两年前第一次听说捷克前总统哈维尔这个人，并读到崔卫平老师翻译的《哈维尔文集》时，被其事迹和文字里智慧、博爱的光芒所深深打动。对捷克平滑完成社会转型羡慕不已，直到今日我在很多社交网络的头像都还是天鹅绒革命的现场照片。因为不太认同崔老师的某些译笔，在她的译文基础上重译了一下《给胡萨克的公开信》，不过因为懒惰，一直没译完。

哈维尔先生现在上了大船，我们能做的也只能缅怀。希望他的精神能激励更多正在遭受苦难和不公正待遇的人民，以使他们能够有勇气和智慧完成属于他们自己的不流血革命。

现送上完整英文版和部分中文译文，后面的译文接下来几天会补上，如有错漏，还望指正：

下文出自：http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/index.php?sec=1&id=1

此处转载纯为学习目的，原文版权归属请见：http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/Index.php?sec=6&id=4 。

“Dear Dr. Husák” (April 1975), addressed to Dr. Gustav Husák, who was then the general secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, is Havel’s first major public statement after being blacklisted in 1969. He describes the circumstances surrounding the writing of this letter in the interview with Jiří Lederer on page 84. The letter was first published in English, in this translation, in Encounter (September 1975). It has subsequently appeared in several anthologies of Czech writing, most recently in Václav Havel or Living in Truth, edited by Jan Vladislav (London: Faber & Faber, 1986). The translator is not identified.

此信写于1975年4月，收信人是时任捷克斯洛伐克总统和捷共总书记的古斯塔夫·胡萨克。这是哈维尔于1969年被官方加入黑名单之后首次公开发表的文章。此文最早用英文发表于1975年9月的英国自由主义刊物 Encounter 杂志上，随后收录于多部捷克作家文集中。英文译者不详。

Dear Dr. Husák,

亲爱的胡萨克博士：

In our offices and factories work goes on, discipline prevails. The efforts of our citizens are yielding visible results in a slowly rising standard of living: people build houses, buy cars, have children, amuse themselves, live their lives.

现如今，我们的办公室和工厂都有序运行，国民的努力成果有目共睹，大家的生活水平正缓慢提升着：人们造房子，买汽车，生小孩，娱乐消遣，过他们的生活。

All this, of course, amounts to very little as a criterion for the success or failure of your policies. After every social upheaval, people invariably come back in the end to their daily labors, for the simple reason that they want to stay alive; they do so for their own sake, after all, not for the sake of this or that team of political leaders.

当然，所有这些，并不能拿来证明您的政策成功与否。每一次社会动荡之后，人们都会回归于日常劳作。原因再简单不过——他们要活着，而且是为他们自己而活，归根结底，并不是为了这个或那个政治领导人的统治集团。

Not that going to work, doing the shopping, and living their own lives is all that people do. They do much more than that: they commit themselves to numerous output norms which they then fulfill and over-fulfill; they vote as one man and unanimously elect the candidates proposed to them; they are active in various political organizations; they attend meetings and demonstrations; they declare their support for everything they are supposed to. Nowhere can any sign of dissent be seen from anything that the government does.

但除了上班、购物、过自己的生活，他们还会做很多很多事：他们投身于需要不断完成并超越的巨大生产计划；他们行动一致地投票选举某个提名给他们的候选人，就像只有一个人在投票一样；他们活跃于各种政治组织；他们参加会议和游行；他们表达对每一件他们应该支持的事的支持。无论在哪里，政府无论要做什么，都不会有人提出异议。

These facts, of course, are not to be made light of. One must ask seriously, at this point, whether all this does not confirm your success in achieving the tasks your team set itself-those of winning the public’s support and consolidating the situation in the country.

这些事情所展现的，当然不是什么轻松的状况。它让人不禁要认真询问，现在的所有这一切是否还能昭示您的成功？您是否完成了您和您的团队早先确立的任务——赢得公众支持并稳定国家局势？

The answer must depend on what we mean by consolidation.

问题的答案必须建立在对稳定的理解之上。

Insofar as it is to be measured solely by statistical returns of various kinds, by official statements and police accounts of the public’s political involvement, and so forth, then we can hardly feel any doubt that consolidation has been achieved.

如果单靠各式各样的统计数字来衡量，或者靠官方声明和警方对民众参与政治事务的记录之类，我们不难得出结论——统一而团结的稳定已然达到。

But what if we take consolidation to mean something more, a genuine state of mind in society? Supposing we start to inquire about more durable, perhaps subtler and more imponderable, but nonetheless significant factors, such as what, by way of genuine personal, human experience lies hidden behind all the figures? Supposing we ask, for example, what has been done for the moral and spiritual revival of society, for the enhancement of the truly human dimensions of life, for the elevation of man to a higher degree of dignity, for his truly free and authentic assertion in this world? What do we find when we thus turn our attention from the mere outward manifestations to their inner causes and consequences, their connections and meanings, in a word, to that less obvious plane of reality where those manifestations might actually acquire a general human meeting? Can we, even then, consider our society “consolidated”?

但是，如果我们把稳定的含义更推进一步，把它定义为社会中一种真实的精神状态呢？让我们开始考虑那些更为持久，也许还更微妙、更难以捉摸的因素——尽管如此，它们仍是有意义的——譬如，所有这些数字背后，真实的个人到底是何种体验？让我们再问一些问题，例如，对于社会之道德与精神复兴，对于生活中真正人性一面之扩增，我们做了什么？对于将人的尊严提升至一个新的高度，让人更自由更真切地表达他对世界的看法，我们又做了些什么？当我们停止关注那些浅层的外在表现，转而关注其内在诱因与潜在结果，关注这些现象之间的联系与意义，也就是说，如果我们去关注现实的不那么明显的层面，我们能获得什么？在这一层面，说不定可以从那些现象中挖掘出某种普遍的人性特点。至此，我们还能说我们的社会“统一”、“团结”、“稳定”吗？

I make so bold as to answer, No; to assert that, for all the outwardly persuasive facts, inwardly our society, far from being a consolidated one, is, on the contrary, plunging ever deeper into a crisis more dangerous, in some respects, than any we can recall in our recent history.

请容我冒昧作答——不，完全不能。因为所有这些看起来颇具说服力的事实，亦显示出我们社会内部的脆弱。我们的社会远不是一个稳定的存在，恰恰相反，她正陷入一场史无前例的危机。在某些方面，这是一场比我们近代史中所能忆起的任何时候还要严重的危机。

I shall try to justify this assertion.

我会尝试解释我的观点。

The basic question one must ask is this: Why are people in fact behaving in the way they do? Why do they do all these things that, taken together, form the impressive image of a totally united society giving total support to its government? For any unprejudiced observer, the answer is, I think, selfevident: They are driven to it by fear.

首先需要弄清楚一个基本问题：我们的人民到为何表现得如此这般？他们为什么要做那些事情？他们的行为，总体上给人十分深刻的印象——这是一个对政府百分百支持的百分百团结的社会。我想，对于任何不带偏见的观察者来说，答案不言自明：他们被恐惧所驱动。

For fear of losing his job, the schoolteacher teaches things he does not believe; fearing for his future, the pupil repeats them after him; for fear of not being allowed to continue his studies, the young man joins the Youth League and participates in whatever of its activities are necessary; fear that, under the monstrous system of political credits, his son or daughter will not acquire the necessary total of points for enrollment at a school leads the father to take on all manner of responsibilities and “voluntarily” to do everything re~ quired. Fear of the consequences of refusal leads people to take part in elections, to vote for the proposed candidates, and to pretend that they regard such ceremonies as genuine elections; out of fear for their livelihood, position, or prospects, they go to meetings, vote for every resolution they have to, or at least keep silent: it is fear that carries them through humiliating acts of self-criticism and penance and the dishonest filling out of a mass of degrading questionnaires; fear that someone might inform against them prevents them from giving public, and often even private, expression to their true opinions. It is the fear of suffering financial reverses and the effort to better themselves and ingratiate themselves with the authorities that in most cases makes working men put their names to “work commitments”; indeed, the same motives often lie behind the establishment of Socialist Labor Brigades, in the clear realization that their chief function is to be mentioned in the appropriate reports to higher levels. Fear causes people to attend all those official celebrations, demonstrations, and marches: Fear of being prevented from continuing their work leads many scientists and artists to give allegiance to ideas they do not in fact accept, to write things they do not agree with or khow to be false, to join official organizations or to take part in work of whose value they have the lowest opinion, or to distort and mutilate their own works. In the effort to save themselves, many even report others for doing to them what they themselves have been doing to the people they report.

因为害怕丢掉工作，教师讲授自己并不相信的东西；因为担心自己的前途，学生跟着老师重复这些东西；因为害怕无法继续学业，青年人加入共青团并参加组织上要求的活动；因为恐惧在这畸形的庞大政治积分体系中自己的子女达不到入学所需分数，父母承担起五花八门的责任并“志愿”去做被要求的所有事情。因为不敢承受拒绝服从的后果，人们参加选举，投票给安排好的候选人，并且还装作这是一场真正选举的样子；出于对生计、地位或者前程的担忧，它们出席会议，投票赞成每一项决议，或至少保持沉默：正是恐惧让他们甘愿经受自我检讨、深刻忏悔、乃至违背本意地填写大量卑劣调查材料的羞辱；因为恐惧有人告发检举，它们不敢公开地，甚至私下里也不敢，表达自己的真实观点。因为害怕遭受经济条件的倒退，因为只有讨好权势者才能获得提拔，有工作的人只好在“工作承诺”上署上大名——至少大多数情况下是如此；事实上，同样的动机也隐含于“社会主义生产队”的筹建背后，他们清楚地意识到这一组织的主要功能不过是让他们的名字适时地出现在给上层领导的某些报告之中。是恐惧让人们参加所有那些官方庆典、示威游行；因为害怕被停止工作，许多科学家和艺术家不得不对他们实际上并不接受的思想表示爱戴，不得不写一些他们并不赞同乃至明知是错误的话，不得不加入一些官方组织或者接下那些自己十分鄙夷的工作，又或者把自己的作品歪曲、破坏得面目全非。为了保住自己，很多人还去举报他人，理由是被举报者对他们做着恰恰是他们自己正对被举报者所做之事。

The fear I am speaking of is not, of course, to be taken in the ordinary psychological sense as a definite, precise emotion. Most of those we see around us are not quaking like aspen leaves: they wear the faces of confident, self-satisfied citizens. We are concerned with fear in a deeper sense, an ethical sense if you will, namely, the more or less conscious participation in the collective awareness of a permanent and ubiquitous danger; anxiety about what is being, or might be, threatened; becoming gradually used to this threat as a substantive part of the actual world; the increasing degree to which, in an ever more skillful and matter-of-fact way, we go in for various kinds of external adaptation as the only effective method of self defense.

我所说的恐惧，当然不是通常心理学意义上所定义的一种确切情感。我们身边的大部分人并没有像杨树叶一样颤栗不已：他们看起来都是信念坚定、心满意足的样子。我们面对的是一种更深层次的恐惧，毋宁说一种社会伦理层面的恐惧。具体表现为，或多或少地参与到针对某种持久且普遍之危险的集体警觉之中；忧心于正在进行或可能会发生的威胁；逐渐习惯于这种威胁，并把它当作现实世界必然存在的一部分；以一种更为娴熟和世故的方式，越来越多地曲意逢迎，如同只有如此才能自卫一般。

Naturally, fear is not the only building block in the present social structure.

Nonetheless, it is the main, the fundamental material, without which not even that surface uniformity, discipline, and unanimity on which official documents base their assertions about the “consolidated” state of affairs in our country could be attained.

自然，恐惧并非当前社会结构的唯一支撑。然而，它却是最重要、最基本的建筑材料。没有了它，官方文件中判定我国“稳定”状况所依据的表面的团结、纪律、统一也无法达到。

The question arises, of course: What are people actually afraid of? Trials? Torture? Loss of property? Deportations? Executions? Certainly not. The most brutal forms of pressure exerted by the authorities upon the public are, fortunately, past history-at least in our circumstances. Today, oppression takes more subtle and selective forms. And even if political trials do not take place today-everyone knows how the authorities manage to manipulate them-they only represent an extreme threat, while the main thrust has moved inco the sphere of existential pressure. Which, of course, leaves the core of the matter largely unchanged.

接下来我们又不禁想问另一个问题：大家到底在惧怕些什么？审讯？拷打？破财？被驱逐？极刑？当然不是。我们应当庆幸，当局施加于公众最严苛的压力，其实是“过去的历史”——至少现在我们的境况如此。现如今，压迫的形式更为微妙和充满心机。即便政治案件已成为历史——大家十分清楚当局对此如何操纵——那也只是一种极端威胁，而主要推动力早已由生存压力来提供。不难看出，事情的本质并未发生什么改变。

Notoriously, it is not the absolute value of a threat which counts, so much as its relative value. It is not so much what someone objectively loses, as the subjective importance it has for him on the plane on which he lives, with its own scale of values. Thus, if a person today is afraid, say, of losing the chance of working in his own field, this may be a fear equally strong, and productive of the same reactions, as if’-in another historical context-he had been threatened with the confiscation of his property. Indeed, the technique of existential pressure is, in a sense, more universal. For there is no one in our country who is not, in a broad sense, existentially vulnerable- Everyone has something to lose and so everyone has reason to be afraid. The range of things one can lose is broad, extending from the manifold privileges of the ruling caste and all the special opportunities afforded to the powerful-such as the enjoyment of undisturbed work, advancement and earning power, the ability to work in one’s field, access to higher education-down to the mere possibility of living in that limited degree of legal certainty available to other citizens, instead of finding oneself amongst the special class to whom not even those laws which apply to the rest of the public apply, in other words, among the victims of Czechoslovak political apartheid. Yes, everyone has someihing to lose. The humblest workman’s mate can be shifted to an even more lowly and worse-paid job. Even he can be cruelly punished for speaking his mind at a meeting or in the pub.

人人心知肚明，威胁的绝对大小并不重要，其相对大小才更重要。人们客观上失去的并不能说明什么，还要看以他生活水平里的价值尺度来看，可能失去的东西对他具有何种主观意义。因此，举个例子来说，今天某人害怕失去合适工作机会的程度或与其在另外的历史背景下害怕财产被完全充公一样强烈，并且将引发几乎完全相同的反应。实际上，从某种意义上来说，若以生存压力作为武器，几乎无人可以幸免。因为，在我们这个国家，广义来看，没有人的存在是不脆弱的——人人皆有可失去的东西，人人皆有理由忧心。人们可失去的东西范围之广，往高处说，包括统治阶层的种种特权与权势者的特殊便利——例如，可以安心享受无人打扰的工作，轻松获得职位晋升及谋求更多权力，拥有在自己擅长领域工作和接受高等教育的资格；往低处说，包括其他公民得以享受有限法定权利的仅存可能性，而不是成为某特殊群体的一员——对这一群体，连适用于其他公民的律法也不能适用，意即，成为捷克斯洛伐克政治隔离的受害者。是的，人人皆有可失去之物。最卑微的工人还可以被安排去做更为下贱、薪水更少的工作。即使是他也可能因在会议上或小酒馆里说出自己的想法而遭受残酷惩罚。

This system of existential pressure, embracing the whole of society and every individual in it, either as a specific everyday threat or as a general contingency, could not, of course, work effectively if it were not backed up-exactly like the former, more brutal forms of pressure-by its natural hinterland in the power structure, namely, by that force which renders it comprehensive, complex, and robust: the ubiquitous, omnipotent state police.

