Thus in a changing world youth was faced with the challenge of bringing our mores up to date.
这样一来,在一个千变万化的世界中,青年一代便面临着使我们的道德习惯与时代合拍这一挑战。
But at the same time it was tempted, in America at least, to escape its responsibilities and retreat behind an air of naughty alcoholic sophistication and a pose of Bohemian immorality.
而与此同时,青年人。至少美国的青年人-又表现出这样一种倾向:他们试图逃避自己的责任。沉溺于一种老于世故、以酒自娱的生活作风之中,装出一副波希米亚式的放荡不羁的样子。
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 escape, an escape made possible by a general prosperity and a post-war fatigue with politics, economic restrictions, and international responsibilities.
追求时尚,为了短暂的快乐和一时的新奇而大肆挥霍,纵情地狂欢,寻求各种各样的感官刺激--性行为,吸毒,酗酒以及各种各样的堕落行为--这些都是他们逃避责任的表现形式,是一种由社会的普遍繁荣及战后人们对于政治、经济限制和国际义务所产生的厌烦情绪所造成的逃避方式。
Prohibition afforded the young the additional opportunity of making their pleasures illicit,and the much-publicized orgies and defiant manifestoes of the intellectuals crowding into Greenwich Village gave them a pattern and a philosophic defense for their escapism.
禁酒法令使青年人有了更多的机会寻求违禁取乐的刺激。文人墨客纷纷涌人格林威治村,他们那些被大肆渲染的放纵行为和挑战性言论也为青年人的逃避主义提供了一种表现形式和一套哲学辩护辞。
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 forced the revelers to sober up and face the problems of the new age.
这种逃避主义者的纵情狂欢,像大多数逃避主义者的纵情狂欢一样,一直要持续到狂欢者囊空如洗为止。到二十年代末世界经济结构总崩溃之时,这种狂欢宴会便告停歇,那些寻欢作乐者也只得从酣醉中清醒过来,去面对新时代的各种难题了。