翻译天堂 2016-08-23
物的暴政
A traveler newly returned from the Pacific Ocean tells pleasant stories of the Patagonians. As the steamer he was in was passing through Magellan’s Straits some natives came out to her in boats. They wore no clothes at all, though there was snow in the air. A baby that came along with them made some demonstration that displeased its mother, who took it by the foot, as Thetis took Achilles, and soused it over the side of the boat into the cold seawater. When she pulled it in, it lay a moment whimpering in the bottom of the boat, and then curled up and went to sleep. The missionaries there have tried to teach the natives to wear clothes, and to sleep in huts; but, so far, the traveler says, with very limited success. The most shelter a Patagonian can endure is a little heap of rocks or a log to the windward of him; as for clothes, he despises them, and he is indifferent to ornament.
一位刚刚从太平洋归来的旅行者讲述了几则有关巴塔哥尼亚人的趣闻。当她所乘坐的轮船经过麦哲伦海峡的时候,有些当地人乘着小船靠了过来。尽管天空飘着雪花,这些人还是赤裸着身体。同行的一个小孩不听话,把母亲给惹恼了,她抓住孩子脚踝,就像是西蒂斯抓住阿克琉斯一样,将其倒提了起来,拎过船舷,泡进了冰冷的海水。等她把孩子拉回船上,孩子趴在船尾抽泣了一阵子,然后蜷曲起身子睡着了。当地的传教士想要教土著学会穿衣服,睡草房,不过按照这位旅行者的说法,迄今为止成效甚微。巴塔哥尼亚人能够容忍的庇护,顶多是一小堆石块或者是一根原本为他挡挡风;他们对衣物嗤之以鼻,而且也不喜欢戴首饰。
To many of us, groaning under the oppression of modern conveniences, it seems lamentably meddlesome to undermine the simplicity of such people, and enervate them with the luxuries of civilization. To be able to sleep out-o-doors, and go naked, and take sea-baths on wintry days with impunity, would seem a most alluring emancipation. No rent to pay, no tailor, no plumber, no newspaper to be read on pain of getting behind the times; no regularity in anything, not even meals; nothing to do except to find food, and no expense for undertakers or physicians, even if we fail; what a fine, untrammeled life it would be! It takes occasional contact with such people as the Patagonians to keep us in mind that civilization is the mere cultivation of our wants, and that the higher it is the more our necessities are multiplied, until, if we are rich enough, we get enervated by luxury, and the young men come in and carry us out.
我们中的许多人,在抱怨现代的便捷生活带来了过多的压力;在我们看来,破坏巴塔哥尼亚人的简单淳朴,这很可悲,是无事生非,等于用文明的奢华消减了巴塔哥尼亚人的活力。能够睡在户外,赤身裸体,大冬天也敢洗海水浴,这种无拘无束是那么令人神往。不用付房租、不用请裁缝、不用雇水工,不读报纸也不用担心会落后于时代;做任何事情都不必受规矩束缚,甚至连吃饭也不用定时定点;没有什么需要做,只需要找点吃的,万一身体不行了,不用花钱请殡仪馆的人,也不用请医生;这种生活是多么的美好,多么的逍遥啊!和巴塔哥尼亚人这样的人偶尔进行一下接触,能让我们记住文明不过是对欲望的培养,文明的程度越高,我们的必需品就越多。等我们足够富足的时候,我们会被奢侈榨干了活力,年轻人得进来把我们抬出去。
We want so many, many things, it seems a pity that those simple Patagonians could not send missionaries to us to show us how to do without. The comforts of life, at the rate they are increasing, bid fair to bury us soon, as Tarpeia was buried under the shields of her friends the Sabines. Mr. Hamerton, in speaking of the increase of comfort in England, groans at the "trying strain of expense to which our extremely high standard of living subjects all except the rich." It makes each individual of us very costly to keep, and constantly tempts people to concentrate on the maintenance of fewer individuals means that would in simpler times be divided among many. "My grandfather," said a modern the other day, "left $200,000. He was considered a rich man in those days; but, dear me! he supported four or five families--all his needy relations and all my grandmother’s." Think of an income of $10,000 a year being equal to such a strain, and providing suitably for a rich man’s large family in the bargain! It wouldn’t go so far now, and yet most of the reasonable necessaries of life cost less to-day than they did two generations ago. The difference is that we need so very many comforts that were not invented in our grandfather’s time.
