amusedthe merely very good课文翻译及原文

the

merely

very

good

课文翻译及

原文

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 in Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I

don't remember the exact location, but a study of the map

convinces me that it was probably New Hope. My first

inclination was to say no. There were several reasons. I was

living in New York City and teaching full time. My weekends

were precious and the idea of getting up before dawn on a

Saturday, renting a car, and driving across the entire state of

New Jersey to deliver a lecture was repellent. As I recall, the

honorarium offered would have barely covered the expense.

Furthermore, 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 two activities. When this first came up, I

felt obligated to say something, but after twenty years, about

the only thing that I felt like saying was that both physics and

writing, especially if one wanted to do them well, were

extremely difficult.

早在

1981

年，

我收到过一份请柬是邀请我在一个作家年会上做讲座，

这次 会议会在在宾夕法尼亚州特拉华河沿岸过新泽西不远的某个地

方召开。

< br>确切的地点我已记不太清了，

但仔细查看地图后我觉得应该

是在新望市。我一开始的意向是拒绝它。拒绝的理由有很多。首先我

在纽约居住，

并担负着一份全职的教学工作，

周末对我来说是很宝贵

的。一想到要在周六天不亮的时候就要起床，然后还得租车，并且驾

车穿越整 个新泽西州去会议上做个讲座，

实在是烦得很。

我回想起这

场讲座所付的酬金几乎还不足以支付我这段行程所需的这些花费。

此

外，

它建议我讲的主题实际上我已经没有什么兴趣了。

我在写作的同

时又从事物理学研究，因此人们经常让我去讨论这两者之间 的联系。

在这个议题第一次提出的时候，

我觉得还有必要谈一谈 。

但二十年过

去了，我现在唯一想说的就是搞物理学和搞写作都 是极其困难的事，

尤其是在你想将这两者做得尽善尽美的时候。

The conference seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of

the things that came to mind was an anecdote that Robert

Oppenheimer used to tell about himself. Since Oppenheimer

will play a significant role in what follows, I will elaborate. After

Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, he was

awarded a fellowship to study in Europe. Following a very

unhappy time in England, where he seems to have had a sort

of nervous breakdown, he went to Germany to get his Ph.D.

这个大会的中心议题似乎在诗歌上，由此我想起罗伯特·奥本海默过

去 讲述的关于他自己的一件事。

因为奥本海默下面的故事中会扮演一

个重要的角色，我会比较详细地去讲述他。奥本海默在

1925

年从哈

佛毕业以后，

被授予研究员的资格到欧洲继续学习。< /p>

在英国时他似乎

有些神经衰弱的症状，

在 那里度过了一段不怎么愉快的经历之后，

他

转去德国攻读博士学 位。

He studied with the distinguished German theoretical

physicist Max 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 wrote,

great talent and I was conscious of his superiority in a way

which was embarrassing and led to trouble. In my ordinary

seminar on quantum mechanics, he used to interrupt the

speaker, whoever it was, not excluding myself, and to step to

the blackboard, taking the chalk and declaring: 'this can be

done much better in the following manner.'

bad that Oppenheimer's fellow students in the seminar

petitioned Born to put a stop to it.

在哥廷根，他跟随著名的德国理论物理学家马克思·伯恩一同搞研究，

并于

1927

年他

23

岁时在那里获得了博士学位。但

1975

年伯恩去< /p>

世后出版的对奥本海默的回忆录中对其毫无赞同之词。

“奥本海默 ，

”

他写道，

“是伟大的天才，我是在 一种令人尴尬并频惹麻烦的方式上

意识到他是一个多么优秀的人。在上我的量子力学的常 规研讨课时，

他经常打断发言者，不管他是谁，也包括我在内，然后跨上讲台，拿

起粉笔，宣称：

‘用下面的方式可以把这做得更好。

< br>’

”虽然实际上，

这样做的效果很糟糕，

以至于他的同学恳求伯恩制止这样事情的再度

发生。

Quantum mechanics had been invented the year before by

Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg and Paul A. M. Dirac.

The next year, Dirac came as a visitor to Gottingen and, as it

happened, roomed in the large house of a physician named

Cario where Oppenheimer 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

remained, an enigma. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was

always with extraordinary precision and often with devastating

effect. This must have had a profound effect on Oppenheimer.

While Oppenheimer was interrupting Born's seminars,

announcing that he could do calculations better in the

quantum theory, Dirac, only two years older, had invented the

subject.

量子力学在此前一年由埃尔温·薛定谔、

沃纳·海森堡和保罗·

A.M

·狄拉

克创造。第二年，

狄拉克到哥廷根做客，碰巧的是他下榻在一位名叫

加里奥的物理学家的大房子里，< /p>

奥本海默正好也住在那里。

狄拉克当

时< /p>

25

岁。

两个年轻人成了朋友——当然迄 今为止他是唯一能和狄拉

克建立友谊的人。狄拉克如此年轻，可已经是个伟大的物理学家 了，

我确信他知道这一点。也许他觉得无所谓。然而，他从前，直至现在

仍然是个谜。

他很少说话，

但一旦他开始说话，

他的话往往特别精确，

而且通常具有压倒一切的威力。这一定对奥本海 默产生了深刻的影

响。

当奥本海默还在打断伯恩的讲座，

声称他能运用量子理论把计箅

做得更好的时候，只比他大两岁的狄拉克 已经将这个课题设置好了。

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, they were walking one evening on the walls that

surrounded Gottingen and got to discussing Oppenheimer's

poetry. I would imagine that the

“

disc ussion

Oppenheimer monologue, which was abruptly interrupted by

Dirac, who asked,

In physics we try to give people an understanding of

something that nobody knew before, whereas in poetry../'

Oppenheimer allowed one to fill in the rest of the sentence. As

interesting as it might have been to hear the responses, this

did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over

especially well at a conference devoted to poetry.

无论如何，