1. Conversation is the most sociable of all human activities. And it is an activity only of humans. However intricate the way in which animals communicate with each other, they do not indulge in anything that deserves the name of conversation. 人类的一切活动中，闲谈是最具交际性的，也是人类特有的。而动物之间的信息交流，无论其方式何等复杂，也是称不上交际的。 2. The charm of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go as it meanders or leaps and sparkles or just glows. The enemy of good conversation is the person who has ―something to say.‖ Conversation is not for making a point. Argument may often be a part of it, but the purpose of the argument is not to convince. There is no winning in conversation. In fact, the best conversationalists are those who are prepared to lose. Suddenly they see the moment for one of their best anecdotes, but in a flash the conversation has moved on and the opportunity is lost. They are ready to let it go. 闲谈的引人入胜之处就在于它没有一个事先设定好的主题。它时而迂回前进，时而奔腾起伏，时而火花四射，时而热情洋溢，话题最终会扯到什么地方去谁也拿不准。感觉―有话想说‖的人是一个―完美闲谈‖的最大敌人。闲谈不是为了争论，尽管争论常常是闲聊的一部分，不过其目的并不是为了说服对方。闲谈之中是不存在什么输赢胜负的。事实上，真正的闲聊高手往往是随时准备让步的。他们也许会偶然间觉得该把自己最得意的奇闻轶事选出一件插进来讲一讲，但一转眼大家已谈到别处去了，插话的机会随之丧失，它们也就听之任之了。
3. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing in English pubs that I think bar conversation has a charm of its own. Bar friends are not deeply involved in each other‘s lives. They are companions, not intimates. The fact that their marriages may be on the rock, or that their love affairs have broken or even that they got out of bed on the wrong side is simply not a concern. They are like the musketeers of Dumas who, although they lived side by side with each other, did not delve into each other‘s lives or the recesses of their thoughts and feelings. 或许是从小混迹于英国小酒吧的缘故吧，我觉得酒馆里的闲聊是别有韵味的。酒馆里的朋友们对彼此的生活毫不了解，他们只是临时的伙伴，相互之间并无深交。这些人之中，也许有人的婚姻面临破裂，有人恋爱受挫，有人碰到别的什么不顺心的事儿，但这些都无关紧要。他们就像大仲马笔下的三个火枪手一样，虽然朝夕相处，却从来不过问彼此的私事，也不去打探别人内心的秘密。
4. It was on such an occasion the other evening, as the conversation moved desultorily here and there, from the most commonplace to thoughts of Jupiter, without any focus and with no need for one, that suddenly the alchemy of conversation took place, and all at once there was a focus. I do not remember what made one of our companions say it – she clearly had not come into the bar to say it, it was not something that was pressing on her mind – but her remark fell quite naturally into the talk. 有一天晚上的情形正是如此。当时人们正在漫无边际地东拉西扯，从最普通的家常琐事聊得有关木星的科学趣闻。完全没有一个特定的主题。可突然间中心话题奇迹般地出现了，大伙的话题都集中到了一处。我不记得其中一个伙伴的那句话是什么情况下说出来的 – 不过，显然她并没有特意地准备什么，那也算不上是什么非说不可的要紧话 – 那只不过是随着大伙儿的话题十分自然地脱口而出的。
5. ―Someone told me the other day that the phrasethe King‘s English,' was a term of criticism, that it means language which one should not properly use.‖
―就在前几天，有人告诉我说‗标准英语‘这个词是带贬义色彩的批评用语，指的是人们应该尽量避免使用的英语。‖
6. The glow of the conversation burst into flames. There were affirmations and protests and denia
ls, and of course the promise, made in all such conversation, that we would look it up on the morning. That would settle it; but conversation does not need to be settled; it could still go ignorantly on. 此语一出，谈话氛围立即热烈起来。有人表示赞成，也有人怒斥，还有人则不以为然。最后，当然少不了像处理所有这种场合下的意见分歧一样，大家约好次日一早去查证一下。问题就这样解决了。不过，闲聊并不需要解决什么问题，大家仍旧可以糊里糊涂地继续闲扯下去。
7. It was an Australian who had given her such a definition of ―the king's English,‖ which produced some rather tart remarks about what one could expect from the descendants of convicts. We had traveled in five minutes to Australia. Of course, there would be resistance to the King's English in such a society. There is always resistance in the lower classes to any attempt by an upper class to lay down rules for ―English as it should be spoken.‖ 告诉她―标准英语‖应做这种解释的原来是个澳大利亚人。知道这个后，有些人便说起刻薄话来了，说什么囚犯的后代这样说倒也不足为奇。就这样，不到5分钟，大家便扯到了澳大利亚。在那个地方，―标准英语‖自然是不受欢迎的。因为下层人民总是会抵制上流社会给―规范英语‖制定的条条框框。
8. Look at the language barrier between the Saxon churls and their Norman conquerors. The conversation had swung from Australian convicts of the 19th century to the English peasants of the 12th century. Who was right, who was wrong, did not matter. The conversation was on wings. 想想撒克逊农民与征服他们的诺曼统治者之间的语言隔阂吧。于是闲聊的主题又从19世纪的澳大利亚囚犯转移到了12世纪的应该农民身上。谁对谁错，并没有关系。闲聊依旧热火朝天地进行着。
9. Someone took one of the best – known of examples, which is still always worth the reconsidering. When we talk of meat on our tables we use French words; when we speak of the animals from which the meat comes we use Anglo – Saxon words. It is a pig in its sty; it is pork (porc) on the table. They are cattle in the fields, but we sit down to beef (boeuf). Chickens become poultry (poulet), and a calf becomes veal (veau ). Even if our menus were not written in French out of snobbery, the English we used in them would still be Norman English. What all this tells us is of a deep class rift in the culture of English after the Norman Conquest. 有人举了一个众所周知但仍值得深思的例子。在谈到饭桌上的肉食时我们用法语词，而谈到提供这些肉食的牲畜是则用盎格鲁-撒克逊词。猪圈里的活猪叫pig，饭桌上吃的猪肉便成了pork（来自法语pore）；地里放养的牛叫cattle，而桌上吃的牛肉则叫beef（来自法语boeuf）；小鸡叫chicken，用作肉食则变成poultry（来自法语poulet）；calf（小牛）加工成肉则变成veal（来自法语vcau）。即便我们的菜单没有为了装洋耍派头而写成法语，我们所用的英语仍然是诺曼式的英语。这一切向我们昭示了被诺曼人征服之后的英国文化上所存在的深刻的阶级裂痕。
10. The Saxon peasants who tilled the land and reared the animals could not afford the meat, which went to Norman tables. The peasants were allowed to eat the rabbits that scampered over their field and, since that meat was cheap, the Norman lords of course turned up their noses at it. So rabbit is still rabbit on our tables, and not changed into some rendering of lapin. 撒克逊农民种地养殖牲畜，自己出产的肉自己却吃不上，全部送到了诺曼人的餐桌上。农民们只能吃在地里乱窜的兔子。因为兔子的肉便宜，诺曼贵族自然不屑去吃它。因此，活兔子和兔子肉共用rabbit这个词表示，而没有换成由法语lapin转化而来的某个词。
11. As we listen today to the arguments about bilingual education, we ought to think ourselves back into the shoes of the Saxon peasant. The new ruling class had built a cultural barrier against him by building their French against his own language. There must have been a great deal of cultural humiliation felt by the English when they revolted under Saxon leaders like Hereward the Wake.
―The king's English‖-if the term had existed then-had become French. And here in America now, 900 years later, we are still the heirs to it. 如今，当我们听着有关双语教育问题的争论时，我们应该设身处地替当时的撒克逊农民想一想，新的统治阶级用法语来对抗撒克逊农民自己的语言，从而在农民周围筑起一道文化壁垒。当英国人在像觉醒者赫里沃德这样的撒克逊领袖领导下起来造反时，他们一定深深地感受到了文化上的屈辱。―标准英语‖-如果那时候有这个名词的话-已经变成法语了。而九百年后我们在美国这个地方仍然继承了这种影响。
12. So the next morning, the conversation over, one looked it up. The phrase came into use some time in the 16th century. ―Queen's English‖ is found in Nashe's ―Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters‖ in 1593, and in 1602, Dekker wrote of someone, ―thou clipst the King's English.‖ Is the phrase in Shakespeare? That would be the confirmation that it was in general use. He uses it once, when Mistress Quickly in ―The Merry Wives of Windsor‖ says of her master coming home in a rage, ―…here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the King's English,‖ and it rings true. 那晚闲聊过后的第二天一大早便有人去查阅了资料。这个名词在16世纪已有人使用过了。纳什作于1593年的《截获信函奇闻》中就有过―标准英语‖（Queen's English）的提法。1602年德克写到某人时有句话说：―你把‗标准英语‘（King's English）简化了‖。莎士比亚作品中是否也出现过这一提法呢？如出现过，那就证明这个词在当时既已通用。他用过一次，在《温莎的风流娘们》中，女仆Quickly在讲到她家老爷回来后将会有的盛怒情形时说，―„„少不了一通臭骂，骂得昏天暗地，―标准英语‖不知要给他糟蹋成个什么样子啦。‖后来的事实果然被她说中了。
13. One could have expected that it would be about then that the phrase would be coined. After five centuries of growth, of tussling with the French of the Normans and the Angevins and the Plantagenets and at last absorbing it, the conquered in the end conquering the conqueror, English had come royally into its own. 我们有理由认为这个词就是那个时候产生的。经过前后五百年的发展和与诺曼人、安茹王朝及金雀花王朝的法语的竞争，英语最终同化了法语。被统治者成了统治着，英语取得了国语的地位。
14. There was a King's (or Queen's)English to be proud of. The Elizabethans blew on it as on a dandelion clock, and its seeds multiplied, and floated to the ends of the earth. ―The King's English‖ was no longer a form of what would now be regarded as racial discrimination. 这样便有了一种英国人值得引以为傲的―标准英语‖。伊丽莎白时代的人没费吹灰之力便使其影响日盛，遍及全球。―标准英语‖再也不带有今天所谓的种族歧视的性质了。
15. Yet there had been something in the remark of the Australian. The phrase has always been used a little pejoratively and even facetiously by the lower classes. One feels that even Mistress Quickly-a servant-is saying that Dr.Caius-her master-will lose his control and speak with the vigor of ordinary folk. If the King's English is ―English as it should be spoken,‖ the claim is often mocked by the underlings, when they say with a jeer ―English as it should be spoke.‖ The rebellion against a cultural dominance is still there.
