研究生综合英语第7单元(2)

people.‖

你见过这位活泼的年仅24岁的初级女主管在旧金山一家第一流的公共关系公司上班的样子以后，你恐怕猜想不到她外表下内心的惶恐：“我知道自己还没有长大。我自己都惊讶在工作上我能表现得这么好。当客户平等地与我打交道时，我会想，‘我侥幸成功了’，但这种感觉并非喜悦，而是害怕他们最后会发现我只不过是个孩子而已。完全不具备什么能力。而另一半的时间里，我又对自己感到无比地自信和自傲，我—— 一个了不起的人，在工作中做到完成了各种各样的工作，每个人都认为我棒极了。我就像是两个不同的人似的。”

Many of us are not consciously aware of such fears. With enough surface bravado to fool the people we meet, we fool ourselves as well. But the memory of formlessness is never far beneath. So we hasten to try on life‘s uniforms and possible partners, in search of the perfect fit.

我们中的许多人尚未有意识地认识到这种恐惧。当我们表面的虚张声势足以愚弄我们所认识的人时，我们也在愚弄着自己。但是对自己尚未成型的记忆仍然清晰可寻。所以我们在追寻着最完美最合适自己的一切的过程中，匆忙地尝试着各种生活方式和可能的伴侣。

―Perfect‖ is that person, we imbue with the capacity to enliven and support our vision or the person we believe in and want to help. Two centuries ago, a fictional young poet in Germany, torn by his hopeless passion for the ―perfect‖ woman, drank a glass of wine, raised a pistol, and put a bullet through his head. It was a shot heard round the world. The lovelorn dropout who fired it was the hero of Goethe‘s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which contributed to the romantic movement that colors our expectations of love to this day. Goethe himself was a poet of 25 when he wrote the story. And like the fictional Werther, he suffered from an infatuation with a married woman, an unreachable woman, whose very mystery invited his fantasies of perfection. Goethe‘s hero struck such a chord in young people throughout Europe that a wave of suicides followed the book‘s publication.

“完美”的人是那位被我们灌输在头脑中的能激活并支持我们幻想的人，或是那位我们信任并愿意帮助的人。两百年前，一个小说中的年轻德国诗人，他因对一位“完美”女人无望的爱情而备受折磨，喝下一杯酒后，举枪射穿了自己的脑袋。这一枪声响彻世界。打响这一枪的那位失恋的弃世者是哥德小说《少年维特的烦恼》书中的男主人公，这本小说促成的浪漫主义运动直到今天仍影响着我们对爱情的期望。当哥德写这本小说时，他自己正是个25岁的诗人。像小说中的维特一样，他痛苦地痴迷于一位结了婚的女人，一个得不到的女人，正是她的神秘激起了他对完美的幻想。哥德的主人公是如此地打动着全欧洲青年的心弦，以致于书出版后，掀起了一股自杀的浪潮。

Today, as then, it‘s enlightening to speculate the degree to which a young man invents his romanticized version of the loved woman. She may be seen as the magical chameleon who will be a mother when he needs it and in the next instant the child requiring his protection, as well as the seductress who proves his potency, the soother or anxieties (who shall have none of her own), the guarantor of his immortality through the conversion of his need. And to what degree does the young woman invent the man she marries? She often sees in him possibilities that on one else recognizes and pictures herself within his dreams as the one person who truly understands. Such illusions are stuff of which the twenties are made. 今天，如同当时，思考一下年轻男子是如何虚构出他那浪漫化了的热恋女子，也很启人深思。她可以被看作是具有魔力的变色龙般的人物，在他需要母爱时便是一位母亲，下一个瞬间又

成为需要他保护的孩子，既是能证明他性能力的风情万种的女子，又是忧虑时能抚慰他的女性（她自己则全无忧虑），而且还能通过为他传宗接代以保存他的不朽。那么年轻女子在多大程度上虚构出她将来的伴侣呢？她经常在他身上看到其他人所未发现的能力，并把自己幻想成他梦中那位唯一了解他的知心人。这些幻想就是二十多岁的人所产生出来的。

―Illusions‖ is usually thought of as a pejorative, something we should get rid of if we suspect we have it. The illusions of the twenties, however, may be essential to infuse our first commitments with excitement and intensity, and to sustain us in those commitments long enough to gain us some experience in living.

“幻想”通常被视为贬义词，是我们一旦察觉自己有此念头就应排除的东西。然而，二十年岁时的幻想，对于激发和强化我们的最初承诺，对于支撑我们去履行承诺以获取生活经验来说，都可能是十分重要的。

The tasks before us are exciting, conflicting, and sometimes overwhelming, but of one thing most of us are certain in our twenties.

展现在我们面前的任务是令人兴奋、充满矛盾、有时又是势不可挡的，但有一件事对我们中大多数人来说是很确定的。 Will power will overcome all. 意志力将克服一切。

Money may be scare, the loans and laundry endless. The evil bait of selling out may tempt the would-be doctor, writer, social worker. But clearly or so it seems, we have only to apply our strong minds and sturdy wills to the wheel of life, and sooner or later our destiny will bend under our control.

我们可能囊中羞涩。有考虑不完的金钱问题和处理不完的生活琐事。那些会让我们背弃理想的邪恶诱饵可能引诱着未来的医生、作家和社会工作者。但是很明显地，或看来如此，我们只有把我们坚强不屈的意志力运用到生活中去， 这样迟早我们的命运将掌握在自己的手中。

A self-deception? Yes, in large part. But also a most useful modus operandi at this stage. For if we didn‘t believe in the omnipotent force of our intelligence, if we were not convinced that we could will ourselves into being whatever kind of persons we wish to be, it wouldn‘t make much sense to try. Doubts immobilize. Believing that we are independent and competent enough to master the external tasks constantly fortifies us in our attempts to become so.

这难道是自欺欺人么？是的，很大程度上是如此。但也是在这阶段的一种非常有益的做法。因为如果我们不相信我们的才智具有无所不能的力量，如果我们不是深信我们能凭意志使自己成为任何理想中的人物，那么尝试便没有什么意义了。疑虑会使你裹足不前。相信我们的独立性和才干足以让我们去驾驭外部世界的各种事务，这种信念在我们尝试着去这样做时不断地给予我们力量。 One True Course in Life

一条正确的人生道路

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