Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea revolves around an old fisherman named Santiago who fights a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream far offshore.
Starting from today, A set of CCTV "Night Talk" will excerpt the wonderful passages of this book in 3 days, and feel Hemingway's fighting spirit of never bowing to fate, never accepting defeat and a positive attitude towards life.
The Old Man and the Sea (Excerpt 1)
Author: Hemingway
He was an old man fishing alone on a small flat-bottomed sailboat in the Gulf Stream, and had been gone for eighty-four days this time, and had not caught a single fish. For the first forty days, a boy was with him. But after forty days he had not caught a single fish, the boy's parents told him that the old man had now finally "poured blood mold," which meant that the misfortune had reached the extreme, so the boy obeyed their instructions, got into another boat, and caught three good fish in the first week. The boy was very uncomfortable to see that the old man came back every day when the boat was always empty, and he always went down to the shore to help the old man with the rolled-up fishing rope, or the hook and harpoon, and the sail around the mast. The sails were patched with flour bags, which when folded up looked like a flag marking eternal failure.
The old man was emaciated and gaunt, and there were some deep wrinkles on his neck. There are some brown spots on the cheeks, which are benign skin lesions caused by the light reflected by the sun on the surface of the tropical sea. Brown spots spread from the sides of his face, and his hands used ropes to pull the big fish, leaving deep scars. But none of these scars are new. They are as old as eroded places in the desert where there are no fish to fight. Everything on his body looked ancient, except for those eyes, which were as blue as the sea, and seemed joyful and unyielding.
"Santiago," the boy said to him as they both climbed ashore from where the boat had docked, "I'm at sea with you again, and my family has earned a little money." ”
The old man taught the boy to fish, and the boy loved him.
"No." The old man said, "You have come across a ship of good luck, stay with them." ”
"But you should remember that you didn't catch a single fish for eighty-seven days, and for three weeks we caught big fish every day."
"I remember." The old man said, "I know you didn't leave me because you weren't sure." ”
"It was Dad who told me to go. I am a child and cannot but obey him. ”
"I understand." The old man said, "That makes sense." ”
"He didn't have much confidence."
"Yes." The old man said, "But we have." But isn't it? ”
"Yes." The boy said, "I invite you to the terrace restaurant for a beer and bring back the fishing family together." ”
"That's good." The old man said, "They are all fishing people." ”
They sat on the terrace of the hotel, and many fishermen joked about the old man, who was not angry. Some other elderly fishermen looked at him and felt uncomfortable. But they didn't show it, just Sven talked about the ocean, how deep they sent the fishing rope under the surface, how good the weather had always been, and what they had seen. The fishermen who had been successful in fishing that day had returned and had cut open the marlins, which were lined up in two planks, one end of each board carried by two men, staggering to the fish collection station, where they were waiting for refrigerated trucks to transport them to the market in Havana. People who caught the sharks have sent them to a shark processing plant on the other side of the bay, where they are hoisted on a combo trolley, where the liver is removed, the fins are cut off, the skin is peeled off, and the meat is cut into strips for marinade.
When the east wind blows, the shark processing plant sends a smell across the bay; but today there is only a faint hint, because the wind has turned to the north, and then gradually subsided, and the hotel terrace is pleasant, the sun is shining...
By the time the boy returned, the old man was asleep in his chair, and the sun had gone down. The boy picked up an old military blanket from the bed and spread it on the back of the chair, covering the old man's shoulders. These two shoulders are quite strange, the person is very old, but the shoulders are still very strong, the neck is still very strong, and when the old man is asleep and the head is pulled forward, the wrinkles are not very obvious. He had patched his shirt an unknown number of times, like his sails, and the patches had faded into many shades and shades of color by the sun. The old man's head was very old, his eyes were closed, and there was no anger on his face. Newspapers were spread out on his knees, in the evening wind, pressed against one of his arms, so that it was not blown away. He was barefoot.
The boy left the old man and left, and when he returned, the old man was still asleep...
Usually as soon as he smelled the wind blowing on the land, he would wake up, put on his clothes and wake up the child. But tonight the breath of the wind blowing on the land came very early, and he knew in his dream that the time was still early, so he continued to dream, seeing the white peak of the archipelago rising from the sea, and then dreaming of the various harbors and anchorages of the Canary Islands.
