評論
打印
Unit 8 The Merely Very Good
第八單元 僅僅不錯
Jeremy Bernstein
杰里米·伯恩斯坦
Early in 1981 I received an invitation to give a lecture at a writers' conference that was being held someplace on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I don't remember the exact location, but a study of the map convinces me that it was probably New Hope. My first inclination was to say no. There were several reasons. I was living in New York City and teaching full time. My weekends were precious and the idea of getting up before dawn on a Saturday, renting a car, and driving across the entire state of New Jersey to deliver a lecture was repellent. As I recall, the honorarium offered would have barely covered the expense. Furthermore, a subject had been suggested for my lecture that, in truth, no longer interested me. Since I both wrote and did physics, I had often been asked to discuss the connection, if any, between these two activities. When this first came up, I felt obligated to say something, but after twenty years, about the only thing that I felt like saying was that both physics and writing, especially if one wanted to do them well, were extremely difficult.
早在1981年，我收到過一份邀請我在一次作家年會上做講座的請柬，這次會議在賓夕法尼亞州特拉華河沿岸過新澤西不遠的某地召開。我記不起確切的地點了，但仔細查看地圖后我確信應該是在新望市。我最初的意向是拒絕。有多種理出。首先我住在紐約，并擔負著全職的教學工作，周末是很寶貴的。一想到周六天不亮就要起床，還要租車，然后駕車穿越整個新澤西州去做個講座，實在是很厭煩。我回想起所給的酬金幾乎還不足以支付行程所需的這些花費。此外，建議我講的主題實際上我已經(jīng)不再感興趣了。我既寫作又從事物理學研究，因此人們經(jīng)常讓我談論兩者之間的聯(lián)系。這個議題最初提出的時候，我覺得還有必要講一講。可是二十年過去了，我現(xiàn)在唯一想要說的就是搞物理學和搞寫作都極其困難，尤其是在一個人想做得盡善盡美的時候。
The conference seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of the things that came to mind was an anecdote that Robert Oppenheimer used to tell about himself. Since Oppenheimer will play a significant role in what follows, I will elaborate. After Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, he was awarded a fellowship to study in Europe. Following a very unhappy time in England, where he seems to have had a sort of nervous breakdown, he went to Germany to get his Ph.D.
大會的中心議題似乎在詩歌上，于是我想起羅伯特·奧本海默過去講述的關于他自己的一件事。由于奧本海默將在下面的故事中扮演重要的角色，我會詳細講述他。奧本海默1925年從哈佛畢業(yè)后，被授予研究員的資格到歐洲學習。在英國他似乎有些神經(jīng)衰弱的癥狀，在那里度過了一段不愉快的時光之后，他去德國攻讀博士學位。