生存压力系统覆盖了整个社会以及其中的每一个人，它可能作为某种特定的日常威胁出现，也可能是某种不经意的潜在意外，但如果没有人在背后支撑，它的效用将大打折扣——这与历史上某种更残酷的压力形式如出一辙——也就是，我们无处不在，无所不能的国家警察。它们都由其在权力结构中自然而生的隐秘腹地所支持，正是这力量让它们变得如此全面、复杂和难以击破。

For this is the hideous spider whose invisible web runs right through the whole of society; this is the vanishing point where all the lines of fear ultimately intersect; this is the final and irrefutable proof that no citizen can hope to challenge the power of the state. And even if most of the people, most of the time, cannot see this web with their own eyes, nor touch its filaments, even the simplest citizen is well aware of its existence, assumes its silent presence at every moment in every place, and behaves accordingly-behaves, that is, so as to acquit themselves in those hidden eyes and ears. And he knows very well why he must. For the spider can intervene in someone’s life without any need to have him in hisjaws. There is no need at all actually to be interrogated, charged, brought to trial, or sentenced. For one’s superiors are also ensnared in the same web; and at every level where one’s fate is decided, there are people collaborating or forced to collaborate with the state police. Thus, the very fact that the state police can intervene in one’s life at any time, without his having any chance of resisting, suffices to rob his life of some of its naturalness and authenticity and to turn it into a kind of endless dissimulation.

这力量是一只丑恶的蜘蛛，织出一张无形的网，精准覆盖了整个社会；这力量是一个灭点，所有恐惧之线最后都交会于此；这力量是一场无从辩驳的终极力证，证明没有哪位公民可以与国家的力量抗衡。虽然大多数人大多数时候都无法亲眼见到这张网，亦不能触碰其一丝一线，但就连头脑最简单的平民也清楚地知道其存在，并相信它静静地存在于每时每刻、每个角落。于是他们恰如其分地规范着自己的言行，以免激怒那些看不见的眼睛和耳朵。大家十分清楚为什么要这么做。因为这只蜘蛛连嘴都不用动一动就可以扰乱一个人的生活。完全不需要讯问、起诉、庭审，直到宣判的过场。人们的各层上级也被这张巨网网罗；在每一个决定命运的时刻，总会有人自愿或者被迫地站出来与国家警察合作。他们能随时对他的生活横加干涉，而他又毫无反抗的机会，这样的事实已足够夺去人们生活中的部分本真和纯善，并将其转变成一种无止无尽的虚伪逢迎。

If it is fear which lies behind people’s defensive attempts to preserve what they have, it becomes increasingly apparent that the chief impulses for their aggressive efforts to win what they do not yet possess are selfishness and careerism.

如果说是恐惧让人们做出自我保护性的举动，是恐惧让他们努力留存个人所有之物，那么，我们也更愿意相信，令他们不择手段地争取还未到手之物的最大冲动则来于他们的自私自利和对名利的勃勃野心。

Seldom in recent times, it seems, has a social system offered scope so openly and so brazenly to people willing to support anything as long as it brings them some advantage; to unprincipled and spineless men, prepared to do anything in their craving for power and personal gain; to born lackeys, ready for any humiliation and willing at all times to sacrifice their neighbors’ and their own honor for a chance to ingratiate themselves with those in power.

近代似乎很少有这样一种社会体系，如此恬不知耻地公然赐予这些人生存空间：给那些只要自己能得到一点好处就心甘情愿支持任何事情的人；给那些为了追名逐利什么都肯做的无原则无骨气之人；给那些可以任意羞辱的拍马天才，他们随时愿意为讨好权势者而放弃身边亲朋乃至自己的尊严。

In view of this, it is not surprising that so many public and influential positions are occupied, more than ever before, by notorious careerists, opportunists, charlatans, and men of dubious record; in short, by typical collaborators, men, that is, with a special gift for persuading themselves at every turn that their dirty work is a way of rescuing something, or, at least, of preventing still worse men from stepping into their shoes. Nor is it surprising, in these circumstances, that corruption among public employees of all kinds, their willingness openly to accept bribes for anything and allow themselves shamelessly to be swayed by whatever considerations their private interests and greed dictate, is more widespread than can be recalled during the last decade.

有鉴于此，我们也就不奇怪为什么如此多重要公职都已越来越多地被臭名昭著的名利至上者、机会主义者、花言巧语者和背景可疑的人所占据。总而言之，这些人都是典型的“合作人士”。他们天赋异禀，总能在关键时刻劝服自己，说自己所做的坏事是为了挽救什么东西，或者，至少可以防止更坏的人接替他们。在这样的情形下，出现史上最大规模的公务员腐败也就不足为奇了。他们坦然地接受任何目的的贿赂，寡廉鲜耻地因着自己的私利与贪欲摇摆不定。

The number of people who sincerely believe everything that the official propaganda says and who selflessly support the government’s authority is smaller than it has ever been. But the number of hypocrites rises steadily: up to a point, every citizen is, in fact, forced to be one.

真心实意相信所有官方话语，并且支持政府权威的民众已经减少至史上最少，而口是心非的伪君子的数量却稳步上升——已达到几乎所有人，每个公民，都被迫成为其中之一的程度。

This dispiriting situation has, of course, its logical causes. Seldom in recent times has a regime cared so little for the real attitudes of outwardly loyal citizens or for the sincerity of their statements. It is enough to observe that no one, in the course of all those self-criticisms and acts of penance, really cares whether people mean what they say, or are only considering their own advantages. In fact, one can safely say that the second assumption is made more or less automatically, without anything immoral being seen in this. Indeed, the prospect of personal advantage is used as the main argument in obtaining such statements. For the most part no one tries to convince the penitent that he was in error or acted wrongly, but simply that he must repent in order to save himsel^ At the same time, the benefits he stands to gain are colorfully magnified, while the bitter taste, which will remain after the act of penance, is played down as an illusion.

这一令人伤感的现象自然有其逻辑成因。

And should some eccentric repent in all sincerity and show it, for example, by refusing the appropriate reward on principle, the regime would, in all probability, treat him with suspicion.

In a way, we are all being publicly bribed. If you accept this or that official position at work-not, of course, as a means of serving your colleagues, but of serving the managementyou will be rewarded with such-and-such privileges. If you join the Youth League, you will be given the right and access to such-and-such forms of entertainment. If, as a creative artist, you take part in such-and-such official functions, you will be rewarded with such-and-such genuine creative opportunities. Think what you like in private; as long as you agree in public, refrain from making difficulties, suppress your interest in truth, and silence your conscience, the doors will be wide open to you.

If the principle of outward adaptation is made the keystone to success in society, what sort of human qualities will be encouraged and what sort of people, one may ask, will come to the fore?

Somewhere between the attitude of protecting oneself from the world out of fear, and an aggressive eagerness to conquer the world for one’s own benefit, lies a range of feelings which it would be wrong to overlook, because they, too, play a significant role in forming the moral climate of today’s “united society”: feelings of indifference and everything that goes with them.

It is as though after the shocks of recent history, and the kind of system subsequently established in this country, people had lost all faith in the future, in the possibility of setting public affairs right, in the meaning of a struggle for truth and justice. They shrug off anything that goes beyond their everyday, routine concern for their own livelihood; they seek ways of escape; they succumb to apathy, to indifference toward suprapersonal
values and their fellow men, to spiritual passivity and depression.

And everyone who still tries to resist by, for instance, refusing to adopt the principle of dissimulation as the key to survival, doubting the value of any self-fulFillment purchased at the cost of self-alienation-such a person appears to his ever more indifferent neighbors as an eccentric, a fool, a Don Quixote, and in the end is regarded inevitably with some aversion, like everyone who behaves differently from the rest and in a way which, moreover, threatens to hold up a critical mirror before their eyes. Or, again, those indifferent neighbors may expel such a person from their midst or shun him as required, for appearance’ sake while sympathizing with him in secret or in private, hoping to still their conscience by clandestine approval of someone who acts as they themselves should, but cannot.

Paradoxically, though, this indifference has become an active social force. Is it not plain indifference, rather than fear, that brings many to the voting booth, to meetings, to membership in official organizations? Is not the political support enjoyed by the regime to a large degree simply a matter of routine, of habit, of automatism, of laziness behind which lies nothing but total resignation? Participation in political rituals in which no one believes is pointless, but it does ensure a quiet life-and would it be any less pointless not to participate? One would gain nothing, and lose the quiet life in the bargain.

Most people are loath to spend their days in ceaseless conflict with authority, especially when it can only end in the defeat of the isolated individual. So why not do what is required of you? It costs you nothing, and in time you cease to bother about it. It is not worth a moment’s thought.

Despair leads to apathy, apathy to conformity, conformity to routine performance-which is then quoted as evidence of “mass political involvement” All this goes to make. up the contemporary concept of “normal” behavior-a concept which is, in essence, deeply pessimistic.

The more completely one abandons any hope of general reform, any interest in suprapersonal goals and values, or any chance of exercising inftuence in an “outward” direction, the more his energy is diverted in the direction of least resistance, i.e., “inwards:’ People today are preoccupied far more with themselves, their families and their homes. It is there that they find rest, there that they can forget the world’s folly and freely exercise their creative talents. They fill their homes with all kinds of appliances and pretty things, they try to improve their accommodations, they try to make life pleasant for themselves, building cottages, looking after their cars, taking more interest in food and clothing and domestic comfort. In short, they turn their main attention to the material aspects of their private lives.

Clearly, this social orientation produces favorable economic results. It encourages improvements in the neglected fields of consumer goods production and public services. It helps to raise the general living standard. Economically, it is a significant source of dynamic energy, capable, at least par tially, of developing society’s material wealth, which the intlexible, bureaucratized, and unproductive state sector of the economy could hardly ever hope to accomplish. (It is enough to compare state and private housing construction as to quantity and quality.)

The authorities welcome and support this spillover of energy into the private sphere.

But why? Because it stimulates economic growth? Certainly, that is one reason. But the whole spirit of current political propaganda and practice, quietly but systematically applauding this “inward” orientation as the very essence of human fulfillment on earth, shows only too clearly why the authorities really welcome this transfer of energy- They see it for what it really is in its psychological origins: an escape from the public sphere. Rightly divining that such surplus energy, if directed “outward,” must sooner or later turn against them-that is, against the particular forms of power they obstinately cling to-they do not hesitate to represent as human life what is really a desperate substitute for living. In the interest of the smooth management of society, then, society’s attention is deliberately diverted from itself, that is, from social concerns. By fixing a person’s whole attention on his mere consumer interests, it is hoped to render him incapable of realizing the increasing extent to which he has been spiritually, politically, and morally violated. Reducing him to a simple vessel for the ideals of a primitive consumer society is intended to turn him into pliable material for complex manipulation. The danger that he might conceive a longing to fulfill some of the immense and unpredictable potential he has as a human being is to be nipped in the bud by imprisoning him within the wretched range of parts he can play as a consumer, subject to the limitations of a centrally directed market.

All the evidence suggests that the authorities are applyiug a method quite adequate for dealing with a creature whose only aim is self-preservation. Seeking the path of least resis~ tance, they completely ignore the price that must be paidthe harsh assault on human integrity, the brutal castration of man’s humanity.

Yet these same authorities obsessively justify themselves with their revolutionary ideology, in which the ideal of man’s total liberation has a central place! But what, in fact, has hap~ pened to the concept of human personality and its manysided, harmonious, and authentic growth? Of man liberated from the clutches of an alienating social machinery, from a mythical hierarchy of values, formalized freedoms, from the dictatorship of property, the fetish and the might of money? What has happened to the idea that people should live in full enjoyment of social and legaljustice, have a creative share in economic and political power, be elevated in human dignity and become truly themselves? Instead of a free share in eco~ nomic decision making, free participation in political life, and free intellectual advancement, all people are actually offered is a chance freely to choose which washing machine or refrig~ erator they want to buy.

In the foreground, then, stands the imposing facade of grand humanistic ideals-and behind it crouches the modest family house of a socialist bourgeois. On the one side, bom~ bastic slogans about the unprecedented increase in every sort of freedom and the unique structural variety of life; on the other, unprecedented drabness and the squalor of life reduced to a hunt for consumer goods.

Somewhere at the top of the hierarchy of pressures by which man is maneuvered into becoming an obedient member of a consumer herd, there stands, as I have hinted, a concealed, omnipotent force: the state police. It is no coincidence, I suppose, that this body should so aptly illustrate the gulf that separates the ideological facade from everyday reality. Anyone who has had the bad luck to experience personally the “working style” of that institution must be highly amused at the official explanation of its purpose. Does anyone really believe that that slimy swarm of thousands of petty informers, professional narks, complex-ridden, sly, envious, malevolent petits bourgeois, and bureaucrats, that malodorous agglomeration of treachery, evasion, fraud, gossip, and intrigue “shows the imprint of the working man, guarding the people’s government and its revolutionary achievements against its enemies’ designs”? For who would be more hostile to a true workers’ government-if everything were not upside downthan your pedit 6ourgeois, always ready to oblige and sticking at nothing, soothing his arthritic self-esteem by informing on his fellow citizens, a creature clearly discernible behind the regular procedures of the secret police as the true spiritual author of their “working style”?

It would be hard to explain this whole grotesque contrast between theory and practice, except as a natural consequence of the real mission of the state police today, which is not to protect the free development of man from any assailants, but to protect the assailants from the threat which any real attempt at man’s free development poses.

The contrast between the revolutionary teachings about the new man and the new morality, and the shoddy concept of life as consumer bliss, raises the question of why the authorities actually cling so tenaciously to their ideology. Clearly, only because their ideology, as a conventionalized system of ritual communications, assures them the appearance of legitimacy, continuity, and consistency, and acts as a screen of prestige for their pragmatic practice.

The actual aims of this practice do, of course, leave their traces on the official ideology at every point. From the bowels of that infinite mountain of ideological rhetoric by which the authorities ceaselessly try to sway people’s minds, and whichas its communication value is nil-the public, for the most part, scarcely notices, there emerges one specific and meaningful message, one realistic piece of advice: “Avoid politics if you can; leave it to us! Just do what we tell you, don’t try to have deep thoughts, and don’t poke your nose into things that don’t concern you! Shut up, do your work, look after yourself-and you’ll be all right!”

