新SAT亚洲首考写作解析

　　亚太区新SAT 首考于2016年5月在万众瞩目中拉开序幕。新SAT作文部分作为变革后改动最大的科目尤其受到了广泛的关注。这次为大家带来作文部分的解析。

　　写 作 分 析

　　亚太区的首次作文把话题的目光投向了欧洲艺术史。分析性作文的阅读材料将雅典卫城华美壮观的画卷展开在每个考生眼前，让大家在写作文的同时，彷佛穿梭在帕特农神庙的空间感受着建筑之美和残缺之痛。

　　文化领域一直是报刊文章关心的重要话题，就像北美区首考作文致敬独立宣言一样，亚太区首考作文题也似乎像是别具匠心的致敬了亚洲的古国文化。本次阅读材料节选自“Vanity Fair” (美国当代著名生活杂志)，文章主旨是“British government should return original Parthenon structures to Greece”，作者目的是号召英国政府慷慨归还文物以保证希腊帕特农神庙装饰和文化的完整性。

　　解析如下：

　　Adapted from Christopher Hitchens, “The Lovely Stones.” ©2009 by Vanity Fair. Originally published June 16, 2009.

　　1. The great classicist A. W. Lawrence once remarked of the Parthenon that it is “the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.”

　　评注：阅读材料以著名古典建筑学家A. W. Lawrence对帕特农神庙的评注开篇，为全文的论证展开打下了坚实的可信度基础。尤其当古典学派的权威人物说到 “the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.”时，让读者从逻辑上相信神庙建筑工艺之精致，建筑视觉之精美，此时读者对神庙工艺的崇敬之情油然而生。

　　写作重点：考生抓住专家引言(Expert Quote)这个特证，使用RICE原则逐层展开评析，尤其从作者如何增强可信度角度来分析，并注意此段位于开篇的独特位置。

　　小知识：

　　A. W. Lawrence( Arnold Walter Lawrence)，剑桥大学古典建筑系教授，英国著名的古典雕塑和建筑作家。

　　帕特农神庙：著名的雅典卫城的主体建筑， 一座矗立在卫城的最高点的巍峨的巨型建筑物。

　　2. Not that the beauty and symmetry of the Parthenon have not been abused and perverted and mutilated. Five centuries after the birth of Christianity the Parthenon was closed and desolated. It was then “converted” into a Christian church, bore being transformed a thousand years later into a mosque—complete with minaret at the southwest corner—after the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire. Turkish forces also used it for centuries as a garrison and an arsenal, with the tragic result that in 1687, when Christian Venice attacked the Ottoman Turks, a powder magazine was detonated and huge damage inflicted on the structure. Most horrible of all, perhaps, the Acropolis was made to fly a Nazi flag during the German occupation of Athens

　　评注：作者从第二段开始追溯到帕特农神庙逐渐被破坏的历史进程。随着几百年来世界历史的宗教变革或战争进程，神庙分别遭受过包括了基督教，清真教，甚至纳粹等各种势力的入侵，占据和破坏。作者回顾神庙的破坏史，并列举大量事例，在事例中使用了 “converted”“complete”，“tragic” “huge damage inflicted” “Most horrible of all” 词汇和短语来描述神庙在不同阶段的破坏程度，让读者了解神庙逐步被动遭受毁坏的轨迹，激发读者心底深处的惋惜之情。

　　写作重点：在本段中考生可以首先抓住事例(Example)这个特证，使用RICE原则逐层展开评析，尤其从作者如何增加说服力角度来分析。同时考生可以抓住措辞(Diction)这个部分与下文的措辞(Diction)同时进行分析。另外还有拟人(Personification)等手法。

　　小知识：

　　Converted：特指宗教的皈依, 这里用拟人的手法让读者感受到帕特农神庙被被动占据的无奈。

　　3. The damage done by the ages to the building, and by past empires and occupations, cannot all be put right. But there is one desecration and dilapidation that can at least be partially undone. Early in the 19th century, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, sent a wrecking crew to the Turkish-occupied territory of Greece, where it sawed off approximately half of the adornment of the Parthenon and carried it away. As with all things Greek, there were three elements to this, the most lavish and beautiful sculptural treasury in human history.

　　Under the direction of the artistic genius Phidias, the temple had two massive pediments decorated with the figures of Pallas Athena, Poseidon, and the gods of the sun and the moon. It then had a series of 92 high-reli panels, or metopes, depicting a succession of mythical and historical battles. The most intricate element was the frieze, carved in bas-reli, which showed the gods, humans, and animals that made up the annual Pan-Athens procession: there were 192 equestrian warriors and auxiliaries featured, which happens to be the exact number of the city’s heroes who fell at the Battle of Marathon. Experts differ on precisely what story is being told here, but the frieze was quite clearly carved as a continuous narrative. Except that half the cast of the tale is still in Bloomsbury, in London, having been sold well below cost by Elgin to the British government in 1816 for $2.2 million in today’s currency to pay off his many debts.