不过，那个澳大利亚人的解释也有一定道理。下层阶级在使用这一名词时总带着一点轻蔑、讥讽的味道。我们会发现，就连Quickly这样一个婢女也会说她的主子凯厄斯大夫管不住自己的舌头，而讲起平民百姓们所讲的那种粗话。如果说―标准英语‖就是所谓―规范英语‖，这种看法常常会受到下层人民的嘲笑讥讽，他们有时故意开玩笑地把它称做―规反英语‖。下层人民对于文华上的专制还是颇有抵制心理的。
16. There is always s great danger, as Carlyle put it, that ―words will harden into things for us.‖ Words are not themselves a reality, but only representations of it, and the King's English, like the Anglo-French of the Normans, is a class representation of reality. Perhaps it is worth trying to speak it, but it should not be laid down as an edict, and made immune to change from below. 正如卡莱尔所说，―对我们来说，词语会变成具体的事物‖是一种始终存在的危险。词语本身并不是现实，它不过是现实的一种反应形式而已。标准英语和诺曼人的盎格鲁法语的性质一样，也只是一个阶段用来表达现实的一种形式。让人们学着去讲也许不错，但既不应该把它作为法令，也不应该使它完全不接受来自下层的改变。 17. I have an unending love affair with dictionaries-Auden once said that all a writer needs is a pen, plenty of paper and ―the best dictionaries he can afford‖-but I agree with the person who said that dictionaries are instruments of common sense. The King's English is a model-a rich and instructive one-but it ought not to be an ultimatum. 我一向对词典有着始终不渝的酷爱-奥登曾经说过，一支笔、够用的纸张―他所能弄到的最好的词典‖就是一个作家的全部所需-但其实上我更赞同另一种说法，即把词典看成是一种常识工具。标准英语是一种范本-一种丰富而又指导作用的范本-但并不是一种绝对的权威。
18. So we may return to my beginning. Even with the most educated and the most literate, the King's English slips and slides in conversation.There is no worse conversation than the one who punctuates his words as he speaks as if he were writing, or even who tries to use words as if he were composing a piece of prose for print. When E. M. Forster writes of ―the sinister corridor of our age,‖ we sit up at the vividness of the phrase, the force and even terror in the image. But if E. M. Forster sat in our living room and said, ―We are all following each other down the sinister corridor of our age,‖ we would be justified in asking him to leave. 由此我们可以回到我先前的话题上。即便是那些学问再高、文学修养再好的人，他们所讲的标准英语在闲聊中也常常会离谱走调。要是有谁闲聊时也像做文章一样句逗分明，或像写一篇要发表的散文般咬文嚼字的话，那他说的话就一定极为倒人胃口。看到E.M.福斯特笔下写出―如今这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊‖时，我们可以深刻体会到语言的生动、比喻的张力。但假若福斯特坐在我们的会客室里说―我们大家正一个接一个地步入这个时代阴森恐怖的长廊‖时，我们肯定会让他离开。
19. Great authors are constantly being asked by foolish people to talk as they write. Other people may celebrate the lofty conversations in which the great minds are supposed to have indulged in the great salons of 18th century Paris, but one suspects that the great minds were gossiping and judging the quality of the food and the wine. Henault, then the great president of the First Chamber of the Paris Parlement, complained bitterly of the ―terrible sauces‖ at the salons of Mme. Deffand, and went on to observe that the only difference between her cook and the supreme chef, Brinvilliers, lay in their intentions. 常常会有一些愚人要求大文豪们在交谈时也像写文章一样字字珠玑，也有人对18世纪巴黎的文艺沙龙里那些文人雅士的高谈阔论极表称羡。可是，说不定那些文人雅士们在那里也只不过是闲谈，谈论酒食的好坏哩。当时的巴黎大法院第一厅厅长亨奥尔特在德芳侯爵夫人家的沙龙作客时就曾大叫到―调料糟糕透了‖，接着还大发议论说侯爵夫人家的厨子和总厨师长布兰维利耶之间的唯一差别不过就是用心不一而已。
20. The one place not to have dictionaries is in a sitting room or at a dining table. Look the thing up the next morning, but not in the middle of the conversation. Otherwise one will bind the conversation; one will not let it flow freely here and there. There would have been no conversation the other evening if we had been able to settle at once the meaning of ―the King's English.‖ We would never have gong to Australia, or leaped back in time to the Norman Conquest. 会客室和餐桌上是无须摆放词典的。闲聊过程中遇到弄不明白而需要查实的问题可留待第二天在说，不要话说到一半却一边查起字典来了。否则，谈话变会受到妨碍，不能如流水般无拘无束地进行了。那晚，如果我们当场弄清了―标准英语‖的意义，也就不可能再有那场交谈辩论，我们也就不可能一会儿跳到澳大利亚去，一会儿又扯回到诺曼征服时代了。
21. And there would have been nothing to think about the next morning. Perhaps above all, one would not have been engaged by interest in the musketeer who raised the subject, wondering more about her. The bother about teaching chimpanzees how to talk is that they will probably try to talk sense and so ruin all conversation.
而且，我们也就没有什么可以留到第二天去思考了。尤为重要的是，如果那个问题能做当场解决的话，人们就不会对于那位引出话题的― 火枪手‖发生兴趣了，也不会想多了解她的情况了。教黑猩猩说话之所以很困难，原因就在于它们往往可能尽是想着要讲出正经八百的话来，因而会使对话失去意趣。 Marrakech马拉喀什见闻
George Orwell
1 As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later. 一具尸体抬过，成群的苍蝇从饭馆的餐桌上瓮嗡嗡而起追逐过去，但几分钟过后又飞了回来。 2 The little crowd of mourners -- all men and boys, no women--threaded their way across the market place between the piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels, walling a short chant over and over again. What really appeals to the flies is that the corpses here are never put into coffins, they are merely wrapped in a piece of rag and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the burying-ground they hack an oblong hole a foot or two deep, dump the body in it and fling over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick. No gravestone, no name, no identifying mark of any kind. The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth, like a derelict building-lot. After a month or two no one can even be certain where his own relatives are buried.
一支人数不多的送葬队伍--其中老少尽皆男性，没有一个女的--沿着集贸市场，从一堆堆石榴摊子以及出租汽车和骆驼中间挤道而行，一边走着一边悲痛地重复着一支短促的哀歌。苍蝇之所以群起追逐是因为在这个地方死人的尸首从不装进棺木，只是用一块破布裹着放在一个草草做成的木头架子上，有四个朋友抬着送葬。朋友们到了安葬场后，便在地上挖出一个一二英尺深的长方形坑，将尸首往坑里一倒。再扔一些像碎砖头一样的日、干土块。不立墓碑，不留姓名，什么识别标志都没有。坟场只不过是一片土丘林立的荒野，恰似一片已废弃不用的建筑场地。一两个月过后，就谁也说不准自己的亲人葬于何处了。
3 When you walk through a town like this -- two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand up in-- when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings.All colonial empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people have brown faces--besides, there are so many of them! Are they really the same flesh as your self? Do they even have names? Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff, about as individual as bees or coral insects? They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way through the prickly pear, you notice that it is rather bumpy underfoot, and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that you are walking over skeletons. 当你穿行也这样的城镇--其居民20万中至少有2万是除开一身聊以蔽体的破衣烂衫之外完
全一无所有--当你看到那些人是如何生活，又如何动辄死亡时，你永远难以相信自己是行走在人类之中。实际上，这是所有的殖民帝国赖以建立的基础。这里的人都有一张褐色的脸，而且，人数书如此之多！他们真的和你意义同属人类吗？难道他们也会有名有姓吗？也许他们只是像彼此之间难以区分的蜜蜂或珊瑚虫一样的东西。他们从泥土里长出来，受哭受累，忍饥挨饿过上几年，然后又被埋在那一个个无名的小坟丘里。谁也不会注意到他们的离去。就是那些小坟丘本身也过不了很久便会变成平地。有时当你外出散步，穿过仙人掌丛时，你会感觉到地上有些绊脚的东西，只是在经过多次以后，摸清了其一般规律时，你才会知道你脚下踩的是死人的骷髅。
4 I was feeding one of the gazelles in the public gardens. 我正在公园里给一只瞪羚喂食。
5Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat when they are still alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their hindquarters without thinking of a mint sauce. The gazelle I was feeding seemed to know that this thought was in my mind, for though it took the piece of bread I was holding out it obviously did not like me. It nibbled rapidly at the bread, then lowered its head and tried to butt me, then took another nibble and then butted again. Probably its idea was that if it could drive me away the bread would somehow remain hanging in mid-air. 动物中也恐怕只有瞪羚还活着时就让人觉得是美味佳肴。事实上，人们只要看到它们那两条后腿就会联想到薄荷酱。我现在喂着的这只瞪羚好象已经看透了我的心思。它虽然叼走了拿在手上的一块面包，但显然不喜欢我这个人。它一面啃食着面包，一面头一低向我顶过来，再啃一下面包又顶过来一次。它大概还因为把我赶开之后那块面包仍会悬在空中。
6 An Arab navvy working on the path nearby lowered his heavy hoe and sidled slowly towards us. He looked from the gazelle to the bread and from the bread to the gazelle, with a sort of quiet amazement, as though he had never seen anything quite like this before. Finally he said shyly in French: \"I could eat some of that bread.\"
一个正在附近小道上干活的阿拉伯挖土工放下笨重的锄头，羞怯地侧着身子慢慢朝我们走过来。他把目光从瞪羚身上移向面包，又从面包转回到瞪羚身上，带着一点惊讶的神色，似乎以前从未建国这种情景。终于，他怯生生的用法语说道：\"那面包让我吃一点吧。\"
7 I tore off a piece and he stowed it gratefully in some secret place under his rags. This man is an employee of themunicipality.
我撕下一块面包，他感激地把面包放进破衣裳贴身的地方。这人是市政当局的雇工。
8 When you go through the Jewish Quarters you gather some idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably like. Under their Moorish rulers the Jews were only allowed to own land in certain restricted areas, and after centuries of this kind of treatment they have ceased to bother about overcrowding. Many of the streets are a good deal less than six feet wide, the houses are completely windowless, and sore-eyed children cluster everywhere in unbelievable numbers, like clouds of flies. Down the centre of the street there is generally running a little river of urine. 当你走过这儿的犹太人聚居区时，你就会知道中世纪犹太人区大概是个什么样子。在摩尔人的统治下，犹太人只能在划定的一些地区内保有土地。受这样的待遇经过了好几个世纪后，他们已经不再为拥挤不堪而烦扰了。这儿很多街道的宽度远远不足六英尺，房屋根本没有窗户，眼睛红肿的孩子随处可见，多的像一群群苍蝇，数也数不清。街上往往是尿流成河。 9 In the bazaar huge families of Jews, all dressed in the long black robe and little black skull-cap, are working in dark fly-infested booths that look like caves. A carpenter sits crosslegged at a prehistoric lathe, turning chairlegs at lightning speed. He works the lathe with a bow in his right hand and guides the chisel with his left foot, and thanks to a lifetime of sitting in this position his
left leg is warped out of shape. At his side his grandson, aged six, is already starting on the simpler parts of the job.
在集市上，一大家一大家的犹太人，全都身着黑色长袍，头戴黑色便帽，在看起来像洞窟一般阴暗无光，苍蝇麋集的摊篷里干活。一个木匠两脚交叉坐在一架老掉牙的车床旁，正以飞快的速度旋制椅子腿。他右手握弓开动车床，左脚引动旋刀。由于长期保持着种姿势，左脚已经弯翘变形了。他的一个年仅六岁的小孙子竟也在一旁开始帮着干一些简单的活计了。 10 I was just passing the coppersmiths' booths when somebody noticed that I was lighting a cigarette. Instantly, from the dark holes all round, there was a frenzied rush of Jews, many of them old grandfathers with flowing grey beards, all clamouring for a cigarette. Even a blind man somewhere at the back of one of the booths heard a rumour of cigarettes and came crawling out, groping in the air with his hand. In about a minute I had used up the whole packet. None of these people, I suppose, works less than twelve hours a day, and every one of them looks on a cigarette as a more or less impossible luxury. 我正要走过一个铜匠铺子时，突然有人发现我点着一支香烟。这一下子那些犹太人从四面八方的一个个黑洞窟里发疯四地围上来，其中有很多白胡子老汉，都吵着要讨支烟抽。甚至连一个盲人听到这讨烟的吵嚷声也从一个摊篷后面爬出来。伸手在空中乱摸。一分钟光景，我那一包香烟全分完了。我想这些人一天的工时谁都不回少于十二小时，可是他们个个都把一支香烟看成是一见十分难得的奢侈品。
11 As the Jews live in self-contained communities they follow the same trades as the Arabs, except for agriculture. Fruitsellers, potters, silversmiths, blacksmiths, butchers, leather-workers, tailors, water-carriers, beggars, porters -- whichever way you look you see nothing but Jews. As a matter of fact there are thirteen thousand of them, all living in the space of a few acres. A good job Hitlet wasn't here. Perhaps he was on his way, however. You hear the usual dark rumours about Jews, not only from the Arabs but from the poorer Europeans.
犹太人生活在一个自给自足的社会里，他们从事阿拉伯人所从事的行业，只是没有农业。他们中有买水果的，有陶工、银匠、铁匠、屠夫、皮匠、裁缝、运水工，还有乞丐、脚夫--放眼四顾，到处是犹太人。事实上，在这不过几英亩的空间内居住着的犹太人就足足有一万三千之多。也算这些犹太人好运气，希特勒未曾光顾这里。不过，他也许曾经准备来的。你常听到的有关犹太人的风言风语，不仅可以从阿拉伯人那里听到，而且还可以从较穷的欧洲人那里听到。
12 \"Yes mon vieux, they took my job away from me and gave it to a Jew. The Jews! They' re the real rulers of this country, you know. They‘ve got all the money. They control the banks, finance -- everything.\"
\"我的老兄啊，他们把我的饭碗夺走给了犹太人。想必你也知道这些犹太人吧，他们才是这
个国家真正的主宰。我们的钱都进了他们的腰包。银行、财政--一切都被他们控制住了。\" 13 \"But\hour?\"
\"可是，\"我说道，\"到多数普通犹太人不也是为了一点微薄的工钱而辛勤劳作的苦力吗？\" 14 \"Ah, that's only for show! They' re all money lenders really. They' re cunning, the Jews.\" \"噢！那不过是做出样子来给人看的。事实上他们都是些放债获利的富豪。这些犹太人就是鬼得很。\"
15 In just the same way, a couple of hundred years ago, poor old women used to be burned for witchcraft when they could not even work enough magic to get themselves a square meal. 与此恰恰相似的是，几百年前，常常也有些苦命的老太婆被当成巫婆给活活烧死，然而事实上她们就连为自己变出一顿象样饭菜的巫术都没有。
16 All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are. Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous. In northern Europe, when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a hot country, anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez, the chances are that you don't even see him. I have noticed this again and again. In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings.It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm tree and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at.