This advice is heeded. That people need to make a living is, after all, the one point on which they can rather easily agree with their government. Why not make good use of it, then? Especially as you have no other choice anyway.

Where is the whole situation which I have tried to outline here ultimately leading?

What, in other words, is the effect on people of a system based on fear and apathy, a system that drives everyone into a foxhole of purely material existence and offers him hypocrisy as the main form of communication with society? To what level is a society reduced by a policy where the only aim is superficial order and general obedience, regardless of by what means and at what price they have been gained?

It needs little imagination to see that such a situation can only lead toward the gradual erosion of all moral standards, the breakdown of all criteria of decency, and the widespread destruction of confidence in the meaning of values such as truth, adherence to principles, sincerity, altruism, dignity, and honor. Amidst a demoralization “in depth,” stemming from the loss of hope and the loss of the belief that life has a meaning, life must sink to a biological, vegetable level. It can but confront us once more with that tragic aspect of man’s status in modern technological civilization marked by a declining awareness of the absolute, and which I propose to call a “crisis of human identity.” For how can the collapse of man’s identity be slowed down by a system that so harshly requires a man to be something other than he is?

Order has been established. At the price of a paralysis of the spirit, a deadening of the heart, and devastation of life. Surface “consolidation” has been achieved. At the price of

a spiritual and moral crisis in society.

Unfortunately, the worst feature of this crisis is that it keeps deepening. We only need to raise our sights a little above our limited daily perspective in order to realize with horror how hastily we are all abandoning positions which only yesterday we refused to desert. What social conscience only yesterday regarded as improper is today casually excused; tomorrow it will eventually be thought natural, and the day after be held up as a model of behavior. What yesterday we declared impossible, or at least averred we would never get accustomed to, today we accept, without astonishment, as a fact of life. And, conversely, things that a little while ago we took for granted we now treat as exceptional: and soon-who knowswe might think of them as unattainable chimeras.

The changes in our assessment of the “natural” and the “normal,” the shifts in moral attitudes in our society over the past few years have been greater than they might appear at first glance. As our insensitivity has increased, so naturally has our ability to discern that insensitivity declined.

The malady has spread, as it were, from the fruit and the foliage to the trunk and roots. The most serious grounds for alarm, then, are the prospects which the present state of affairs opens up for the future.

The main route by which society is inwardly enlarged, enriched, and cultivated is that of coming to know itself in ever greater depth, range, and subtlety.

The main instrument of society’s self-knowledge is its culture: culture as a specific field of human activity, influencing the general state of mind-albeit often very indirectly-and at the same time continually subject to its influence.

Where total control over society completely suppresses its differentiated inner development, the first thing to be suppressed regularly is its culture: notjust “automatically,” as a phenomenon intrinsically opposed to the “spirit” of manipulation, but as a matter of deliberate “programming” inspired byjustified anxiety that society be alerted to the extent of its own subjugation through. that culture which gives it its selfawareness. It is culture that enables a society to enlarge its liberty and to discover truth-so what appeal can it have for the authorities who are basically concerned with suppressing such values? They recognize only one kind of truth: the kind they need at the given moment. And only one kind of liberty: to proclaim that “truth.”

A world where “truth” flourishes not in a dialectic climate of genuine knowledge but in a climate of power interests is a world of mental sterility, petrified dogmas, rigid and unchangeable creeds leading inevitably to creedless despotism.

This is a world of prohibitions and limitations and of orders, a world where cultural policy means primarily the operations of the cultural police force.

Much has been said and written about the peculiar degree of devastation which our present-day culture has reached: about the hundreds of prohibited books and authors and the dozens of liquidated periodicals; about the carving up of publishers’ projects and theatre repertoires and the cutting off of all contact with ihe intellectual community; about the plundering of exhibition halls; about the grotesque range of per secution and discrimination practiced in this field; about the breaking up of all the former artistic associations and countless scholarly institutes and their replacement by dummies run by little gangs of aggressive fanatics, notorious careerists, incorrigible cowards, and incompetent upstarts anxious to seize their opportunity in the general void. Rather than describe all these things again, I will offer some reflections on those deeper aspects of this state of affairs which are germane to the subject of my letter.

In the first place, however bad the present situation, it still does not mean that culture has ceased to exist altogether. Plays are put on, television programs go out every day, and even books get published. But this overt and legal cultural activity, taken as a whole, exhibits one basic feature: an overall externalization due to its being estranged in large measure from its proper substance through its total emasculation as an instrument of human, and, therefore of social, self-awareness. And whenever something of incontestably excellent value does appear-a superb dramatic performance, let us say, to stay in the sphere of art-then it appears, rather, as a phenomenon to be tolerated because of its subtlety and refinement, and hence, from an official point of view, its relative innocuousness as a contribution to social self-awareness. Yet even here, no sooner does that contribution begin to be at all keenly perceived than the
authorities start instinctively to defend themselves: there are familiar instances where a good actor was banned, by and large, simply for being too good.

But that is not what concerns me at this point. What inter ests me is how this externalization works in fields where it is possible to describe the human experience of the world far more explicitly and where the function of promoting social self-awareness is, thus, far more manifestly fulfilled.

For example, suppose a literary work, a play perhaps, um deniably skillful, suggestive, ingenious, meaningful, is published (it does happen from time to time). Whatever the other qualities of the work may be, of one thing we may always be perfectly certain: whether through censorship or selfcensorship, because of the writer’s character or his selfdeception, as a consequence of resignation or of calculation, it will never stray one inch beyond the taboos of a banal, conventional and, hence, basically fraudulent social consciousness that offers and accepts as genuine experience the mere appearance of experience-a concatenation of smooth, hackneyed, superficial trivia of experience; that is, pallid reflections of such aspects of experience as the social consciousness has long since adopted and domesticated. Despite, or rather, because of this fact, there will always be people who find such a work entertaining, exciting, and interesting, although it sheds no light, offers no flash of real knowledge in the sense that it reveals something unknown, expresses something unsaid, or provides new, spontaneous, and effective evidence of things hitherto only guessed at. In short, by imitating the real world, such a work in fact, falsifies the real world. As regards the actual forms this externalization takes, it is no accident that the vat most frequently tapped should be the one which, thanks to its proven harmlessness, enjoys the warmest approval of the authorities in our country, whether bourgeois or proletarian. I refer to the aesthetics of banality, safely housed within the four walls of genial petit bourgeois morality; the sentimental philosophy of kitchen-sink, country-bumpkin earthiness, and the provincial conception of the world based on the belief in its general goodness. I refer to the aesthetic doctrine whose keystone is the cult of right-thinking mediocrity, bedded in hoary national selfsatisfaction, guided by the principle that everything must be slick, trivial, and predigested, and culminating in that false optimism which puts the basest interpretation on the dictum that “truth will prevail.”

Of works designed to give literary expression to the government’s political ideology, there is today-as you must be aware-an extreme scarcity, and those few are clearly, by professional standards, bad ones. This is not merely because there is no one to write them, but also, I am sure, paradoxical as it may appear, because they would not be particularly welcome. For, from the standpoint of actual contemporary attitudes (those of the consumer society, that is), even if such works were available, were professionally competent, and attracted somebody’s interest, they would divert too much attention “outwards,” rub salt into too many old wounds, provokethrough their general and radical political character-too much general and radical political reaction, thus stirring up too many pools that are meant to be left as stagnant as possible. Far more suitable to the real interests of the authorities today is what I have called the aesthetics of banality, which misses the truth much more inconspicuously, acceptably, and plausibly, and (since it is far more digestible for the conventional mind) is far more suited to the role accorded to culture in the consumer philosophy: not to excite people with the truth, but to reassure them with lies.

This kind of artistic output, of course, has always predominated. But in our country, there had always been some chinks at least through which works of art that could truthfully be said to convey a more genuine kind of human self-wareness reached the public. The road for such works was never particularly smooth. They met resistance not only from the authorities, but from the easygoing inertia of conventional attitudes as well. Yet until recently they had always managed in some mysterious way, by devious paths and seldom without delay, to get through to the individual and to society, and so to fulfill the role of culture as the agent of social self-awareness.

This is all that really matters. This is precisely what I take to be really important. And it is also precisely this that the present government-arguably for the first time since the age of our national revival-has managed to render almost completely impossible, so total is the present system of bureaucratic control of culture, so perfect the surveillance of every chink through which some major work might see the light of day, so greatly does that little band of men, who hold the keys to every door in their own pockets, fear the government and fear art.

You will, of course, appreciate that I am speaking at this moment not of the indexes, listing the names of all creative artists subject to a total or partial ban, but of a much worse list-of that “blank index” which includes, a priori, everything which might contain the spark of a slightly original thought, a perceptive insight, deeper sincerity, an unusual idea, or a suggestive form; I am speaking of that open warrant for the arrest of anything inwardly free and, therefore, in the deepest sense “cultural,” I am speaking of the warrant against culrixre issued by your government.

Once more the question which I have been posing from the start arises. What does it all really mean? Where is it leading? What is it going to do to society?

Once more, I take a particular case. Most of the former cultural periodicals, as we know, have ceased to appear in our country. If any have survived, they have been so made to conform to official policy that they are hardly worth taking seriously.

What has been the effect of that?

At first glance, practically none. The wheels of society continue to go round even without all those literary, artistic, theatrical, philosophical, historical, and other magazines whose number, even while they existed, may never have filled the latent needs of society, but which nevertheless were around and played their part. How many people today still miss those publications? Only the few tens of thousands of people who subscribed to them-a very small fraction of society.

Yet this loss is infinitely deeper and more significant than might appear from the numbers involved. Its real implica~ tionš are again, of course, hidden, and can hardly be assessed precisely.

The forcible liquidation of such a journal-a theoretical review concerned with the theatre, say-is notjust an impoverishment of its particular readers. It is not even merely a severe blow to theatrical culture. It is simultaneously, and above all, the liquidation of a particular organ through which society becomes aware of itself and hence it is an interference, hard to describe in exact terms, in the complex system of circulation, exchange, and conversion of nutrients that maintain life in that manydayered organism which is society today. It is a blow against the natural dynamic of the pro~ cesses going on within that organism; a disturbance of the balanced interplay of all its many functions, an interplay reflecting the level of complexity reached by society’s anatomy. And just as the chronic deficiency of a vitamin (amounting in quantitative terms only to a negligible fraction of the human diet) can make a person ill, so, in the long run, the loss of a single periodical can cause ihe social organism far more damage than would appear at first sight. And what if the loss involves notjust one periodical, but virtually all?

It is easy to show that the real importance of knowledge, thought, and creation is not limited, in the stratified world of a civilized society,. to the
significance these things have for the particular circle of people who are primarily, directly and, as it were, physically involved with them, either actively or passively. This is always a small group, especially in the sciences. Yet the knowledge in question, conveyed through however many intermediaries, may in the end profoundly affect the whole society,just as politics, including the nuclear threat, physically concerns each one of us, even though most of us have had no experience of the speculations in theoretical physics which led to the manufacture of the atom bomb. That the same holds for nonspecific knowledge is shown by many historic instances of an unprecedented cultural, political, and moral upsurge throughout society, where the original nucleus of crystallization, the catalyst, was an act of social selfawareness carried out, and indeed directly and “physically” perceived, only by a small and exclusive circle. Even subsequently, that act may have remained outside the apperception of society at large, yet it was still an indispensable condition of its upsurge. For we never know when some inconspicuous spark of knowledge, struck within range of the few brain cells, as it were, specially adapted for the organism’s self awareness, may suddenly light up the road for the whole of society, without society ever realizing, perhaps, how it came to see the road. But that is far from being the whole story. For even those other countless flashes of knowledge which never illuminate the path ahead for society as a whole have their deep social importance, if only through the mere fact that they happened; that they might have cast light; that in their very occurrence they fulfilled a certain range of society’s potentialities-either its creative powers, or simply its liberties; they, too, help to make and maintain a climate of civilization without which none of the more illuminating flashes could ever occur.

In short, the space within which spiritual self-awareness operates is indivisible; the cutting of a single thread must injure the coherence of the whole network, and this itself showed the remarkable interdependence of all those fine processes in the social organism that I spoke of, the transcendent importance of each one of them, and hence the transcendent destructiveness wrought by its disruption.

I would not wish to reduce everything to this single and still relatively minor aspect of the problem. Still, does it not in itself confirm the deeply injurious intluence on the general spiritual and moral state of society which the “warrant against culture” already has and will have in future, even though its immediate impact is only on a limited number of heads?

If not a single new Czech novel, of which one could safely say that it enlarges our experience of the world, has appeared in recent years in the bookshops, this will certainly have no public effect. Readers are not going to demonstrate in the streets and, in the end, you can always find something to read. But who will dare assess the real significance of this fact for Czech society? Who knows how the gap will affect the spiritual and moral climate of the years to come? How far will it weaken our ability to know ourselves? How deeply will such an absence of cultural self-knowledge brand those whose selfknowing begins only today or tomorrow? What mounds of mystification, slowly forming in the general cultural consciousness, will need to be chipped away? How far back will one need to go? Who can tell which peopte will still find the strength to light new fires of truth, when, how, and from what resources, once there has been such thorough wastage not only of the fuel, but of the very feeling that it can be done?

A few novels of the kind absent from the bookshops do nevertheless exist: they circulate in manuscript. In this respect, the situation is not yet hopeless: it follows from everything I have said that if such a novel, over the years, remained unknown to all but twenty people, the fact of its existence would stilt be important. It means something that there is such a book, that it could be written at all, that it is alive in at least one tiny area of the cultural consciousness. But what about the fields in which it is impossible to work, except through the so-called legal channels? How can one estimate the damage already done, and still to be done, by the strangling of every interesting development in the stage and cinema, whose role as social stimuli is so specific? How much greater still may be the long-term effect of the vacuum in the humanities and in the theory and practice of the social sciences? Who dares measure the consequences of the violent interruption of the long processes of self-knowledge in ontology, ethics, and historiography, dependent as they are on access to the normal circulation of information, ideas, discoveries, and values, the public crystallization of attitudes?

The overall question, then, is this: What profound intellectual and moral impotence will the nation suffer tomorrow, following the castration of its culture today?

I fear that the baneful effects on society will outlast by many years the particular political interests that gave rise to them. So much more guilty, in the eyes of history, are those who have sacrificed the country’s spiritual future for the sake of their present power interests.

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.

Life rebels against all uniformity and leveling; its aim is not sameness, but variety, the restlessness of transcendence, the adventure of novelty and rebellion against the status quo. An essential condition for its enhancement is the secret constantly made manifest.

On the other hand, the essence of authority (whose aim is reduced to protecting its own permanence by forcibly imposing the uniformity of perpetual consent) consists basically in a distrust of all variety, uniqueness, and transcendence; in an aversion to everything unknown, impalpable, and currently obscure; in a proclivity for the uniform, the identical, and the inert; in deep affection for the status quo. In it, the mechanical spirit prevails over the vital. The order it strives for is no frank quest for ever higher forms of social self-organization, equivalent to its evolving complexity of structure, but, on the contrary, a decline toward that “state of maximum probability” representing the climax of entropy. Following the direction of entropy, it goes against the direction of life.

