高级英语第二册第十课学习辅导资料

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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

stylistic vagaries of the

really so wild?

a Younger Generation problem?

a Younger Generation Problem;

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

1

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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

2

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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

to get into the fun before the whole thing turned belly up.

1916-- 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

3

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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

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

self-respecting person wanted to suffer the disgrace of being drafted, the 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

4

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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

were not 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

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

5

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

still cheap in 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

became

a

fad.

Each

town

had

its

set

which

prided

itself

on

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

6

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

factor in American life as 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

rallying point of sensitive persons 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

7

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

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.

10

It was in their defiant, but generally short-lived, European expatriation that our

leading writers of the Twenties learned to think of themselves, in the words of Gertrude

Stein, as the

attitude nevertheless acted as a common denominator of the writing of the times. The

war and the cynical power politics of Versailles had convinced these young men and

women that spirituality was dead; they felt as stunned as John Andrews, the defeated

aesthete In Dos Passos' Three Soldiers, as rootless as Hemingway's wandering

alcoholics in The Sun Also Rises. Besides Stein, Dos Passos, and Hemingway, there

were Lewis Mumford, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, Matthew Josephson, d.

Harold Stearns, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cumminss, Malcolm Cowley, and many other

novelists, dramatists, poets, and critics who tried to find their souls in the Antibes and

on the Left Bank, who directed sad and bitter blasts at their native land and who,

almost to a man, drifted back within a few years out of sheer homesickness, to take up

residence on coastal islands and in New England farmhouses and to produce works

ripened by the tempering of an older, more sophisticated society.

11

For actually the

a time, bitter, critical, rebellious, iconoclastic, experimental, often absurd, more often

misdirected- but never

above, such fisures as Eugene O'Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzserald,

8

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Vincent Ben

é

t, Hart Crane, Thomas Wolfe,

and innumerableothers could never be written off as sterile ,even by itself in a moment

of self-pity. The intellectuals of the Twenties, the

Fitzserald

called

them,

cursed

their

luck

but

didn't

die;

escaped

but

voluntarily

returned;

flayed the Babbitts but loved their country, and in so doing gave the nation the Iiveliest,

freshest, most stimulating writing in its literary experience.

(from Rhetoric and Literature by P. Joseph Canavan)

9

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

NOTES

1. Horton and Edwards: joint authors of the book, Backgrounds of American Literary

Thought (1967), from which this piece is taken.

2. The Sad Young Men: a term created by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his book All the Sad

Young

Men

to

describe

the

disillusioned

post-World

War

I

younger

generation,

especially the young writers who lived as expatriates in west Europe for a short time.

They were also called the

3. flask-toting: always carrying a small flask filled with whisky or other strong liquor

4. crash of the world economic structure: referring to the Great Depression in U.S.

history, the severe economic crisis supposedly precipitated by the U. S. stock-market

crash of 1929. The American depression produced severe effects abroad, especially

in Europe.

5. Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt (1859-1919), 26th President of the United States

(1901-- 09). He drew considerable criticism for his glorification of military strength

and

his

patriotic

fervor.

After

the

outbreak

of

World

War

I

he

attacked

Wilson'

s

neutrality policy; and when the United States entered the war he pleaded vainly to be

allowed to raise and command a volunteer force.

6.

Dos

Passos:

John

Dos

Passos

(1896--1970),

American

novelist.

Publications:

Three Soldiers; Manhattan Transfer; U. S. A. District of Columbia, etc.

7. turn belly up: to finish, to end; a term borrowed from fishing. A fish that floats belly

up is dead.

8. the strife of 1861--65: the Civil War between the Northern (Federal) States and

Southern

(Confederate)

States,

which

resulted

in

victory

for

the

former

and

the

abolition of slavery

9.

fracas

with

Spain

in

1898:

the

Spanish-American

War

(1898),

a

brief

conflict

between Spain and the United States arising out of Spanish policies in Cuba. It was, to

a large degree, brought about by the efforts of U. S. expansionists. On May 7, a U. S.

squadron under George Dewey sailed into the harbor of Manila, Philippine Islands, and

in a few hours thoroughly defeated the Spanish fleet there.

