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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
On RN Summer this is Great Lovers, and part four of the story romance in the western world. I'm Amanda Smith.
Today it’s a love story from the Renaissance1 that's become the greatest teenage love story of them all, or as William Shakespeare called it, The Most Excellent and Lamentable2 Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
Reader: Two households both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.
Jill Levenson: English Renaissance tragedy, to this point, had never before made romantic love its theme. It had dealt with matters of history and matters of legend, but not matters of love. So Romeo and Juliet was a first in that way.
Amanda Smith: That's Jill Levenson. She's the the editor of the Oxford5 edition of Romeo and Juliet.
Now in the Middle Ages, the best-loved mythic tale of forbidden and tragic6 love was 'Tristan and Isolde' - and they were the subject of part three, yesterday’s edition of Great Lovers. And if you missed it, it’s on the RN website. On the program list it’s under RN Afternoons.
Well moving form the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the favourite in becomes Romeo and Juliet. Both stories though, contain that mixture of love and death encapsulated in the German word, 'leibestod', according to Jill Levenson.
Jill Levenson: 'Liebestod': that word is ambiguous in German and it's ambiguous in translation from the German. It can mean 'love in death', it can mean 'death in love', it can mean 'love's death'. But what I can tell you, that is clear and straightforward8 I think, is there's a plot, a sequence of events which defines the liebestod theme. And we have that whole plot enacted9 in Romeo and Juliet. Basically it's simply that two young lovers face obstacles which are impossible, and they defy the obstacles and try to circumvent10 the obstacles with secret plans, but they fail, because of accident or because of misjudgement, and in the end, both of them die for love.
Amanda Smith: There's also a paradox11 there too, isn't there, about the desire for love, or the compulsion for love, becomes a kind of compulsion for death?
Jill Levenson: Yes, absolutely. And at the time that the play was written in the late 16th century, and beyond, there was a connection between those two ideas, because, how can I put this so that it doesn't sound rude? Well, I can't put it in any way that doesn't sound rude. Orgasm was identified with death.
Amanda Smith: As a 'little death'?
Jill Levenson: Yes, exactly. As something which in enough quantity shortened life, so that there was a direct connection between concepts of love and concepts of death.
Amanda Smith: Okay, so Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love at the Capulet's ball. Because Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet, and the two families hate each other's guts12, the lovers get married in secret. Just after the wedding, the secret wedding, the two feuding14 factions15 get into a street brawl16. Tybalt (he’s Juliet’s cousin) kills Romeo's friend Mercutio. As a payback Romeo kills Tybalt. And for this, Rome is exiled to Mantua. He and Juliet have just one night to spend together in Verona before he has to leave. They part at dawn. Meanwhile Juliet's parents are arranging a marriage for her, to Lord Paris. Well, for Juliet that’s not going to happen, so she fakes her own death. But Romeo, who’s in Mantua by this time, gets the news that she is dead. What he doesn't get is a letter that would tell him it's a ruse17. He races back to Verona, finds Juliet apparently18 dead in a tomb, and so he kills himself. Then Juliet wakes up, she finds Romeo dead beside her, and she kills herself, this time for real.
It's clearly a tragic story, but Romeo and Juliet is not, as the actor and director John Bell says, a tragedy in the classical dramatic sense.
John Bell: It's more of a sad story, if you like, or an unlucky story, than it is a tragedy. And that's signalled in the Prologue19 where we talk about 'star-crossed lovers'. It's a story of misfortune and accident, and misunderstandings and bad timing20, which in itself is interesting. That's what we call a tragedy every day: someone gets run over by a train or two lovers get killed in an accident, we say 'What a tragedy'. So we still use the word rather loosely because we think it's a dreadful thing, especially if young people, children are killed by some unlucky or unhappy circumstance. But in the classical terminology21 I suppose, it isn't a tragedy in the sense that his more mature works are.
Amanda Smith: But it is kind of a tragedy of circumstance I suppose.
John Bell: Yes, which some critics would say, well, that isn't as significant as a tragedy of character; bad luck isn't as significant as human action and behaviour that is deliberate.
Amanda Smith: You could say though that the tragic outcome for the lovers, sort of hinges on a bad postal23 service between Verona and Mantua, and that is the sort of mix-up you're more likely to get in comedy, not tragedy, I would have thought.
John Bell: Absolutely. I think Romeo and Juliet could be a comedy. Until the death of Mercutio, it's full of fun and jokes and a ball scene and young lovers and a balcony in the moonlight. It's got all the romance and fun and jokes. It's got more jokes than any other Shakespeare play I think, and more dirty jokes at that. But suddenly the death of Mercutio turns the whole play around and then it becomes tragic. But until halfway24 through it could have a happy ending. And audiences are frequently shocked by the ending. I remember schoolkids coming out of Baz Luhrmann's film; the girls were all weeping and saying 'Oh my God, I didn't know it would finish like that.' You know, they wanted the happy ending and thought they were going to get it, because that's how the play starts out.
Amanda Smith: Yes well, it is interesting that, because to me something very strange happens when you're watching Romeo and Juliet. On the one hand you know they're going to die because they love each other, you're told that at the start, and yet also, no matter how many times I've seen Romeo and Juliet, during it I always find myself wishing and hoping that it's all going to turn out all right for them. So it seems to me there's something psychologically very clever about this play. What do you think?