　　评注：作者在本段首先给出了英国从神庙拿走了一半装饰物的事例，然后给出关于帕特农神庙装饰物的全景描述，向读者展示了神庙三个完整部分组成的华美壮观的全貌，尤其提及其中檐壁上所雕刻的雅典女神节(Pan-Athens procession)的神话故事，因为被被英国人强行拿走一半装饰物而无法保持艺术审美和故事欣赏的连续。尤其提及英国人用起卖掉用来偿还债务，让读者在为历史文物的史诗般的华美赞叹之余，为现今无法看到全貌而产生浓烈的遗憾情绪，让每一个历史和艺术的爱好者扼腕 叹息的同时，也为作者在下文指出英国拿走文物的不当行为做了有力的铺垫。

　　写作重点：在本段中考生可以首先抓住描述(Imagery)这个特证，使用RICE原则逐层展开评析，尤其从作者如何让读者形成画面感，并激发读者情感角度来解析。

　　小知识：

　　Pan-Athens procession：雅典人对雅典娜的崇拜集中体现在专为雅典娜庆生举行的“大型泛雅典人节”(Panathinaia)上,这个传统节日始于公元前566年,四年一度。

　　4. There has been a bitter argument about the legitimacy of the British Museum’s deal. I’ve written a whole book about this controversy and won’t oppress you with all the details, but would just make this one point. If the Mona Lisa had been sawed in two during the Napoleonic Wars and the separated halves had been acquired by different museums in, say, St. Petersburg and Lisbon, would there not be a general wish to see what they might look like if re-united? If you think my analogy is overdrawn, consider this: the body of the goddess Iris is at present in London, while her head is in Athens. The front part of the torso of Poseidon is in London, and the rear part is in Athens. And so on. This is grotesque.

　　评注：作者在第四段提出一个争议性话题，即英国博物馆占有神庙文物的合法性 。作者首先诉诸情感和信誉，提出“I’ve written a whole book about this controversy and won’t oppress you with all the details”， 首先塑造了自己关于神庙文物流向研究领域的深入性和权威性地位，让读者倾向于相信他以下的解释。同时因为作者不强制读者接纳自己所有观点，反而很客观地让读者在情感上觉得更容易接受他关于英国对文物占有合法性的相关辩驳。作者进而使用了类比论证，他先用著名油画蒙娜丽莎做了一个假设性类比，然后用希腊彩虹女神像做了进一步的现实性类比，这两个类比的对象都是人类历史上著名的文化财富，读者彷佛能感受到这些文物被分割后不完美的遗憾，而两个类比又从假设递进到现实，更从不同逐步让读者接受了文物具有不可分割性及英国行为的不合法性。尤其作者提及一旦被分割占据只会造成奇形怪状(grotesque)的后果，让文物的可观赏性大打折扣。

　　作者中间穿插了反问和虚拟假设等方式，唤起读者对文物被强行分割后果的深思，每个读到此处的人都更赞同英国强行占据文物，并造成其不完整性这一行为是极度不合理。

　　写作重点：在本段中考生可以首先抓住作者诉诸情感和信誉的部分来从客观性和情感性角度进行解析。或者考生可以选取类比( Analogy)这一特征来从情感说服力角度来解释。 另外措词，反问，虚拟假设等方法也有可分析之处。

　　小知识：

　　Goddess Iris: 伊里斯是希腊神话与传说中的彩虹女神，她从东飞到西替众神向生灵传递消息， 她在天空匆匆飞过时会留下一道色彩，形成彩虹。她还指引女人的灵魂到达她们的安息之地，因此蝴蝶花就成了女人墓地上常见的花束，以纪念伊里斯。

　　5. It is unfortunately true that the city allowed itself to become very dirty and polluted in the 20th century, and as a result the remaining sculptures and statues on the Parthenon were nastily eroded by “acid rain.” And it’s also true that the museum built on the Acropolis in the 19th century, a trifling place of a mere 1,450 square meters, was pathetically unsuited to the task of housing or displaying the work of Phidias. But gradually and now impressively, the Greeks have been living up to their responsibilities. Beginning in 1992, the endangered marbles were removed from the temple, given carul cleaning with ultraviolet and infra-red lasers, and placed in a climate-controlled interior.

