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第十七届“韩素音青年翻译奖”竞赛我的译文

关键词： 第十七届“韩素音青年翻译奖                                          

                                   Beauty (excerpt)
　　Judging from the scientists I know, including Eva and Ruth, and those I’ve read about, you can’t pursue the laws of nature very long without bumping into beauty. “I don’t know if it’s the same beauty you see in the sunset,” a friend tells me, “but it feels the same.” This friend is a physicist, who has spent a long career deciphering what must be happening in the interior of stars. He recalls for me this thrill on grasping for the first time Dirac’s equations describing quantum mechanics, or those of Einstein describing relativity. “They’re so beautiful,” he says,” you can see immediately they have to be true. Or at least on the way toward truth.” I ask him what makes a theory beautiful, and he replies, “Simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and power.”
　　 Why nature should conform to theories we find beautiful is far from obvious. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe, as Einstein said, is that it’s comprehensible. How unlikely, that a short—lived biped on a two--bit planet should be able to gauge the speed of light, lay bare the structure of an atom, or calculate the gravitational tug of a black hole. We’re a long way from understanding everything, but we do understand a great deal about how nature behaves. Generation after generation, we puzzle out formulas, test them, and find, to an astonishing degree, that nature agrees. An architect draws designs on flimsy paper, and her buildings stand up through earthquakes. We launch a satellite into orbit and use it to bounce messages from continent to continent. The machine on which I write these words embodies hundreds of insights into the workings of the material world, insights that are confirmed by every burst of letters on the screen, and I stare at that screen through lenses that obey the laws of optics first worked out in detail by Issac Newton.
　　 By discerning patterns in the universe, Newton believed, he was tracing the hand of God. Scientists in our day have largely abandoned the notion of a Creator as an unnecessary hypothesis, or at least an untestable one. While they share Newton’s faith that the universe is ruled everywhere by a coherent set of rules, they cannot say, as scientists, how these particular rules came to govern things. You can do science without believing in a divine Legislator, but not without believing in laws.
　　 I spent my teenage years scrambling up the mountain of mathematics. Midway up the slope, I staggered to a halt, gasping in the rarefied air, well before I reached the heights where the equations of Einstein and Dirac would have made sense. Nowadays I add, subtract, multiply, and do long division when no calculator is handy, and I can do algebra and geometry and even trigonometry in a pinch, but that is about all that I’ve kept from the language of numbers. Still, I remember glimpsing patterns in mathematics that seemed as bold and beautiful as a skyful of stars.
　　 I’m never more aware of the limitations of language than when I try to describe beauty. Language can create its own loveliness, of course, but it cannot deliver to us the radiance we apprehend in the world, any more than a photograph can capture the stunning swiftness of a hawk or the withering power of a supernova. Eva’s wedding album holds only a faint glimmer of the wedding itself. All that pictures or words can do is gesture beyond themselves toward the fleeting glory that stirs our hearts. So I keep gesturing.
　　 “All nature is meant to make us think of paradise,” Thomas Merton observed. Because the Creation puts on a nonstop show, beauty is free and inexhaustible, but we need training in order to perceive more than the most obvious kinds. Even 15 billion years or so after the Big Bang, echoes of that event still linger in the form of background radiation, only a few degrees above absolute zero. Just so, I believe, the experience of beauty is an echo of the order and power that permeate the universe. To measure background radiation, we need subtle instruments; to measure beauty, we need alert intelligence and our five keen senses.
　　 Anyone with eyes can take delight in a face or a flower. You need training, however, to perceive the beauty in mathematics or physics or chess, in the architecture of a tree, the design of a bird’s wing, or the shiver of breath through a flute. For most of human history, the training has come from elders who taught the young how to pay attention. By paying attention, we learn to savor all sorts of patterns, from quantum mechanics to patchwork quilts. This predilection brings with it a clear evolutionary advantage, for the ability to recognize patterns helped our ancestors to select mates, find food, avoid predators. But the same advantage would apply to all species, and yet we alone compose symphonies and crossword puzzles, carve stone into statues, map time and space.
　　 Have we merely carried our animal need for shrewd perceptions to an absurd extreme? Or have we stumbled onto a deep congruence between the structure of our minds and the structure of the universe?
　　 I am persuaded the latter is true. I am convinced there’s more to beauty than biology, more than cultural convention. It flows around and through us in such abundance, ad in such myriad forms, as to exceed by a wide margin any mere evolutionary need. Which is not to say that beauty has nothing to do with survival: I think it has everything to do with survival. Beauty feeds us from the same source that created us. It reminds us of the shaping power that reaches through the flower stem and through our own hands. It restores our faith in the generosity of nature. By giving us a taste of the kinship between our own small minds and the great Mind of the Cosmos, beauty reassures us that we are exactly and wonderfully made for life on this glorious planet, in this magnificent universe. I find in that affinity a profound source of meaning and hope. A universe so prodigal of beauty may actually need us to notice and respond, may need our sharp eyes and brimming hearts and teeming minds, in order to close the circuit of Creation.

