U13 Beauty课文翻译.doc

U13 Beauty
For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Persons then were assumed to be what we now have to call---lamely, enviously--- whole person. If it did occur to the Greeks to distinguish between a person’s “inside” and “outside”, they still expected that inner beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind. The well-born young Athenians who gathered around Socrates found it quite paradoxical that their hero was so intelligent, so brave, so honorable, so seductive ---- and so ugly. One of Socrates’ main pedagogical acts was to be ugly ---- and teach those innocent, no doubt splendid-looking disciples of his how full of paradoxes life really was.
美之于古希腊人是一种德性一种美德。今天看来他们就是我们如今所谓的“全面的人”虽然这个称呼有点不理直气壮,并且带有嫉妒之意。倘若让古希腊人区分一个人的“内在”和“外在”他们仍期望内在美是需要与其他种类之美相匹配的。那些聚集在苏格拉底身边的雅典青年人发现自己的偶像是如此得聪慧、勇敢、正直、充满诱惑力而同时又那么得丑 这是多么自相矛盾啊。而苏格拉底主要的教学手段之一即为“丑”告诉这些天真却拥有毋庸置疑般美貌的门生真正的人生是充满悖论的。
They may have resisted Socrates’ lesson. We do not. Several thousand years later, we are more wary of the enchantments of beauty. We not only split off ---- with the greatest facility ---- the “inside” (character, intellect) from the “outside” (looks); but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent, talented, good.
他们或许能够抗拒苏格拉底的学说。而我们做不到。几千年以后.美的魅惑使我们更加疲惫。我们不仅仅用最容易的方式将“内在”(性格,心智)和“外在”(外貌)割离开来.同时我们也对那些既有美貌亦有智慧天赋之人,感到诧异。
It was principally the influence of Christianity that deprived beauty of the central place it had in classical ideals of human excellence. By limiting excellence (virtus in Latin) to moral virtue only, Christianity set beauty adrift ---- as an alienated, arbitrary, superficial enchantment. And beauty has continued to lose prestige. For close to two centuries it has become a convention to attribute beauty to only one of the two sexes: the sex which, however Fair, is always Second. Associating beauty with women has put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.
美在古典时期是理想的人类美德,而将其从这中心位置赶走的首要原因来自基督教的影响。通过美德(拉丁语为virtus)的概念限定到仅仅指伦理道德的范畴,基督教放逐了“美”—— 它成为一种异化的,武断的,肤浅的诱惑。同时美不断丢失了它原本的名声。到二世纪末的时候,美成为一种既定概念,仅用于修饰两性之的一个性别:这个性别虽然是悦目的,但却处于第二位。将美与女性联系起来,使得美的概念在道德层面上更加脆弱。
A beautiful woman, we say in English. But a handsome man. “Handsome” is the masculine equivalent of ---- and refusal of ---- a compliment which has accumulated certain demeaning overtones, by being reserved for women only. That one can call a man“beautiful”in French and in Italian suggests that Catholic countries ---unlike those countries shaped by the Protestant version of Christianity---still retain some vestiges of the pagan admiration for beauty. But the difference, if one exists,is of degree only. In every modern country that is Christian or post-Christian, women are the beautiful sex ---- to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.
在英语里,我们说一位女子是美丽的。但是我们却说一位男子是英俊的。“英俊”是其阳性的等同词,同时拒绝一种带有某些贬义暗示的赞扬,而这种赞扬是仅用于女性的。在法语和意大利语里,人们可以称男子是“美丽的”,这暗示着这些天主教国家依旧保留了前基督教时期欣赏“美”的痕迹,而这些痕迹在新教国家中已经荡然无存。但即使存在,差别也只是程度不同而已。在任何一个基督教或者后基督教国家里,女性就是那个美丽的性别——既损害了美这个概念,也损害了女性这个概念。
To be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to women’s character and concerns. (In contrast to men ---- whose essence is to be strong, or effective, or competent.) It does not take someone in the throes of advanced feminist awareness to perceive that the way women are taught to be involved with beauty encourages narcissism, reinforces dependence and immaturity. Everybody (women and men) knows that. For it is “everybody”, a whole society, that has identified being feminine with caring about how one looks. (In contrast to being masculine ---- which is identified with caring about what one is and does and only secondarily, if at all, about how one looks.) Given these stereotypes, it is no wonder that beauty enjoys, at best, a rather mixed reputation.

被称为“美”意味着要列举出一些对女性来说必要的特征和她们所关心的事物。(和男性不同,他们的核心是强壮、有效率,或者有能力。)那些拥有超前女性意识的人将很容易就能感受到,让女性和“美”联系起来,会助长她们孤芳自赏的态度也会让她们更加有依赖性且不成熟。所有人(女性和男性)都认识到这点。因为“所有人”,整个社会,都很明确,作为女性就应该关心长相。(作为男性则不同:他们身份的确认是关注于某人是谁,做什么的,而长相即使并非一无是处,至少也是其次的。)有了这些老套的看法,我们就不难明白,
即使从最好的方面来看,为什么“美”也有着褒贬不一的名声。
It is not, of course, the desire to be beautiful that is wrong but the obligation to be ---- or to try. What is accepted by most women as a flattering idealization of their sex is a way of making women feel inferior to what they actually are ---- or normally grow to be. For the ideal of beauty is administered as a form of self-oppression. Women are taught to see their bodies in parts, and to evaluate each part separately. Breasts, feet, hips, waistline, neck, eyes, nose, complexion, hair, and so on ---- each in turn is submitted to an anxious, fretful, often despairing scrutiny. Even if some pass muster, some will always be found wanting. Nothing less than perfection will do.
