高级英语（第二册） Lesson7 The Libido for the Ugly (H. L. Mencken)
这里涉及到一个心理学家迄今未加重视的问题，即为了丑本身的价值而爱丑(非因其他利益驱动而爱丑)，急欲将世界打扮得丑不可耐的变态心理。这种心理的孳生地就是美国。从美国这个大熔炉中产生出了一个新的种族，他们像仇视真理一样地仇视美。这种变态心理的产生根源值得进行更多的研究，它的背后一定隐藏着某些原因，其产生和发展肯定受到某些生物学规律的制约，而不能简单地看成是出于上帝的安排。那么，这些规律的具体内容究竟是什么呢?为什么它们在美国比在其他任何地方更为盛行?这个问题还是让某位像德国大学的无薪教师那样正直的社会病理学 家去研究吧。
(摘自卡罗琳什罗迪斯，克里福德A约瑟夫逊，詹姆斯R威尔逊编《修辞读物》)
16
高级英语（第二册） Lesson7 The Libido for the Ugly (H. L. Mencken)
习题全解
I. Henry Louis Mencken (1880--1956) was the first American to be widely read as a critic. He was born in Baltimore, Md. , on Sept. 12, 1880, and privately educated there. After graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute at the age of 16, he became a reporter on the Baltimore Herald. He rose repidly, soon he was the Herald's city editor and then edi tor. In 1906 Mencken joined the organization known as the Sunpaper, which he served in a variety of ways until his re- tirement. Mencken' s journalistic skill became his chief hand- icap as a critic. He had also carried out a fruitful study of the American Language, with some comprehensive works pub- lished in this field. By the time of his death on Jan. 29, 1956, in his beloved Baltimore, recognition of his service to the language was everywhere admitted.
1. The writer is referring to industrial production which is the most lucrative and characteristic activity in the United States.
2. All the noble aspirations of a man for a better, fuller and more beautiful life here on earth. 3. All the houses were ugly. The houses look like bricks set on end. They were made of clapboards, with narrow, low- pitched roofs. And the whole house is set upon thin brick piers. All the houses are streaked with grime and many of them are not even perpendicular but they lean this way and that. The writer suggests a chalet-type house for the hill sides. A chalet with high-pitched roof, to throw off the
heavy winter snows, but still essentially a low and clinging building, wider than it was tall.
4, According to the writer, the house has the most loathsome color. The color of a fried egg when and after some time they take on the color of uremic yellow.
5. Strictly speaking, no. Most of them were most probably U.S. citizens of European origin, with perhaps a few re- cent immigrants from Europe.
6. Mencken doesnI t believe that mere ignorance was the rea son for such ugliness. He believes on certain levels of the American race, there seems to be a great passion for the ugly. Ugliness seems to give some sort of satisfaction to this type of mind. Mencken, however, doesnf t understand they have such tastes.
7. No. he is only implying in a sarcastic tone, that he does- n~t understand why so many Americans seem to love ugli ness for its own sake. He doesn~ t understand the psycholo gy of these people who lust to make the world intolerable. He thinks these people have a diseased mind.
1. Mencken deliberately uses the word \create the impres sion that his description and analysis has some scientific foundation.
2. Paragraph 1 is developed by contrasting the great wealth of this region to the abominable human habitations seen everywhere. The last two sentences bring home to readers that ugliness is not due to poverty, but to something in- nate in the American character--a love of ugliness for its own sake, or, as the title says, the libido for the ugly.
3. Meneken refers to other towns and villages in America, to the villages of Europe and to the Parthenon in order to em- phasize the ugliness of Westmoreland County. He means to say Westmoreland is the ugliest spot on earth and the United States as a whole is uglier than Europe. 4. The author also attacks the whole American raee a race that loves ugliness for its own sake, that lusts to make the world intolerable; a race which hates beauty as it hates truth (see the text, para. 9)
17
高级英语（第二册） Lesson7 The Libido for the Ugly (H. L. Mencken)
5. The satirical power of the authorr s attack in this essay is not only a result of his choice of words, of his diction, but also his masterly employment of the various rhetoric means such as metaphors, similes, hyperboles and so on. Examples may be referred to the answers to Exs. XIII, XIV,XV.
