Flaming diatribes poured from their pens denouncing the materialism and what they considered to be the cultural boobery of our society.
于是,他们的笔尖下便喷射出愤怒的火花,猛烈抨击着美国社会中的唯物质主义以及他们所称的文化市侩习气。
An important book rather grandiosely entitled Civilization in the United States, written by, thirty intellectuals under the editorship of J. Harold Stearns, was the rallying point of sensitive persons disgusted with America.
由三十位知识分子合撰、哈罗德·斯特恩斯编辑出版的一部颇为庄重地题名为《美国的文明》的重要著作,汇集的便是一些憎恶美国的敏感人士的抨击性言论。
The burden of the volume was that the best minds in the country were being ignored, that art was unappreciated, and that big business had corrupted everything.
这部著作的中心主题是:在美国,杰出人才得不到重视,艺术事业无人理解,大企业腐蚀败坏了整个社会。
Journalism was a mere adjunct to moneymaking, politics were corrupt and filled with incompetents and crooks, and American family life so devoted to making money and keeping up with the Joneses that it had become joyless, patterned, hypocritical, and sexually inadequate.
新闻事业沦为发财赚钱的工具,政治腐败,官场上充斥着庸才和骗子,而美国人的家庭生活也由于人们一心想着挣钱和与邻里斗富而变得索然无味,刻板单调,充满虚情假意。
These defects would disappear if only creative art were allowed to show the way to better things,
夫妻生活也缺乏鱼水之乐。本来只需让创造性艺术来指明通向美好生活的道路以上这些缺憾就会自动消失的。
but since the country was blind and deaf to everything save the glint and ring of the dollar, there was little remedy for the sensitive mind but to emigrate to Europe where they do things better.
可是,美国举国上下除了亮晶晶响当当的美金之外,对其他的一切都视而不见.充耳不闻。因此,对那些敏感的才俊之士来说,唯一的出路便只有移居欧洲,那儿的情形要好一些。
By the time Civilization in the United States was published (1921), most of its contributors had taken their own advice and were Wing abroad, and many more of the artistic and would-be artistic had followed suit.
《美国的文明》正式出版(1921)之时该书的撰稿人大多数已经接受自己的忠告寄居在国外了,还有许多别的艺术家和预备艺术家也纷纷步其后尘。