所有靠自己的双手干活的人一般都有点不太引人注目，他们所干的活儿越是重要，就越不为人所注目。不过，白皮肤总是比较显眼的。在北欧，若是发现田里有一个工人在耕地，你多半会再看他一眼。而在一个热带国家，直布罗陀以南或苏伊士运河以东的任何一个地方，你就可能看不到田里耕作的人。这种情形我已经注意到多次了。在热带的景色中，万物皆可一目了然，惟独看不见人。那干巴巴的土壤、仙人掌、棕榈树和远方的山岭都可以尽收眼底，但那在地理耕作的农夫却往往没人看见。他们的肤色就和地里的土壤颜色一样，而且远不及土壤中看。
17 It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas. But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed. What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman? An orange grove or a job in Government service. Or to an Englishman? Camels, castles, palm trees, Foreign Legionnaires, brass trays, and bandits. One could probably live there for years without noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil. 正因如此，贫穷至极的亚非国家反倒成了旅游观光的胜地。没有谁会有兴趣到本地的贫困地区去作依次毫无价值的旅行。但在那些居住着褐色皮肤的人的地方，他们的贫困却根本没有人能注意大批。摩洛哥对于一个法国人来说意味着什么呢？无非是一个能买到橘子圆或者谋取一份政府差使的地方。对于一个英国人呢？不过是骆驼、城堡、棕榈树、外籍兵团、黄铜盘子和匪徒等富于浪漫色彩的字眼而已。就算是在那儿呆过多年的人也未必会注意得到，对于当地百分之九十的居民来说，现实生活只意味着永无休止、劳累至极的斗争，其目的是从贫瘠的土壤中费力地弄出点吃的来。
18 Most of Morocco is so desolate that no wild animal bigger than a hare can live on it. Huge areas which were once covered with forest have turned into a treeless waste where the soil is exactly like broken-up brick. Nevertheless a good deal of it is cultivated, with frightful labour. Everything is done by hand. Long lines of women, bent double like inverted capital Ls, work their way slowly across the fields, tearing up the prickly weeds with their hands, and the peasant
gathering lucerne for fodder pulls it up stalk by stalk instead of reaping it, thus saving an inch or two on each stalk. The plough is a wretched wooden thing, so frail that one can easily carry it on one's shoulder, and fitted underneath with a rough iron spike which stirs the soil to a depth of about four inches. This is as much as the strength of the animals is equal to. It is usual to plough with a cow and a donkey yoked together. Two donkeys would not be quite strong enough, but on the other hand two cows would cost a little more to feed. The peasants possess no harrows, they merely plough the soil several times over in different directions, finally leaving it in rough furrows, after which the whole field has to be shaped with hoes into small oblong patches to conserve water. Except for a day or two after the rare rainstorms there is never enough water. A long the edges of the fields channels are hacked out to a depth of thirty or forty feet to get at the tiny trickles which run through the subsoil.
摩洛哥的土地大半是一片荒凉，赖以生存的走兽至大者莫如野兔。原先曾有的森林覆盖着的土地如今已成为光秃秃的荒漠，土壤跟碎砖头一般。尽管如此，仍有大片大片的土地被人们开垦，劳动强度十分惊人。一切活儿全靠手工完成。排着长队的妇女们弯着腰像一个个倒过来的大写字母L一样，以便慢慢地在地里移动着身子往前走，一边用手去拔除带刺的野草。农民采集苜蓿喂牲口时，不是用刀去割而是用手将一棵棵苜蓿连根拔起，免得割剩下来的一两寸的根茬白白浪费掉。犁是用木头做的劣货，一点也不结实，一个人可以毫不费力的扛在肩上。犁的底部安着一个粗劣的铁尖子，只能犁进地里4英寸来深。拉犁的牲口的力气也只有这么大。通常是用一头牛和一头驴子套在一起拉犁。这是因为两头驴子拉不动，而如用两头牛，耗费的饲料有太多。农民们都没有耙地的耙，他们指示顺着不同的方向犁上几遍，弄出一道道垄沟来，然后再用锄头把整块田地做成一块块长条形的小畦，以利蓄水。除了较为罕见的暴雨之后紧接着的那一两天外，这地方总是缺水。农民们在地边上挖出一道道深达三十至四十英尺的沟渠以便把土层深处的涓涓细流汇集起来。 19 Every afternoon a file of very old women passes down the road outside my house, each carrying a load of firewood. All of them are mummified with age and the sun, and all of them are tiny. It seems to be generally the case in primitive communities that the women, when they get beyond a certain age, shrink to the size of children. One day a poor creature who could not have been more than four feet tall crept past me under a vast load of wood. I stopped her and put a five-sou piece ( a little more than a farthing ) into her hand. She answered with a shrill wail, almost a scream, which was partly gratitude but mainly surprise. I suppose that from her point of view, by taking any notice of her, I seemed almost to be violating a law of nature. She accepted her status as an old woman, that is to say as a beast of burden. When a family is travelling it is quite usual to see a father and a grown-up son riding ahead on donkeys, and an old woman following on foot, carrying the baggage.
每天下午都有一对年迈的妇女背着柴草从我屋外的路上走过。由于上了年纪而又饱经日晒，他们一个个都变得想木乃伊似的干瘪，而且身躯都是那么瘦小。在原始社会里，妇女超过了一定的年纪便萎缩得如孩子般大小，这似乎是一种普遍的现象。一天，一个身高不过四英尺的可怜人扛着老大的一捆柴草从我身边蹒跚而过。我叫住她，往她手上塞了一枚面值五个苏的钱币（略多于1/4个旧便士）。她的反应竟是一声近乎尖叫的哭喊，这喊叫含有感激的成分，主要还是出于惊讶。我想，在她看来，我虽然会注意她，似乎是违反了自然法则。对于自己作为一个老妇人，即作为一匹驮兽的地位，她是早已接受了的。每当一家人出门远行时，往往可以看到父亲和已经成年的儿子骑着驴子在前边走，而一个老太婆则背着包袱步行跟在后面。
20 But what is strange about these people is their invisibility. For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing -- that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being beneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it. There is no question that the donkeys are damnably treated. The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a St. Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would be considered too much for a fifteen-hands mule, and very often its packsaddle is not taken off its back for weeks together. But what is peculiarly pitiful is that it is the most willing creature on earth, it follows its master like a dog and does not need either bridle or halter . After a dozen years of devoted work it suddenly drops dead, whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold. 然而这些人的真正奇特之处还在于他们的隐身的特性。一连几个星期，每天几乎在同一时候总有一队老妪扛着柴草从我房前蹒跚走过。虽然他们的身影以映入我的眼帘，但老实说，我并不曾看见她们。我所看见的是一捆捆的柴草从屋外掠过。直到有一天我碰巧走在她们身后时，堆柴草奇异的起伏动作才使我注意到原来下面有人。这才第一次看见那些与泥土同色的可怜老妪的躯体--枯瘦的只剩下皮包骨头、被沉重的负荷压得弯腰驼背的躯体。然而，我踏上摩洛哥国土还不到五分钟就已注意到驴子的负荷过重，并为此感到愤怒。驴子遭到荷虐，这是无疑的事实。摩洛哥的驴子不过如一只瑞士雪山救人犬一般大小，可它驮负的货物重量在英国军队里让一头五英尺高的大骡子来驮都嫌过重。而且，它还常常是一连几个星期不卸驮鞍。尤其让人觉得可悲的是，它是世上最驯服听话的牲畜。不需要鞍辔会僵绳。它便会像狗一样更随着自己的主人。为主人拼命干上十几年活后，它便猝然倒地死去，这时，主人就把它仍进沟里，尸体未寒，其五脏六腑便被村狗扒出来吃掉。 21 This kind of thing makes one's blood boil, whereas-- on the whole -- the plight of the human beings does not. I am not commenting, merely pointing to a fact. People with brown skins are next door to invisible. Anyone can be sorry for the donkey with its galled back, but it is generally owing to some kind of accident if one even notices the old woman under her load of sticks. 这种事情当然令人发指，可是，一般说来，人的苦难却没人理会。我并非在乱发议论，只不过是指出一个事实而已。这种人简直就是一种无影无行之物。一头背上被磨得皮破肉烂的驴子人人见了都会同情，而那驮着大捆柴草的老妇人则往往要有某种偶然因素才会受到注意。 22 As the storks flew northward the Negroes were marching southward -- a long, dusty column, infantry , screw-gun batteries, and then more infantry, four or five thousand men in all, winding up the road with a clumping of boots and a clatter of iron wheels.
白鹳鼓翼被去时，黑人正行军南下--一列长长的满身征尘的队伍：步兵，炮队，接着又是更多的步兵，总共大约四五千人，正靴声橐橐，车声辚辚地蜿蜒前行。
23 They were Senegalese, the blackest Negroes in Africa, so black that sometimes it is difficult to see whereabouts on their necks the hair begins. Their splendid bodies were hidden in
reach-me-down khaki uniforms, their feet squashed into boots that looked like blocks of wood, and every tin hat seemed to be a couple of sizes too small. It was very hot and the men had marched a long way. They slumped under the weight of their packs and the curiously sensitive black faces were glistening with sweat.
他们是塞内加尔人，是非洲肤色最黑的人--黑得简直难以看清他们颈项上的头发从何处生起。他们健硕的身躯罩在旧的卡其布制服里面，脚上套着一双看上去像块木板似的靴子，每个人头上戴着的钢盔似乎都小了一两号。天气正热,队伍已经走了很长一段路，士兵们都被沉重的包袱压得疲惫不堪，敏感得出奇的黑脸颊上汗水闪闪发光。
24 As they went past, a tall, very young Negro turned and caught my eye. But the look he gave me was not in the least the kind of look you might expect. Not hostile, not contemptuous, not sullen, not even inquisitive. It was the shy, wide-eyed Negro look, which actually is a look of profound respect. I saw how it was. This wretched boy, who is a French citizen and has therefore been dragged from the forest to scrub floors and catch syphilis in garrison towns, actually has feelings of reverence before a white skin. He has been taught that the white race are his masters, and he
still believes it.
当他们走过时，一个身体欣长，年纪很轻的黑人回头后顾，和我的目光相遇。他的那种目光完全超出人们意料之外。既不带敌意，又不含轻蔑，也没有愠怒，甚至连好奇的成分都没有。那是一种羞怯的，瞪圆双眼的黑人的目光，实际上就是一种表示深厚敬意的目光。这种情况我是了解的。这可怜的小伙子，因为成了法国公民，所以被从森林里拉出来送到军队驻扎的城镇去擦洗地板，并染上了梅毒。他对于白种人的确是满怀敬意的。过去别人教导他说白种人是他的主人，对此他至今深信不疑。
25 But there is one thought which every white man (and in this connection it doesn't matter twopence if he calls himself a socialist) thinks when he sees a black army marching past. \"How much longer can we go on kidding these people? How long before they turn their guns in the other direction?\"
然而，无论哪一个白人（哪怕是那些自称为社会主义者的人也不例外），当他望着一支黑人军队从身边开过时，都会想到同一桩事：\"我们还能愚弄他们多久？他们倒戈相向的日子离现在还有多远？\"
26 It was curious really. Every white man there had this thought stowed somewhere or other in his mind. I had it, so had the other onlookers, so had the officers on their sweating chargers and the white N. C. Os marching in the ranks. It was a kind of secret which we all knew and were too clever to tell; only the Negroes didn't know it. And really it was like watching a flock of cattle to see the long column, a mile or two miles of armed men, flowing peacefully up the road, while the great white birds drifted over them in the opposite direction, glittering like scraps of Paper.
真是怪有意思的。在场的每一个白人心里都有着这样一个共同的心思。我有，其他旁观者也有，骑在汗涔涔的战马上的军官们有，走在队伍中的白人军士也有。这是大家心里都明白而有彼此心照不宣的秘密，只有那些黑人对此尚茫然不知。看着这列一两英里长的队伍静静地向前开进，真好像看着一群牛羊一样，而那掠过它们头顶、朝着相反方向高翔的大白鹳恰似片片碎纸在空中泛着点点银光。 Loving and Hating New York亦爱亦恨话纽约 Thomas Griffith托马斯格里非斯
1 Those ad campaigns celebrating the Big Apple, those T-shirts with a heart design proclaiming ―I love New York,‖are signs, pathetic in their desperation, of how the mighty has fallen. New York City used to leave the bragging to others, for bragging was ―bush‖ Being unique, the biggest and the best, New York didn't have to assert how special it was.
