Grant and Lee 高英6课文翻译

Grant and Lee大学英语综合教程五第五单元文章 When Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met in the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, to work out the terms for the surrender of Lees Army of Northern Virginia, a great chapter in American life came to a close, and a great new chapter began. 当尤利西兹格兰特和罗伯特李在弗吉尼亚州阿珀马特科斯县城一所不太大的房子的客厅里会面，商讨李所率的北弗吉尼亚军队投降条件时，美国人生活中一个伟大的篇章结束了，一个崭新的重要篇章开始了。 These men were bringing the Civil War to its virtual finish. To be sure, other armies had yet to surrender, and for a few days the fugitive Confederate government would struggle desperately and vainly, trying to find some way to go on living now that its chief support was gone. But in effect it was all over when Grant and Lee signed the papers. And the little room where they wrote out the terms was the scene of one of the poignant, dramatic contrasts in American history 此二人是在实质上终止内战。 诚然，其他军队尚未投降， 已失去主要支柱的逃亡的邦联政府仍将绝望地徒然挣扎数日，想法寻觅生机。 其实，在格兰特和李签署文件之时，一切都已结束。他们拟定投降条件时用的那间小客厅成了见证美国史上强烈的戏剧性对照的场所。 They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting currents that, through them, had come into final collision. 这两位截然不同的将军都是强有力的人物，他们代表着两股相互冲突的力量的潮流，那两股潮流通过他们最终发生碰撞。 Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in American life.罗伯特李所仰仗的信念是，古老的贵族观念或许能以某种方式继续存在下去，并左右美国人的生活。 Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition . the age of chivalry transplanted to a New World which was making its own legends and its own myths. He embodied a way of life that had come down through the age of knighthood and the English country squire. America was a land that was beginning all over again, dedicated to nothing much more complicated than the rather hazy belief that all men had equal rights, and should have an equal chance in the world. In such a land Lee stood for the feeling that it was somehow of advantage to human society to have a pronounced inequality in the social structure. There should be a leisure class, backed by ownership of land; in turn, society itself should be keyed to the land as the chief source of wealth and influence. It would bring forth (according to this ideal) a class of men with a strong sense of obligation to the community; men who lived, not to gain advantage for themselves, but to meet the solemn obligations which had been laid on them by the very fact that they were privileged. From them the country would get its leadership; to them it could look for the higher values - of thought, of conduct, of personal deportment - to give it strength and virtue. 李是弗吉尼亚州沿海低地人氏，他的生活背景是家庭、文化、传统，是被移植到这个正在形成自身的传说与神话的新世界的骑士时代。他体现了从骑士和英格兰乡绅时代流传下来的一种生活方式。美国是个一切从头开始的国度，信奉的只不过是一种颇为模糊的信念，即人人拥有平等的权利，在世间应有平等的机会，如此而已。在这样一个国度里，李代表着这样一种情感，即社会结构中保留一种明显的不平等多少有利于人类社会。理应存在一个拥有土地的有闲阶级；反过来，社会本身应以土地为本，视其为财富与势力的主要来源。（根据这一理想）这样一个社会会造就一个对社会有着强烈责任感的阶级，他们不是为自己获利活着，而是为了承担自己的特权所赋予的重大责任活着。国家从他们中觅得领导人员；国家可依靠他们产生更加高尚的价值观念 思想方面的，行为方面的，个人风度方面的 以求国兴德盛。 