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历届韩素音翻译大奖赛竞赛原文及译文
英译汉部分 ..............
..................................................
..................................................
.............. 3
Beauty (excerpt) ........
..................................................
..................................................
. 3
美(节选) ................................
..................................................
....................................... 3
The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature
of Power byThomas De Quincey ...... 8
知识文学与力量文学托 马斯·昆西 .............................
.............................................
8
An Experience of Aesthetics by Robert
Ginsberg .........................................
............... 11
审美的体验 罗伯特·金斯伯格 ........
..................................................
...................... 11
A Person Who
Apologizes Has the Moral Ball in His Court by Paul
Johnson ............ 14
谁给别人道歉,谁就在道义上掌握了主动
保罗·约翰逊 .................................... 14
On Going Home by Joan Didion .................
..................................................
............... 18
回家 琼·狄迪恩 ..............
..................................................
........................................ 18
The Making of Ashenden (Excerpt) by Stanley
Elkin
.................................................
22
艾兴登其人(节选)斯坦利·埃尔金 ......................
................................................
22
Beyond Life ...........................
..................................................
..................................... 28
超越生命[美] 卡贝尔 著 ................................
..................................................
......... 28
Envy by Samuel Johnson ......
..................................................
..................................... 33
论嫉妒 [英]塞缪尔·约翰逊 著 .............................
..................................................
33
中译英部分 .................................
..................................................
........................................... 37
在义与利之外 .......................................
..................................................
..................... 37
Beyond
Righteousness and Interests ......................
..................................................
.... 37
读书苦乐 杨绛 ..........................
..................................................
................................ 40
The
Bitter-Sweetness of Reading Yang Jiang ...........
..................................................
. 40
想起清华种种 王佐良 .........................
..................................................
................... 43
Reminiscences of
Tsinghua Wang Zuoliang ...........................
..................................... 43
歌德之人生启示宗白华 ...................................
..................................................
......... 45
What Goethe's Life Reveals by
Zong Baihua ......................................
........................ 45
怀想那片青草地 赵红波 ..
..................................................
........................................ 48
Yearning for That Piece of Green Meadow by
Zhao Hongbo ......................................
48
可爱的南京 .................................
..................................................
............................... 51
Nanjing
the Beloved City .................................
..................................................
.......... 51
霞 冰心 .......................
..................................................
...............................................
53
The Rosy Cloud byBingxin ..............
..................................................
.......................... 53
黎明前的北平 .....
..................................................
..................................................
..... 54
Predawn Peiping .................
..................................................
........................................ 54
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老来乐 金克木 ...............................
..................................................
........................... 55
Delights in
Growing Old by Jin Kemu ..........................
...............................................
55
可贵的“他人意识” .............................
..................................................
................... 58
Calling for an
Awareness of Others ..............................
................................................
58
教孩子相信 .................................
..................................................
............................... 61
To
Implant In Our Children’s Young Hearts An Undying
Faith In Humanity ............. 61
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英译汉部分
Beauty (excerpt)
美(节选)
Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva
and Ruth, and those whom I've read
about, you
can't pursue the laws of nature very long without
bumping into beauty. “I don't
know if it's the
same beauty you see in the sunset,” a friend tells
me, “but it feels the same.”
This friend is a
physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering
what must be happening in
the interior of
stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping
for the first time Dirac's⑴
equations
describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein
describing relativity. “They're
so beautiful,”
he says, “you can see immediately they have to be
true. Or at least on the way
toward truth.” I
ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he
replies, “Simplicity, symmetry,
elegance, and
power.”
我结识一些科学家(包括伊娃和露丝),也拜读过不少科学家的著作,从中我作
出
推断:人们在探求自然规律的旅途中,须臾便会与美不期而遇。一个朋友对我说:“我
不敢肯
定这种美是否与日落之美异曲同工,但至少,两者带给我的感受别无二致。” 我
的这个朋友是一位物理
学家,他大半辈子都在致力于破解群星内部的秘密。他向我讲述
了当年邂逅科学之美时的狂喜:那是当他
生平第一次顿悟狄拉克的量子力学方程式,或
是洞彻爱因斯坦相对论的方程式时的感受。“那些方程式是
如此动人,”他说道,“只消
看一眼你就会明白,它们一定是正确的,或者说---
至少,它们的指向是正确的。”
我好
奇一个“动人的”理论是个什么样,他的回答是:“简约、和谐、典雅,有力。”
Why nature should conform to theories we find
beautiful is far from obvious. The most
incomprehensible thing about the universe, as
Einstein said, is that it's comprehensible. How
unlikely, that a short-lived biped on a two-
bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of
light,
lay bare the structure of an atom, or
calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole.
We're a
long way from understanding
everything, but we do understand a great deal
about how nature
behaves. Generation after
generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and
find, to an
astonishing degree, that nature
agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy
paper, and her
buildings stand up through
earthquakes.
那些打动我们的理论,往往受到自然之母的肯定,其中奥妙不可言宣
。诚如爱因斯
坦所言:这个世界最让人费解之处就在于:它是能够被了解的。想想这一切是多么地不可思议:在一个不起眼的星球上,生存着一种拥有短暂生命的两足生物,然而,正是这
些微不足道的
小生物,不但测量出了光速,而且把原子层层剥开,还计算出了黑洞的引
力。人类虽然尚未全知全能,但
是,关于大自然的脾性,我们所知道的确实不能算少。
人类经过世世代代的努力,猜想出各种定理公式,
并在实践中检验它们,然后惊讶地发
现:大自然竟然与我们不谋而合。这就像一位建筑师在薄薄的图纸上
绘制出设计方案,
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依此建造的高楼大厦,竟能够经受住地震的洗礼考验,依然耸立。
⑴ Dirac: 迪
拉克,保罗·阿德利安·莫里斯1902-1984英国数学和物理学家。1933
年因新原子理论公式
与人分享诺贝尔奖。
We launch a satellite into orbit
and use it to bounce messages from continent to
continent.
The machine on which I write these
words embodies hundreds of insights into the
workings
of the material world, insights that
are confirmed by every burst of letters on the
screen, and I
stare at that screen through
lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked
out in detail by
Isaac Newton⑵.
我们发射一枚人
造卫星,它便帮助我们将讯息传遍世界各地。而我,正在一台机器
上记录下这些文字,这台机器包涵着人
类思想的精髓---对物质世界运作方式的真知灼见
---每一次敲打键盘,这些真知便化为字母跳入屏
幕;当我注视着屏幕,架在鼻梁上的眼
镜则是根据光学原理配制而成的,而对这一理论进行详细论证的开
山始祖则是艾萨
克·牛顿。
By discerning patterns in
the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the
hand of God.
Scientists in our day have
largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an
unnecessary
hypothesis, or at least an
untestable one. While they share Newton's faith
that the universe is
ruled everywhere by a
coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as
scientists, how these particular
rules came to
govern things. You can do science without
believing in a divine Legislator, but
not
without believing in laws.
通过对万物造化的深入观察,牛顿相
信自己正追随着上帝的笔触。如今的科学家大
都摒弃了“造物主”一说,认为那是无稽的假设,即使不全
盘否定,至少也认定那是不
可能得到验证的假说。诚然,他们坚信牛顿的看法---世界受一套整合的法
则所支配,但
问题在于,发轫之始,这些法则是如何开始掌管世界的?对此,身为科学家的他们也无从知晓。在科学的疆界,我们可以拒绝相信上帝的存在,但我们不能否认万物之法的存
在。
I spent my teenage years scrambling up the
mountain of mathematics. Midway up the
slope,
however, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the
rarefied air, well before I reached the
heights where the equations of Einstein and
Dirac would have made sense. Nowadays I add,
subtract, multiply, and do long division when
no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and
geometry and even trigonometry in a pinch, but
that is about all that I've kept from the
language of numbers. Still, I remember
glimpsing patterns in mathematics that seemed as
bold
and beautiful as a skyful of stars.
少年时,我曾试图攀登数学之颠。可惜才到半山腰,便开始步履踉跄;空气稀薄,
使我气喘吁吁,不得不
停下脚步,而爱因斯坦和狄拉克的方程式却仍旧远在高处。现在
的我,若是手边没有计算器,便通过心算
处理加减乘除;有必要时,我还能应付代数、
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几何,甚至三角运算;但是话说回来
,数字世界留给我的也就只有这些零星点滴了。不
过,我至今仍然记得曾在数学王国里浅尝到的无穷变幻
---大胆、迷人,犹如群星漫天。
⑵ Isaac Newton: 牛顿
(1642-1727) 英国物理学家、数学家。
I'm never more aware
of the limitations of language than when I try to
describe beauty.
Language can create its own
loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us
the radiance we
apprehend in the world, any
more than a photograph can capture the stunning
swiftness of a
hawk or the withering power of
a supernova⑶. Eva's wedding album holds only a
faint
glimmer of the wedding itself. All that
pictures or words can do is gesture beyond
themselves
toward the fleeting glory that
stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.
每当我尝
试着将美付诸于文字时,我便极为深刻地意识到:文字的力量是多么有限。
语言自有其灵动可人之处,可
它却无法传达大千世界的绚烂。正如一方相片框不住一只
鹰的迅捷,也再现不了一颗超新星毁灭时的壮丽
。伊娃的婚礼相册仅仅留存了一丝微弱
的光芒,以见证婚礼现场的光鲜夺目。相片和文字能够做到的最多
只是描摹那些瞬息即
逝的、那些让我们心潮涌动的光芒。于是,我一直都在努力描摹。
“All nature is meant to make us think of
paradise,” Thomas Merton⑷ observed.
Because
the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is
free and inexhaustible, but we need
training
in order to perceive more than the most obvious
kinds. Even 15 billion years or so
after the
Big Bang⑸, echoes of that event still linger in
the form of background radiation⑹,
only a few
degrees above absolute zero⑺. Just so, I believe,
the experience of beauty is an
echo of the
order and power that permeate the universe. To
measure background radiation, we
need subtle
instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert
intelligence and our five keen
senses.
托马斯·梅尔顿说过,“世间造物之神奇无不令人联想到天堂乐土”,因为创世纪本
身就是一出永不落幕
的表演;其间芳华之美悠游自在,无穷无尽。有些美显而易见,容
易为我们所捕捉,但另一些则不然:若
要欣赏她们,我们得付出一点努力。宇宙大爆炸
在一百五十多亿年后的今天仍余波未平,爆炸当时所释放
的能量(即使这些能量看起来
似乎微不足道)仍以背景辐射现象的形式存在着。由此,我得出一个观点:
人类对美的
体验中暗含着秩序和力量的影子,而这些秩序和力量充斥着整个宇宙空间。测量背景辐
射,我们需要精密仪器;而衡量美,则需要动用我们的聪慧和所有敏锐的感官。
⑶
supernova: 超新星,一种罕见的天文现象,表现为一恒星中的绝大部分物质爆
炸后,产生能
放射极大能量的极为明亮而存在时间极短的物体。
⑷ Thomas Merton: 默顿,托
马斯1915-1968美国天主教教士和作家,其作品主要
是关于当代宗教和世俗生活的,包括
《七重山》(1948年)和 《无人为孤岛》(1955
年)。
⑸ the Big
Bang: 创世大爆炸按照大爆炸理论,标志宇宙形成的宇宙爆炸。
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(6)
background radiation: 背景辐射,又名3K宇宙背景辐射,是60年代天文学上的四<
br>大发现之一,它是由美国射电天文学家彭齐亚斯和威尔逊发现的。该学说认为,大爆炸
之初,宇宙
的温度高得惊人。随着宇宙膨胀的进行,其温度不断降低,到现在平均只有
绝对温度2.7度(相当于零
下270.46摄氏度)左右。
(7) absolute zero:
绝对零度在此温度下物质没有热能,相当于摄氏-273.15度或华氏
-459.67度。
Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or
a flower. You need training, however, to
perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics
or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the
design
of a bird's wing, or the shiver of
breath through a flute. For most of human history,
the
training has come from elders who taught
the young how to pay attention. By paying
attention,
we learn to savor all sorts of
patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork
quilts. This
predilection brings with it a
clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to
recognize patterns
helped our ancestors to
select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the
same advantage
would apply to all species, and
yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword
puzzles,
carve stone into statues, map time
and space.
任何人都能在一颦一笑,一花一草中体验快乐。但是,发现数学之美、物
理之绝、
象棋之妙的眼睛并不是与生俱来,而欣赏树木形态、鸟翼构造、或是悠扬笛声的心灵也
非浑然自成。我们需要点拨和引领。纵观历史传承,这样的点拨和引领往往来自长者,
籍此,年轻人学会
专注;因为专注,我们领略到万千形态的美,无论是量子力学中精妙
的理论,还是棉被上漂亮的拼花图案
。正是出于对美的强烈偏爱,才使得人类在物种进
化的追逐比拼中处于上风。因为人类能够辨识出美的事
物,而我们的祖先则因循这一标
准选择伴侣,寻找食物,躲避敌人。如果自然界中所有的物种都拥有发现
美的能力,那
么它们都将在进化过程中称霸一方。然而,惟独人类在演变中独占鳌头:我们谱写交响曲,创造字谜游戏;在我们的手中,顽石诞生为雕像,时空归依为坐标。
Have we
merely carried our animal need for shrewd
perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or
have we
stumbled onto a deep congruence between the
structure of our minds and the
structure of
the universe?
这一切究竟来源于何?仅仅是我们将本能的敏锐感知力推向了荒
谬的极致,还是我
们不经意间摸索到了扎根于人类思想和苍茫万物间那深刻的一致性?
I
am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced
there's more to beauty than biology, more
than
cultural convention. It flows around and through
us in such abundance, and in such
myriad
forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere
evolutionary need. Which is not to say
that
beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it
has everything to do with survival.
Beauty
feeds us from the same source that created us.
我相信后者是正确的。我坚信美不仅仅存在于生物学和文化习俗中。美我们身边流
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淌,充盈、润泽着我
们的心田;而其量之充沛,形态之多变已经远远超越了进化本身的
需要。我这样说并不意味着美和生存毫
无干系;恰恰相反,我相信美和生存之间有着千
丝万缕的联系。如果说是自然造就了我们,那么,是美通
过自然滋养了我们。
It reminds us of the shaping power
that reaches through the flower stem and through
our
own hands. It restores our faith in the
generosity of nature. By giving us a taste of the
kinship
between our own small minds and the
great Mind of the Cosmos, beauty reassures us that
we
are exactly and wonderfully made for life
on this glorious planet, in this magnificent
universe.
I find in that affinity a profound
source of meaning and hope. A universe so prodigal
of beauty
may actually need us to notice and
respond, may need our sharp eyes and brimming
hearts
and teeming minds, in order to close
the circuit of Creation.
无论是一朵花或是一双手,都让我们联想到
美的创造力量。美让我们重拾信念---
相信自然对于我们的无私恩惠与慷慨。美在人类渺小的心灵和宇
宙伟大的精魂之间,化
身为一座沟通的桥梁,并以此让我们不再怀疑:在这片恢宏的宇宙中,在这颗璀璨
的星
球上,人类的存在实为天工之作,神明之意。宇宙和人类对于美的共识,给予我生存的
意义
与希望。我们的宇宙中,美无处不在;她等待着我们敏锐的眼睛、充实的心灵,和
泉涌般的智慧,去发现
美,去回应美,由此成全造物的圆满。
译者注:
本文为美国当代作家司各特·罗素·桑达(Scott Russell Sander,1945-)所写。桑
达出生于美国田纳西州(Tennessee)的孟菲斯(Memphis)。1963年,他就读于布
朗大学
(Brown University), 其后,又就读于剑桥大学(Cambridge U
niversity)并获得文学博士。
1971年,他携妻子(就是本文一开始提到的Ruth,而E
va则是作者的女儿)迁往印地安那
州(Indiana)的布鲁明顿(Bloomington),
并在那里的印地安那大学(Indiana University)任教
至今。印地安那的自然风光给
予他创作的灵感,他在作品中对于自然的生动细致描写充
分体现出他对环境的关注。本文选自他新近出版
的作品《寻找希望》(Hunting for Hope)。
(编辑:李吉琴)
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The Literature of Knowledge and the
Literature of Power
byThomas De Quincey
知识文学与力量文学托 马斯·昆西
What is it that we mean
by literature? Popularly, and amongst the
thoughtless, it is held to
include everything
that is printed in a book. Little logic is
required to disturb that definition.
