評論
打印
Unit 5 Love is a Fallacy
愛情是謬誤
Max Shulman
馬克斯·舒爾曼
Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a month of Sundays, unfettered the informal essay with his memorable "Old China" and "Dream's Children." There follows an informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb's frontier. Indeed, "informal" may not be quite the right word to describe this essay; "limp" or "flaccid" or possibly "spongy" are perhaps more appropriate.
像査爾斯·蘭姆這樣快樂和富有創新精神的人物并不常見，他寫了《古瓷》和《夢中的孩子》兩篇文章，這兩篇文章可以說解放了散文。下面的這篇散文顛覆了蘭姆的所有文體。當然，用“散”的字眼來評價這篇文章并非特別貼切，用“殘缺”“無力”或者可能用“富有彈性”或許更為恰當。
Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay. It develops an argument; it cites instances; it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle do more? Could Ruskin?
盡管很難對這篇文章進行歸類，但毫無疑問，這是一篇散論文：有論點，有例證，有結論。卡萊爾能寫得更好嗎？羅斯金呢？
Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry, pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion, and trauma.
那么，就讀讀下面這篇文章吧，它將向我們展示邏輯并不是一門枯燥乏味、迂腐不堪的學科；恰恰相反，邏輯是一個活生生的事物，充滿美麗、激情和心靈的創傷。
—Author's notes
——作者簡介
Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And-think of it! —I was only eighteen.
我頭腦冷靜，邏輯縝密。敏捷、縝密、熟慮、洞見、睿智是我的特點。我的大腦像發電機一樣強有力，像化學家的天平一樣精確，像手術刀一樣鋒利。能想到嗎？我剛18歲。
It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my roommate at the University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable.
這么智力非凡的年輕人世所罕見。就令我在明尼蘇達大學的同寢同學皮蒂·伯奇來說吧，我們年齡相同，背景一樣，可他卻愚蠢到了極點。你能明白，他是個不錯的家伙，可惜腦子空空。他屬于易于激動的類型：情緒無常，易受左右。