In a person’s life, as we know, there is a moment when the complexity of structure begins suddenly to decline and his path turns in the direction of entropy. This is the moment when he, too, succumbs to the general law of the universe: the moment of death.

Somewhere at the bottom of every political authority which has chosen the path to entropy (and would like to treat the individual as a computer into which any program can be fed with the assurance that he will carry it out), there lies hidden the death principle. There is an odor of death even in the notion of “order” which such an authority puts into practice and which sees every manifestation of genuine life, every ex~ ceptional deed, individual expression, thought, every unusual idea or wish, as a red light signaling confusion, chaos, and anarchy.

The entire political practice of the present regime, as I have tried to outline it here step by step, confirms that those con cepts which were always crucial for its program-order, calm, consolidation, “guiding the nation out of its crisis,” “halting disruption,” “assuaging hot tempers” and so on-have finally acquired the same lethal meaning that they have for every regime committed to entropy.

True enough, order prevails: a bureaucratic order of gray monotony that stifles all individuality; of mechanical precision that suppresses everything of unique quality; of musty inertia
that excludes the transcendent. What prevails is order without life.

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

In a society which is really alive, something is always happen ing. The interplay of current activities and events, of overt and concealed movement, produces a constant succession of unique situations which provoke further and fresh move~ ment. The mysterious, vital polarity of the continuous and the changing, the regular and the random, the foreseen and the unexpected, has its effect in the time dimension and is borne out in the flow of events. The more highly structured the life of a society, the more highly structured its time dimension, and the more prominent the element of uniqueness and unrepeatability within the time flow. This, in turn, of course, makes it easier to reflect its sequential character, to represent it, that is, as an irreversible stream of noninterchangeable situations, and so, in retrospect, to understand better whatever is governed by regular laws in society. The richer the life society lives, then, the better it perceives the dimension of social time, the dimension of history.

In other words, wherever there is room for social activity, room is created for a social memory as well. Any society that is alive is a society with a history.

If the element of continuity and causality is so vitally linked in history with the element of unrepeatabidity and unpredicb ability, we may well ask how true history-that inextinguishable source of “chaos,” fountainhead of unrest, and slap in the face to law and order-can ever exist in a world ruled by an “entropic” regime.

The answer is plain: it cannot. And, indeed, it does noton the surface, anyway. Under such a regime, the elimination of life in the proper sense brings social time to a halt, so that history disappears from its purview.

In our own country, too, one has the impression that for some time there has been no history. Slowly but surely, we are losing the sense of time. We begin to forget what happened when, what came earlier and what later, and the feeling that it really doesri t matter overwhelms us. As uniqueness disappears from the flow of events, so does continuity; everything merges into the single gray image of one and the same cycle and we say, “There is nothing happening-” Here, too, a deadly order has been imposed: all activity is completely organized and so completely deadened. The deadening of the sense of unfolding time in society inevitably kills it in private life as well. No longer backed by social history or the history of the individual within it, private life declines to a prehistoric level where time derives its only rhythm from such events as birth, marriage, and death.

The loss of the sense of social time seems, in every way, to cast society back into the primeval state where, for thousands of years, humanity could get no further in measuring it than by the cosmic and climatic pattern of endlessly repeated annual seasons and the religious rites associated with them.

The gap left by the disquieting dimension of history has, naturally, to be filled. So the disorder of real history is replaced by the orderliness of pseudo-history, whose author is not the life of society, but an official planner. Instead of events, we are offered nonevents; we live from anniversary to anniversary, from celebration to celebration, from parade to parade, from a unanimous congress to unanimous elections and back again; from a Press Day to an Artillery Day, and vice versa. It is no coincidence that, thanks to this substitution for history, we are able to review everything that is happening in society, past and future, by simply glancing at the calendar. And the notoriously Familiar character of the recurrent ritu als makes such information quite as adequate as if we had been present at the events themselves.

What we have, then, is perfect order-but at the cost of reverting to prehistory. Even so, we must enter a caveat: whereas for our ancestors the repeated rituals always had a deep existential meaning, for us they are merely a routine performed for its own sake. The government keeps them going to maintain the impression that history is moving. The public goes through the motions to keep out of trouble.

An “entropic” regime has one means of increasing the general entropy within its own sphere of influence, namely, by tightening its own central control, rendering itself more mon olithic, and enclosing society in a straitjacket of onedimensional manipulation. But with every step it takes in this direction, it inevitably increases its own entropy too.

In an effort to immobilize the world, it immobilizes itself, undermining its own ability to cope with anything new or to resist the natural currents of life. The “entropic” regime is, thus, doomed to become the victim of its own lethal principle, and the most vulnerable victim at that, thanks to the absence of any impulse within its own structure that could, as it were, make it face up to itsel^ Life, by contrast, with its irrepressible urge to oppose entropy, is able all the more successfully and inventively to resist being violated, the faster the violating authority succumbs to its own sclerosis.

In trying to paralyze life, then, the authorities paralyze themselves and, in the long run, make themselves incapable of paralyzing life.

In other words, life may be subjected to a prolonged and thorough process of violation, enfeeblement, and anesthesia. Yet, in the end, it cannot be permanently halted. Albeit quietly, covertly, and slowly, it nevertheless goes on. Though it be estranged from itself a thousand times, it always manages in some way to recuperate; however violently ravished, it always survives, in the end, the power which ravished it. It cannot be otherwise, in view of the profoundly ambivalent nature of every “entropič’ authority, which can only suppress life if there is life to suppress and so, in the last resort, depends for its own existence on life, whereas life in no way depends on it. The only force that can truly destroy life on our planet is the force which knows no compromise: the universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics.

If life cannot be destroyed for good, then neither can history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy cover of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the cover will no longer hold and will start to crack.

This is the moment when once more something visibly begins to happen, something truly new and unique, something unscheduled in the official calendar of “happenings,” something that makes us no longer indifferent to what occurs and when-something truly historic, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

But how, in our particular circumstances, could it come about that history “demands to be heard”? What does such a prospect really imply?

I am neither historian nor prophet, yet there are some observations touching on the structure of these “momentš’ which one cannot avoid making.

Where there is, in some degree, open competition for power as the only real guarantee of public control over its exercise and, in the last resort, the only guarantee of free speech, the political authorities must willy-nilly participate in some kind of permanent and overt dialogue with the life of society. They are forced continually to wrestle with all kinds of questions which life puts to them. Where no such competition exists and freedom of speech is, therefore, of necessity sooner or later suppressed-as is the case with every “entropic” regime-the authorities, instead of adapting themselves to life, try to adapt life to themselves. Instead of coping openly and continually with real conflicts, demands, and issues, they simply draw a veil over them. Yet somewhere under this cover,
these contlicts and demands continue, grow, and multiply, only to burst forth when the moment arrives when the cover can no longer hold them down. This is the moment when the dead weight of inertia crumbles and history steps out again into the arena.

And what happens after that?

The authorities are certainly still strong enough to prevent those vital conflicts from issuing in the shape of open discussion or open rivalry for power. But they have no longer the strength to resist this pressure altogether. So life vents itself where it can-in the secret corridors of power, where it can insist on secret discussion and finally on secret competition. For this, of course, the authorities are unprepared: any substantive dialogue with life is outside their range of competence. So they panic. Life sows confusion in their council chambers in the shape of personal quarrels, intrigues, pitfalls, and confrontations. It even infects, as it were, their own representatives: the death mask of impersonality that their officials wore to confirm their identity with the monolith of power is suddenly dropped, revealing live people competing for power in the most “human” way and struggling in selFdefense, one against the other. This is the notorious moment for palace revolutions and putsches, for sudden and outwardly mystifying changes of portfolio and changes of key points in set speeches, the moment when real or construed conspiracies and secret centers are revealed, the moment when real or imaginary crimes are made known and ancient guilt unearthed, the moment for mutual dismissals from office, mutual denigration, and perhaps even arrests and trials. Whereas before every man in authority had spoken the same language, used the same clichés, applauded the successful fulfillment of the same targets, now suddenly the monolith of power breaks down into distinguishable persons, still speaking the same language, but using it to make personal attacks on one another. And we learn with astonishment that some of them-those, that is, who lost in the secret struggle for power-had never taken their targets seriously and never successfully fulfilled themfar from it-whereas others-the winners-had really meant what they said and are alone capable of achieving their aims.

The more rational the construction of the official calendar of nonevents over the years, the more irrational the effect of a sudden irruption of genuine history. All its lorig-suppressed elements of unrepeatability, uniqueness, and incalculability, all its long-denied mysteries, come rushing through the breach. Where for years we had been denied the slightest, most ordinary surprise, life is now one huge surprise-and it is well worth it. The whole disorderliness of history, concealed under artificial order for years, suddenly spurts out.

How well we know all this! How often we have witnessed it in our part of the world! The machine that worked for years to apparent perfection, faultlessly, without a hitch, falls apart overnight. The system that seemed likely to reign unchanged, world without end, since nothing could call its power in question amid all those unanimous votes and elections, is shattered without warning. And, to our amazement, we find that nothing was the way we had thought it was.

The moment when such a tornado whirls through the musty edifice of petrified power structures is, of course, far from beingjust a source of amusement for all of us who are outside the ramparts of authority. For we, too, are always involved, albeit indirectly. Is it not the quiet perennial pressure of life, the ceaselessly resisted, but finally irresistible demands and interests of all society, its conflicts and its tensions, which ever and again spoke the foundations of power? No wonder society continually reawakens at such moments, attaches itself to them, receives them with great alertness, gets excited by them, and seeks to exploit them! In almost every case, such tremors provoke hopes or fears of one kind or another, create-or seem to create-scope for the realization of life’s various impulses and ambitions, and accelerate all kinds of movements within society.

Yet, in almost every case, it is equally true that this situation, owing to the basically unnatural structure of the kind of confrontation with life which such shakeups of power bring about, carries with it many incalculable risks.

I shall try to illuminate further one such risk.

If every day someone takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny himself in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of dignity.

On the contrary: even if they never speak of it, people have a very acute appreciation of the price they have paid for outward peace and quiet: the permanent humiliation of their human dignity. The less direct resistance they put up to itcomforting themselves by driving it from their mind and deceiving themselves with the thought that it is of no account, or else simply gritting their teeth-the deeper the experience etches itself into their emotional memory. The man who can resist humiliation can quickly forget it; but the man who can long tolerate it must long remember it. In actual fact, then, nothing remains forgotten. All the fear one has endured, the dissimulation one has been forced into, all the painful and degrading buffoonery, and, worst of all, perhaps, the feeling of having displayed one’s cowardice-all this settles and accumulates somewhere in the bottom of our social consciousness, quietly fermenting.

Clearly, this is no healthy situation. Left untreated, the abscesses suppurate; the pus cannot escape from the body, and the malady spreads throughout the organism. The natural human emotion is denied the process of objectivi2ation and instead, caged up over long periods in the emotional memory, is gradually deformed into a sick cramp, into a toxic substance not unlike the carbon monoxide produced by incomplete combustion.

No wonder, then, that when the crust cracks and the lava of life rolls out, there appear not only well-considered attempts to rectify old wrongs, not only searchings for truth and For reforms matching life’s needs, but also symptoms of bilious hatred, vengeful wrath, and a feverish desire for immediate compensation for all the degradation endured. (The impulsive and often wayward forms of this desire may also spring largely from a vague impression that the whole outbreak has come too late, at a time when it has lost its meaning, having no longer any immediate motive and so carrying no immediate risk, when it is actually just an ersatz for something that should have happened in quite a different context.)

No wonder, again, that the men in power, accustomed for years to absolute agreement, unanimous and unreserved support, and a total unity of total pretense, are so shocked by the upsurge of suppressed feelings at such a moment that they feel exposed to such an unheard-of threat and, in this mood (assuming themselves to be the sole guarantors of the world’s survival), detect such an unprecedented threat to the rest of the world, too, that they do not hesitate to call upon millions of foreign soldiers to save both themselves and the world.

We experienced one such explosion not long ago. Those who had spent years humiliating and insulting people and were then so shocked when those people tried to raise their own voices, now label the whole episode an “outbreak of passions.” And what, pray, were the passions that broke out? Those who know what protracted and thoroughgoing humiliations had preceded the explosion, and who understand the psycho-social mechanics of the subsequent reaction to them should be more su
rprised at the relatively calm, objective and, indeed, loyal form which the explosion took. Yet, as everyone knows, we had to pay a cruel price for that moment of truth.

The authorities in power today are profoundly different from those who ruled prior to that recent explosion. Not only because the latter were, so to speak, “originals” and their successors a mere formalized imitation, incapable of refiecting the extent to which the “originals” had meanwhile lost their mystique, but primarily for another reason.

For whereas the earlier version rested on a genuine and not inconsiderable social basis derived from the trustful support accorded, though in declining measure, by one part of the population, and on the equally genuine and considerable attractiveness (which also gradually evaporated) of the social benefits it originally promised, today’s regime rests solely on the ruling minority’s instinct for self preservation and on the fear of the ruled majority.

In these circumstances, it is hard to foresee all the feasible scenarios for a future “moment of truth”: to foresee how such a complex and undisguised degradation of the whole of society might one day demand restitution. And it is quite impossible to estimate the scope and depth of the tragic consequences which such a moment might inflict, perhaps must inflict, on our two nations.

In this context, it is amazing that a government which advertises itselF as the most scientific on record is unable to grasp the elementary rules of its own operations or to learn from its own past.

I have made it clear that I have no fear of life in Czechoslovakia coming to a halt, or of history being suspended forever with the accession to power of the present leaders. Every situation in history and every epoch have been succeeded by a fresh situation and a new epoch, and for better or worse, the new ones have always been quite remote from the expectations of the organizers and rulers of the preceding period.

What I am afraid of is something else. The whole of this letter is concerned, in fact, with what I really fear-the pointlessly harsh and long-lasting consequences which the present violent abuses will have for our nations. I fear the price we are all bound to pay for the drastic suppression of history, the cruel and needless banishmenc of life into the underground of society and the depths of the human soul, the new compulsory deferment of every opportunity for society to live in anything like a natural way. And perhaps it is apparent from what I wrote a little way back that I am not only worried about our current payments in terms of everyday bitterness at the spoliation of society and human degradation, or about the heavy tax we shall have to pay in the long-lasting spiritual and moral decline of society. I am also concerned with the scarcely calculable surcharge which may be imposed on us when the moment next arrives for life and history to demand their due.

