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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Obituary;Tony Judt;
讣告;托尼·朱蒂;
历史学家、学者,托尼朱蒂于8月6日过世,享年62岁;
Quizical, erudite and clear-sighted, Tony Judt never let matters rest. He worried at his own beliefs—Zionist, Francophile, socialist2 and Euro-federalist—until they fell apart and reformed under the pressure of his restless, meticulous3 intellect. Few people in the Anglo-Saxon world can call themselves “intellectuals”, continental-style, without feeling (and sounding) a little odd. But in Mr Judt's case the word deserved a capital “I”.
明智、好学,时刻秉承着探索精神,托尼朱蒂从来没有停止过探索的步伐。他曾一度担心自己的信仰-支持犹太主义、亲信法国以及欧洲联邦主义-直到这些信仰在他那无休止的、谨慎细微的学术精神的促使下,很好地分离并重组起来,他才不再担心。很少有人能在盎格鲁-撒克逊的世界里大胆地自称“学者”,而不感到名不副实,但到了朱蒂先生这里,没有人再比“我”更合适了。
In the world of brain and pen, his main trade was as a historian: he plunged4 into that at Cambridge in the 1960s, and stayed with it even when immobilised by the wasting disease that cost him his life. His was no narrow historicism: he scorned the idea that the past was a guide to the future. But study of it could help avoid making the same mistakes twice.
在智慧与笔尖的世界里,成为一个历史学家成为朱蒂先生的主要人生轨迹:他于19世纪60年代考进剑桥大学便开始从事这个行业,直到那最终夺走自己生命的恶疾让他无法动弹,他都从未离开过历史学。他所研究的并非狭隘的历史主义:他蔑视那些认为历史可以引领未来的观念。但他认为学习历史可以避免在同一个地方跌倒两次。
Though he worked in America from 1987, his intellectual centre of gravity was Europe; the defining event in his world view was the second world war, and Hitler's Holocaust5. The aftermath of those catastrophes6 was the theme of “Postwar” (2005), a 1,000-page tome that dealt with the 44 years between the end of the main fighting and the collapse7 of the Soviet8 totalitarian empire that survived it. It was a book more bought than read. But even skimmers got the message: the European Union was a vitally important experiment, an attempt to transcend9 the ideological10, nationalist and ethnic11 schisms12 that had cursed the continent. Prosperity, modernisation and peace, plus a judicious13 dose of amnesia14, would lay the ghosts to rest.
虽然朱蒂先生从1987年开始在美国工作,但他的学术中心依旧落在了欧洲;在他的世界观里,第二次世界大战以及希特勒的恐怖主义才算是大事件。这一系列的灾难所造成的后果便形成了一本主题为“战后欧洲史”(2005年出版)的书,这本长达1000页的巨著阐述了从主要战争的结束到苏维埃集权主义倒塌的这44年。大多数购买此书的人都没有读过。但只要是粗略读过此书的人都能得到这样的信息:欧盟曾是一个相当重要的实验,这个实验企图超越那些咒骂社会的理想民族主义者和民族分裂者。朱蒂先生认为繁荣,现代化以及和平,再加上少许明断的淡忘,这些便能安顿魔鬼,而更何况民众呢。
But Mr Judt was no sentimental15 Europhile. His deep connections with the Czechoslovak opposition16 under communism gave him rare binocular vision, and an edginess17 towards those who focused only on the luckier western half of the continent. He detested18 the shallowness and artificial obscurity of European-born intellectual fashions such as post-modernism and structuralism. In politics, he bemoaned19 what he saw as the degeneration of the EU into a racket run by an elite20 class of administrators21 for the benefit of its richest citizens. Admittedly, the Eurocracy's enlightened despotism was better than the other kind. But the cult22 of efficiency was no substitute for democracy and justice.