The most
thoughtless person is easily made aware that in
the idea of literature one essential
element
is some relation to a general and common interest
of man—so that what applies only
to a local,
or professional, or merely personal interest, even
though presenting itself in the
shape of a
book, will not belong to Literature. So far the
definition is easily narrowed; and it
is as
easily expanded. For not only is much that takes
a station in books not literature; but
inversely, much that really is literature
never reaches a station in books. The weekly
sermons
of Christendom, that vast pulpit
literature which acts so extensively upon the
popular
mind—to warn, to uphold, to renew, to
comfort, to alarm—does not attain the sanctuary of
libraries in the ten-thousandth part of its
extent. The Drama again—as, for instance, the
finest
of Shakespeare's plays in England, and
all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the
Attic
stage—operated as a literature on the
public mind, and were (according to the strictest
letter
of that term) published through the
audiences that witnessed their representation some
time
before they were published as things to
be read; and they were published in this scenical
mode
of publication with much more effect than
they could have had as books during ages of costly
copying or of costly printing.
我们所说的“文学”是什
么呢?人们,尤其是对此欠考虑者,普遍会认为:文学包括印
在书本中的一切。可这种定义无需多少理由
便可被推翻。最缺乏思考的人也很容易明白,
“文学”这一概念中有个基本要素,即文学或多或少都与人
类普遍而共同的兴趣有关;
因此,那些仅适用于某一局部、某一行业或仅仅处于个人兴趣的作品,即便以
书的形式
面世,也不该属于“文学”。就此而论,文学之定义很容易变窄,而它同样也不难拓宽。
因为不仅有许多跻身于书卷之列的文字并非文学作品,而且与之相反,不少真正的文学
著作却未曾付梓
成书。譬如基督教世界每星期的布道,这种篇什浩繁且对民众精神影响
极广的讲坛文学,这种对世人起告
戒、鼓励、振奋、安抚或警示作用的布道文学,最终
能进入经楼书馆的尚不及其万分之一。此外还有戏剧
,如英国莎士比亚最优秀的剧作,
以及雅典戏剧艺术鼎盛时期的全部主流剧作,都曾作为文学作品对公众
产生过影响。这
些作品在作为读物出版之前,已通过观看其演出的观众而“出版”了(这正是“出版”<
br>一词最严格的意义)。在抄写或印刷都非常昂贵的年代,通过舞台形式“出版”这些剧
作远比将它
们出版成书效果更佳。
Books, therefore, do not suggest an
idea coextensive and interchangeable with the idea
of
Literature; since much literature, scenic,
forensic, or didactic (as from lecturers and
public
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orators), may
never come into books, and much that does come
into books may connect itself
with no literary
interest. But a far more important correction,
applicable to the common vague
idea of
literature, is to be sought not so much in a
better definition of literature as in a sharper
distinction of the two functions which it
fulfills. In that great social organ which,
collectively,
we call literature, there may be
distinguished two separate offices that may blend
and often do
so, but capable, severally, of a
severe insulation, and naturally fitted for
reciprocal repulsion.
There is, first, the
literature of knowledge; and, secondly, the
literature of power. The function
of the first
is—to teach; the function of the second is—to
move: the first is a rudder; the
second, an
oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere
discursive understanding; the second
speaks
ultimately, it may happen, to the higher
understanding or reason, but always through
affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely,
it may travel towards an object seated in what
Lord Bacon calls dry light; but, proximately,
it does and must operate—else it ceases to be a
literature of power—on and through that humid
light which clothes itself in the mists and
glittering iris of human passions, desires,
and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected
on
the higher functions of literature as to
find it a paradox if one should describe it as a
mean or
subordinate purpose of books to give
information. But this is a paradox only in the
sense
which makes it honorable to be
paradoxical. Whenever we talk in ordinary
language of
seeking information or gaining
knowledge, we understand the words as connected
with
something of absolute novelty. But it is
the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very
high
place in human interests that it is never
absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it
exists
eternally by way of germ or latent
principle in the lowest as in the highest, needing
to be
developed, but never to be planted. To
be capable of transplantation is the immediate
criterion
of a truth that ranges on a lower
scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than
truth—namely, power, or deep sympathy with
truth. What is the effect, for instance, upon
society, of children? By the pity, by the
tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of
admiration,
which connect themselves with the
helplessness, with the innocence, and with the
simplicity
of children, not only are the
primal affections strengthened and continually
renewed, but the
qualities which are dearest
in the sight of heaven—the frailty, for instance,
which appeals to
forbearance, the innocence
which symbolizes the heavenly, and the simplicity
which is most
alien from the worldly—are kept
up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are
continually refreshed. A purpose of the same
nature is answered by the higher literature, viz.
the literature of power. What do you learn
from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you
learn from a cookery book? Something new,
something that you did not know before, in every
paragraph. But would you therefore put the
wretched cookery book on a higher level of
estimation than the divine poem? What you owe
to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a
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million separate items are still but a
million of advancing steps on the same earthly
level;
what you owe is power—that is, exercise
and expansion to your own latent capacity of
sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse
and each separate influx is a step upwards, a
step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from
earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All
the steps of knowledge, from first to last,
carry you further on the same plane, but could
never
raise you one foot above your ancient
level of earth: whereas the very first step in
power is a
flight—is an ascending movement
into another element where earth is forgotten.
由此可见,书之概念与“文学”之概念不可相提并论,互相替换,因为许多文学作品,
如戏剧演出或演
讲者,雄辩家的说教和辩论,也许永远都不会付印成书,而不少印成书
册的作品却可能与文学趣味并不相
关。不过更为重要的是,要纠正人们对文学普遍的模
糊观念,与其去为文学找一个更好的定义,不如更明
确地划分文学的两种功能。在那两
个被我们统称为文学的庞大社会媒体中,可以分辨出两种不同的功能。
两种功能可能混
合,而且经常混合,但各自又具有一种绝缘性,而且天生就互相排斥。这二者之一乃“知
识文学”,之二则为“力量文学”。知识文学的作用在于教诲,力量文学的功能在于感化。
前者
可谓舵艄,后者则是桨桡或蓬帆。前者只有助于纯粹的推理悟解,后者则总是通过
愉悦之情和恻隐之心的
影响,最终激发出更高的悟性,或曰理性。远而望之,仿佛它可
以通过培根称之为“理性之光”中的某个
目标,近而观之,方知它必须通过那道被世人
七情六欲之蒙蒙薄雾和闪闪彩虹包裹的“感性之光”发挥其
作用,不然它就不再是一种
“力量”的文学。世人对文学这两个更为重要的作用思之甚少,所以如果有人
说赋予知
识是书本平庸或次要的用途,此说便被视为悖论。但只有在悖论亦真这个意义上,此说
方为悖论。每当我们用平常语言谈论求学求知的时候,总以为这些字眼与某种绝对新奇
的事务有联系。然
而,能在人类关注的事物中占据极高地位的真理之所以伟大,就在于
它对最卑微者而言也绝非新奇;无论
在最卑微者还是最高贵者心中,真理永远都以种子
或潜在原理的方式存在,他只需去培育或发现,而无需
去种植或创造。能够被移植是判
断一个真理属于低级真理的直接标准。除此之外,还有一种比真理更珍贵
的东西,那就
是力量,或曰对真理的深切认同。举例而言,儿童对社会有何作用呢?儿童的无助、天真和单纯所唤起的怜悯、柔情和种种特殊的爱慕之意,不仅可强化和升华世人与生俱来
的仁爱之心,
就连那些在上帝眼中最为珍贵的品质,诸如唤醒宽容的柔弱、象征神圣的
天真、以及超凡脱俗的单纯,也
都会在永恒的记忆中得以保持,其完美典范亦会不断更
新。更高层次的文学,即力量的文学,要实现的正
是与此相同的目的。从弥尔顿的《失
乐园》中你能获取什么知识呢?一无所获。从一本烹调书中你能学到
什么呢?从每一段
中你都能学到某种新的知识,某种你不曾知晓的知识。可你能因此而认为那本微不足道
的烹调书比那部神圣的诗作更高明吗?你应该感谢弥尔顿的不是他给了你什么知识,因
为获取一
百万条互不相干的知识,也不过是在茫茫尘世向前走了一百万步;你应该感谢
的是他给予你“力量”,使
你能发挥并拓展与无限世界产生共鸣的潜能。在无限世界中,
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每一次脉动和心跳都是上升的一步,
犹如沿雅各的天梯从地面攀向远离凡尘的神秘高
处。知识的步伐,自始至终都让你在同一层面行进,但绝
不可能使你从古老的人间尘世
上升一步;而力量迈出的第一步就是飞升——
升入另一种境界,一种使你忘却凡尘的
境界。 (集体讨论 曹明伦、吴刚 执笔)
An Experience of Aesthetics by Robert Ginsberg
审美的体验 罗伯特·金斯伯格
I climbed the heights above
Yosemite Valley, California in order to see the
splendid granite
mountain, Half Dome, in its
fullest view. Approaching the edge through the
woods I was
filled with heightened
expectation. I saw the ruin of a cabin and my
approach caused the
alignment of the chimney
on this side of the valley with the shorn mountain
across the valley.
I stopped. Something
happened. The stone verticals corresponded, one
human-shaped, the
other natural. The human
site was still engaged in sightseeing. I was on
its side. I saw the
famous sight through the
eyes of the ruin. I had come expecting beauty; I
discovered an
unexpected dimension to the
beauty of the sceneseen.
为了饱览壮丽的花岗岩山峰半穹顶的全景,我
登上了加州约塞米蒂谷的高地。穿过树林,
走近山沿,心中充满美的期盼。远远望见一处小屋的废墟,走
到近前,只见山谷这边的
烟囱与横穿山谷的陡峭山崖恰好连成一线。我停下脚步,奇观出现了:两道石壁
遥相呼
应,一边人工打造,一边浑然天成。人造景观这边仍供观光游览,我此时就身临其境。
透
过小屋的废墟,我看到了著名的景观。我怀着对美的期盼而来,不经意间却发现了美
的另一番天地。
In this experience I had been seeking the
aesthetic. I knew I would find it, for I had seen
post
cards in advance and was following the
trail map. The seeking took considerable effort
and
time. It was a heavy investment. I was not
going for the scientific purpose of studying rock
formation, nor was it for the recreational
purpose of exercising my limbs in the fresh air,
though that exertion added intensity to the
experience and was its context. Primarily, I was
going for the scenic wonders. No wonder that I
would take delight in seeing Half Dome. The
expectation elicited the outcome. I was
suitably prepared. No distractions of practical
consideration — or theoretic — detracted from
my concentrated expectancy. Indeed, the
world
all around me on the climb contributed to the
context for my goal. I was on the terrain
of
Nature in a national park, following the trail to
a viewpoint upon a celebrated natural
formation. Each step in the climb not only
brought me closer but obliged me to sense the
altitude. Moving through the thick woods was
in anticipatory contrast to the great gap of the
valley and the starkness of the treeless
granite boulder.
这次旅程中我一直在捕捉一种美感。我知道会如愿以偿,因为我
事先看过一些有关的风
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景明信片,循着山路示意图一路找来
。这样的寻找费时费力,投入颇大。我此行的目的
既不是出于对科学的动机来研究岩石的结构,也不是出
于娱乐消遣的考虑在清新的空气
中舒展肢体——尽管这次跋涉加深了我对美的体验,而且是这番体验的不
可或缺的环
节。我来这主要是为了览胜,因此见到半穹顶自然欣喜不已。有什么样的期盼就有什么
样的结果。我有备而来,心无旁骛,一心期盼着美景,不受任何实际或假设因素的干扰。
真的,在攀登
过程中,我周围的一切都为寻美营造了氛围。我登上了国家公园的天然山
地,循着山道前来观赏闻名遐迩
的大自然的鬼斧神工。攀登中的每一步不仅使我距目标
越来越近,也使我感受到海拔越来越高。不出所料
,穿行在茂密的树林中,登上大峡谷
寸草不生的花岗岩巨石,两种不同境界给人以强烈的反差。
My spirit and my senses were heightened. I was
keenly aware of the world, eager to
experience
it. My senses were willing to be gratified by
their fullest exercise. Hence my eye
was
sharp, but so was my ear and my nose, I was open
to experiencing aesthetically. And on
the way
I did take minor pleasure in a bird's song, a
tree's sway, and a cloud's contortion. I
was
in the world considered as potential aesthetic
realm. Any pleasing feature that appeared
would be welcomed. And that welcoming mode
drew forth pleasing features. A tonic
subjective at-homeness with the world pervaded
my feelings. I was in the right mood to enjoy
Nature.
我精神抖擞,感官敏锐。我真切地感受到周围的一切,急于体验这一切,渴
望在最充分
的感官体验中得到最大满足。因此我不但目光敏锐,听觉和嗅觉也十分灵敏——我敞开
心扉,尽情地体验着美的滋味。沿途所见所闻,哪怕是一点小小的愉悦,鸟雀鸣唱、树
影婆娑、云卷云
舒,都着实让我动情。置身于这样一个处处蕴含着美的王国,我随时准
备接纳任何不期而至的景色。这样
一种心态更促生了令人赏心悦目的景致,一种心旷神
怡的回归自然之情在我心中油然而生。这样一种心情
最适于欣赏自然美景不过了。
Then the unexpected happened. I
had no thought in reaching the natural heights
that a human
structure would be present.
Normally, I would have avoided any such structure
as I directed
my steps toward the natural
view. In retrospect it makes sense that a service
building be
present at the trail end. It may
have had facilities for visitors and played an
interpretive role.
But the building was not
present when I arrived. It was absent though its
ruin was present.
And that ruin spoke to my
experience as related to what I had come to see.
If I had been
trudging on in a dulled state,
passing the time in surroundings — like those of
the railway
station — that did not draw
interest, I might well have missed the chimney,
walked past it as
if it were another tree on
the way to the goal. The heightened intensity of
my sensibility
allowed the chimney to be
integrated into the experiencing aesthetically.
Readiness was all.
The extraterrestrial
aesthetician would explain that the creature it
was observing on the trail
was a specimen of
an aesthetic being whose experiencing apparatus
for the aesthetic was on
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full alert. The
individual was completely given over to the
enjoyment of its experience. And
while headed
in the direction of an anticipated goal it was
nonetheless open to enjoying
anything that
came its way. Something quite unexpected came its
way, and it was ready to
attend to it, getting
the maximum aesthetic value out of the encounter.
The creature was
embarked on an adventure in
experience. Given the wide range of accessible
natural wonders
in the national park, the
individual in the right mood was bound to make
gratifying
discoveries.
接着,出乎意料的景观出现了。我怎么
也不曾想到,在抵达天然高地时竟然会出现一处
人工建筑。在通常情况下,我要是徒步参观某处自然景点
,一定会绕开这类建筑。回想
起来,在山路尽头有一座服务性建筑也全在情理之中。这小屋也许曾为游客
提供过方便,
起过导游讲解作用。可我来到高地时,小屋不见了。虽有断垣残壁,房屋却荡然无存。而正是这片废墟使我体验到此行览胜的真正含义。如果我当时兴致索然地一路跋涉,比
如像在火车站
那样的地方消磨时光,周围的事物一点也不引人注意,那么我很可能会错
过烟囱,只当它是沿途路过的又
一棵树罢了。而现在,我的感悟力增强了,烟囱作为一
道景观融入了审美体验的始终。一切取决于心态。
如果一个天外美学家看到我这模样,
可能会认为,它观察到的路上这个怪人准是个充满审美细胞的动物,
其审美感官正处于
极度警觉的状态。他已完全沉浸在审美体验所带来的愉悦之中。他朝着既定的目标行进
,
同时又不放过闯入视野的任何景致。奇观乍现,立即映入眼帘,他便从中发掘出最大的
审美价
值。此人正在经历一次美的历险。有国家公园这般天地,随处可见自然奇现,心
境舒畅的游人必定会获得
心满意足的发现。
What are the contents of the
aesthetic discovery? Formal properties of beauty
may be pointed
to in what I saw: the verticals
as distinctively shaped and gathering space about
them, and the
interplay between the two kinds
of vertical shapes over the enormous intervening
space. The
pleasure of perspective entered,
for though the chimney is miniscule compared to
Half Dome,
my approaching it from the trail
made it assume visual and spatial dignity equal to
the
mountain. Complexity of human meaning is
encountered with poignant irony. The chimney is
an enduring marker of the human value placed
on the mountain visible from this point. Here
human hands raised stones to shelter an
experience of pure stone. So I have come to the
right
place; I am at home. But the human
occupation has been lifted; our presence has
turned to
stone. Nature has reclaimed its
elements. Half Dome presides over the petrifaction
of the
world. Chimney and mountain are in
dialogue as I sense the switching between their
perspectives. I am present in ruin and in
unity.