The degree of responsibility a political leader bears for the condition of his country must always vary and, obviously, can never be absolute. He never rules alone, and so some portion of responsibility rests on those who surround him. No country exists in a vacuum, so its policies are in some way always influenced by those of other countries. Clearly the previous rulers always have much to answer for, since it was their policies which predetermined the present situation. The public, too, has much to answer for, both individually, through the daily personal decisions of each responsible human being which went to create the total state of affairs, or collectively, as a socio-historic whole, limited by circumstances and in its turn limiting those circumstances.

Despite these qualifications, which naturally apply in our current situation as in any other, your responsibility as a political leader is still a great one. You help to determine the climate in which we all have to live and can therefore directly influence the final size of the bill our society will be paying for today’s process of consolidation.

The Czechs and Slovaks, like any other nation, harbor within themselves simultaneously the most disparate potentialities. We have had, still have, and will continue to have our heroes, and, equally, our informers and traitors. We are capable of unleashing our imagination and creativity, of rising spiritually and morally to unexpected heights, of fighting for the truth and sacrificing ourselves for others.

But it lies in us equally to succumb to total apathy, to take no interest in anything but our bellies, and to spend our time tripping one another up. And though human souls are far from being mere pint pots that anything can be poured into (note the arrogant implications of that dreadful phrase so frequent in official speeches, when it is complained that “we”-that is, “the government”-find that such-and-such ideas are being instilled into people’s heads), it depends, nevertheless, very much on the leaders which of these contrary tendencies that slumber in society will be mobilized, which set of potentialities will be given the chance of fulftllment, and which will be suppressed.

So far, it is the worst in us which is being systematically activated and enlarged-egotism, hypocrisy, indifference, cowardice, fear, resignation, and the desire to escape every personal responsibility, regardless of the general consequences.

Yet even today’s national leadership has the opportunity to influence society by its policies in such a way as to encourage not the worse side of us, but the better.

So far, you and your government have chosen the easy way out for yourselves, and the most dangerous road for society: the path of inner decay for the sake of outward appearances; of deadening life for the sake of increasing uniformity; of deepening the spiritual and moral crisis of our society, and ceaselessly degrading human dignity, for the puny sake of protecting your own power.

Yet, even within the given limitations, you have the chance to do much toward at least a relative improvement of the situation. This might be a more strenuous and less gratifying way, whose benefits would not be immediately obvious and which would meet with resistance here and there. But in the light of our society’s true interests and prospects, this way would be vastly the more meaningful one.

As a citizen of this country, I hereby request, openly and publicly, that you and the leading representatives of the present regime consider seriously the matters to which I have tríed to draw your attention, that you assess in their light the degree of your historic responsibility, and act accordingly.

April 1975

©2011 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有5条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣

http://124.228.254.229/html/music/20101109/153325_22.html (优酷上面的不能放了，挂acfun把)

歌好听，歌词的含义也很深刻：

诚意的良善诉求，总是唤起人们的大量共鸣。能够用音乐把这些想法表达出来，亦让我对 Nickelback 刮目相看（说实话，以前对他们bang bang bang的嘶吼型风格一直不太感冒）。

重点是MV里面讲述的各种历史事件，让人相信“只要人人都献出一点爱，世界将变成美好的人间”。而这种爱并不是盲目的爱，肤浅地停留在“受感召”层面的爱，而是一种 care ，一种对他人的关怀，对社会公平正义的在意，一种实际的行动与支持，这种爱才是真正促进人类文明进步的力量。在维基百科上查了下，据说这首歌的所有电子版的销售收入都会捐给国际特赦组织和加拿大的 International Children’s Awareness  （这是一个零管理成本运行的帮助第三世界国家建立关爱社区的组织）。

现将MV中的字幕逐句翻译如下：

若人人献出关爱 世界会变怎样？
1984年，Bob Geldof，摇滚乐主唱，前音乐记者
被一篇有关非洲饥荒盛行的报道所触动
开始了对抗世界饥荒的努力
Geldof 筹办了第一个全球性的慈善音乐会
LIVE AID
由来自世界各地的100名艺术家参演
超过15 亿人观看
在一天之内 Live Aid 募得了 1.5 亿美元

1976年，Betty Williams，饭店招待，两个孩子的母亲
目睹三名孩子在北爱尔兰的政治骚乱中丧生
在惨剧发生后的两天之内
Williams 即征集到6000人的和平祈愿签名
然后她组织了向孩子们墓地行进的万人游行
和平游行被抗议者扰乱
一周之后，Williams 组织了另一次游行
这一次
游行队伍扩大到了35000人
当年，她因此获得了诺贝尔和平奖

1961年，两名葡萄牙学生因为举杯庆祝自己的自由
而被判处七年监禁
英国律师 Peter Benenson 大为震惊
为召集对两位学生的支持
他给当地的报纸写了封信
反响非常强烈
以至于为组织这场运动
专门成立了一个组织
运动迅速在全世界开展开来
最终成为今天的大赦国际

1920年，南非一个小村落里的一名男孩
梦见他的国家将人人平等
数年的活动之后 他被指控为“政治叛国”
并被判处终身监禁
他追求平等的梦想从未消逝
1990年，在被关押27年之后
纳尔逊·罗利拉拉·曼德拉终获自由
随后，他安排了南非史上第一场民主的总统选举
将近1900万民众参与投票
曼德拉赢得选举
结束了南非长达46年的种族隔离制度

Williams : 不管他们扔再多石头，再多瓶子
我们只管走过去
我们就已取得巨大的胜利…

永远不要怀疑一小群信心坚定的人改变世界的能力
事实上，世界正是被这些人所改变
—— Margaret Mead

我自己做了个歌词的字幕文件，您可以用电驴下载视频（ed2k链接），然后从此处下载字幕文件（虽然说一首歌并不值得挂字幕… 囧 ）。

最后，附上两个其他版本的歌词翻译：

版本一（出处）：

From underneath the trees, we watch the sky
Confusing stars for satellites
I never dreamed that you’d be mine
But here we are, we’re here tonight
Singing Amen I, I’m alive (I’m alive)
Singing Amen I, I’m alive
大树下我们仰望苍穹
星空中难辨人造卫星
虽未曾梦过你属于我
但今夜此地我们相拥
唱吧，阿门！我，如此活着（我如此活着）
唱吧，阿门！我，如此活着

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
We’d see the day, when nobody died
And I’m singing
Amen I, Amen I, I’m alive (I’m alive)
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I’m alive
如若人人懂得关心，再无一人流泪
如若人人懂得去爱，再无一人欺哄
如若人人都能分享，放下内心骄傲
我们终会看到那日，再无逝去生命
我要歌唱阿门，阿门，我，我如此活着……
阿门，阿门，阿门，我如此活着

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We’ll show the world they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along
Singing Amen I, I’m alive (I’m alive)
Singing Amen I, I’m alive
萤火虫飞舞在空中
这天堂仅有的照明
要让世界看到是他们错
要教世人歌唱与我们齐声
唱吧，阿门！我，如此活着（我如此活着）
唱吧，阿门！我，如此活着

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
We’d see the day, when nobody died
如若人人懂得关心，再无一人流泪
如若人人懂得去爱，再无一人欺哄
如若人人都能分享，放下内心骄傲
我们终会看到那日，再无逝去生命

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be
当我们在星空下面躺倒
意识到我们是多么渺小
如果他们像你我如此相爱
试想世界将会多么美好

版本二（出处）：

from underneath the trees 在树底下
we watch the sky 我们看着天空
confusing stars for satellites 闲聊着宇宙万物
I never dreamed that you’d be mine 我做梦也没想过你会是我的
but here we are 但是我们在这
we’re here tonight 今夜我们就在这
singing Amen I,I’m alive 歌唱真主和我，我活着
singing Amen I,I’m alive 歌唱真主和我，我活着

[CHORUS]
if everyone cared and nobody cried 如果每个人去关心就没有人会哭泣
if everyone loved and nobody lied 如果每个人去爱就没有人会说谎
if everyone shared and swallowed their pride 如果每个人去分享并且放下他们的骄傲
we’d see the day when nobody died 我们就可以看到没有人死去的那天了
I’m singing 我在歌唱
Amen I,I’m alive 真主和我，我活着
Amen I,I’m alive 真主和我，我活着

and in the air the fireflies 在夜空中的萤火虫是
our only light in paradise 天堂中唯一的光亮
we’ll show the world they were wrong 我们将会证明给世界看他们是错的
and teach them all to sing along 然后教他们全部向前歌唱
singing Amen I,I’m alive 歌唱真主和我，我活着
singing Amen I,I’m alive 歌唱真主和我，我活着

©2010 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有6条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣

为什么我的博文大部分都是翻译，而缺少原创的观点呢？因为我深知自己的浅薄，说也说不出什么好话来。所以还是搞一些不用自负文责的忠实于原文的翻译好了。翻译是为了学习，我也放出我在翻译的过程中学到的东西与大家共享。想提高自己英语水平的朋友们可以多多留意这一系列了，也欢迎你推荐你感兴趣但是看得一知半解的英语原文，不嫌弃的话就让我帮忙翻吧。当然，也非常希望高手们能指出我的错误，大家共同提高！

以后译文都会在译言首发，然后在博客同步发布，并附上生词和难句表（洋盘一下，我译言页面的PR也有3…… 哈哈哈）。

迈克尔·杰克逊之死令全世界缅怀

迈克尔·杰克逊的流行无边无界，不需要翻译，一条旋律、节奏和舞蹈的长廊就构成了世界各地歌迷的共同维系。周五他的突然辞世引发了大量强烈反应，其范围之广让我们更为意识到他的影响力是多么巨大。

从悉尼到香港，中国到洛杉矶，歌迷们都在表达着自己的震惊和悲痛。他的音乐在咖啡馆里回荡，从汽车音响中飘出。每一个人，从国家领袖到贫民百姓，似乎都参与进来。

委内瑞拉总统雨果·查韦斯称这位巨星的陨落为“令人伤心的消息”，即使他也批评了媒体对此事关注太多。韩国前总统金大中曾经亲眼面见迈克尔·杰克逊，他说：“我们失去了一位世界级的英雄。”

在香港，歌迷们自发地举行烛光晚会悼念；在菲律宾，宿务岛（Cebu）一家监狱正在准备一场致敬舞会，监狱的安保顾问拜伦·加西亚（Byron Garcia）打算让1500名狱友一起跳杰克逊的音乐录影带《Thriller》里的舞蹈。

“我的心情沉重，因为的我的偶像死了” ，他伤感地说。

在网上，由于人们传播他的死讯耗费过大流量，微博客网站Twitter也不得不暂停服务。另据BBC报道，甚至于Google这位搜索引擎巨擘也怀疑自己受到了服务攻击。

菲律宾前第一夫人，伊梅尔达·马科斯，坦言自己听到这个消息后也流泪了。

“迈克尔·杰克逊让我们的生活变得更丰富，给我们快乐，”她在一项声明中说。“控告和污蔑带给他如此多的经济和精神上的痛苦。即使法庭宣布他无罪，这场争斗还是毁掉了他的生活。我想这为我们所有人都上了沉重的一课。”

昆西·琼斯，这位曾经在他最成功的几张专辑里与杰克逊有过密切合作的歌手，正组织着音乐界对杰克逊的致敬与怀念。

“这个悲剧，这个不可想象的坏消息，是真真切切地让我崩溃，” 他说杰克逊是MTV一代中第一位赢得广泛喜爱的黑人歌星。

电影导演马丁·斯科西斯和史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格也表达了自己的敬意。斯科西斯对MTV.com说：“迈克尔·杰克逊不是一般人。当我们合作《Bad》时，他的舞蹈和歌唱才华都如此之高，让我满心敬畏。他的每一个动作都既精准又流畅。感觉就像是看水银流动。”

“和他工作也十分愉快，任何时刻都绝对专业，而且… 真的不用说大家也看得出来—— 他是个真正的艺术家。我想我会需要很长时间才能接受他已经离开我们这个事实。”

斯皮尔伯格对《娱乐周刊》（Entertainment Weekly）说：“就像是永远不会有另一个弗雷德·阿斯泰尔（Fred Astaire，百老汇歌舞巨星），或者查克·贝利（Chuck Berry，黑人摇滚吉他大师），或另一个猫王，也不会再有人能比得上迈克尔·杰克逊了。他的才华和他身上的谜题让他成为永远的传奇。”

同为歌手的席琳·迪翁（Celine Dion）在她的声明中说，“我很震惊。这一悲剧让我感到无法承受。迈克尔·杰克逊是我一生的偶像。”

迈克热·杰克逊本来打算下个月在伦敦举办复出巡演，现在伦敦的歌迷们也只能聚集起来缅怀他。英国文化大臣本·布拉德肖（Ben Bradshaw）发布了一则声明宣告他的悲痛。据《卫报》报道，他说他是“迈克尔·杰克逊的忠实歌迷，与民事伴侣（civil partnership）的结合仪式上播放的第一支歌就是《Billie Jean》”。

译注：本·布拉德肖是公开的同性恋，Civil Partnership即同性伴侣之间的法律认证关系。类似于法律意义的婚姻，主要是为了保护同性伴侣的权益，但并非正式的婚姻，也非传统意义上的夫妻。

更多

译言原文 双语对照

英文原文

Michael Jackson’s brand of pop knew no borders and needed no translation, linking listeners around the world through the accessible corridors of rhythm, beat, and dance. And as reaction to his sudden death began to pour in Friday, its extent underscored how far his influence had spread.

From Sydney to Hong Kong, China to Los Angeles, fans spoke of their shock and sadness. His music echoed from cafes and car speakers, and everyone from national leaders on down seemed to weigh in.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called the star’s death “lamentable news,” though he criticized the media for giving it so much attention. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who had met Mr. Jackson, said: “We lost a hero of the world.”

Fans lit candles at a spontaneous memorial in Hong Kong, while in the Philippines, a dance tribute was planned for a prison in Cebu, where Byron Garcia, a security consultant, had 1,500 inmates join in a synchronized dance to the “Thriller” video.

“My heart is heavy because my idol died,” he said.

Online, the traffic was so thick with people sharing news of his death that the microblogging service Twitter crashed, and even Google, the search giant, believed it may have been under service attack, the BBC reported.

The former Philippine first lady, Imelda Marcos, said she cried on hearing the news.

“Michael Jackson enriched our lives, made us happy,” she said in a statement. “The accusations, the persecution caused him so much financial and mental anguish. He was vindicated in court, but the battle took his life. There is probably a lesson here for all of us.”

Quincy Jones, who worked closely with Jackson on some of his most successful recordings, led tributes from the music world.

“I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news,” he said of one of the first black entertainers of the MTV generation to gain a big crossover following.

The film directors Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg also paid tribute. Mr. Scorsese told MTV.com: “Michael Jackson was extraordinary. When we worked together on Bad, I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion.

“He was wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times, and — it really goes without saying — a true artist. It will be a while before I can get used to the idea that he’s no longer with us.”