但是朱蒂先生并非一个感性的亲欧盟主义者。他深入地关注斯洛伐克人在共产主义下的反抗行为,这一点使得他能细微地、犀利地洞察那些只关心那些幸运的富饶西方大陆的人。他讨厌那些浅薄的,诸如前现代化、建筑学等晦涩的欧洲土生土长的学术潮流。在政治方面,朱蒂先生认为欧盟已经堕落成一个由高层精英所操控的非法局面,而这些非法勾当全是为了那些最富有的公民的。他承认,欧洲开明的统治者比起其他的好很多。然而,但是民主和公平是不能用对效率的追求来代替的。
Mr Judt's deepest knowledge was of France, and particularly its post-war intellectual history, which he regarded with a mixture of fascination23 and disgust. “Past Imperfect”, published in 1992, was the definitive24 book about the self-indulgence and wilful25 self-delusion of the French brainboxes who failed to see that Stalin was a monster.
朱蒂先生最深远的研究莫过于对法国的历史的学习,尤其是第二次世界大战之前的法国学术历史,他认为这段历史正是法国美好与丑恶并存的时期。一本名为“过去的瑕疵”的书在1992年出版,该书的最终版本正是关于那些法国统治者沉溺在对自我的放纵和自我的妄想中,并没有察觉到斯大林是个恶魔。
His evisceration26 of the phoney and creepy was best displayed in his journalism27, often in his natural home of the New York Review of Books. A savage28 collection of essays, “Reappraisals”, published in 2008, skewered29 among others Louis Althusser, a mad Marxist wife-killer with a cult philosophical30 following, and Eric Hobsbawm, a distinguished31 British historian with unrepentant pro-Soviet views. George Bush fared little better: Mr Judt was a trenchant32 critic of his policies in Iraq and the Middle East.
朱蒂先生对虚假和骇人听闻的事情的反驳的文章常常出现在他的报刊中,但更加经常出现在他那个名为“纽约书评”的简单文集中,“重新评价”于2008年出版,在同类杂志中独树一帜,文中讲述了路易斯卢梭,一个疯狂的马克思主义者,对哲学有着疯狂的崇拜,杀死了自己的妻子,~~,一个独一无二的英国历史学家,却怀揣着不可悔改的前苏联观念。就连乔治布什总统都未得到另眼相待,朱蒂先生曾对他的伊拉克于中的哦个政策提出了严厉批评。
In hot water
水深火热
He was fearless in his fights. When he found the pro-Israel lobby in America too strong, and thought Israel's democratic credentials33 were weakening, he said so. That got him into the hottest water of his career. It started with an essay in the NYRB in 2003 stating that the peace process was “finished”; that the Jewish state was an “anachronism”; and that legitimate34 criticism of Israel was being silenced by bogus charges of anti-Semitism.
他从未畏惧战斗。当他发现在美国的前以色列团体活动过于激烈时,他意识到以色列的民主信任度正在下降,并且也这样发表了自己的意见这一点使得他陷入水深火热当中。这一切源自他在2003年NYRB杂志上发表的一篇文章,文中宣称,和平的过程已经“结束”;犹太人建立自己的国家只是个“时代的错误”;并且对以色列合法批判声音被反犹太主义的谣言所淹没了。
Nobody could accuse him of letting fly from a position of ignorance. He had been an ardent35 teenage Zionist, working as an interpreter during the six-day war of 1967. But to many his critique was exaggerated. Given the intense publicity36 he attracted, it was hard to argue, as he did, that debate was habitually37 squelched38. The notion that Israel had no friends outside America, or could be “the” (his italics) threat to world peace, struck even some of his friends as extreme. Lectures were cancelled and the New Republic, a longstanding ally, removed him from its masthead.
没有人能够抓到他懈怠的把柄,朱蒂先生曾经是一个热情而年轻的犹太主义者,曾在1967年的六日之战中担任翻译员的职务。但是对大多数人来说过于激进,当遇上令他着迷的紧张政治事件时,个人的观点往往很难得到承认,正如他做的那样,他的辩驳被很自然地掩埋了。他的一些关于以色列除美国外没有朋友或以色列对世界和平会造成什么威胁的观点,都极大地震撼了他的身边的朋友们。他的课程被删除,”新出版”——一个长期的合作伙伴也将他的名字从报头删除。
A severe self-critic, he dealt poorly with sniping from others. This East End boy did not wear his learning, or his polyglottal talents, lightly. He tended to dismiss adversaries39 as fools, rather than as merely mistaken, or half-right. As the head of a richly endowed faculty40 at New York University, his contempt for the poverty of British universities could sound gratingly complacent41. He could fund-raise. So should they.
