Lesson 15,No Signposts in the Sea V. Sackville-West,About the author,Victoria Mary Sackville-West (1892-1962), an English poet and novelist. Born in Knole Castle, the seat of the Sackville family from the time that Queen Elizabeth I gave Knole to her cousin, Lord Treasurer Thomas Sackville. A member of the Bloomsbury group (布卢姆斯伯里团体. 19071930年间经常在伦敦布卢姆斯伯里区一些人家里聚会讨论美学和哲学问题的一批英国作家、哲学家和艺术家。主要成员有福斯特、斯特雷奇、C.贝尔、画家V.贝尔(18791961)和D.格兰特(18851978)、J.M.凯恩斯、费边社作家L.吴尔夫(18801969)和吴尔夫(夫人)。,She was born in Knole Castle,Knole is an English stately home (富丽堂皇的住宅) in the town of Sevenoaks in west Kent, surrounded by a 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) deer park.,Bloomsbury Group,The Bloomsbury Group was an informal group of literary and artistic friends who lived in or near London during the first half of the twentieth century. Their works deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. The Bloomsbury Group came from mostly upper middle-class professional families. Almost everything about Bloomsbury appears to be controversial, including its membership and name. Same-sex relations are common among the Bloomsbury Group,In 1913, married to diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) Her passionate affairs with women like novelist Virginia Woolf , etc. (Bisexuality) Her works,After their marriage, they traveled widely when he was in foreign office. At first she played her role as a dutiful wife, but then her husband admitted that he had a male lover. The marriage endured despite their homosexual affairs, but Harolds affairs were less passionate than Vitas. They had two children, the art critic Benedict Nicholson and the publisher Nigel Nicholson.,Harold Nicolson,弗吉尼亚伍尔夫 Virginia Woolf British famous novelist, had great contribution in novel creation and literary review. Also one of the most famous novelists of Stream of consciousness in the world. Forerunner of feminism, Greatly influenced by ideas of Freudian psychology and feminist and homosexual.,Her works,A prolific writer, Victoria Sackville-West authored 15 novels, as well as biographies and travel books.,Her best Known Poetry Today,The Land (1926) helped her to gain the initial recognition in the field of literary works, through which she was awarded Hawthorndon Prize and was praised as one of the most beautiful bucolics (田园风味的 ) in English literature.,Her best Known Novels Today,The Edwardians All Passion Spent,Both were bestsellers and portrayed English upper-class manners and life,Honour,The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems. In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honor (名誉勋爵士) for her services to literature.,Hawthornden Prize霍桑登奖,The Hawthornden Prize, the oldest of the famous British literary prizes, was founded in 1919 by Alice Warrender. It is awarded annually to an English writer for the best work of imaginative literature. It is especially designed to encourage young authors.,About the novel,The 144-page novel is written in the form of journal, narrated by Edmund Carr, 50, an eminent political columnist and a bachelor. He has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. How shall he spend them? In this quandary (困惑), he decides to leave his job on a Fleet Street paper, and takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger to Far East.,The first week at sea give Carr special experiences: the release from pressure, the lackadaisical (懒洋洋的, 感伤的) rhythms of ship life, the shifting panorama of magnificent skies and sea, passing shores and the infrequent ports-of-call, as well as his growing knowledge of Laura. Exhilarated by the distant vista of exotic islands never to be visited and his conversations with Laura, Edmund finds himself rethinking all his values.,Carrs growing love for Laura, despite his self-acknowledgement that she must be unattainable for him, shatters this expanding felicity. A handsome, pompous yet unpredictably engaging (动人的, 有魅力的) colonel form a threesome with them. Carr is full of jealousy and disappointment in dealing with his “rival” A voyage on many levels, those long purposeless days at sea find Edmund relinquishing the past as he discovers the joys and the pain of a love he is simultaneously determined to conceal.,This haunting, elegiac tale about the secret love of a man destined shortly to die, was published in the year before the authors death and is her last novel.,Edmund Carr is at sea in more ways than one. An eminent journalist and self-made man, he has recently discovered that he has only a short time to live. Leaving his job on a Fleet,Street paper, he takes a passage on a cruise ship where he knows that Laura, a beautiful and intelligent widow whom he secretly admires, will be a fellow passenger. Exhilarated by,the dista