halfway-锥形裤
Unit 8 The Merely Very Good
第八单元
仅仅不错
Jeremy Bernstein
杰里米
·
伯恩斯坦
Early in 1981 I received an
invitation to give a lecture at a writers'
conference that was being held
someplace on the Delaware River i
n
Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I don't
remember the
exact location, but a
study of the map convinces me that it was
pr
obably New Hope. My first inclination
was to say no. There were
several
reasons. I was living in New York City and
teaching full ti
me. My weekends were
precious and the idea of getting up before
dawn on a Saturday, renting a car, and
driving across the entire sta
te of New
Jersey to deliver a lecture was repellent. As I
recall, the
honorarium offered would
have barely covered the expense.
Furth
ermore, a subject had been
suggested for my lecture that, in truth,
no longer interested me. Since I both
wrote and did physics, I had
often been
asked to discuss the connection, if any, between
these t
wo activities. When this first
came up, I felt obligated to say
somet
hing, but after twenty years,
about the only thing that I felt like
say
ing was that both physics and
writing, especially if one wanted to
do
them well, were extremely difficult.
1981
年初，我接到一个邀请，在
一个作家会议上发表演讲，
这次会议是在宾夕法尼亚州特拉华河的某个地方举行的，就<
/p>
在新泽西对面。
我不记得确切的位置，
但对地图的研究使我
确信它可能是新希望。
我第一个想说不。
有几个原因。
我住
在纽约市，全职教书。
我的周末是宝贵的，一个星期六黎明
前起床，租一辆车，开车穿过整个新
泽西州发表演讲的想法
是令人厌恶的。
我记得，提供的酬金几乎不能支付这笔费
用。
此外，我的演讲中有一个主题被建议，事实上，我不再
感兴趣。
自从我写和做物理以来，我经常被要求讨论这两个
活动之间的联系，如果有的话。
当这第一次出现时，我觉得<
/p>
有义务说些什么，但二十年后，我唯一想说的是，物理和写
作，特
别是如果一个人想把它们做好，都是非常困难的。
The conference
seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of the
th
ings that came to mind was an
anecdote that Robert Oppenheimer
used
to tell about himself. Since Oppenheimer will play
a significa
nt role in what follows, I
will elaborate. After Oppenheimer
gradu
ated from Harvard in 1925, he was
awarded a fellowship to study i
n
Europe. Following a very unhappy time in England,
where he se
ems to have had a sort of
nervous breakdown, he went to Germany
to get his Ph.D.
这次会议似乎是以诗歌为中心的，想到的一件事就是罗伯
特
·
奥本海默过去讲述自己的轶事。
由于
奥本海默将在以下方
面发挥重要作用，我将详细说明。
在
1925
年奥本海默从哈佛
毕业后，他被授予在欧洲学习的奖学金。
在英国度过
了一段
非常不愉快的时光，在那里他似乎有点神经崩溃，他去了德
国获得他的博士学位。
He studied with
the distinguished German theoretical physicist
Ma
x Born in Gottingen and took his
degree there in 1927 at the age of
twenty-
three. Born's recollections of
Oppenheimer, which were published
posthumously in 1975, were not
sympathetic. Oppenheimer, he wr
ote,
n a way which was
embarrassing and led to trouble. In my
ordinar
y seminar on quantum mechanics,
he used to interrupt the speaker,
whoever it was, not excluding myself, and to step
to the blackboar
d, taking the chalk and
declaring: 'this can be done much better in
the following manner.'
llow
students in the seminar petitioned Born to put a
stop to it.