John Bell: Oh yes, there is, because the lovers are quite irresistible25. And because they're so young, you have this inbuilt pathos26, you want them to survive and come through it. And of course the tragedy really isn't about them, it's about vendetta27. It's about their parents and what the older generation has set up. That's the fulcrum28 for tragedy. If that vendetta didn't exist, and if the two parents could forgive each other, there would be no tragedy. So I think it's got a deeper significance than just bad luck and misfortune, it's really about the nature of vengefulness and unforgiving parents.
Amanda Smith: Is it a big part of the appeal of Romeo and Juliet that the lovers are victims of vengefulness, victims of circumstance, that they are themselves blameless?
John Bell: I think that's true. Just as we find great vicarious pleasure in the love affair of Antony and Cleopatra, I think we find vicarious pleasure in the youth, the romance, the rhapsody of Romeo and Juliet. And we also can identify I suppose. We all feel sometimes we're the victims of circumstance, and that our parents have let us down, or the older generation has stuffed up the world for us. So young people identify very strongly with that, I think. Young people disobeying their parents, at odds29 with their parents, try to say 'There's a place for us', like in West Side Story which is just another rendition of Romeo and Juliet. That appeal of youth having been betrayed by the older generation has a huge and everlasting30 appeal.
Amanda Smith: Yes, well you mention West Side Story. And for all the most beautiful words about love that there are in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, there's a very simple line from one of the songs in West Side Story that as you're speaking, keeps coming into my head, and which applies to Romeo and Juliet as well as to Tony and Maria, and the line is 'When love comes so strong, there is no right or wrong'. In other words, love is amoral, it's bigger than anything else. Is that a deep-seated view we have about love which is projected in Romeo and Juliet as well as its offshoots like West Side Story?
John Bell: I think therein lies the tragedy, that that's what lovers feel. But of course society can't tolerate that, especially parents, who say 'Well there is right and wrong' and 'You can't do this, and you can't do that'. And youth is always constricted32 by what is regarded as right or wrong by people who are outside the situation. But for lovers themselves, there's no right or wrong, they're totally on cloud nine, above all that.
Amanda Smith: West Side Story is, as you know, the twentieth century American re-telling of Romeo and Juliet. Do you remember though, that at the end of 'West Side Story' Maria doesn't die, unlike Juliet? But as we'll hear later in this epsiode of Great Lovers here on RN, playing around with Shakespeare's ending to Romeo and Juliet is actually something of a time-honoured tradition.
Well the setting for West Side Story is gritty New York, whereas the original's in fair Verona. And John Bell thinks it's significant that it was an Italian love story that the great English dramatist drew on for his Romeo and Juliet.
John Bell: I think it's very interesting that so many of Shakespeare's plays are set in Italy. He wasn't the only writer to do this. Marlowe, Johnson, most of the Elizabethan dramatists, used Italy as a backdrop. Because from there came a lot of the best stories, either the stories of ancient Rome, or stories out of the Renaissance, medieval Italian romances. They found something very liberating33 and very un-English I suppose, about the grand passions, the degree of emotion, the sensuality. It was a rather sort of romantic Englishman's version of a more colourful civilisation34 I think, and it's significant that the great lovers of Antony and Cleopatra are Rome and Egypt, and Romeo and Juliet are Italian. And it's very liberating for actors when you do these plays, to think, don't think Australian, don't think English, just think of the Italian vivacity35 and exuberance36 and that kind of climate, our popular images of Italy, and it's a rather liberating thing. And I think whenever I've seen Romeo and Juliet played by English actors, it can get very sort of cool and a bit stitched up unless they liberate22 themselves from that mindset, and think 'Let's play it Italian'.
Amanda Smith: So what is the lineage of the Romeo and Juliet story before Shakespeare gets a hold of it late in the sixteenth century? Jill Levenson says that it was a story that had already been doing the rounds for a good hundred, hundred and twenty years.
Jill Levenson: Well most of the plot that we have in Romeo and Juliet first appeared in 1476 in printed form in a short fiction, a novella, by an Italian writer named Masuccio. And there seems to have been quite a bit of activity around the story in northern Italy, between then and about 1530 when an important version was published. It was another novella and it was by a writer named Luigi da Porto. Da Porto was the writer who added a feud13 to the narrative37 as an explanation for the secret marriage, because in its original version there was no reason for the lovers to marry secretly. It's a very strange story, the Masuccio one, so da Porto added the feud, and he furnished the famous names. He borrowed the names Montecchi and Cappelletti from Dante's 'Purgatory38' for the political factions. So that gives us our two feuding factions.
What happened next was that da Porto's version was elaborated in another Italian novella by Matteo Bandello, that was 1554, and then it began to travel to England. I can't resist saying that Bandello turned a novella that was a gazelle into a novella that was an elephant. It became very, very large and it became filled with circumstantial material. And it became quite prosaic39 by modern standards, I would think, but during the Renaissance this was the version that everyone loved.
Amanda Smith: What are the specifics of time and place that come into the story, as it is doing the rounds in Italy in the fifteenth, sixteenth century in this novella form? For example, as you mentioned, the family feud is the obstacle to the lovers. Now why does that come in as the reason why the love is forbidden?
Jill Levenson: Each novella was shaped by the cultural circumstances in which it was written. So for example, Bandello's novella version reflects social and economic conditions during the Italian Renaissance, which affected40 attitudes towards marriage. With the development of capitalism41, there was an emphasis on consolidating42 the city-state and consolidating prosperous families. Women were viewed as marriage commodities. So you can see why a love affair would turn into a threat to that in this type of context. An unauthorised relationship would disrupt the new patterns of exchange and challenge the concept of marriage as it was developing at that point.
