第二篇（英译汉） Passage 2 (E---C)

相关词语 Related Words and Expressions

venue 聚集地； 会场

landmark building 标志性建筑

international architectural icon 国际建筑的偶像

pantheon 神殿；经典

second-rate 二流的

maverick genius 怪才

promontory 海角

masterfully 巧妙地

in high dudgeon 极大的愤怒

manifold 各种各样的; 数不清的

It is pretty hopeless as a venue for opera, it took 17 years to build, its architect was forced to resign and it was never properly finished inside. None of these matters. The Sydney Opera House, by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, is the mother and father of all modern landmark buildings. It has come to define not only a city, but also an entire nation and continent.

Beyond that, it is a global expression of cultural modernity. Everyone in the world with media access knows what the Sydney Opera House looks like. First designed in 1956 and finally declared complete in 1973, the opera house was the single best-known modern building in the world until the arrival of Frank Gehry’s equally extraordinary Bilbao Guggenheim in 1997. But it will outlive the Guggenheim as an international architectural icon------because it did all the difficult work first.

In the pantheon of classic modern buildings, Utzon’s creation has the status of myth. The myth states that the unknown architect, then in his thirties, submitted rough sketches to the competition judges. He ignored most of the rules and his design was only selected after being plucked at the last moment from the reject pile by one of the judges, and that the design was unbuildable.

But Sydney is remarkable for another reason: it is completely unique. It does not fit into any stylistic category. None of Utzon’s other buildings-----churches, government departments, houses—looks anything like it. The architects today who try to copy his concept always end up looking very second-rate indeed. It is “modern”, certainly, but it is an expressive modernism that was far away from the “international style” of its time. It has more in common with the work of the American maverick genius Frank Lloyd Wright. Of course its location is an enormous help, sitting on a promontory with water on three sides and the famous Sydney Harbor Bridge as a picture-postcard backdrop. But Utzon masterfully exploited the site as nobody else could.

Utzon left Australia in high dudgeon in 1966, never to return, before he could finish designing the interiors. But for all his manifold difficulties in building the Sydney Opera House, which other contemporary architect can claim an equivalent achievement? The Sydney Opera House showed us that anything is possible, and it demonstrated that sheer, seductive beauty for its own sake is nothing to be ashamed of.