　　评注： 本段中作者采用了让步的逻辑，从事实和数据方面指出希腊本身在文物管理上存在的一些诸如：酸雨和高度之类的问题，但是作者同时也肯定了希腊人也逐渐开始负起责任并采取了一系列有效的措施如(given carul cleaning with ultraviolet and infra-red lasers, and placed in a climate-controlled interior)来说明希腊是有实力保护本国文物不受侵害的，这样就暗中有力地回击了因为保护不当而可以被他国占据的观点。作者通过论证让“英国文物归还文物”这一主旨更具有了不可辩驳性和强烈的说服力。

　　写作重点：在本段中考生可以根据让步论证(Concession) 这个特证，使用RICE原则逐层展开评析，尤其从作者如何增强说服力角度来分析。

　　小知识：

　　Phidias：菲狄亚斯被公认为最伟大的古典雕刻家。其著名作品为世界七大奇迹之一的宙斯巨像和巴特农神殿的雅典娜巨像，

　　6. Acropolis Museum will open on June 20. With 10 times the space of the old repository, it will be able to display all the marvels that go with the temples on top of the hill. Most important, it will be able to show, for the first time in centuries, how the Parthenon sculptures looked to the citizens of old.

　　评注：本段给出了如“With 10 times， “all the marvels”等事实和数据论据来支持全新希腊雅典卫城博物馆在开馆后将具备强大的贮藏和展示功能。

　　写作重点： 考生针对数据论据(Statistics)和事实论据(Facts)来解析这两种特征是如何实现逻辑上和理性上说服读者。

　　小知识：

　　Acropolis Museum：雅典(新)卫城博物馆坐落于希腊雅典卫城山下。占地约2.5万平方米，是一个现代与古典相结合的建筑。新的博物馆使参观者仿佛置身于时空走廊，在古老与现代间徘徊。

　　7. The British may continue in their constipated fashion to cling to what they have so crudely amputated, but the other museums and galleries of Europe have seen the artistic point of re-unification and restored to Athens what was looted in the years when Greece was denseless. Professor Pandermalisproudly showed me an exquisite marble head, of a youth shouldering a tray, that fits beautifully into panel No. 5 of the north frieze. It comes courtesy of the collection of the Vatican. Then there is the sculpted foot of the goddess Artemis, from the frieze that depicts the assembly of Olympian gods, by courtesy of the Salinas Museum, in Palermo. From Heidelberg comes another foot, this time of a young man playing a lyre, and it fits in nicely with the missing part on panel No. 8. Perhaps these acts of cultural generosity, and tributes to artistic wholeness, could “set a precedent,” too?

　　评注：作者在本段将英国博物馆的狭隘(constipated fashion)保留与其它博物馆的慷慨(courtesy)归还来做对比。此论证可以唤起英国政府的读者将对其不当行为进行更深刻的反思。尤其作者还用 “constipated fashion”和“crudely amputated”这样的措词和语气讥讽了英国的畸形审美情趣。本段结束时，作者用反问直击读者的心弦，迫使其考量是否他国为了保留艺术完整性慷慨归还文物的先例是否可以形成一个榜样?

　　写作重点：考生在本段可以针对三个部分的特征进行分析，分别是对比(Contrast),措词和语气 (Diction & Tone), 以及反问(Rhetorical Question)，解析其如何从情感角度唤起英国政府的深刻反省。

　　8. The Acropolis Museum has hit on the happy idea of exhibiting, for as long as following that precedent is too much to hope for, its own original sculptures with the London-held pieces represented by beautifully copied casts. This has two fects: It allows the visitor to follow the frieze round the four walls of a core “cella” and see the sculpted tale unfold (there, you suddenly notice, is the “lowing heifer” from Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn). And it creates a natural thirst to see the actual re-assembly completed. So, far from emptying or weakening a museum, this controversy has instead created another one, which is destined to be among Europe’s finest galleries. And one day, surely, there will be an agreement to do the right thing by the world’s most “right” structure.

　　评注： 作者给出了两个理由来支持英国归还历史文物的必要性，第一个是游客可以沿着四面墙逐渐看到整个神话故事展开，另一个是制造游客对重组后全貌一探究竟的本能的渴望，从逻辑角度让英国政府或有关读者了解归还文物和保证艺术完整性的重大意义。另外作者用 “right” 这个简单却容易记忆的词汇贯穿全文，通过不断重复，让读者形成保留建筑“right”的深刻印象，即保证艺术文化遗产的精致全貌。

　　写作重点：本段中，考生主要针对因果论证(Reasoning)来从理性角度解析作者如何支持观点和说服读者。

　　小知识：

　　Core “cella：古代庙宇的中心内殿

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