The Jewel in the Amazon Jungle

⊙ By Robert Beckford

翻譯：丁 一

The Jewel in the Amazon Jungle

亞馬孫雨林的璀璨明珠

⊙ By Robert Beckford

翻譯：丁 一

遮天蔽日的樹林、奇珍異獸、奇花異草、與世隔絕的土著人……這大概是別人提起亞馬孫熱帶雨林時，你會想到的景象吧。但你很難把熱帶雨林與有百余年歷史的歐式建筑聯系起來——這正是本文要介紹的亞馬孫奇觀。

Here in the most unlikely of places, in the city of Manaus, at the heart of the Amazon rainforest, stands this grand building—the Teatro Amazonas, or the Amazon Theatre and Opera House.

The end of the 19th century was a boom time for the Amazonian region of Brazil. It was1)flush with money from exports from its large2)rubber3)plantations. Manaus quickly became one of Brazil’s richest cities. And this Opera House was to be the jewel in the jungle. Dr. Luciana Martins (University of London): The rubber4)barons were making a lot of money, you know, in that period. Really, really, really a lot of money. They didn’t know where to spend it. The Amazon was really not a place that people looked at in Brazil at all. It meant5)savagery, really. It had this very negative6)connotation in Brazil. And these people were making money and they wanted to show, “No, we are civilized as well.”

At the time, it was a major engineering project, as much of the building material had to be transported from Europe and then brought more than 1,000 miles through the newly cleared rainforest. Built in the 1890s by the7)immensely

1) flush [fl??] adj. 充足的，大量的

2) rubber [?r?b?（r)] n. 橡膠

3) plantation [plɑ?n?te??（?）n] n. 大農場，種植園

4) baron [?b?r?n] n. 大財主

5) savagery [?s?v?d?r?] n. 野蠻行為，原始狀態

6) connotation [?k?n???te??（?）n] n. 內涵，涵義

7) immensely [??mensl?] adv. 極大地，無限地rich rubber barons, mostly European immigrants, it was an attempt to reproduce the8)grandeur of a9)bygone age, a little bit of European10)splendour in the middle of the Amazon.

The walls, statues and the11)columns are made with marble brought from Italy, as were the12)chandeliers. The13)ceiling tiles came from France. For a building in the middle of the rainforest, it’s pretty impressive.

8) grandeur [?gr?nd??（r）] n. 宏偉，壯觀

9) bygone [?ba?g?n] adj. 過去的，以往的

10) splendour [?splend?] n. 光彩壯麗，顯赫，杰出

11) column [?k?l?m] n. 柱子

12) chandelier [??nd??l??（r）] n. 枝形吊燈

13) ceiling [?si?l??] n. 頂篷

詞組：look at

我們都知道，動詞詞組look at有“看，瀏覽，查看”等意思，而在用于否定形式時，它還可以表示動作實施者的一種態度，還有“（不）接受，（不）理睬”的意味，如：

· David looked at me in surprise.（大衛吃驚地看著我。）

· He looked at the books in his office and didn’t find what Emily needed.（他瀏覽了一下辦公室里的書，

沒有發現有埃米莉需要的東西。）

· I don’t have time to look at your proposal last week.（我上星期沒有時間看你的建議。）· They won’t even look at such a proposal.（這樣的提案，他們連看都不會看一眼。）

在這個人們最想不到的地方，在亞馬孫雨林的中心城市馬瑙斯市，竟然佇立著這座宏偉的建筑——亞馬孫劇院。

19世紀末是巴西亞馬孫地區的繁榮時期，當地橡膠園靠出口賺了大錢，富得流油。馬瑙斯市迅速成為了巴西最富裕的城市之一，而這個歌劇院將成為雨林中的一顆明珠。

盧西恩娜·馬丁斯博士（倫敦大學）：在那個時期，你知道嗎，橡膠大亨財源滾滾來，他們非常、非常、非常有錢，錢多到都不知道怎么花才好。但當時的巴西人對亞馬孫地區非常輕視，因為它象征著野蠻世界，在巴西有著非常負面的形象。這些人賺了很多錢，他們想讓人知道：“不對，我們也是文明人。”

在那個年代，建造這座劇院是一項大工程，因為大部分建筑材料都從歐洲進口，再途經一千多英里剛剛砍伐開辟的雨林運進來。劇院由非常富有的橡膠大亨興建于19世紀90年代，他們當中大都是歐洲移民，試圖再現歐洲昔日的輝煌，在亞馬孫叢林深處展示歐洲繁華景象的一面。

劇院的墻壁、雕塑與圓柱用從意大利運來的大理石制成，吊燈也來自意大利，天花板的瓷磚則來自法國。對一座建在雨林深處的建筑來說，這真是讓人佩服的壯舉。