那些赞美\"大苹果\"的广告活动，还有那些印着带有\"我爱纽约\"字样的心形图案的T恤衫，只不过是它们在绝望中发出悲哀的迹象，只不过是纽约这个非凡的城市日趋衰落的象征。纽约过去从不自我炫耀，而只让别的城市去这样做，因为自我炫耀显得\"小家子气\"。纽约既然是独一无二的、最大的而且是最好的城市，也就没有必要宣称自己是如何与众不同了。
2 It isn't the top anymore, at least if the top is measured by who begets the styles and sets the trends.Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste as often as it is out of step with American politics. Once it was the nation's undisputed fashion authority, but it too long resisted the incoming casual style and lost its monopoly. No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from prevailing American trends, a place to escape Common Denominator Land.
然而，今日的纽约再不是头号城市了。至少，在开创时尚、领导潮流方面，纽约是再也配不不这个称号了。今日的纽约非但常常跟不上美国政治前进的步伐，而且往往也合不上美国人生活情趣变化的节拍。过去有一个时期，它曾是全国流行服装款式方面无可争议的权威，但由于长期抵制越来越流行的休闲服装款式而丧失了其垄断地位。纽约已不再是众望所归、纷起仿效的对象了，如今它甚至以成为风行美国的时装潮流的抵制者，以成为摆脱全国清一色的单调局面的一隅逃遁之地而自鸣得意。
3 Its deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident. A dozen other cities have buildings more inspired architecturally than any built in New York City in the past twenty years. The giant Manhattan television studios where Toscanini's NBC Symphony once played now sit empty most of the time, while sitcoms cloned and canned in Hollywood, and the Johnny Carson show live, preempt the airways from California. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood. Vegas casinos routinely pay heavy sums to singers and entertainers whom no nightspot in Manhattan can afford to hire. In sports, the bigger superdomes, the more exciting teams, the most enthusiastic fans, are often found elsewhere.
纽约无力保持排头兵的地位这一点已是越来越明显了。有十多座其他城市都已经有了一些在建筑艺术上很富有创造性的建筑物，而纽约最近二十年来所造的任何一幢建筑物都不能与之相比。曾是托斯卡尼尼全国广播公司交响乐团演出场所的巨人般的曼哈顿电视演播厅，现在经常是空无一人，而好莱坞大量生产出的情景喜剧和约翰尼·卡森节目的实况转播却占满了加利福尼亚的广播电视发送频道。美国流行歌曲创作发行中心从纽约的廷潘胡同转移到了纳什维尔和好莱坞。拉斯韦加斯的赌场经常出高薪聘请曼哈顿没有哪一家夜总会请得起的歌手和艺员。而体育运动方面，那些规模较大的体育馆、比较激动人心的球队以及热情最高的球迷们，往往都出现在纽约以外的地方。 4 New York was never a good convention city – being regarded as unfriendly, unsafe, overcrowded, and expensive – but it is making something of a comeback as a tourist attraction. Even so, most Americans would probably rate New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, or Disneyland higher. A dozen other cities, including my hometown of Seattle, are widely considered better cities to live in. 纽约从来都不是召集会议的好场所--因为那儿少友情.不安全，人口拥挤，消费高昂--但现在它似乎正在一定程度上争回其作为旅游胜地的地位。即便如此，大多数美国人对新奥尔良、旧金山、华盛顿或迪斯尼乐园等地的评价可能还是高于纽约。人们普遍认为，还有十几座其他城市，包括我的家乡西雅图，都比纽约更适于居住。 5 Why, then, do many Europeans call New York their favorite city? They take more readily than do most Americans to its cosmopolitan complexities, its surviving, aloof, European standards, its alien mixtures. Perhaps some of these Europeans are reassured by the sight, on the twin fashion avenues of Madison and Fifth, of all those familiar international names – the jewelers, shoe stores, and designer shops that exist to flatter and bilk the frivolous rich. But no; what most excites Europeans is the city's charged , nervous atmosphere, its vulgar dynamism .
那么，为什么有许多欧洲人称纽约是他们最喜爱的城市呢?他们比大多数美国人更欣赏纽约这个国际大都市的五彩缤纷的生活，它那残存的、独此一家的欧洲社会准则以及它那众多外来民族混杂而居的社会。这些欧洲人中有些人也许是因为在麦迪逊大街和第五大街这两条双胞胎似的繁华大街上看到那些熟悉的国际名牌商号--那些专为迎合并蒙骗那些轻浮浅薄的有钱人而存在的珠宝店、鞋店和服装设计店…而感到心头踏实。然而事实并非如此，最令欧洲人激动不已的是这个城市的那种精神饱满的紧张气氛和它那种野性的活力。
6 New York is about energy, contention, and striving. And since it contains its share of articulate
losers, it is also about mockery, the put-down , the loser's shrug (―whaddya gonna do?‖). It is about constant battles for subway seats, for a cabdriver's or a clerk's or a waiter's attention, for a foothold , a chance, a better address, a larger billing. To win in New York is to be uneasy; to lose is to live in jostling proximity to the frustrated majority. 纽约充满着活力、竞争和奋斗。同时，由于存在着一批能说会道的失意者，它也充满着嘲笑、轻侮和失意者的心灰意冷(\"你说该咋办?\")。它充满着无休无止的斗争一一为了地铁上的座位，为了引起一个的士司机、一个办事员或一个侍者的注意，为了有一个立足之地，为了一次成功的机会。为了一个较好的居住地方，为了让自己名字出现在一张大一点的海报上。在纽约，一个人若成功了，他会感到惶惶不安;如果失败了，他就得和那灰心丧气的大多数人一起苦熬岁月。
7 New York was never Mecca to me. And though I have lived there more than half my life, you won't find me wearing an ―I Love New York‖ T-shirt. But all in all, I can't think of many places in the world I'd rather live. It' s not easy to define why. 纽约从来都不是我心目中的麦加圣地。尽管我在那儿生活了大半辈子，你却休想看到我穿上一件印着\"我爱纽约\"的文化衫。但总的说来，我倒还想不出这世界上有多少个地方我更愿意去居住。至于为什么，就很难说得清。
8 Nature's pleasures are much qualified in N, ew York, . You never see a star-filled sky; the city's bright glow arrogantlyobscures the heavens. Sunsets can be spectacular: oranges and reds tinting the sky over the Jersey meadows and gaudily reflected in a thousand windows on Manhattan's jagged skyline. Nature constantly yields to man in New York: witness those fragile sidewalk trees gamely struggling against encroaching cement and petrol fumes. Central Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted designed as lungs for the city's poor, is in places grassless and filled with trash, no longer pristine yet lively with the noise and vivacity of people, largely youths, blacks, and Puerto Ricans, enjoying themselves. On park benches sit older people, mostly white, looking displaced. It has become less a tranquil park than an untidy carnival. 在纽约所能欣赏到的自然美景非常有限。你从来看不到一片繁星点点的夜空，城里的万家灯火交相辉映使得天空黯然失色。唯有日落时分的景色尚可谓壮观：泽西市草地上的天空染上了一块块深浅不一的橙红色，在曼哈顿那些高高矮矮、大大小小的建筑物上的万千扇玻璃窗的反射下，更显得绚丽多彩。大自然对纽约人总是低头服输。只须看看人行道上那些脆弱的树木迎着四面进逼的水泥路面和阵阵袭来的石油烟气拚命挣扎的样子，就足以说明问题了。由弗雷德里克·劳·奥姆斯特德设计的纽约中央公园本应是城市贫民休养身体、呼吸新鲜空气的场所，但如今园内有些地方已寸草不生，垃圾遍地，无复当年的清新质朴之气，然而依旧人声嘈杂，生意盎然，许多人一一多数为年轻人、黑人和波多黎各人，仍在其间自得其乐。公园中的长条椅上则坐着一些上了年纪的人，其中以白人居多，看样子都是一些流离失所的人。这里已经不是什么静造的公园了，倒更像是一个乱哄哄的狂欢场所。
9 Not the glamour of the city, which never beckoned to me from a distance, but its opportunity – to practice the kind of journalism I wanted – drew me to New York. I wasn't even sure how I'd measure up against others who had been more soundly educated at Ivy League schools, or whether I could compete against that tough local breed, those intellectual sons of immigrants, so highly motivated and single-minded, such as Alfred Kazin, who for diversion (for heaven't sake!) played Bach's Unaccompanied Partitas on the violin.
吸引着我来到纽约的不是这个城市的魅力--它从没有在远方向我遥遥招手呼唤，而是它给我提供了一个从事我梦寐以求的新闻事业的机会。我当时甚至拿不准自己的能力如何能比得上那些在东北部一些名牌大学受过更好教育的人，又怎能竞争得过纽约那些意志坚强的本地人，
那些才华横溢的移民子弟.他们是那样的目标明确，用心专一，比如那个艾尔弗雷德·卡津，他作为业余消遣(真是不可思议！)竞能用小提琴演奏巴赫的无伴奏组曲。 10 A testing of oneself, a fear of giving in to the most banal and marketable of one's talents, still draws many of the young to New York. That and, as always, the company of others fleeing something constricting where they came from. Together these young share a freedom, a community of inexpensive amusements, a casual living, and some rough times. It can't be the living conditions that appeal, for only fond memory will forgive the inconvenience, risk, and squalor. Commercial Broadway may be inaccessible to them, but there is off- Broadway, and then off-off-Broadway. If painters disdain Madison Avenue's plush art galleries, Madison Avenue dealers set up shop in the grubby precincts of Soho. But the purity of a bohemian dedication can be exaggerated. The artistic young inhabit the same Greenwich Village and its fringes in which the experimentalists in the arts lived during the Depression, united by a world against them. But the present generation is enough of a subculture to be a source of profitable boutiques and coffeehouses. And it is not all that estranged. 今天仍有许多青年被吸引到纽约来，因为他们想考验一下自己，怕让自己的才能沦为极其平庸而易于上市的商品。除此之外，还有另外一些为逃避家乡某种束缚的年轻同伴，也总是被吸引到纽约来。这些青年们在一起共享自由，同处于一个消费低廉的娱乐区，一起过着自由自在的生活，也共同度过了一些艰难时刻。吸引他们的不可能是纽约的生活条件，因为只有不合实际的乐观回忆才会忘记他们在那儿的生活中所遇到的不便、危险和贫困。商业性的百老汇剧院可能不会向他们开门，但还有那些外百老汇剧院和外外百老汇剧院。倘若画家们对麦迪逊大街上那些奢侈豪华的画廊不屑一顾，那些画廊老板们便会在索荷区陋巷之内开设小分店。可是·也许是波希米亚式艺术献身的纯洁性被人渲染过甚，这些年轻艺术家们也住进了格林威治村及其外围地区。那是大萧条时期由于面对一个敌对的世界而团结在一起的一批艺术实验主义者住过的地方。但今天的这一代青年艺术家已经形成了一个显著的亚文化群，以至于他们成了一些精品时装和咖啡馆的赚钱对象。他们已不再是那么与世隔绝了。
11 Manhattan is an island cut off in most respects from mainland America, but in two areas it remains dominant. It is the banking and the communications headquarters for America. In both these roles it ratifies more than it creates. Wall Street will advance the millions to make a Hollywood movie only if convinced that a bestselling title or a star name will ensure its success. The networks' news centers are here, and the largest book publishers, and the biggest magazines – and therefore the largest body of critics to appraise the films, the plays, the music, the books that others have created. New York is a judging town, and often invokes standards that the rest of the country deplores or ignores. A market for knowingness exists in New York that doesn't exist for knowledge.
曼哈顿是一个在许多方面与美国大陆隔绝的孤岛，但在两个领域内它仍处于支配地位。它是美国金融和通讯的中枢。在这两个方面，它所起的审批作用大于其创造作用。华尔街只有在确信某种畅销书或是某位影星的大名准保一部影片的成功时才会为制作一部好莱坞影片投放百万巨资。美国广播电视网的新闻中心、最大的图书出版商和最大的期刊杂志都在这里，因而最庞大的一支评论家队伍也在这里，他们可以对别人创作出的电影、戏剧、音乐、图书和其他作品评头论足。纽约是一个裁判城市，经常炮制出一些全国其他地方的人不是为之感到遗憾就是完全不予理睬的规范标准。在纽约这地方真正的知识学问没有市场，狡黠伶俐却颇有市场。
12 The ad agencies are all here too, testing the markets and devising the catchy jingles that will move millions from McDonald's to Burger king, so that the ad agency's ―creative director‖ can
lunch instead in Manhattan's expense-account French restaurants. The bankers and the admen. The marketing specialists and a thousand well-paid ancillary service people, really set the city's brittle tone— catering to a wide American public whose numbers must be respected but whose tastes do not have to shared. The condescending view from the fiftieth floor of the city's crowds below cuts these people off from humanity. So does an attitude which sees the public only in terms of large, malleable numbers— as impersonally as does the clattering subway turnstile beneath the office towers.