论     美

根据我所知道的以及我所拜读过的科学家的观点，包括伊娃和露思[i]的观点在内，如果你沿着自然的法则追寻下去，不许多久就能领悟到美的境界。一位朋友对我说：“我不知道是不是夕阳晚照的那种美，但这种感受是相同的。”这位朋友是一个物理学家，长期致力于研究星球内部结构的奥妙。他的话让我回忆起了第一次领悟到迪拉克量子力学方程式时的那种惊喜，第一次理解爱因斯坦相对论时那种兴奋。“这些理论真是太美了，”他说，“你一定能立刻明白这些肯定都是真理，或者至少都接近真理。”我追问他是什么理论之美。 他回答说：“简单、对称、雅致、有力。”

自然与我们认为的理论之美相符这一点不是显而易见的。正如爱因斯坦所说得那样，宇宙最不可理解的地方就在于它是可以理解的。一个生命短暂的两足动物居然能够测量出光的速度，揭示出原子的结构，计算出黑洞的引力，这一切是多么不可思议啊！我们还远不能理解宇宙所有的奥妙，但我们的确了解自然的运行方式。我们一代接一代的提出公式，然后求证，最后惊奇地发现这些公式居然与自然的运行方式惊人地一致。建筑师在一张薄纸上画出蓝图，而按照设计图建成的建筑物却能经受的住强烈的地震。我们发射卫星入轨并利用它在各大洲之间传递信息；我现在用于写下这些文字的电脑正体现了人类对种种自然事物规律深刻理解的成果，而这种成果正被屏幕上跳动的字符所证实；我透过眼镜片注视着屏幕，而眼镜片的工作原理也正好遵循着埃萨克·牛顿首先发现的光学原理。

牛顿认为，他是在上帝的指引下去探索宇宙万物规律的。现在的科学家们大都把造物主这一概念视为虚幻的假说，或者至少是一个无法证实的谬论。尽管如此，他们有一点是和牛顿相同的，即相信宇宙是由一系列有机的规律支配的。但作为科学家，他们也不能解释这些特殊的规律是如何支配宇宙万物的。从事科学研究可以不相信万能立法者（上帝）的存在，但你必须尊重自然法则和规律。

少年时期我曾致力于攀登数学高峰。然而，在远远还未能达到爱因斯坦和迪拉克那样的高度的半山腰我就步履蹒跚，止步不前，在稀薄的空气里气喘吁吁。现在手头没有计算器的时候，我也能做加、减、乘、长除，必要时还可以解代数、几何甚至三角函数题。但这也就是我所剩的全部数学知识了。然而，我至今还清楚记得那些匆匆一瞥的数学图案模型美丽、耀眼如满天繁星。

在我试图描述美的时候，我益发意识到语言的局限性。当然，语言固然有其可爱之处，但它并不能完完本本地把世界的灿烂光辉之美传达给我们，如同照片难以捕捉到鹰击长空之迅疾，或超新星坍缩爆炸之惊世骇俗[ii]。伊娃的结婚相册只留住了婚礼时瞬间的朦胧印象。图像和文字只不过是描摹下那些激荡我们心灵而又转瞬即逝的东西的表象，但难以完全刻画出它们。因此，我还在这里描摹着。

托马斯·默顿说：“自然总是让我们想起天堂。”由于造物主永无休止的创造着美，所以美是自由无疆而又永不枯竭的。但是为了欣赏那些不易察觉的内在美则需要专门的训练。发生在150亿年前的宇宙大爆炸，至今还以微波背景辐射的方式影响着人们，尽管它的温度比绝对零度要稍微高点[iii]。正因如此，我确信体验美就是对遍布宇宙中的秩序和力量的回应。测量这种背景辐射，需要精密的仪器；而审衡美的价值，更需要高超的智慧和灵敏的感官。

任何目明之人皆可欣赏面容和鲜花之美。然而要领略数学之美、物理之美、棋艺之美、树干结构之美、鸟翼构造之美乃至长笛颤音之美，则是需要专门训练的。就大部分人类历史来说，这种训练在于长辈教导晚辈如何去观察。通过观察，我们学会欣赏千姿百态之美，包括从量子力学之美到碎花布被面之美。这种对不同事物的偏好带来了明显的进化的优势，这种认识和辨认事物的能力帮助我们的祖先如何择偶、觅食和避兽。虽然所有的动物都有着这种进化优势，但是唯独我们人类能创作交响乐、做字谜游戏、雕塑时刻，以致描绘时空。

我们仅仅是把自己敏锐感觉的动物本能发挥到一个荒谬的极端吗？抑或是我们意外地发现了我们人类心灵的构造与宇宙的结构之间的深度和谐呢？

我信服于后者。我相信美所蕴含的和谐比生物学和文化习俗中的要多得多。美是千姿百态、不可胜数的，她不仅存在我们身边，也贯穿于我们的躯体，而且远远超过了任何一般的进化的需求。这并不意味着美与生存无关。在我看来，美恰恰是与生存息息相关的。美用创造我们的源泉滋养着我们。美让我们意识到存在于花茎和我们双手中的塑造之力；美使我们重新相信大自然的慷慨。美让我们品味到人类小心灵与宇宙大智慧之间的密切联系，美让我们确信人类的确是这宏伟宇宙中，美丽地球上最奇妙的生命。在这种和谐中，我发现深远的意义和无限的希望。宇宙之美，美不胜收，而我们需要用敏锐的眼睛去发现美，用广阔的胸怀去拥抱美，用充实的头去体会美，从而使造物主的历程生生不息、薪火相传、循环往复以致无穷。

 

 

 

 

【作者: tarzanzhong】【访问统计:】【2005年10月15日 星期六 14:05】【注册】【打印】