《爱的教育》 作者爱德蒙多德亚米契斯[Edemondo De Amicis],生于意大利利古里亚大区因佩里亚省收奥内利亚的一个海滨城市,从小喜爱军旅生活,16岁进人莫德纳军事学院学习,1865年毕业后成为军官,1866年积极参加了意大利第三次独立战争。1868年发表处女作《军营生活》,并因此而成名。1870年罗马解放后,他放弃军事生涯,定居都灵,成为意大利主要报纸的记者,并从此开始从事专业文学创作。
亚米契斯早期曾周游世界,写下不少游记,如《西班牙》、《荷兰》、《伦敦记事》、《摩洛哥》、《君土坦丁堡》、《美国游记》、《西西里的回忆》等。1879-1889年这10年是亚米契斯创作的繁荣时期,他写了许多有关社会题材的作品,有《散文集》、《朋友们》、《爱的教育》、《大西洋上》等。他关注社会问题,继而投身政治,参加社会主义运动,1891年加入社会党,此后,他先后出版了《一个教师的小说》、《工人的教师》和《公共电车》等作品。
目錄:
OCTOBER
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.
OUR MASTER
AN ACCIDENT
THE CALABRIAN BOY
MY COMRADES
A GENEROUS DEED
MY SCHOOLMISTRESS OF THE UPPER FIRST.
IN AN ATTIC
THE SCHOOL
THE LITTLE PATRIOT OF PADUA.
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.
THE DAY OF THE DEAD.
NOVEMBER
MY FRIEND GARRONE.
THE CHARCOAL-MAN AND THE GENTLEMAN.
MY BROTHERS SCHOOLMISTRESS..
MY MOTHER
MY COMPANION CORETTI.
THE HEAD-MASTER
THE SOLDIERS
NELLIS PROTECTOR.
THE HEAD OF THE CLASS
THE LITTLE VIDETTE OF LOMBARDY
THE POOR
DECEMBER
THE TRADER
VANITY
THE FIRST SNOW-STORM.
THE LITTLE MASON
A SNOWBALL
THE MISTRESSES.
IN THE HOUSE OF THE WOUNDED MAN.
THE LITTLE FLORENTINE SCRIBE
WILL
GRATITUDE.
JANUARY
THE ASSISTANT MASTER
STARDIS LIBRARY
THE SON OF THE BLACKSMITH-IRONMONGER
A FINE VISIT
THE FUNERAL OF VITTORIO EMANUELE
FRANTI EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL
THE SARDINIAN DRUMMER-BOY
THE LOVE OF COUNTRY.
ENVY
FRANTIS MOTHER
HOPE
FEBRUARY
A MEDAL WELL BESTOWED.
........
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
內容試閱:
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.
Monday, 17th.
To-day is the first day of school. These three months of vacation in the country have passed like a dream. This morning my mother conducted me to the Baretti schoolhouse to have me enter for the third elementary course: I was thinking of the country and went unwillingly. All the streets were swarming with boys: the two book-shops were thronged with fathers and mothers who were purchasing bags, portfolios, and copy-books, and in front of the school so many people had collected, that the beadle and the policeman found it difficult to keep the entrance disencumbered. Near the door, I felt myself touched on the shoulder: it was my master of the second class, cheerful, as usual, and with his red hair ruffled, and he said to me:
So we are separated forever, Enrico?
I knew it perfectly well, yet these words pained me. We made our way in with difficulty. Ladies, gentlemen, women of the people, workmen, officials, nuns, servants, all leading boys with one hand, and holding the promotion books in the other, filled the anteroom and the stairs, making such a buzzing, that it seemed as though one were entering a theatre. I beheld again with pleasure that large room on the ground floor, with the doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for three years. There was a throng; the teachers were going and coming. My schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of the class-room, and said:
Enrico, you are going to the floor above this year. I shall never see you pass by any more! and she gazed sadly at me. The director was surrounded by women in distress because there was no room for their sons, and it struck me that his beard was a little whiter than it had been last year. I found the boys had grown taller and stouter. On the ground floor, where the divisions had already been made, there were little children of the first and lowest section, who did not want to enter the class-rooms, and who resisted like donkeys: it was necessary to drag them in by force, and some escaped from the benches; others, when they saw their parents depart, began to cry, and the parents had to go back and comfort and reprimand them, and the teachers were in despair.
My little brother was placed in the class of Mistress Delcati: I was put with Master Perboni, up stairs on the first floor. At ten oclock we were all in our classes: fifty-four of us; only fifteen or sixteen of my companions of the second class, among them, Derossi, the one who always gets the first prize. The school seemed to me so small and gloomy when I thought of the woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again, too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us, and I grieved that I should no longer see him there, with his tumbled red hair. Our teacher is tall; he has no beard; his hair is gray and long; and he has a perpendicular wrinkle on his forehead: he has a big voice, and he looks at us fixedly, one after the other, as though he were reading our inmost thoughts; and he never smiles. I said to myself: This is my first day. There are nine months more. What toil, what monthly examinations, what fatigue! I really needed to see my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand. She said to me:
Courage, Enrico! we will study together. And I returned home content. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and school does not seem pleasant to me as it did before.