评论
打印
Peggy Noonan lives in New York and writes a weekly column for The Wall Street Journal. This piece is taken from one of them. In it she reflects on her week and on life in the city. Writing less than a year away from the destruction of the World Trade Center, her thoughts are inevitably affected by that terrible event.
佩吉·诺南住在纽约，每周为《华尔街时报》撰写专栏文章。本文即其中一篇。她在文章中反思了自己的一周以及这个城市的生活。撰写此文时，离世贸中心被毁还不到一周年，她的思考不可避免地带有这一可怕事件的阴影。
The Nightmare and the Dreams
-- How has Sept. 11 affected our national unconscious?
PEGGY NOONAN
1 It is hot in New York. It is so hot that once when I had a fever a friend called and asked me how I felt and I said, "You know how dry and hot paper feels when it's been faxed? That's how I feel." And how I felt all day yesterday. It is hot. We feel as if we've been faxed.
梦魇与梦想
――9·11事件如何影响了国民的潜意识？
佩吉·诺南
纽约真热。天气如此炎热，因此，有一次我发高烧，朋友打电话来问候我感觉如何时，我就说，“你知道发传真时纸张有多干燥多烫手吗？那就是我的感觉。”昨天整整一天我都是这种感觉。太热了。我们觉得自己被传真过似的。
2 I found myself fully awake at 5 a.m. yesterday and went for a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. Now more than ever the bridge seems like a great gift to my city. It spans. In the changed landscape of downtown it is our undisturbed beauty, grown ever more stately each year. People seem to love it more now, or at least mention it more or notice it more. So do I. It's always full of tourists but always full of New Yorkers, too.
昨天清晨5点我就完全醒了，便去布鲁克林大桥散步。如今这座大桥越发像是赐予我们这个城市的一件贵重礼物。它跨河而立。在业已改变的市区景观中，它依旧是一道美丽的景致，年复一年，越发显得气势非凡。如今，人们似乎更喜欢它，至少是更多地提到它、注意到它。本人也一样。桥上总是挤满游客，也总是挤满纽约居民。
3 I am struck, as I always am when I'm on it, that I am walking on one of the engineering wonders of the world. And I was struck yesterday that I was looking at one of the greatest views in the history of man's creation, Manhattan at sunrise.
我在这座桥上行走时总是深感骄傲，因为自己漫步在世界工程技术一大奇迹之上；今天踏上这座桥，我同样深感骄傲。昨天我深受感动，因为我在观看有人类创造史以来最辉煌的景象之一：曼哈顿日出。
4 And all of it was free. A billionaire would pay billions to own this bridge and keep this view, but I and my jogging, biking and hiking companions have it for nothing. We inherited it. Now all we do is pay maintenance, in the form of taxes. We are lucky.
而且那是分文不花的。亿万富翁要想拥有这座桥，将这一景致占为己有，那得付出亿万钱财，而我以及那些或慢跑、或骑车、或徒步的同行者却能免费享用。我们继承了这座大桥。如今我们所要做的只是以纳税的方式支付维修费用。我辈实属有幸。
5 As I rounded the entrance to the bridge on the Brooklyn side, a small moment added to my happiness. It was dawn, traffic was light, I passed a black van with smoked windows. In the driver's seat with the window down was a black man of 30 or so, a cap low on his brow, wearing thick black sunglasses. I was on the walkway that leads to the bridge; he was less than two feet away; we were the only people there. We made eye contact. "Good morning!" he said. "Good morning to you," I answered, and for no reason at all we started to laugh, and moved on into the day. Nothing significant in it except it may or may not have happened that way 30 or 40 years ago. I'm not sure the full charge of friendliness would have been assumed or answered. 我从布鲁克林一边上桥时，一件小事更增添了我的快乐。天刚亮，车辆稀少，我与一辆车窗熏黑的黑色面包车擦肩而过。窗开着的驾驶座里坐着一个30岁左右的黑人，帽子低低地压在眉檐上，戴着一副厚厚的黑色太阳镜。我走在通往大桥的人行道上，他距我不到两英尺；周围只有我们两个人。我们目光对视。“早上好！”他说。“早上好，”我回答着，两人随即无缘无故地大笑起来，笑罢各人继续各人的生活。这事并没有什么特别的意义，只是30年或40年前是不是会发生这样的事。我不知道那时会不会有这种完全友好的表示，又会不会得到回应。
6 It made me think of something I saw Monday night on TV. They were showing the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" with Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracy, about a young white woman and a young black man who fall in love, hope to marry and must contend with disapproving parents on both sides. It's held up well, and parts of it seemed moving in a way I didn't remember, and pertinent.
这让我想起星期一晚上看的电视节目。他们播放的是1967年的影片《猜猜谁来赴晚餐》，由凯瑟琳·赫本、辛尼·普瓦提艾和斯潘塞·特雷西主演，讲的是一个白人姑娘与一个黑人小伙子相爱，想要结婚，不得不与持反对态度的双方父母做斗争。影片拍得不错，故事的部分细节似乎很感人，如何感人我记不清楚了，反正很切题。
7 There was a bit of dialogue that packed a wallop. Spencer Tracy as the father of the would-be bride is pressing Mr. Poitier on whether he has considered the sufferings their mixed-race children might have to endure in America. Has he thought about this? Has his fiancée? "She is optimistic," says Mr. Poitier. "She thinks every one of them will grow up to become president of the United States. I on the other hand would settle for secretary of state." Those words, written 35 years ago may have seemed dreamy then. But in its audience when the movie came out would likely have been a young, film-loving Army lieutenant named Colin Powell who, that year, was preparing for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. And now he is secretary of state. This is the land dreams are made of. Does that strike you as a corny thing to say and talk about? It is. That's another great thing.
有几段对话让人为之震动。饰演未来新娘父亲的斯潘塞·特雷西质问普瓦提艾先生，他是否想过他们混血的孩子在美国将会承受多少痛苦。他考虑过这点吗？他的未婚妻考虑过这点吗？“她很乐观，”普瓦提艾先生说。“她认为他们每个人都能长大成人当上美国总统。而我则觉得他们能当国务卿也就可以了。”这些写于35年前的话当时听上去或许就像是痴人说梦。但影片上映时，观众中可能就有爱看电影的年轻的陆军中尉科林·鲍威尔，当年他正准备第二次到越南去服役。如今他正担任着国务卿一职。这是个梦想成真的国度。这么说你是否觉得有点老生常谈？这又是一件美妙的事情。
