Who Ruinedthe Humanities中文翻译.docx

1、Who Ruinedthe Humanities中文翻译人文学科之没落，幸焉？不幸焉？2013-7-29 08:02|发布者:疯子|查看: 5974|评论: 0摘要: LEE SIEGELYouve probably heard the baleful reports. The number of college students majoring in the humanities is plummeting, according to a big study released last month by the American Academy of Ar .LEE SIEGELLEE S

2、IEGELYouve probably heard the baleful reports. The number of college students majoring in the humanities is plummeting, according to a big study released last month by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The news has provoked a flood of high-minded essays deploring the development as a symptom

3、and portent of American decline.你大概已经听说过那些惨不忍睹的调查报告。上月美国人文与科学院(American Academy of Arts & Sciences)发布的一项大型研究结果显示，主修人文学科的大学生人数在直线下降。这一消息引发了海量评论文章，这些文章站在道德制高点上，慨叹人文专业学生的减少是美国衰落的迹象和征兆。But there is another way to look at this supposed revelation (the number of humanities majors has actually been falling

4、 since the 1970s).Michael Kirkham但我们也可以从另外一个角度看待这一所谓的发现（人文专业大学生人数其实从20世纪70年代就开始下降了）。The bright side is this: The destruction of the humanities by the humanities is, finally, coming to a halt. No more will literature, as part of an academic curriculum, extinguish the incandescence of literature. No l

5、onger will the reading of, say, King Lear or D.H. Lawrences Women in Love result in the flattening of these transfiguring encounters into just two more elements in an undergraduate careerthe onerous stuff of multiple-choice quizzes, exam essays and homework assignments.光明的一面是：人类对人文的戕害终于要告一段落了。作为学术课程

6、的文学不会再扑灭炽热的文学之火。阅读李尔王(King Lear)或D.H.劳伦斯(D.H. Lawrence)的恋爱中的女人(Women in Love)不会再从让灵魂升华的邂逅沦为本科生涯的另外两个元素成为多选测验、考试论文和作业中让人头疼的内容。The disheartening fact is that for every college professor who made Shakespeare or Lawrence come alive for the lucky fewthe British scholar Frank Kermode kindled Shakespeare i

7、nto an eternal flame in my headthere were countless others who made the reading of literary masterpieces seem like two hours in the periodontists chair. In their numbing hands, the term humanities became code for and you dont even have to show up to get an A.令人沮丧的事实是，虽然有少数学生能有幸遇到把莎士比亚(Shakespeare)或劳

8、伦斯讲得栩栩如生的大学教授（英国学者弗兰克克莫德(Frank Kermode)在我的脑海中点燃了永恒的莎士比亚之火），但也有无数教授让阅读文学名著感觉就像在牙医诊所的椅子上坐上两小时一样。在他们麻木的手中，“人文学科”一词变成了“你不去上课也能得A”的代号。When people wax plaintive about the fate of the humanities, they talk, in particular, about the slow extinction of English majors. Never mind that the preponderance of Eng

9、lish majors go into other fields, such as law or advertising, and that students who dont major in English can still take literature courses. In the current alarming view, large numbers of people devoting four years mostly to studying novels, poems and plays are all that stand between us and sociocul

10、tural nightfall.在人们为人文学科的命运慨叹不已时，他们谈得特别多的是英语专业的缓慢消亡。但他们没有看到，大多数英语专业学生会进入法律和广告等其他领域，非英语专业学生也一样可以修文学课程。根据当前危言耸听的论调，大批将四年时间主要用于研究小说、诗歌和戏剧的人全都站在我们与社会文化的夜幕之间。The remarkably insignificant fact that, a half-century ago, 14% of the undergraduate population majored in the humanities (mostly in literature, bu

11、t also in art, philosophy, history, classics and religion) as opposed to 7% today has given rise to grave reflections on the nature and purpose of an education in the liberal arts.半个世纪之前，有14%的本科生主修人文学科（主要是文学，此外还有艺术、哲学、历史、古典学和宗教学），而如今这一比例降至7%，这个事实其实无足轻重，却引起了人们对人文教育本质和目的的严肃反思。Such ruminations always c