商业广告公司也全集中在这里。这些广告公司窥测着市场动向，挖空心思地炮制出一些琅琅上口、易于记诵的广告词，把千千万万的顾客从\"麦克唐纳\"拉到\"伯格·金\"，因而广告公司的\"创作主任\"便可以坐在曼哈顿那些记帐报销的高级法国餐馆里吃午餐了。实际上，就是那些银行家、广告商、市场营销专家以及那数以千计的为他们工作的高薪雇员们为纽约这个城市定下了尖锐生硬的调子--对广大的美国公众要投其所好，对他们人数的多寡必须予以重视，但对他们的兴趣爱好却不必加以认同。从摩天大楼的五十层楼上屈尊俯就地光顾楼下的芸芸众生。这些富人们就会感觉到他们与这些芸芸众生仿佛不是同类;还有他们那种就像他们的办公高楼下面地铁入口处卡嗒作响的转门一样，丝毫不带任何感情地视广大人民群众如一大堆可以任意排列组合的数字的态度，也同样使他们产生不属于人类的感觉。
13 I am surprised by the lack of cynicism, particularly among the younger ones, of those who work in such fields. The television generation grew up in the insistent presence of hype, delights in much of it, and has no scruples about practicing it. Men and woman do their jobs professionally, and, like the pilots who from great heights bombed Hanoi, seem unmarked by it. They lead their real lives elsewhere, in the Village bars they are indistinguishable in dress or behavior from would-be artists, actors, and writers. The boundaries of ―art for art's sake‖ aren't so rigid anymore; art itself is less sharply defined, and those whose paintings don't sell do illustrations; those who can' get acting jobs do commercials; those who are writing ambitious novels sustain themselves on the magazines. Besides, serious art often feeds in the popular these days, changing it with fond irony.
我对这些行业的从业人员，尤其是其中较为年轻的一些人那种缺乏愤世嫉俗情绪的态度感到惊讶。电视的一代是在强烈的广告刺激的环境中成长起来的一代。他们也很欣赏这种广告刺激，并且毫不犹豫地去亲身实践。许多男男女女都以职业性的态度对待自己的工作，就像那些从高空向河内投掷炸弹的飞行员一样，对于其工作本身的意义似乎毫不在意。他们真正的生活寄托在别的地方。在格林威治村的酒吧间里，他们的衣着打扮、言谈举止都与那些预备艺术家、演员和作家毫无二致。\"为艺术而艺术\"的界限已不再那么难以突破了，艺术本身的定义也不像以前那样明晰了。艺术家的画作卖不出去便转而画插图;演员找不到拍戏的机会就去拍广告;作家在创作鸿篇巨著的同时还得为通俗杂志撰文以维持生计。此外，这些年来严肃艺术往往要靠通俗艺术来提供养料，这倒使通俗艺术发生了一些可喜的讽刺性变化。 14 In time the newcomers find or from their won worlds; Manhatten is many such words, huddled together but rarely interacting. I think this is what gives the city its sense of freedom. There are enough like you, whatever you are. And it isn't as necessary to know anything about an apartment neighbor- or to worry about his judgment of you- as it is about someone with an adjoining yard. In New York, like seeks like, and by economy of effort excludes the rest as stranger. This distancing, this uncaring in ordinary encounters, has another side: in no other American city can the lonely be as lonely.
那些初来纽约的人早晚有一天会找到或形成他们自己的小圈子。曼哈顿有许多这类小圈子，密密麻麻地挤在一起，但彼此之间却极少往来。我想正是这种情况给纽约一种自由感。不管
你属于哪类人，与你同样的人都多的是。对于同住一座公寓的邻居，你不必去了解他的任何情况，也不必在意他对你的看法如何，只有住在乡下的屋院相连的邻居才有此必要。在纽约，人以群分，人们对于自己圈子以外的人一律视同路人，以免浪费精力。人们在日常交往中的这种保持距离、冷漠无情的态度还有一种影响：那些有孤独感的人在纽约比在其他任何美国城市都更觉孤独。
15 So much more needs to be said. New Your is a wounded city, declining in its amenities . Overloaded by its tax burdens. But it is not dying city; the streets are safer than they were five years age; Broadway, which seemed to be succumbing to the tawdriness of its environment, is astir again.
要说的情况还有很多。总之，纽约是一个受了创伤的城市，它重税压身，不堪负担，好景不再，江河日下。但纽约并不是一个就要死的城市;与五年前相比较，如今纽约的街道更安全了，曾一度似乎是在繁华旖旎的环境包围之下一蹶不振的百老汇大街如今又呈现出勃勃的生机。
16 The trash-strewn streets, the unruly schools, the uneasy feeling or menace, the noise, the brusqueness- all confirm outsiders in their conviction that they wouldn't live here if you gave them the place. Yet show a New Yorker a splendid home in Dallas, or a swimming pool and cabana in Beverly Hills, and he will be admiring but not envious. So much of well-to-do America now lives antiseptically in enclaves, tranquil and luxurious, that shut out the world. Too static, the New Yorker would say. Tell him about the vigor of your outdoor pleasures; he prefers the unhealthy hassle and the vitality of urban life. He is hopelessly provincial. To him New York- despite its faults, which her will impatiently concede (―so what else is new?‖) — is the spoiler of all other American cities.
街道上布满垃圾，学校里毫无秩序，市民们个个惶惶不安，到处噪声不绝于耳，人人讲话粗声大气--这一切都会使局外人更加坚定决心：就算把纽约送给他们，他们也不愿意在这里居住。然而，你如果让一个纽约人去看达拉斯市的一所富丽堂皇的住宅，或是贝弗利希尔斯市的一个带小屋的游泳池，他一定会表示赞赏，但却不会眼红。现在有许多美国有钱人在安静、豪华、与世隔绝的小天地里过着世外桃源式的生活。纽约人会说，这太沉闷了。可是，你如果对他讲起户外游山玩水的劲头，他又会说他更欣赏都市生活那种虽有害于健康但却热热闹闹的活泼气氛。他有着无可改变的乡土观念。对他来说，纽约--就算连他自己也无可奈何地承认有一些缺点(\"还有什么新的吗?\")--使他对所有其他美国城市都不屑一顾。
17 It is possible in twenty other American cities to visit first-rate art museums, to hear good music and see lively experimental theater, to meet intelligent and sophisticated people who know how to live, dine, and talk well; and to enjoy all this in congenial and spacious surroundings. The New Yorkers still wouldn't want to live there.
人们有可能在二十个其他的美国城市里参观到第一流的艺术博物馆，听到美妙的音乐，看到生动活泼的实验戏剧，遇到懂得怎样生活、吃饭和谈话，而且是在舒适宽敞的环境中去享受这一切聪明而又世故的人物。然而，纽约人还是不愿意居住在那里。
18 What he would find missing is what many outsiders find oppressive and distasteful about New York – its rawness, tension, urgency; its bracing competitiveness; the rigor of its judgments; and the congested, democratic presence of so many other New Yorkers, encased in their own worlds, the defeated are not hidden away somewhere else on the wrong side of town. In the subways, in the buses, in the streets, it is impossible to avoid people whose lives are harder than yours. With the desperate, the ill, the fatigued, the overwhelmed, one learns not to strike up conversation (which isn't wanted ) but to make brief, sympathetic eye contact, to include them in the human
race. It isn't much, but it is the fleeting hospitality of New Yorkers, each jealous of his privacy in the crowd. Ever helpfulness is often delivered as a taunt: a man, rushing the traffic light, shouts the man behind him. ― You want to be wearing a Buick with Jersey plates?‖ — great scorn in the word Jersey, home of drivers who don't belong here.
他所恋恋不舍的正是纽约的那些在许多外地人看来难以忍受、令人讨厌的地方…它的粗俗、紧张、急迫感，它那剑拔弩张的竞争，它那严厉苛刻的评判，以及那么多封闭在各自的小圈子里、不分尊卑贵贱地挤作一团的纽约人。那些在竞争中吃了败仗的人并非躲在城里某个看不见的地方。在地铁里，在公共汽车上，在大街上，到处都会不可避免地遇见一些生活过得比你艰难的人。对于那些悲观绝望、疾病缠身、精疲力竭、不知所措的人，最好不要与之交谈(他们并不希望交谈).只需用同情的目光稍稍接触一下，表示把他们视同人类就行了。这虽没什么了不起，但对于最忌在大庭广众之中暴露隐私的纽约人来说，这就是他们那种一闪即逝的友好表示。即使是一种帮助，纽约人往往也要用嘲骂来表示：一个人闯红灯，冲到一辆开过来的汽车前，他身后的那个人便会大声喊叫：\"当心点，老弟，你难道想让一辆带着泽西牌照的汽车撞倒吗?\"--\"泽西\"一词具有很强的讽刺意味，指的是所有的外地司机的家乡。 19 By Adolf Hitler's definition, New York is mongrel city. It is in fact the first truly international metropolis. No other great city- not London, Paris, Rome or Tokyo- plays host (or hostage) to so many nationalities. The mix is much wider- Asians, Africans, Latins - that when that tumultuous variety of European crowded ashore at Ellis Island. The newcomers are never fully absorbed, but are added precariously to the undigested many. 按照阿道夫希特勒的定义，纽约是一个杂种城市。事实上，它是第一个真正的国际大都市。没有别的大城市--无论是伦敦、巴黎、罗马还是东京--能接纳(或是收容)这么多的民族。现在比当时各种各样的欧洲人吵吵嚷嚷登上埃利斯岛的时候更为混杂一一又有了亚洲人、非洲人和拉丁系人。新来者永远不会被完全同化。只是不稳定地加入到未被消化的多数中去。 20 New York is too big to be dominated by any group, by Wasps or Jews or blacks, or by Catholics of many origins — Irish, Italian, Hispanic. All have their little sovereignties, all are sizable enough to be reckoned with and tough in asserting their claims, but none is powerful enough to subdue the others. Characteristically, the city swallows up the United Nations and refuses to take it seriously, regarding it as an unworkable mixture of the idealistic, the impractical, and the hypocritical. But New Yorkers themselves are in training in how to live together in a diversity of races- the necessary initiation into the future.
纽约太大了，无法为任何一个集团所控制，不论是盎格鲁撤克逊新教的白人还是犹太人、黑人或来源不同的天主教徒--爱尔兰人、意大利人、西班牙血统的人。所有这些集团都有他们小小的天地，人数相当多，不容忽视;在维护他们的要求方面都很坚韧，但没有一个强大到足以制服其他集团。这个城市很典型地把联合国加以吞没，不把它当一回事，把它看作一个空想、不切实际、虚伪、无法运转的混合体。但是纽约人却在训练自己如何在一个多民族的社会里共同生活--这是迈向未来必要的开端。
21 The diversity gives endless color to the city, so that walking in it is constant education in sights and smells. There is wonderful variety of places to eat or shop, and though the most successful of such places are likely to touristyhybrid compromises, they too have genuine roots. Other American cities have ethnic turfs jealously defended, but not, I think, such an admixture of groups, thrown together in such jarring juxtapositions. In the same way, avenues of high-rise luxury in New York are never far from poverty and mean streets. The sadness and fortitude of New York must be celebrated, along with its treasures of art and music. The combination is unstable; it produces friction, or an uneasy forbearance that sometimes becomes a real toleration.
多样化使这个城市色彩无穷。漫步此城，可以不断受到情景与风味方面的教育。有众多的各有特色的地方可以去吃饭或购买物品。虽然其中最成功的似乎是那些为招引游客而把各种：民族特色混在一起的地方，但是他们也都有真正的根基。在其他的美国城市，不同的民族各有自己的地盘，并小心翼翼地加以保护，但是我认为那里没有这种不和谐地把不同的集团搁在一起的大杂烩。f司样地，在纽约拥有多层高楼的豪华大街与它近邻的穷街陋巷相映成趣。对纽约的忧伤和刚毅要与其艺术和音乐的财富一起加以赞美。这种结合是不稳定的，它产生摩擦或是一种不稳定的克制。这种克制有时变成一种真正的容忍。
22 Loving and hating New York becomes a matter of alternating moods, often in the same day. The place constantly exasperates , at times exhilarates. To me it is the city of unavoidable experience. Living there, one has the reassurance of steadily confronting life.