这次审美体验的发现是什么?我所目睹的景致或许可以说明美的外在特征:悬崖峭壁,<
br>造型奇特,给人以强烈的空间感,两道石壁形状迥异,广袤交错,凌空矗立。此外,还
有透视效果
带来的愉悦:虽然与半穹顶相比石烟囱显得非常渺小,但我从山道这边靠近,
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看上去无论在视觉上
还是空间上其气势都一点儿不亚于半穹顶。人类的复杂意图受到了
辛辣的讽刺。从这一视点看过去,那烟
囱是人的价值置于大山上的一道永久性标记。人
类在那里垒石筑屋,以观苍石。这样看来,我来对了地方
,我找到了归宿。不过人类对
自然的占据被消除掉了,我们的存在与石头融为一体。大自然索回了自己的
要素,半穹
顶主宰着石头的世界。我感受到两种不同景致的交替,仿佛听见烟囱在和大山对话。我
站在小屋废墟上,也置身于和谐统一中。
(集体讨论 许建平 执笔)
A
Person Who Apologizes Has the Moral Ball in His
Court by
Paul Johnson
谁给别人道歉,谁就在道义上掌握了主动
保罗·约翰逊
I have sympathy for the butler in The
Big Sleep. Marlowe detects him in a contradiction
and
asks him aggressively,
sweetly, make
many mistakes, so do I. I am, by instinct and
training, a very
specific writer, and so my
errors are numerous. Recent ones include
misspelling Geoffrey
Madan's name —I phoned
the printers with a correction but my page had
already gone to
press — and crediting Richard
Tauber with Donald Peers's signature-tune, a
babbling
brook
and for others in the past,
and for those to come.
我同情《长眠》这部影片中的男管家。马洛探长发现
了他讲话前后有矛盾,就逼问道:
“你犯了一个错,对不?”管家伤感而乖巧地答曰:“我犯下的错可多
去啦,先生。” 我
又何尝不是如此呢?我有点灵气并且训练有素,写起东西来旁征博引,力求翔实,自
然
就言多语失喽。最近犯下的错误包括把杰弗瑞·马丹的名字拼写错了——我给印厂打了
个电话
,把更正告诉他们,可是我的那页已经开印了;我把唐纳德·皮尔斯的信号曲“在
潺潺的小溪旁”安到了
理查德·陶波的头上(陶波的信号曲自然是“你是我心中的喜悦”。)
对于这些错误,以及过去犯的错误
和今后会犯的错误,在下这厢有礼啦。
Disraeli thought that, in
politics, apologies don't work. I see why. Such
being the nature of
parliamentary conflict, an
apology in politics merely leads to fresh
accusations and further
demands for
embarrassing details. I once said to Harold Wilson
when he was prime minister,
would be a good
idea, Harold, to admit the government's mistakes
occasionally, and
replied, a shrewd
suggestion, Paul, and I entirely agree with
it.
(Harold being Harold, I knew an untruth was
coming.)
think of any mistakes, and so there's
nothing to apologise for.
point, though in a
Wilsonian way.
迪斯累里首相认为在政治问题上,给别人道歉行不通。我明白个中的
缘由。议会斗争的
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本质就是如此,在政治问题上,道歉
只会招致新的诘责和进一步要求交待让你左右为难
的详情。还是哈罗德·威尔逊担任首相的时候,有一次
我向他进言:“哈罗德,偶尔承
认一下政府的错误,并且道个歉,不失为一个好主意吧。” 他答道:“
你这个建议高,
保罗,本人完全赞同。”(哈罗德毕竟是哈罗德,我知道一句言不由衷的话就要脱口而出
了。)“然而难办的是我实在想不出有哪些错误,因此,也就没有甚么好道歉的喽。”
这
正是以威尔逊的方式表达出了迪斯累里的意思。
Apologise is one of
those words which has effectively reversed its
original meaning. Its origin,
in the Greek
lawcourts, was jurisprudential: it signified the
speech for the defence in which
the
prosecution's case was answered point by point. It
retained its original meaning until at
least
the 16th century. Thus Sir Thomas More, after
resigning from office, drew up his
Lord
Chancellor of Englande
acquire the connotation
of excuse, withdrawal, admission of fault and plea
for forbearance. It
still bore its original
meaning in theology: Newman's Apologia pro Vita
Sua was not an
apology at all but a vigorous
rebuttal of Charles Kingsley's charges. Dickens's
unfortunate
statement about his reasons for
splitting up with his wife, which his friends
begged him not to
publish, was self-
destructive precisely because it was halfway
between the two meanings: half
defiant
vindication, half admission of guilt.
有那么一些词儿,
已经彻底演变得与本义完全相反,“Apologise”即是其中之一。该词
的本义,在希腊法庭上,
具有法理学意义:该词即指辩护词,在辩护过程中,对于诉讼
方的指控,逐一予以回答。其原义至少到了
16世纪还一直保留着。托马斯·莫尔爵士
在挂印辞官之后,就是这样撰写了他的“托马斯·莫尔爵士之
辩护词;辞去英格兰大法
官之职后所作。”今天我们会使用“Vindication”(辩白,辩护)
一词。只是渐渐地“Apologise”
这个词才获得了“原谅、撤回所说的话、承认错误并请求宽恕
”之含义。在神学中该词
仍保留原来的意义:纽曼的《为吾生辩》(Apologia pro
Vita Sua)根本就不是什么道歉,
而是对查尔士·金斯菜的指控所作的强硬辩驳。讲狄更斯与其
妻分手理由的那篇倒霉的
陈词(其友人求他不要发表),就是自毁其身,恰恰是它介于两个意义之间:一
半是倔
强的辩白,一半是承认有愧。
No doubt everyone has to
apologise for his life, sooner or later. When we
appear at the Last
Judgment and the Recording
Angel reads out a list of our sins, we will
presumably be given
an opportunity to
apologise, in the old sense of rebuttal, and in
the new sense too, by way of
confession and
plea of repentance. In this life, it is well to
apologise (in the new sense), but
promptly,
voluntarily, fully and sincerely. If the error is
a matter of opinion and unpunishable,
so much
the better —an apology then becomes a gracious and
creditable occasion, and an
example to all. An
enforced apology is a miserable affair.
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毋庸置疑,任何人都要为自己的一生辩护,不管是今生还是来世。当我们出席最后的审<
br>判时,记录天使诵读出所罗列的我们的罪孽,我们作了忏悔并请求宽恕,这样大概会被
给予辩白(
这个词的老义)和表示歉意(它的新义)的机会。在今生中,道歉(新义)
是桩对的事, 但是要做到及
时、要心甘情愿、要完完全全、要诚心诚意。如果过错是
看法上的事,并且错不当罚,那最好不过——说
一声“对不起”就成了一个显示大度的
机会,可赞可叹,众人之楷模也。而被迫去道歉,那可就难受了。
Newspaper apologies nearly always seem
inadequate. The most audacious one I know was
brought back from America by the artist Edward
Burne-Jones to show his friend Lady Homer
of
Mells. It read:
stairs, and hurling a lighted
kerosene lamp after her, the Revd. James P.
Wellman died
unmarried four years
ago.
succinctness of the correction — not, be
it noted, an apology, for the law of libel, in the
United States as in England, offers no redress
to a dead person. I suspect the extract is from
the New York World when it was a sensational
paper owned by Pulitzer. For reasons which a
recent biography of him does not clarify, he
had a particular hatred for clergymen of all
denominations, and frequently exaggerated or
invented discreditable news items about them.
He also discovered that such items invariably
put on circulation.
报社的道歉几乎从来是不到位的。据我所知,最为厚颜的一次是艺术家爱德华·伯恩 —
琼斯从美国带回来,让他的友人麦尔斯庄园的洪纳夫人看的,曰:“詹姆士·P. 维尔曼
神甫
没有像我们所述说的那样,因为将妻子一脚踹下了楼梯,随后又将一支点燃的煤油
灯朝她掷去而被逮捕,
而是于四年之前过世,从未婚娶。”对于如此之大的错误,而更
正又如此之简短,这一句话可谓妙矣也哉
——请注意,这算不上是“赔礼道歉”,因为
在美国(正如在英国一样),根据诽谤法,是不给死人纠错
的。我猜想这条剪报取自《纽
约世界报》,曾是一家轰动的报纸,由普利策拥有。不知何故(最近有关普
氏的传记并
未澄清)他尤其痛恨各个教派的教士们,经常将一些诋毁他们的新闻段子加以渲染,或
是编造出一些这样的段子。他还发现此类新闻段子总是会使发行量剧增。
The most
famous apology in history was made to a much
maligned, though far from innocent,
cleric:
Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. He had become
involved in what is known as the
Investiture
Dispute, a fierce Church-State Kulturkampf,
revolving round the appointment of
bishops.
His chief opponent, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry
IV — not a nice man but not a
monster either —
had called him an impostor, an antipope, an
Antichrist and I know not what,
but had got
the worst of it in the armed struggle that
followed. Henry decided to purge his
excommunication and get the interdict on his
territories withdrawn by apologising and doing
penance. The Pope had sought the protection of
Countess Matilda of Tuscany, then the world's
richest woman, and princess of startling
beauty, taste and wisdom. He was sheltering at her
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stupendous mountain stronghold of
Canossa, not far from Modena, and the Emperor had
to
climb there barefoot, in the depths of
winter, to make his kowtow. Why has this amazing
story
not been the subject of a great opera?
Perhaps it has. Needless to say, the apology was
insincere and the tragic story ended in tears
on both sides, the Pope's bitter last words being:
was slow to canonise this remarkable man
suggests that to begin with it did not accept his
version of events. A century later. Henry II
of England was locked in mortal struggle over the
same issue with Becket, and also apologised
after he caused the archbishop's murder. This,
too,
was in some degree insincere, and trouble
broke out afresh soon after Henry had donned
sackcloth. Becket was at least as intemperate
as Hildebrand, but he not only got his halo but
did so in the fastest time on record. But then
he was a martyr, and they always move to
canonisation faster than any other category of
saint.
历史上最为有名的“道歉”是向一位神职人士所致:此公乃是希尔得布兰德,即教皇格<
br>列高利七世,他被人诋毁多多,然而也并非无辜。他卷入了史书所记载的“授职争议”,
即一次围
绕教会与国家之间有关任命主教问题的激烈的“文化冲突”。他的主要对手就
是神圣罗马帝国的皇帝亨利
四世——他算不上是个好人,但也不是什么魔鬼——他称教
皇是个骗子、伪教皇、假耶稣,还有一些不知
道是什么样的骂名,但是在随后的武装冲
突中,他却为此一败涂地。亨利四世决定向教皇请罪,表示诲意
,以此希冀教皇解除将
其逐出教门的惩罚,并撤回在其领土上的授权禁令。教皇寻求托斯坎尼区的玛蒂尔
达伯
爵夫人的庇佑,这位伯爵夫人是当时世界上最富有的女人,一位倾国倾城,睿智聪颖,
极有
品味的郡主。教皇躲进了她那气势恢宏的山间城堡,它建在离摩德纳市不远的卡诺
萨。皇帝不得不在隆冬
季节赤脚攀上城堡,前去叩头谢罪。 这样一个令人拍案叫绝的
故事却不曾成为一个大歌剧的主题,未知
何也?或许已经有了。毋庸赘言,这次道歉并
非真心实意,而悲剧则是以双方眼泪洗面告终。教皇临终时
痛楚地说:“吾爱正义而恶
不公:故而吾死于流放。”但是,教会迟迟不将这位杰出的人封为圣人,此事
表明他们
从一开始就未曾接受他对事件的说法。一个世纪之后,英格兰的亨利二世与贝克特大主
教在同一问题上打得你死我活,不可开交;在他指使谋杀大主教之后,也做了道歉。这
在某种程度上也并
非诚心诚意,在亨利二世披上麻衣去忏悔之后,麻烦再度出现。贝克
特主教至少也和希尔得布兰德一样放
纵无度,然而他不但得到了光环,而且是以有史记
载以来最快的速度得到的。再说啦,他算是个殉道者,
这些殉道者比起其他类圣人,其
被封圣的速度要快得多。
When I was an
editor, I always preferred to apologise promptly,
whatever the merits of the
case, rather than
face the expense and, more importantly, the time-
consuming complexities
and debilitating worry
of litigation, libel being one of the least
satisfactory branches of the law.
When we took
a crack at Dr Bodkin Adams, believing him to be
dead, and his joyful lawyer
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phoned me the
next morning to tell me he was very much alive, I
settled the matter there and
then for the sum
(if I remember correctly) of £450 and an apology.
So my advice to editors
is, get shot of claims
quickly, unless the plaintiff's demands are
manifestly unreasonable.
我还是编辑的时候,无论情况如何,我总是选择
立马道歉,而不是去面对诉讼过程中所
发生的费用,更为重要的是,去面对费时耗神的诉讼过程中产生的
复杂情况。诽谤法是
法律当中最不尽人意的部分。我们曾拿鲍德金·亚当姆斯医生开涮,还以为他已经死
了;
莅日,他的律师喜滋滋地打电话给我,告诉我亚当姆斯医生还活得好好的,我立时以一
笔4
50 英镑 (如果我没记错的话)的赔偿费和一句道歉的话了结此事。所以,我对编
辑们的忠告是:对
于赔偿要求要立马了结,除非原告的要求太离谱。
Besides, there is
something distinguished about a ready apology. It
is the mark of a gentleman,
more particularly
if it is not necessary. It is the opposite of
revenge. Bacon wrote,
revenge, a man is but
equal with his enemy, but in forgiving him, he is
superior, for it is a
princes' part to pardon.
此外,随时准备好一句道歉的话,是一种高尚行为,特别是在没有必要道歉时而道歉,
更显示出
一个绅士的特质。道歉与报复相对。培根有云:“夫图报复焉,汝与汝仇等:
苟汝恕之,则汝优於汝仇焉
;盖宽恕也,王者之风也。”由是,谁把“对不起”常挂在
嘴边,谁就在道义上掌握了主动。
(集体讨论 范守义 执笔)
On Going Home by Joan
Didion
回家 琼·狄迪恩
I am home for my
daughter's first birthday. By I do not mean the
house in Los
Angeles where my husband and I
and the baby live, but the place where my family
is, in the
Central Valley of California. It is
a vital although troublesome distinction. My
husband likes
my family but is uneasy in their
house, because once there I fall into their ways,
which are
difficult, oblique, deliberately
inarticulate, not my husband's ways. We live in
dusty houses
(
filled with mementos quite
without value to him (what could the Canton
dessert plates. mean
to him? How could he have
known about the assay scales, why should he care
if he did
know?), and we appear to talk
exclusively about people we know who have been
committed
to mental hospitals, about people we
know who have been booked on drunk-driving
charges,
and about property, particularly
about property, land, price per acre and C-2
zoning and
assessments and freeway access. My
brother does not understand my husband's inability
to
perceive the advantage in the rather common
real-estate transaction known as
hears
about in my father's house have recently been
committed to mental hospitals or booked
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on drunk-driving charges. Nor does he
understand that when we talk about sale-leasebacks
and right-of-way condemnations we are talking
in code about the things we like best, the
yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the
rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads
closing when the heavy snow comes in. We miss
each other's points, have another drink and
regard the fire. My brother refers to my
husband, in his presence, as husband.
