散文赏析 | 感知快乐的天赋

商务印书馆英语编辑室 2022-06-09

The Faculty of Delight

感知快乐的天赋

Charles Edward Montague

查尔斯·爱德华·蒙塔古

Among the mind's powers is one that comes of itself to many children and artists. It need not be lost, to the end of his days, by any one who has ever had it. This is the power of taking delight in a thing, or rather in anything, everything, not as a means to some other end, but just because it is what it is, as the lover dotes on whatever may be the traits of the beloved object.

在人的心理能力中，有一种是很多孩子和艺术家自然就有的。不论是谁，一且有了这种能力，直到他生命的最后一天也不一定会丧失。这就是从某一事物，或任一事物，每一事物，都能感受快乐的能力，不是为了某一目的，只是因为它就是这样，这好比一个人喜爱一样东西，不论它有什么特征他都喜爱。

A child in the full health of his mind will put his hand flat on the summer turf, feel it, and give a little shiver of private glee at the elastic firmness of the globe. He is not thinking how well it will do for some game or to feed sheep upon. That would be the way of the wooer whose mind runs on his mistress's money. The child's is sheer affection, the true ecstatic sense of the thing's inherent characteristics.

一个心理健全的孩子会把他的手掌平放在夏天的草皮上，抚摩它，在他感觉到具有弹性又很坚实的地球表面时，他心里便产生一种快乐的冲动。他不是在想，要是在上面做游戏或放羊什么的该有多好哇。那岂不是就像求婚者一心只想着女友的钱财一样吗？而孩子则完全是因为喜爱，是事物内在的特质真正让他有一种欣喜若狂的感觉。

No matter what the things may be, no matter what they are good or no good for, there they are, each with a thrilling unique look and feel of its own, like a face; the iron astringently cool under its paint, the painted wood familiarly warmer, the clod crumbling enchantingly down in the hands, with its little dry of the sun and of hot nettles: each common thing a person marked by delicious differences.

不论是什么事物，也不论它们有没有用途，它们就在那里，每一样东西都有其使人激动的独特外观和感觉，就像人的面孔；上过油漆的铁器使人感觉冷峻，而上过油漆的木器则让人感觉温和而亲切，当土块在手里松动而散发出阳光和热荨麻的微干的气味时，简直让人陶醉；每一样普通的东西都有它自己的“性格”，而这“性格”都有其不同的宜人的特征。

The joy of an Adam new to the garden and just looking round is brought by the normal child to the things that he does as well as those that he sees. To be suffered to do some plain work with the real spade used by mankind can give him a mystical exaltation: to come home with his legs, as the French say, re-entering his body from the fatigue of helping the gardener to weed beds sends him to sleep in the glow of a beatitude that is an end in itself ...

亚当初来伊甸园举目四望时所感到的那种快乐，一个正常孩子在其所做及所见的事物里都可以感觉到。在他被允许使用人类常用的铁锨去做一些简单的体力劳动时,他会感到一种神奇的兴奋：他拖着双腿回到家（就像法国人常说的那样），由于他已从帮助园丁在花坛里锄草而产生的疲劳中恢复过来，在一种幸福感的光辉里进入梦乡，这本身就是目的……

The right education, if we could find it, would work up creative faculty of delight into all its branching possibilities of knowledge, wisdom, and nobility. Of all three it is the beginning condition, or raw material.

正确的教育，如果我们能够发现它，可以调动这一带有创造性的感知快乐的天赋，使其进入所有可能的方面一知识智慧和高尚的情操。对于这三者，这种心理能力是开始，是条件，或是原始材料。

以上内容摘自《英语经典散文翻译与赏析》，刘士聪选译，谷启楠审译。书中还有对原文译文的赏析和讲解，对学英语和学翻译都大有帮助。

本书为近代重要英语作家、名人的散文随笔选译本，收录了蒲柏、骚塞、狄更斯、兰姆、吉卜林、休谟等名家的60篇散文精品，内容涵盖广泛，语言优美自然。

每篇均包括作家简介、原文、译文和译后语四个部分，可供读者阅读、理解、赏析和模仿练习。译文准确流畅、朴实自然，注重散文语言的审美再现，有助于对读者提高英语散文的欣赏能力和英文写作水平。

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