对纽约的爱与恨成了一个不断交替变化着的情绪问题。这种情绪的变化常常发生在同一天。这个地方经常使人恼怒，有时也让人振奋。对我来说，这是一个取得不可或缺的经验的城市。住在这儿，人们可以放心，一定能持续地面向生活。 The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American一个发现：做一个美国人意味着什么 James Baldwin詹姆斯鲍德温
1 ―It is a complex fate to be an American,‖ Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is. America‘s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world – yesterday and today – are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word ―America‖ remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.
亨利詹姆斯曾经说过，―身为一个美国人是一种复杂玄妙的命运。‖而一位作家在欧洲作出的最重大的发现就是这种命运究竟复杂到何种程度。美国的历史，其远大志向，其不同凡响的辉煌成就，还有她那更加不同凡响的挫折失败。以及她在世界上的地位——不论是过去还是现在„都是那么深不可测而又无可更改地独一无二，以至于―美国‖这个词至今仍是一个陌生的、几乎可以说是完全没有明确定义的、且具有极大争议性的专有名词。世界上似乎还没有人确切地知道这个词的含义，就连我们这些五颜六色、千千万万自称为美国人的人也不例外。 2 I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.) I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or even, merely a Negro writer. I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them. (I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him.)
我当初离开美国是因为我曾怀疑自己能否经受住这儿的有色人种问题的狂风暴雨的冲击。(现在我仍然时不时地这样怀疑。)我想使自己不至于仅仅成为一个黑人，或是仅仅只成为一个黑人作家。我想寻求一种什么途径。来使自己的生活经历的特殊性把自己与他人联系起来而不是分离开来。(我同黑人之间也产生了隔阂，就像我同白人之间的隔阂一样严重，当一个黑人开始真正地相信白人对黑人的评价时，常常就会发生这样的情况。)
3 In my necessity to find the terms on which my experience could be related to that of others, Negroes and whites, writers and non-writers, I proved, to my astonishment, to be as American as any Texas G. I. And I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris. Like me, they had been divorced from their origins, and it turned out to make very little difference that the origins of white Americans were European and mine were African – they were no more at home in Europe than I was.
在我认为有必要去寻求一种能把我的生活经历同别的人一一黑人和白人，作家和非作家——的生活经历联系起来的途径的过程中，我惊奇地发现：自己原来也同任何得克萨斯州士兵一样，是非常爱国的美国人。而且我发现，我在巴黎所认识的每一位美国作家都有我这种感受。他们都同我一样脱离了自己的本源，而且事实证明，这些美国白人的欧洲本源同我的非洲本源竞没有多少差别——他们在欧洲也像我一样感到不自在。
4 The fact that I was the son of a slave and they were the sons of free men meant less, by the time we confronted each other on Europe soil, than the fact that we were both searching for our separate identities.When we had found these, we seemed to be saying, why, then, we would no longer need to cling to the shame and bitterness which had divided us so long. 我是奴隶的后代，而他们是自由人的子孙，这种差异则无关紧要。因为我们在欧洲大地上相遇时，都在努力探求着各自的自我价值。当我们终于发现各自的自我价值之后，我们似乎都在感慨：这下可好啦，多少年来造成我们之间的隔阂的遗憾和痛苦之情，我们可再也不用死抱住不放了。
5 It became terribly clear in Europe, as it never had been here, that we knew more about each other than any European ever could. And it also became clear that, no matter where our fathers had been born, or what they had endured, the fact of Europe had formed us both, was part of our identity and part of our inheritance.
我们美国人彼此间的相互了解超过任何欧洲人所能达到的程度。这一点在本国不曾有人认识到，但一到欧洲，我们便认识得很清楚了。还有一点也显得很清楚：不论我们的祖先源于何处，也不管他们曾有过什么样的遭遇，我们美国黑人和白人都是欧洲造就出来的。这一事实就是我们的身分以及我们的遗传特征的组成部分。
6 I had been in Paris a couple of years before any of this became clear to me. When it did, I like many a writer before me upon the discovery that his props have all been knocked out from under him, suffered a species of breakdown and was carried off to the mountains of Switzerland, There, in that absolutely Hiroshima landscape, armed with two Bessie Smith records and a typewriter I began to try to recreate the life that I had first known as a child and from which I had spent so many years in flight.
在我认清这些之前，我在巴黎呆了两三年的时间。待到认清这些之后，我就像许多前辈作家发现他的生活支柱全部被人拆掉了一样，遭受了一种精神崩溃的痛苦，不得不到瑞士的高山上去疗养。在那一片晶莹的雪山景色中。我以两张贝西·史密斯的唱片和一台打字机为工具，开始试图把自己孩提时代最初体验到的，多年来又一直想尽力忘却的生活经历再现出来。 7 It was Bessie Smith, through her tone and her cadence, who helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was a pickaninny, and to remember the things I had never listened to Bessie Smith in America (in the same way that, for years, I would not touch watermelon), but in Europe she helped to reconcile me to being a ―nigger‖. 是贝西·史密斯用她的音调和节拍帮我发掘出了当我还是个黑人小孩时本就使用过的说话口吻，使我重新忆起了小时候的所闻、所见和所感。我已将这些深深藏在了心底。在美国。我从来不听贝西·史密斯的歌(这与我多年不碰西瓜是同一道理)，但在欧洲，她却使我体会到身为―黑鬼‖并没有什么不好。
8 I do not think that I could have made this reconciliation here. Once I was able to accept my role – as distinguished, I must say, from my ―place‖—in the extraordinary drama which is America, I was released from the illusion that I hated America. 我觉得自己在美国是体会不到这一点的。一旦我能够接受自己在美国这出不同寻常的戏剧中所扮演的角色——应该指出，这里说的角色是就我的―地位‖而言——我便从仇恨美国的幻觉中清醒过来了。
9 The story of what can happen to an American Negro writer in Europe simply illustrates, in some relief, what can happen to any American writer there. It is not meant, of course, to imply that it happens to them all, for Europe can be very crippling too; and, anyway, a writer, when he has made his first breakthrough, has simply won a crucial skirmish in a dangerous, unending and unpredictable battle still, the breakthrough is important, and the point is that an American writer, in order to achieve it, very often has to leave this country.
一个美国黑人作家在欧洲所可能遇到的一切只是比较鲜明地显示了任何一位美国作家在欧洲所可能遇到的情况。当然这并不是说所有的人都会遇上同样的情况，因为欧洲也很有可能阻碍人的发展。不管怎么说，当一个作家完成自己的第一次突破时，他只不过是在一次险象环生、旷日持久、胜负难料的战役中打赢了一场有决定意义的小规模战斗。虽则如此，第一次突破仍是很重要的，问题是一个美国作家要实现这一次突破，往往就必得离开自己的国家。 10 The American writer, in Europe, is released, first of all, from the necessity of apologizing for himself. It is not until he is released from the habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a ―regular guy‖ that he realizes how crippling this habit has been. It is not necessary for him, there, to pretend to be something he is not, for the artist does not encounter in Europe the same suspicion he encounters here. Whatever the Europeans may actually think of artists, they have killed enough of them off by now to know that they are as real – and as persistent – as rain, snow, taxes or businessmen. 在欧洲，美国作家首先是不必为自己进行辩护的。只有等到他摆脱了要靠屈伸肌肉亮出本领来证明自己是个―正常人‖的习惯之后，他才会认识到这一习惯是多么的有害。在欧洲，他不必装模作样地掩饰自己的本来面目，因为艺术家在那里不会像在美国一样遭到怀疑。不论欧洲人对待艺术家的实际态度如何，他们所毁掉的艺术家已经够多的了，而现在他们终于认识到艺术家就像雨、雪、税收和商人一样是真实存在，并且永远会存在的。
11 Of course, the reason for Europe‘s comparative clarity concerning the different functions of men in society is that European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition – of intellectual activity, of letters – and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America. 当然，欧洲人之所以对于人们在社会中所起的不同作用有比较明确的概念，是因为欧洲社会历来就被划分为不同的阶层，而美国社会则从未这样划分过。欧洲作家把自己看作一种古老而光荣的传统——文化活动或文学创作传统——的一部分。在选择这一职业时，他不用去顾虑自己是否会因此而失去所有的朋友。然而，美国却没有这样一种传统。
12 On the contrary, we have a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately). An American writer fights his way to one of the lowest rungs on the American social ladder by means of pure bull-headednessand an indescribable series of odd jobs. He probably has been a ―regular fellow‖ for much of his adult life, and it is not easy for him to step out of that lukewarm bath.
恰恰相反，我们美国人对于真正的文化活动持有一种根深蒂固的不信任态度(这大概是因为人们担心文化活动会粉碎一一我倒希望如此一一我们死死抓住不放的美国神话)。一个美国作家必须凭着一股十足的牛劲拼命奋斗，并从事一系列难以形容的零工杂活才能勉强爬上美国社会阶梯的最低一级。也许在他成年生活的大部分时间里，他一直在过着―正常人‖的生活，要他从这个温水浴池中跨出来，可实在有点不容易。
13 We must, however, consider a rather serious paradox ; though American society is more mobile than Europe‘s, it is easier to cut across social and occupational lines there than it is here.This has something to do, I think, with the problem of status in American life. Where everyone has status, it is also perfectly possible, after all, that no one has. It seems inevitable, in any case, that a man may become uneasy as to just what his status is. 不过，我们还必须考虑一个相当严重的怪现象：尽管美国社会提供给人们的改变社会地位的机会比欧洲多，但在欧洲人们却比在美国更容易跨越社会和职业界线。我认为，这同美国社会生活中的地位问题不无关系。在一个人人都有地位的地方，也完全可能没有一个人真正有地位。因此，一个人会因为不知自己地位如何而忧心忡忡，这是无论如何都不可逃避的事实。 14 But Europeans have lived with the idea of status for a long time.A man can be as proud of being a good waiter as of being a good actor, and in neither case feel threatened.And this means that the actor and the waiter can have a freer and more genuinely friendly relationship in Europe than they are likely to have here. The waiter does not feel, with obscure resentment, that the actor has ―made it,‖ and the actor is not tormented by the fear that he may find himself, tomorrow, once again a waiter.
而欧洲人早已正确接受了地位观念。一个人不论是当个好堂倌还是好演员，都会同样地为自己的地位而感到自豪，而且彼此之间也不会感到有任何威胁。这就意味着，在欧洲，一个演员和一个堂倌之间可以建立起比在美国更自由、更真诚的友谊。堂倌不会因演员的―成名得利‖而感到丝毫的怨愤，演员也不用提心吊胆地害怕自己有朝一日会重新当起堂倌。 15 This lack of what may roughly be called social paranoia causes the American writer in Europe to feel – almost certainly for the first time in his life – that he can reach out to everyone, that he is accessible to everyone and open to everything. This is an extraordinary feeling. He feels, so to speak, his own weight, his own value.
由于消除了那种可以不那么准确地称之为社会偏执狂的心理，在欧洲的美国作家开始觉得——几乎可以肯定地说是平生第一次产生这种感觉一一他可以接近任何人，也欢迎任何人来接近他，而且也愿意同任何人谈论任何事。这是一种很不寻常的感觉。可以说，他感觉出了自身的分量和价值。
16 It is as though he suddenly came out of a dark tunnel and found himself beneath the open sky. And, in fact, in Paris, I began to see the sky for what seemed to be the first time. It was borne in on me – and it did not make me feel melancholy – that this sky had been there before I was born and would be there when I was dead. And it was up to me, therefore, to make of my brief opportunity the most that could be made.
这就好比是他突然问从一条黑暗的隧道中走出，发现自己正臵身于辽阔的天空之下。确确实实，我就是在巴黎才仿佛是第一次见到了天空。这使我深深地认识到——但这并没有使我忧伤„那天空在我出生前就已存在，而在我去世之后仍将存在。因此，如何尽可能地充分利用自己短暂的一生，就完全取决于我自己了。
17 I was born in New York, but have lived only in pockets of it. In Paris, I lived in all parts of the city – on the Right bank and the Left, among the bourgeoisie and among les miserables, and knew all kinds of people, from pimps and prostitutes in Pigalle to Egyptian bankers in Neuilly. This may
sound extremely unprincipled or even obscurely immoral: I found it healthy. I love to talk to people, all kinds of people, and almost everyone, as I hope we still know, loves a man who loves to listen.
