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The Rite of Spring
春的洗礼
Arthur Miller
阿瑟·米勒
I have never understood why we keep a garden and why over 36 years ago when I bought my first house in the country, I started digging up a patch for vegetables before doing anything else. When you think how easy and cheap, relatively, it is to buy a bunch of carrots or beets, why raise them? And root crops especially are hard to tell apart, when store-bought, from our own. There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of back-breaking make-believe that has no reality. Besides, I don't particularly like eating vegetables. I'd much rather eat something juicy and fat. Like hot dogs.
我一直想不通为什么我们要经营一个菜园，为什么36年前我在乡村买第一座房子时，在做其他事情之前，我就先挖出一块地来种菜。当你想到买一捆胡萝卜或甜菜，相对来讲是多么容易和便宜时，你就会问自己为什么要动手种它们呢？而且从商店买来的块根类作物和我们自己种的很难区分开。这是人类天生的本能在作怪，是一种费尽心力的自欺欺人的行为。而且我不是特别喜欢吃蔬菜，我更喜欢吃油腻多汁的东西，比如热狗。
Now, if you could raise hot dogs outside your window, you'd really have something you could justify without a second's hesitation. As it is, though, I cannot deny that when April comes I find myself going out to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land, resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again. But inevitably a morning arrives when, just as I am awakening, a scent wafts through the window, something like earth-as-air, a scent that seems to come up from the very center of this planet. And the sun means business, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet. The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinking—the worms are deliciously worming their way through the melting soil.
现在，如果能在窗外种植热狗，你会毫不犹豫地去种。实际上，我不能否认的是，当4月份到来的时候，我会走出去斜靠在栅栏上，望着那块糟糕的小菜地，十分理智地下定决心不再种它了。然而，总有那么一个早晨，当我醒来时，一股沁人心脾的清香从窗户飘进来，有点像是泥土夹杂着空气的芳香，好像从地球中心飘出来的一股香气。太阳也来了劲，瞬间在地毯上投下比以往更加深黄的光束。鸟儿开始兴奋地欢唱，它们和我想的一样——那些美味可口的虫子正从融化的泥土中爬出来。
