thesadyoungmen课文和翻译.docx

1、thesadyoungmen课文和翻译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 mid

2、dle-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 part

3、ies, the flask-toting sheik, and the moral and stylistic vagaries of the flapper and the drug-store cowboy. Were young people really so wild? present-day students ask their parents and teachers. Was there really a Younger Generation problem? The answers to such inquiries must of necessity be yes and

4、 no-Yes because the business of growing up is always accompanied by a Younger Generation Problem; no because what seemed so wild, 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 jazz

5、mad 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 centur

6、y. 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

7、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 a

8、ny 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

9、 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 tu

10、rned 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

11、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

12、 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 manifesto

13、es 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 fo

14、rced 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 ma

15、ny 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 wanted to get into the fun before the whole t

16、hing turned belly up. For military service, in 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 fraca

17、s 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 i

18、n 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 intellectuals in the ambulance corps, others in the infantry, merchant marine, or wherever else they could find a plac

19、e. 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

20、with volunteers to go home and wait for the draft, but since no 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

21、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 a

22、nd 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

23、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 home

24、s 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 ove

25、r 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 made the world safe for democracy. And, as if home town conditions were not enough, the returning veteran a

26、lso 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 give and, after a short period of bitter resentment, it gave in the form of a complete ove

27、rthrow 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 majo

28、r 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 Puritanical gentility , ,should flock to the tradition

29、al artistic center (where living was 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 m

30、ore 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 flaming youth, it was Greenwich Village that fanned the flames. Bohemian living became a fad. Each town had its fast set which prided

31、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 deno

32、unced 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). You

33、nger 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. Thei