我出生于纽约，但生活范围只限于纽约的一些小角落，而在巴黎，我的生活足迹却遍及全市的每一个角落——在右岸区和左岸区，在有钱的资产阶级中间和―悲惨世界‖里的穷人中间。我还结识了各式各样的人物，从皮加叶区的老鸨和妓女到纳伊区的埃及银行家都接触过。这听起来可能很不正经，甚至有点不道德，但我觉得这是正常的。我喜欢与人交谈，与各种各样的人交谈，而几乎每一个人——正如我所希望人们仍然明白的——都是喜欢爱听人讲话的人。 18 This perpetual dealing with people very different from myself caused a shattering in me of preconceptions I scarcely knew I held. The writer is meeting in Europe people who are not American, whose sense of reality is entirely different from his own. They may love or hate or admire or fear or envy this country – they see it, in any case, from another point of view, and this forces the writer to reconsider many things he had always taken for granted. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable.
与这些跟我自己大不相同的人的不断交往，破除了我思想上原先并没有意识到的一些偏见。作者在欧洲遇见的一些人并不是美国人，他们对现实的感受同他本人的感受完全两样。对于美国这个国家，他们或是热爱，或是憎恨，或是敬佩，或是畏惧，或是妒忌——反正他们是从另一个不同的角度来看待美国的，这就迫使作者对许多他原以为是理所当然的事情重新加以考虑。这个重新认识的过程是非常痛苦的，但也是很有价值的。
19 This freedom, like all freedom, has its dangers and its responsibilities. One day it begins to be borne in on the writer, and with great force, that he is living in Europe as an American. If he were living there as a European, he would be living on a different and far less attractive continent.
这种自由(指美国作家到欧洲后摆脱了原先的种种束缚和传统观念，等于获得了某种自由一一译者注)，像任何一种自由一样，也带来一些危险和责任。总有一天，在欧洲的美国作家会意识到，而且是强烈地意识到，他是作为一个美国人居住在欧洲的。倘若他是作为一个欧洲人居住在欧洲，那么，他所居住的这块大陆在他心目中的地位就会大不一样，其对他的吸引力也会大打折扣。
20 This crucial day may be the day on which an Algerian taxi-driver tells him how it feels to be an Algerian in Paris. It may bethe day on, which he passes a café terrace and catches a glimpse , of the tense, intelligent and troubled face of Albert Camus. Or it may be the day on which someone asks him to explain Little Rock and he begins to feel that it would be simpler – and, corny as the words may sound, more honorable – to go to Little Rock than sit in Europe, on an American passport, trying to explain it. 这个有决定性意义的一天，可能就是当一个阿尔及利亚出租车司机对他讲起作为一个阿尔及利亚人生活在巴黎有何种感受的那一天，也可能是他路过某一家露天小吃店的平台，一眼瞥见艾伯特·加缪那张紧张、睿智而又苦闷的面孔的那一天，还有可能是有人请他讲述一下小石城的事情的那一天。这时，他就会感觉到，与其拿着美国护照坐在欧洲向人们讲述小石城的事情，倒不如亲身投入到小石城的民主斗争中去来得干脆——或者说光荣，尽管这个词听起来有些不新鲜。
21 This is a personal day, a terrible day, the day to which his entire sojournhas been tending. It is the day he realizes that there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world; that if he has been preparing himself for anything in Europe, he had been preparing himself – for America. In short, the freedom that the American writer finds in Europe brings him, full circle, back to
himself, with the responsibility for his development where it always was: in his own hands. 这是他个人生活中有重大意义的一天，是可怕的一天，也是他的整个羁旅生涯目标所向的一天。就是在这一天，他终于认识到，在这个多灾多难的世界上并不存在什么太平乐土；如果说他一直在欧洲训练自己准备承担什么重任的话，他实际是在为美国而训练自己。总而言之，美国作家在欧洲找到的自由，带着他绕了整整一圈后，又回到了自己身边。用其自身发展的责任把自己又带回到了自由原本所在之处——他自己手中。
22 Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him – he may be forced to – but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally , the life of a writer depends.
即使是一头最不可救药的迷途小牛也必有其降生地点。他也许会脱离那曾生养他的群体——或许是被迫如此一一但是，无论他走到哪里，他身上总会带着他的出身标志，这是无论如何也抹不掉的。我认为了解这一点，甚至像那些最坚强的人那样，不论地位如何，能视之为乐事，是很重要的。说实在的，一个作家的命运便取决于他对这一点能否接受。
23 The charge has often been made against American writers that they do not describe society, and have no interest in it. They only describe individuals in opposition to it, or isolated from it. Of course, what the American writer is describing is his own situation. But what is Anna Karenina describing if not the tragic fate of the isolated individual, at odds with her time and place?
人们常常指责美国作家们．说他们不描写社会，对社会问题不感兴趣。他们只喜欢描写与社会对立的个人，或是与社会相脱离的个人。诚然，美国作家所描写的是他个人的情况，但《安娜·卡列宁娜》中所描写的，如果说不是那个与时代和社会格格不入的孤立个人的悲惨命运，那又到底是什么呢?
24 The real difference is that Tolstoy was describing an old and dense society in which everything seemed –to the people in it, though not to Tolstoy – to be fixed forever. And the book is a masterpiece because Tolstoy was able to fathom , and make us see, the hidden laws which really governed this society and made Anna‘s doom inevitable.
真正的区别在于：托尔斯泰所描写的是一个古老而结构严密的社会，在那个社会中，一切事物——在该社会的成员看来，不过不包括托尔斯泰一一似乎都是一成不变的。这部著作之所以成为一部伟大作品是因为托尔斯泰能够探索出，并且使我们清楚地看到一些潜在的规律，这些规律对那个社会起着实际的支配作用并使安娜的悲惨结局成为必然之事。
25 American writers do not have a fixed society to describe. The only society they know is one in which nothing is fixed and in which the individual must fight for his identity. This is a rich confusion, indeed, and it creates for the American writer unprecedented opportunities.
美国作家并没有一个一成不变的社会可供他们描写。他们所了解的社会只是一个万事皆变、人人为出人头地而奋斗的社会。这确实是一个五彩缤纷、错综复杂的社会，它为美国作家提供了前所未有的创作机会。
26 That the tension of American life, as well as the possibilities, are tremendous is certainly not even a question. But these are dealt with in contemporary literature mainly compulsively ; that is, the book is more likely to be a symptom of our tension than an examination of it. The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here. 美国生活的极度紧张和它提供的无限的发展机会已经是尽人皆知、毫无疑问的事实了。但当代文学作品中对这些问题的描写却很带勉强性。也就是说，这些作品不是对我们社会中的紧
张生活的深入分析，倒更像是这种紧张生活的直接反映。天晓得，现在该我们对自己进行一番检查的时候了。但如果我们要将自己从美国神话中解放出来，并设法弄清楚这个国家的现实情况究竟是怎样的，我们也就只能这样做。
27 Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception. It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter. 每个社会其实都是由一些潜在的规律，由一些人们没有说出来但却深深感觉到并看作是理所当然的事物所支配的，我们的社会也不例外。要弄清这些规律和事物，就要由美国作家来努力。在一个非常喜爱冲破禁忌却又不能由此从中解脱出来的社会，要弄清这些，不会是一件容易的事。
28 It is no wonder, in the meantime, that the American writer keeps running off to Europe. He needs sustenance for his journey and the best models he can find. Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of life‘s possibilities. 难怪在此期间美国作家不断跑到欧洲去。他的人生历程需要精神食粮，他也需要可能找到的最好的模式。欧洲有着我们还没有的东西，一种生活的神秘而又不可抗拒的极限感，一句话，一种悲剧感。而我们也有着他们十分需要的东西——一种认为生活大有可为的新认识。 29 In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.
在努力把新旧世界的看法结合起来的过程中，我们最强有力的武器不是政治家，而是作家。虽然我们迄今还未全信，可是内心的生活确是真正的生活，而人们那种海市蜃楼般的梦幻却对世界有着实实在在的影响。
Disappearing Through the Skylight从天窗中消失 Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr.小奥斯本本内特哈迪森
1 Science is committed to the universal.A sign of this is that the more successful a science becomes, the broader the agreement about its basic concepts: there is not a separate Chinese or American or Soviet thermodynamics, for example; there is simply thermodynamics. For several decades of the twentieth century there was a Western and a Soviet genetics, the latter associated with Lysenko's theory that environmental stress can produce genetic mutations. Today Lysenko's theory is discredited , and there is now only one genetics.
科学是能够为人们普遍接受的。有一个事实可用来说明这一点：一门科学发展程度越高，其基本概念就越能为人们普遍接受。举例而言，世界上就只有一种热力学，并不存在什么分开独立的中国热力学、美国热力学或者苏联热力学。在二十世纪的几十年的时间里，遗传学曾分为两派；西方遗传学和苏联遗传学。后者源于李森科的理论，即环境的作用可能造成遗传基因的变异。今天，李森科的理论已经被推翻，因此，世界上就只有一种遗传学了。
2 As the corollary of science, technology also exhibits the universalizing tendency. This is why the spread of technology makes the world look ever more homogeneous. Architectural styles, dress styles, musical styles--even eating styles--tend increasingly to be world styles. The world looks
more homogeneous because it is more homogeneous. Children who grow up in this world therefore experience it as a sameness rather than a diversity , and because their identities are shaped by this sameness, their sense of differences among cultures and individuals diminishes. As buildings become more alike, the people who inhabit the buildings become more alike. The result is described precisely in a phrase that is already familiar.\" the disappearance of history. 作为科学的自然产物，工艺技术也显示出一种世界通用的倾向。这就是为什么工艺技术的发展传播使世界呈现出一体化特征的原因。原本各异的世界各地的建筑风格、服饰风格、音乐风格--甚至饮食风格--都越来越趋向于变成统一的世界流行风格了。世界呈现出同一性特征是因为它本来具有同一性。在这个世界上长大的儿童感受到的是一个千篇一律的世界而不是一个多样化的世界。他们的个性也受到这种同一性的影响，因此，在他们的感觉中，不同文化和个人之间的差异变得越来越小了。由于世界各地的建筑越来越千篇一律，居住在这些建筑里的人也越来越千人一面了。这样带来的结果用一句人们已经听熟的话来描述再恰当不过：历史要消失了。
3 The automobile illustrates the Point With great clarity. A technological innovation like streamlining or all-welded body construction may be rejected initially, but if it is important to the efficiency or economics of automobiles, it will reappear in different ways until it is not only accepted but universally regarded as an asset. Today's automobile is no longer unique to a given company or even to a given national culture, its basic features are found, with variations, in automobiles in general, no matter who makes them.
以汽车为例即可非常清楚地证明这一点。诸如流线型或全焊接式车身结构一类的技术革新，一开始可能不被人接受，但假如这种技术革新在提高汽车制造业的工作效率和经济效益方面确有巨大作用，它便会一再地以各种变异的形式出现，直到最终它不仅会被接受，而且会被大家公认为是一种宝贵的成果。今天的汽车再也找不出某个汽车公司或某个民族文化的标志性特征了。一般的汽车，不管产于何地，其基本特征都大同小异。 4 A few years ago the Ford Motor Company came up with the Fiesta, which it called the \"World Car.\" Advertisements showed it surrounded by the flags of all nations. Ford explained that the cylinder block was made in England, the carburetor in Ireland, the transmission in France, the wheels in Belgium, and so forth.
几年前，福特汽车公司制造出一种菲爱斯塔牌汽车，并将其称为\"世界流行车\"。这种车出现在广告上的形象是周围环绕着世界各国的国旗。福特公司解释说，这种汽车的汽缸活塞是英国产的，汽化器是爱尔兰造的，变速器是法国产的，车轮是比利时产的，诸如此类，等等等等。
5 The Fiesta appears to have sunk without a trace. But the idea of a world car was inevitable. It was the automotive equivalent of the International Style. Ten years after the Fiesta, all of the large automakers were international. Americans had Plants in Europe, Asia, and South America, and Europeans and Japanese had plants in America and South America, and in the Soviet Union Fiat Fiat (= Fabbrica Italiana Automobile Torino ) workers refreshed themselves with Pepsi-Cola). In the fullness of time international automakers will have plants in Egypt and India and the People's Republic of China.