Marriage
is the classic betrayal.
我回家给女儿过周岁生日。我所说的“家”,
并非指丈夫,我和小宝宝在洛杉矶的家,
而是指位于加州中央谷地的娘家。这样区分,尽管麻烦,却很重
要。丈夫不是不喜欢我
娘家的人,但是在我娘家却颇不自在。因为我一回去,就染上了娘家人的习惯,说
起话
来故意吞吞吐吐、拐弯抹角、令人费解,完全有别于丈夫的习惯。我们住在灰蒙蒙的屋
子里
(丈夫曾用手指在落满灰尘的地方都写上了“灰——尘”两个大字,只是没人注意),
里面还摆满了纪念
品,可在丈夫眼里这些东西毫无价值(粤式细瓷点心盘对他来说能有
什么意义?他怎么可能了解分析天平
?即使他了解,他又何必在意?)。在他看来,我
们好像尽在那谈熟人,哪个被送进了精神病院,哪个被
控酒后驾车。还谈财产,特别是
地产、土地和地价,C-2区制规划及评估,还有高速公路的出入口,等
等。弟弟弄不明
白,我丈夫怎么连很平常的“售后回租”这种房地产交易的好处也不懂?丈夫也觉得奇<
br>怪,在我娘家为何听到这么多人最近被送进了精神病院,或是因酒后开车被控?其实丈
夫不明白,
我们谈售后回租和依法征用公共用地的时候,是在用娘家人特有的语言谈论
最来劲的东西,像金黄色的田
野、棉白杨、时涨时落的河水,以及下大雪时封闭的山路。
话不投机,索性接着喝酒,默默注视着炉火。
弟弟当着我丈夫的面,称他为“琼的丈夫”。
结婚啊,从古到今,都意味着背叛。
Or
perhaps it is not any more. Sometimes I think that
those of us who are now in our thirties
were
born into the last generation to carry the burden
of to find in family life the
source of all
tension and drama. I had by all objective accounts
a
family situation, and yet I was almost
thirty years old before I could talk to my family
on the
telephone without crying after I had
hung up. We did not fight. Nothing was wrong. And
yet
some nameless anxiety colored the
emotional charges between me and the place that I
came
from. The question of whether or not you
could go home again was a very real part of the
sentimental and largely literary baggage with
which we left home in the fifties; I suspect that
it is irrelevant to the children born of the
fragmentation after World War II. A few weeks ago
in a San Francisco bar I saw a pretty young
girl on crystal take off her clothes and dance for
the cash prize in an
this, none of the
effect of romantic degradation, of
strived so
assiduously. What sense could that girl possibly
make of, say, Long Day's Journey
into Night?
Who is beside the point?
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或许,现在情况变了。我有时想,我
们这些三十几岁的人,注定成为承担“家”的重负、
并经受家庭生活中种种紧张和冲突的最后一代人。在
别人的眼里,无论从哪方面看,我
都曾拥有一个“正常”而“幸福”的家。然而,直到将近三十岁以前,
我与娘家人通电
话后总是要哭鼻子。我们没吵过架,也没出过岔子。但一丝莫名的忧虑,浸染了我和生<
br>我养我的家之间的情感纠葛。五十年代我们离家时,背负着一个装着伤感、多半是书籍
的行囊。还
能回家吗?这个问题便是行囊中实实在在的一部分。我想,这个问题大概与
二战后破碎家庭里出生的孩子
无关。几个礼拜前,在旧金山的一个酒吧里,我看见一位
吸了毒的漂亮姑娘,脱去衣服跳舞,仅仅是为得
到一场“业余无上装”比赛的现金奖励!
这没有什么特别的意思,与浪漫沉沦沾不上边儿,与我们这一代
人所趋之若鹜的“黑暗
之旅”也沾不上边儿。那位姑娘呀,你对《进入黑夜的漫长旅程》作何理解?到底
是谁
离题了?
That I am trapped in this
particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to
me than when I am
home. Paralyzed by the
neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one's
past at every turn,
around every corner,
inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly from room to
room. I decide to
meet it head-on and clean
out a drawer, and I spread the contents on the
bed. A bathing suit I
wore the summer I was
seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation,
an aerial photograph
of the site for a
shopping center my father did not build in 1954.
Three teacups hand-painted
with cabbage roses
and signed
for letters of rejection from The
Nation and teacups hand-painted in 1900. Nor is
there any
answer to snapshots of one's
grandfather as a young man on skis, surveying
around Donner
Pass in the year 1910. I smooth
out the snapshot and look into his face, and do
and do not see
my own. I close the drawer, and
have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get
along
very well, veterans of a guerrilla war
we never understood.
这个不相干的问题困扰着我,在我返回老家后尤为明显
。走过每个角落,打开每个食橱,
转身驻足间,我一次次地面对过去,思绪不宁,及至疲乏不堪,我还是
漫无目的地逐个
房间走着。我决意正视过去,清理出一个抽屉,把东西摊在床上。一件我十七岁那年夏<
br>天穿的泳衣;一封《民族》周刊的退稿信;一张从空中拍摄的选址照片,1954年父亲曾
打算在
那里建购物中心;还有三只茶杯,上面有手绘的百叶蔷薇,并签有祖母名字的两
个首字母E.M.。我不
知道该如何处理1900年手绘的茶杯和《民族》周刊的退稿信,也
不知道该如何处理祖父1910年的
几张快照。照片里的祖父青春年少,踩着滑雪板,在
察看唐纳山口。我抚平照片,注视着祖父的脸,依稀
看到自己的影子,又似乎没有。我
关上抽屉,陪母亲又喝了一杯咖啡。我们现在相处得很好,就像打过游
击战的老兵一样,
真不明白过去为何有龃龉。
Days pass. I see no
one. I come to dread my husband's evening call,
not only because he is
full of news of what by
now seems to me our remote life in Los Angeles,
people he has seen,
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letters which
require attention, but because he asks what I have
been doing, suggests uneasily
that I get out,
drive to San Francisco or Berkeley. Instead I
drive across the river to a family
graveyard.
It has been vandalized since my last visit and the
monuments are broken,
overturned in the dry
grass. Because I once saw a rattlesnake in the
grass I stay in the car and
listen to a
country-and-Western station. Later I drive with my
father to a ranch he has in the
foothills. The
man who runs his cattle on it asks us to the
roundup, a week from Sunday, and
although I
know that I will be in Los Angeles I say, in the
oblique way my family talks, that I
will come.
Once home I mention the broken monuments in the
graveyard. My mother shrugs.
日子一天天过去,我没拜访任何人。
我开始对丈夫晚间打来的电话感到害怕,不光是因
为他老是跟我讲洛杉矶的情况,见到谁啦,哪些信件该
回啦,等等,而洛杉矶的生活距
离我似乎已遥远了啊!还因为他问我在做什么,有点拘束地建议我出去走
走,开车去旧
金山或伯克利。我却驾车去了河对岸的一块家族墓地。自我上次来过之后,墓地被破坏了,墓碑断裂,翻倒在枯草丛里。以前我曾在草丛里见到一条响尾蛇,所以这次我待在
车上,收听乡
村与西部音乐台的广播。后来我同父亲开车去了他在山麓小丘上的农场。
为他放牛的人请我们下周日来看
他赶拢牛群。尽管我明明知道那时我已回到洛杉矶了,
但我还是以家里人绕弯子的方式说要来。一回到家
里,我就提起了墓地里的断碑。母亲
耸了耸肩。
I go to visit my
great-aunts. A few of them think now that I am my
cousin, or their daughter
who died young. We
recall an anecdote about a relative last seen in
1948, and they ask if I still
like living in
New York City. I have lived in Los Angeles for
three years, but I say that I do.
The baby is
offered a horehound drop, and I am slipped a
dollar bill buy a treat.
Questions trail off,
answers are abandoned, the baby plays with the
dust motes in a shaft of
afternoon sun.
我
去看望姑婆们。其中几位把我当成了我的堂妹,或她们早逝的女儿,我们回忆起一位
亲戚的轶事,上次相
见是在1948年。她们问我是否还喜欢住在纽约市。其实我在洛杉
矶已经住了三年,但我还是说喜欢纽
约。她们给我女儿带苦味的薄荷糖吃,还塞给我一
块钱“再买点好吃的。”慢慢地,问题少了,回答也就
省了。女儿在午后的一缕阳光里,
欢快地抓弄着尘埃。
It is time for
the baby's birthday party: a white cake,
strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a
bottle of
champagne saved from another party. In the
evening, after she has gone to sleep, I
kneel
beside the crib and touch her face, where it is
pressed against the slats, with mine. She
is
an open and trusting child, unprepared for and
unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life,
and perhaps it is just as well that I can
offer her little of that life. I would like to
give her more.
I would like to promise her
that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins
and of rivers and
of her great-grandmother's
teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a
river with fried
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chicken and her
hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her
birthday, but we live
differently now and I
can promise her nothing like that. I give her a
xylophone and a sundress
from Madeira, and
promise to tell her a funny story.
女儿的生日聚会开始了—
—有白蛋糕,草莓蜜饯冰激凌,和一瓶从别的聚会上留下来的
香槟。晚上,女儿睡着后,我跪在小床边,
面颊贴着她那紧挨着床栏的小脸蛋。女儿性
情开朗,相信别人,对于家庭生活的陷阱既不知晓,也无防范
。也许,我还是让她少过
这种生活吧。我倒是愿意给与她更多别的东西。我倒愿意许诺让堂兄弟姊妹的手
足之情、
潺潺流淌的小河、以及外曾祖母的茶杯伴着她成长;愿意答应带她去河边野炊,认她披
散着头发,啃炸鸡;愿意给她一个真正的家作为生日礼物。但是,我们的生活不同了啊,
我无法许诺给予
她这一切!我只给了她一把木琴和来自马德里的背心裙,还答应给她讲
个有趣的故事。
(集体讨论 方开瑞 执笔)
The Making of Ashenden
(Excerpt) by Stanley Elkin
艾兴登其人(节选)斯坦利·埃尔金
I've been spared a lot, one of the blessed of
the earth, at least one of its lucky, that
privileged
handful of the dramatically
prospering, the sort whose secrets are asked, like
the
hundred-year-old man. There is no secret,
of course; most of what happens to us is simple
accident. Highish birth and a smooth network
of appropriate connection like a tea service
written into the will. But surely something in
the blood too, locked into good fortune's
dominant genes like a blast ripening in a time
bomb. Set to go off, my good looks and
intelligence, yet exceptional still, take away
my mouthful of silver spoon and lapful of luxury.
Something my own, not passed on or handed
down, something seized, wrested—my good
character, hopefully, my taste perhaps. What's
mine, what's mine? Say taste—the soul's
harmless appetite.
我一直活得无忧无虑,深得上帝垂爱,至少算个幸运
儿,少数人才享有的尊荣富贵,我
垂手得之。就像百岁人瑞总有人讨教,我的秘诀也总有人探询。当然,
秘诀谈不上,人
间之事大多纯属偶然。高贵的出身、顺畅的关系网有如凭遗嘱继承的茶具,随我所用。<
br>当然,我的幸运也有某种与生俱来的因素,一种血液里固有的强势基因;它像定时炸弹,
到时就会
爆炸。一旦爆炸,我出类拔萃的相貌和智慧将会使口衔银匙、满堂金玉的身世
完全微不足道。我的成功源
自我自己特有的东西,不是祖传的福荫,是某种我拼命抓住、
努力得到的东西——我良好的性格或品味。
那么,究竟什么才是我自己特有的东西?是
什么呢?是品味吧一一那种无害的心灵欲求。
I've money, I'm rich. The heir to four
fortunes. Grandfather on Mother's side was a
Newpert.
The family held some good real estate
in Rhode Island until they sold it for many times
what
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they gave for it. Grandmother on
Father's side was a Salts, whose bottled mineral
water, once
available only through
prescription and believed indispensable in the
cure of all fevers, was
the first product ever
to be reviewed by the Food and Drug
Administration, a famous and
controversial
case. The government found it to contain nothing
that was actually detrimental
to human beings,
and it went public, so to speak. Available now
over the counter, the Salts
made more money
from it than ever.
我有钱,我富足,我继承了四笔遗产。外公姓纽波特,纽家在
罗得岛坐拥不菲房产,后
来以高出原价好多倍出手。奶奶姓索尔茨。她的家族生产的瓶装矿泉水,一度只
能凭医
生处方才能买到,据说是治各种发热症所必需,是联邦食品药品管理局有史以来审查的
第
一宗产品。那个案例名噪一时、颇具争议。政府发现它没有对人体有害的东西,也就
上市了。现在谁都可
以在商店买到,索尔茨家族因此赚得钵满盆满。
Mother was an Oh. Her
mother was the chemical engineer who first
discovered a feasible way
to store oxygen in
tanks. And Father was Noel Ashenden, who though he
did not actually
invent the match-book, went
into the field when it was still a not very
flourishing novelty, and
whose slogan, almost
a poem,
to say), obvious only after someone
else has already thought of it (the Patent Office
refused to
issue a patent on what it claimed
was merely an instruction, but Father's company
had the
message on its matchbooks before his
competitors even knew what was happening), removed
the hazard from book matches and turned the
industry and Father's firm particularly into a
flaming success overnight—Father's joke, not
mine. Later, when the inroads of Ronson and
Zippo threatened the business, Father went
into seclusion for six months and when he
returned to us he had produced another slogan:
Our Matchless saved the
industry a second
time and was the second and last piece of work in
Father's life.
家母随外婆姓欧。外婆是化学工程师,成功开发了罐装氧气。家父是
诺尔•艾兴登。尽
管纸板火柴不是他发明的,但当它还是个新玩意儿、不怎么旺销时,他就人了这个行业
。
他的推销广告颇有诗意:“阖盖一划火自来”(就像父亲常说的,轻轻一划就成)。很显然,
这是拾人牙慧(专利局因此拒发专利证,说这只不过是句使用说明。但父亲的公司在对
手还懵然不觉时,
就抢先把这句广告词印在火柴盒上)。正是这句推销广告消除了纸板
火柴使用时的危险,使整个行业,特
别是父亲的火柴公司,一夜之间生意火了起来——
这是父亲的玩笑而非我本人的幽默。后来,荣升和芝宝
打火机打人市场,火柴生意受到
威胁。父亲于是隐退,半年后推出了另一句广告词:“我友(有)火柴”
,父亲因此第二次
拯救了火柴业,这也是父亲一生中第二个也是最后一个成就。
There
are people who gather in the spas and watering
places of this world who pooh-pooh our
fortune. Après ski, cozy in their wools,
handsome before their open hearths, they
scandalize
amongst themselves in whispers.
they say, from ruin because of some
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cornball
sentiment available in every bar and grill and
truck stop in the country. It's not, not...
那些
整日泡在温泉浴场、休闲胜地的人对我们的财富嗤之以鼻。他们滑雪回来,换上温
暖舒适的羊毛衫,神气
活现地坐在壁炉前嘀嘀咕咕嚼舌头:“想想看,”他们说,“他没
有完蛋,还不是因为郊野的酒吧、烧烤
店、卡车场总有些人对纸板火柴恋恋不合。不是
因为„„”
Not what?
Snobs! Phooey on the First Families. On railroad,
steel mill, automotive, public
utility,
banking and shipping fortunes, on all hermetic
legacy, morganatic and blockbuster
blood-lines
that change the maps and landscapes and alter the
mobility patterns, your jungle
wheeling and
downtown dealing a stone's throw from warfare. I
come of good stock—real
estate, mineral water,
oxygen, matchbooks: earth, water, air and fire,
the old elementals of the
material universe, a
bellybutton economics, a linchpin one.
