2021年经济学人 勤劳的革命者——地壳构造板块（1）（在线收听）

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Industrious revolutionaries - Tectonic plates

勤劳的革命者——地壳构造板块

The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain. By Tristram Hunt.

《激进的波特：乔赛亚·韦奇伍德与英国的转型》，作者：崔斯特瑞姆·亨特。

One half of the world, wrote Jane Austen, cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

世界上一半的人无法理解另一半人的快乐，简·奥斯汀写道。

That may be especially true when the other half is inexplicably devoted to pottery.

当另一半人莫名其妙地专注于陶器时，这句话可能尤其正确。

Yet many people, including Austen herself, used to enjoy pottery enormously.

然而，许多人，包括奥斯汀本人，过去都非常喜欢陶器。

Vases, ewers and urns; statues, busts and bas-reliefs; cameos and intaglios — the drawing rooms of 18th-century England were filled with fiddly little thises and charming little thats, with jasperware trinkets and basalt-ware baubles.

花瓶、水罐和骨灰盒；雕像、半身像和浅浮雕；浮雕宝石和凹雕玉石——18世纪英国的客厅里摆满了精巧又迷人的小东西，还有碧玉器皿和玄武陶这些小玩意儿。

And those made by Josiah Wedgwood were particularly coveted.

而那些由约西亚·韦奇伍德做出的东西尤其令人垂涎。

Wedgwood wanted to “astonish the world... for I hate piddling”.

韦奇伍德想要“震惊世界……因为我讨厌小打小闹”。

And for a time his pottery did.

有一段时间，他的陶器做到了。

Austen admired it; Edward Gibbon collected it; Empress Catherine II of Russia ordered a job lot of it.

奥斯汀赞美它；爱德华·吉本收藏它；俄国女皇凯瑟琳二世也订购了许多。

Then, suddenly, it fell out of fashion, coming to be seen as piddling, not astonishing.

然后，突然间，它不再流行，并且被认为是无关紧要的，而不是什么令人震撼的东西。

Wedgwood’s own grandson, Charles Darwin, evinced an “insensibility to Wedgwood ware”.

韦奇伍德自己的孙子查尔斯·达尔文“对韦奇伍德陶器不感兴趣”。

When the author J.B. Priestley set out on a round-England trip in the 1930s, he sniffed at the Wedgwood factory in Stoke-on-Trent: so industrial, he considered, and so soulless.

20世纪30年代，当作家J.B.普里斯特利启程环游英国时，他对特伦特河畔斯托克的韦奇伍德工厂嗤之以鼻：如此工业化，他认为，如此没有灵魂。

Today, Wedgwood is cherished by the very elderly and the very ironic; an ancient aunt or an east London hipster are likeliest to wear a cameo brooch now.

今天，韦奇伍德受到年长者和极具讽刺意味者的珍爱；老妇或东伦敦的潮人如今是最有可能佩戴浮雕胸针的人。

So though it might not seem odd that Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has written a biography of Wedgwood (the V&A has lots of his stuff), its title may be a surprise.

因此，尽管维多利亚与阿尔伯特博物馆馆长特利斯特拉姆·亨特为韦奇伍德写了一本传记(该博物馆中收藏了许多他的作品)，这似乎并不奇怪，但这本书的名字可能会让人大吃一惊。

“The Radical Potter”: fancy pottery today feels about as radical as a doily.

“激进的陶工”：喜欢陶器在今天给人的感觉就像喜欢装饰桌巾一样激进。

That only proves Mr Hunt’s case.

这恰恰证明了亨特先生的观点。

The most remarkable revolutions change the world so completely that no one remarks on them any more.

最伟大的革命如此彻底地改变了世界，以至于没有人再对它们评头论足。

And, in a way, Wedgwood did change the world.

在某种程度上，韦奇伍德确实改变了世界。

When he started out in the 1740s, pottery was such a small-scale, rackety industry that some potters got the clay they needed by digging it out of holes in the road — “potholes”.

当他在18世纪40年代开始做陶器时，制陶业还是一个规模很小、非常混乱的行业，以至于一些制陶工人在路上打洞(即“坑洞”)挖出他们需要的粘土。