这种菲爱斯塔牌汽车现在似乎已完全销声匿迹了，但这种制造世界流行汽车的设想计划却是势在必行的。这表明汽车业也像建筑等行业一样在向国际流行风格的方向发展。菲爱斯塔牌汽车问世十年后，所有大型汽车制造公司都已国际化。美国人在欧洲、亚洲和南美洲都设了汽车厂。欧洲人和日本人也把他们的汽车厂设到了美国、南美洲以及苏联(菲亚特公司的工人在那儿可以喝到百事可乐来消乏解渴)。当时机成熟的时候，这些跨国型的汽车制造公司
还会把他们的汽车厂设在埃及、印度和中华人民共和国。 6 As in architecture, so in automaking.In a given cost range, the same technology tends to produce the same solutions. The visual evidence for this is as obvious for cars as for buildings. Today, if you choose models in the same price range, you will be hard put at 500 paces to tell one makefrom another. In other words, the specifically American traits that lingered in American automobiles in the 1960s--traits that linked American cars to American history--are disappearing. Even the Volkswagen Beetle has disappeared and has taken with it the visible evidence of the history of streamlining that extends from D'Arcy Thompson to Carl Breer to Ferdinand Porsche. 汽车制造业的情形也像建筑业的情形一样。在一定的成本范围内，相同的工艺技术就能产生相同的产品。证明这一点的直观证据在汽车方面和建筑方面一样，都是显而易见的。今天，如果要你在同一价格档次的各型汽车中进行选择，从距离五百步的地方看是很难分辨出各种不同牌子型号的汽车的。换句话说，六十年代里美国汽车还保留着的美国特色--美国汽车中那种与美国历史相联系的特点--正在逐渐消失。甚至连德国的大众汽车公司的大众甲壳虫型汽车也丧失了自身原有的特色，而通过自己车型的变化演示了从达西·汤普森到卡尔·布里尔到费迪南德·波尔舍一代一代的流线型汽车设计发展史。 7 If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the World Car he drives, modern man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, from one airport to the next, from one Holiday Inn to its successor three hundred miles down the road; but somehow his location never changes. He is cosmopolitann. The price he Pays is that he no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the word.The benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the modern sense is everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.
人创造了机器，而机器反过来也能塑造其创造者。由于汽车已普遍化，使用汽车的人也就司空见惯了。现代社会的人像他们驾驶的世界流行汽车一样正变得越来越彼此雷同。他们不再具有鲜明的个性特征，再不是某个特殊地理文化环境里孕育出来的特殊个人了。他们可以从一个装设空调的市场到另一个市场，从一个机场到另一个机场，从一个假日酒店到三百英里外的另一家酒店，不停地旅行运动，但他们所处的环境却可能永远一个样。他们是世界人，他们为此付出的代价是他们不再拥有一个传统意义的家。他们从中得到的好处则是开始觉得传统意义上的家是牢笼的别称，而现代意义的家则无处不是，自己身边周围的人又无不是自己的邻友。
8 The universalizing imperative of technology is irresistible.Barring the catastrophe of nuclear war, it will continue to shape both modern culture and the consciousness of those who inhabit that culture.
工艺技术的普遍应用是不可抗拒的。只要没有核战争给世界带来毁灭性灾难，这种应用将继续影响现代文化以及创造这种文化的现代人的思想意识。
9 This brings us to art and history again. Reminiscing on the early work of Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, Madame Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia wrote of the discovery of the machine aesthetic in 1949:\"I remember a time ... when every artist thought he owed it to himself to turn his back on the Eiffel Tower, as a protest against the architectural blasphemywith which it filled the sky.... The discovery and rehabilitation of ... machines soon generated propositions which evaded all tradition, above all, a mobile, extra human plasticity which was absolutely new....‖ 这又把我们的注意力带回到艺术和历史方面来了。迦百列布菲·皮卡比阿夫人追忆弗朗西
斯·皮卡比阿和马塞尔·杜尚的早期作品时对1949年机器美学的产生作了这样的描写：\"我记得有一个时期……每一位艺术家表示对埃菲尔铁塔的蔑视，谴责这座污染天空，亵渎神明的建筑是自己义不容辞的责任……机器……的发明与发展很快就提出了一些传统思维完全无法解决的命题，一种全新的、灵活的、超出人的理解力的可塑性……\"
10 Art is, in one definition, simply an effort to name the real world. Are machines \"the real world\" or only its surface? Is the real world that easy to find? Science has shown the in substantiality of the world. It has thus undermined an article of faith: the thingliness of things. At the same time, it has produced images of orders of reality underlying the thingliness of things. Are images of cells or of molecules or of galaxiesmore or less real than images of machines? Science has also produced images that are pure artifacts. Are images of self-squared dragons more or less real than images of molecules?
曾有人下定义说，艺术就是一种给现实世界命名的尝试。机器是\"现实世界\"本身还是仅仅是其表面呢?现实世界容易发现吗?科学已经证明，世界是虚无的。这就动摇了人们认为世界的物质是客观实在的信念。同时，科学又创造出了潜存于客观实在之中的各种不同种类和范畴的现实世界的形象。机器的形象与细胞、分子或是银河系这些物体形象相比较，哪一个更实在呢?科学还创造出了纯属人造物的形象。一个张牙舞爪的龙的形象比分子的形象是更接近现实还是更远离现实呢?
11 The skepticism of modern science about the thingliness of things implies a new appreciation of the humanity of art entirely consistent with Kandinsky's observation in On the Spiritual in Art that beautiful art \"springs from inner need, which springs from the soul.\"Modern art opens on a world whose reality is not \"out there\" in nature defined as things seen from a middle distance but \"in here\" in the soul or the mind. It is a world radically emptied of history because it is a form of perception rather than a content.
现代科学对世界万物的客观实在性的怀疑意味着对艺术的性质需重新评价，这与康定斯基在《论艺术中的精神因素》一书中对美的艺术所作的评价是十分吻合的。他说，美的艺术是\"发自人的灵魂深处的需要\"。现代艺术所描绘的并不是用眼睛看到的物质世界的客观现实，而是人的内心世界所反映的现实。因为现代艺术所描绘的世界不是客观存在的物质世界，而是人的内心世界，所以，它是一个完全丧失了历史的世界。
12 The disappearance of history is thus a liberation--what Madame Buffet-Picabia refers to as the discovery of \"a mobile extra-human plasticity which [is] absolutely new.\" Like science, modern art often expresses this feeling of liberation through play--in painting in the playfulness of Picasso and Joan Miro and in poetry in the nonsense of Dada and the mock heroics of a poem like Wallace Stevens's \"The Comedian as the Letter C.\"
因此，历史的消失是一种解放--即布菲皮卡比阿夫人所谓的\"一种全新的、灵活的、超出人的理解力的可塑性\"的发现。像科学一样，现代艺术往往也是通过玩耍的方式来表达这种思想解放的--在绘画艺术方面是通过毕加索和琼·米罗的玩耍性作品，在诗歌艺术方面是通过达达派的朦胧诗以及诸如华莱士·斯蒂文斯的《C字母一样的喜剧演员》一类的滑稽史诗。 13 The playfulness of the modern aesthetic is, finally, its most striking--and also its most serious and, by corollary, its most disturbing--feature. The playfulness imitates the playfulness of science that produces game theory and virtual particles and black holes and that, by introducing human growth genes into cows, forces students of ethics to reexamine the definition of cannibalism. The importance of play in the modern aesthetic should not come as a surprise. It is announced in every city in the developed world by the fantastic and playful buildings of postmodernism and neo-modernism and by the fantastic juxtapositions of architectural styles that typify collage city
and urban adhocism.
现代美学的玩耍性说到底是其最突出的，也是最严肃的，而必然地也是最令人不安的特征。这种玩耍性是模仿产生了博奕论、虚构粒子和黑洞的科学的荒诞性。这种科学的玩耍性还通过把人的生长基因植入牛体，迫使伦理学的研究者重新审定食人肉的习性的定义。玩耍在现代美学中的重要性不应引起惊讶。它在发达世界的每座城市里都通过后现代主义和新现代主义的奇形怪状和荒诞的建筑物，通过把各种建筑风格奇特地拼凑在一起得到反映，而这恰恰是拼贴画式的城市和无计划的大杂烩城市的典型表现。
14 Today modern culture includes the geometries of the International Style, the fantasies of facadism, and the gamesmanship of theme parks and museum villages . It pretends at times to be static but it is really dynamic. Its buildings move and sway and reflect dreamy visions of everything that is going on around them. It surrounds its citizens with the linear sculpture of pipelines and interstate highways and high-tension lines and the delicate virtuosities of the surfaces of the Chrysler Airflow and the Boeing 747 and the lacy weavings of circuits etched on silicon, as well as with the brutal assertiveness of oil tankers and bulldozers and the Tinkertoy complications of trusses and geodesic domes and lunar landers. It abounds in images and sounds and values utterly different from those of the world of natural things seen from a middle distance. 今天，现代文化包括了国际风格的几何图形、传统门面与新型建筑相结合的奇特图案以及主题公园和博物馆村庄的游戏绝招。这种文化有时装成是静态的，但实际上却是生机勃勃的。体现这种文化的建筑移动、摇摆，就像做梦一样，反映了周围发生的一切。这种文化向其公民展示了体现几何图形的直线结构，如管道、州际公路和高压电线，也展示了富有艺术性的流线型克莱斯勒公司的气流汽车、波音747飞机以及硅片集成电路上的精细网织图案。现代文化也向其公民展示了无情地引人注目的庞然大物--油轮和推土机以及结构玩具的复杂设计、短线拱顶和登月车辆。它充满了想象、声音和价值，完全不同于我们肉眼所看到的我们周围世界的自然景物。
15 It is a human world, but one that is human in ways no one expected. The image it reveals is not the worn and battered face that stares from Leonardo's self-portrait much less the one that stares, bleary and uninspired, every morning from the bathroom mirror. These are the faces of history. It is, rather, the image of an eternally playful and eternally youthful power that makes order whether order is there or not and that having made one order is quite capable of putting it aside and creating an entirely different or the way a child might build one structure from a set of blocks and then without malice and purely in the spirit of play demolish it and begin again. It is an image of the power that made humanity possible in the first place. 现代文化是一个显示人的特点的世界，但又不是人们想象的那种模样。它所表现的形象不是列奥纳多自画像上那种倦怠憔悴的面容，更不是每天早晨从浴室镜子里见到的模模糊糊、平平淡淡的面孔。这些都是历史的本来面目了。现代文化是一种永远具有玩耍性而又朝气蓬勃的力量；这种力量可以创造出某种秩序，不管这种秩序是否客观存在于现实世界之中；而且，在创造出一种秩序后，又完全有可能打破这种秩序，再创一个完全不同的新秩序，就像一个小孩玩积木时已经拼造出一种结构后又毫无恶意地以纯粹的玩耍态度拆散重拼一样。这就是它使人类显示其特点的形象。
16 The banks of the nineteenth century tended to be neoclassic structures of marble or granite faced with ponderous rows of columns. They made a statement\"\"We are solid. We are permanent. We are as reliable as history. Your money is safe in our vaults.\"
十九世纪的银行一般都是以大理石或花岗石砌成的新古典式建筑，正面装饰着一排排粗重的廊柱。它们向世人宣告：\"我们坚不可摧；我们永不衰朽；我们像历史一样令人信赖。您的
钱储放在我们的地下保险库里可保绝对完全。\"
17 Today's banks are airy structures of steel and glass, or they are store-fronts with slot-machinelike terminals, or trailers parked on the lots of suburban shopping malls. 今天的银行却是一些钢架玻璃结构的虚无飘渺的建筑，或是一些门前装有像自动售货机一样的计算机终端设备的商店门面，或是一些停放在城郊商业中心停车场上的挂车式活动房屋。 18 The vaults have been replaced by magnetic tapes. In a computer, money is sequences of digital signals endlessly recorded, erased, processed, and reprocessed, and endlessly modified by other computers. The statement of modern banks is \"We are abstract like art and almost invisible like the Crystal Palace. If we exist at all, we exist as an airy medium in which your transactions are completed and your wealth increased.\" 原先的地下保险库如今也换成了磁带来替代其职能。钱在电脑中变成了一系列数字信号，这些数字信号要不断地经过其他电脑一次次地录入、删除、处理、再处理并不断加以修改。现代银行向世人宣告的是：\"我们像艺术般的抽象，几乎像水晶宫般的无形。假如我们还存在的话，我们也只是以一种虚无飘渺的媒介而存在，通过这种媒介您们的交易得以进行，您们的财富得以增值。 19 That, perhaps, establishes the logical limit of the modern aesthetic. If so, the limit is a long way ahead, but it can be made out, just barely, through the haze over the road. As surely as nature is being swallowed up by the mind, the banks, you might say, are disappearing through their own skylights. 也许这就可以成为现代美学发展的逻辑上的极限。如果这样的话，这个极限点距离我们还有一段较长的路程，但其模糊的轮廓透过路上弥漫着的薄雾已依稀可辨。正如物质世界的客观现实逐渐消失于人们的头脑中一样，可以说，现代银行也正从自己的天窗中逐渐消失。
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