Mr. Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly: “Just as there will never be another Fred Astaire or Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, there will never be anyone comparable to Michael Jackson. His talent, his wonderment and his mystery make him legend.”

Fellow singer Celine Dion said in a statement, “I am shocked. I am overwhelmed by this tragedy. Michael Jackson has been an idol for me all my life.”

Mr. Jackson had been scheduled to begin a comeback tour in London next month, and fans there gathered to mourn. Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, issued a statement to announce his grief in which he said he was “a long-time fan of Michael Jackson and had Billie Jean played as the first dance at his civil partnership,” the Guardian reported.

生词表

corridor ['kɔridɔ:] n. 走廊
underscore [,ʌndə'skɔ:] v. 划线于…下 v.强调
weigh in 参加辩论,加入比赛
lamentable ['læməntəbl] adj. 可悲的,哀伤的,可怜的
spontaneous [spɔn'teinjəs, -niəs]  adj. 自发的,自然产生的
tribute ['tribju:t] n. 贡品,颂词,称赞,(表示敬意的)礼物
accusation [ækju(:)'zeiʃən] n. 控告,指控,非难
persecution [,pə:si'kju:ʃən] n. 迫害,烦扰
anguish ['æŋgwiʃ] n. 苦闷,痛苦 v. 使…极苦闷,使…极痛苦
vindicate ['vindikeit] v. 辩护
devastate ['devəsteit] v. 毁坏
in awe of adj. 敬畏(恐惧)

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有7条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣

Saturday Night Live，简称SNL，中文译名为《周六夜现场》，也译为《周末夜现场》，是美国一个非常长寿的喜剧节目，迄今已经34季（也就是34年! ）。上周刚刚播出了这一季的最终回。节目的形式是每期请一位名人作为主持，有歌手(Jusint Timberlake)、演员(James Franco，豪斯医生Hugh Laurie… )、运动员(菲尔普斯，勒布朗·詹姆斯)，等等。然后分单元播出各种主题的搞笑短剧（大部分都是现场直播），演员由节目的固定阵容(Regular Cast)和当期嘉宾主持组成，剧情涉及时政新闻、名人绯闻，以及各种社会议题。大部分单元剧都不会每期节目出现，但是会随时回归。多次出现在SNL的嘉宾，如果上一次出现时某个单元反响比较好，他再次出现时这一单元就会有续集。此外，还有每期都有的恶搞新闻播报(Weekend Update) 环节，主持人是固定的—— Seth Meyers，以及偶尔会不来的女主持Amy Poehler。新闻环节会不定期出现明星来跑通告，做宣传。

然后每期节目还有Music Guest来做现场表演……

这一季的Music Guest ：

Kelly Clarkson, Ciaria, Green Day, Jonas Brothers, Beyonce, Coldplay, Duffy…. 都是大牌啊~

噢~ 贾斯汀·汀布莱克

上上个星期，第一次真正看SNL，就赶上Justin的精彩表演。他太搞笑了……  让我第一次知道，原来走偶像派的帅哥也不一定要装酷的！ 人长得又帅，又会唱歌，又会搞笑……  叫我如何不喜欢他？

一直想把这期节目翻译出来与大家共享，不过由于典故太多，用词也比较高级，很多地方都听得一知半解，自己看看可能还行，做字幕的话还是要对广大网友负责的。好在现在有了外国朋友做出的脚本：http://snltranscripts.jt.org/08/08u.phtml

这个专门的关于SNL的网站上，有1975年以来各期的详细介绍和部分脚本。朋友们可以去看看哇，然后找到有你喜欢的明星的episode，对照着脚本看，简直是学英语的完美方法！这叫什么？这叫寓教于乐啊~！

单元剧《移民》

无比遗憾地告诉大家：视频已遭遇版权投诉，被优酷和六房间屏蔽。

不过，现在暂时还可以下载 。

我很好奇，究竟是谁去投诉的？这个节目的版权照理说应该属于NBC公司，NBC在中国有没有什么业务，在这里传播，提高一点知名度，又哪里影响到他们的权利了呢？如果说是因为光腚总急的“互联网试听”传播条款，无证禁止传播，那我无话可说。

这段剧情设定为一群爱尔兰人移民美利坚，在登陆前的对话。贾斯汀曾祖父的曾祖父和他的同路人们，预测自己子孙的将来……

台词中英对照：

Immigrant #1:  [with Irish accent] Oh look, Ellis Island! The new world is upon us! I can smell it in me nose! [爱尔兰口音]看呐! 爱丽丝岛! 新世界就在我们眼前! 我能闻到它的芬芳! [1]

Immigrant #2: Just think of it, a chance to start a new life for our children. 想想看哪！这是为我们的孩子开创一个新世界的机会

Immigrant #3: And our children’s children. 以及我们孩子的孩子。

Immigrant #4: Why, someday I hope that me own great, great grandson might own his own land. 希望有一天我的曾孙子的曾孙子能有一片属于他自己的领地。

Immigrant #2: I hope my great, great grandson will be a learned doctor. 我希望我曾孙子的曾孙子会是一位博学的医生。

Immigrant #1: What about you, Cornelius Timberlake? What do you think your great, great grandson will be like?  你能? 柯林尼斯·汀布莱克?  你希望你的曾孙子的曾孙子会是什么样?

Cornelius Timberlake: Well, I know he’ll be very handsome. And he’ll be a millionaire. 好吧.. 我坚信他会非常帅气。而且… 他会成为百万富翁。

Immigrant #1: A millionaire? From fur trapping? 百万富翁? 靠猎兽皮?

Immigrant #4: From coal? 还是开煤矿?

Cornelius: No, from popular songs. 不 靠的是流行歌曲

Immigrant #3: What sort of songs could make a man millions? 什么样的歌会让一个男人成为百万富翁啊?

Cornelius: Oh I don’t know. Something like [singing] “cry me a river.”  我也不知道。也许像这样的.. “cry me a river…”

Immigrant #3: So… he’ll be a girl? 所以.. 他会是个女孩咯?

Cornelius: NO, that’s a perfectly normal way for a man to sing! He’ll be world famous by the age of 16. 不! 男人这样唱也非常正常! 还有… 他16岁时就会世界闻名

Immigrant #2: Oh, by 16? How? 哦 16岁? 为啥?

Cornelius: At a young age, he’ll go to work with a band of boys. 在他年轻的时候..  他会和一队男孩一起打拼

Immigrant #4: Like a sweatshop? 在血汗工厂里?

Cornelius: Sort of. Sort of like a sweatshop. Then I imagine he’ll branch out on his own. Growing more and more handsome every day. He’ll strut about in tiny vests, thin ties, and outdated hats.  差不多。差不多就是血汗工厂 。然后我认为他会独立发展 ，每一天都变得越来越帅气。他会穿着紧身背心招摇过市，小小的领结，老式的帽子。

Immigrant #2: Oh that will look dreadful!  噢 那一定难看死了。

Cornelius: No, on him it will work! 不 在他身上就很好看!

Immigrant #4: That will probably frustrate huggar maiden.  那肯定会让处女Tuggar非常沮丧(这句拿不准)

Cornelius: Aye. T’will. I actually dream of a day when my great, great grandson will… bring sexy back.  对 肯定会的。我一直在梦想有一天，我的曾曾孙子能找回性感来。

Immigrant #1: Bring-bring sexy back, what does that mean? 找- 找回性感? 这是什么意思?

Cornelius: It’ll be gone and he’ll bring it back! 那东西跑掉了，他就把它找回来。

Immigrant #3: Where did it go? 跑哪儿去了?

Cornelius: Just trust me, people will be on board. Okay? 你就相信我! 到时候人们会懂的, 好吧？

Immigrant #2: Well it sounds like he’ll have his pick of the ladies. 看起来好像他身边会围绕着很多女人啊。

Cornelius: Aye. Indeed. I’d like to think that at first, he’ll date a popular female singer. Publicly, they claim to be virgins but, privately, he hit it. 没错，确实是。我希望最开始的时候，他会和一位很红的女歌手约会。公开场合他们都宣称自己是处子之身，而其实，他已经做过。

[audience screams with laughter as Justin glances around, raises his eyebrows, closes his eyes and shakes his head] [观众们欢呼起来，贾斯汀蛮不在乎的环视一圈，抬了抬眉毛，闭上眼睛摇了摇头。]

Then-then, he’ll make love with women so beautiful and so often, that it won’t be enough for him, and he’ll, I don’t know maybe try some stuff with guys. I mean he’ll be straight! But, uh, well, never mind, forget that part, everything else will come true but forget that part. His life is going to be a nonstop orgy of fame and money. He’ll sing! He’ll dance! He’ll act! He’ll even make surprise appearances on a Saturday night comedy show! There will be great excitement. And then he’ll appear. Again and again. Many times a year. 然后- 然后他会经常地和非常漂亮的女人做爱。即便这样他也不满足，然后他说不定会到男人那儿尝尝鲜。我是说他当然是还是异性恋!不过 额 好吧 忘掉这一段! 其他所有事都会成真，但这一段不要！他将生活在奢华淫逸之中。他唱歌! 他跳舞! 他表演! 他甚至会不经意地出现在 一个周六晚上的喜剧节目中，他的出现让人兴奋，然后他还会，一次又一次地出现。一年里很多次 。

Immigrant #1: Won’t that lessen the excitement, though? 不过 这样兴奋感不就会减少吗?

Cornelius: Nooo!!!! No!! Right? It’ll be good, right? 不!!!! 不会!!  是吧? 会没问题的 对吧?

[a Jewish-looking man walks in] [犹太人装扮的人走了进来]

Moyshe Samberg: [with Jewish accent] Ohhhh, it will be good! 啊 当然会没问题!

[audience cheers] [观众们欢呼]

Cornelius: Who are you? 你是谁?

Moyshe Samberg: My name is Moyshe Samberg. Your prediction has inspired me. Maybe someday my great, great grandson will also make songs.  我叫莫伊西·三宝宝. 你的预言启发了我. 也许有一天 我的曾曾孙子也会去唱歌。

Immigrant #2: Well, do you think he’ll have a beautiful voice?  那么 你认为他会有一副好嗓子吗?

Moyshe Samberg: Ehhh, he’ll have a voice! A fine, workable voice, you know? It’ll be more about charisma with him. And maybe, in this new land of opportunity, our grandsons will collaborate.  啊..  他会有好嗓子 好吧? 前途无量的好嗓子，还会带给他额外的魅力。而且说不定，在这个充满机会的新疆土，我们的曾孙子们会联合起来。

Cornelius: You know what Jew?  知道么 犹太佬?

Moyshe Samberg: THERE IT IS!  我们到了!

Cornelius: You’re all right.  你是对的

Immigrant #1: To the new world!  为新世界欢呼!

[everyone cheers and raises their fists] [全体欢呼并高举拳头]

[fade out] [淡出]

英文脚本整理: Katie    中文翻译：笨活儿

语法要点精讲

in me nose 如果大家够仔细，应该也听出来上一篇文章中的祖孙俩，那位爷爷也是说的me。i lost me wife.

埃利斯岛（Ellis Island，又译爱丽丝岛）是位于美国纽约州纽约港内的一个岛屿。与自由女神像的所在地自由岛相邻。埃利斯岛在1892年1月1日到1954年11月12日期间是移民管理局的所在地。许多来自欧洲的移民在这里踏上美国的土地，进行身体检查和接受移民官的询问。目前，埃利斯岛上的移民管理局已经改建为移民博物馆。[via Wikipedia]

think = tink.. 不得不说，我爱死爱尔兰口音了。《IT狂人》里的Roy也是这口音，太可爱了~

fur trapping fur，兽皮。trap，布陷阱。

sweatshop 血汗工厂。sweat 是汗水嘛。可别和sweetshop，糖果厂搞混了哦。

strut [strʌt] n. 高视阔步,支柱,抗压材    v. 趾高气扬地走,用支柱支撑
[ 过去式strutted 过去分词strutted 现在分词strutting 第三人称单数struts 名词strutter 副词struttingly ]

T’will   It will的缩读。

a nonstop orgy of fame and money  名利和金钱上不停歇的纵欲狂欢

orgy ['ɔ:dʒi]  n.【复数-gies】
1) 纵酒欢宴，狂歌乱舞，狂饮
2) 无节制(举动或行为)
3) [常用复数](古希腊、古罗马时期的)秘密祭神仪式(常以歌舞、狂欢、纵欲等为其特点)
4) 放荡；公开纵淫的聚会

charisma

charisma [kə'rizmə] n.
1. 【基督教神学】 神赐的才能 (如预言等)
2. (能引起群众拥护和爱戴的知名人士政治上的)领袖气质；个人的魅力，超凡魅力，吸引力，感召力
3. 魅力;性感 [亦作charism]
变形: n. charismata

这还不算最好的

其实，最搞笑的并不是这段。后面的Plasticeville (整形谷) 单元里，贾斯汀又唱又跳，同时展现了作为一个喜剧演员和歌手的才华…… 唱的都是当前的流行热歌的歌词改编……   编剧和演员，整个剧组都太有才啦！

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有3条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣

[media id=6 width=480 height=320]

Burnin’ Up  燃烧

I’m hot
我热如火
You’re cold
你冷若霜
You go around
你四顾环绕
Like you know
好像知道
Who I am
我是谁
But you don’t
其实你不了
You’ve got me on my toes
你已让我  神魂颠倒

I’m slipping into the lava
就像是掉进了火热熔岩
And I’m trying to keep from going under
我使尽全力避免更加深陷
Baby
宝贝
You turn the temperature hotter
你让周围的温度升高
Cause I’m burning up
看吧我在燃烧 [可能会被听成“看把我再燃烧”。不过并无大碍。]
Burning up
烧尽我
For you baby
只为你  宝贝

I fell(I fell)
陷落（陷落）
So fast(so fast)
太快（太快）
can’t hold myself
我停不下来
back
鸟~ -_-||
High heels(high heels)
高跟鞋
Red dress(red dress)
红裙子
All by yourself
都是自己挑选…
Gotta catch my breath
天哪 我得喘口气

I’m slipping into the lava
就像是掉进了火热熔岩
And I’m trying to keep from going under
我使尽全力避免更加深陷
Baby
宝贝
You turn the temperature hotter
你让周围的温度升高
Cause I’m burning up
看吧我在燃烧
Burning up
烧尽我
For you baby
只为你 宝贝

I walk in the room
房里游走
All I can see is you
随时看到的都是你
You’re staring me down
你在把我打量
I know you feel it too
这感觉你一定也 察觉 到

I’m slipping into the lava
就像是掉进火热熔岩
And I’m trying to keep from going under
我使尽全力避免更加深陷
Baby
宝贝
You turn the temperature hotter
你让周围温度升高
Cause I’m burning up
看吧我在燃烧
Burning up
烧尽我
For you baby
只为你 宝贝