Amanda Smith: In the film, Shakespeare in Love, Will is trying without much inspiration, to write a play that he first calls 'Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter'. But historically, where does William Shakespeare get a hold of this story of Romeo and Juliet?
Jill Levenson: As far as we know, not quite out of his own experience, as the film would have you believe. Yes, the title of that play just kills me every time I hear it. Well there were two English versions actually, one by Arthur Brooke and one by William Painter, and he used both of them but he used one much more than the other. Brooke, which is the primary source, made two contributions to the narrative: he elaborated the idea of fortune controlling events, and he filled out the character of the Nurse. And I think personally that his version is interesting for another reason. Perhaps this is the reason that Shakespeare chose it. There are contradictions in it if you read it from beginning to end - I don't recommend that, because it's very boring, it really is soporific - but if you do read it from beginning to end, you find contradictions in his views of sex and marriage, which may register not just as inconsistencies in his own thinking, but inconsistencies in the thinking of his age about sex and marriage.
Amanda Smith: So what does Shakespeare do with the story? As you say, it's already well known and popular, and aside from turning it into a play, how does Shakespeare re-cast the narrative so that it's his version of the tale that becomes the famous one?
Jill Levenson: We should keep in mind in thinking about these questions that what Shakespeare inherited was a straightforward, melancholy43 tale of young love. There was no irony44 in them, there was no comedy in them, they were unremittingly sad. So what did he do with this material, as you asked? I think on one level he enhanced this emotional intensity45 and he enhanced the presence of the leibestod myth. For example, by reminding us from the beginning that the outcome of this love affair will be tragic.
Amanda Smith: Yes, because of course Shakespeare tells us right at the start of the play that it's going to end badly, 'a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life'.
Jill Levenson: Yes, that's right, and then after the Prologue, you have characters who experience dreams and forebodings about what's going to happen. The language is going to refer again and again to Death, as Juliet's lover. So even though there's an infusion46 of comedy and a hint that perhaps this plot could take a different turn, you're constantly being reminded that the story is headed for a tragic ending. So that's one of the things that he did. He enhanced what was already there. At the same time, he added something completely new, a wholly new dimension to the narrative, in portraying47 Romeo and Juliet as adolescents going through that particular rite7 of passage. If I could say something a little personal about this aspect of the research on the play which I did as part of the edition. When I discovered this dimension and was trying to understand it, I even took a course on adolescent psychology48 because by that point I was so far from my own adolescence49 that I couldn't remember it very clearly. And it was an exciting experience because as I began to understand the psychological state, the play seemed to come into view as a photograph from a negative. This part of it is so clear and so thorough and so brilliantly accurate, and I wonder if this isn't the dimension of the play which explains its continuing emotional appeal in the late twentieth and early twenty first century.
Amanda Smith: Especially for young people.
Jill Levenson: Yes, particularly for young people. For example, the opening scene emphasises Romeo's adolescence, and that part of the scene is wholly invented. That part of the scene where Benvolio, Romeo's cousin and Montague, Romeo's father, are discussing Romeo's behaviour; it must have been a huge surprise to the original audiences of the play, who wouldn't have had any indication that this was coming. But they talk about his restlessness, they talk about his lack of communication, indicating I think to the audience, a case of unsettled hormones50, and we find out at the same time that Benvolio's doing the same thing. That's how he happened to find Romeo before dawn, wandering around, not having eaten, etc. So that dimension begins to become apparent right in the opening scene.
Amanda Smith: And Jill Levenson is the editor of the Oxford edition of Romeo and Juliet.
A striking thing about Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as a love story is that it presents more than one, in fact many views about love. In a way, the play's a discussion about the nature of love. For Romeo and for Juliet, it's the full fireworks and the full catastrophe51, but we do get a range of other views and experiences of love. For example, at the start of the play, Romeo is actually quite desperately52 in love with someone else, with Rosaline, who's a bit of an ice maiden53. So, John Bell, what's going on there?
John Bell: Well I think it's to show that Romeo is ready for the real thing, that the Rosaline thing was a mere54 sort of puppy love, obsession55, but the Juliet relationship is going to develop into the real lasting31 relationship, that's what's been set up. Juliet on the other hand, this is her first love, she's totally virginal and idealistic. And she's the one who teaches Romeo what love's really about. He's the one who wants to rush off and she says, 'Hang on, wait till tomorrow, we'll get married, we'll do it properly; I'm worried about this rashness, it can't last.' And she I think makes a man of Romeo, and we see her mature into a woman by the end of the play - which only happens over four days if you look at the calendar - but she's grown from a wide-eyed girl to a very mature heroine by the end of it.
Amanda Smith: Now a big factor I think in the success of productions of this play, is the extent to which the lead actors can convince us right from the start of the depth of their love for each other, right from their first meeting. But I wonder, John, how many people today can really believe in love at first sight, and if we don't, does that diminish the emotional effect of the play?
John Bell: I think people do believe in it still, remarkably56 so. Especially young people. I mean you don't have to believe in it, it just hits you like a ten-ton truck. And given the circumstance of the play and the story, I think we accept that. We also accept that it's not very real, that it has to be tested against time and trial. But the idea of sudden infatuation I think is well within our understanding.
Amanda Smith: There's also something marvellously uncomplicated about Romeo and Juliet's love for each other. Their circumstances are complicated, but their love is immediate57, it's completely mutual58, neither of them has a problem with commitment. Again, I wonder how does this sort of perfect match sit with audiences today at a time when I suppose relationships don't necessarily seem so straightforward?
