英语专业晨读美文-人物篇 5 The Props to Help Man En

[00:00.31]The Props 1 to Help Man Endure

[00:03.81]I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work,

[00:10.92]a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit.

[00:15.30]Not for glory and least of all, for profit,

[00:19.01]but to create out of the material of the human spirit something which did not exist before.

[00:26.13]So this award is only mine in trust.

[00:29.96]It would not be difficult to find a dedication 2 for the money part of it,

[00:34.88]commensurate for the purpose and significance of its origin.

[00:39.36]But I would like to do the same with the acclaim 3 too

[00:43.51]by using this moment as a pinnacle 4 from which I might be listened to

[00:48.54]by the young men and woman,already dedicated 5 to the same anguish 6 and travail 7,

[00:54.13]among whom is already that one who will someday stand here where I am standing 8.

[01:01.35]Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now

[01:09.00]that we can even bear it.

[01:10.97]There’re no longer problems of the spirit, there’s only the question;

[01:16.00]“When will I be blown up?”

[01:18.62]Because of this, the young man or woman writing today

[01:22.45]has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself,

[01:27.26]which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about,

[01:32.07]worth the agony and the sweat.

[01:34.49]He must learn them again, he must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid,

[01:41.26]and teaching himself that,forget it forever,

[01:44.76]leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities 9 and truths of the heart.

[01:51.11]The old universal truths, lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed 11:

[01:57.23]love and honor and pity and pride,

[01:59.53]and compassion 12 and sacrifice.

[02:02.05]Until he does so, he labors 13 under a curse.

[02:06.09]He writes not of love, but of lust 14,

[02:09.16]of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value,

[02:13.42]of victories without hope, and most of all, without pity or compassion.

[02:18.67]His grief weaves on no universal bone, leaving no scars.

[02:24.47]He writes not of the heart, but of the glands 15.

[02:28.19]Until he relearns these things,

[02:31.03]he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man.

[02:35.62]I decline to accept the end of man.

[02:38.68]It’s easy enough to say that man is immortal 16 simply because he will endure:

[02:44.26]that when the last ding-dong of doom 10 has clanged

[02:48.75]and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tireless in the last red and dying evening,

[02:55.42]that even then, there will still be one more sound:

[02:59.36]that of his puny 17 and inexhaustible voice, still talking.

[03:04.72]I refuse to accept this.

[03:07.48]I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.

[03:11.97]He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice,

[03:18.20]but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion,and sacrifice, and endurance.

[03:26.62]The poets’, the writers’ duty is to write about these things.

[03:31.54]It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart,

[03:36.25]by reminding him of the courage,and honor

[03:39.52]and hope and compassion and pity

[03:42.59]and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

[03:46.52]The poets' voice need not merely be the record of man,

[03:51.12]it can be one of the props,

[03:53.52]the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

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