什么才是英语中的美文？
提到“英文美文”，我们需要知道的一个词是: phonaesthetic
Phonaesthetics is the study of the euphony and cacophony of words without regard for semantics. Phonaesthetics derives from two Greek word parts that mean “voice-sound” and “aesthetics.”
Steven Pinker在The Sense of Style中说:
The best words not only pinpoint an idea better than any alternative but echo it in their sound and articulation, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, the feeling of sound.
我们经常说的"头韵" Alliteration就是一个极好的例子; 还有一些对仗押韵的词句。例如最近几期的《经济学人》的标题:
Does Deutschland do digital?
Old-time Pekingology makes a comeback; old-time party rule never went away.
除了“听起来很美”，还要有“画面美"。《葛传椝英文写作》中提到了 “What is beautiful language?” 在此分享给你。
Beautiful language, as I have just said, is not the same thing as “fine writing”. It consists rather in the use of plain words that create vivid images. When I say “plain words”, I do not mean that figurative language is not beautiful. Figurative language is of great value in artistic description; but then good figurative language comes of the felicitous use of plain rather than pretentious words. When a plain word is so well chosen as to create a vivid image, it is beautiful, be it figurative or not.
Notice the italicized words in the following beautiful sentence:
In a morning sharp with dew and bright with sunshine, I had climbed to a great undulating heath a rolling sea of copper-colored bracken that spread like a double tide to either margin of the moorland road and foamed about the feet of sombre firs which dotted the heath with rare islands. — Martin Armstrong.
“Sharp” and “sombre” are here non-figurative; “rolling”, “sea”, “tide”, “foamed”, arid “islands” are here figurative. Figurative or not, however, all these words create vivid image, and the whole sentence is beautifully written.
A descriptive sentence does not need to contain many such words to be beautiful. Very often the beauty or a sentence depends upon the use of a single words aptly chosen for vividness. Notice the italicized words in the following sentences:
Jane wore garments which were a somewhat confused compromise between afternoon and evening dress.
The primrose was more vulgar, a homely pleasant creature who appeared in every cranny like a weed.
And, instantly, at the sound of his voice, her joy died, the light was out.
He stood still in the middle of the room, frozen by a sudden thought.
Her beautiful, haunted eyes seemed scarcely to see us.
Emma Snow was house-proud.
Outside, a small detached wind went through the trees, touching them almost leaf by leaf, turning them over, looking, as it seemed, for some lost treasure.
There were geese marching.
It rained very often; the mud rose higher and higher in the streets; on many days a thick heavy pall hung over the place and everyone walked with bent shoulders, as though they dreaded a blow.
Her beauty was light and delicate, her eyes were translucent and expressed all the shades and tones of youth with unforgettable, ravishing loveliness.
All day the hot summer sun had scorched the earth.
Steven Pinker的一条建议分享给大家:
Readers who want to become writes should read with a dictionary at hand (several are available as smartphone apps), and writers should not hesitate to send their readers there if the word is dead-on in meaning, evocative in sound, and not so obscure that the reader will never see it again.
没有什么“高大上”或者是“被用烂的词" (除了cliché的现象), 一个词用的好不好不是因为这个词是专八词汇还是GRE词汇，而是因为是否恰当，是否读起来“和谐”，是在装X炫耀还是服务于某种目的(例如幽默，讽刺)。不考虑这些的话，简单把一个词换成它的"同义词"难免会变的很奇怪。
例如《经济学人》中很多这样的表达: "It did not end well." 如果我们把end变成"teminate" "close" "complete" "finish"，读起来就会“差那么一点儿” 。
我认为plain language才是我们需要的。说人话, 说清楚，是沟通的首要原则。 如William Zinsser所说: "simplify your language and thereby find your humanity".
在"小黄书" The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus的扉页上引用了Mark Twain的一段话来描述用词准确是一种什么样的感受:
A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when the right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry.
最后介绍一个之前推荐的资源。
Brooks Landon有一个课程叫"Build Great Sentences"，对英文赏析有兴趣的朋友可以看一看 -- 对于读这篇文章还吃力的朋友就不要看了，作用不大。这个课程和配套的电子书挺无趣的，一直都是一个大叔在滔滔不绝 -- 不过我相信如果你真把它看完的话，相信你的写作和阅读都会有新的收获。
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