John Bell: Well again I think that, you mentioned the casting, I think that's terribly important that they are really adolescents, because we know that can happen and does happen repeatedly in adolescence. If you cast the lovers too old, then of course it doesn't make sense. These would have been played by boys of about fourteen, fifteen years old in Shakespeare's time, and I think that's the challenge today, to get young actors who are young enough to be convincing, but who are experienced and mature enough to handle that extraordinary language, who have that kind of acting59 technique. That's the challenge we have today. Whereas in Shakespeare's time they were brought up from a very early age as apprentices60, and they were very expert actors by the time they were fifteen, and of course, speaking Elizabethan verse was their natural element. They were expert at it. It's harder today to make the play work, to find the right talented youngsters who can carry that off.
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Romeo: See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
Amanda Smith: In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare does put into the mouths of his young lovers some of the most beautiful and memorable63 and poetic64 lines that have ever been written about love in the English language. So how does Shakespeare use the conventions of the love poetry of his age, and recast them into drama? Jill Levenson.
Jill Levenson: I think what he's done with the poetry is quite astonishing, because as I've been saying, I think this play must have struck its original audiences as extremely new. And, perhaps I should add at this point that English Renaissance tragedy to this point had never before made romantic love its theme. It had dealt with matters of history and matters of legend, but not matters of love. So Romeo and Juliet was a first in that way. But the use of love poetry is especially intriguing65. Shakespeare himself had been working extensively with the sonnet66 form and sequence when he wrote this play, and he incorporates all of the conventions into the dialogue, the rhyme schemes and all. So why did he make such extensive use of this fashionable verse, because sonnets67 were fashionable in the middle of the 1590s, why did he do that in a play? He may have been trying to give the prestige of lyrical verse to his work for the theatre, because verse was more prestigious68 than drama. He may have been attempting to reach a particular demographic in his audience, who would appreciate the references. Or he may even have wanted to rethink this poetry that he had been writing, from a different point of view. So Romeo and Juliet the play may in part show us a poet-dramatist thinking out loud. The only thing we can say for sure, I believe, is that Shakespeare adapts a verse form very effectively for the stage. It becomes the language of Verona, but at the same time its articulation69 by Romeo and Juliet distinguishes them from everyone else. At their most intense, they speak it in a way that still makes my hair stand on end, even though I've edited the play and I've had to look at every word and every punctuation70 mark. When I get, for example, to the speech that Juliet has before her wedding night, when she's anticipating her wedding night. Which comes in the wake of the death of Mercutio and Tybalt. Which takes a conventional piece of Elizabethan poetry, the kind of song that was done before a nuptial71, and turns it into something totally new and original and brilliant.
Juliet: Come gentle night, coming loving black-browed night.
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
Not yet enjoyed.
Amanda Smith: Well let's move to the fortunes and passage of this play after Shakespeare's time. Romeo and Juliet was revived in 1662 after the playhouses were reopened following the Restoration. Now, Samuel Pepys saw it, we know this from his diary, and he thought it was a shocker, didn't he?
Jill Levenson: Yes, he thought it was poor. But we actually don't know much about the earliest revivals76 during the Restoration. The history of that period is fairly vague. We haven't got printed texts, we have only references.
Amanda Smith: I'm terribly interested in an alternative version of the play at this time, the middle of the seventeenth century, that as I understand it, changed the ending. Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after, so the dying-for-love theme, and the inevitably77 of the lovers' deaths that drives the play, was entirely78 removed. Can you tell me what we know about the happy ending version of Romeo and Juliet?
Jill Levenson: We know virtually nothing. A prompter describes this as tragi-comical and it seems that this adaptation played alternately with the tragedy. But we don't know anything more about it, except from that reference. It seems to have sunk without a trace. In other words, the idea of the happy ending did not catch on.
Amanda Smith: No, well fair enough. Do subsequent productions though, into the eighteenth century, continue to play around with the death scene at the end?
Jill Levenson: They play around with it, but they don't make it a happy ending.
Amanda Smith: What do they do?
Jill Levenson: Mostly what they do is elaborate on it. That is, in the versions of the play which bear any relation to Shakespeare's play, and I'm thinking of Garrick at this point.
Amanda Smith: This is David Garrick who produced the play in the mid-eighteenth century?
Jill Levenson: Yes, that's right. And Garrick produced what I would call the biggest blockbuster ever of Romeo and Juliet. What Garrick was doing was adapting the Shakespeare play to eighteenth century taste. It was a revival75 which began in 1748 and it actually held the stage for ninety-seven years, and it was not finally dislodged until the late ninteenth century, and there are still elements of it which crop up in modern productions, and even in Baz Luhrmann's film.
Amanda Smith: Such as?
Amanda Smith: So this is the playing around with the death scene at the end?
Jill Levenson: That's the kind of playing around with the death scene, which is famous, and still influential80. Juliet awakens81 before Romeo dies, and in his version they have a seventy-five line dialogue immediately after he takes the poison.
Amanda Smith: And what's that doing that's different from the original Shakespeare: that thing of Juliet waking up?
Jill Levenson: I think it emphasises the pathos of the situation. You know, if she had awakened82 one minute earlier he wouldn't have taken the poison, everything would have been all right. We already know that, it seems to me, but Garrick enhanced, or increased the amount of sentimentality that that episode would hold. It seems to me he makes it explicit83, or in your face.
Amanda Smith: Jill Levenson, the editor of the Oxford Romeo and Juliet.
