recipient declined the honor.
他几乎一点责任感都没有，坚信世人就该供养他。为了支持这种信念，他从所有能借到钱的人那里借钱——男人，女人，朋友，甚至是陌生人。他大量写信求人家借钱给他，有时不知羞耻，低声下气，而有时却又傲慢地给他看上的施主授予资助他的特权。如果收信人拒绝接受帮助他的尊荣，他便大为光火。
What money he could lay his hand on he spent like an Indian rajah. No one will ever know ― certainly he never knows ― how much money he owed. We do know that his greatest benefactor gave him $6,000 to pay the most pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later had to give him $16,000 to enable him to live in another city without being thrown into jail for debt.
对于他仅有的一点点钱，他也挥霍无度，堪比印度的王公。从来没人知道----当然他自己也从来不知道——他到底欠了多少钱。我们能确证的是，对他最慷慨的施主给了他6,000美元来偿还他在某城市欠下的债务，解了他的燃眉之急；一年之后又不得不给他16,000美元使他能在另一个城市混下去，免遭因债台高筑而被投入大牢的命运。
He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer, from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman ― any wealthy woman ― whom he could marry for her money.
其他方面他也一样肆无忌惮，寡廉鲜耻。无数女人在他生活中往来不绝。第一任妻子和他相处了20年，不断忍受和原谅他的不忠。第二任妻子曾是他最忠实的朋友和仰慕者的前妻，他还是将她据为己有。甚至在他劝说这个即将成为他第二任妻子的女人离开她丈夫的同时，他还在给一个朋友写信，问他是否能推荐一个富婆——随便什么富婆——能嫁给他，尽管他在意的只是她的钱财。
He had a genius for making enemies. He would insult a man who disagreed with him about the weather. He would pull endless wires in order to meet some man who admired his work and was able and anxious to be of use to him ― and would proceed to make a mortal enemy of him with some idiotic and wholly uncalled-for exhibition of arrogance and bad manners. A character in one of his operas was a caricature of one of the most powerful music critics of his day. Not content with burlesquing him, he invited the critic to his house and read him the libretto aloud in front of his friends.
他擅长树敌。如果有人就天气问题和他意见不一，他便侮辱此人。他一直暗地里想方设法结交仰慕他作品的人士，仰慕者能够并且渴望被他利用——随后他却用愚不可及、毫无缘由的傲慢无礼把这位人士变成和自己不共戴天的死敌。他一部歌剧中的某个人物原型来自于和他
同时代的最有影响力的音乐批评家之一，他把这位批评家的形象以漫画形式呈现。就这么嘲讽他还不满足，还请他到家里来，在一帮朋友面前大声把相关歌词读给他听。
The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything I have said about him you can find on record ― in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew him, in his own letters, between the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesn’t matter in the least.
这位怪才的名字叫理查德?瓦格纳。我所谈到的关于他的一 切情况都有记录可查——包括报纸、警方报告、认识他的人的证词、他本人的信件以及他的自传。但令人奇怪的是，这种记录对他的名望丝毫无损。
Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time, the joke was on us. He was one of the world’s greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living. What if he did talk about himself all the time? If he talked about himself for twenty-four hours every day for the span of his life he would not have uttered half the number of words that other men have spoken and written about him since his death.
因为这位矮墩墩、病怏怏、讨人嫌却很迷人的小个子是一贯正确的，该被笑话的是我们。他是世上最伟大的戏剧家之一，他是位伟大的思想家，他是世上迄今为止最了不起的音乐天才之一。世人就该供养他。假如他片刻不停地谈论他自己又如何呢？假设他每天24小时，一生中的每一天都在谈论他自己，他所说的话还及不上自他身故至今世人对他的口头和书面评论的一半篇幅。
When you consider what he wrote ― thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the world’s great musico-dramatic masterpieces ― when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him don’t seem much of a price.
当你想想他所写的作品——13部歌剧和音乐剧，其中11部至今仍然盛演不衰，其中8部毋庸置疑地雄踞世界伟大的音乐戏剧杰作之列——当你聆听他的作品，他欠下的债务和给人们带来的心痛看起来不算多大的代价。
What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise with what he believed, with what he dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that his poor brain and body didn’t burst under the torment of the
demon of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder he had no time to be a man?