12、ome to the same conclusion: We are told that the lack of a formal education, mostly in literature, leads to numerous pernicious personal conditions, such as the inability to think critically, to write clearly, to empathize with other people, to be curious about other people and places, to engage wit

13、h great literature after graduation, to recognize truth, beauty and goodness.这类反思通常会得出同样的结论，我们被告知：缺乏正规人文教育（尤其是文学教育）会导致许多致命的人格缺陷，比如批判性思维欠缺，写不出表达清晰的文章，不能换位思考，对其他人和地方缺乏好奇心，毕业后不会去阅读文学名著，无法辨别真、善、美。These solemn anxieties are grand, lofty, civic-minded, admirably virtuous and virtuously admirable. They are

14、 also a sentimental fantasy.这些严肃的忧思俨然一副冠冕堂皇、居高临下、正气凛然、高风亮节、亮节高风的派头。但它们也是多愁善感的幻想。The college teaching of literature is a relatively recent phenomenon. Literature did not even become part of the university curriculum until the end of the 19th century. Before that, what came to be called the humanities

15、 consisted of learning Greek and Latin, while the Bible was studied in church as the necessary other half of a full education. No one ever thought of teaching novels, stories, poems or plays in a formal course of study. They were part of the leisure of everyday life.大学里教授文学是一个相对较新的现象。直到19世纪末，文学才成为大学

16、课程的一部分。在此之前，所谓人文学科包括学习希腊语和拉丁语，而在教堂里学习圣经(Bible)是完整教育的另一半必要组成部分。根本没有人想要通过正规课程教授小说、故事、诗歌和戏剧。这些都属于日常生活中的消遣。With the waning of religious authority, the humanities were born as a means of taking up the slack. Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare were now put in the service of ministering truth to souls parched

17、 for higher meaning. Anything more contemporary than Shakespeare, however, was seldom part of the curriculum. (As an undergraduate at Columbia, it delighted me no end to discover that the English department listed the telephone number of the visiting professor each year in the Manhattan White Pages

18、under the name Milton S. Chaucer. Looking the number up, as I often did, enchanted me.)Getty Images济慈（左）和莎士比亚（右）随着宗教权威的衰落，人文学科作为取代宗教的方式应运而生。乔叟(Chaucer)、弥尔顿(Milton)和莎士比亚开始承担起帮助渴求更高意义的心灵寻找真理的职能。不过，文学课程中很少包括莎士比亚时代之后的作品。（我在哥伦比亚大学(Columbia)读本科时发现，英语系每年都在曼哈顿白页(Manhattan White Pages)上把访问学者的电话号码列在弥尔顿S.乔叟 (M

19、ilton S. Chaucer)名下，这个发现让我乐不可支。查询这个电话号码（我经常查询）让我乐在其中。）The teaching of literature came into its own early in the 20th century, with the formation of literature departments. For years, these consisted mostly of philologists who examined etymology and the history of a text. It was only after World War

20、II that the study of literature as a type of wisdom, relevant to actual, contemporary life, put down widespread institutional roots.随着文学系的建立，文学教育在20世纪初取得了独立地位。在许多年里，文学系里主要是一些研究词源和文本历史的文献学者。直到第二次世界大战之后，文学研究才作为一种与真实现代生活相关的智慧在文学系广泛落地生根。In a sense, the story of teaching literature as a profession is a s

21、tory of war. Soldiers returning home in 1945 yearned to make sense of their lives after the carnage they had witnessed and survived. The GI Bill and an abundant economy afforded them the opportunity and the time to do so. In that moment, teaching literature as an investigation of lifes enigmas struc

22、k a deep collective chord. Majoring in English hit its zenith, yet it was this very popularity of literature in the university that spelled its doom, as tendentious pedants of various stripes accelerated the academicization of literary art.从某种意义上来说，文学教育作为一种专业是战争的产物。1945年，见证了杀戮并幸存下来的士兵返回家园，他们渴望为生活赋予意