Lee embodied the noblest elements of this aristocratic ideal. Through him, the landed nobility justified itself. For four years, the Southern states had fought a desperate war to uphold the ideals for which Lee stood. In the end, it almost seemed as if the Confederacy fought for Lee; as if he himself was the Confederacy . the best thing that the way of life for which the Confederacy stood could ever have to offer. He had passed into legend before Appomattox. Thousands of tired, underfed, poorly clothed Confederate soldiers, long-since past the simple enthusiasm of the early days of the struggle, somehow considered Lee the symbol of everything for which they had been willing to die. But they could not quite put this feeling into words. If the Lost Cause, sanctified by so much heroism and so many deaths, had a living justification, its justification was General Lee.李体现了这一贵族理想的最高尚的部分。拥有土地的贵族通过他获得存在的理由。四年间，南方各州拼死战斗，以捍卫李所代表的理想。到后来，南部邦联似乎是为李而战；李本人似乎就是南部邦联似乎是南部邦联所代表的生活方式能提供的菁华。还在来到阿珀马特科斯之前，他已经成为传奇人物了。成千上万疲于征战、忍饥挨饿、征衣褴褛的邦联士兵早已失去了战争伊始的单纯的热情，他们把李视作自己甘愿为之献身的一切的象征。只是他们不善表述这种情感。这一被无数英雄行为、无数阵亡将士神圣化了的注定失败的事业若有其现实的理由证明其是正确的话，那这理由就是李将军。 Grant, the son of a tanner on the Western frontier, was everything Lee was not. He had come up the hard way, and embodied nothing in particular except the eternal toughness and sinewy fiber of the men who grew up beyond the mountains. He was one of a body of men who owed reverence and obeisance to no one, who were self-reliant to a fault, who cared hardly anything for the past but who had a sharp eye for the future. 格兰特是西部边远地区一个制革工人的儿子，他与李截然不同。他历经艰难才出人头地，他并不代表哪种特别的信念，所体现的只是在边远山区长大的人所具有的永远能吃苦耐劳、坚忍不拔的品质。他不敬畏任何人，不顺从任何人，过分讲求自力更生，他不追怀既往，但能用敏锐的目光看未来。 These frontier men were the precise opposites of the tidewater aristocrats. Back of them, in the great surge that had taken people over the Alleghenies and into the opening Western country, there was a deep, implicit dissatisfaction with a past that had settled into grooves. They stood for democracy, not from any reasoned conclusion about the proper ordering of human society, but simply because they had grown up in the middle of democracy and knew how it worked. Their society might have privileges, but they would be privileges each man had won for himself. Forms and patterns meant nothing. No man was born to anything, except perhaps to a chance to show how far he could rise. Life was competition.这些西部边民与东部沿海低地的贵族恰恰相反。在他们的心目中，在爬过阿勒格尼山脉、进入辽阔的西部的人潮中，存在着对因循守旧的过去的不直接言明的深深不满。他们拥护民主制度，不是经缜密分析后推断出了适合人类社会的管理形式，而仅仅是由于他们生长在民主政体之中，懂得民主制度如何运作。他们的社会或许也存在特权，但那是每个人自己赢得的特权。惯例与固有模式不起任何作用。也许除了都有一个可以展示自己有多少发展空间的机会外，没有人生来就享有什么。生活就是竞争。 Yet along with this feeling had come a deep sense of belonging to a national community. The Westerner who developed a farm, opened a shop or set up in business as a trader, could hope to prosper only as his own community prospered - and his community ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada down to Mexico. If the land was settled, with towns and highways and accessible markets, he could better himself. He saw his fate in terms of the nations own destiny. As its horizons expanded, so did his. He had, in other words, an acute dollars-and-cents stake in the continued growth and development of his country.然而，伴随着这种情感的是对国家的深深的归属感。那些开垦农场、开店或从事贸易的西部人只有在所属的社会富起来时自己才有希望富起来 他们所属的社会从大西洋一直到太平洋，从加拿大一直到墨西哥。如果人们前来定居，建立起城镇、公路和近便的市场，他们自己也就能改善生活。他们从国家的命运出发看自身的命运。国家的疆域拓展了，他们自身的天地也会随之拓展。换言之，他们的利益与国家的兴旺发达紧紧相连，息息相关。 