他对朋友和妻子不忠又如何呢？他对一位情人至死不渝，那就是音乐。他片刻都没有出卖过他的信仰，他的梦想。他的每一行音乐都不是出自等闲之辈。即便在他令人生厌的时候，在他十足道德败坏的时候，他也坏得了不起。聆听着他的音乐，他的所作所为相形之下简直不足挂齿，根本谈不上原谅不原谅。这简直就是一个让人难以言表的奇迹，他那可怜的大脑和身体竟然没有在如此强大的创造力的折磨下崩溃，这个恶魔挣扎着，抓挠着要挣脱出来，撕扯着，尖叫着，想要他把内心的音乐谱写出来。在他短短70年的生命历程中，他取得了几乎难以企及的成就，即便对一位伟大的天才来说也是如此。这就是奇迹。那么他没时间好好做人，有什么值得大惊小怪的吗？
Unit 8 The Discus Thrower
I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients by any means and from any stance that he might take for the more fully assemble evidence? So I stand in the doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need only look up to discover me. But they never do.
我窥探我的病人。为了更加全面地搜集例证，难道医生不应该用任何方法、从任何位置观察病人吗？于是我站在医院病房门口凝望。哦，这算不上太鬼鬼祟祟的勾当。那些躺在床上的人只需抬头就可以发现我。但他们从不抬头。
From the doorway of Room 542 the man in the bed seems deeply tanned. Blue eyes and close-cropped white hair give him the appearance of vigor and good health. But I know that his skin is not brown from the sun. It is rusted, rather, in the last stage of containing the vile repose within. And the blue eyes are frosted, looking inward like the windows of a snowbound cottage. This man is blind. This man is also legless ― the right leg missing from midthigh down, the left from just below the knee. It gives him the look of a bonsai, roots and branches pruned into the dwarfed facsimile of a great tree.
从542病房门口可以看到，躺在床上的男子肤色很深。蓝色的眼睛和剪得很短的白发给人富有活力、健康良好的印象。但我知道，他的褐色皮肤并不是晒太阳的缘故，而是机体生锈衰退、体内糜烂污物沉积、病入膏肓的表现。他的蓝眼睛雾蒙蒙的，看上去像被白雪覆盖的乡间小屋的窗户。他是个盲人。而且他失去了双腿——右腿是大腿中间以下缺失，左腿是膝盖以下。这让他看上去像一个盆景，仿佛树根和树枝都被修剪掉的微缩版的大树。 Propped on pillows, he cups his right thigh in both hands. Now and then he shakes his head as though acknowledging the intensity of his suffering. In all of this he makes no
sound. Is he mute as well as blind?
依靠枕头的支撑，他用双手环抱着右大腿。他不时晃动脑袋来诉说他承受的巨大痛苦。但他始终一声不吭。他看不见了，难道也哑了？
The room in which he dwells is empty of all possessions ― no get-well cards, small, private caches of food, day-old flowers, slippers, all the usual kickshaws of the sick room. There is only the bed, a chair, a nightstand, and a tray on wheels that can be swung across his lap for meals.
他住的房间空空荡荡——没有祝愿康复的卡片，没有私藏的食物，没有放了一些时日的鲜花，也没有拖鞋，没有病房里经常看到的东西。只有病床、椅子、床头柜和一个带轮子的可以转到面前用来吃饭的托板。 “What time is it?” he asks. “Three o’clock.” “Morning or afternoon?” “Afternoon.”
He is silent. There is nothing else he wants to know. “How are you?” I say. “Who are you?” he asks.
“It’s the doctor. How do you feel?” He does not answer right away. “Feel?” he says.
“I hope you feel better,” I say. I press the button at the side of the bed. “Down you go,” I say. “Yes, down,” he says. “现在几点了？”他问道。 “3点。”
“凌晨还是下午？” “下午。”
他沉默不语。他想知道的只有这些。 “您感觉怎样？”我问。 “你是谁？”他问。 “医生。您感觉怎样？” 他没有马上回答。 “感觉?”他说。
“我希望您感觉好些了。”我说。