爱是送一把纸玫瑰?相比短暂的绚烂之后就枯萎凋零的鲜花,也许一捧鲜艳的人造花更能持久地留住爱。本文作者就是一位人造花粉丝,因为在她看来,将鲜花从故土“绑架”到异地销售的行为会让鲜花失色又失神,而一束精心制作的人造花则浓缩了制作人满满的爱。
By Avi Steinberg 黄雪芹 译注 When I profess my affection for fake flowers, I often feel as though I’m confessing a character flaw. They have, to say the least, a bad reputation. As decoration, they are considered tacky; as gifts, tactless. They are widely regarded as creepy and depressing—the association is with the debauched fakeries you’ll find on the lapels of birthday-party clowns and the sad sacks of nylon collecting dust in the waiting rooms of our laziest dentists. I understand why people prefer fresh flowers—we imagine they’re individuals like us, delicate, one of a kind and all the more precious for the fact that their time on earth is limited. But real flowers aren’t quite as rare as they seem, nor quite as personal as we’d like them to be. Their authenticity —the essence of their appeal—is often illusory.
I’ve been having this debate for years with my mother, a hard-liner on the question of soil-grown flowers versus simulacra. Once, when I praised some handmades at a store, she told me that she found my worldview joyless and bleak. “That’s not how I raised you,” she said, and walked away as though she couldn’t even bear to see me standing next to them. Later, she summarized her position: “Why don’t you just put fake lettuce in your salad? I’m sure your dinner guests will appreciate it.” I have stopped trying to argue with her, and instead I’ve turned to sleazy methods of persuasion: I recently sent her a photo of some silk peonies and lured her into praising them before revealing their dark secret. Regardless of what my mother says, I don’t believe that organic authenticity is really what we prize most in a flower. Take the Rafflesia arnoldii : It may grow in the wild, just as God intended, but it looks like a scary open wound and smells like a decaying rat. The artificial flower, on the other hand, may not have originated in the field, but it has long found a stately perch. Imitations were once prized by nobles, from the palaces of imperial China to Versailles, where Louis XIV’s courtiers are believed to have sought silken blossoms for the tops of their bed canopies. From these royal lineages to the more democratic-spirited creations of today’s artisans, handmade blossoms remain a proud tradition. Maybe there’s a good reason so many people buy Eco Flowers. Maybe people are seeing beyond the supposed authenticity of an orchid, kidnapped from its true home, so that you can impulse-buy it at Ikea, only to watch it “bloom” on your dinner table in the dead of a New England winter. The people who ship soil-grown flowers from across the globe—which are the bulk of a roughly $31 billion floral industry—are the ones selling a falsehood; what authentic connection to nature could possibly arise from such a convoluted arrangement? And how sad that a flower, so alienated from its true home, is supposed to communicate feelings of genuine connection. Handcrafted flowers, by contrast, make no pretenses. They are the sincerest of flowers, precisely because they are made—with intention, craft, ingenuity and quirky imperfection. Born in the heart and shaped by the singular hand of the gift giver, these artful flowers are the ones that most resemble love itself. Vocabulary 1. tacky: 俗气的,劣质的;tactless: (说话或行为)不圆通的,不明智的。 2. debauched: 堕落的,道德败坏的;lapel: 翻领。 3. authenticity: 真实性。 4. hard-liner: 不妥协者,强硬派;simulacra: 模拟物。 5. sleazy: 低劣的,低级庸俗的。 6. Rafflesia arnoldii: 阿诺德大王花,是世界上最大的花,以英国植物学家约瑟夫·阿诺德的姓氏命名。 7. stately: 庄重的,高贵的;perch: 栖息地。 8. Versailles: 凡尔赛宫,位于巴黎西南郊,1682—1789年间曾是法国的王宫及政治中心,1979年被列入《世界文化遗产名录》;Louis XIV: 路易十四(1638—1715),自号太阳王,是波旁王朝的法国国王和纳瓦拉国王,也是欧洲历史上在位时间(1643—1715)最长的君主;courtier: 朝臣,侍臣;canopy: (床、座位等上的)顶罩,华盖。 9. lineage: 血统,世系。 10. Eco Flower: 一家环保花束公司,创办于2014年,总部位于美国犹他州,使用的材料都是可再生或循环使用的,如木头、粗斜棉布、粗麻布、纸张等。 11. impulse-buy: 即兴购买;in the dead of winter: 在隆冬时节。 12. bulk: (商品的销售或运输)大量的,大批的。 13. convoluted: 错综复杂的。 14. ingenuity: 心灵手巧,善于创新;quirky: 奇特的,古怪的。 15. singular: 非凡的,突出的。 (来源:英语学习杂志 编辑:董静) |
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