Mr. Imagination
想象大师
George Kent
乔治·肯特
Back in the 1880s, a big red-bearded man came to call one day on the French Minister of Education. The receptionist looked at the card and his face lighted up. "Monsieur Verne," he said reverently, "pray be seated. With all the traveling you do, you must be tired."
时间回到19世纪80年代。一个留着红胡子的大个子来拜访法国教育部长。接待员看了看他的名片,面露喜色。“凡尔纳先生,”他恭敬地说,“快请坐。您经历了那么多次的旅行,肯定很累了吧。”
Jules Verne should have been worn out. He had gone around the world 100 times or more—once in eighty days. He had voyaged 60,000 miles under the sea, whizzed around the moon, hitchhiked on comets, explored the center of the earth, chatted with cannibals in Africa and Bushmen in Australia. There was very little of the world's geography that Jules Verne, the writer, had not visited.
儒勒·凡尔纳的确应该累坏了。凭借想象力,他环游世界至少有100次了——有一次是在80天内完成的。他在海底航行了60000英里,急速掠过月球,在彗星上搭过便车,去地心探险,和非洲的食人族、澳洲的丛林居民交谈。世界上几乎没有什么地方是作家儒勒·凡尔纳凭着想象力没有去过的。
Jules Verne, the man, was a stay-at-home. If he was tired it was merely writer's cramp. For forty years, he sat in a small room of the red brick tower of his home, in Amiens, turning out, year in, year out, one book every six months—more than 100 altogether. Verne himself had made visits around Europe and North Africa, and one six-week tour of New York State. And that was all. The world's most extraordinary tourist spent less than one of his seventy-seven years on voyage.
儒勒·凡尔纳本人却是个不爱出门的人。如果他感到疲倦,那只不过是长时间写作导致的手指抽筋罢了。40年来,他一直都待在位于亚眠的家中的那个红砖楼的一间小屋子里,日复一日、年复一年地以每半年出一本书的速度进行着创作——总共出了100多本。凡尔纳本人曾游览过欧洲和北非,还曾在纽约州玩了六个星期。这就是他全部的旅行了。这个世界上最了不起的旅行家活了77岁,真正花在旅行上的时间却还不足一年。