影片對白 Moment of truth. My God. I don't believe this. A rose. The rose was a symbol for the Holy Grail.
文化面面觀
Holy Grail —— 迷樣圣杯
了解一些英美文學的人對“圣杯”都不陌生。《圣經》里提到過它，亞瑟王的傳說中也有它。圍繞圣杯，有許多的謎團和傳說，為它披上神秘的外衣。
A portion of the Arthurian cycle of romance, of late origin, embodying a number of tales dealing with the search for a certain vessel of great sanctity called the "Grail" or "Graal." Versions of the story are numerous, the most celebrated of them being the Conte del Graal, the Grand St. Graal, Sir Percyvalle, Quete del St. Graal, and Guyot, but there are also many others. These overlap in many respects, but the standard form of the story may perhaps be found in the Grand St. Graal, one of the latest versions, which dates from the thirteenth century.
It tells how Joseph of Arimathea employed a dish used at the Last Supper to catch the blood of the Redeemer, which flowed from his body before his burial. The wanderings of Joseph are then described. He leads a band to Britain, where he is cast into prison, but is delivered by Evelach or Mordrains, who is instructed by Christ to assist him. Mordrains builds a monastery where the Grail is housed. Brons, Joseph's brother-in-law, has a son Alain, who is appointed guardian of the Grail. Alain, having caught a great fish with which he feeds the entire household, is called "the Rich Fisher," which becomes the perpetual title of the Grail keepers. Alain places the Grail in the castle of Corbenic and in time, various knights of King Arthur's court come in quest of the holy vessel. Only the purest of the pure could approach it, and in due time the knight Percival manages to see the marvel.
It is probable that the idea of the Grail originated with early medieval legends of the quest for talismans that conferred great boons upon the finder, for example, the shoes of swiftness, the cloak of invisibility, and the ring of Gyges, and that these stories were interpreted in the light and spirit of medieval Christianity and mysticism.
The legends may be divided into two classes: those that are connected with the quest for certain talismans, of which the Grail is only one, and that deal with the personality of the hero who achieves the quest; and second, those that deal with the nature and history of the talismans.
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| The Damsel of the Sanct Grael by Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
A great deal of controversy has raged around the possible Eastern origin of the Grail legend. Much erudition has been employed to show that Guyot, a Proven?al poet who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, found at Toledo, Spain, an Arabian book by an astrologer, Flegitanis, which contained the Grail story. But the name "Flegitanis" can by no means be an Arabian proper name. It could be the Persian felekedanêh, a combined word which signifies "astrology," and in that case it would be the title of an astrological work. Some believed the legend originated in the mind of Guyot himself, but this conclusion was strongly opposed by the folklorist Alfred Nutt. There is, however, some reason to believe that the story might have been brought from the East by the Knights Templar.
The Grail legend has often been held by various ecclesiastical apologists to support theories that either the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church has existed since the foundation of the world. From early Christian times the genealogy of these churches has been traced back through the patriarchs to numerous apocryphal persons, although it is not stated whether the religions possessed hierophants in neolithic and paleolithic times, or just how they originated. Such theories, which would logically identify Christianity with the grossest forms of paganism, are confined only to a small group.
The Grail legend was readily embraced by those who saw in it a link between Palestine and England and an argument for the special separate foundation of the Anglican Church by direct emissaries from the Holy Land. Glastonbury was fixed as the headquarters of the Grail immigrants, and the finding of a glass dish in the vicinity of the cathedral there some years ago was held to be confirmation of the story by many of the faithful. The exact date of this vessel was not definitely estimated, but there seemed little reason to suppose that it was more than a few hundred years old.
A new conspiratorial interpretation of the Grail legend is offered in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Their speculation involves suggestions that Jesus did not die on the Cross, but married and had children. His wife, they postulate, fled to the south of France with her family, taking with her the "Royal and Real Blood," the "Sang-real" or Grail of medieval romance. This line will supposedly culminate in a second Messiah, all this being the secret of an order named the Prieure de Sion. Apparently the investigation of this amazing story began with the mystery of Berenger Sauniere, a parish priest at Rennes-le-Chateau in the Pyrenees, who seemed to have discovered a secret that gave him access to a vast sum of money before his death, under mysterious circumstances, in 1917. That secret involved the history of Rennes-le-Chateau and its association with the Templars, the Cathars, and the royal bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty. The story has too many jumps in history and logic to ever be researched, and only time will show whether its major claims can be independently substantiated.
Patricia and Lionel Fanthorpe refute the theory of Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln in their 1982 book The Holy Grail Revealed: The Real Secret of Rennes-le-Chateau.
考考你
用今日所學將下面的句子譯成英語。
1. 我怎樣才能找回丟失的錢呢？
2. 警察警告我有危險。
3. 現在到了關鍵時刻：我們是走還是留？
The Da Vinci Code《達?芬奇密碼》（精講之二）考考你 參考答案
1. Apparently, it was his dying wish that we meet. If you help me understand why, I will get you to your embassy, where we cannot arrest you.
顯然，讓我們見面，這是他生前的愿望。如果你能幫我搞清楚他的死，我就把你送到你們國家的大使館，這樣我們就不能逮捕你了。
2. Fache was never gonna let me just stroll out of here, was he?
Fache 永遠也不會讓我從這里溜達出去的，對吧？
影片對白 Moment of truth. My God. I don't believe this. A rose. The rose was a symbol for the Holy Grail.