And now to another re-working of the great teenage love story, created in the twentieth century: the music for the ballet of Romeo and Juliet, composed by Sergei Prokofiev. It's a bit hard to believe now, but in the 1930s, this music caused an artistic84 and political storm.
This ballet music for Romeo and Juliet gets my vote as the most successful adaptation of the story into another medium, at least since Will Shakespeare took that boring novella and turned it into a great play.
And what the ballet loses in spoken word, it gains in musical expressiveness85, according to Mark Carroll, who lectures in the history and aesthetics86 of music.
Mark Carroll: One of the great strengths of the score is that it's not simply a story told to music, as one often finds, but it's actually a story told in music. By that I mean that it's quite possible to actually follow the dramatic action and the story unfolding, by listening purely87 to the music itself, without the visual prompt of the ballet.
Amanda Smith: But this music for the ballet very nearly didn't happen. There was as much intrigue88 around its creation as there is in a Shakespearean drama. This was because it was being created in the Soviet89 Union under Joseph Stalin, where the story of Romeo and Juliet smacked90 way too much of capitalist decadence91, especially coming from a composer who'd been living in the West since the Communist revolution. Mark Carroll, tell us the story.
Mark Carroll: Well Prokofiev's decision to compose the score to Romeo and Juliet coincided with his decision to move back to the Soviet Union from the West. He found himself in Leningrad, what we now know as St Petersburg, and his friend the avant garde choreographer92, Sergei Radlov, invited him to collaborate93 with him on a score for a new production of Romeo and Juliet.
Amanda Smith: And this is for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad.
Mark Carroll: The Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. Now unfortunately, right about that time, and indeed nary a note had been composed, when Radlov himself fell out of favour with the city's Communist authorities. So immediately the plans came awry94. It's also reasonable to suspect that they also fell apart because the tragic ending, Romeo and Juliet's tragic ending, was very much out of kilter with what we would call the ruthlessly enforced optimism of Stalinism's socialist95 façade.
Amanda Smith: So what happens? The Kirov drops it.
Mark Carroll: Yes, they're cast adrift by the Kirov, and in 1935, Prokofiev and Radlov signed a contract with the Bolshoi Theatre.
Amanda Smith: So how come the Bolshoi picks it up when the Kirov has dropped it for largely political reasons?
Mark Carroll: Well at this particular point, socialist realism was not a blanket policy, so it was very much driven by localised party cells, if you like. Whereas in Leningrad, the spectre of Uncle Joe was looming96 large over the arts, in Moscow at that particular point, and here I'm talking about early 1935, things were a lot freer. So the Bolshoi was at that particular point in a political position to be able to offer Prokofiev and Radlov a new contract.
Amanda Smith: And they were happy with a story like Romeo and Juliet, whereas the Kirov found it ideologically97 unacceptable?
Mark Carroll: Indeed. So Prokofiev essentially98 retired99 to his dacha outside of Moscow and set about composing a score, or a piano reduction of the score, which he could then take back to the directors of the Bolshoi. Now in what's a remarkable100 sort of volte-face, the directors, upon hearing Prokofiev's completed piano reduction, promptly101 declared the music 'undanceable'.
Amanda Smith: Undanceable? What does that mean?
Mark Carroll: Well undanceable doesn't mean undanceable. Undanceable means we've had the message from higher up that this kind of music is now seen as an indulgence that's out of step with the Soviet socialist realist view of art. Now of course the unfortunate thing was that the realities of Soviet life at that particular time, were fairly miserable102. But of course Stalin and his cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov, would have none of that, so that by official decree, we're all required to be happy. And art is required to be happy.
Amanda Smith: So yes, as Prokofiev originally conceived the ballet, it was with a happy ending, that Juliet would wake up just in the nick of time before Romeo killed himself. Now this wasn't the first time that Romeo and Juliet has been tried with a happy end, but do we know anything of why Prokofiev originally wanted to do it that way?
Mark Carroll: Well the official story, in other words Prokofiev's version of events was 'Living people can dance, the dying cannot, so how do you put onto the dance stage a death scene?' Now there's probably a fair degree of common sense in that, but also you would have to say that also arose through probably his collaborator103, Radlov, being a little bit politically more attuned104 than Prokofiev. In other words, and after all he'd suffered the wrath105 of Stalin at the Kirov ballet, so he was probably encouraging Prokofiev in the direction of a happy ending: one that would then be able to celebrate and it would be seen as a celebration of Soviet life.
Amanda Smith: Well with or without the happy ending, Prokofiev's music for Romeo and Juliet remained 'undanceable'. In other words, ideologically unacceptable, in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. It was performed, however, in Czechoslovakia in 1938, which prompted another about-face back in the USSR.
Mark Carroll: Well the public success of the Czech premiere, together with what was during wartime a relaxation106 in socialist realist cultural policy in the Soviet Union, prompted the Kirov and the Bolshoi ballets to overcome their initial reluctance107. So the Soviet premiere was given by the Kirov in 1940, and the Bolshoi followed suit in 1946.
Amanda Smith: What sort of reception did it get when it was finally performed in the USSR?
Mark Carroll: It received widespread acclaim108. It was lauded109 as a great example of Soviet art. So obviously Stalin was very happy that during the war that the masses were being offered a diversion, however ideologically unsound it may well have appeared at the time.
Amanda Smith: Now maybe I'm just imagining this, but the music for the ball scene in this ballet, the Capulet's ball - which is probably the most well-known music from the ballet, that big, powerful, tight, tense sound - does seem kind of Soviet to me.