不是因为什么
?这帮势利眼!呸!什么第一家族!什么铁路、钢厂、汽车、公共设施、
银行和航运方面的财富!什么秘
密遗产!什么贵贱婚配!什么豪门世家!你们改变了地
图、地貌、甚至改变了社会流动的格局,可你们弱
肉强食,巧取豪夺,跟战争相差无几。
我这才叫来路正宗——房地产、矿泉水、氧气、火柴:土、水、气
、火,物质世界古老
的四大元素。这才是核心经济,这才是关键经济。
It is as I
see it a perfect genealogy, and if I can be bought
and sold a hundred times over by a
thousand
men in this country—people in your own town could
do it, providents and trailers of
hunch, I
bless them, who got into this or went into that
when it was eight cents a share—I am
satisfied
with my thirteen or fourteen million. Wealth is
not after all the point. The genealogy
is.
That bridge-trick nexus that brought Newpert to
Oh, Salts to Ashenden and Ashenden to
Oh,
love's lucky longshots which, paying off,
permitted me as they permit every human life!
(I have this simple, harmless paranoia of the
good-natured man, this cheerful awe.) Forgive
my enthusiasm, that I go on like some secular
patriot wrapped in the simple flag of self, a
professional descendant, every day the closed-
for-the-holiday banks and post offices of the
heart. And why not? Aren't my circumstances
superb? Whose are better? No boast, no boast.
I've had it easy, served up on all life's
silver platters like a satrap. And if my money is
managed for me and I do no work—less work even
than Father, who at least came up with
those
two slogans, the latter in a six-month solitude
that must have been hell for that
gregarious
man (Our Matchless Friendsno slogan finally but a
broken code, an
extension of his own
hospitable being, simply the Promethean gift of
fire to a guest)—at least
I am not
count
one's blessings, Brewster Ashenden's a miser.
在我看来,我出身完美。如果这个国家有一千人百余次买卖我的股票——跟你同住一城
的人可能会这么
做;有远见的人,跟着感觉走的人,我祝福他们!当每股还只有八分钱
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时,他们就买进了我
的这种或那种股票——我对我原有的一千三、四百万,就很满足了。
毕竟财富不是关键,关键是出身。桥
牌般复杂的姻缘让外公走进了外婆的生活,奶奶嫁
给了爷爷,家父娶了家母。父母姻缘巧合的爱情造就了
我,就像别人的爱晴造就了一个
个鲜活的生命!(我这个性良好的人也有这种朴素而无害的追问到底的执
拗,这种对自
己生命的由衷的敬畏。)原谅我有如此热情,像一个无宗教信仰的爱国者,处处强调自我,或者像一个职业继承人,每天心无所系,有如放假关门的银行和邮局。为什么不呢?
我的条件不
优越吗?还有比我条件更好的吗?这不是吹牛,根本不是。我的一切来得太容
易,犹如一位大老爷,一切
都有人用银盘奉上。钱有人管,不用工作一一我比父亲工作
还少,他起码还炮制了两句广告词,第二句还
是他退隐半年的结果。对于像他那样好热
闹的人来说,那半年简直是人间地狱(“我友(有)火柴”,说
到底并不算什么广告词,
而是个被破解的密码,是他殷勤个性的延伸,是他的好客之火,是普罗米修斯的
圣火)。
即便如此,我起码没被“宠坏”,浑身还洋溢着感恩之情。如果数数自己的福气也算是
小气的话,那我布鲁斯特·艾兴登就是个小气鬼。
This will give you some
idea of what I'm like:
简单给您说说我的为人:
On
Having an Account in a Swiss Bank: I never had
one, and suggest you stay away from
them too.
Oh, the mystery and romance is all very well, but
never forget that your Swiss bank
offers no
premiums, whereas for opening a savings account
for 5,000 or more at First
National City Bank
of New York or other fine institutions you get
wonderful
premiums—picnic hampers, Scotch
coolers, Polaroid cameras, Hudson's Bay blankets
from L.
L. Bean, electric shavers, even lawn
furniture. My managers always leave me a million
or so
to play with, and this is how I do it. I
suppose I've received hundreds of such bonuses.
Usually
I give them to friends or as gifts at
Christmas to doormen and other loosely connected
personnel of the household, but often I keep
them and use them myself. I'm not stingy. Of
course I can afford to buy any of these
things—and I do, I enjoy making purchases—but
somehow nothing brings the joy of existence
home to me more than these premiums.
Something
from nothing—the two-suiter from Chase Manhattan
and my own existence,
luggage a bonus and life
a bonus too. Like having a film star next to you
on your flight from
the Coast. There are
treats of high order, adventure like cash in the
street.
说到在瑞士银行开户:我从没开过,建议你也别开。当然,那种神秘感觉和浪漫色彩
挺
不错的。但记住,瑞士银行从不提供任何礼品。相反,如果你在纽约第一国民城市银行
或别的
优质机构开一个5000美元或更多的储蓄帐户,你就可以得到精美礼品,像什么
野餐篮子啦、苏格兰冷
饮啦、宝丽来相机啦、名牌毛毯啦、电动剃须刀啦,甚至还有草
坪家私。我的经理们总给我留个百儿八十
万元什么的玩着花,我顺手就到银行开个户。
估计类似的赠品我已有几百件了。我常拿它们送朋友或作为
圣诞礼物送给门童和家里的
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勤杂人员。但我也经常留下自用。我
不是抠门的人,这些玩意儿我当然买得起——也去
买过,我喜欢购物一一但不知为什么,这些赠品给我带
来了无与伦比的快乐。从无到有
——大通·曼哈顿银行送的男士小行李箱是这样,我的人生也是这样;行
李箱是赠品,
人生也是赠品。那感觉就像在从西岸回来的飞机上,发现邻座是个电影明星。生活中总有这种难得的乐事,就像大街上捡钱那样刺激。
Let's enjoy ourselves,
I say; let's have fun. Lord, let us live in the
sand by the surf of the sea
and play till cows
come home. We'll have a house on the Vineyard and
a brownstone in the
Seventies and a pied-à-
terre in a world capital when something big is
about to break. (Put the
Cardinal in the back
bedroom where the sun gilds the bay at afternoon
tea and give us the
courage to stand up to
secret police at the door, to top all threats with
threats of our own, the
nicknames of mayors
and ministers, the fast comeback at the front
stairs, authority on us like
the funny
squiggle the counterfeiters miss.) Re-Columbus us.
Engage us with the overlooked,
a knowledge of
optics, say, or a gift for the tides. (My pal, the
heir to most of the vegetables in
inland
Nebraska, has become a superb amateur
oceanographer. The marine studies people
invite him to Wood's Hole each year. He has a
wave named for him.) Make us good at things,
the countertenor and the German language, and
teach us to be as easy in our amateur standing
as the best man at a roommate's wedding. Give
us hard tummies behind the cummerbund and
long
swimmer's muscles under the hound's tooth so that
we may enjoy our long life. And may
all our
stocks rise to the occasion of our best
possibilities, and our humanness be bullish too.
我常说,我们要玩得开心,要及时行乐。上帝啊,让我们住在海边吧,踏沙,冲浪,嬉
戏,直至
永远。我们要在马萨葡萄园岛有一套独栋别墅,在纽约七十几街有一套褐石豪
宅,在某个世界之都有个安
乐窝,以便就近亲临大事的现场。(请红衣主教住最里边的
卧室,下午茶时分的阳光将海湾镀上金色,同
时给我们增添勇气,直面门外的秘密警察,
以我们的威胁来消除一切外来的威胁,报出达官贵人们的诨名
,在门口与他们唇枪舌战,
那种威势,就像纸币上古怪的防伪线条,无法模仿。)我们要像哥伦布再世。
我们要致
力于别人忽略的东西,如光学的某一方面或研究海潮的某种能力。(我有个朋友,在远
离海洋的内布拉斯加州继承了蔬菜种植业,却成了一位出色的业余海洋学家。研究海洋
的专业人士每年都
请他去伍兹霍。有一种海浪以他的名字命名。)让我们擅长点什么吧,
无论成为男高音歌手还是掌握德文
。让我们轻松地做业余专家,就像在室友的婚礼上做
伴郎那样容易。让我们的腰带下有结实的小腹,泳衣
里有游泳健将的强劲肌肉,这样我
们会安享长命天年。让我们的股票天天猛涨,让我们做人也牛气冲天。
Speaking personally I am glad to be a heroic
man.
私下里说,我很乐意做个英雄人物。
I am pleased that I
am attractive to women but grateful I'm no
bounder. Though I'm touched
when married women
fall in love with me, as frequently they do, I am
rarely to blame. I never
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encourage these
fits and do my best to get them over their
derangements so as not to lose the
friendships
of their husbands when they are known to me, or
the neutral friendship of the
ladies
themselves. This happens less than you might
think, however, for whenever I am a
houseguest
of a married friend I usually make it a point to
bring along a girl. These girls are
from all
walks of life—models, show girls, starlets,
actresses, tennis professionals, singers,
heiresses and the daughters of the diplomats
of most of the nations of the free world. All
walks. They tend, however, to conform to a
single physical type, and are almost always tall,
tan, slender and blond, the girl from Ipanema
as a wag friend of mine has it. They are always
sensitive and intelligent and good at sailing
and the Australian crawl. They are never
blemished in any way, for even something like
a tiny beauty mark on the inside of a thigh or
above the shoulder blade is enough to put me
off, and their breaths must be as sweet at three
in the morning as they are at noon. (I never
see a woman who is dieting for diet sours the
breath.) Arm hair, of course, is repellent to
me though a soft blond down is now and then
acceptable. I know I sound a prig. I'm not. I
am—well, classical, drawn by perfection as to
some magnetic, Platonic pole, idealism and
beauty's true North.
很高兴我深得女人青睐,但谢天谢地,我绝非好色之徒。
尽管已婚女人有意于我时——
这是常事——我会感动,但多责不在我。我从不鼓励这样的一时冲动,还会
尽量让她们
恢复平静,以便保持与她们的夫君一一如果认识的话――的友谊,或者与她们本人的适
度关系。不过,这种事比你想像的要少,因为每次我到已婚明友的府上做客,都刻意携
一位靓女同行。
这些女孩各行各业都有:模特啦、舞女啦、新星啦、演员啦、职业网球
手啦、歌手啦、富家女啦什么的,
还有自由世界许多国家外交官的女儿们,真的是形形
色色。我的玩伴往往都像一个模子铸出来的,几乎都
是个子高挑、肤色健康、身段苗条、
金发碧眼的可爱美人,用我一个喜欢调侃的朋友的说话,她就像歌中
走出来的“来自伊
帕内玛的女孩”。她们都敏感聪慧,擅长玩帆船和澳式自由泳。她们完美无瑕,因为即
使是大腿内侧或锁骨上边的美人痣也让我扫兴。她们还必需呵气如兰,即使在凌晨三点
也要像正
午时分那样清新(我从不约见节食的女人,因为节食会使她的呼吸带酸味儿)。
自然,腋毛令我反感,金
色细软绒毛倒是偶尔可以接受。听起来我有点自命不凡。但我
不是。我是那种,怎么说呢,正统的人,喜
欢尽善尽美,像被某种磁力吸引着,去追求
那种柏拉图式的理想的、纯粹的美妙。
(集体讨论,蒋骁华、孔昊执笔)
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Beyond Life
超越生命[美] 卡贝尔 著
I want my life, the only
life of which I am assured, to have symmetry or,
in default of that, at
least to acquire some
clarity. Surely it is not asking very much to wish
that my personal
conduct be intelligible to
me! Yet it is forbidden to know for what purpose
this universe was
intended, to what end it was
set a-going, or why I am here, or even what I had
preferably do
while here. It vaguely seems to
me that I am expected to perform an allotted task,
but as to
what it is I have no notion. And
indeed, what have I done hitherto, in the years
behind me?
There are some books to show as
increment, as something which was not anywhere
before I
made it, and which even in bulk will
replace my buried body, so that my life will be to
mankind no loss materially. But the course of
my life, when I look back, is as orderless as a
trickle of water that is diverted and guided
by every pebble and crevice and grass-root it
encounters. I seem to have done nothing with
pre-meditation, but rather, to have had things
done to me. And for all the rest of my life,
as I know now, I shall have to shave every morning
in order to be ready for no more than this! 我愿此生,我唯一确知的此生,能和谐地度过;若此愿不遂,至少也该活得有几分清醒。
希望自己之
所作为能被自己了解,这肯定不算要求过分。不过有些奥秘却不容你去了解,
诸如宇宙宏旨之所在,乾坤
归宿在何方,我为何置身于此间,于此间该做何事等。我隐
约觉得此生被指望去履行一项既定使命,但这
是项什么使命,我却一无所知。而且真正
说来,我在过去的岁月里又有过什么作为呢?有那么几本书可显
示为生命之赢余,可显
示为在我创作其之前这世间未曾有过的东西,其体积甚至可置换我入土后的那副躯
壳,
从而使我生命之结束不致给人类造成物质损失。但当回首往昔,我发现自己的生命历程
就像
溪流之蜿蜒漫无定向,触石砄草根则避而改道,遇岩缝土隙则顺而流之。我似乎做
任何事都未经事先考虑
,而是任凭事务来摆布自己。且据我眼下所知,在我的整个余生,
我每日清晨得剃须也仅仅是为了翌日清
晨得剃须。
I have attempted to make the best of my
material circumstances always; nor do I see to-day
how any widely varying course could have been
wiser or even feasible: but material things
have nothing to do with that life which moves
in me. Why, then, should they direct and
heighten and provoke and curb every action of
life? It is against the tyranny of matter I would
rebel—against life's absolute need of food,
and books, and fire, and clothing, and flesh, to
touch and to inhabit, lest life perish. No,
all that which I do here or refrain from doing
lacks
clarity, nor can I detect any symmetry
anywhere, such as living would assuredly display,
I
think, if my progress were directed by any
particular motive. It is all a muddling through,
somehow, without any recognizable goal in
view, and there is no explanation of the scuffle
tendered or anywhere procurable. It merely
seems that to go on living has become with me a
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habit.
我总想善用身边的物质环境,因时至今日我也不知有任何迥异之
做法会更为明智可行。
然身外之物与涌动于我心中的那种生命毕竟无关。既如此,为何人之一举一动又常
为身
外之物所引所趋,所扬所抑?我所厌恶的正是这种物质之主宰——这种为了生命苟存于
世而
对食物、书本、炉火、衣衫等身外之物以及灵魂借以寓居之肉体的纯粹需求。的确,
我在世界之全部所为
或忍而不为之事都不甚明了,无论何处我都看不到丝毫和谐,而我
认为,我的人生历程若有任何特定目标
之指引,定会显现出那种明澈和谐。但不知何故,
我眼前无可辨之目标,一直在浑然度日,而且对这种蹉
跎或茫然也无从解说。活下去似
乎已成了我的一种习惯,仅此而已。
And I want
beauty in my life. I have seen beauty in a sunset
and in the spring woods and in
the eyes of
divers women, but now these happy accidents of
light and color no longer thrill
me. And I
want beauty in my life itself, rather than in such
chances as befall it. It seems to me
that many
actions of my life were beautiful, very long ago,
when I was young in an evanished
world of
friendly girls, who were all more lovely than any
girl is nowadays. For women now
are merely
more or less good-looking, and as I know, their
looks when at their best have been
painstakingly enhanced and edited. But I would
like this life which moves and yearns in me,
to be able itself to attain to comeliness,
though but in transitory performance. The life of
a
butterfly, for example, is just a graceful
gesture: and yet, in that its loveliness is
complete and
perfectly rounded in itself, I
envy this bright flicker through existence. And
the nearest I can
come to my ideal is
punctiliously to pay my bills, be polite to my
wife, and contribute to
deserving charities:
and the program does not seem, somehow, quite
adequate. There are my
books, I know; and
there is beauty
and in the books of other
persons, too, which I may read at will: but this
desire inborn in me is
not to be satiated by
making marks upon paper, nor by deciphering them.
In short, I am
enamored of that flawless
beauty of which all poets have perturbedly divined
the existence
somewhere, and which life as men
know it simply does not afford nor anywhere
foresee.
