2016年5月亞洲SAT寫作題目

The Lovely Stones

1. The great classicist A. W. Lawrence . . . once remarked of the Parthenon1 that it is
   「the one building in the world which may be assessed as absolutely right.」. . .

2. Not that the beauty and symmetry of the Parthenon have not been abused and
   perverted and mutilated. Five centuries after the birth of Christianity the Parthenon
   was closed and desolated. . . . Turkish forces also used it for centuries as a garrison2
   and an arsenal, with the tragic result that in 1687 . . . a powder magazine was
   detonated and huge damage inflicted on the structure. Most horrible of all,perhaps, the Acropolis was made to fly a Nazi flag during the German occupation of
   Athens. . . .

3. The damage done by the ages to the building, and by past empires and occupations,
   cannot all be put right. But there is one desecration and dilapidation that can at least
   be partially undone. Early in the 19th century, Britain』s ambassador to the Ottoman
   Empire, Lord Elgin, sent a wrecking crew to the Turkish-occupied territory of

   Greece, where it sawed off approximately half of the adornment of the Parthenon and

   carried it away. As with all things Greek, there were three elements to this, the most
   lavish and beautiful sculptural treasury in human history. Under the direction of the
   artistic genius Phidias, the temple had two massive pediments decorated with the
   figures of Pallas Athena, Poseidon, and the gods of the sun and the moon. It then had
   a series of 92 high-relief panels, or metopes, depicting a succession of mythical and
   historical battles. The most intricate element was the frieze, carved in bas-relief,3
   which showed the gods, humans, and animals that made up the annual Pan-Athens
   procession: there were 192 equestrian warriors and auxiliaries featured, which
   happens to be the exact number of the city』s heroes who fell at the Battle of

   Marathon. Experts differ on precisely what story is being told here, but the frieze was

   quite clearly carved as a continuous narrative. Except that half the cast of the tale is
   still in Bloomsbury, in London, having been sold well below cost by Elgin to the
   British government in 1816 for $2.2 million in today』s currency to pay off his many
   debts. . . .

4. . . . [T]here has been a bitter argument about the legitimacy of the British Museum』s
   deal. I』ve written a whole book about this controversy and won』t oppress you with all
   the details, but would just make this one point. If the Mona Lisa had been sawed in
   two during the Napoleonic Wars and the separated halves had been acquired by
   different museums in, say, St. Petersburg and Lisbon, would there not be a general

   wish to see what they might look like if re-united? If you think my analogy is

   overdrawn, consider this: the body of the goddess Iris is at present in London, while
   her head is in Athens. The front part of the torso of Poseidon is in London, and the
   rear part is in Athens. And so on. This is grotesque. . . .

5. It is unfortunately true that [Athens] allowed itself to become very dirty and polluted
   in the 20th century, and as a result the remaining sculptures and statues on the
   Parthenon were nastily eroded by 「acid rain.」 . . . But gradually and now
   impressively, the Greeks have been living up to their responsibilities. Beginning in
   1992, the endangered marbles were removed from the temple, given careful cleaning
   with ultraviolet and infra-red lasers, and placed in a climate-controlled interior. . . .

6. About a thousand feet southeast of the temple [is] the astonishing new Acropolis
   Museum. . . . With 10 times the space of the old repository, it display[s] all the
   marvels that go with the temples on top of the hill. Most important, it show[s], for the
   first time in centuries, how the Parthenon sculptures looked to the citizens of old. . . .

7. The British may continue in their constipated fashion to cling to what they have so
   crudely amputated, but . . . the Acropolis Museum has hit on the happy idea of
   exhibiting . . . its own original sculptures with the London-held pieces represented by
   beautifully copied casts. This creates a natural thirst to see the actual re-assembly
   completed. So, far from emptying or weakening a museum, this controversy has
   created another [museum], which is destined to be among Europe』s finest galleries.
   And one day, surely, there will be an agreement to do the right thing by the world』s
   most 「right」 structure.

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