Mark Carroll: It does, you're absolutely right, I couldn't agree with you more. It's very foursquare. It's music to goosestep to, almost. It does very much have that sort of severe outlook.
Mark Carroll: What saves it from being the soundtrack to the Revolution if you like, is I think what comes before it and what comes after it. But it is very much that foursquare, severe kind of music that we've come to associate with the Soviet style.
Amanda Smith: Even though Prokofiev infused his ballet music for Romeo and Juliet with some elements of acceptable Soviet style, his political fortunes in the Soviet Union once again reversed towards the end of WW2. In 1948, Prokofiev was condemned110 by the Party Central Committee. He died in 1953, on the very same day, coincidentally, as Joseph Stalin died.
But, and here's another twist, Romeo and Juliet, with the music of Sergei Prokofiev, was the very first ballet that the Bolshoi took to the West. The company performed it at Covent Garden in 1956, to huge critical acclaim. In fact, Romeo and Juliet was the work that established the Bolshoi's international reputation. Maybe it was because the ballet so perfectly111 combined Soviet technical brilliance112 with Western sentiment.
Now to return to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Earlier in this series I was speaking with the actor and director John Bell, about Shakespeare's other pair of great lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, and the ambivalence113 that surrounds them about how they really feel about each other: is it love, is it lust114? Are they motivated by ambition more than love or lust? But, John, with Romeo and Juliet, we never doubt that they love each other truly deeply, do we?
John Bell: No, and it's because the play happens so fast. It happens over the four days and they never get a chance to really examine themselves very deeply, or to face the longeurs of a long-term affair. But that works. Because they're so young, because the whole thing happened so quickly, and they're up against such odds, and therefore they're on full throttle115 to get all they can out of this affair while it can last. I think that's what carries it through, it's the sheer impetuosity of the whole thing.
Amanda Smith: Well given that these young lovers do end up killing116 themselves, what view of love do you think audiences take from the play? For example, that there is such a thing as loving too much, and it's dangerous?
John Bell: Yes, we do get that. Yet we think how wonderful that people can love so much, and can take those risks and go to those lengths for real love. And some people have said, 'Well what if they have survived? They would have settled into a very ordinary middle age.' And that's quite possible, so therefore they have to die, in the sense of we mustn't have that image of adolescent romance dashed, it has to remain. They died young, they died beautiful, and that's how it had to be.
Amanda Smith: Yes, you can't really imagine them discussing the mortgage or whether they're going to have chops for tea, can you?
John Bell: Who puts the garbage out! No, none of that.
Amanda Smith: John Bell, the founding artistic director of the Bell Shakespeare Company. Well, whether it's the Shakespeare play, the Prokofiev ballet music, or the film directed by Baz Luhrmann, or before him, the one by Franco Zeffirelli, watching this sad story of Romeo and Juliet does always seem to me to be a strangely uplifting experience, as any well-told story of forbidden and tragic love always is. So why do we find these great love stories so attractive? Do they tell you anything useful about your own lives and relationships?
John Armstrong is the author of Conditions of Love - the Philosophy of Intimacy117, and he's not so sure they do.
John Armstrong: One is tempted118 to say that these great loves have a delusional119 quality to them. That doesn't mean that they are worthless, but it does mean that we should reconsider the way in which they stand as, say, an inspiration or as admirable. They're perhaps more like other delusions120 that inspire people to do great things, but are fundamentally quite weird121. Like, why do people climb mountains? I think that's really quite weird, but it is impressive that they do it. So there can be great motives122 that we have which are actually not that well founded, but they impel123 people to do things which look rather amazing.
Amanda Smith: Now a feature of all love stories I think, is the obstacles that stand in the way of the lovers: 'the course of true love never did run smooth' as Shakespeare tells us in Midsummer Night's Dream. And put simply, in romantic comedy the obstacles are eventually overcome and the story ends with the promise or suggestion of living happily ever after. Whereas in romantic tragedy the obstacles are ultimately overwhelming, so the story ends with separation and most often death. Why do you think that so many of our most enduring love stories, the great lovers of Western culture, are tragedies?
John Armstrong: One of the things about tragedy is that it cuts off love at an early stage. So with Romeo and Juliet we get this very beautiful, as it were, morning image, springtime image of the start of love. And because things work out so badly for them, their love is cut off when it's in its perfect pristine124 condition. And that means that we don't really have to follow through what might happen, and does in fact happen, even in good loving relationships. Namely, that there are a lot of other problems, they discover the irritating little habits, annoying things about the other person. And all that is much less entertaining, much less in a way, less imaginatively powerful, but it's the real stuff of most relationships. So I think it's quite important to us culturally, to give ourselves images of love which is perfect, and one of the ways of doing it is to cut it off early. So that these great tragedies can give us a slightly misleading conception of what love is actually about.
Amanda Smith: But they are kind of strangely uplifting.
John Armstrong: It's nice to be misled.
Amanda Smith: Well even those these are tragic love stories in extremis, is their power to move us also that we recognise, or find kind of reassuring125 something of our own experience of love's agonies and ecstasies126 in them, and that's the consolation127 of art and philosophy?