他和著名
的德国理论物理学家马克斯一起学习，他在
1927
年
23
岁时取得了学位。
博恩对奥本海默的回忆在
1975
年死后
出版，并不同情。
奥本海默，他写道，
< br>“
是一个很有才华的
人，我意识到他的优势，以一种尴尬
和导致麻烦的方式。
在
我关于量子力
学的普通研讨会上，他经常打断演讲者，不管
是谁，而不是排斥我自己，走到黑板前，拿
起粉笔，宣布：
“
通过以下方式可以做得更好。
”“
事实上，情况太糟了，奥本
海默在研讨会上的同学请求
Born
停止讨论。
Quantum
mechanics had been invented the year before by
Erwin S
chrodinger, Werner Heisenberg
and Paul A. M. Dirac. The next ye
ar,
Dirac came as a visitor to Gottingen and, as it
happened, roome
d in the large house of
a physician named Cario where
Oppenheim
er also had a room. Dirac was
twenty-
five. The two young men became
friends
—
insofar as one could
have a friendship with Dirac. As young as he
was, Dirac was already a great
physicist, and I am sure he knew it.
He
probably just took it for granted. However, he
was, and remai
ned, an enigma. He rarely
spoke, but when he did, it was always
w
ith extraordinary precision and often
with devastating effect. This
must have
had a profound effect on Oppenheimer. While
Oppenhe
imer was interrupting Born's
seminars, announcing that he could d
o
calculations better in the quantum theory, Dirac,
only two years
older, had invented the
subject.
量子力学是前一年由
Erwin
Schrodinger
、
Werner
Heisenberg
和保罗
A. M.
Dirac
发明的。
第二年，狄拉<
/p>
克来到格廷根，正如它发生的那样，住在一个名叫卡里奥的
医生的
大房子里，奥本海默也有一个房间。
狄拉克
< br>25
岁。
这两个年轻人成了朋
友
-
只要你能和狄拉克有友谊。
狄拉克虽
然年轻，但他已经是一位伟大的物理学家，我相信他知道这
一点。
他可能只是认为这是理所当然的。
然而，他仍然是一
个谜。
他很少说话，但当他说话时，总是非常精确，而且往
往具有毁灭性的效果。
这一定对奥本海默产生了深远的影
响。
奥本海默打断了博尔恩的研讨会，宣布他可以在量子理
论中做得
更好，而只有两岁的狄拉克发明了这个主题。
In any case, in
the course of things the two of them often went
for
walks. In the version of the story
that I heard Oppenheimer tell, th
ey
were walking one evening on the walls that
surrounded Gotting
en and got to
discussing Oppenheimer's poetry. I would imagine
th
at the
“
discussion
ich
was abruptly interrupted by Dirac, who asked,
ve people an understanding
of something that nobody knew before
,
whereas in poetry../' Oppenheimer allowed one to
fill in the rest o
f the sentence. As
interesting as it might have been to hear the
resp
onses, this did not seem to be the
sort of anecdote that would go o
ver
especially well at a conference devoted to
poetry.
无论如何，在事情的发展过程中，他们两个经常去散步。
在
我听到奥本海默讲述的故事版本中，有一天晚上，他们在环
绕着戈丁根的墙上散步，开始讨论奥本海默的诗歌。
我想，
“
讨论
”
更像是一个奥本海默独白，狄拉克突然打断了他，他
问：
“
你怎么能同时做诗歌和物理？
在物理学中，我们试图让
人们理解以前没有人知道的东西，而在诗歌中，奥本海默允
许一个人填写句子的其余部分。
尽管听到
这些答复可能很有
趣，但这似乎并不是在专门讨论诗歌的会议上特别好的那种
轶事。
Pitted against these excellent reasons
for my not going to the conf
erence were
two others that finally carried the day. In the
first plac
e, I was in the beginning
stages of a love affair with a young
wom
an who wanted very much to write.
She wanted to write so much t
hat she
had resigned a lucrative job with an advertising
agency an
d was giving herself a year in
which, living on her savings, she wa
s
going to do nothing but write. It was a gutsy
thing to do, but like
many people who
try it, she was finding it pretty rough going. In
f
act, she was rather discouraged. So,
to cheer her up, I suggested att
ending
this conference, where she might have a chance to
talk wit
h other people who were in the
same boat. This aside, I had read in
the tentative program of the conference that one
of the other tutor
s was to be Stephen
Spender. This, for reasons I will now explain,
was decisive.
