波澜N多的波兰
亲爱的小文：
你弹过萧邦Frederic Francois Chopin（一八一○——一八四九）的作品吗？Chopin是波兰人。只活了三十九岁。Chopin played the piano in public when only eight years old. He began to compose soon afterward. He studied at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826 to 1829 before leaving Poland in 1830. He settled in Paris in 1831, and, except for some travel, he lived there the rest of his life.
波兰夹在德国俄国之间，老是被侵略、被瓜分、被瓜剖豆分（[of a county] to be divided or split like a melon or a bean；to be partitioned）。
Chopin音乐激起波兰人的爱国心。
The poles also have an insatiable appetite for translations of Molière and Shaw and for their own 19th-century dramatists who wrote from exile, when their country was partitioned among three neighboring empires.
The plays, novels, and music of this period helped keep the Poles sense of nationhood alive. One composer, in particular, has stirred polish pride through the dark years, He, of course, is Chopin, whose birthplace at Zelazowa Wola, 28 miles west of Warsaw, is a national shrine. here, every Sunday in the spring and summer, the public is invited to a Chopin concert.
波兰在一七七二、一七九三、一七九五、一九三九年前后被瓜分四次。一九一四年被瓜分了以后，地图上没有波兰了。一九四五年苏联（Russia/U.S.S.R.）分了波兰东边，却把德国东边补给波兰。所以波兰“失之东隅，收之桑榆”（to suffer a loss in one place but make a gain somewhere else）。
苏联这种作风，叫“慷他人之慨”（to show generosity or unselfishness by anothers wealth；to be generous at the expense of others）。爸爸在四、六信中跟你谈过，英文叫Rob Peter to pay Paul（抢彼得赔保罗）。
波兰的首都是华沙（Warsaw），Warsaw, Warsaw, Warsaw可真saw了war。二次世界大战，华沙城全毁，人死了四分之一。
葛单斯克（Gdańsk）在德文叫但泽（Danzig），是造船中心，这个城和波兰走廊（Polish Corridor）过去都是世界大新闻，因为它们老是和德国扯不清。
POLISH CORRIDOR is a historic strip of land that was once the ancient polish province of Pomorze. Poland lost the province to Prussia in 1772. When Prussia become a German state in 1871, the area fell into German control.
After World War I, the Versailles Treaty established the corridor of land to give Poland free access to the Baltic Sea. The corridor separated East Prussia and the port city of Danzig from the rest of Germany. In 1939, Germany regained control of the area when Nazi troops invaded Poland. After World War II, the corridor was returned to Poland.
波兰成为天主教国家已一千年，Most Poles are Roman Catholics, and religion is important in their lives, Poland has been a Christian country for 1000 years.
波兰的瓷器很有名，瓷器又叫china，所以，可以说，Poland的china很有名。
小文你还记得爸爸跟你谈过的一种猪叫Poland China吗？Poland Chinas gain weight rapidly and make excellent meat hogs. Farmers in Ohio developed the Poland China breed.
Kraków是波兰的文化城，以前是首都（Kraków is the traditional capital of polish culture）波兰天文学家哥白尼（Copernicus）就是在这个城里出头的。
Copernicus skillfully applied this new idea in his masterpiece, Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres（1543）. In this book, Copernicus demonstrated how the earths motions could be used to explain the motions of other heavenly bodies. His theory laid the foundations for the telescopic discoveries of Galileo, the planetary laws of Johannes Kepler, and the gravitation principle of Sir Isaac Newton.
Copernicus was born in the city of Thorn（now Toruń, Poland）, and attended the University of Kraków.
波兰人跑到外国成名的：
①在法国有居里夫人 Marie Sklodowska Curie（1867——1934），Polish chemist and physicist in France, wife of Pierre Curie, Madame Curie. 她是做下女出身的，苦学成功。她是唯一一个人得过两次Noble Prize的科学家。她的大女儿Iréne后来也得了Nobel Prize；小女儿 Egrave Eve. Her life of her mother, Madame Curie（1937）, had a great and immediate success, as did Among Warriors（1943）．
②在英国有康拉德Joseph Conrad（一八五七——一九二四）。
Joseph Conrad的爸爸和一个叔叔都因为反抗俄国，被俄国人抓去，死在牢里（exiled to Siberia）。他原跟他爸爸住在Cracow（就是Kraków），不到四岁时，爸爸被抓，他和妈妈也跟着到了俄国的Siberia（西伯利亚）——政治犯可以带家属在一起。
他八岁时，妈妈死，十一岁时，爸爸死，他流浪到欧洲，一直做水手。
他二十岁以前不会英文，后果却变成了英国大文学家。
他最有名的小说是《吉姆老爷》（Lord Jim）和《黑暗的心》（Heart of Dark）。家里都有。
③在美国有鲁宾斯坦Artur Rubinstein，爸爸跟你谈过的大钢琴家。
波兰最有名的文学家是显克维支Henryk Sienkiewicz（一八四六——一九一六），他用Rome的Nero做故事，写成了《暴君焚城录》（Quo Vadis，也叫《你往何处去》），这本书和前面居里夫人女儿给她妈妈写的那本Madame Curie，你都该看。家里都有。
爸 爸
一九七五年十月二十六日