The summer holidays are over. But why go away at all? 暑假已經結束，但究竟為什麼要去度假呢？

第 9311 期 (2022/0904 出刊) 的《經濟學人》在 The Back Story 專欄裡刊出了一篇饒富趣味的散文，夾敘夾議，既抒情又帶著條理地討論了為何要出門度假。遣詞用字有相當深度，適合參加留學考試、英文教甄的考生當作挑戰。

需要參加考試的朋友，一定要先看英文，有看不懂的單字也不要一下子放棄，也不要馬上看中文翻譯，盡量利用前後文推想，猜猜不懂的單字是什麼意思，好逼出自己的潛力。這對於參加考試來說，至關重要。

本文長度約 800 字，與雅思閱讀測驗長度相當。文章主題很日常，但是單字在 GRE 與英語教甄難度等級。

英文原文與對應之中文翻譯整理如下，每個段落附有該段主題導引。如果不想受到引導，可以點選前面所附原文連結。練習閱讀時若有對語意不清楚之處，可供查閱對照，以提升閱讀理解能力。

1. 從欣賞歌劇引導出文章主題

   Because, for all their risks and contradictions, they make life and the world seem wider.

   At the end of a tenebrous alley, where assassins may once have lurked, is an ornate 15th-century palace. You ascend a candlelit staircase and find a seat in the hall. Violetta is preparing for the soirée that opens “La Traviata”, an opera that had its premiere in Venice in 1853. At Musica a Palazzo it has only three musicians, as many singers, and you, the audience, doubling as party guests. To go with Verdi and the frescoes, at the interval you get a glass of prosecco in a salon overlooking the Grand Canal.

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   因為，儘管帶著風險與矛盾，度假使生活和世界看起來更寬廣。

   在一條陰暗的小巷盡頭，是一座 15 世紀的華麗宮殿，那裡可能曾經潛伏著刺客。你登上燭光樓梯，在大廳裡找到一個座位。維奧萊塔正在為《茶花女》開場的晚會做準備，這部歌劇於 1853 年在威尼斯首演。在 Musica a Palazzo 歌劇院， 它只有三名音樂家，同樣人數的歌手，和你，觀眾，則兼任派對嘉賓。為了配合威爾第和壁畫，在中場休息時，你會在可以俯瞰大運河的沙龍裡分到一杯普羅塞克酒。

2. 出國旅遊不易，風險矛盾難免

   Summer holidays are a miracle. Trips abroad require time off work, the privilege of disposable income, sophisticated travel infrastructure and international peace. The pandemic suspended them; climate-change levies may make them unaffordable. Even when you pull it off, the miracle is fragile—for, as you may recently have observed, holidays are fraught with risks and packed with contradictions. One is the explorer’s delusion, whereby people set out to discover what they already expect to find.

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   暑日假期是個奇跡。出國旅行需要有不必上班的時間，需要有可支配收入的特權，需要有先進的旅遊基礎設施和國際和平。新冠大流行使一切嘎然而止；氣候變遷帶來的稅捐可能使旅遊價格高不可攀。即使你成功克服一切，這個奇蹟也不牢靠—因為正如你最近可能已經觀察到的，假期充滿了風險，充滿了矛盾。一個是探險家的錯覺，即人們出發去發現他們已經期望找到的東西。

3. 以威尼斯為例

   Venice, for instance, has been performing itself for visitors for centuries, laying on masked balls, gondolas and romantic opera. Bitterness can ensue when a destination fails to match the caricature of it in the tourist’s mind. Take the let-down Samuel Johnson recorded in “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland”, published in 1775. “We came thither too late to see what we expected,” he lamented, “a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life.” It is a familiar complaint. You go in search of authenticity and the unspoilt—in other words, of your own preconceptions—and are obliged to order your seppie al nero through an app.

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   例如，幾個世紀以來，威尼斯一直在為遊客做演出，上演化妝舞會、貢朵拉和浪漫歌劇。當一個目的地與遊客心目中的漫畫場景不相符時，痛苦就會隨之而來。以山繆-詹森 (就是《經濟學人》Johnson 專欄的那個 Johnson) 在 1775 年出版的《蘇格蘭西部島嶼之旅》中記載的失望為例。他感歎道： “我們來的太晚了，沒有看到我們所期望的東西，一個外表奇特的民族和一個古老的生活體系”。這是個經常聽到的抱怨。你去尋找原汁原味和未受污染的地方—換言之，尋找你自己的先入之見—但不得不透過應用程式來訂購你的烏汁墨魚 seppie al nero。

4. 安適難求

   If authenticity is elusive, so is comfort. Even if your aircraft cabin is plusher than other travellers’, it is rarely more congenial than your own home. On arrival you are bitten by mosquitoes and spend hours in queues. You get lost in narrow streets in a way that is funny until it isn’t, and catch a vaporetto heading in the wrong direction. Travel with children, and a meltdown looms if the museum-to-gelato ratio gets out of whack. “Comfort must not be expected by folks that go apleasuring,” Byron wrote perceptively in 1809, while afflicted with diarrhoea in Lisbon.

