The Three New Yorks
Elwyn Brooks White
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter -- the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last -- the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the Intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
The commuter is the queerest bird of all. The suburb he inhabits has no essential vitality of its own and is a mere roost where he comes at day's end to go to sleep. Except in rare cases, the man who lives in Mamaroneck or Little Neck or Teaneck, and works in New York, discovers nothing much about the city except the time of arrival and departure of trains and buses, and the path to a quick lunch. He is desk-bound, and has never, idly roaming in the gloaming, stumbled suddenly on Belvedere Tower in the park, seen the ramparts rise sheer from the water of the pond, and the boys along the shore fishing for minnows, girls stretched out negligently on the shelves of the rocks; he has never come suddenly on anything at all in New York as a loiterer, because he had no time between trains. He has fished in Manhattan's wallet and dug out coins, but has never listened to Manhattan's breathing, never awakened to its morning, never dropped off to sleep in its night. About 400,000 men and women come charging onto the Island each week-day morning, out of the mouths of tubes and tunnels. Not many among them have ever spent a drowsy afternoon in the great rustling oaken silence of the reading room of the Public Library, with the book elevator (like an old water wheel) spewing out books onto the trays. They tend their furnaces in Westchester and in Jersey, but have never seen the furnaces of the Bowery, the fires that burn in oil drums on zero winter nights. They may work in the financial district downtown and never see the extravagant plantings of Rockefeller Center -- the daffodils and grape hyacinths and birches of the flags trimmed to the wind on a fine morning in spring. Or they may work in a midtown office and may let a whole year swing round without sighting Governor's Island from the sea wall. The commuter dies with tremendous mileage to his credit, but he is no rover. His entrances and exits are more devious than those in a prairie-dog village; and he calmly plays bridge while his train is buried in the mud at the bottom of the East River. The Long Island Rail Road along carried forty million commuters last year; but many of them were the same fellow retracing his steps.
The terrain of New York is such that a resident sometimes travels farther, in the end, than a commuter. The journey of the composer Irving Berlin from Cherry Street in the lower East Side to an apartment uptown was through an alley and was only three or four miles in length; but it was like going three times around the world.
参考译文
三个纽约
埃尔文.布鲁克斯.怀特
孙致礼 译
大致说来，有三个纽约。首先是那些土生土长的男男女女的纽约，他们对这座城市习以为常，认为它有这样的规模和喧嚣，乃是自然而然、不可避免的。其次是家住郊区、乘公交车到市内上班的人们的纽约－－这座城市每到白天就被如蝗的人群吞噬进去，每到晚上又给吐出来。第三是外来人的纽约，他们生于他乡，到纽约来寻求机缘。在这三座充满骚动的城市中，最了不起的是最后一座－－那座被视为最终归宿的城市，视为追寻目标的城市。正是由于这第三座城市，纽约才有了紧张的秉性、诗人的气质、对艺术的执着追求、无与伦比的成就。上班族给纽约带来了潮汐般时涨时落的骚动，当地人保证了纽约的稳固和持续发展，而外来人则赋予纽约以激情。无论是从意大利来到贫民窟开小杂货店的农夫，还是从密西西比州某小镇跑出来躲避邻居的淫秽目光的年轻姑娘，还是从玉米地带满怀酸楚地拎着手稿跑来的小伙子，情况都没有什么两样：每个人都怀着初恋的激情拥抱纽约，每个人都是以冒险家的新奇目光审视纽约，每个人散发出的光和热，足以令爱迪生联合电气公司相形见绌.
上班族是天下最怪异的人。他们居住的郊区没有自身的勃勃生机，仅仅是他们晚上回来睡觉的栖息所。那些住在马马罗内克、利特尔内克、蒂内克，到纽约上班的人，除个别情况外，对这座城市了无所知，只晓得火车汽车到站离站的时间、去快餐店的路径。这些人整日伏案工作，从来没有闲暇徜徉在暮色之中，意外地走到公园里的观景塔跟前，瞧见湖中突兀而起的防护堤，沿着湖边钓米诺鱼的男孩，大大咧咧地舒展着身子躺在石台上的女孩。他们从未在纽约游游逛逛偶然遇见什么，因为他们从下火车到再上火车，这中间是没有闲工夫的。他们把手伸到曼哈顿的钱包里捞钱，抓到几个微不足道的小钱，但却从未聆听过曼哈顿的鼻息，从未在醒来时见到曼哈顿的早晨，也从未在曼哈顿的夜幕中入睡过。每个工作日的早晨，大约有40万男男女女走出地道口、隧道口，涌上曼哈顿岛。他们之中没有多少人跑到公共图书馆沉寂得只能听到沙沙声的阅览室，懒洋洋地度过一个下午，看着图书传送机像旧水轮一样，将书吐在书盘里。他们在韦斯特切斯特和泽西烧火炉，却从未见过鲍厄里街在气温降至零度的冬夜用油桶烧火取暖。他们可能在市中心的金融区工作，却从未见过洛克菲勒中心那枝繁叶茂的花木－－春光明媚的早晨，黄水仙、风信子和鸢尾花，齐崭崭地迎风摇曳。他们的办公地点可能位于商业区和居住区之间，可是一年到头也没从海堤上眺望过加弗纳斯岛。上班族一生中有惊人的行程，但是从未东游西逛过。他们进进出出的地方比草原犬鼠的地洞群还要曲曲弯弯。即使火车陷进东河底的淤泥中，他们也会若无其事地只管打桥牌。去年，仅长岛铁路就运载了4千万上班族，只不过许多人是反反复复往返乘车罢了。
纽约的地形比较特别，有时住在城里的人最终走的路可能比上班族还要远。作曲家欧文·柏林是通过一条小巷，从下东区来到住宅区公寓，原本只有三四英里路程，却好像绕着地球走了三圈。