他对别人的恶意中伤却嗤之以鼻,却是一位严厉的自我批评者。这位来自东部边上的男孩从来不轻易炫耀他的学识与多才多艺的天赋,他宁愿将自己的对手看成是一个个的傻子也不愿意将他们当成只是有一点点的学术过失或对学术方面是一知半解的人。作为纽约大学大额捐资教员中的领头人,他对英国大学普遍财政窘迫的轻蔑听起来可能成了刺耳的沾沾自喜。认为既然自己可以筹集资金,他们也应该可以。
His final ordeal42 might have inspired great self-pity, though he displayed no hint of it. Just under a year ago, he appeared at a public lecture in a wheelchair to announce that he was suffering from a variant43 of motor-neurone disease, in which the body succumbs44 to inexorable paralysis45: like being imprisoned46 in a shrinking cell, he said. But he wrote about that too, in poignant47, crystalline vignettes about his upbringing and travels.
虽然朱蒂先生从未提及,但是临终前的病痛肯定引起他的极大自哀,就在一年前,他出现在公共演讲庭,坐在轮椅上告诉别人,自己现如今正被不同种类的动态神经细胞病变所折磨,这是一种将身体蹂躏成麻痹状态的病:感觉像困兽般被囚禁在一个不断缩小的牢笼中,他坦言到。但他也同样这样写过这些,就写在那些关于教训和人生旅行的辛酸和水晶般的小拼图中。
He was “raised on words” though by the end his vocal48 muscle, “for 60 years my reliable alter ego” failed him: “vowel sounds and sibilant consonants49 slide out of my mouth, shapeless and inchoate”. He minded that, while insisting that “the view from inside is as rich as ever”.
尽管他临终时坦言“这60年中我不断怀疑自我“.他却是“立足于学术信仰”,接着便是一段呜咽,然后他接着说“从我嘴里说出来的元音和辅音发出吱吱的声响,他们都那么得无形而且没有回音“。他沉默了一会,然后坚定地说到”只有源自心灵深处的声音才会永恒“
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1 aged | |
adj.年老的,陈年的 | |
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2 socialist | |
n.社会主义者;adj.社会主义的 | |
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3 meticulous | |
adj.极其仔细的,一丝不苟的 | |
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4 plunged | |
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5 holocaust | |
n.大破坏;大屠杀 | |
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9 transcend | |
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10 ideological | |
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11 ethnic | |
adj.人种的,种族的,异教徒的 | |
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12 schisms | |
n.教会分立,分裂( schism的名词复数 ) | |
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13 judicious | |
adj.明智的,明断的,能作出明智决定的 | |
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14 amnesia | |
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15 sentimental | |
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17 edginess | |
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18 detested | |
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19 bemoaned | |
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22 cult | |
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23 fascination | |
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24 definitive | |
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25 wilful | |
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26 evisceration | |
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27 journalism | |
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28 savage | |
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29 skewered | |
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30 philosophical | |
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31 distinguished | |
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32 trenchant | |
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33 credentials | |
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34 legitimate | |
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35 ardent | |
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36 publicity | |
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37 habitually | |
ad.习惯地,通常地 | |
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38 squelched | |
v.发吧唧声,发扑哧声( squelch的过去式和过去分词 );制止;压制;遏制 | |
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39 adversaries | |
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40 faculty | |
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41 complacent | |
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42 ordeal | |
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43 variant | |
adj.不同的,变异的;n.变体,异体 | |
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44 succumbs | |
不再抵抗(诱惑、疾病、攻击等)( succumb的第三人称单数 ); 屈从; 被压垮; 死 | |
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45 paralysis | |
n.麻痹(症);瘫痪(症) | |
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46 imprisoned | |
下狱,监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47 poignant | |
adj.令人痛苦的,辛酸的,惨痛的 | |
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48 vocal | |
adj.直言不讳的;嗓音的;n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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49 consonants | |
n.辅音,子音( consonant的名词复数 );辅音字母 | |
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