2006年 Text 4
①Many things make people think artists are weird. ②But the weirdest may be this: artists’ only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.
①许多事情使人们认为艺术家是怪人。②而最怪异的可能是：艺术家唯一的工作就是探索情感，但他们却将焦点投向负面的情感。
①This wasn’t always so.②The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. ③But somewhere from the 19th century onward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, phony or, worst of all, boring, as we went from Wordsworth’s daffodils to Baudelaire’s flowers of evil.
①情况并不总是如此。①最早的艺术形式，如绘画和音乐，是最适合表达欢乐的。③但是从19世纪的某个时候开始，当我们从华兹华斯的《水仙花》转向波德莱尔的《恶之花》时，越来越多的艺术家开始把快乐看作是毫无意义的、虚伪的甚至是令人厌倦的东西。
①You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery. ②But it’s not as if earlier times didn’t know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. ③The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
①你可能认为艺术对快乐产生越来越多的怀疑是因为现代社会经历了太多的痛苦。②但是这并不是说以前的时代就没有经历过连年的战争、灾难和滥杀无辜。③事实上，原因可能正好相反：如今的世界上有太多的快乐了。
①After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? ②Advertising. ③The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
①归根结底，几乎完全致力于描绘快乐的那种现代表达方式究竟是什么？②广告。②反快乐艺术的兴起，几乎与大众传媒同时出现，并且，随着它的出现产生了一种商业文化，在这种文化氛围中，快乐不仅是一种理想，而且成为一种意识形态。
①People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. ②They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. ③In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms. ④Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.
①早些时代的人们处于令人处处想到悲苦的境地。②他们工作到筋疲力尽，生活几乎没有保障，最后英年早逝。③在西方，在大众传播和教育普及之前，最强大的大众传媒是教堂，教堂提醒信徒，他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们有一天会成为蛆虫的食物。④有了这一切，他们无需艺术再来表现这种失落感。
①Today the messages the average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. ②Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling. ③Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. ④And since these messages have an agenda—to lure us to open our wallets—they make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. ⑤“Celebrate!” commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
①如今一个普通西方人面对的信息轰炸不是宗教的，而是商业的，而且是永远快乐的。②快餐食客、新闻主播、收发短信者，都在微笑、微笑、微笑。③我们的杂志刊登满面春风的名人和美满幸福的家庭。④由于这样的信息都有一项任务——诱使我们打开钱包——从而使“快乐”的概念本身显得虚假。⑤“欢庆吧！”宣传关节炎良药西乐葆的广告这样鼓动道，随后我们却发现它能增加心脏病的发病率。
①But what we forget—what our economy depends on us forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. ②The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. ③Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. ④It’s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
①但是我们所忘记的——我们的经济依赖我们忘却的——是：快乐绝不仅仅是没有痛苦的快乐。②带来最大快乐的东西也最有可能带有损失和失望。③如今，我们的周围充斥着唾手可得的幸福的承诺，我们需要艺术来告诉我们，正如宗教曾经告诉过我们的：记得你终将死亡，一切都会结束，幸福的到来不是因为否认这一点，而是对其加以忍受。④这一启示甚至比叶子烟还要苦，但却不知何故带来了一缕清新的空气。
Q126-考研英语阅读-2006 text4 全文翻译