John Armstrong: One of the most intense moments of life, at least in my experience, has been the moment of rejection128, the moment when love breaks down. Especially if you feel that it's not your fault. That point when you've been abandoned makes you feel both intensely aware of yourself and also intensely sorry for yourself. And it's actually I think quite a special moment because your sense of what life is about suddenly gets this huge jolt129. And often it cleanses130 away, although it's very painful, it cleanses away a lot of the petty details of existence. This is my experience. I remember my girlfriend at the time, it's a few years ago, left me, just at the point where a few other things were quite tricky131 in life as well. And I suddenly thought it's not the little things that are the problem, if only she'd come back, everything would be all right. So you get a sense of the really deep issues in life, even if only because you've lost them. One of the tragedies of life is that we appreciate things most when we lose them. The point is, that we are returned, when we watch a tragedy, we return to a very solemn and serious view of ourselves, which can actually be quite consoling, because it reminds us of what's really important to us. And by being reminded of what's really important, other problems get put in perspective, and I think that's the consoling aspect of tragedy.
The other thing is that when we see other people having a really bad time, it can make us feel quite cosy132 about our own existence. We're not being horrible to Romeo and Juliet on the stage by thinking, 'Thank God my life's not as bad as that'. But when you leave the theatre, you want to come back and sort of cuddle up and 'I'm so glad we're not in the tomb together.'
Amanda Smith: In this episode of Great Lovers, the perfect, young love of Romeo and Juliet, I was speaking with the philosopher John Armstrong, the author of Conditions of Love, and a professorial fellow at the University of Tasmania. Also John Bell, the founding artistic director of the Bell Shakespeare Company, based in Sydney; Mark Carroll, who lectures in Music at the Elder School of Music in Adelaide, and the author of Music and Ideology133 in Cold War Europe; and Jill Levenson, who's the editor of the Oxford Romeo and Juliet. Jill's also Professor of English at the University of Toronto, in Canada.
Tomorrow on Great Lovers, we turn to the dark romanticism of the ninteenth century, with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and that strange, haunting, intense love of Heathcliff and Catherine.
And, ’the love that dare not speak its name’, the love that brought down Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas – Oscar and Bosie.
That’s Great Lovers tomorrow, hope you'll join me. And by the way, audio, transcripts134 and details for the five episodes of series are on the RN website – abc.net.au/rn. In the program list choose RN Afternoons. Technical production for Great Lovers is by Carey Dell. I'm Amanda Smith.
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1 renaissance | |
n.复活,复兴,文艺复兴 | |
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2 lamentable | |
adj.令人惋惜的,悔恨的 | |
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3 grudge | |
n.不满,怨恨,妒嫉;vt.勉强给,不情愿做 | |
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4 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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5 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
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6 tragic | |
adj.悲剧的,悲剧性的,悲惨的 | |
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7 rite | |
n.典礼,惯例,习俗 | |
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8 straightforward | |
adj.正直的,坦率的;易懂的,简单的 | |
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9 enacted | |
制定(法律),通过(法案)( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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10 circumvent | |
vt.环绕,包围;对…用计取胜,智胜 | |
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11 paradox | |
n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法;自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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12 guts | |
v.狼吞虎咽,贪婪地吃,飞碟游戏(比赛双方每组5人,相距15码,互相掷接飞碟);毁坏(建筑物等)的内部( gut的第三人称单数 );取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 );内脏;消化道的下段;肠 | |
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13 feud | |
n.长期不和;世仇;v.长期争斗;世代结仇 | |
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14 feuding | |
vi.长期不和(feud的现在分词形式) | |
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15 factions | |
组织中的小派别,派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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16 brawl | |
n.大声争吵,喧嚷;v.吵架,对骂 | |
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17 ruse | |
n.诡计,计策;诡计 | |
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18 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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19 prologue | |
n.开场白,序言;开端,序幕 | |
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20 timing | |
n.时间安排,时间选择 | |
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21 terminology | |
n.术语;专有名词 | |
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22 liberate | |
v.解放,使获得自由,释出,放出;vt.解放,使获自由 | |
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23 postal | |
adj.邮政的,邮局的 | |
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24 halfway | |
adj.中途的,不彻底的,部分的;adv.半路地,在中途,在半途 | |
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25 irresistible | |
adj.非常诱人的,无法拒绝的,无法抗拒的 | |
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26 pathos | |
n.哀婉,悲怆 | |
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27 vendetta | |
n.世仇,宿怨 | |
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28 fulcrum | |
n.杠杆支点 | |
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29 odds | |
n.让步,机率,可能性,比率;胜败优劣之别 | |
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30 everlasting | |
adj.永恒的,持久的,无止境的 | |
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31 lasting | |
adj.永久的,永恒的;vbl.持续,维持 | |
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32 constricted | |
adj.抑制的,约束的 | |
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33 liberating | |
解放,释放( liberate的现在分词 ) | |
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34 civilisation | |
n.文明,文化,开化,教化 | |
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35 vivacity | |
n.快活,活泼,精神充沛 | |
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36 exuberance | |
n.丰富;繁荣 | |
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37 narrative | |
n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的 | |
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38 purgatory | |
n.炼狱;苦难;adj.净化的,清洗的 | |
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39 prosaic | |
adj.单调的,无趣的 | |
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40 affected | |
adj.不自然的,假装的 | |
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41 capitalism | |
n.资本主义 | |
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42 consolidating | |
v.(使)巩固, (使)加强( consolidate的现在分词 );(使)合并 | |
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43 melancholy | |
n.忧郁,愁思;adj.令人感伤(沮丧)的,忧郁的 | |
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44 irony | |
n.反语,冷嘲;具有讽刺意味的事,嘲弄 | |
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45 intensity | |
n.强烈,剧烈;强度;烈度 | |
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46 infusion | |
n.灌输 | |
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47 portraying | |
v.画像( portray的现在分词 );描述;描绘;描画 | |
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48 psychology | |
n.心理,心理学,心理状态 | |
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49 adolescence | |
n.青春期,青少年 | |
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50 hormones | |
n. 荷尔蒙,激素 名词hormone的复数形式 | |
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51 catastrophe | |
n.大灾难,大祸 | |
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52 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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53 maiden | |
n.少女,处女;adj.未婚的,纯洁的,无经验的 | |
