A Passover sermon, a play, and a century of the Melting pot
The melting pot metaphor, touchstone of America’s debate over immigration, was claimed by the rabbi of a New York City synagogue, who said he coined it in a Passover sermon he gave exactly 100 years ago.
The image has been traced to a naturalized New Yorker in 1782, and also to DeWitt Clinton and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Later in 1907, a book by the English writer Ford Madox Ford included a chapter titled “The Melting Pot,” which said Britain had been revitalized by the influx of foreigners.
And finally, the following year, the phrase was popularized for eternity in “The Melting Pot,” a stage play by Israel Zangwill that preached the gospel of assimilation.
“I coined the term,” Rabbi Samuel Schulman said years after his 1907 sermon. “But I used it in a much different sense than Zangwill subsequently did. American democracy, in my mind, is a vast ‘single melting pot’, in that it absorbs all races, brings out the common humanity in each, separates the gold from the dross and preserves only the gold.”
The play by Zangwill, a London-born son of Russian Jewish immigrants who was a Zionist, made its debut in Washington in 1908 and played in New York for four months the next year. The protagonist is David Quixano, a Jewish immigrant, orphaned by a pogrom, who lives with his uncle on Staten Island and becomes smitten with the daughter of a Russian nobleman.
Zangwill originally titled the play “The Mills of God,” then “The Crucible,” before settling on “The Melting Pot.” The phrase has many fathers, including J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, a French writer who lived for many years in New York. He wrote 225 years ago that in America, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race.”
By that time, the phrase had appeared in various writings about assimilation, including at least two articles in the New York Times in the fall of 1889 that referred to the “American melting pot” as a “mysterious force which blends all foreign elements in one homogeneous mass.”
Zangwill died in Britain in 1926 at age 62.
Since then, the metaphor of the melting pot has evolved. “If it means that cultures have mixed and impacted each other, he’d have no problem with it,” said Professor Nahshon, whose book “From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot” was published last year. “If it meant uniformity, he’d totally reject the meaning.”
考研詞匯：
melt[melt]
v.(使)融化，(使)熔化
coin[kɔin]
n.硬幣，貨幣;v.鑄造(硬幣)，創(chuàng)造(新詞)
absorb[əbˈsɔ:b]
v.①吸收;②吸收，使專(zhuān)心
homogeneous[ˌhɔməˈdʒi:niəs]
a.同種類(lèi)的，同性質(zhì)的，有相同特征的 evolve[i5vClv]
v.(使)發(fā)展，(使)進(jìn)化
[真題例句] We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us.[2000年閱讀2]
[例句精譯] 我們沒(méi)有進(jìn)化。因?yàn)闄C(jī)器和社會(huì)替我們做到了這一切。
uniformity[ˌju:niˈfɔ:miti]
n.統(tǒng)一，一致
[真題例句] There is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of consumption” launched by the 19th century department stores that offered “vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere”.[2006年閱讀1]
[例句精譯] 19世紀(jì)由百貨公司發(fā)起的民主化統(tǒng)一的著裝、言論和隨意的消費(fèi)提供了“在優(yōu)雅購(gòu)物環(huán)境中的大批商品”。
背景常識(shí)介紹：
人們常說(shuō)美國(guó)是個(gè)大熔爐，能熔化移民到美國(guó)的各個(gè)種族和民族。美國(guó)的歷史和文化決定了其移民社會(huì)的獨(dú)特性。美國(guó)之所以成為“大熔爐”的基礎(chǔ)——美國(guó)之夢(mèng)，除了本民族價(jià)值觀，還有美國(guó)公民都認(rèn)同的另一個(gè)共同的價(jià)值觀：自我?jiàn)^斗，實(shí)現(xiàn)成功。這個(gè)“美國(guó)之夢(mèng)”，將不同種族、不同文化背景的人融合到一起。
參考譯文：
逾越節(jié)的布道，一部戲劇，一個(gè)世紀(jì)大熔爐
美國(guó)關(guān)于移民問(wèn)題爭(zhēng)論的試金石，大熔爐這個(gè)比喻，是由一個(gè)紐約市猶太教堂的法師提出來(lái)的，法師說(shuō)他是從一百多年前的一次逾越節(jié)的布道中提煉出這個(gè)觀念的。
這個(gè)形象化的比喻可以追溯到1782年，一個(gè)獲得了美國(guó)國(guó)籍的紐約人，DeWitt Clinton以及Ralph Waldo Emerson。在隨后的1907年英國(guó)作家Ford Madox Ford的一本書(shū)里有一章的標(biāo)題就叫“大熔爐”，其中描述了移居英國(guó)的外國(guó)人給英國(guó)帶來(lái)了活力。
而在第二年(1908年)，“大熔爐”這個(gè)詞因?yàn)楣拇怠巴摗钡腎srael Zangwill的舞臺(tái)劇“大熔爐”而廣為流傳。
Samuel Schulman法師在他1907年布道之后說(shuō)“我創(chuàng)造了這個(gè)詞。但是，我用它表達(dá)的意思和后來(lái)Zangwill表達(dá)的完全不一樣。在我看來(lái)，美國(guó)的民主主義就是一個(gè)巨大的單一的大熔爐，這個(gè)熔爐吸納所有的種族，熔煉出共同的博愛(ài)仁慈，去其糟粕，取其精華�！�
Zangwill出生在倫敦，是一位俄羅斯猶太人移民的兒子，其父親是一個(gè)擁護(hù)猶太復(fù)國(guó)運(yùn)動(dòng)者。這部由Zangwill編導(dǎo)的戲劇1908年在華盛頓首次登臺(tái)亮相，并且1909年在紐約演出了四個(gè)月。戲劇的主角是David Quixano，一位猶太移民，由于大屠殺成了孤兒，和他的叔叔居住在一個(gè)叫Staten的小島上，David深深地愛(ài)上了一位俄國(guó)貴族家庭小姐。
Zangwill在把這部戲劇確定命名為《大熔爐》之前，先后考慮過(guò)命名為《上帝的磨房》，《嚴(yán)酷的考驗(yàn)》。大熔爐這個(gè)詞有很多的創(chuàng)造者，包括J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur，一位久居紐約的法國(guó)作家。他描寫(xiě)了225年前的美國(guó)“各種各樣不同的種族融合成為一個(gè)新的種族�！�
從那個(gè)時(shí)候起，“大熔爐”出現(xiàn)在各種各樣的關(guān)于民族同化的作品中，其中，至少有1889年紐約時(shí)報(bào)的兩篇文章把“大熔爐”譽(yù)為“可以把各種外國(guó)的因素融合成一種和諧社會(huì)的神奇力量”。
Zangwill于1926年在英國(guó)去世，享年62歲。
從那個(gè)時(shí)候起，大熔爐這個(gè)比喻逐漸形成。去年剛剛出版了新書(shū)《從猶太人區(qū)到大熔爐》的Nahshon博士說(shuō)：“如果這個(gè)比喻的喻義是說(shuō)文化交融并且互相影響，Zangwill先生肯定會(huì)贊成，但是，如果是指‘同一或統(tǒng)一’，我想他會(huì)完全反對(duì)的�！� |