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   如果原汁原味令人難以捉摸，那麼舒適性也是如此。即使你的機艙比其他旅客的機艙要好，也很難比你自己的家更舒適。抵達後，你會被蚊子叮咬，花幾個小時排隊。你會在狹窄的街道上迷路，剛開始還很有趣，到後來就完全變了個樣，你會搭上反方向的水上巴士。帶著孩子旅行，如果博物館與義式冰淇淋的比例失衡，那麼爐心熔解就在眼前。拜倫於 1809 年在里斯本患腹瀉時深具洞見地寫道：“那些去找樂子的人不能指望旅遊能有多安適”。

5. 矛盾之所在

   Your inconvenience, though, is as nothing beside the suffering you read about in the guidebook. A quirk of European sightseeing is that jaunts taken for relaxation are also safaris of pain: reminders of the centuries of bloodshed and anguish that went into all the loggias and basilicas. The upshot is an awkward mix of sybaritic indulgence and fleeting compassion for the unfortunate dead. A tour of the ghetto and the torture chamber is washed down by an Aperol Spritz (a cocktail that, in a triumph of Instagram over taste, now seems to be drunk everywhere).

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   不過，你的不便與你在旅遊指南中讀到的痛苦相比，實在是微不足道。歐洲觀光的一件怪事是，為放鬆而進行的旅行也是痛苦的旅行：所有的涼廊與大殿都在提醒人們幾個世紀的流血和苦難。其結果是一種尷尬的混合，既是驕奢淫逸的放縱，又是對不幸死者的短暫同情。貧民區和刑訊室的參觀被阿佩羅爾雞尾酒（Aperol Spritz）沖淡了（這種雞尾酒在 Instagram 上的賣相比味道來得好，現在似乎到處都能喝到）。

6. 兩大障礙

   Memory and time are the main glitches in holidays. Neither can be outrun. A holiday is shaped by the yearnings that accumulate in the 50-odd other weeks of the year. This is why objectively trivial details—the furnishings in the hotel room where you spend hardly any time, the slightly bedraggled breakfast—can take on such outsize significance. The linen and the buffet will always struggle to live up to the hopes and frustrations invested in them.

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   記憶和時間是假期中的主要故障。兩者都不能被超越。一個假期是由一年中其他 50 多個星期所積累的渴望所塑造的。這就是為什麼客觀上微不足道的細節— 幾乎沒待上什麼時間的酒店房間裡的傢俱，和略顯疲態的早餐—會有如此大的意義。床單寢具和自助餐總是在努力滿足人們對它們的希望和挫折感。

7. 時間因素

   And, as in the rest of life, only more so, the clock is always ticking. Discount the several days it takes to swear off email at the start, and the shadow of return that falls over the final few, and you are left, like a pampered Sisyphus on top of a mountain, with only a fleeting interlude of serenity. In his book “The Art of Travel”, Alain de Botton reckoned that the spells in which everyday anxieties recede, and travellers are receptive to the wonders around them, rarely last more than ten minutes.

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   而且，就像生命中其他時段一樣，時間總在不停流逝，而且更加明顯。扣掉在開始時，會花上幾天的時間發誓不接電子郵件，還有在最後的一、兩天裡，回家的陰影籠罩著你，你就像山頂上被寵壞的西西弗斯一樣，只剩下短暫的寧靜。艾倫狄波頓在他的《旅行的藝術》一書中認為，日常焦慮的消退，以及旅行者能夠感受到他們周遭神奇事物的時間，很少能持續超過 10 分鐘。

8. 追根究柢問緣由

   Why, then, did you go on holiday in the first place? Not, surely, for the rictus-grin photos and the fridge magnet. With luck, alongside the sunburn, crowds and saw-you-coming prices, there were moments of harmony and revelation—a magically deserted piazza at dusk, a perfect family evening, a ride across the lagoon on which you felt like Sophia Loren—that made life and the world seem wider and more generous. As Mr de Botton notes, Wordsworth believed such “spots of time” can live in the memory and buck you up for years after the event.

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   那麼，你當初為什麼要去度假？當然，不是為了那些笑得花枝亂顫的照片和冰箱上的吸鐵。運氣好的話，除了曬傷、人擠人和被當盤子的天價之外，還有帶來和諧與啟示的時刻—黃昏時分神奇的無人廣場，一場完美的家庭之夜，一次感覺自己像索菲亞-羅蘭一樣的穿越瀉湖之旅—這讓生活和世界看起來更加寬廣和慷慨。正如狄波頓所指出的，華茲華斯相信這樣的 “時間點” 可以活在記憶中，並在事件發生後的許多年裡讓你振作起來。

9. 呼應首段結尾

   The poet was thinking of epiphanies in nature, but they can also arise on a sunlounger or on a plate. Or at the opera. For the finale of “La Traviata” you move into the palazzo’s bedroom. Her silhouette cast on the stuccoed walls, Violetta swoons and dies, exactly as she should.

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   詩人想到的是自然界中的頓悟，但頓悟也可能出現在日光浴椅或餐盤中。或者在歌劇裡。在《茶花女》的終曲部分，你進入了宮殿的臥室。維奧萊塔的剪影投射在粉刷灰泥的牆壁上，她暈厥，而後死去，正如她應該的那般。