由于这些原因，我不去参加这次会议，还有两个人终于坚持<
/p>
了这一天。
首先，我正处于与一个非常
想写作的年轻女人恋
爱的开始阶段。
她想写这么多，以至于她辞去了一份在一家
广告公司赚钱的工作，给了自己一年的时间，
在这一年里，
依靠她的积蓄，她将只做写作。
这是一件很有勇气的事情，
但就像许多人一样，她发现这是相当艰难的过程。<
/p>
事实上，
她相当气馁。
所以，为了让她振作起来，我建议她参加这个
会议，在那里她可能有机会和其
他在同一条船上的人交谈。
撇开这一点，我在会议的暂定计划
中读到，其他的导师之一
是斯蒂芬
·
斯
潘德。
出于我现在要解释的原因，这是决定性
的。
I should begin by saying right off that
I am not a great admirer of
Spender's
poetry. He is, for me, one of those people whose
writing
about their writing is more
interesting than their writing itself.
Bu
t I had read with great interest
Spender's autobiography
—
World
Within
World
—
especially for what it
revealed about the poet who did mean the
m
ost to
me
—
namely, W. H. Auden.
Auden's Dirac-
like lucidity, the sheer
wonder of the language, and the sense of
fu
n about serious
things
—
on the
Quantum Theory
—
were to me
irresistible. I became fascinated by Spender's
obsessio
n with Auden. Auden must have
been to Spender what Dirac was f
or
Oppenheimer, a constant reminder of the difference
between be
ing
fact that,
like Oppenheimer, Spender seemed
Jewish, partly homosexual, partly a
British establishment figure, o
ne
wondered when he got time to write poetry. By
being profoundl
y eccentric, both Auden
and Dirac, probably not by accident,
insul
ated themselves. They focused like
laser beams. What I did not kn
ow in
1981
—
I learned it only after
Spender's journals were published in
1986
—
was that Spender had
paid a brief visit to the Institute for
Advance
d Study in Princeton in November
of 1956, the year before I got th
ere
and two years before Dirac came on one of his
perennial visits.
首先，我应该说，我不是一个伟大的崇拜斯潘德的诗歌。
对
我来说，他是那些比他们的写作本身更有趣的人之一。
但是
我很感兴趣地阅读了斯宾德的自传《世界内
部的世界》，特
别是其中所揭示的对我来说意义最大的诗人，也就是
W.H.
奥
登。
奥登的狄拉克般的洞察力，语言的纯粹奇迹，以及对严
肃事物的乐趣感
-
“
至少我的现代作品应该是愉快的
/
就像量子
理论上的英国主教一样
-
对我来说是不可抗拒的。
我被斯宾德
对奥登的痴迷迷住了。
<
/p>
奥登一定是为了把狄拉克对奥本海默
的感觉吐出来，不断地提醒人
们
“
伟大
”
和
“
仅仅
”“
非
常好
”
之间
的区别。我还感到震惊的是
，就像奥本海默一样，斯宾德似
乎
“
不
专注
”
。
“
部
分是犹太人，部分是同性恋，部分是英国的
机构人物，人们怀疑他什么时候有时间写诗。
奥登和狄拉克
都非常古怪，这也许不
是偶然的，从而使自己绝缘。
它们像
激光一样聚焦。
我在
1981
年不知道的是，我在
< br>1986
年出版
了
Spende
r
的期刊之后才知道，
Spender
是在
1956
年
11
< br>月，
也就是我到达普林斯顿大学的前一年，也就是在
Di
rac
进行他
的一次常年访问之前的两年，对普林斯顿高等研究
所进行了
一次简短的访问。
Spender's journal entry on
his visit is fascinating both for what it
s
ays and for what it does not say. He
begins by noting that
heimer lives in a
beautiful house, the interior of which is painted
a
lmost entirely white.