我希望生活中有美。我曾在落日余晖、春日树林和女人的眼中看见过美,可如今与这
些
光彩邂逅已不再令我激动。我期盼的是生命本身之美,而非偶然降临的美的瞬间。我觉
得很久
以前我生活行为中也充溢着美,那时我尚年轻,置身于一群远比当今姑娘更为友
善可爱的姑娘之中,置身
于一个如今已消失的世界。时下女人不过是多少显得有几分姿
色, 而据我所知,她们最靓丽的容颜都经
过煞费苦心的设色缚彩。但我希望这在我心
中涌动并期盼的生命能绽放出自身之美,纵然其美丽会转瞬即
逝。比如蝴蝶的一生不过
翩然一瞬,但在这翩然一瞬间,其美丽得以完善,其生命得以完美。我羡慕一生
中有这
种美丽闪烁。可我最接近我理想生活的行为只是付账单一丝不苟,对妻子相敬如宾,捐
善
款恰宜至当,而这些无论如何也远远不够。当然,还有我那些书,在我自己撰写以及
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我可随意翻阅
的他人所撰写的书中,都有美“封藏”于万千书页之间。但我与生俱来的
这种欲望并不满足于在纸上写美
或从书中读美。简而言之,我所迷恋的那种无暇之美,
那种天下诗人在忐忑中发现存在于某处的美,那种
世人所知的凡尘生活无法赐予也无法
预见的美。
And tenderness,
too—but does that appear a mawkish thing to
desiderate in life? Well, to my
finding human
beings do not like one another. Indeed, why should
they, being rational
creatures? All babies
have a temporary lien on tenderness, of course:
and therefrom children
too receive a dwindling
income, although on looking back, you will
recollect that your
childhood was upon the
whole a lonesome and much put-upon period. But all
grown persons
ineffably distrust one another.
In courtship, I grant you, there is a passing
aberration which
often mimics tenderness,
sometimes as the result of honest delusion, but
more frequently as
an ambuscade in the endless
struggle between man and woman. Married people are
not ever
tender with each other, you will
notice: if they are mutually civil it is much: and
physical
contacts apart, their relation is
that of a very moderate intimacy. My own wife, at
all events, I
find an unfailing mystery, a
Sphinx whose secrets I assume to be not worth
knowing: and, as I
am mildly thankful to
narrate, she knows very little about me, and
evinces as to my affairs no
morbid interest.
That is not to assert that if I were ill she would
not nurse me through any
imaginable contagion,
nor that if she were drowning I would not plunge
in after her, whatever
my delinquencies at
swimming: what I mean is that, pending such high
crises, we tolerate
each other amicably, and
never think of doing more. And from our blood-kin
we grow apart
inevitably. Their lives and
their interests are no longer the same as ours,
and when we meet it
is with conscious
reservations and much manufactured talk. Besides,
they know things about
us which we resent. And
with the rest of my fellows, I find that
convention orders all our
dealings, even with
children, and we do and say what seems more or
less expected. And I
know that we distrust one
another all the while, and instinctively conceal
or misrepresent our
actual thoughts and
emotions when there is no very apparent need.
Personally, I do not like
human beings because
I am not aware, upon the whole, of any generally
distributed qualities
which entitle them as a
race to admiration and affection. But toward
people in books—such as
Mrs. Millamant, and
Helen of Troy, and Bella Wilfer, and Mélusine, and
Beatrix Esmond—I
may intelligently overflow
with tenderness and caressing words, in part
because they deserve
it, and in part because I
know they will not suspect me of being “queer” or
of having ulterior
motives.
我也渴望柔情——但对生活如此
奢求难道不是自作多情?我发现世人彼此间从不相互
喜欢。的确,作为理性动物,他们为何要相互喜欢呢
?婴儿当然都有权得到短期柔情贷
款,而且在童年时期还会有逐日递减的柔情进账,然而你回忆往事时就
会发现,童年大
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体上是一段孤独寂寞且屡屡受骗的时
期。但成人都莫可名状地相互猜疑。我承认,男女
求爱时会有一时间的失常,而这种失常往往装扮成柔情
蜜意,因此有时还让人误以为是
真情,但更多时候会变成男女间无休止争斗的伏笔。你会注意到,已婚男
女通常不会柔
情缱绻,双方能以礼相待就不错了,除两性身体接触外,夫妻关系往往都不愠不火。以我妻子为例,我横竖都觉得她就像斯芬克司,一个永远也猜不透的谜,而我想也没必要
去探究她那些
秘密。并且就像我并无欣慰地述说的一样,她对我同样知之甚少,对我的
私事也没有表现出任何病态的兴
趣。但这并非说一旦我罹病,她会因惧怕传染而置我于
不顾,也并非说万一她溺水,我会因不善游泳而不
下水施救。我的意思是说,除非到紧
要关头,我俩会彼此容忍,和睦相处,但绝不会想到更进一步。我们
与亲属的关系也势
必日渐疏远。因各自生活已不同,彼此情趣已相异,故见面时存心话说三分且多说套话
。
再说他们还知晓我们不想被别人抖露的底细。至于其他熟人,甚至包括未成年人,我发
现彼此
间交往全然是蹈常袭故,我们的所言所行似乎都不会超出对方之所料。我知道我
们始终都互不信任,虽然
有时毫不必要,我们仍本能地隐藏或伪装真实的思想感情。就
我个人而言,我不喜欢人类,因为从总体上
看,我不知这个物种有何共同的品质使其值
得被人钦慕。但对书中那些人——例如米拉曼特夫人、特洛伊
的海伦、贝拉·威尔弗、
比阿特丽克丝·埃斯蒙德等——我却能不失理性地满怀柔情,表达一腔爱慕之意
,这一
则是因为她们值得我爱慕,二则是因为我知道她们不会怀疑我“变态”或别有用心。
And I very often wish that I could know the
truth about just any one circumstance connected
with my life. Is the phantasmagoria of sound
and noise and color really passing or is it all an
illusion here in my brain? How do you know
that you are not dreaming me, for instance? In
your conceded dreams, I am sure, you must
invent and see and listen to persons who for the
while seem quite as real to you as I do now.
As I do, you observe, I say! and what thing is it
to
which I so glibly refer as I? If you will
try to form a notion of yourself, of the sort of a
something that you suspect to inhabit and
partially to control your flesh and blood body,
you
will encounter a walking bundle of
superfluities: and when you mentally have put
aside the
extraneous things—your garments and
your members and your body, and your acquired
habits
and your appetites and your inherited
traits and your prejudices, and all other
appurtenances
which considered separately you
recognize to be no integral part of you,—there
seems to
remain in those pearl-colored brain-
cells, wherein is your ultimate lair, very little
save a
faculty for receiving sensations, of
which you know the larger portion to be illusory.
And
surely, to be just a very gullible
consciousness provisionally existing among
inexplicable
mysteries, is not an enviable
plight. And yet this life—to which I cling
tenaciously—comes to
no more. Meanwhile I hear
men talk about
upon their knowledge of it: but
I align myself with
that recorded time has
left unanswered.
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我还常常祈愿,愿我能了解关于我生
活的哪怕任何一点真相。这变化的声色光彩是在真
正掠过,还是我脑海中的一种幻觉?譬如你何以知晓此
刻我不是你梦中之幻象?毫无疑
问,你在你坦言的梦中肯定遇见过人,且眼观其行,耳闻其声,当时他们
于你肯定就像
现时之我一样真实。注意,我说像现时之我一样真实!那么,我这口口声声称之谓的“我”
又当是何物?若你设法去感知你自己为何物,那种你觉得寓于你体内并肆意支配你肉体
的东西又
为何物,那将有一大堆活生生的多余物与你不期而遇——诸如你的衣衫裙袍、
手足躯干、习性胃口、禀性
偏见以及其他所有附属物,那些你逐一视之便会承认其并非
你不可或缺的多余之物——而若是你从心中将
这些多余物抹去,那在你珍珠色的脑细胞
了,在你最终的寓所之中,几乎就只剩下一种感知能力,可你知
道,这种感知多半都是
幻觉。而毋庸置疑,仅仅作为一种极易受骗的知觉,暂居于神秘莫测的迷幻之中,
这并
非一种令人羡慕的境况。然而这种生命——这种我死死黏附的生命——也不过如此这
般。但
与此同时我却听世人在谈论“真理”,他们甚至花大价钱为其所知的真理担保;
可我愿与“爱逗趣的彼拉
多”为伍,重复那几个几乎没法回答且上千年来无人回答的疑
问。
Then, last
of all, I desiderate urbanity. I believe this is
the rarest quality in the world. Indeed,
it
probably does not exist anywhere. A really urbane
person—a mortal open-minded and
affable to
conviction of his own shortcomings and errors, and
unguided in anything by
irrational blind
prejudices—could not but in a world of men and
women be regarded as a
monster. We are all of
us, as if by instinct, intolerant of that which is
unfamiliar: we resent its
impudence: and very
much the same principle which prompts small boys
to jeer at a straw-hat
out of season induces
their elders to send missionaries to the heathen…
最后我还企求高雅。我认为高雅乃世间最珍贵的品质。其实然,高雅或许并不存在于现
实之中。
真正的高雅之士虚怀若谷,闻过则喜,不会被非理性的盲目偏见所左右,而在
这个被庸男俗女充斥的世界
,这等高雅之士只能被视为怪物。仿佛是出于天性,我们所
有人都容不得稀罕之事,都恨其不守规矩;而
正是依照与此极其相似的准则,小男孩嘲
讽不合时令的草帽,他们的父辈则给异教徒派出传教士„„(集
体讨论,曹明伦 执笔)
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Envy by Samuel
Johnson
论嫉妒 [英]塞缪尔·约翰逊 著
Envy is almost
the only vice which is practicable at all times,
and in every place — the only
passion which
can never lie quiet for want of irritation; its
effects therefore are everywhere
discoverable,
and its attempts always to be dreaded.
嫉妒几乎是唯
一一种随时都能大行其道的恶习,唯一一种不会因缺乏刺激而平息的强
烈感情,因此其影响随处可见,其
攻击性也总是令人生畏。
It is impossible to mention a name
which any advantageous distinction has made
eminent, but
some latent animosity will burst
out. The wealthy trader, however he may abstract
himself
from public affairs, will never want
those who hint, with Shylock, that ships are but
boards.
The beauty, adorned only with the
unambitious graces of innocence and modesty,
provokes,
whenever she appears, a thousand
murmurs of detraction. The genius, even when he
endeavours only to entertain or instruct, yet
suffers persecution from innumerable critics,
whose acrimony is excited merely by the pain
of seeing others pleased, and of hearing
applauses which another enjoys.
一提到某位因其所长而
才出众的名流,就会有人发出隐伏于心的妒意。富商不管怎样超
脱于公共事务,也不乏有人像夏洛克那样
,说商船不过是一堆木板,暗示其财富由风浪
摆布者不足以谓之富人。(1)美女纵然仅以端庄素雅为装
饰,其出现也会引起众人私下
里的猜忌和诽谤。至于天才人物,即使他们只想展示令人愉悦的自然万象,
或只想说明
无可争辩的科学原理,也难免会招致众多批评者的诋毁,而批评者之尖刻仅仅是因为见
不得别人欣然陶然,听不到别人所享受的掌声。
The frequency of envy
makes it so familiar that it escapes our notice;
nor do we often reflect
upon its turpitude or
malignity, till we happen to feel its influence.
When he that has given no
provocation to
malice, but by attempting to excel, finds himself
pursued by multitudes whom
he never saw, with
all the implacability of personal resentment; when
he perceives clamour
and malice let loose upon
him as a public enemy, and incited by every
stratagem of
defamation; when he hears the
misfortunes of his family, or the follies of his
youth, exposed
to the world; and every failure
of conduct, or defect of nature, aggravated and
ridiculed; he
then learns to abhor those
artifices at which he only laughed before, and
discovers how much
the happiness of life would
be advanced by the eradication of envy from the
human heart.
嫉妒之频频出现使我们队其熟视无睹,使我们很少想到其卑鄙险恶,除非自
己碰巧也遭
人妒忌。倘若遭妒忌者从不招惹怨恨,而只想凭真才实学超凡出众,那当他发现自己被
一群他觉得与之并无不可化解之个人恩怨的民众纠缠之时,当他发现自己被种种诽谤伎
俩煽动起来的铺
天盖地的恶意丑化成社会公敌之时,当他得知自己家庭之不幸和少时的
愚行而被公诸于众,自己所有的不
端行为和性格缺陷都被夸大和嘲笑之时,他便能学会
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憎恶那些他此前只是一笑置之的伎俩
,并发现若能从世人心中根除嫉妒,人们会怎样更
多地感受生活之幸福。
Envy is,
indeed, a stubborn weed of the mind, and seldom
yields to the culture of philosophy.
There
are, however, considerations which, if carefully
implanted and diligently propagated,
might in
time overpower and repress it, since no one can
nurse it for the sake of pleasure, as
its
effects are only shame, anguish, and perturbation.
It is above all other vices inconsistent
with
the character of a social being, because it
sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak
temptations. He that plunders a wealthy
neighbour gains as much as he takes away, and may
improve his own condition in the same
proportion as he impairs another's; but he that
blasts a
flourishing reputation, must be
content with a small dividend of additional fame,
so small as
can afford very little consolation
to balance the guilt by which it is obtained.
嫉妒实乃人们心中难以根除的野草,它极少接受理性之教化。不过,只要循循善诱且坚
持不懈,迟早会有
理性之思将其制服,毕竟没人会为了取乐而心怀嫉妒,因嫉妒之后果
只有羞耻、苦闷和不安。较之其他所
有恶习,嫉妒与人的社会属性最为相悖,因为它会
蝇头小利而牺牲真诚和善良。一个人若是抢劫其富有的
邻居,他所得之物即他所劫之物,
其境况之改善与其邻居境况之恶化恰成正比;但一个人若是毁损他人的
盛名,他只能满
足于得到的那盛名分给他的一点点红利,而与他行恶而产生的负疚感相比,其获利之少<
br>几乎不可能给他带来慰藉。
(1)参见莎士比亚《威尼斯商人》第1幕第3场开始时夏洛克对巴
萨尼奥说的那番话。
集体讨论,曹明伦执笔)
四川外语学院第七届“语言桥杯”翻译大赛获奖译文选登
These aspects of
her personality I came to know gradually over the
coming months. What
struck me first were the
outward things, her animation and expressiveness.
I couldn't tell
whether this was something she
was born with, or whether the projection of
emotion which
she had learned as an actress
had become second nature. When indignant, her eyes
would
flash fire, when happy she would laugh
unrestrainedly like a child. I quickly changed my
preconceived notions about the
在接下来的几个月里,
我逐渐了解了她的这些个性特点。首先给我留下深刻印象的,是
她种种外在的表现:活泼开朗,能言善谈
。我不知道这是她的天性使然,还是因为当过
演员,表情达意早已成为她的第二天性。她气愤时,两只眸
子会冒出怒火;高兴时,却
又像个孩子似的开怀大笑。我原先以为东方人都是“神秘难测”的,认识她之
后,很快
便改变了这个先入之见。
... She had not remarried
because she had not found anyone for whom she
could care enough
and who would respect her
independence.
„„因为找不到一个既让她喜欢、又尊重她的独立性的男人,她一直没有
再婚。至少,
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在我出现在她的面前之前是这样。我俩初次相识就立即被对方的外貌所吸引。
Not, at least, till I came along. Our physical
attraction was immediate and mutual. But more
than that, we shared an identity of interests
and found pleasure in each other's company...
不过,除此之外,我们还有着共同的兴趣爱好,觉得走在一起很开心。„„
We sat
in tea gardens amid flowering shrubs and fanciful
pavilions and sipped green
Well
many shops
of marvelous handicrafts connected by a zigzag
bridge around a lotus pond.
