專四閱讀長難句小測（25）

　　121. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs (烈士) ; he is provided with comport and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvellous, life like electronic sound and image reproductions he is enjoying.

　　122. Each highbrow did and does congratulate himself on being unique in his unlikeness to other men; and conversely each lowbrow now congratulate himself on being in some mystical way unique in his likeness—on being, so to say, outstandingly average and extraordinarily ordinary.

　　123. As for the lowbrows' claim to be specially "human", I for one have never been able to understand why it should be "inhuman" to use the faculties that distinguish us from pigs and geese and "human" to use those which we share with the lower animals.

　　124. There is no disputing, says the proverb, about taste—though, in fact, human beings spend at least half their leisure doing nothing else—and if highbrowism and lowbrowism were exclusively ( as it is certain that they are in great part) matters of individual taste, there would be no more to say about them than what I have said in the preceding lines.

　　125. Thus I desire a great deal less pleasure from jazz and thrillers than from the music, let us say, of Beethoven(貝多芬) or the novels, for example, of Dostoievsky; and the sex appeal of the girls on the covers of magazines seems to me less thrilling than the more complicated appeal to a great variety of feelings made by a Rubens, an EI Greco, a Constable, a Seurat.

　　參考中文翻譯：

　　121、他享受著數(shù)世紀來哲學天才和政治英雄們聯(lián)合取得的自由，這是被烈士的鮮血神圣化了的自由;著人類有史以來最發(fā)達的經濟提供的舒適與休閑;科學解開了自然的奧秘，使他能享受神奇逼真的音響和影像效果。

　　122、每個有學問的人慶幸著自己與其他人的不一般;反過來沒有學問的人則正慶幸著自己說不清的與別人的相似性——對于存在，這么說吧，杰出的大眾化和非凡的普通。

　　123、對于沒學問者自稱特殊的“人類”，有一點我一直搞不明白，為什么是“非人類”去使用那些設施來將我們和豬啊、鵝啊劃分，而“人類”去使用那些我們與低等動物共享的東西。

　　124、諺語中說對于口味來說，是沒有爭議的——盡管在事實上，人類一—至少在一半的休閑時間里什么也不做——并且如果陽春白雪和下里巴人對于個人口味的問題是排外(這一點在很大程度上是肯定的)，那么對于他們來說，除了我在前面講的，就沒什么說的了。

　　125、因此我從爵士樂和刺激性事物中找到的樂趣需比音樂里的少得多，比如說，貝多芬的或者是Dostoievsky的小說;雜志封面上的性感女郎比Rubens，Greco，Constablet Seurat所創(chuàng)造的精細復雜的情感對于我來說要遜色得多。