thesadyoungmen课文和翻译

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1 No aspect of life in the Twenties has been more commented upon and sensationally

romanticized than the so-called Revolt of the Younger Generation. The slightest mention of the

decade brings nostalgic recollections to the middle-aged and curious questionings by the young:

memories of the deliciously illicit thrill of the first visit to a speakeasy, of the brave denunciation of

Puritan morality, and of the fashionable experimentations in amour in the parked sedan on a country

road; questions about the naughty, jazzy parties, the flask-toting

vagaries of the

students ask their parents and teachers.

to such inquiries must of necessity be

always accompanied by a Younger Generation Problem;

irresponsible, and immoral in social behavior at the time can now be seen in perspective as being

something considerably less sensational than the degenerauon of our jazzmad youth.

2 Actually, the revolt of the young people was a logical outcome of conditions in the age: First of

all, it must be remembered that the rebellion was not confined to the Unit- ed States, but affected the

entire Western world as a result of the aftermath of the first serious war in a century. Second, in the

United States it was reluctantly realized by some- subconsciously if not openly -- that our country was

no longer isolated in either politics or tradition and that we had reached an international stature that

would forever prevent us from retreating behind the artificial walls of a provincial morality or the

geographical protection of our two bordering oceans.

3 The rejection of Victorian gentility was, in any case, inevitable. The booming of American

industry, with its gigantic, roaring factories, its corporate impersonality, and its largescale

aggressiveness, no longer left any room for the code of polite behavior and well-bred morality

fashioned in a quieter and less competitive age. War or no war, as the generations passed, it became

increasingly difficult for our young people to accept standards of behavior that bore no relationship to

the bustling business medium in which they were expected to battle for success. The war acted merely

as a catalytic agent in this breakdown of the Victorian social structure, and by precipitating our young

people into a pattern of mass murder it released their inhibited violent energies which, after the

shooting was over, were turned in both Europe and America to the destruction of an obsolescent

nineteenth-century society.

4 Thus in a changing world youth was faced with the challenge of bringing our mores up to date.

But at the same time it was tempted, in America at least, to escape its responsibilities and retreat behind

an air of naughty alcoholic sophistication and a pose of Bohemian immorality. The faddishness , the

wild spending of money on transitory pleasures and momentary novelties , the hectic air of gaiety, the

experimentation in sensation -- sex, drugs, alcohol, perversions -- were all part of the pattern of escape,

an escape made possible by a general prosperity and a post-war fatigue with politics, economic

restrictions, and international responsibilities. Prohibition afforded the young the additional opportunity

of making their pleasures illicit , and the much-publicized orgies and defiant manifestoes of the

intellectuals crowding into Greenwich Village gave them a pattern and a philosophic defense for their

escapism. And like most escapist sprees, this one lasted until the money ran out, until the crash of the

world economic structure at the end of the decade called the party to a halt and forced the revelers to

sober up and face the problems of the new age.

5 The rebellion started with World War I. The prolonged stalemate of 1915 -- 1916, the increasing

insolence of Germany toward the United States, and our official reluctance to declare our status as a

belligerent were intolerable to many of our idealistic citizens, and with typical American

adventurousness enhanced somewhat by the strenuous

jingoism of Theodore Roosevelt, our young

men began to enlist under foreign flags. In the words of Joe Williams, in John Dos Passos' U. S. A.,

they

1917, was still a romantic occupation. The young men of college age in 1917 knew nothing of modern

warfare. The strife of 1861 --1865 had popularly become, in motion picture and story, a

magnolia-scented soap opera, while the one hundred-days' fracas with Spain in 1898 had dissolved into

a one-sided victory at Manila and a cinematic charge up San Juan Hill. Furthermore, there were enough

high school assembly orators proclaiming the character- forming force of the strenuous life to convince

more than enough otherwise sensible boys that service in the European conflict would be of great

personal value, in addition to being idealistic and exciting. Accordingly, they began to join the various

armies in increasing numbers, the

merchant marine, or wherever else they could find a place. Those who were reluctant to serve in a

foreign army talked excitedly about Preparedness, occasionally considered joining the National Guard,

and rushed to enlist when we finally did enter the conflict. So tremendous was the storming of

recruitment centers that harassed sergeants actually pleaded with volunteers to

the draft,

enlistment craze continued unabated.