我们坐在绿树红花和亭台楼阁掩映下的茶
园里,一边抿着碧绿的龙井茶,一边嗑着西瓜
子儿。我们在城隍庙徜徉,那里有很多出售精美的手工艺品
的店铺;一座绕着荷塘迂回
而行的九曲桥,把商铺连在一起。
And we met in
her flat with a few other Chinese friends and
talked in low voices, with the
radios turned
on loud against possible eavesdroppers, about who
had just been arrested, or
what bookstores had
been raided, or whether more revolutionaries had
been executed, and
what the news from the
Liberated Areas was. Sometimes we could pick up
Yen’an on my
short-wave set.
我们时常在她的公寓房间里和
几个中国朋友聚会。为防窃听,我们只得低声交谈,同时
把收音机开得很响。我们谈论谁刚刚被捕了,哪
几家书店被查抄了,是不是又有革命分
子被处死,以及来自解放区的消息。有时我的那台短波收音机可以
收听到延安电台的广
播。
She had no doubt about our
compatibleness, and if our future was unsure, so
was the future of
everyone in China. Nor did
my
to my appearance, and recovered from the
initial shock of seeing me in a raglan sleeve
topcoat
on finding, when I took it off, that I
had shoulders after all. In fact she had become
bemused
to such an extent that she thought I
was quite nice-looking. No one stared when we
appeared
in public together, nor did I, for
some reason, attract the crowds which often
trailed other
foreigners, awestruck by their
outlandish garb and, by Chinese standards, huge
noses. Her
family offered no objections
whatever.
她深信我俩意气相投。我们两个人也许前路渺茫,但是在中国何尝不是人人如此。
我的
“洋人相”似乎也不成问题。起初看到我穿着套袖的轻便大衣,她颇为惊愕,及至我脱
掉大
衣,她发现原来我也长着两只肩膀,这才回过神来。如今,她早已习惯我的这副洋
人相了。事实上,她简
直不知如何看待我的长相,竟至于觉得我长得挺好看的。我俩一
起在公共场所露面时,没有人盯着我们看
;不知何故,我也没有吸引人群围观。洋人一
身奇装异服,还有按中国人的标准显得特别高的鼻子,都使
中国人感到惊异,因此他们
常常喜欢尾随洋人。她的家人一点儿也不反对我俩交往。
Absence of racial or religious prejudice is
traditional in China. For two thousand years
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foreigners had been encouraged to
settle in the Middle Kingdom and practice their
religions
and retain their customs. There was
some talk among the rustics that all foreigners
had red
hair and blue eyes and walked without
bending their knees. But those who had actually
seen
them knew better. None of her compatriots
was shocked, though some perhaps wondered why
she chose a foreigner when there was so many
Chinese around.
传统上,种族歧视或宗教偏见在中国是不存在的。两千年来,“中央
王国”一直柔怀远
人,鼓励外国人在这片土地上定居、信教,并且保留他们的风俗习惯。乡下人中间有传
言说洋人全都赤发碧眼,而且直着腿走路。但是,亲眼见过外国人的那些人知道,事实
并非如此
。看到我这个“异类”和她在一起,她的同胞无人感到震惊,尽管有些人也许
会想:她的身边有那么多中
国人,为什么偏偏选中一个老外? (香港大学中文学院 汪
宝荣)
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中译英部分
在义与利之外
Beyond Righteousness and Interests
“君子喻以义,小人喻以利”。中国人的人生哲学总是围绕着义利二字打转。可是,假
如我既不
是君子,也不是小人呢?
“Men of virtue are concerned
whether they behave righteously while virtueless
men are
concerned about their personal
interests.” The Chinese philosophy of life can
hardly go
beyond the continuous debate over
righteousness and interests. But what am I
concerned
about if I am neither a man of
virtue nor one without it?
曾经有过一个人皆君子言必称义的时代
,当时或许有过大义灭利的真君子,但更常见的
是借义逐利的伪君子和假义真信的迂君子。那个时代过去
了。曾几何时,世风剧变,义
的信誉一落千丈,真君子销声匿迹,伪君子真相毕露,迂君子豁然开窍,都
一窝蜂奔利
而去。据说观念更新,义利之辨有了新解,原来利并非小人的专利,倒是做人的天经地
义。
There was once an alleged age of
righteousness, in which all men were of virtue.
Maybe, few
of them were really men of virtue,
who vindicated righteousness by sacrificing their
own
interests. However, most of them were
either pharisees, who pursued their personal
interests
in the name of righteousness, or
pedants, who believed in fake morality. Such an
era had
already elapsed. There was once a
period of time when the ethos deteriorated
overnight and
people’s belief in righteousness
greatly declined. Consequently, men of virtue
vanished,
pharisees revealed their impudent
faces and pedants suddenly disenchanted. All
people rushed
for their own interests. It was
said that people had renovated their values and
they had
endowed their conceptions of
righteousness and interests with new contents. For
them, the
pursuit of personal interests is not
a patent right of men without virtue but the
primary
principle followed by all human
beings.
“时间就是金钱!”——这是当今一句时髦口号。企业家以之鞭策生产,本无可非议。
但世人把它奉为指导人生的座右铭,用商业精神取代人生智慧,结果就使自己的人生成
了一种企
业,使人际关系成了一个市场。
我曾经嘲笑廉价的人情味,如今,连人情味也变得昂贵而罕见了。试问
,不花钱你可能
买到一个微笑,一句问候,一丁点儿恻隐之心?
Nowadays
“Time is money” is a popular slogan. It is
reasonable for entrepreneurs to adopt it
in
their production management. However, if we
substitute commercial spirit for life wisdom,
taking this slogan as a motto to guide our
life, we tend to regard our life as business and
our
relationship, market.
不过,无须怀旧。想靠形形色色的义
的说教来匡正时弊,拯救世风人心,事实上无济于
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事。在义利之外,还有别样的人生态
度。在君子小人之外,还有别样的人格。套孔子的
句式,不妨说:“至人喻以情。”
I
once derided the human kindness for its cheapness.
But at present it has become costly and
infrequent. Can you buy a smile, a greeting or
a particle of sympathy without money?
However,
there is no need to reminisce. In fact, various
preaches of righteousness are helpless
to the
rectification of current social malpractices and
the salvation of present public morals.
Beyond
righteousness and interests, there are other life
values. Apart from men of virtue and
virtueless men, there are men with other
personality. A remark by Confucius might be quoted
here, which says: “A perfect man apprehends
affection.”
义和利,貌似相反,实则相通。“义”要求人献身抽象的社会实体,“利
”驱使人投身世
俗的物质利益,两者都无视人的心灵生活,遮蔽了人的真正的“自我”。“义”教人奉献
,
“利”诱人占有,前者把人生变成一次义务的履行,后者把人生变成一场权利的争夺,
殊不知
人生的真价值是超乎义务和权利外的。义和利都脱不开计较,所以,无论义师讨
伐叛臣,还是利欲支配众
生,人与人之间的关系总是紧张。
Righteousness and interests
seem opposite on the surface but in nature they
have something in
common. “Righteousness”
requests people to devote themselves to the
abstract social
noumenon while “interests”
impels them to pursue the mundane loaves and
fishes. Both of
them ignore people’s spiritual
life and as a result, they shade their real
“selves”.
“Righteousness” instructs people to
dedicate themselves to the society and turns their
life into
the performance of an obligation
while “interests” tempts people to appropriate
material
profits and makes their life become a
scramble for rights and profits. Nevertheless, the
real
value of life lies beyond righteousness
and interests. As both righteousness and interests
can
hardly escape from calculation and
consideration, the interpersonal relations are
always
strained no matter when a justice army
suppresses a rebellion or when all flesh are
dominated
by an appetite for personal
interests.
如果说“义”代表一种伦理的人生态度,“利”代表一种功利的人生态度,那
么,我所
说的“情”便代表一种审美的人生态度。它主张率性而行,适情而止,每个人都保持自
己的真性情。你不是你所信奉的教义,也不是你所占有的物品,你之为你仅在于你的真
实“自我”。生命
的意义不在奉献或占有,而在创造,创造就是人的真性情的积极展开,
是人在实现其本质力量时所获得的
情感上的满足。创造不同于奉献,奉献只是完成外在
的责任,创造却是实现真实的“自我”。至于创造和
占有,其差别更是一目了然,譬如
写作,占有注重的是作品所带来的名利地位,创造注重的只是创作本身
的快乐。有真性
情的人,与人相处唯求情感的沟通,与物相触独钟情趣的品味。更为可贵的是,在世人<
br>匆忙逐利又为利所逐的时代,他接人待物有一种闲适之情。我不是指中国士大夫式的闲
情逸致,也
不是指小农式的知足保守,而是指一种不为利驱、不为物役的淡泊的生活情
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怀。仍以写作为例,
我想不通,一个人何必要著作等身呢?倘想流芳千古,一首不朽的
小诗足矣。倘无此奢求,则只要活得自
在即可,写作也不过是这活得自在的一种方式罢
了。
If “righteousness”
represents an ethical value of life and
“interests”, a utilitarian attitude
towards
life, the “affection” that I have mentioned
represents aesthetic attitude towards life. It
claims that we should behave frankly and
properly and all of us should maintain our real
temperament. You are neither the teachings
that you believe in nor the resources that you are
possessed of, but your true “self”, which is
the very reason why you are yourself. The value of
life does not consist in dedication or
possession, but creation. Creation is the
outspread of
one’s true temperament and the
affectional satisfaction that one obtains when
achieving
hisher essential potence. Creation
differs from dedication in that the former is the
realization
of the true “self” but the later,
only the fulfillment of the exterior
responsibilities. As for
creation and
possession, the difference between them is
distinct at a glance. For instance, in
writing
possession means the concern for the fame and the
status brought by works but
creation means the
concern for the happiness of writing itself. A
person with true
temperament only seeks for
emotional communication when getting alone with
others while
he is only in deep love with the
taste of sentiment when in contact with things.
More
importantly, he is always in a tranquil
mood in such an era when others scramble for
personal
interests and are driven by material
benefits. It is neither the leisurely and carefree
mood of
the Chinese scholar-bureaucrats nor
the content and conservative mood of the petty
farmers,
but a quiet mood free from hollow
fames and material interests. Still take writing
as an
instance. I can hardly figure out why
one must produce as many famous works as he can.
An
enduring poem is enough to make one
renowned forever. Without such an extravagant
hope,
one only needs to live to his content.
Writing is just one means to such an end.
肖伯纳
说:“人生有两大悲剧,一是没有得到你心爱的东西,另一是得到了你心爱的东
西。”我曾经深以为然,
并且佩服他把人生的可悲境遇,表述得如此轻松俏皮。但仔细
玩味,发现这话的立足点仍是占有,所以才
会有占有欲未得满足的痛苦和已得满足的无
聊这双重悲剧。如果把立足点移到创造上,以审美的眼光看人
生,我们岂不可以反其意
而说:人生有两大快乐,一是没有得到你心爱的东西,于是你可以去寻求和创造
;另一
是得到了你心爱的东西,于是你可以去品味和体验?当然,人生总有其不可消除的痛苦,
而重情轻利的人所体味到的辛酸悲哀,更为逐利之辈所梦想不到。但是,摆脱了占有欲,
至少可以使人免
除许多琐屑的烦恼和渺小的痛苦,活得有器度些。我无意以审美之情为
救世良策,而只是表达了一个信念
:在义与利之外,还有一种更值得一过的人生。这个
信念将支撑我度过未来吉凶难卜的岁月。
George Bernard Shaw once said: “There are two
tragedies in our life. One is that you have not
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obtained what you love while the other
is that you have obtained what you love.” I took
his
remark for granted and admired him for his
easy and witty expression of the lamentable plight
in life. But when carefully relishing it, I
discover that the stand of this remark is still
possession, which is the very reason why there
are two tragedies: the affliction of not
satisfying one’s appetite for possession and
the vacuity of satisfaction. If we regard creation
as our stand and have an aesthetic vision for
life, can’t we say that there are two enjoyments:
one is that you have not attained what you
love and you can continue your pursuit and
creation while the other is that you have
attained what you love and you can commence your
appreciation and experience? Certainly, there
are always some agonies in our life and the
sufferings experienced by those who value
affection but despise profits are out of the
consideration of those who pursue interests.
However, if we can get rid of the appetite for
possession, we, at least, can avoid a great
deal of inconsiderable vexations and trivial
afflictions and live a life of more tolerance.
Rather than intending to suggest the aesthetic
affection as an excellent tactics of
salvation, I merely express such a belief that
there is a life
more worthy of living beyond
righteousness and interests. This faith will
support me through
the precarious and
unpredictable future.
读书苦乐 杨绛
The
Bitter-Sweetness of Reading Yang Jiang
读书钻研学问,
当然得下苦功夫。为应考试、为写论文、为求学位,大概都得苦读。陶
渊明好读书。如果他生于当今之世
,要去考大学,或考研究院,或考什么“托福儿”,
难免会有些困难吧?我只愁他政治经济学不能及格呢
,这还不是因为他“不求甚解”。
Reading and studying regularly
calls for a painstaking effort, whether it is
meant for passing
an exam, writing a thesis or
pursuing an academic degree. T'ao Yuanming, a
famous scholar in
Jin Dynasty, who doted on
reading, might probably feel baffled if he were
living today and
had to take exams for getting
into universities or graduate programs or to score
well in such
tests as the TOEFL. I'm afraid he
might fail the exam in Political Economics, as the
result of
his motto
我曾挨过几下“棍子”,说我读书“追求精神享受
”。我当时只好低头认罪。我也承认自
己确实不是苦读。不过“乐在其中”并不等于追求享受。这话可为
知者言,不足为外人
道也。
I was for a couple of times,
being reprimanded for reading seek spiritual
indulgence.
as well that I've never made
any painstaking effort in reality. Nevertheless,
doesn't mean seeking indulgence, whose truth
can only be shared with like-minded people,
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but goes beyond those without similar
experiences
我觉得读书好比串门儿——“隐身”的串门儿。要参见钦佩的老师或拜谒有名
的学者,
不必事前打招呼求见,也不怕搅扰主人。翻开书面就闯进大门,翻过几页就升堂入室;
而且可以经常去,时刻去,如果不得要领,还可以不辞而别,或者另找高明,和他对质。
不问我们要拜见
的主人住在国内国外,不问他属于现代古代,不问他什么专业,不问他
讲正经大道理或聊天说笑,都可以
挨近前去听个足够。我们可以恭恭敬敬旁听孔门弟子
追述夫子遗言,也不妨淘气地笑问“言必称‘亦曰仁
义而已矣’的孟夫子”,他如果生
在我们同一个时代,会不会是一位马列主义老先生呀?我们可以在苏格
拉底临刑前守在
他身边,听他和一位朋友谈话;也可以对斯多葛派伊匹克悌忒斯的《金玉良言》思考怀<
br>疑。我们可以倾听前朝列代的遗闻逸事,也可以领教当代最奥妙的创新理论或有意惊人
的故作高论
。反正话不投机或言不入耳,不妨抽身退场,甚至砰一下推上大门——就是
说,拍地合上书面——谁也不
会嗔怪。这是书以外的世界里难得的自由!
I would compare reading
to visiting friends — in the spiritual rather than
physical sense.
Visiting a well-respected
teacher or paying homage to a renowned scholar
doesn't necessarily
require appointment in
advance and we won't feel as if we were disturbing
him. Opening the
book is like getting into the
door uninvited; and turning a few pages, we may
find ourselves in
his study. Besides, we can
go visit him as frequently as we want and at any
time we wish. If
we fail to get the pith of
his argument, we can just leave without saying
someone else for help, and come back to
challenge him. We can get close to the host and
listen to every word he has to say, no matter
where he resides, at home or abroad, what a
person he was or is, a contemporary or a man
of the past, whatever field he specializes in, or
whether he is talking about a serious subject
of importance or simply chatting plus cracking
jokes. We can sit in, in due reverence, and
listen as Confucius' disciples recount their
master's
legacy of teachings, or playfully ask
Mencius, who likes to prattle about nothing but
kindness
and justice, whether or not he would
become a pious Marxist preacher, should he live in
our
time. We can stay by the side of Socrates
at his execution and listen to him talking to his
friend, or harbor doubt as we ponder the truth
of Discourse by Epictetus, a Stoic Philosopher.
