評論
打印
The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American
做一個美國人意味著什么
James Baldwin
詹姆斯鮑德溫
It is a complex fate to be an American, Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is.
亨利詹姆斯曾經說過，"身為一個美國人是一種復雜玄妙的命運。"而一位作家在歐洲作出的最重大的發現就是這種命運究竟復雜到何種程度。
America’s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world–yesterday and today-are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word America remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun.
美國的歷史，其遠大志向，其不同凡響的輝煌成就，還有她那更加不同凡響的挫折失敗。以及她在世界上的地位--不論是過去還是現在…都是那么深不可測而又無可更改地獨一無二，以至于"美國"這個詞至今仍是一個陌生的、幾乎可以說是完全沒有明確定義的、且具有極大爭議性的專有名詞。
No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.
世界上似乎還沒有人確切地知道這個詞的含義，就連我們這些五顏六色、千千萬萬自稱為美國人的人也不例外。
I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.)
我當初離開美國是因為我曾懷疑自己能否經受住這兒的有色人種問題的狂風暴雨的沖擊。(現在我仍然時不時地這樣懷疑。)
I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or even, merely a Negro writer.
我想使自己不至于僅僅成為一個黑人，或是僅僅只成為一個黑人作家。
I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them.
我想尋求一種什么途徑。來使自己的生活經歷的特殊性把自己與他人聯系起來而不是分離開來。
(I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him.)
(我同黑人之間也產生了隔閡，就像我同白人之間的隔閡一樣嚴重，當一個黑人開始真正地相信白人對黑人的評價時，常常就會發生這樣的情況。)
