新編英語教程6-U7-Beauty-中英翻譯

1、新編英語教程6-U7-Beauty-中英翻譯BeautySusan SontagFor 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 persons. If it did occur to the Greeks to distinguish between a persons “inside” and “outside”, they still expected that

2、 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

3、 innocent, no doubt splendid-looking disciples of his how full of paradoxes life really was.They may have resisted Socrates lessons. 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, inte

4、llect) from the “outside” (looks): but we are actually surprised when someone who is beautiful is also intelligent, talent and good.It was principally the influence of Christianity that deprived beauty of the central place it had in classical ideals of human excellence (virtus in latin) to moral vir

5、tue 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

6、beauty with women has put beauty even further on the defensive, morally.A beautiful woman, we say in English. But a handsome man. “Handsome” is the masculine equivalent of-and refusal of-a compliment which has accumulate certain demeaning overtones, by being resolved women only. That one can call a

7、man 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 differences, if one exists, is of degrees only. In every modern country that is Christian or

8、post-Christian, women are the beautiful sex to the detriment of the notion of beauty as well as of women.To be called beautiful is thought to name something essential to womens character and concerns. (In contrast to men whose essence is to be strong or competent). It doesnt take someone in the thro

9、es 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 ”every body”, a whole society, that has identified with caring about what one is and doe

10、s and only secondarily, if at all, about how one looks.) Given these stereotype, it is on wonder that beauty enjoys, at best, a rather mixed reputation.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 id

11、ealization 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

12、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.In men, good looks is a whole, something taken in at a glance. It does not nee

13、d to be confirmed y 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 positiv

14、ely 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 id implied in that judgment.“

15、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 relation to men; it is not the power to do that but the power

16、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.To preen, for a woman, can never be jut a pleasure. It is also a duty. It is her work. If a woman dose real work, and even if she has clambe

17、red up to a leading position in politics, law, medicine, business, or whatever, she is always under pressure to a confess that she still works at bring 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, a

18、uthoritative, thoughtful. Damned if they do-women are. And damned if they dont.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. H

19、ow easy it is to start off by defining women as 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

20、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.對(duì)于古希臘人來說，美麗是一種美德：一種出色表現(xiàn)。這樣的人在今天會(huì)理所當(dāng)然而又無不受嫉妒地被人們稱為"完整"的人。即使古希臘人真的曾經(jīng)將一個(gè)個(gè)體的"

21、內(nèi)在"與"外在"區(qū)分開來，他們依然會(huì)期望這個(gè)個(gè)體的內(nèi)在美能夠與他其他方面的美相匹配。當(dāng)那些出身良好的年輕雅典人聚集在蘇格拉底周圍時(shí)，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)非常矛盾的事實(shí)：他們的英雄是如此地睿智，如此英勇，如此高貴，如此有誘惑力而且，如此其貌不揚(yáng)。蘇格拉底用自己的丑陋給他的那些天真無邪的，無疑也是非常俊美的始徒們上的其中最重要的一節(jié)課就是：生活中充滿了矛盾。他們也許聽不進(jìn)去導(dǎo)師的教誨。但是我們不會(huì)。幾千年以后的今天，我們變的更加小心翼翼地對(duì)待美麗之銷魂。我們不但十分輕而易舉地把二者"內(nèi)在"（品質(zhì)，智慧）與"外在"（外表）分割開，實(shí)際上

22、，當(dāng)我們看到一個(gè)人既漂亮同時(shí)又聰明，有才干，善良的時(shí)候，我們會(huì)感到很驚訝。人們將美麗從古典的人類理想的中心地位中分裂出來，主要是受到了基督教的影響。為了將出色（在拉丁文中是virtus,與美德的virtue同源）的范圍縮小到僅僅是道德上的出色，基督教將美麗流放了使它成為一種疏遠(yuǎn)的，恣意的，膚淺的誘惑。而美麗的威望不斷地流失。在長(zhǎng)達(dá)近兩個(gè)世紀(jì)中，美麗約定俗成地變得只能用于形容兩性中其中一性：即無論多么"公平對(duì)待"，依然是排在"第二位"的那一性。把美麗與女人聯(lián)系起來使美麗陷入道德上愈加不利的境地。一個(gè)美麗的女人，我們?cè)谟⒄Z中是這么說的。但是，我們會(huì)說一個(gè)英俊

23、的男人。英俊是美麗的陽(yáng)性的對(duì)等物，同時(shí)也是一種藐視。美麗一詞現(xiàn)在專用于女人，它當(dāng)中積聚著一定的貶抑的弦外之音。在法語和意大利語中，仍有稱一個(gè)男性"美麗"的現(xiàn)象，這說明與那些被新教的基督教教義塑造的國(guó)家不同，天主教國(guó)家中還殘存著一些對(duì)美麗的異端贊美的痕跡。但是如果真的有什么區(qū)別的話，那只是程度上的。在所有現(xiàn)代國(guó)家中，無論是基督教國(guó)家還是后基督教國(guó)家，女性都是"美麗的性別 "這是對(duì)美麗本身同時(shí)也是對(duì)女性本身的貶損。渴望被稱為美麗被認(rèn)為是道出了女性性格的本質(zhì)與她們所關(guān)心事物的核心。（與男性形成對(duì)比他們的核心是強(qiáng)壯，高效，強(qiáng)競(jìng)爭(zhēng)力）不需要具有先進(jìn)女權(quán)主義者的敏銳

24、洞察力，人們也能夠察覺到，女性被引導(dǎo)向美麗的過程實(shí)質(zhì)上鼓吹了自戀主義，加重了女性的依賴性和不成熟性。每個(gè)人（男人和女人）都心照不宣。"每一個(gè)個(gè)體"，也就全社會(huì)，都默認(rèn)了"女性化"就是關(guān)心一個(gè)人看上去怎樣，（與男性化的關(guān)心一個(gè)人是怎樣，干得怎樣，然后才有可能再關(guān)心一個(gè)人長(zhǎng)得怎樣形成了對(duì)比）考慮到這些思維定勢(shì)，無怪乎美麗一詞，最多只能享有一種不純的名聲。當(dāng)然，渴望美麗本身并沒有錯(cuò)，錯(cuò)就錯(cuò)在當(dāng)追求美變成了一種義務(wù)去完成，或者去嘗試。使女性覺得自己比實(shí)際的她,或者說正常成長(zhǎng)的她要低一籌，是一種被女性廣泛接受的諂媚的性別理想化。因?yàn)樽非罄硐氲拿涝趯?shí)際操作中已成為一種自我壓抑的形式。女性被引導(dǎo)去把她們身體的各部分拆分開來看待，然后獨(dú)立地衡量各部分。胸部，腿，臀部，腰身，頸部，眼睛，鼻子，膚色，頭發(fā)，等等每一樣都被置于焦急的，難于取悅的，時(shí)常是近乎絕望的細(xì)察之中。即使一些過關(guān)了，肯定還有不足之處。不達(dá)到完美誓不罷休。在男性那里，好看是一種整體的感覺，是匆匆一瞥留下的印象。它不需要提供身體各部位的尺寸來確認(rèn)，沒有人