6. So far as the point which the author wanted to make is concerned, all the metaphors, similes and hyperboles are used appropriately and effectively.
7. As a rule, an excessive use of strong language in writing tends to be self-defeating. Mencken uses a lot of hyper boles to exaggerate and also makes abundant use of sar casm, ridicule and irony to taunt the jeer in the essay. It may lead the average reader to doubt the objectivity and fairness or even the honesty of the writer. He may feel the writer perhaps has a special axe to grind and lose interest in what he has to say. So one might say Mencken employs all the force of diction, structure and figures only to batter his readers into insensitivity. IV.
1. As a boy and later when I was a grown-up man, I had of- ten travelled through the region. 2. But somehow in the past I never really perceived how shocking and wretched this whole region was.
3. This dreadful scene makes all human endeavors to advance and improve their lot appear as a ghastly, saddening joke.
4. The country itself is pleasant to look at, despite the sooty dirt spread by the innumerable mills in this region.
5. The model they followed in building their houses was a brick standing upright. / All the houses they built iooked like bricks standing upright.
6. These brick-like houses were made of shabby, thin wooden boards and their roofs were narrow and had little slope.
7. When the brick is covered with the black soot of the mills it takes on the color of a rotten egg.
8. Red brick, even in a steel town, looks quite respectable with the passing of time. / Even in a steel town, old red bricks still appear pleasing to the eye.
9. I have given Westmoreland the highest award for ugliness after having done a lot of hard work and research and after continuous praying.
10. They show such fantastic and bizarre ugliness that, in looking back, they become almost fiendish and wicked./ When one looks back at these houses whose ugliness is so fantastic and bizarre, one feels they must be the work of the devil himself.
11. It is hard to believe that people built such horrible houses just because they did not know what beautiful houses were like.
12. People in certain strata of American society seem definite- ly to hunger after ugly things; while in other less Chris- tian strata, people seem to long for things beautiful.
13. These ugly designs, in some way that people cannot un- derstand, satisfy the hidden and unintelligible demands of this type of mind.
14. They put a penthouse on top of it, painted in a bright, conspicuous yellow color and thought it looked perfect but they only managed to make it absolutely intolerable.
15. From the intermingling of different nationalities and races in the United States emerges the American race which hates beauty as strongly as it hates truth．
18
高级英语（第二册） Lesson7 The Libido for the Ugly (H. L. Mencken)
V．See the translation of the text． Ⅵ．
1．express：a fast，direct train。Making few stops
2．roll：travel in a wheeled vehicle(here an express train) 3．revolting：disgusting 4.line：railway line
5．yard：a railway center where trains are made up，serviced， switched from track to track。etc．
6．streak：mark with streaks(a line or long，thin mark) 7．sightly：pleasant to the sight 8．pullman：a railroad car with private compartments or seats that can be made up into berths for sleeping．It is so—called after the U．S．inventor，George。M．Pullman(1831— 1897)． 9．save：except。but
10．yield：surrender，give into border upon：be like，almost be 11．pull：drawing force．appeal
12．1evel：position。elevation，or rank considered as one of the planes in a scale of values 13．put down(to)：attribute(to)
14．impossible：not capable of being endured，used。agreed to，etc．，because of being disagreeable or unsuitable： hard to tolerate Ⅶ.