23、义。退伍军人权利法案(GI Bill)的颁布和经济的繁荣让他们有机会和时间来做这件事。当时，将文学教育作为探究人生中的难题的方式激起了深刻的共鸣。英语专业的发展达到了顶峰，然而，正是文学在大学里的这一段流行期敲响了文学没落的丧钟，因为各式各样抱有偏见的学究加快了文学艺术的学术化。In contrast to the effects of World War II, the purposeless bloodshed of the Vietnam War made all authority suspect. That was when teaching literature acquired

24、an especially intense ideological fervor, when university radicals started their long (and fruitless) march through academic institutions armed with that fig leaf for mediocrity known as theory. And that was when majoring in English began its slow decline. The rest is todays news.与第二次世界大战的影响形成反差的是，越

25、南战争中无谓的流血让所有权威都受到质疑。当时，文学教育沾染了特别浓重的意识形态热情，大学里的激进派在学术机构里踏上了漫长的征程（他们的征程徒劳无功），他们以“理论”为武装，以掩饰平庸。也正是在那个时候，主修英语的学生开始缓慢减少。再往下就是今天发生的事情了。Only a knave would applaud the falling-off in the formal study of books that cultivate empathy, curiosity, aesthetic taste and moral refinement. But the academic study of

26、literature leads to nothing of the sort.有一些书籍能够培养我们的同理心、好奇心，提升审美品位和道德修养，在针对这类书籍的正规研究走向衰落时，只有无赖才会喝彩。但对文学进行学术研究根本不会带来这些裨益。More than 50 years ago, the critic and professor Lionel Trilling expressed his frustration with presenting imaginative writing in the classroom in an essay titled On the Teaching o

27、f Modern Literature. It was published in 1961, a time when majoring in English was in its heyday.Gallery Stock你可以在生活中在捕鲸船上或大树底下体味文学，把这些地方当成你的大学课堂你的耶鲁和哈佛。在50多年前，评论家兼教授莱昂内尔特里林(Lionel Trilling)在一篇题为论现代文学教学(On the Teaching of Modern Literature)的文章中表达了他对在课堂上介绍虚构文学作品之举的失望。这篇文章发表于1961年，当时英语专业正处于全盛时期。Trilli

28、ng observed that the modernist literature he had on his syllabusEliot, Yeats, Lawrence, Proust, Kafka, Mann, Gideasks every question that is forbidden in polite society. It asks us if we are content with our marriages, with our family lives, with our professional lives, with our friends. He then rol

29、led his eyes at professorial efforts to convey the character of such outlaw works to undergraduates, mocking a typical exam question for his course: Compare Yeats, Gide, Lawrence, and Eliot in the use which they make of the theme of sexuality to criticize the deficiencies of modern culture. Support

30、your statement by specific references to the work of each author. Time: One hour.特里林指出，他的教学大纲中包含的现代派文学作品（艾略特(Eliot)、叶芝(Yeats)、劳伦斯、普鲁斯特(Proust)、卡夫卡(Kafka)、曼(Mann)、纪德(Gide)的作品）“问及文明社会所忌讳的所有问题。现代派文学问我们对婚姻，对家庭生活、职业生活，对我们的朋友是否满意”。然后他讽刺了大学教授努力让本科生理解这类离经叛道作品的特性的做法，这是他戏拟的一道文学课典型试题：“叶芝、纪德、劳伦斯和艾略特都运用性主题来批判现代文

31、化的缺陷，请对他们在性主题运用方面的异同进行比较。请援引每位作家作品的具体内容来论证你的观点。（时间：一小时）”Trilling was exasperated by the absurdity of teaching morally subversive modernist works in the morally conventional precincts of a university, to the point where he somewhat hysterically exaggerated what he called the force and terror of moder

32、nist literature (there is terror in Syria, not in Gide). But he was, after all, a college teacher, and he was not able to see that the classroom also ruins literatures joys, as well as trivializing its jolting dissents.在恪守传统道德的大学领地里教授颠覆道德规范的现代派作品的荒谬性触怒了特里林，使他在一定程度上歇斯底里地夸大了所谓现代派文学的“武力和恐怖”（恐怖存在于叙利亚，而不是纪德的作品）。但他毕竟是一名大学教师，他看不出课堂教学也破坏了文学的乐趣，并把文学中令人震撼的异见变得琐碎化。Literature changed my life long before I began to study it in college and then, in a hapl