当然,对美的崇拜并没有什么错,错就错在认为美是一种义务,并且试图想要变美。作为她们性别的一种讨好的理想化状态,大多数女性都可以接受的方式是,让她们觉得自己比实际情况来的差劲。因为美的理想境界就是受制于一种自我对立的状态。人们教导女性要从各部分区看待她们的身体,并且要分别评价每一个部分。胸部、腿、臀部、腰、颈、眼睛、鼻子、肤色、头发等等——每一部分都需要一番焦虑、苦恼,甚至绝望的审查。即使有些部分符合要求,但总有地方永远是希望更好一些的。只有完美无瑕了,才能无可挑剔。
In men, good looks is a whole, something taken in at a glance. It does not need to be confirmed by giving measurements of different regions of the body, nobody encourages a man to dissect his appearance, feature by feature. As for perfection, that is considered trivial ---- almost unmanly. Indeed, in the ideally good-looking man a small imperfection or blemish is considered positively desirable. According to one movie critic (a woman) who is a declared Robert Redford fan, it is having that cluster of skin-colored moles on one cheek that saves Redford from being merely a “pretty face”. Think of the depreciation of women ---- as well as of beauty ---- that is implied in that judgment. 在男人之中,好的外表是一个整体是那种一眼扫过的东西。并不需要通过测量身体每个部
分来做出最后的确认。没有人会鼓励男性去一部分一部分地细查自己的外貌。至于完美,那是被认为无关紧要的,并且几乎是不男性化的。的确,对于一些理想中的美男子,一点小瑕疵反而是让人喜欢的。有一位电影评论家(女性),她是罗伯特?雷德福的影迷,她觉得正是因为其脸颊一侧有一颗肉色的痣,才使得雷德福不被仅仅认为有一张“漂亮的脸蛋”。想想这个评价里既暗示了对女性的贬低,也暗示了对“美”的贬低.
“The privileges of beauty are immense, ” said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; it is not the power to do but the power to attract. It is a power that negates itself. For this power is not one that can be chosen freely ---- at least, not by women ---- or renounced without social censure. 科克托曾说:“美的特权是无限的。”毫无疑问,美是一种力量形式,并且理因如此。但遗憾的是,如今人们只鼓励大多数的女性去追求这种力量。这种力量的制造总是和男性联系起来。这力量不是去做什么,而是去吸引什么的。这种力量否定了自身。因为这种力量并不是一个人所能自我选择的,至少不是女性可以自我选择的,或者说如果她们声称要放弃这种力量的话,是要受到社会谴责的。
To preen, for a woman, can never be just a pleasure. It is also a duty. It is her work. If a woman does real work ---- and even if she has clambered up to a leading position in politics, law, medicine, business, or whatever ---- she is always under pressure to confess that she still works at being attractive. But in so far as she is keeping up as one of the Fair Sex she brings under suspicion her very capacity to be objective, professional, authoritative, thoughtful. Damned if they do women are. And damned if they don’t. 对女性来说,梳妆打扮不仅仅是一份乐趣,更是一种责任,是她的工作。如果一位女士做着实际的工作,乃至她在政治、法律、医学、商界或别的什么领域爬到了领导层位置,她也总是背负着压力,时刻要确保她在工作的时候还保持着吸引人的魅力。但只要她仍然是“悦目的性别”中的一员,那她就一直要受到质疑——是否有能力保持客观、专业、权威和缜密。如果真成为了那样的人,那这样的女人真糟透了!如果她们不是这样那也糟透了!
One could hardly ask for more important evidence of the dangers of considering persons as split between what is "inside" and what is "outside" than that interminable half-comic half-tragic tale, the oppression of women. How easy it is to start off by defining women s caretakers of their surfaces, and then to disparage them(or find them adorable)for being "superficial". It is a crude trap, and it has worked for too long. But to get out of the trap requires that women get some critical distance from the excellence and privilege which is beauty, enough distance to see how much beauty itself has been abridged in order to prop up the mythology of the "feminine." There should be a way of saving beauty from women---and for them. 比起那种无止境的喜忧参半的故事,即女性的苦闷而言,我们几乎不太能从将人区分成“内在”和“外在”的做法中找到更多证据来说明其危险性。一开始就将女性定义成只对外表关注的人,然后就说她们是“肤浅”的,这是多么容易的事情啊!这个粗鄙的陷阱已经存在太久了。但是要从这个陷阱里逃脱出来,就要求女性与美的好处与特权保持严格的距离,并且要有足够的距离去了解“美”这个概念本身有多少被删节了,用以支撑起“女性”这个神话。我们应该有一种方式将“美”从女性那里解救出来也将“美”为了女性本身而解救出来。