And that, perhaps, is where the contrast between Grant and Lee becomes most striking. The Virginia aristocrat, inevitably, saw himself in relation to his own region. He lived in a static society which could endure almost anything except change. Instinctively, his first loyalty would go to the locality in which that society existed. He would fight to the limit of endurance to defend it, because in defending it he was defending everything that gave his own life its deepest meaning.而这，或许正是格兰特与李之间最大差异之所在。那位弗吉尼亚贵族必然要将自己与他生活的地区相联系。他生活在一个几乎容得一切，惟独容不得变化的静止的社会里。出于天性，他的第一忠诚归于这一社会所在的地域。他会不惜一切地捍卫自己的地域，因为捍卫它，也就是捍卫赋予他生命最深刻意义的一切。 The Westerner, on the other hand, would fight with an equal tenacity for the broader concept of society. He fought so because everything he lived by was tied to growth, expansion, and a constantly widening horizon. What he lived by would survive or fall with the nation itself. He could not possibly stand by unmoved in the face of an attempt to destroy the Union. He would combat it with everything he had, because he could only see it as an effort to cut the ground out from under his feet.So Grant and Lee were in complete contrast, representing two diametrically opposed elements in American life. Grant was the modern man emerging; beyond him, ready to come on the stage, was the great age of steel and machinery, of crowded cities and a restless, burgeoning vitality. Lee might have ridden down from the old age of chivalry, lance in hand, silken banner fluttering over his head. Each man was the perfect champion of his cause, drawing both his strengths and his weaknesses from the people he led.Yet it was not all contrast, after all. Different as they were - in background and personality, in underlying aspiration - these two great soldiers had much in common. Under everything else, they were marvelous fighters. Furthermore, their fighting qualities were really very much alike.而西部人则以同样的执着捍卫自己更为开明的社会观。他为此而战，因为他赖以为生的都与发展、开拓以及不断拓宽的地平线密切相连。他所赖以为生的一切与国家同存共亡。面对颠覆联邦的企图他不可能无动于衷，袖手旁观。他将竭尽所能与之斗争，因为他只能将这一企图视为挖他墙脚的举动。 因此格兰特和李两人截然相反，代表着美国人生活中两种完全对立的要素。格兰特是初露锋芒的现代人；他身后准备登场的是钢铁和机器的伟大时代，是拥挤的城市时代，是永不满足、欣欣向荣、生机勃勃的时代。李则手握长矛从古老的骑士时代一路策马奔来，旌旗在头上飘扬。两人都是各自事业的杰出捍卫者，从所率的民众中汲取长处，同时也承袭了他们的弱点。 然而，存在于两人之间的也不完全是差异。虽然他们很不一样 如背景、个性、胸怀的抱负 但这两位杰出的军人却也有着许多的共同之处。最根本的是，两人都是优秀的斗士。再者，两人在战场上显示出的品质也极为相似。 Each man had, to begin with, the great virtue of utter tenacity and fidelity. Grant fought his way down the Mississippi Valley in spite of acute personal discouragement and profound military handicaps. Lee hung on in the trenches at Petersburg after hope itself had died. In each man there was an indomitable quality . the born fighters refusal to give up as long as he can still remain on his feet and lift his two fists.Daring and resourcefulness they had, too; the ability to think faster and move faster than the enemy. These were the qualities which gave Lee the dazzling campaigns of Second Manassas and Chancellorsville and won Vicksburg for Grant. 首先，两人都具有极其顽强和忠诚的崇高品格。格兰特不顾巨大的个人伤痛和重大的军事失利，沿密西西比河流域一路打过来。李在完全丧失希望的情况下死守彼得斯堡战壕。两人都具有一种百折不挠的个性一种与生俱来的斗士精神：一息尚存，就战斗到底。 两人还都既勇敢又足智多谋；都有比敌手思考敏捷、行动迅速的能力。正是这些品质为李赢得了世人赞叹的第二次默纳塞斯战役和桑塞勒兹维尔战役，为格兰特赢得了维科斯堡大捷。 Lastly, and perhaps greatest