Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life , de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.
Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life , de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.
Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.
作者简介
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阿兰·德波顿（Alain de Botton），英伦才子型作家，生于1969年，毕业于剑桥大学，现住伦敦。著有小说《爱情笔记》（1993）、《爱上浪漫》（1994）、《亲吻与诉说》（1995）及散文作品《拥抱逝水年华》（1997）、《哲学的慰藉》（2000）、《旅行的艺术》（2002）、《身份的焦虑》（2004）。他的作品已被译成二十几种文字。
“We saw stars, and waves; We saw sands, too; And despite many cries and unforeseen disasters, We were often bored, just as we are here.” —“Le Voyage” Charles Baudelaire
we overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as being worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but random association has turned us against them.
True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the optio...
2016-06-02 20:31:42
True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge, but it may also unwittingly make the effort of acquiring that knowledge seem superfluous. It suggests that we have done all the work simply by taking a photograph...引自 On Possessing Beauty
Two realistic artists may sit at the edge of the same olive grove and produce divergent sketches. Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole... If we in turn like a painter's work, it is perhaps because we judge that he or she has selected the features that we believe to be the most valuable within...
2016-06-02 13:31:58
Two realistic artists may sit at the edge of the same olive grove and produce divergent sketches. Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole...
If we in turn like a painter's work, it is perhaps because we judge that he or she has selected the features that we believe to be the most valuable within a particular scene. There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there. 引自 On Eye-Opening Art
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid our oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies ...
2016-06-02 10:40:33
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid our oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.引自 On the Sublime
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or materal goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy —we are not able to enjoy—sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to ...
2012-01-20 09:39:18
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or materal goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. Thus we will not enjoy —we are not able to enjoy—sumptuous tropical gardens and attractive wooden beach huts when a relationship to which we are committed abruptly reveals itself to be suffused with incomprehension and resentment.引自第25页
Baudelaire honoured reveries of travel as a mark of those noble,questing souls whom he described as"poets", who could not be satisfied with horizons of home even as they appreciated the limits of other lands, whose temperaments oscillated between hope and despair, childlike idealism and cynicism. It was the fate of poets, like Christian pilgrims, to live in a fallen world while refusing to surr...
2012-01-19 21:48:25
Baudelaire honoured reveries of travel as a mark of those noble,questing souls whom he described as"poets", who could not be satisfied with horizons of home even as they appreciated the limits of other lands, whose temperaments oscillated between hope and despair, childlike idealism and cynicism. It was the fate of poets, like Christian pilgrims, to live in a fallen world while refusing to surrender their vision of an alternative, less compromised realm.引自第32页
“Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds:this one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he'd get better if he was by the window"
2014-04-02 12:31:54
“Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds:this one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he'd get better if he was by the window"
Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens that hang in rows from the terminal ceilings to announce the departure and arrival of flights, whose absence of aesthetic self-consciousness and whose workmanlike casing and pedestrian typefaces do nothing to disguise their emotional charge and imaginative allure...The constant calls of the screens, some accom...
2016-05-11 13:23:28
Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens that hang in rows from the terminal ceilings to announce the departure and arrival of flights, whose absence of aesthetic self-consciousness and whose workmanlike casing and pedestrian typefaces do nothing to disguise their emotional charge and imaginative allure...The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly entrenched lives might be altered were we simply to walk down a corridor and onto a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one knew our name. How pleasant to hold in mind through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon, when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere, for Bauderlaire's 'anywhere! anywhere!'...引自 On Travelling Places
True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the optio...
2016-06-02 20:31:42
True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge, but it may also unwittingly make the effort of acquiring that knowledge seem superfluous. It suggests that we have done all the work simply by taking a photograph...引自 On Possessing Beauty
Two realistic artists may sit at the edge of the same olive grove and produce divergent sketches. Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole... If we in turn like a painter's work, it is perhaps because we judge that he or she has selected the features that we believe to be the most valuable within...
2016-06-02 13:31:58
Two realistic artists may sit at the edge of the same olive grove and produce divergent sketches. Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole...
If we in turn like a painter's work, it is perhaps because we judge that he or she has selected the features that we believe to be the most valuable within a particular scene. There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there. 引自 On Eye-Opening Art
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid our oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies ...
2016-06-02 10:40:33
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid our oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.引自 On the Sublime
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall ar...