We can indulge ourselves in the anecdotes and
amazing tales of the past, and appreciate the
profound nouveau theories of our own age or
hear sensational arguments meant to shock the
world. In a nutshell, we can bang the door
shut —closing the book that is —the minute we
find anything disagreeable or distasteful, and
leave forthwith. No one will blame us. This is
the kind of freedom we can hardly expect other
than from the books.
壶公悬挂的一把壶里,别有天地日月。每一本书——不论
小说、戏剧、传记、游记、日
记,以至散文诗词,都别有天地,别有日月星辰,而且还有生存其间的人物
。我们很不
必巴巴地赶赴某地,花钱买门票去看些仿造的赝品或“栩栩如生”的替身,只要翻开一
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页书,走人真境,遇见真人,就可以亲亲切切地观赏一番。
For Hu Gong
(or Master Gourd), a master herbalist in ancient
China, a magical gourd of his
contains the
entire world. Likewise, every book, be it a novel,
a play, a biography, or a book
of traveling
notes, of journals, and of even essays or of
poems, contains a world of its own,
with its
own sun, moon, and stars and its own live
characters between heaven and earth. There
is
really no need trotting all the way to places and
paying admission fees, merely to view
imitations or vivid
situations and meet
real characters for a close contact.
尽管古人把书说成“
浩如烟海”,书的世界却真正的“天涯若比邻”,这话绝不是唯心的
比拟。世界再大也没有阻隔。佛说“
三千大千世界”,可算大极了。书的境地呢,“现在
界”还加上“过去界”,也带上“未来界”,实在是
包罗万象,贯穿三界。而我们却可以
足不出户,在这里随意阅历,随时拜师求教。谁说读书人目光短浅,
不通人情,不关心
世事呢!这里可得到丰富的经历,可认识各时各地、多种多样的人。经常在书里“串门
儿”,至少也可以脱去几分愚昧,多长几个心眼儿吧?
Despite the
ancient saying about books being like a vast
ocean, the distant world of books
could be
actually deemed as close as a next-door neighbour,
which is not merely an idealistic
metaphorical
assertion. For in the world of books there are no
longer any barriers. The
Buddhist notion of
Buddha- worldis extremely enormous. But what about
the
extremities of the world of books? It
consists of present realmpast realmand
borders we can go back and forth with
great ease. We can read and experience all we care
to
read and experience, and learn from masters
any time we want, without venturing outdoors at
all. Who says that book-lovers are near-
sighted, inflexible and indifferent to worldly
affairs!
In the world of books, we can enrich
our experience and get to know all kinds of people
from
different times and places. Those who
visit the world of books frequently can at least
rid
themselves of some ignorance and gain a
certain degree of wisdom.
可惜我们“串门”时“隐”而犹存“身”,毕
竟只是凡胎俗骨。我们没有如来佛的慧眼,
把人世间几千年积累的智慧一览无余,只好时刻记住庄子“生
也有涯而知也无涯”的名
言。我们只是朝生暮死的虫豸(还不是孙大圣毫毛变成的虫儿),钻入书中世界
,这边
爬爬,那边停停,有时遇到心仪的人,听到惬意的话,或者心上悬挂的问题偶有所得,
就
好比开了心窍,乐以忘言。这“乐”和“追求享受”该不是一回事吧?
It is a pity
that our physical body, invisible as we visit the
world of books, is after all confined
to this
mundane world. Without the insight of Buddha, who
takes in all the human wisdom
accumulated over
thousands of years at one glance, we have to
comfort ourselves by what
Zhuang Zi has said:
We are but
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insects with a
fleeting lifetime (not even the insects the Monkey
King turned into with his
hairs), crawling our
way into the world of books, pausing hither and
thither, becoming
speechless with exultation
when we accidentally bump into a much-admired
person or hear a
few soothing words or
occasionally find an answer to a pending question.
I wonder if this
sense of (集体讨论 史志康 执笔)
想起清华种种 王佐良
Reminiscences of
Tsinghua Wang Zuoliang
我只是清华几万校友中的一个,现已不在清华工作
,然而一说起这所学校,至今仍像年
轻时候一样兴奋,话也像说不完似的。
I
am just one of the thousands of alumni of Tsinghua
University, and although I am no longer
working there, every time Tsinghua is
mentioned, I would get as excited as when I was
young,
and can't seem to stop talking about
it.
清华吸引人的究竟是什么?它有很好的校园,设备,但这些别校也有;它的历史也不很
长,世界大学中,成立已几百年的有的是;想来想去,还是由于清华的人,或者说清华
人和中国历史的
特殊关联。
What is it that makes Tsinghua so
attractive? Its beautiful campus? Its advanced
facilities? But
all these are not lacking in
other universities. Or its long history? But a
good many
universities in the world even boast
histories of several hundred years. Having thought
it over
and over again, I come to the
conclusion that it is the people of Tsinghua, or
rather, the special
relationship between its
people and Chinese history, that makes it so
attractive.
说起清华人,我怀念我的老师们。大学一年级,俞平伯、余冠英两先生教我国
文,一位
教读本,一位教作文,都亲切而严格,有一次余先生指出我把爬山虎写成紫荆的错误,
但又要我多写几篇给他看。二年级,贺麟老师教我西洋哲学史,见了我长达百页的英文
读书报告不仅不皱
眉,反而在班上表扬我;正是在他的指导之下,我读了不少古希腊哲
学家著作的英译,真有发现新星球似
的喜悦。温德老师在工字厅讲意大利文艺复兴时期
艺术,打开许多画册让我们传阅,幽默地然而严格地区
分画的优劣。同样难忘的事还多,
那时候日本军队已在华北城市大街上演习,而清华的师生们则在学术上
特别争气,不久
又在政治上发动了公然反日的一二九运动。
Speaking of
the Tsinghua people, I cherish a lot of sweet
memories of my teachers. As a
freshman, I was
taught Chinese language and literature by
Professor Yu Pingbo and Professor
Yu Guanying
in reading and writing respectively. They were
both encouraging and rigorous
with me. Once
Professor Yu Guanying pointed out that I had
mistaken creepers for redbuds
and encouraged
me to write more for practice. As a sophomore, I
was taught History of
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Western
Philosophy by Professor He Lin. He did not frown
at my one-hundred-page long
book report in
English, but rather praised me in class. It was
under his guidance that I read a
great deal of
ancient Greek philosophers in English translation,
the delight from which was
just like that of
discovering a new planet. I was also taught
Italian Renaissance by Professor
Winter in the
Gongzi Courtyard. In his lectures, he passed
around many painting albums, and
humorously
but rigorously offered his critical evaluations. I
have many such unforgettable
experiences. At
the time when the Japanese troops were carrying
out military maneuvers in
the cities of North
China, the teachers and students of Tsinghua were
endeavoring to achieve
excellence in learning,
and soon openly launched the December 9th
Movement, a political
movement against
Japanese invasion.
我们这一级(1935-1939)还有一段特殊经历,即
抗日战争的锻炼。我们两年在清华园
度过,两年在长沙、南岳、蒙自、昆明度过 。有的同学进入解放区
打游击,大多数在
大后方直接或间接地参加战争工作。但是学术上并未放松。昆明西南联大集北大、清华
、
南开三校的精华,师生在最简陋的条件下做出了当时第一流的研究成绩,青年人的成长
分外迅
猛。走遍半个中国给了我们以接触内地实际的宝贵经验,这是在清华园小范围内
埋头读书所无法得到的。
所以这次大转移又是我们知识和感情上的一次大扩充。
Our grade
(1935-1939) also went through a special
experience, an experience of being
tempered in
the Anti-Japanese War. We spent the first two
years on Tsinghua Campus, and the
last two at
Changshang, Nanyue, Mengzi and Kunming. Some of us
fought as guerillas in the
liberated areas,
while most stayed in the vast rear areas, directly
or indirectly participating in
war work.
Nevertheless our academic work never let up. The
Southwest Associated
University in Kunming
assembled the elites from Peking, Tsinghua and
Nankai Universities,
who, under the crudest
conditions, achieved the best academic results of
the time, with the
young maturing very
rapidly. Waling over half of China endowed us with
invaluable
experiences of getting closer
contact with the reality of inland China. These
experiences were
impossible to obtain by
burying ourselves in books within the confines of
Tsinghua Campus.
This great shift therefore
broadened both our knowledge and our sympathies.
然而我们仍然怀念清华园。在昆明读书和教书的八年里,可以说没有一天不想念北方的
故土。中
国历史上,汉族士大夫几度被赶出北方,却没有一次能够回去。正如冯友兰先
生指出的,只有这一次抗日
不同。我们战胜了,1946 年夏我从昆明带着妻儿重新回到
了清华园,虽然校舍残破,校园荒芜,但
有陈岱孙先生领导一批员工在进行大规模的复
校工作,不久就在北方的灿烂秋阳中重新上课,清华人意兴
之豪,达到了一个新的高度。
Nevertheless, we still missed
Tsinghua Campus. During the 8 years of learning
and teaching
in Kunming, there was not a
single day we did not miss the native land in the
north. In the
course of Chinese history, Han
Literati had been driven out of the north several
times, and had
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never been able
to return. As Professor Feng Youlan pointed out,
the Anti-Japanese War was
an exception. This
time we won the war. In the summer of 1946, I,
together with my wife and
children, returned
from Kunming to Tsinghua Campus. Although the
school buildings were
worn out, and the campus
desolate, a large group of staff led by Mr. Chen
Daisun immediately
threw themselves into
reconstruction on a large scale, and before long,
the Tsinghua people
resumed classes under the
splendid autumn sun of the north, their
aspirations and enthusiasm
reaching a new
height.
接着,我出国留学。等我回来,清华园已经解放,开始了一个新的历史时期。
After that, I went abroad to further my study.
When I came back, Tsinghua Campus had
already
been liberated and ushered a new historical era.
后来我转入别的学校工作。但是我心里始终保持着一种清华做学问的标准。
Later
on, I was transferred to another university. But
the Tsinghua academic standard remains
with
me.
这标准并无人明确定出,但是无数师友“行胜于言”的实际榜样却使我悟到:做学问必
须要有最高标准,而取得学问却是为了报效国家。简单说,就是卓越与为公。
Such a
standard has never been explicitly laid down, but
the actual example set by our
innumerable
fellow teachers and students of
me realize
that there must be the highest standard in
scholarship, and that the ultimate purpose
of
gaining knowledge is to serve our country. To put
it simply,
contribution to society.
歌德之人生启示宗白华
What Goethe's Life Reveals by
Zong Baihua
人生是什么?人生的真相如何?人生的意义何在?人生的目的是何?这些人生
最重大
最中心的问题,不只是古来一切大宗教家哲学家所殚精竭虑以求解答的。世界上第一流
的
大诗人凝神冥想,深入灵魂的幽邃,或纵身大化中,于一朵花中窥见天国,一滴露水
参悟生命,然后用他
们生花之笔,幻现层层世界,幕幕人生,归根也不外乎启示这生命
的真相与意义。宗教家对这些问题的方
法与态度是预言的说教的,哲学家是解释的说明
的,诗人文豪是表现的启示的。荷马的长歌启示了希腊艺
术文明幻美的人生与理想,但
丁的神曲启示了中古基督教文化心灵的生活与信仰,莎士比亚的剧本表现了
文艺复兴时
人们的生活矛盾与权力意志。至于近代的,建筑于这三种文明精神之上而同时开展一个
新时代,所谓近代人生,则由伟大的歌德以他的人格,生活,作品表现出它的特殊意义
与内在的问题。
What is life? What are the true nature,
meaning and purpose of life? Since ancient times,
great
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philosophers and scholars of religion
have strained their energy and intellect to the
limit for an
answer to these crucial and
central questions in a person's life. But they are
not alone.
First-rate poets in the world have
done the same by contemplating and pondering over
the
questions—now delving into the depth of
their souls—now communing with Nature. They
envision Paradise through a flower and see the
meaning of life in a dewdrop. Then, with their
gifted pens, they picture a kaleidoscopic
world and act upon act of the drama of life. In
the
end their works serve no other purpose
than revealing the truth and meaning of life.
Faced
with these questions, scholars of
religion adopt the attitude and approach of trying
to
prophesy and exhort; philosophers to
explain and expound; poets and men of letters to
portray
and reveal. Homer's epics enlighten us
about the kind of refined, colorful life and ideal
in
Greek art. Dante's Divina Comedia reveals
people's minds and faith in the Christian culture
of
the Middle Ages. Shakespeare's plays
reflect the contradictions in men's lives and the
power
three civilizations mentioned above
and heralds a new age, it is the great Goethe who,
through
his personal character, life and
works, demonstrates its special meaning and innate
problems.
歌德对人生的启示有几层意义,几种方面。就人类全体讲,他的人格与生活可谓极
尽了
人类的可能性。他同时是诗人,科学家,政治家,思想家,他也是近代泛神论信仰的一
个伟
大的代表。他表现了西方文明自强不息的精神,又同时具有东方乐天知命宁静致远
的智慧。德国哲学家息
默尔(Simmel)说:“歌德的人生所以给我们以无穷兴奋与深沉
的安慰的,就是他只是一个人,他
只是极尽了人性,但却如此伟大,使我们对人类感到
有希望,鼓动我们努力向前做一个人。“我们可以说
歌德是世界一扇明窗,我们由他窥
见了人生生命永恒幽邃奇丽广大的天空!
Goethe
reveals to us different layers and aspects of the
meaning of life. Taking the human
race as a
whole, we may say that Goethe's personality and
life represent the best possible in
man. He is
at once a poet, scientist, statesman, thinker and
an outstanding representative of
pantheistic
faiths of modern times. He is the embodiment of
both the spirit of unremitting
endeavor in
western civilization and the oriental wisdom of
easy contentment and internal
peace with
foresight. Simmel the German philosopher once
said,
give us infinite excitement and deep
solace is that he is but a human being, and he
does
nothing more than bringing out the best
in human nature. Yet he is so great, and his
greatness
makes one see the hope in mankind's
future and serves to encourage everyone of us to
forge
ahead and be a worthy man.
which we
can see the eternal, serene, uniquely beautiful
and boundless skies of life.
再狭小范围,就欧洲文化的观点说,歌
德确是代表文艺复兴以后近代人的心灵生活及其
内在的问题。近代人失去了基督教对一超越上帝虔诚的信
仰。人类精神上获得了解放,
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得到了自由;但也就同时失所依傍,
彷徨摸索,苦闷,追求,欲在生活本身的努力中寻
得人生的意义与价值。歌德是这时代精神伟大的代表,
他的主著《浮士德》是这人生全
部的反映与其问题的解决。歌德与其替身浮士德一生生活的内容就是尽量
体验这近代人
生特殊的精神意义,了解其悲剧而努力以解决其问题,指出解救之道。所以有人称他的浮士德是近代人的圣经。
In a narrower sense, viewed in
the perspective of European culture, Goethe indeed
represents
people of the post-Renaissance
period in terms of their intellectual life and
their inner
problems. In modern times people
have abandoned their strong Christian faith in an
omnipotent God. Their spirit has been
emancipated and they have acquired freedom. Yet,
on
the other hand, they have lost what gave
them strength. They are nervously groping in the
dark; they are spiritually tormented; they
engage in a quest, trying to find the true meaning
and value of life through their mundane
efforts. Goethe is a great representative of our
Zeitgeist. His most important work, Faust, is
a reflection of everything in this kind of life
and
a solution to its problems. All that
Goethe and Dr Faust, his stand-in, do throughout
their lives
is to experience to the fullest
the peculiar spirit and meaning of life in modern
times, try to
understand its tragedy, strive
to solve its problems and show people the way of
deliverance.
This is why his Faust is deemed
the Bible of modern times.
但歌德与但丁莎士比亚不同的地方,就是他
不单是由作品里启示我们人生真相,尤其在
他自己的人格与生活中表现了人生广大精微的义谛。
But Goethe is different from Dante and
Shakespeare, in that he does not merely enlighten
us
about the true meaning of life through his
works. His personal character and behavior does
even more in demonstrating the great and
subtle truth of life.(黄焕猷 译)
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