西班牙人

V. M. 希利尔（仲秋　译）

V. M. 希利尔（1875—1931），美国著名儿童教育家、科普作家，创建了卡尔弗特教育体系。他为孩子们编写了一套趣味盎然的历史、地理、艺术读物，即《写给孩子看的世界历史》《写给孩子看的世界地理》《写给孩子看的艺术史》。本文选自《写给孩子看的艺术史》，该书写于20世纪二三十年代。

This article is about Spain. But Im going to begin by telling you about Crete， which hasnt anything at all to do with Spain. Crete is an island south of Greece. It belongs to Greece and the people of Crete speak the Greek language. Sometime about the middle of the fifteen hundreds there was born in Crete a baby who was to become a celebrated painter. You have never heard of his name and couldnt pronounce it if you had. Ill tell it to you just to show you， but dont try to remember it， for this painter is never spoken of except by his nickname. Here is his real name—Domenico Theotocopuli.

He was a mysterious kind of man and no one knows very much about his life. He seems to have left Crete and gone to Venice to study art under the great Titian. The next we hear of him he has bobbed up in Spain and settled in the city of Toledo. In Spain he remained and in Spain he died in 1614， but he always thought of himself as a Greek rather than a Spaniard， and he signed his most important paintings in Greek letters. The Spaniards could hardly be expected to call him Domenico Theotocopuli any more than you are expected to. They just called him “that Greek fellow” or “the Greek”， which in Spanish is El Greco.

本文主要聊西班牙。不过在介绍西班牙之前，我要先说一说克里特岛，一个跟西班牙一点关系都没有的小岛。克里特岛是位于希腊南部的一个岛，属于希腊。岛上的人说希腊语。大约在16世纪中期的时候，克里特岛有一个婴儿出生了，他后来成为远近闻名的画家。不过我估计你从来没听说过这位画家的名字，而且就算听说过也不一定能读得准。现在我就告诉你他的名字吧，他的全名叫多梅尼科·狄奥托科普里。但这个名字你不用费力去记，了解一下就行，因为人们从来不叫他的全名，而只叫他的昵称。

多梅尼科·狄奥托科普里是一个神秘的人，所以没有人确切地了解他的生活到底是什么样子的，只知道他后来好像离开了克里特岛，去威尼斯跟着伟大的画家提香學习绘画;后来我们再听到他的消息时，他已经突然出现在了西班牙，在托莱多城定居。此后他就一直待在西班牙，直到1614年在西班牙去世。尽管他在西班牙居住的时间很长，但是他一直把自己视为希腊人，而不是西班牙人，他在重要作品上的签名也都是希腊名。西班牙人并不习惯叫他多梅尼科·狄奥托科普里，就像你一样。……