He no longer dreamed of storms, no longer dreamed of women, no longer dreamed of big things that had happened, no longer dreamed of big fish, no longer dreamed of fights, no longer dreamed of wrestling, no longer dreamed of his wife. He now only dreams of lions in some places and on the beach. They played like kittens in the twilight, and he loved them as much as the child. He had never dreamed of the child. He woke up, looked at the moon outside the open door, and spread out his trousers to put them on. Walk down the road to wake up the child. He was overwhelmed by the cold of the morning. But he knew he would feel warm after a while, and it wouldn't be long before he was going to row.
The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was his meal for the whole day today, and he knew he should drink it. For a long time, eating bored him, so he never brought food with him. He had a bottle of water on the bow of the boat, and all he needed for the whole day was enough.
The children returned with sardines and two baits wrapped in newspapers, and as they walked down the path to the boat, they felt pebbles embedded in the sand beneath their feet, and they lifted the boat and let it slip into the water.
"Good luck, sir."
"Good luck." The old man said. He put the rope snare on the oar's seat and rushed forward to counteract the resistance that the paddle encountered in the water, and rowed out of the harbor in the dark. There were other boats on the other beaches going out to sea, and the old man heard the sound of their oars falling and paddling, even though the moon had fallen behind the mountain at the moment, and he couldn't see them clearly.
Occasionally there was someone talking in a boat. But apart from the sound of paddles, most of the boats were silent. As soon as they left the harbor, they scattered, each heading for the surface of the sea where they were hoping to find fish. The old man knew he was going to sail away, so he left the breath of the land behind and paddled into the fresh breath of the early morning ocean.
The old man felt the morning coming in the darkness, and as he paddled, he heard the trembling of the flying fish as they came out of the water, and the sizzling of their upright wings as they flew in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish and used them as his main friends on the ocean. He grieves for the birds, especially the weak little black terns, who are always flying, looking for food, but have hardly ever found them, so he thinks that the birds' lives are even more difficult than ours, except for the birds of prey and the powerful birds. If the ocean is so brutal, why are birds like these petrels born so weak and delicate? The ocean is merciful and very beautiful. Yet she could become so brutal, and so suddenly, and these flying birds, falling from the air to feed and make subtle cries, were born too weak to live at sea.
When they mentioned the ocean, they used her as a competitor or a place to go, or even as an enemy. But this old man always regards the ocean as a woman, and she gives or does not want to give great favors, and if she does something willful or immoral, it is because she cannot help herself. The moon had an effect on her, as it had on a woman, he thought.
He paddled smoothly, not struggling to tell him, because he kept himself within his top speed, and the sea was flat and waveless, except for the occasional whirlwind of the current. He was asking the current to do a third of the work for him, when it was getting dark and he found himself paddling farther than he expected at this moment...
The boy gave him two fresh little tuna, or albacore tuna, which hung like plumes on the two deepest fishing lines, and on the other two he hung a big blue trevally and a yellow gold and silver fish, which had been used but remained intact, and which had been added to their fragrance and appeal. Each fishing rope is as thick as a large pencil, and one end is wrapped around a green-skinned fishing rod, so that as long as the fish pulls or touches the bait, the fishing rod can be made to fall downwards, and each fishing cable has two forty-inch long rolls, which can be fastened to other spare rolls, so that if it is used, a fish can pull out more than three hundred long fishing ropes.
At this time, the old man looked at whether the three fishing rods that were picked out on the side of the small sailboat had moved, and slowly paddled them, so that the fishing rope remained straight up and down, staying at the appropriate depth of the water. The sky is quite bright, and the sun will rise at any time.
The faint sun rose from the sea, and the old man saw the other ships, low against the water, not far from the shore, spreading vertically in the direction of the current. As the sun grew brighter, the dazzling sunlight hit the water, and then the sun rose completely from the horizon, and the flat sea reflected the sunlight into his eyes, making his eyes sting violently, so that he did not look at the sun, but stroked himself. He looked down into the water and stared at the fishing ropes that had been drooping into the deep water of the black fish. He hung the fishing line more straight than anyone, so that at several different depths in the depths of the Black Ray's Gulf Stream, there would be a bait just in the place he was counting on, waiting for the fish swimming there to eat. Other fishermen let the fishing rope drift with the current, sometimes the fishing rope is in the depth of sixty yingxun, but they think that they are in the depth of one hundred yingxun.
Still, he thought, "I always put them precisely in the right place." The problem was only that my luck was bad. But who is right? Maybe it's going to be transferred today. Every day is a new day. Luck is certainly good. But I'd rather do it. That way, when luck comes, you're ready. ”
Reader: North Star
Have you read The Old Man and the Sea?
What do you think about reading it?
Tomorrow, A set of "night talks" on CCTV will continue to be published
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