1．dirt指任何不清洁的或玷污之物，如泥土、灰尘、粪便、垃圾； filth一词用来表示脏得令人作呕的东西；soot是指主要由 炭粒构成，由物质的不完全燃烧所形成的一种黑色物质； grime指沉积在表面上或嵌入表面之中的煤烟或小颗粒状 污秽。
2．love意指强烈的喜爱或深刻的倾心，可用于表示各种不同的 关系或用于各种对象(如性爱、手足之爱、对工作之爱等)； passion通指一种具有压倒或强制性的强烈情绪，如：His passions overcame his reason．(他的激情压倒了他的理 智。)；lust指一种欲望，特别是那种寻求不。受拘束的满足 ——感官满足，尤其是性满足的欲望；libido是精神分析学 上的一个术语，能指精神上的能量，通指精神能量的一种基 本形式，包含积极的、爱的本能，并在性格发展的不同阶段中 表现出来。 Ⅶ．hideous。horrid。horrible，frightful，dreadful，terrible，awful，repulsive，repugnant，ghastly，revolting Ⅸ．beauty．beautifulness。prettiness，handsomeness，attractiveness，loveliness，charm，pulchritude，grace，elegance， exquisiteness X．
1．1ucrative，creative，destructive，indicative，fricative，e vocative，sedative，negative，interrogative，relative，con templative
2．characteristic，realistic，artistic，egotistic，altruistic，im pressionistic，antagonistic，chauvinistic，humanistic，opti mistic，pressimistic
19
高级英语（第二册） Lesson7 The Libido for the Ugly (H. L. Mencken)
3．horrible，divisible，legible，invincible，edible，incredible， elegible。negligible，audible，intelligible，infallible
4．ghastly，harshly，finely，loosely，delicately，tersely，fear somely，deathly，steadfastly，curtly，eloquently 5．swinish，piggish，sluggish，doggish，hoggish，kittenish， owlish，ghoulish，girlish”fiendish，devilish
6．biological，theological，physiological，etymological，an thropological，astrological，bacteriological，psychologi cal，geological，archeological，mythological 7．10athsome，gladsome，ti’resome，venturesome，trouble some。burdensome，cumbersome，frolicsome，gruesome， quarrelsome，fearsome
8．hideous，outrageous，courageous，advantageous，contem poraneous．extemporaneous，simultaneous，spontaneous' instantaneous, extraneous, erroneous
XI. appalling desolation, dreadfully, hideous, intolerably, bleak, forlorn, abominable, filth, dirty, ugliness, revolt ing, monstrousness, horrible, leprous, hideousness, mis shapen, shabby, uncomely, grime, dingy, decaying, swin ishly, eczematous patches, shocking, uremic yellow, loath- some, unlovely, decomposing, gloomy, God-forsaken, malarious, grotesqueries of ugliness, diabolical, frightful, abominations, putrid, horror, deface, ghastly, depravity, etc.
XI. 1. profitable 2. dwellings, homes 3. refer to 4. wound, hurt 5. absurd, ridiculous 6. exactly upright, vertical 7. unsafely, insecurely 8. continual, repeated 9. unfriendly, hostile 10. insensitive, without feelings 11. hateful or dis gusting things 12. spoil the appearance of, disfigure care- lessness, oversight 13. building 14. causes
XI. The many metaphors and similes in the essay are largely ap propritately used in describing the ugliness of Westmoreland County. For example, in para. 3 the metaphor of comparing the houses there to pigs wallowing in the mud~ the metaphor in the same para. of comparing the patches of paint to dried up scales formed by a skin disease~ and the simile in para. 2 as shown in the sentence \stadi um ~ -- the line\mostly very effective in conveying what the author had to say. In para. 1, we read the sentence \was wealth ... alley cats\exaggerating the richness and grandeur of this region and of America as a whole, the boast and pride of the richest and grandest nation ever seen on earth ; in para. 5 we read \great power, who didn' t like to do the right things and who was an inflexible enemy of man, em ployed all the cleverness and skill of hell to build these ugly houses; and again in para. 2 there is the sentence \Not every house could have been that ugly.
XV. In the essay, sarcasm, ridicule or irony is employed profuse The following are just a few examples:
l. (Para. 2) \
2. (Para. 3) \
3. (Para. 4) \
20