10. San Juan Hill: in East Cuba, near the city of Santiago de Cuba. It was the scene

(July, 1898) of a battle in the Spanish-American war, in which Theodore Roosevelt

and the Rough Riders took part.

11. National Guard: U. S. militia. In peace time the National Guard is placed under

state jurisdiction and can be used by governors to quell local disturbances. In times of

10

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

war or other emergencies, the National Guard is absorbed into the active service of the

United States and the President is commander-in-chief.

12. Fourth-of-duly: U. S. Independence Day, commemorating the adoption of the

Declaration of Independence. Traditionally, it has been celebrated with the firing of

guns and fireworks, parades, open-air meetings, and patriotic speeches.

13. Gopher Prairies: backward, undeveloped areas of the prairies

14.

the

world

safe

for

democracy

The

exact

quotation

from

Woodrow

Wilson's Address to Congress (April 2, 1917) is,

democracy.

15. Napoleonic cynicism: As conqueror, Napoleon cynically rearranged the whole map

of Europe. The victorious allies of World War I did the same at Versailles.

16. country club class: people rich enough to join the country clubs

17. Model T: one of the early Ford motorcars

18.

Dutch

Colonial

home:

spacious

houses

following

the

style

of

Dutch

Colonial

architecture

19.

Floral

Heights:

referring,

perhaps,

to

Floral

Park

on

Long

Island,

a

residential

suburb of New York. It has a commercial flower industry.

20. Rotary (International): organization of business and professional men, founded

(1905) by Paul Percy Harris, a Chicago lawyer. Besides Rotary clubs in the United

States, other branches were established in many countries throughout the world. The

name was derived from the original custom of meeting in rotation at the members'

places of business.

21. Mumford: Lewis Mumford (1895--1990), American social philosopher. Among his

books are: Technics and Civilization; The Condition of Man, and The City in History.

22.

Pound:

Ezra

Pound

(1885--1972),

American

poet,

critic,

and

translator;

An

extremely important influence in the shaping of 20th century poetry, he was one of the

most famous and controversial literary figures of this century-- praised as a subtle

and complex modern poet, dismissed as a naive egotist and pedant, condemned as

a traitor and reactionary. During World War

Ⅱ

he broadcast Fascist propaganda to

the United States for the Italians and was indicted for treason. Pound's major works

are: Homage to Sextus Propertius; Hugh Selw3rn Manberley, and the Cantos.

23. Anderson: Sherwood Anderson (1876-- 1941), American novelist and short story

11

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

writer, best known for his novel Wines burg, Ohio

24. Josephson: Matthew Josephson (1899-- ), New York author, known for a time as

a member of the post-war expatriate group. Some of his publications include Zola and

His Time Portrait of the Artist as American The Robber Barons, etc.

25.

Eliot:

T.

S.

Eliot

(1888-1965),

English

poet

and

critic.

One

of

the

most

distinguished literary figures of the 20th century, T. S. Eliot won the 1948 Nobel Prize

in

literature.

Some

of

his

important

works

include:

The

Waste-land;

Murder

in

the

Cathedral The Sacred Wood, etc.

26.

Cummings:

E.

E.

Cummings

(1894-1962),

American

poet.

Among

his

15

volumes of poetry are: Tulips and Chimneys; Is 5, and 95 Poems.

27. Cowley: Malcolm Cowley (1898-- ), American critic and poet. He lived abroad in

the 1920s and knew many writers of the

Exile' s Return and Second Flowering.

28. Antibes: a seaside resort on the French Riviera favored by writers and artists

29. Left Bank: left bank of the River Seine in Paris, famous for its open-air book stalls.

The Latin quarter, the haunt of university students and teachers, is also on the left

bank.

30. O'Neill: Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), American dramatist. Widely acknowledged

as America's greatest playwright, O' Neill brought to the U. S. stage its first serious

native drama. Among his famous plays are: Beyond the Horizon; The Emperor Jones;

Desire Under the Elms; the Iceman Cometh, etc.

31.

Millay:

Edna

St.

Vincent

Millay

(1892-1950),

American

poet.

