collar. 
 
No.39-1　THE DYING GAUL（《垂死的高卢人》） 
This statue showed the wound in the man’s side, made by the sword, and the stony blood flowing from it. There was a card on the statue. “Don’t Touch,” but I could hardly keep from touching the sword wound from which the blood flowed. It seemed so very natural. 
“Come away,” said my mother. “It’s dreadful—a man dying. Let’s look at the Apollo Belvedere. This is one of the most beautiful statues of a man ever made.” 
“Is that a man?” I exclaimed. “He looks like a woman.” 
“That’s just because he has long hair and it is put up on the top of his head in the way many Greek men wore their hair.” 
Apollo, as I’ve told you, was the Sun God and the handsomest of all the Greek gods. We don’t know what he is supposed to be doing in this statue. Some say he was holding a bow in his left hand and had just pulled the bowstring with his right hand and shot a dreadful dragon-like serpent called a Python that killed every one who came near him. Others say Apollo was holding the head of Medusa in his left hand, to turn his enemy into stone. Apollo, Minerva, and Perseus all had copies of Medusa’s head to kill their enemies with. 
“Belvedere” means “beautiful to see,” but the Apollo is called Belvedere not because he was beautiful to see but because the room in which the statue stands now in the Vatican Museum in Rome is called the Belvedere Room. 
 
No.39-2　THE APOLLO BELVEDERE（《贝尔维德尔的阿波罗》） 
But I was more interested in the statues that told a story, especially if the story seemed to be something terrible. There was a big statue of three men caught in the coils of two huge serpents. The sign on it said, “Laocoön and His Two Sons.” Laocoön (Layock’o-on) was Trojan priest who told his people that the Greeks were putting over a trick on them. Just then two huge snakes attacked Laocoön’s sons. He went to save them and all three were killed by the serpents. The people believed this was a sign that Laocoön was not telling the truth about their enemy, though it afterward turned out—too late—that he was right. Not one but three sculptors are said to have made this statue. 
Why is it that some people, especially boys, like to see pictures and statues of suffering and dying? I used to, but now I wouldn’t have a picture or a statue of such a thing in my house. It is too unpleasant to have around. But in olden times many people were bloodthirsty and loved to see killings, and statues of killing and suffering. They went to fights and took their luncheons along to eat while they watched and gloated over the fighting and especially over fights that ended in death. There are still people who like to see bull-fights and to visit slaughter-houses. 
 
No.39-3　LAOCOÖN（《拉奥孔》） 
Courtesy of The University Prints 
But there was one little statue I’ve always liked. It is not the statue of a god or a mythical person—not even of a grown-up. It is of a boy pulling a thorn out of his bare foot, and it shows us that boys who go bare-footed nowadays are very much like boys who went bare-footed two thousand years ago. 
One other statue, made just before Christ was born, was so huge that there was no plaster cast of it. It was a bronze giant statue of the Sun God, about one hundred feet high, and was so placed that the god’s legs straddled the entrance to a harbor in the island of Rhodes and ships went in and out of the harbor between the legs. It was called the Colossus of Rhodes. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. For some reason, perhaps in an earthquake, the Colossus fell and the broken pieces were sold for junk. 
 
No.39-4　BOY WITH THORN（《拔刺的男孩》） 
Courtesy of The University Prints