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发信人: Stiga (云淡风清), 信区: English
标  题: 永别了武器
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (2002年12月25日20:35:34 星期三), 站内信件

发信人: aquila (好的开始), 信区: English
标  题: 永别了武器
发信站: 飘渺水云间 (Sun Jan  2 15:26:30 2000), 转信

A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway Hemingway combines austere realism and poetic language to
present a powerful argument against war and to tell a touching love story at
the same time. Possessed of the most remarkable time sense of the period
between wars, his
disillusioned temperament and technical skill have influenced a whole
generation of writer. In spite of its hard-boiled realism of detail and its
tragic ending, A Farewell to Arms is nevertheless an idealistic book. The
novel was dramatized by Laurence
Stallings and was made into a motion picture.
Lieutenant Frederic Henry was a young American attached to an Italian
ambulance unit on the Italian front. An offensive was soon to begin, and when
Henry returned to the front from leave he learned from his friend, Lieutenant
Rinaldi, that a group of
British nurses had arrived in his absence to set up a British hospital unit.
Rinaldi introduced him to nurse Catherine Barkley.
Between ambulance trips to evacuation posts at the front, Henry called on
Miss Barkley. He liked the frank young English girl in a casual sort of way,
but he was not in love with her. Before he left for the front to stand by for
an attack, she gave him
a St. Anthony medal.
At the front, as Henry and some Italian ambulance drivers were eating in a
dugout, an Austrian projectile exploded over them. Henry, badly wounded in
the legs, was taken to a field hospital. Later he was moved to a hospital in
Milan.
Before the doctor was able to see Henry in Milan, the nurses prohibited his
drinking wine, but he bribed a porter to bring him a supply which he kept
hidden behind his bed. Catherine Barkley came to the hospital and Henry knew
that he was in love with
her. The doctors told Henry that he would have to lie in bed six months
before they could operate on his knee. Henry insisted on seeing another
doctor, who said that the operation could be performed the next day.
Meanwhile. Catherine managed to be with
Henry constantly.
After his operation, Henry convalesced in Milan with Catherine Barkley as his
attendant. Together they dined in out of the way restaurants, and together
they rode about the countryside in a carriage. Henry was restless and lonely
at nights and
Catherine often came to his hospital room.
Summer passed into autumn. Henry's wound had healed and he was due to take
convalescent leave in October. He and Catherine planned to spend the leave
together, but he came down with jaundice before he could leave the hospital.
The head nurse accused
him of bringing on the jaundice by drink, in order to avoid being sent back
to the front. Before he left for the front, Henry and Catherine stayed
together in a hotel room; already she had disclosed to him that she was
pregnant.
Henry returned to the front with orders to load his three ambulances with
hospital equipment and go south into the Po valley. Morale was at low ebb.
Rinaldi admired the job which had been done on the knee and observed that
Henry acted like a married
man. War weariness was all-pervasive. At the front, the Italians, having
learned that German divisions had reinforced the Austrians, began their
terrible retreat from Caporetto. Henry drove one of the ambulances loaded
with hospital supplies. During
the retreat south, the ambulance was held up several times by wagons, guns,
and trucks which extended in stalled lines for miles. Henry picked up two
straggling Italian sergeants. During the night the retreat was halted in the
rain for hours.
At daybreak Henry cut out of the long line and drove across country in an
attempt to reach Udine by side roads. The ambulance got stuck in a muddy side
road. The sergeants decided to leave, but Henry asked them to help dislodge
the car from the mud.
They refused and ran. Henry shot and wounded one; the other escaped across
the fields. An Italian ambulance corpsman with Henry shot the wounded
sergeant through the back of the head. Henry and his three comrades struck
out on foot for Udine. On a
bridge, Henry saw a German staff car and German bicycle troops crossing
another bridge over the same stream. Within sight of Udine, one of Henry's
group was killed by an Italian sniper. The others hid in a barn until it
seemed safe to circle around
Udine and join the main stream of the retreat toward the Tagliamento River.
By that time the Italian army was nothing but a frantic mob. Soldiers were
throwing down their arms and officers were cutting insignia of rank from
their sleeves. At the end of a long wooden bridge across the Tagliamento
military carabiniere were
seizing all officers, giving them drumhead trials, and executing them by the
river bank. Henry was detained, but in the dark of night he broke free,
plunged into the river, and escaped on a log. He crossed the Venetian plain
on foot, then jumped aboard
a freight train and rode to Milan, where he went to the hospital in which he
had been a patient. There he learned that the English nurses had gone to
Stresa.
During the retreat from Caporetto Henry had made his farewell to arms. He
borrowed civilian clothes from an American friend in Milan and went by train
to Stresa, where he met Catherine, who was on leave. The bartender of the
hotel in which Henry was
staying warned Henry that authorities were planning to arrest him for
desertion the next morning; he offered his boat by means of which Henry and
Catherine could escape to Switzerland. Henry rowed all night. By morning his
hands were so raw that he
could barely stand to touch the oars. Over his protests, Catherine took a
turn at the rowing. They reached Switzerland safely and were arrested. Henry
told the police that he was a sportsman who enjoyed rowing and that he had
come to Switzerland for
the winter sports. The valid passports and the ample funds that Henry and
Catherine possessed saved them from serious trouble with the authorities.
During the rest of the fall and the winter the couple stayed at an inn
outside Montreux. They discussed marriage, but Catherine would not be married
while she was with child. They hiked, read, and talked about what they would
do together after the war.
When the time for Catherine's confinement approached, she and Henry went to
Lausanne to be near a hospital. They planned to return to Montreux in the
spring. At the hospital Catherine's pains caused the doctor to use an
anaesthetic on her. After hours
of suffering she was delivered of a dead baby. The nurse sent Henry out to
get something to eat. When he went back to the hospital, he learned that
Catherine had had a hemorrhage. He went into the room and stayed with her
until she died. There was
nothing he could do, no one he could talk to, no place he could go. Catherine
was dead. He left the hospital and walked back to his hotel in the dark. It
was raining.
--- Excerpts from Masterpieces of World Literature in Digest Form
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※ 来源:．飘渺水云间 freecity.dhs.org．[FROM: aquila]

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※ 来源:·哈工大紫丁香 bbs.hit.edu.cn·[FROM: 202.118.248.68]

English 版 (精华区)