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54 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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55 obsession | |
n.困扰,无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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56 remarkably | |
ad.不同寻常地,相当地 | |
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57 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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58 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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59 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
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60 apprentices | |
学徒,徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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61 bounty | |
n.慷慨的赠予物,奖金;慷慨,大方;施与 | |
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62 boundless | |
adj.无限的;无边无际的;巨大的 | |
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63 memorable | |
adj.值得回忆的,难忘的,特别的,显著的 | |
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64 poetic | |
adj.富有诗意的,有诗人气质的,善于抒情的 | |
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65 intriguing | |
adj.有趣的;迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词);激起…的好奇心 | |
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66 sonnet | |
n.十四行诗 | |
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67 sonnets | |
n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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68 prestigious | |
adj.有威望的,有声望的,受尊敬的 | |
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69 articulation | |
n.(清楚的)发音;清晰度,咬合 | |
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70 punctuation | |
n.标点符号,标点法 | |
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71 nuptial | |
adj.婚姻的,婚礼的 | |
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72 garish | |
adj.华丽而俗气的,华而不实的 | |
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73 mansion | |
n.大厦,大楼;宅第 | |
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74 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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75 revival | |
n.复兴,复苏,(精力、活力等的)重振 | |
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76 revivals | |
n.复活( revival的名词复数 );再生;复兴;(老戏多年后)重新上演 | |
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77 inevitably | |
adv.不可避免地;必然发生地 | |
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78 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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79 awakening | |
n.觉醒,醒悟 adj.觉醒中的;唤醒的 | |
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80 influential | |
adj.有影响的,有权势的 | |
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81 awakens | |
v.(使)醒( awaken的第三人称单数 );(使)觉醒;弄醒;(使)意识到 | |
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82 awakened | |
v.(使)醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 );(使)觉醒;弄醒;(使)意识到 | |
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83 explicit | |
adj.详述的,明确的;坦率的;显然的 | |
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84 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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85 expressiveness | |
n.富有表现力 | |
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86 aesthetics | |
n.(尤指艺术方面之)美学,审美学 | |
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87 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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88 intrigue | |
vt.激起兴趣,迷住;vi.耍阴谋;n.阴谋,密谋 | |
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89 Soviet | |
adj.苏联的,苏维埃的;n.苏维埃 | |
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90 smacked | |
拍,打,掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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91 decadence | |
n.衰落,颓废 | |
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92 choreographer | |
n.编舞者 | |
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93 collaborate | |
vi.协作,合作;协调 | |
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94 awry | |
adj.扭曲的,错的 | |
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95 socialist | |
n.社会主义者;adj.社会主义的 | |
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96 looming | |
n.上现蜃景(光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼)v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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97 ideologically | |
adv. 意识形态上地,思想上地 | |
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98 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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99 retired | |
adj.隐退的,退休的,退役的 | |
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100 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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101 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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102 miserable | |
adj.悲惨的,痛苦的;可怜的,糟糕的 | |
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103 collaborator | |
n.合作者,协作者 | |
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104 attuned | |
v.使协调( attune的过去式和过去分词 );调音 | |
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105 wrath | |
n.愤怒,愤慨,暴怒 | |
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106 relaxation | |
n.松弛,放松;休息;消遣;娱乐 | |
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107 reluctance | |
n.厌恶,讨厌,勉强,不情愿 | |
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108 acclaim | |
v.向…欢呼,公认;n.欢呼,喝彩,称赞 | |
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109 lauded | |
v.称赞,赞美( laud的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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110 condemned | |
adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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111 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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112 brilliance | |
n.光辉,辉煌,壮丽,(卓越的)才华,才智 | |
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113 ambivalence | |
n.矛盾心理 | |
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114 lust | |
n.性(淫)欲;渴(欲)望;vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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115 throttle | |
n.节流阀,节气阀,喉咙;v.扼喉咙,使窒息,压 | |
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116 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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117 intimacy | |
n.熟悉,亲密,密切关系,亲昵的言行 | |
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118 tempted | |
v.怂恿(某人)干不正当的事;冒…的险(tempt的过去分词) | |
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119 delusional | |
妄想的 | |
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120 delusions | |
n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 );谬见;错觉;妄想 | |
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121 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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122 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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123 impel | |
v.推动;激励,迫使 | |
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124 pristine | |
adj.原来的,古时的,原始的,纯净的,无垢的 | |
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125 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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126 ecstasies | |
狂喜( ecstasy的名词复数 ); 出神; 入迷; 迷幻药 | |
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127 consolation | |
n.安慰,慰问 | |
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128 rejection | |
n.拒绝,被拒,抛弃,被弃 | |
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129 jolt | |
v.(使)摇动,(使)震动,(使)颠簸 | |
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130 cleanses | |
弄干净,清洗( cleanse的第三人称单数 ) | |
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131 tricky | |
adj.狡猾的,奸诈的;(工作等)棘手的,微妙的 | |
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132 cosy | |
adj.温暖而舒适的,安逸的 | |
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133 ideology | |
n.意识形态,(政治或社会的)思想意识 | |
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134 transcripts | |
n.抄本( transcript的名词复数 );转写本;文字本;副本 | |
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