6 Naturally, the spirit of carnival and the enthusiasm for high military adventure were soon

dissipated once the eager young men had received a good taste of twentieth- century warfare. To their

lasting glory, they fought with distinction, but it was a much altered group of soldiers who returned

from the battlefields in 1919. Especially was this true of the college contingent, whose idealism had led

them to enlist early and who had generally seen a considerable amount of action. To them, it was bitter

to return to a home town virtually untouched by the conflict, where citizens still talked with the naive

Fourth-of-duly bombast they themselves had been guilty of two or three years earlier. It was even more

bitter to find that their old jobs had been taken by the stay-at-homes, that business was suffering a

recession that prevented the opening up of new jobs, and that veterans were considered problem

children and less desirable than non- veterans for whatever business opportunities that did exist. Their

very homes were often uncomfortable to them; they had outgrown town and families and had

developed a sudden bewildering world-weariness which neither they nor their relatives could

understand. Their energies had been whipped up and their naivete destroyed by the war and now, in

sleepy Gopher Prairies all over the country, they were being asked to curb those energies and resume

the pose of self-deceiving Victorian innocence that they now felt to be as outmoded as the notion that

their fighting had

enough, the returning veteran also had to face the sodden, Napoleonic cynicism of Versailles, the

hypocritical do-goodism of Prohibition, and the smug patriotism of the war profiteers. Something in the

tension- ridden youth of America had to

the form of a complete overthrow of genteel standards of behavior.

7 Greenwich Village set the pattern. Since the Seven-ties a dwelling place for artists and writers

who settled there because living was cheap, the village had long enjoyed a dubious reputation for

Bohemianism and eccentricity. It had also harbored enough major writers, especially in the decade

before World War I, to support its claim to being the intellectual center of the nation. After the war, it

was only natural that hopeful young writers, their minds and pens inflamed against war, Babbittry, and

1919) to pour out their new- found creative strength, to tear down the old world, to flout the morality of

their grandfathers, and to give all to art, love, and sensation.

8 Soon they found their imitators among the non-intellectuals. As it became more and more

fashionable throughout the country for young persons to defy the law and the conventions and to add

their own little matchsticks to the conflagration of

fanned the flames.

its unconventionality , although in reality this self-conscious unconventionality was rapidly becoming a

standard feature of the country club class -- and its less affluent imitators --throughout the nation.

Before long the movement had be-come officially recognized by the pulpit (which denounced it), by

the movies and magazines (which made it attractively naughty while pretending to denounce it), and by

advertising (which obliquely encouraged it by 'selling everything from cigarettes to automobiles with

the implied promise that their owners would be rendered sexually irresistible). Younger brothers and

sisters of the war generation, who had been playing with marbles and dolls during the battles of Belleau

Wood and Chateau- Thierry, and who had suffered no real disillusionment or sense of loss, now began

to imitate the manners of their elders and play with the toys of vulgar rebellion. Their parents were

shocked, but before long they found themselves and their friends adopting the new gaiety. By the

middle of the decade, the

flapper, the Model T, or the Dutch Colonial home in Floral Heights.

9 Meanwhile, the true intellectuals were far from flattered. What they had wanted was an America

more sensitive to art and culture, less avid for material gain, and less susceptible to standardization.

Instead, their ideas had been generally ignored, while their behavior had contributed to that

standardization by furnishing a pattern of Bohemianism that had become as conventionalized as a

Rotary luncheon. As a result, their dissatisfaction with their native country, already acute upon their

return from the war, now became even more intolerable. Flaming diatribes poured from their pens

denouncing the materialism and what they considered to be the cultural boobery of our society. An

important book rather grandiosely entitled Civilization in the United States, written by

intellectuals

disgusted with America. The burden of the volume was that the best minds in the country were being

ignored, that art was unappreciated, and that big business had corrupted everything. Journalism was a

mere adjunct to moneymaking, politics were corrupt and filled with incompetents and crooks, and

American family life so devoted to making money and keeping up with the Joneses that it had become

joyless, patterned, hypocritical, and sexually inadequate. These defects would disappear if only creative

art were allowed to show the way to better things, but since the country was blind and deaf to

everything save the glint and ring of the dollar, there was little remedy for the sensitive mind but to

emigrate to Europe where

published (1921), most of its contributors had taken their own advice and were Wing abroad, and many

more of the artistic and would-be artistic had followed suit.