One

of

the

most

popular poets of her era, Millay was admired as much for the bohemian freedom of her

youthful life style as for her verse. Among her poems are: Renascence A Few Figs

from Thistles The Ballad of the Harp Weaver Fatal Interview, etc.

32.

Fitzgerald:

F. Scott Fitzgerald

(1896-1940), American novelist

and short-story

writer. Fitzgerald is considered the literary spokesman of the

of the 1920s. Among his famous works are: This Side of Paradise; The Beautiful and

Damned; The Great Gatsby; Tales of the Jazz Age All the Sad Young Men, etc.

33. Faulkner: William Faulkner (1897-1962), American novelist. As a writer Faulkner's

primary concern was to probe his own region, the deep south. He was awarded the

1949 Nobel Prize in literature. His best-known novels are: The Sound and the Fury; As

I Lay Dying Sanctuary A Fable, etc.

12

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

34.

Lewis:

Sinclair

Lewis

(1895-1951),

American

novelist.

Probably

the

greatest

satirist

of

his

era,

Lewis

wrote

novels

that

present

a

devastating

picture

of

middle-class American life in the 1920s. In 1930, Lewis became the first American to

win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His best-known novels are:Main Street ; Babbit

Arrowsrnith It Can't Happen Here, etc.

35.

Benrt:

Stephen

Vincent

Benrt

(1898-1943),

American

poet

and

author.

Publications: Heaven and Earth John Brown's Body; Ballads and Poems, etc.

36. Crane: Hart Crane (1899--1932), American poet. He published only two volumes

of poetry, White Buildings (1926) and The Bridge (1930), during his lifetime, but those

works established Crane as one of the most originaland vital American poets of the

20th century.

37. Wolfe: Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American novelist. His well known novels are:

Of Time and the River The Web and the Rock, and You Can't Go Home Again.

13

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

词汇

(Vocabulary)

nostalgic (adj.) : looking for something far away or long ago or for former happy circumstance

怀

旧的

illicit (adj.) : not allowed by law

，

custom

，

ru le

，

etc

．

：

unlawful

；

prohib ited

违法的，违禁的，

非法的

thrill (n.) : tremor of excitement(

一阵

)

激动

speakeasy (n.) : [slang]a place where alcoholic drinks are sold illegally

，

esp. such a place in the

U

．

S

．

during Prohibition[

俚

](

美国禁酒期的

)

非法的酒店

denunciation (n.) : the act of denouncing

控告；指责，斥责

amour (n.) : a love affair

，

esp. of an illicit or secret nature

恋情；

(

尤指

)

不正当的男女关系

sedan (n.) : an enclosed automobile with two or four doors

．

and two wide seats

．

front and rea r(

两

扇或四扇门、双排座的

)

轿车

naughty (adj.) : improper

，

obscene

不得体的；猥亵的

jazzy (adj.) : (a party)playing jazz mu sic(

舞会

)

放爵士音乐的

flask

—

toting (adj.) :always carrying a small flask filled with whisky or other strong liquor

身带烈

性酒的

sheik

(n.)

:

(Americanism)a

masterful

man

to

whom

women

are

supposed

to

be

irresistably

attracted[

](

能使女子倾心的

)

美男子

vagary (n.) : an odd

，

eccentric

，

or unexpected action or bit of conduct< /p>

古怪行径；难以预测的行

为

flapper

(n.)

:

[colloq

．

](in

the

1920?s)a

young

woman

considered

bold

and

unconventional

in

actions and dress [

口

](

在

20

世纪

20

年代被认为

)

举止与衣着不受传统拘束的年轻女子，轻佻女

郎

perspective (n.) : a specific point of view in understanding or judging things or events

，

esp. one

that shows them in their true relations to one another

正确理解或判断事物相互关系的能力

jazzmad (adj.) : blindly and foolishly fond of jazz music

爵士乐狂

aftermath (n.) : a result or consequence

，

esp. an unpleasant one

结果，

后果

(

尤指令人不愉快的后

果

)

14

高级英语

（第二册）

Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men

(Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)

provincial (adj.) : narrow

，

limited like that of rural provinces

狭窄的；偏狭的；地方性的

gentility (n.) : he quality of being ge nteel

；

now

，

specifically

，

excessive or affected refinement and

elegance