大家来动手翻译真题 坚持下来必有所长进，这是我的第一篇
Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists' only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.
This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.
You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.
Today the messages your average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
许多事情让人们认为艺术家很怪异。但最奇怪的莫过于此：艺术家们仅把发掘情感作为其工作，却还要选择关注痛苦的情感。
但事实并非一直如此，最早的艺术形式，如绘画和音乐，能淋漓尽致地表达喜悦之情。然而，大概自十九世纪以后，越来越多的艺术家把快乐看作是毫无意义的虚假之物，甚至是令人厌恶的，倘若你从Wordsworth的水仙读到Baudelaire的恶之花，对此会颇有感受。
也许，你会说艺术越发质疑快乐的价值正是因为当今目睹了太多苦难。但反过来想，难道早年的人们不曾饱尝连年的战火，灾难或是无辜者惨遭杀害的悲剧？事实上，原因或许恰恰相反，正是今天的世界充斥了过多该死的快乐。
归根结底，几乎完全被用于描绘幸福的现代表现形式是什么呢？广告。随着大众传媒的粉墨登场，反快乐的艺术的兴起几乎紧随其后，而且，同时产生的商业文化中所包含的快乐不仅完美更扎根于人们的意识中。
在过去，一直萦绕人心的总是痛苦的回忆。人们要工作到精疲力竭，生活毫无保障，往往英年早逝。在大众传媒和文学形式尚未出现之前，西方社会中最具影响力的大众传播媒介是教堂，宗教一直告诫信徒们要居安思危，他们终将成为虫子的美食，回归尘土。既然是这样，信徒们也就没必要把艺术也描绘得那么悲惨了。
如今，对于一个普通西方人来说，生活不仅仅充斥着宗教的神旨，更有来自商业的讯息，以及永不休止的快乐。享用快餐的人微笑着，新闻主播微笑着，送信的人也微笑着，全是微笑。杂志特写不是满面春风的知名人士就是美满幸福的全家福。这些信息的目的无非是让人们乖乖地掏腰包，因此与幸福相关的企图时常不攻自破。“Celebrate”治疗关节炎的药物Celebrex的广告叫嚣着，可后来人们发现使用它能增加患上心脏病的危险。
然而，被我们所遗忘的—经济发展指望着我们去遗忘的—是没有痛苦的快乐称不上是快乐。所谓祸兮福之所倚，福兮祸之所伏。当今社会中，被唾手可得的快乐所包围的我们需要艺术的警示，如同宗教曾经提醒我们那样：记住死亡终会降临，万事皆有终结，而快乐并不与其矛盾而是蕴藉其中。这听起来或许比卷烟的味道更苦涩，却不知为什么也给人带来脉脉清新馥郁。
[ 本帖最后由 ethan_liu 于 2008-8-17 11:48 编辑 ] |
收藏
点赞!
反对!
楼主