斯潘德访问时的日记对他说的和不说的都很吸引人。
他首先
指出，
“
奥本海
默住在一所漂亮的房子里，房子的内部几乎全
是白色的。
”
This
was the director's mansion. Spender did not notice
that, becau
se of Oppenheimer's western
connections, there was also the odd
h
orse on the grounds. He continues:
“
He has beautiful paintings.
As soon as we came in, he said: 'Now
is
the time to look at the van Gogh.' We went into
his sitting room
and saw a very fine
van Gogh of a sun above a field almost
entirel
y enclosed in
shadows.
enheimer, immediately after I
had driven cross-
country from Los
Alamos in a convertible with a large hole in the
roof and had been summoned to the
interview while still covered i
n grime,
he said to me that he and his wife had some
pictures I mi
ght like to look at
sometime. I wondered what he was talking
abou
t. Some months later I was invited
to a party at the Oppenheimers,
and
realized that he was talking about a van Gogh.
Some years lat
er, I learned that this
was part of a small collection he had
inherite
d from his father to which he
had never added.
这是导演的豪宅。
斯潘德没有注意到
，由于奥本海默的西方
关系，也有奇怪的马在地面上。
他继续说：
“
他有漂亮的画。
我们一进来，他就说：
“
现
在是看梵高的时候了。
”
我们走进<
/p>
他的客厅，看到一个非常好的梵高的太阳在一个几乎完全封
闭在阴
影中的田野上。
“
在我第一次采访奥本海默的结束时，
当我从洛斯阿拉莫斯开着一辆敞篷车，车顶上有一个大洞，
被召去采访时
，他对我说，他和他的妻子有一些我可能喜欢
看的照片。
我想知道他在说什么。
几个月后，我
被邀请参加
奥本海姆的一个聚会，并意识到他在谈论梵高。
<
/p>
几年后，我
知道这是他从他父亲那里继承下来的一小部分，他从未
补充
过。
In his journal entry, Spender describes
Oppenheimer's physical ap
pearance:
looking men I have ever seen. He has a
head like that of a very sm
all
intelligent boy, with a long back to it, reminding
one of those s
kulls which were
specially elongated by the Egyptians. His skull
g
ives an almost eggshell impression of
fragility, and is supported b
y a very
thin neck. His expression is radiant and at the
same time a
scetic.,
eaves out
the fact that Oppenheimer did have the sunwrinkled
look
of someone who had spent a great
deal of time outdoors, which he
had.
在他的日记条目中，斯宾德描述了奥本海默的外表：
“
罗伯<
/p>
特
·
奥本海默是我见过的最不寻常的男人
之一。
他有一个像一
个非常聪明的小
男孩一样的头，有一个很长的背，提醒着那
些被埃及人特别拉长的头骨之一。
他的头骨给人一种几乎蛋
壳般的脆弱印象，并有
一个非常薄的脖子支撑。
他的表情容
光焕发，同时又是苦行僧。
“
这种描述对我来说似乎很正确，<
/p>
只是它忽略了一个事实，即奥本海默确实有一个人在户外度
过了很
多时间，他曾经有过阳光般的外表。
Spender also does not seem to have
remarked on Oppenheimer's e
yes, which
had a kind of wary luminescence. Siamese cats make
a
similar impression. But more
important, Oppenheimer appears in
Spender's journal as a disembodied
figure with no contextual relev
ance to
Spender's own life.
斯宾德似乎也没有
注意到奥本海默的眼睛，这有一种谨慎的
发光。
暹罗猫也有类似的印象。
但更重要的
是，奥本海默在
斯宾德的期刊上作为一个无实体的人物出现，与斯宾德自己
的生活无关。
There is no comment about the fact
that, three years earlier, Oppen
heimer
had been
learance had been taken away.
