2024年1月12日发(作者：摄影器材价格表)

Destination: College, U.S.A

By Yilu Zhao

All-Nighters with the Western World

1 In the sleepiness at the end of a library nap, I wasn’t sure where I was. I stretched out my arm

to reach for a human being, but what I grabbed was a used copy of The Odyssey, the book about

going home. My heart ached.

2 It was The library, flooded with white fluorescent light and smelling of musty books and

sweaty sneakers, was eerily quiet. My readings seemed endless. I had been admitted into a three-course, yearlong freshman program called Directed Studies, dubbed Directed Suicide by Yalies. It

was supposed to introduce us to “the splendors of Western civilization,’’ in the words of the

catalog, by force-feeding the canons of philosophy, literature and history.

3 I wanted very much to study the Western canon, because I knew nothing about it. Yes,

McDonald’s ads and Madonna posters were plastered on Shanghai streets, but few Western ideas

filtered through. We had been informed of Karl Marx’s habit of sitting at the same spot in the

British Library, for instance, but had read none of his original words. Western civilization was

different, mysterious and thus alluring. Besides, because I longed to be accepted here, I yearned

to understand American society. What better way to comprehend it than to study the very ideas

on which it is based?

4 But at , I was tired of them all: Homer, Virgil, Herodotus and Plato. Their words were dull

and the presentations difficult to follow. The professors here do not teach in the same way that

teachers in China do. Studying humanities in China means memorizing all the “correct,’’ standard

interpretations given during lectures. Here, professors ask provocative questions and let the

students argue, research and write papers on their own. At Yale, I often waited for the end-of-class “correct’’ answers, which never came.

5 Learning humanities was secure repetition in China, but it was shaky originality here. And it

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could be even shakier for me. The name Agamemnon was impossibly long to pronounce, and as a

result I didn’t recognize it when we were discussing him in the seminars. I had written my first

English essay ever just a year earlier, when applying to colleges, and now came the papers

analyzing the canons. And I simply didn’t write in English fast enough to take notes in classes.

6 I hoped my diligence would make up for lack of preparation. On weekend nights, when my

American roommates were out on dates, I would tell them I had planned a date with Dante or

Aristotle. (They didn’t think it was funny.)

7 On one of those weekend nights, I wrote a paper on Aeneas, the protagonist of The Aeneid,

who was destined to found Rome but reluctant to leave behind his native Troy.” Aeneas agonizes,’’

I wrote. “He hesitates. Natural instincts call him to stick to the past, while at the same time, he

feels obligated to obey his father’s instructions for the future. His present life is split, pulled apart

by the bygone days and by the days to come.’’ I saw myself in what I wrote.

8 During calls home every two weeks, my mother pleaded with me to take chemistry or biology.

Science was the same everywhere, she said. And I, like everybody else from China, was well

prepared in math, physics and chemistry. (To graduate from a standard six-year Chinese high

school, one needs to take five years of physics, four years of chemistry and three years of biology.)

9 Instead, I visited the writing tutor — there is one in every undergraduate residential hall — for

every paper I turned in. My papers were always written days before they were due. I lingered

after classes to question professors. My classmates lent me their notes so I could learn the skill of

note-taking in English.

10 By the time I missed home so much that soup dumplings and sautéed eels popped up in my

head as I read, Nietzsche had replaced Plato on the chronological reading list and Flaubert Homer.

And every paper of mine came back with an A.

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目的地：美国大学

赵轶璐

通宵苦读西方经典

1 我在图书馆打盹醒来，迷糊之间不知身处何处。我伸出手去，想触摸到身边的其他人， 不料却抓到了一本旧书：《奥德赛》。这本书的主题是回家。我的心好痛。

2 这是凌晨两点。图书馆被白色日光灯照得透亮，空气中弥漫着书本的霉味和运动鞋的汗 臭，安静得令人不寒而栗。我要读的书似乎读也读不完。我选修了一个由三门课组成、持续一年的新生课程，名为“指导学习”，耶鲁学生们戏称它为“指导自杀”。根据课程介绍，其宗旨是让我们填鸭式地通读哲学、文学和历史经典，了解“西方文明的辉煌”。

3 我很想学习西方经典名著，因为我对其一无所知。上海街头的确到处张贴着麦当劳的广告和麦当娜的海报，但西方思想很少渗透过来。例如，我们得知，马克思习惯坐在大英图书馆的同一个位置看书，但我们从未读过他的原作。西方文明跟我们的文明不一样，显得神秘并因此诱人。此外，因为我渴望被美国社会接纳，所以我很想对它有所理解。而要理解它， 最好的办法难道不是研究它赖以存在的理念吗？

4 然而，在凌晨两点的时候，我烦透了他们：荷马、维吉尔、希罗多德和柏拉图。他们的 语言乏味，表达艰涩。这里的教授的教学方法跟中国教师不一样。在中国，学习人文学科意 味着牢记所有上课时给出的“正确”、标准的解读。在这里，教授们提出引人深思的问题并让学生们自行争论、研究和撰写论文。在耶鲁，我常常等待下课前的“正确”答案，但每次 都是落空。

5 在中国，人文学科的学习是安稳的重复，在这里则是惴惴不安的独创，而我比别人还更 加惴惴不安。阿伽门农这个名字长得让我读不出来，以至于在讨论课上我都没明白我们原来 是在讨论他。一年前申请大学时，我才第一次写英语短文，而今我得用英语写出分析经典著 作的论文来。还有，我写英语的速度不够快，上课来不及记笔记。

6 我希望以勤奋来弥补准备的不足。每逢周末夜晚，在我的美国室友们外出约会时，我总 是跟他们说我已约了但丁或亚里士多德。（他们并不觉得这有什么好笑。）

7 就在这样的一个周末夜晚，我写了一篇关于《埃涅阿斯纪》的主人公埃涅阿斯的论文。命运注定埃涅阿斯将要建立罗马，但他难以割舍他的故乡特洛伊。“埃涅阿斯感到极度痛苦，”我写道，“他犹豫不决。直觉叫他坚守过去，而同时他又感到有义务遵照父亲有关未来的指

令。他当下的生活被一劈为二，已逝的岁月和将来的日子相互撕扯。”而这正是我自己的写

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照。

8 每两周打电话回家时，我母亲总是极力劝我选修化学或生物学。她说，无论到哪里，科 学都是一样的。而我就像所有其他中国留学生一样，数理化的功底很好。（要从中国六年制的正规高中毕业，人人都得学五年物理、四年化学和三年生物学。）

9 我没有听从她。每写一篇论文，在交上去之前我都会请教写作导师——每一幢本科生宿 舍楼都配备有一位写作导师。我总是在截止日期前好几天就写好论文。下课后我总是留在教 室，向教授提问。同学们把笔记借给我，好让我学习用英语记笔记的技能。

10 等到我的思乡情绪越来越重，读书时脑海里会蹦出小笼包和清炒鳝丝的时候，我那个按 年代顺序排列的必读书单上，尼采已经取代了柏拉图，福楼拜已经取代了荷马。而我的每篇 论文发还时都得到了 A 等。

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