Unit4AViewofMountains课文翻译综合教程四

1、Unit 4A View of MountainsJonathan Schell1.On August 9, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, YosukeYamahata,a photographerservingintheJapanesearmy,wasdispatchedtothedestroyedcity.Thehundredorso pictureshe tookthenextdayconstitutethefullestphotographicrecordofnucleardestructioninexis

2、tence.Hiroshima,destroyed three days earlier, had largely escaped the camera s lens in the first dayafter the bombing. It was therefore left to Yamahata to record, methodically and,as it happens, with a great and simple artistry the effects on a human populationof a nuclear weapon only hours after i

3、t had been used. Some of Yamahata s picturesshowcorpsescharredinthepeculiarwayinwhichanuclearfireballcharsitsvictims.Theyhavebeen burnedby light technicallyspeaking,bythe“ thermalpulse” andtheirbodiesareoftenbrandedwiththepatternsoftheirclothes,whosecolorsabsorblightindifferentdegrees.Onephotographs

4、howsahorsetwisted under the cart it had been pulling. Another shows a heap of something thatonce had been a human being hanging over a ledge into a ditch. A third shows a girlwhohas somehowsurvivedunwoundedstandingintheopenmouthofa bombshelter and smiling an unearthly smile, shocking us with the sig

5、ht of ordinary life,whichotherwiseseems tohavebeenleftbehindforgood in the scenes we arewitnessing. Stretching into the distance on all sides are fields of rubble dotted withfires, and, in the background,a viewofmountains.We can see the mountainsbecause the city is gone. That absence, even more than

6、 wreckage, contains the heartof the matter. The true measure of the event lies not in what remains but in all thathas disappeared.2.It took a few seconds forthe United States to destroy Nagasaki with the world ssecond atomic bomb, but it took fifty years for Yamahata s pictures of the event tomake t

7、he journey back from Nagasaki to the United States. They were shown for thefirsttimein thiscountryin 1995,at theInternationalCenter forPhotographyinNew York. Arriving a half-century late, they are still news. The photographs displaythe fate of a single city, but their meaning is universal, since, in

8、 our age of nucleararms, what happened to Nagasaki can, in a flash, happen to any city in the world. Inthe photographs,Nagasakicomesintoits own. Nagasakihas alwaysbeenintheshadow of Hiroshima, as if the human imagination had stumbled to exhaustion inthe wreckageofthefirstruinedcity withoutreachingev

9、entheoutskirtsofthesecond. Yet the bombing of Nagasaki is in certain respects the fitter symbol of thenuclear dangerthatstill hangs overus. Itisproof that,having once usednuclearweapons, wecan use themagain. Itintroducestheideaof a series the seriesthat, with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons rem

10、aining in existence, continuesto threateneveryone.(Theunpredictable,open-endedcharacterof the series issuggested by the fact that the second bomb originally was to be dropped on the cityof Kokura, which was spared Nagasaki s fate only because bad weather protected itfrom view.) Each picture therefor

11、e seemed not so much an image of something thathappeneda half-centuryago as a windowcutintothewallofthe photographycenter showing what soon could easily happen to New York. Wherever the exhibitmight travel, moreover, the view of threatened future from these“ windows ” wouldbe roughly accurate, since

12、, although every intact city is different from every other,all cities that suffer nuclear destruction will look much the same.3.Yamahata s pictures afford a glimpse of the end of the world. Yet in our day,whenthechallengeisnotjusttoapprehendthenuclearperilbut toseize aGod-given opportunity to dispel

13、 it once and for all, we seem to need, in addition,someotherpicturetocounterpoiseagainstruinedNagasaki one showingnotwhatwe wouldlosethroughourfailurebutwhat we wouldgainby oursuccess.What might that picture be, though? How do you show the opposite of the end ofthe world? Should it be Nagasaki, inta

14、ct and alive, before the bomb was droppedor perhaps the spared city of Kokura? Should it be a child, or a mother and child, orperhaps the Earth itself? None seems adequate, for how can we give a definite formto that which can assume infinite forms, namely, the lives of all human beings, nowandin the

15、future?Imagination,facedwitheithertheendofthe worldoritscontinuation, must remain incomplete. Only action can satisfy.4.Once, the arrival in the world of new generations took care of itself. Now, theycan come into existence only if, through an act of faith and collective will, we ensuretheir right t

16、o exist. Performing that act is the greatest of the responsibilities of thegenerations now alive. The gift of time is the gift of life, forever, if we know how toreceive it.望远山乔纳森 谢尔1 1945 年 8 月 9 日，一颗原子弹投向长崎。当天，在日军中服役的摄影师山端庸介被派遣到这座已遭毁灭的城市。 他第二天拍摄的百来张照片可谓现存最完整的核毁灭威力的影像记录。此前 3 天也遭遇毁灭的广岛在轰炸的第一天基本没被相机拍

17、摄下来。山端碰巧有条不紊地用伟大而简洁的艺术手法记录下了核武器爆炸后仅仅数小时对人类的影响。山端的部分照片展示了被核火球以其独特的方式烧焦了的尸体。他们是被光烧焦的用专业术语来说，他们是被 “热脉冲 ”烧焦的 尸体通常都烙上了衣服的图案，因为不同的颜色吸光程度不同。一张照片拍下了一匹身形扭曲的马儿蜷缩在它拉的大车下面。另一张显示了一堆悬挂在突出物上面伸进沟渠的东西， 看得出这也是一个人的遗骸。 第 3张照片中有个小女孩站在防空洞入口处， 不知何故她虽经历劫难却毫发无伤。她脸上露出诡异的笑容，令人震撼。如果不是这张照片， 在我们现在见证的场景中， 原先的日常生活已一去不返。大片茫茫的废墟瓦砾一直

18、伸向远方，残火零落其间，而这片景象的背景则是绵延的大山。我们能遥望远山，正因为整个城市已化为焦土。 城市的灰飞烟灭比断壁残垣更能说明问题的核心本质。这一事件的真正效应不在于城市还剩下什么，而在于消失的一切。2 美国使用世界上第 2 颗原子弹将长崎夷为平地仅仅用了几秒钟，然而，山端拍摄这一事件的照片从长崎辗转回到美国却用了50 年之久。照片第一次在美国展出是在1995 年，展出地点是纽约国际摄影中心。迟到了半个世纪， 这些照片仍然带有新闻效应。这些照片展示的是单个城市的命运， 但却带有普遍意义， 因为在我们这个核武器时代，发生在长崎身上的灾难也可能在转瞬之间发生在世界任何一个城市身上。通过这些照片，长崎为自己正名。它一直存在于广岛的阴影中，因为似乎人类的想象力到达广岛这第一个被毁灭的城市的废墟之后便裹足不前、消失殆尽了，以至于连长崎的边缘都到达不了。然而，长崎的灭顶之灾在某些方面恰恰是笼罩在我们头顶上的核威胁阴云的更有力的象征。它证明人类一旦大开核武器杀戒， 就会重蹈覆辙。 它带来了系列破坏的概念，就是说，有成千上万的核武器持续存在，我们每个人都有可能受到威胁。( 第 2颗原子弹原定是投向小仓的， 只是后来因为天气恶劣，空中视线不佳， 这才使小仓免遭长崎的厄运。 这说明了核