文档介绍：第十三课 No signposts in the sea
Paraphrase
1. I was once so completely absorbed in the important affairs of the world that I devoted all my attention, time and energy to them and only occasionally did I allow myself a little rest by reading poetry or listening music.
2. Or maybe my suppressed inclination has been brought out under Laura’s unintentional influence.
3. I was as puritanical as a Pharisee and I viewed with contempt all those who lived a less practical life than my own and regarded them as creatures on the moon.
4. I firmly believed in uncompromising materialism which in my opinion represented the law of human progress.
When people claimed that they protested against damaging natural beauty out of unselfish motives, I suspected them and viewed them with contempt. I not only disbelieved people when they said things out of unselfish motives,
I also held them in contempt.
5. Just imagine how I have changed now. Here I stand, sentimental and sensitive, like an old unmarried woman painting a water-color picture of the sunset.
6. I want to enjoy beauty to my heart’s content before I die.
7. At this moment I am not the middle-aged journalist that people believe me to be, spending a holiday on an ocean-going liner. I have now become a liberated person, bathed in magic waters, and I feel I am like Endymion, a young and strong youth who has a god for his father and gifted with the power to see the world inspired by the gods at Olympus.
8. I feel that I am weightless and totally absorbed by the night and feel at peace with the night.
9. I imagine devoted religions people must feel as clean and pure as I do now when they leave the solemn confessional after gaining pardon for their sins.
10. In the same way I let myself freely imagine what the innermost part of Laura
‟s character presents. She looks so severe outwardly, but inwardly she is full of tenderness---tenderness like delicate flowers waiting for the daring to discover them.