I’m slipping into the lava
就像是掉进火热熔岩
And I’m trying to keep from going under
我使尽全力避免更加深陷
Baby
宝贝
You turn the temperature hotter
你让周围温度升高
Cause I’m burning up
看吧我在燃烧
Burning up
烧尽我
For you baby
只为你 宝贝

We’re burning up In this place tonight
今晚我们把自己燃烧掉
You brothers sing it loud(and we’re feeling right)
你的兄弟大声唱着歌谣（我们感觉很好）
Get up and dance don’t try to fight
站起来跳一场不挑衅的舞蹈
Big Rob for real (and that’s no lie)
Big Rob来真的（骗人是小狗）
stop drop and roll (and touch the floor)
不要做drop and roll（还有单手倒立）
(To keep from burning up)
（以免被烧尽）
More and More
更多更多
I got JB with me(we’re laying it down)
JB和我一起[囧]
Come on boys
来吧帅哥们
let’s bring the chorus around
咱们再唱一遍副歌

(chorus)

翻译歌词的时候我一般喜欢一句一句地对应，并且注意字数，同时保证韵律，能按照原曲唱出来最好。

第一句就有问题了。I’m hot，是自信男青年在夸耀自己的魅力，翻译成“我热如火”意味就淡了，因为中文的“热”，没有“性感迷人”那层意思。而如果不这么翻，则没法和下一句对应。You’re cold不翻译成“冷若冰”，也是出于韵脚的考虑。ang显然比ing更顺口。

“You go around你四顾环绕/Like you know好像知道/Who I am我是谁/But you don’t其实你不了” 这一句容易出现理解错误。最开始我就认为know who I am是指女青年看透了男青年，知道了他本性，不过仔细想了想，这句话应该是说“其实我们素未谋面，你却到处走动，完全不关注我，就好像早就认识我了一样”。潜台词是“我这么hot，你居然不感兴趣？”。又是男青年自信的表现。

“but you don’t”比较不好翻译。在英语里，这句话很容易就根据上下文推断出don’t后面省略了“know me”。而按照汉语的习惯，表达同样的意思，则需要“但你并不知道”，多了三个音节。这么多音节，按照原曲，根本没法塞进去。最后选用“其实你不了”，“你”字没有省略，是为了降低这句话被误解的概率。必须在中文习惯、英文原意、原曲音律里找一个平衡点，很难啊。

got me on my toes ，on one’s toes，做好了准备，急切着要做某事。意思是女青让男青年想要行动起来，发动求爱攻势！同样，为了押韵和字数，省略掉这层意思，译成“神魂颠倒”表达同样的感觉。

副歌部分也是做了很多调整，省略了“的”，“了”之类的副词，让歌词简洁，以对应音节，同时要么改变语序，要么换一个说法，以保持押韵。最终结果还算差强人意吧。大家可以按照原曲用中文唱一遍，嗯哼~？

for you baby前的那句Burning up，也可以按照原词的重复，翻译成“在燃烧”。但就没有表现出up这个词的意思，所以译成了“烧尽我”。

can’t hold myself back这句话翻译得比较囧。“我停不下来/鸟~”的译法纯属恶搞。按照原曲，停顿后就是得要一个单音节才好。英语里的这个back，是这句话含义的核心，因为hold back才表示一个完整的意思，所以停顿过后说，有强调的意味，不显得奇怪。而中文里怎么办？中文句尾一般都是副词，对句子含义没什么影响的副词。也许应该翻译成“我根本无法/停下来…” 把“停下来”唱快一点，那个音也能糊弄过去。

“High heels(high heels)高跟鞋/Red dress(red dress)红裙子/All by yourself都是自己挑选/Gotta catch my breath天哪 我得喘口气”。在网上看到有人把red dress翻译成“红洋装”的。囧。外国人会叫自己的衣服为“洋装”哇…… 这句应该是说我们的女青年品味很高，自己选的衣服来穿，很hot，于是男青年就受不了了。Gotta catch my breath这句我给他加了个感叹词“天哪”，一方面对应gotta的音节，一方面把英语里很明显，汉语里不明显的热情给明显化。

staring me down 有一直盯着我看，让我都不敢和你对视的意思。中文要表达这个意思，最简洁的是“你盯得我不敢和你对视”。如果说“你的眼神打败了我”，又根本没法联想到原意上去…… 最后，弱化了down这层意思，译成“你在把我打量”。时态也正好吻合。

I know you feel it too还可以翻译成“我知道你也有感觉”。囧啊，remind me of SHE的某首歌。

rap部分是乱翻的。值得一提的是Big Rob，他还专门有一个网站呢：http://www.bigrobsforreal.com/Big_Rob.html

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有3条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣

Travis – Before You Were Young

In the days before you were young
we used to sit in the morning sun
we used to turn the radio on
what happened?
那时你也年少轻狂
我们并肩享受清晨阳光
聆听电台的声响
怎会这样

we’d see our lies in the eyes of fate
and take our cradles to the grave
but even then we’re never saved
from danger
命运看出我们在撒谎
倔强任性到死亡
但至死我们仍深陷
这危险地方

and if you ever leave me come
i will be there waiting
waiting for you know i will
i love you for ever
i’ll never say never
如果你要离开我远航
我定会为你守望
等待着 你能明了
我的爱能比永远长
我绝不说永别

but i’ve only got two hands
and i’ll never learn to dance
i’ll never get a second chance
whatever
但我只是一介草莽
浪漫舞蹈都不敢想
机会不会再次造访
只能就这样

i’ll take the breath away from your sighs
and wipe the tears away from your eyes
and hope the fire never dies
inside you
我会尽力为你驱走惆怅
不再让泪水装满你眼眶
让你的心中满满荡漾
希望

and if you ever leave me come
i will be there waiting
waiting for you know i will
i love you
i love you
i love you…
而如果你要离开我远航
我会一直为你守望
等待着 你能明白
我爱你
我爱你
我爱你…

in the days before you were young
we used to sit in the morning sun
we used to turn the radio on
what happened?
那时你也年少轻狂
我们并肩享受清晨阳光
聆听电台的声响
怎会这样

—————————————————————————————

歌词翻译的最高境界，是让意境准确传达的同时，保持音节和韵律。

我貌似还没达到这个境界。更多的时候是在为了音律而勉强用词…… 哎~~ 主要还是中文造诣不够啊~~（囧。说得好像我英文造诣就很高一样……）

PS: 好难得遇到一首完全没有生词的歌。

其实给大家说了吧，翻译这歌词完全是因为豆瓣上Travis 《Ode to J. Smith》专辑的最受欢迎评论居然是这个词的翻译。我觉得他翻译得也不过如此嘛…… So, 自己也try了一下……

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 板凳还在 | 推荐到豆瓣

谷歌音乐的地址：http://www.google.cn/music/homepage

当然，你还是可以通过 http://g.cn/music 访问

谷歌音乐广告打到了谷歌中国的首页，标志着谷歌音乐的正式发布。

首页相比过去仅仅只有一个排行榜，多了一些最新专辑和新功能推荐。

泡泡选歌可以根据音乐的节奏、声调、年代等随机推荐歌曲。

UPDATE：谷歌音乐团队还专门根据这个功能退出了一个谷歌音乐的单曲。实在洋气..

歌手库 让找歌更加方便。

专题 页面比以前单纯是一个歌曲列表要更好用。

每个曲目列表右边都有“相似歌曲”，让发现你喜欢的音乐更加容易。

据说还有哼唱功能，我们拭目以待。

不知道是不是因为网络中心换了设备的缘故，今天我试听谷歌音乐非常快，几乎没有缓冲……

最重要的是，大部分歌曲还能免费下载！哇咔咔~~

继续每日一歌：

Jason Mraz – Life Is Wonderful

[media id=3 width=480 height=320]

Jason大叔超cute的~

随附歌词：

It takes a crane to build a crane 造起重机得用起重机
It takes two floors to make a storey 造一楼层得用两楼板
It takes an egg to make a hen 孵母鸡得用鸡蛋
It takes a hen to make an egg 生鸡蛋得用母鸡
There is no end to what I’m saying 我的碎碎念没有止尽

It takes a thought to make a word 想好词得用脑子
And it takes some words to make an action 促行动得用好词
And it takes some work to make it work 要成功得先做功
It takes some good to make it hurt 要伤害得用好处引诱
It takes some bad for satisfaction 要满意得先知道不好

Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful  啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命真精彩
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 它循环无止境
Ah la la la la life is wonderful   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命真精彩
Ah la la la la la   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦

It takes a night to make it dawn 有黎明才有黑夜
And it takes a day to make you yawn brother 累一整天才会打哈欠 兄弟
And it takes some old to make you young  有衰老才有年轻
It takes some cold to know the sun 有寒冷才让人觉察太阳的温暖
It takes the one to have the other 有舍才有得

And it takes no time to fall in love 相爱是瞬间的事
But it takes you years to know what love is 懂得爱却要花你几年的时间
And it takes some fears to make you trust 恐惧才让你相信
It takes some tears to make it rust 记忆锈蚀在眼泪之后
It takes the dust to have it polished 满布灰尘之时你又将其打磨光亮

Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful  啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生活多奇妙
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 它循环无止境
Ah la la la la life is wonderful   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生活多美好
Ah la la la la la   啊啦啦啦啦啦啦

It takes some silence to make sound 有寂静才有声响
And it takes a loss before you found it 有丢失才有寻着
And it takes a road to go nowhere 去往未知领域也需一条路
It takes a toll to make you care 有损失你才会开始珍惜
It takes a hole to make a mountain 一处的下陷才造就另一处的高山

Ah la la la la la life is wonderful 啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命真精彩
Ah la la la la la life goes full circle 啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命周而复始
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful 啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命真精彩
Ah la la la la la life is meaningful 啊啦啦啦啦啦啦 生命意义非凡
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la life is meaningful
Ah la la la la la la life is full of
Ah la la la la la life is so full of love
Ah la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life is meaningful
Ah la la la la la life is full of
Ah la la la la la life is so full of love

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 板凳还在 | 推荐到豆瓣

下面做一个小小的批注，说明一下自己的译法。然后把原文中有用的写作技巧找出来，对大家应该会有帮助。

以下内容，绿色部分代表不太好猜到意思的部分，紫色部分代表生词或不熟悉的——也就是你自己写作文不会想起要用的单词，蓝色部分代表重点词组和用法（有可能会被出到完形填空的），粗体部分代表很有用的用法，将来写作时可以直接套用的，中括号内的代表长难句（对理解文章意思很重要）。

是不是有点眼花缭乱啊？？我自己都要昏了。没关系，慢慢来嘛！

Yes, More Mr. Nice Guy

是的，我们需要更多好好先生

———————————-

Not quite seven weeks into Barack Obama‘s presidency, the capital’s leading thinkers seem to agree that the era of postpartisanship is over. Obama’s team made little secret of their intention to win broad support for his stimulus plan – an effort that yielded three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. The president’s pick for the Commerce Department, Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, turned down the job, citing his personal opposition to the bill. According to E. J. Dionne Jr. of  The Washington Post, Obama himself, speaking to a group of columnists aboard Air Force One, suggested that in the future, he would approach Republicans with more wariness. “You know, I am an eternal optimist,” the president said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”

巴拉克·奥巴马上任不过七周，他的智囊团国会的领先主导思想家（leading thingker）们似乎已然承认“跨党派分歧”时代“后党派时代”（超越党派分歧的时代）的结束。奥巴马团队为其经济刺激方案争取广泛支持的意图明显路人皆知，但他们的努力只在参议院换来三张共和党支持票，而在众议院一无所获。总统钦点的商务部长，参议员贾德·格雷格（Judd Gregg），一位来自新罕布什尔州的共和党员，拒绝了这项工作就任，并声称原因之一是他个人反对奥巴马的方案。 根据《华盛顿邮报》记者E. J. 迪翁（E. J. Dionne Jr.) 的报道，奥巴马本人，在空军一号上对一群专栏作家说，将来他会更加审慎地着手处理(approach)与共和党人的关系。”大家知道，我是个永恒的乐天派，”总统说，” 但这并不代表我是个傻蛋。”

【词汇】
postpartisanship post-前缀 ，…之后，partisanship，party的衍生词，党派观念；党派观念滞后，超越党派观念，跨党派分歧
yielded 动词yield，产出，收获…；勉强交出；让步，承认：I yield to no one in my admiration for (ie am one of the greatest admirers of) her work. 我比任何人都佩服她的工作.
make little secrect of 不掩饰。这个短语的意思很明显。This phrase makes little secrect of itselfe.
the Senate，参议院；the House，the House of Representatives的缩写，众议院
turn down 拒绝，让某人失望
cite 引用，原句中表达了“他个人的反对是拒绝部长职位的原因之一 ”这层意思。
approach 靠近，开始处理  wariness 名词，谨慎；固定搭配：with wariness
sap 俚语，傻瓜。原意是“植物的汁液”，引申含义“元气，精力”

【翻译心得】
sap我译成了“傻蛋”，更具俚语特征。the capital’s leading thinkers 受译言上的推荐者影响，最开始理解成了奥巴马的智囊团。实际上应该指国会政治人物中所有党派的领先思考家占主导地位的政策考虑者（感谢译言网友“小水爸爸”提醒），因为不论党内党外都认为奥巴马的团结策略是失败的。make little secrect of 的含义要准确而不动声色地译出十分困难。“路人皆知”是我觉得比较接近的译法，只是好像与原文有一点语气上的差异。

“是个傻蛋”，删掉中间的“个”，行文更加简洁，语气得到加强，也更符合中文语言习惯

———————————-

Such talk acted like a shot of adrenaline to the stilled hearts of liberal bloggers and columnists who had feared that Obama might squander a chance to stomp on his bewildered opposition. So much energy has been spent berating the idea of bipartisanship, in fact, that no one has stopped to ask what Obama means by it. As the political scientist James Morone recently pointed out on The Times’s Op-Ed page, legislative bipartisanship, in the sense of two-party unity behind a single agenda, has never really existed.[1]【 The presidents we tend to immortalize hardly managed to transcend party politics; their greatness grew from their willingness to articulate arguments that were calibrated to be divisive.】 Franklin Roosevelt infuriated generations of conservatives who reviled his concept of expansive government. Ronald Reagan‘s passionate counterargument made him an enduring enemy to the left.

