经典英语美文 （51）人类将取胜
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work，a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit,but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be diffcult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin.But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too,
by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here whereI am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflictwith itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again.
He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget itforever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed，love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, ofdefeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories whthout hope and, worst of all, without pityor compassion.His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but ofthe glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal,not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrfice and endurance.
The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man,it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
我觉得，这个奖不是授给我这个人，而是授给我的创作——那沉浸于人类心灵的煎熬与劳苦之中的毕生劳作——它既不为名誉，亦不为利润，只是为了创造出前所未有的人类精神的样本。因而，这个奖只是由我暂时保管罢了。要为这笔奖金找一个与它设置的目的和意义相称的用途并非难事，然而我却想以同样的方式利用这个赞美——我要把这个时刻当作一个巅峰，使自己能被那些已经献身于同样的心灵煎熬与劳苦的青年男女们听见，未来的某一天他们中的一个将会站在我今天所站的地方。
我们今天的悲剧，是一种全面的普遍的肉体的恐惧，这种恐惧持续已久以至我们甚至能够忍受它。不再有心灵的问题了，剩下的只有一个疑问：我何时会被毁灭？因此当今从事写作的青年男女已经忘记人的内心冲突的问题，而惟有它才能产生好的作品，因为只有它才值得我们去写，值得我们为之忍受煎熬与劳苦。
对此他必须重新学习。他必须告诫自己，所有事物中最卑劣的便是恐惧；他必须告诫自己，永远忘记它；在他的工场不应有任何其他东西，除了古老的真理和心灵的真实——没了这普遍的真理，任何文学作品都是短命的，僵死的——这就是爱、荣誉、怜悯、自尊、同情和牺牲。在他这样做之前，他将在诅咒下劳作。他描写的不是爱情而是性欲。他写的失败中没有人失去任何有价值的东西，他写的成功里没有希望——更糟的是——没有怜悯与同情。他的悲哀因缺乏普世价值的骨骼而留不下伤痕。他描绘的不是人的心灵，而是他的腺体。
除非他学会了这些事情，否则，他将如同置身于末日为注视末日的来临而写。我拒绝接受人类末日的说法。仅仅因为人能够忍受就说他是不朽的，这也太轻松了。说什么即便当那末日的钟声敲响，并从那默默地悬坠于垂死的黄昏与夕阳的残红里的最后的无价值的岩石上飘零消逝之时，世界上还会有一种声音——即人的微弱却永不衰竭的声音——在不停地诉说。我拒绝接受这个。我深信，人不仅会忍耐，他还将蓬勃发展。他是不朽的，不是因为生物中唯有他的声音永不衰竭，而是因为他有灵魂，有能同情能牺牲能忍耐的心灵。
诗人和作家的责任，就在于描写这些事物。他的特权，就在于通过升华人的心灵，通过唤醒人的勇气、荣誉、希望、尊严、同情、怜悯和牺牲这些记录了人的往昔光荣的精神，来帮助人忍耐。诗人的声音，不必仅仅成为人的记录，更能成为帮助他忍耐与成功的一种支柱和栋梁。