One of the charges brought against
him
was that his wife, Katherine Puening Oppenheimer,
was the f
ormer wife of Joseph Dallet,
who had been a member of the Com
munist
Party and who had been killed in 1937 fighting for
the Spa
nish Republican Army. In 1937,
Spender was also a member of th
e
Communist Party in Britain and had also spent time
in Spain. Di
d Oppenheimer know this? He
usually knew most things about the
people who interested him. Did
d this
have anything to do with the fact that, during
Spender's visit
, she was upstairs
thinking? There were so many things the
two of them might have s
aid to each
other, but didn't. They talked about the invasion
of the
Suez Canal.
三年前，奥本海默因对这个国家不忠诚而受到
“
审判
”
，他的
清白已被带走，这一事实没有任何评论。
对他提出
的指控之
一是，他的妻子凯瑟琳
·
普宁
·
奥本海默是约瑟夫
·
达莱的前
妻，他曾是共产党党员，
1937
年为西班牙共和国军队战斗而
被杀。
1937<
/p>
年，斯潘德也是英国共产党的一员，也曾在西班
牙度过。
奥本海默知道吗？
他通常知道对他感兴趣的人的大
部分事情。
< br>“
凯蒂
”“
奥本海默
”
知道吗？
这是否与斯
潘德访问
期间她在楼上生病有关？
斯宾德没有发表任何评论。
他在想
什么？
他们两个可能对对方说了那么多话，但没有。
他们谈
到了苏伊士运河的入侵。
In the fall of my second
year at the institute, Dirac came for a
visit
. We all knew that he was coming,
but no one had actually encoun
tered
him, despite rumored sightings. By this time,
Dirac, who wa
s in his
mid-
fifties, had a somewhat curious
role in physics. Unlike Einstein, he
had kept up with many of the developments and
indeed from time
to time commented on
them.
在研究所的第二年秋天，狄拉克来拜访我。
< br>我们都知道他要
来，但没有人真正遇到他，尽管传闻中的目击。
< br>
到了这个时
候，狄拉克已经五十多岁了，他在物理学中
扮演了一个有点
奇怪的角色。
与爱因
斯坦不同的是，他跟上了许多发展，并
不时地对它们发表评论。
But, like Einstein, he had
no school or following and had produce
d
very few students. He had essentially no
collaborators. Once, wh
en asked about
this, he remarked that
sics are had by
only one person. That seems to apply to poetry as
well. He taught his classes in the
quantum theory at Cambridge Un
iversity,
where he held Newton's Lucasian chair, by,
literally, read
ing in his precise,
clipped way from his great text on the subject.
When this was remarked on, he replied
that he had given the subje
ct a good
deal of thought and that there was no better way
to prese
nt it.
<
/p>
但是跟爱因斯坦一样，他没有建立学派，没有追随者，也没
有培养
出几个学生。基本上也没有合作者。有一次被问及此
事时，他说：
“
物理学上真正有价值的见地，只属于个人。
”
这个说法好像对诗歌也挺合适。他曾经在剑桥大学教授量子
理论课程，在那里
他坐着牛顿曾经执掌过的卢卡斯教授的席
位，在教授课程时他以一种梢确的、掐头去尾的
方式念着与
课题有关的他本人的著作中的东西。当有人对此质疑时，他
< br>回答说他对该课题钻研至深，但没有更好的方式演示出来。
At the institute we had a
weekly physics seminar over which
Oppe
nheimer presided, often
interrupting the speaker. Early in the fall
we were in the midst of one of
these
—
there were about forty
people in attendance in a rather small
room
—
when the door opened.
In walked Dirac. I had never seen him
befo
re, but I had often seen pictures
of him. The real thing was much b
etter.
He wore much of a blue
suit
—
trousers, shirt, tie,
and, as I recall, a sweater
——
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
halfway-锥形裤
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