我们想要的很多很多,令人遗憾的是那些纯朴的巴塔哥尼亚人没有派传教士来教我们如何摆脱这些欲望。生活的舒适品越积越多,按照这种速率,我们大有希望很快被它们埋葬,就像是塔尔皮亚葬身在她的朋友萨宾人的盾牌之下一样。汉默顿先生谈到在英国越来越多的人追求舒适安逸的时候,悲叹道:“我们的生活标准过高,除非是富翁,人人都会感到手头窘迫。”它使我们每个人的耗费昂贵,也在不断诱惑者人们减少供养的人数,而在更淳朴的年代,这些钱本可以分给许多人。前不久有个现代人说:“我的祖父留下了20万美元。他在当时被认为是一位富翁;但是,天呐!他要养四五家人——他所有的穷亲戚和我祖母所有的穷亲戚。”想象看一年一万的收入能承受得起这样的负担,此外还能够为这位有钱人的大家庭提供像样的生活!现在这是不可能的了,尽管目前大多数合理的生活必需品比两代人之前的价格更便宜。差异在于我们需要这么多的舒适品,这些东西在祖父的时代还没有被发明出来。
…The trouble seems to be with very many of us, in contemporary private life as well as in institutions, that the enlightened experience of the day invents more necessaries than we can get the money to pay for. Our opulent friends are constantly demonstrating to us by example how indispensably convenient the modern necessaries are, and we keep having them until we either exceed our incomes or miss the higher concerns of life in the effort to maintain a complete outfit of its creature comforts.
…对我们中的许多人来说,无论是在当代个人生活还是在社会生活中,都会碰到这个问题;时下人们体验文明,发明了大量的必需品,却没有足够的钱付账。我们富裕的朋友总在不断现身说法,向我们展示现代必需品是如何便利,如何必不可少,而我们则在不断购买,或者是超出了预算,或者是忘记了生活更重要的意义,只忙于追求吃穿用度的齐备。
And the saddest part of all is that it is in such great measure an American development. We Americans keep inventing new necessaries, and the people of the effete monarchies gradually adopt such of them as they can afford. When we go abroad we growl about the inconveniences of European life--the absence of gas in bedrooms, the scarcity and sluggishness of elevators, the primitive nature of the plumbing, and a long list of other things without which life seems to press unreasonably upon our endurance. Nevertheless, if the res angustae domi [poor circumstances or limited means] get straiter than usual, we are always liable to send our families across the water to spend a season in the practice of economy in some land where it costs less to live.
最令人黯然神伤的是,这主要是美国的发展模式。我们美国人不停地发明新的必需品,而那些来自没落君主国家的人们也在得得瑟瑟地仿效我们。出国的时候,我们不断抱怨欧洲生活的种种不便——卧室里没有(烧壁炉的)燃气,电梯数量少而且速度慢,下水管道陈旧,除吃之外还可以列上长长一串。生活中缺了这些东西,似乎是在无理地挑战着我们的忍耐力。不过,如果光景比往年更不济或者是手头更紧,我们往往会把家人送到大洋对岸住上一个季度,在生活花费不那么昂贵的国度练习一下节俭。
Of course it all belongs to Progress, and no one is quite willing to have it stop, but it does a comfortable sufferer good to get his head out of his conveniences sometimes and complain.
当然,时代在“进步”,没有人愿意阻止发展的脚步,但是对一位受舒适之苦的人来说,偶尔从舒适中伸出头,抱怨一下,也是件好事。