此番言论就像给开明的(?)博客作者和专栏作家们缺乏动静的内心打了一剂肾上腺素。此前，他们一度担心奥巴马会错失将骚动的对手踩在脚下的良机。两党合作的想法被不遗余力地痛斥，事实上，也一直有人在不断质问奥巴马，这样做究竟是作何考虑。正如政治学者詹姆斯·马龙（James Morone ）在《时报》的特稿专页上所说，立法上的两党合作，若是企图通过在一个简单的日程表内实现两党联合而达到，是从不可能真正实现的。那些我们愿意让他永垂不朽的总统都尝试过超越党派间的政治分歧；他们希望道破那些被我们修正到使我们分裂的争端，而这些希望使他们的形象更加伟大。那些我们认为是永垂不朽的总统，几乎从未尝试过超越党派分歧；而正是随时准备展现自己辩论风采的热切意愿让他们的伟大形象更加熠熠发光。他们论证时用词精准，每一句话都被认真调节到足以引起分裂的程度。富兰克林·罗斯福（Franklin Roosevelt）让几代保守派气急败坏，他们咒骂他把政府扩大化的怪想法 扩张政府的理念让几代保守派气急败坏，破口大骂。罗纳德·里根（Ronald Reagan）的激情抗辩让他成为左派的长期敌人。

【词汇】
a shot of 一管针剂    adrenaline [ə'drenəlin] 肾上腺素
squander / ˈskwɔndə(r); ˋskwɑndɚ/v. 浪费（时间、金钱、机会、感情…）。这个词比waste高级多了吧，哇咔咔？
stomp / stɔmp; stɑmp/ v. (infml 口) move, walk, dance, etc with a heavy step (in the specified direction)
bewildered /bɪˈwɪldəd US -ərd/ adj. totally confused    动词bewilder，使混乱，使迷惑
berating 原词berate / bɪˈreɪt; bɪˋret/ v [Tn] (fml 文) scold sharply 严厉责备; 痛斥.
means by it means经常和by it联系起来用
Op-Ed page Op-Ed是形容词，也可以不必大写首字母，词源是opposite (the) editorial [社论背面]。美国英语特有词。美国报纸的署名评论版一般在社论所在版面的背面。社论代表报纸立场，署名评论只代表作者观点。
legislative /ˈledʒɪslətɪv US -leɪtɪv/ 与立法相关的。动词legislate，立法。
in the sense of 从…的意义上说
immortalize also immortalise BrE /ɪˈmɔːtəlaɪz US -ɔːr-/ 使不朽
articulate 用词准确的，发音清晰的
calibrate 校准（仪器刻度）
divisive 引起分歧的，divide + active。
infuriate / ɪnˈfjuərɪeɪt; ɪnˋfjʊrɪˏet/  使大怒
conservative 保守的，保守者
revile 咒骂
counterargument 反争辩，couner- 前缀，表示“回应reaction”，“相对的opposite”，“配对的matching”
enduring 持续的，长期的

【难句】

[1]【 The presidents we tend to immortalize hardly managed to transcend party politics; their greatness grew from their willingness to articulate arguments that were calibrated to be divisive.】
那些我们认为是永垂不朽的总统，几乎从未尝试过超越党派分歧；而正是随时准备展现自己辩论风采的热切意愿让他们的伟大形象更加熠熠发光。他们论证时用词精准，每一句话都被认真调节调校到足以引起分裂的程度。

我的翻译比较冗长，因为我觉得只有这样才能表达清楚原文的意思。也许还有更简洁的译法，我想不出来。最开始我没有注意到那个hardly，结果整个段落都理解错误，搞得我还认为作者的逻辑禁不起推敲。

这个句子的前半部分还比较好理解，难点就在那个hardly，可不要把它看做是immortalize的修饰语。“竭尽全力使其不朽”算怎么回事？后半部分只要能准确断句，也不难理解。正确的语素关系应该是： their greatness grew| from their willingness [to articulate arguments (that were calibrated to be divisive)]。N重嵌套的修饰语在中文实在少见，翻译的时候十分困难。如果大家觉得还有更好的译法，请留言告知。

【翻译心得】

“扩张政府的理念让几代保守派气急败坏，破口大骂”的译法是我力求翻译腔的尝试。

———————————-

This doesn’t mean, though, that our politics have not fundamentally changed over the last few decades. Roosevelt and his Republican critics had profound disagreements, but both sides understood that their dispute was ideological rather than personal, the clash of opposing theories in a common pursuit. In his outstanding biography of  Tip O’Neill, John A. Farrell describes how, far from slamming the Oval Office door on a politician who didn’t agree with them, Reagan’s aides kept O’Neill’s favorite cigars on hand. Reagan and the Democratic speaker would spar heatedly for hours in the Oval Office (and in the news media), only to shake hands and do it again. Unlike Obama, of course, Reagan had little choice but to do business with his adversary, who controlled the House. But from the stormy dialogue between Reagan and O’Neill came a more balanced program than either man might have authored alone.

不过，这并不代表我们的政治家在过去几十年中没有发生根本上的改变。罗斯福和他的共和党批评者之间有深刻的对立，但双方都很清楚，他们的争论与其说是个人的恩怨，还不如说是意识形态上的[差异]，是拥有共同追求的对立观点之间的冲突。在其杰出著作《迪普·奥尼尔（Tip O’Neill）传》中，约翰·A·法雷尔（John A. Farrell）描述了里根总统是如何帮助奥尼尔，而不是在总统办公室遇到这位不同意自己的政客，就甩门而去。由于里根的帮助，奥尼尔才能一直抽到自己喜爱的雪茄。里根和民主党发言人在总统办公室（以及新闻媒体上）可以激烈争吵互相争辩上几个小时，最终还是会总是握手言和。如此吵吵停停，循环往复。当然，与奥巴马不同，里根是不得不和对手打交道，因为当时他们控制着众议院。不过，里根和奥尼尔之间暴风雨般对话的结果总是一个更为平衡各方利益的方案。

【词汇】
fundamentally 根本上的
profound 深刻的，极大的，可用于sigh,silence,sleep,shock,interest,changes,ignorance等等…  pro-前缀代表”在..之前”，在成立之前就存在着的，是不是很大很深刻呢？
dispute / dɪˈspjuːt; dɪˋspjut/ 争论，口角
ideological /ˌaɪdiəˈlɔdʒɪkəl US -ˈlɑː-/ 意识形态的，观念上的
in a common pursuit 出于共同追求
the Oval Office 椭圆形办公室，也就是总统办公室
spar (通常指带善意地) 争吵
adversary / ˈædvəsərɪ; US -serɪ; ˋædvɚˏsɛrɪ/ 敌手，竞赛中的对手

【翻译心得】
In his outstanding biography of  Tip O’Neill 这句意思明白的话反而不好译。“在他的杰出的迪普·奥尼尔的传记中”，“的”字太多，显得很低级，翻译腔太重。若去掉任何一个“的”，要么不符合汉语平常的说话习惯，要么产生歧义，要么翻译腔更重。最终采用“在其杰出著作《迪普·奥尼尔（Tip O’Neill）传》中”这一译法，算是比较满足自然准确的要求，我不信他的biography of  Tip O’Neill不叫《迪普·奥尼尔传》。其实，”Tip”算是奥尼尔的绰号，但是这层意思不好翻译出来，再加上Tip本来就是由“Thomas Phillip”而来，也算是发音贴合，音译也没错。

than either man might have authored alone 直接省略不译。因为在英语中这样的强调很正常，但在汉语中就显得有点罗嗦了。

本段第一句话和最后一句话都以“不过”开头，显得有点奇怪。谁能帮我找一个更好的处理方法？

———————————-

[2]【Such an acknowledgment of common purpose has all but vanished, as the realignment in American politics – a hardening of regional loyalties that began with battles over civil rights and Vietnam – deepened the cultural divisions in Washington.】 Each party has demonized the other and embraced the notion that dissent can have no moral or intellectual value. True, we’ve not quite reached the depths of the 1850s, when the pro-slavery congressman Preston Brooks severely beat his colleague Charles Sumner with a cane (it’s a shame they didn’t have YouTube), but nonetheless, the two sides rarely breach their mistrust long enough to bicker like ordinary humans, let alone share a cigar.

这一显而易见的政治目标几乎已经无人注意到 ，因为美国政治格局的重组深化了华盛顿的文化分歧。自关于公民权利和越南问题的斗争起，宗教忠诚就被不断强化。但随着美国政治格局的重组，这种大家其实殊途同归的政治共识已经几乎消失殆尽。自民权争端和越战问题起，宗教地区忠诚就被不断强化，华盛顿内部出现了更严重的文化分歧。两个党派都妖魔化对方，并且臣服于“异议既不道德，也无智慧”这一信条。不错，我们的确还没有达到19世纪50年代的那些前辈们的厉害程度(，) —— 当年亲奴隶制的国会议员普雷斯顿·布鲁克斯（Preston Brooks）用藤条手杖狠狠鞭打笞打他的同僚查尔斯·萨姆纳（Charles Sumner）（很可惜当时的人们没有YouTube）。但是话说回来，政治上对立的这两派始终还是很少放弃对彼此的不信任，像正常人一样斗嘴都尤不可为，更别说分享雪茄了。

【词汇】

【难句】

[2]【Such an acknowledgment of common purpose has all but vanished, as the realignment in American politics – a hardening of regional loyalties that began with battles over civil rights and Vietnam – deepened the cultural divisions in Washington.】

———————————-

This is why Obama is right to value bipartisanship, even if he doesn’t manage to win a single Republican vote – and even if he doesn’t need any to enact his legislative program. During the closing weeks of the fall campaign, Obama told me that bridging the cultural chasm in America would require of him, as president, a governing style that acknowledged differences rather than exploited them. This is why he intends to keep Republican leaders on speed dial, even if they vote against him – in doing so, he demonstrates to the voters that he will not be dragged into the pettiness and derision that have caused so many of them to lose faith in their government. He may also, over time, accumulate enough goodwill to wrangle Republican votes when he really does need them. [2]【If Obama is serious about making the difficult choices necessary to reform entitlements, for instance, he is bound to lose some support within his own party, and he may well find himself in need of partners from unexpected quarters.】

这就是为什么奥巴马重视两党合作是一个正确的决定，即便他都无法获得共和党的一张支持票——而且他要使自己的法案生效其实并不需要这些投票。在去年秋季竞选的最后一周，奥巴马告诉我，要在美国的文化鸿沟之上架起一座沟通的桥梁，需要他当总统时采取承认差异而不是利用差异的执政风格。这就是为什么他打算继续保存共和党领导人的快速拨号，即使他们总是投他的反对票——通过这样做，他向他的支持者表明了决心：他不会陷入让民众失去对政府信心的卑鄙而可笑的境地。随着时间的推移，他也能够积攒足够的声望和善意，当他真的实在需要共和党支持票的时候，作为与他们争辩的砝码。例如，如果奥巴马非常认真地要执行某项改革特定权益(entitlements)的艰难决定，他可能不得不丧失部分党内支持，而此时他还可以在一些意想不到的阵营中找到伙伴。

———————————-

In this way, Obama’s efforts haven’t been the failure that some think them to be. Eric Cantor, the Republican House whip, told me that he had met with the president four times already and thought him sincere and likable. The last of these meetings came on the night when senior Republicans in the House managed to corral their caucus into unanimously rejecting Obama’s stimulus program, then marched straight up Pennsylvania Avenue for drinks at the White House. [3]【He sought Republican backing for his plan to withdraw from Iraq and won conditional support from no less an adversary than John McCain.】 [4]【And while the president has taken to chastising his critics for old ideas, and while they have pilloried his economic instincts as being essentially Marxist, neither side has yet done so with anything like the venom that characterized the previous era.】

由此看来，奥巴马的努力并不是像某些人认为的，是毫无收益的失败。艾瑞克·坎特（Eric Cantor），众议院的共和党纪律委员（whip），告诉我说他已经面见总统四次，并且认为他是一个诚恳的、值得喜欢的人。最后一次见面是在一个晚上，众议院的共和党高层使出手段，让党内决策人员一致反对奥巴马的刺激计划，然后直接游行到了宾夕法尼亚大道，要在白宫讨杯喝的。奥巴马寻求共和党人对其从伊拉克撤军方案的支持，并且至少获得了约翰·麦凯恩（John McCain）这一老对手有条件的支持。在奥巴马总统严厉斥责他的批评是出于守旧观念时，在共和党人嘲笑奥巴马的经济直觉本质上是马克思主义时，双方都没有做任何过分的事，比如说用恶毒的言语评价上个总统任期内对方的表现。

———————————-

The tone of a presidency reveals itself only in time. After all, George W. Bush worked with Ted Kennedy to create his signature education plan during his first months in office, and he enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in the months after Sept. 11, 2001. It would have been hard to foresee then that the totality of his two terms would be remembered as one of the least cooperative periods in the country’s history. Similarly, it’s far too soon to assume that Obama’s opening act signals the curtain coming down on his bipartisan ideal. Only the most reactionary forces in Obama’s own party would demand that he stop trying to overhaul the contemptuous culture of the capital. And only a sap would listen to them.

总统执政风格只有经过时间的磨洗才会尽显本色。毕竟，乔治·W·布什（George W. Bush）与泰德·肯尼迪（ Ted Kennedy）在其任内第一个月内，合作提出了教育改革方案，并在9·11后几个月内，享受了压倒性的两党合作支持。当时谁又能料想到他的两个任期最终会被人们看作是历史上党派间最缺乏合作的时期之一。同理，现在断言奥巴马失败的开场标志着他的两党合作理想就要落幕，还为时尚早。只有奥巴马自己党内的极端倒退势力才会要求他停止修正国会大厦里傲慢文化的步伐。而只有“傻蛋”才会听他们的。

———————————-

Matt Bai, who covers politics for the magazine, is the author of “The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.”

作者简介：马特·白（Matt Bai），《纽约时报》政治方面专业作者，曾著有《论证：重建民主政治的斗争局内》（The Argument: Inside the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics）。

©2009 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 板凳还在 | 推荐到豆瓣

编剧: Thomas Bahmann

导演: Marco Kreuzpaintner

主演: Robert Stadlober / Kostja Ullmann / Alicja Bachleda-Curus

上映年度: 2004

官方网站: http://www.sommersturm.de/

语言: German

制片国家/地区: Germany

又名: 夏日风暴 / Sommersturm

imdb链接: tt0420206

夏日暴风雨海报

当时看了豆瓣上的介绍，决定下这部片子来看看。然后用电驴等待的那一个星期，用了电驴的预览功能，看了点片头，一下就被打动了（伟大的Blonde On Blonde）。突然就萌发了等这部片子下好要翻译一下的想法。

在射手网上找的字幕，TLF的太瞎编，whopper的又太不严肃，我用一种尽量专业的姿态，尽量贴合影片原意做了个翻译，希望能恰如其分的表达片中的青春喜剧成分和淡淡的忧伤。请多多支持！谢谢！

这部片子真的不赖，不后悔花这么多时间去做翻译。

不好意思本人不懂德语，是照着射手上找的英文字幕翻的。如果您发现了什么错误，还望及时告知。

在线收看地址：

http://6.cn/plist/124527/0.html

如果你喜欢我做的版本，请把它放到你的电驴的共享目录里。

或者你可以通过这里查看我发布到电驴上的链接下载：

http://www.verycd.com/groups/@u1312969/195791.topic ED2K链接

如果你已经下载了TLF的avi版本，可以直接前往射手下载外挂字幕。

©2008 笨活儿 | 永久链接 | 已经有2条评论了 | 推荐到豆瓣