2016-05-11 13:47:01
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand. Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks--charged with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness, and which runs scared of memories, longings and introspective or original ideas, preferring instead the administrative and the impersonal.引自第54页
jianshuo
上海译文出版社2004版
Luke
上海译文出版社2004版
岂有此女
上海译文出版社2004版
邓安庆
上海译文出版社2004版
0 有用 三也｀ 2014-07-22 19:42:54
感觉读起来比walden累啊…排版不喜欢…内容许多还是很有共鸣的！
0 有用 小晨 2013-11-21 10:34:34
有些章节略意识流，nature那章特别有感触。越看越好，因为会让你思考。值得过段时间再重读的好书。
0 有用 Sophie 2010-01-19 13:05:52
大爱！
1 有用 正在注销 2014-08-20 23:37:24
我个人感觉前部分和最后一章是精华，中间的不怎么精彩
0 有用 Welfare 2018-08-15 11:37:27
“We saw stars, and waves; We saw sands, too; And despite many cries and unforeseen disasters, We were often bored, just as we are here.” —“Le Voyage” Charles Baudelaire
0 有用 最后的12码 2022-02-07 00:38:53
“…try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen”
0 有用 豆友229677258 2022-02-07 00:38:18
德波頓展示了一系列的敘事（他自己的和其他人的），這些敘述舉例說明瞭他認為對完成旅行具有決定性意義的關注領域。例如，德波頓表明，擁有好奇心並做出與你的背景相關的發現，對旅行至關重要；或者，對崇高的場景進行調整，並認識到你可以在調整自己方面發揮積極作用，也會使旅行變得充實。 他的主要觀點是好的。但我更希望能少一些敘述，多一些對他所確定的那些關注領域的分析/評價。他所講述的許多故事對於闡明作為本書核心的... 德波頓展示了一系列的敘事（他自己的和其他人的），這些敘述舉例說明瞭他認為對完成旅行具有決定性意義的關注領域。例如，德波頓表明，擁有好奇心並做出與你的背景相關的發現，對旅行至關重要；或者，對崇高的場景進行調整，並認識到你可以在調整自己方面發揮積極作用，也會使旅行變得充實。 他的主要觀點是好的。但我更希望能少一些敘述，多一些對他所確定的那些關注領域的分析/評價。他所講述的許多故事對於闡明作為本書核心的「教訓」似乎並不總是必要的。其中一些敘述很單調，讓人分心。 事實上，德波頓更像是一個「dandy traveller」，當他旅行時，他會去度假村。或者去鄉下朋友家，早上他會在那裡吃巧克力甜甜圈。所以，他的敘述可能是無趣的，甚至是疏離的。也就是說，好像他還沒有真正經歷過那種讓人心生敬畏的冒險旅行。 (展开)
0 有用 Moretzme 2021-11-17 22:42:08
Despite all of this, I still want to travel.
0 有用 liberte 2021-08-30 14:19:49
8.27-8.29 在carmel valley两天早起/睡前看完的读物。每一章都是出发于作者的旅途，交错一个历史人物与旅行的故事，以及作者意识流般的随笔与反思。就文字风格和思考方式来讲还挺喜欢的，会让我想起毛姆（可能因为在看客厅里的绅士）和唐诺。串联历史也有一些浪漫和思考，作者选篇也挺有意思的，比如“断层式旅行”（下了飞机下一步就在酒店了，路上完全是真空的），古早旅行与当代旅行的区别（根据sub... 8.27-8.29 在carmel valley两天早起/睡前看完的读物。每一章都是出发于作者的旅途，交错一个历史人物与旅行的故事，以及作者意识流般的随笔与反思。就文字风格和思考方式来讲还挺喜欢的，会让我想起毛姆（可能因为在看客厅里的绅士）和唐诺。串联历史也有一些浪漫和思考，作者选篇也挺有意思的，比如“断层式旅行”（下了飞机下一步就在酒店了，路上完全是真空的），古早旅行与当代旅行的区别（根据subject matters，现代旅行很多只是location），艺术与旅行（梵高），人在旅行中想要抓住并拥有美（拍照）。但可能旅行本身可讲的点并不多，随手挑了这本书，主要原因还是想去旅行。然后，我可能也看的太快了（笑，可能因为知道这两天不看完就不会再继续看了），不算非常印象深刻的作品。另，太想下雨了。 (展开)
0 有用 片片子 2020-12-11 08:48:19
we overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as being worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but random association has turned us against them.