In any case, in the course of things the two of them often went for walks. In the version of the story that I heard Oppenheimer tell, they were walking one evening on the walls that surrounded Gottingen and got to discussing Oppenheimer's poetry. I would imagine that the “discussion" was more like an Oppenheimer monologue, which was abruptly interrupted by Dirac, who asked, "How can you do both poetry and physics? In physics we try to give people an understanding of something that nobody knew before, whereas in poetry../' Oppenheimer allowed one to fill in the rest of the sentence. As interesting as it might have been to hear the responses, this did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over especially well at a conference devoted to poetry.
無論如何，那時兩個人經常一塊散步。在我聽說足奧本海默所講述的那個故事的版本中，一天傍晚他們正在哥廷根周圍的城墻上散步，討論著奧本海默的詩歌。我可以想象，這種“討論”更像奧本海默的個人獨白。狄拉克會突然打斷他，問道：“你怎么能夠又寫詩又搞物理學？在物理學的領域里我們盡力讓人們明白從前沒人知道的事情，可是詩歌……”。奧本海默意在用后半句未填的內容留給人們廣泛的想象空間。盡管聽聽人們對此的反應可能會很有趣，可這似乎并不是適合在以詩歌為主題的年會上講的話題。
Pitted against these excellent reasons for my not going to the conference were two others that finally carried the day. In the first place, I was in the beginning stages of a love affair with a young woman who wanted very much to write. She wanted to write so much that she had resigned a lucrative job with an advertising agency and was giving herself a year in which, living on her savings, she was going to do nothing but write. It was a gutsy thing to do, but like many people who try it, she was finding it pretty rough going. In fact, she was rather discouraged. So, to cheer her up, I suggested attending this conference, where she might have a chance to talk with other people who were in the same boat. This aside, I had read in the tentative program of the conference that one of the other tutors was to be Stephen Spender. This, for reasons I will now explain, was decisive.
盡管有這些不去參加會議的冠冕堂皇的理由，另外兩個原因最終還是占了上風。首先，我剛剛同一位極其熱衷于寫作的年輕女士同沐愛河。她對寫作是如此熱切以至于為此她甚至辭掉了一家廣告公司的報酬豐取的工作，給了自己一年時間，在此期間她緊靠積蓄生活，除了寫作什么也不做。這么做的確勇氣可嘉，可是像許多如此嘗試的人一樣，她逐漸覺得異常艱難，毫無進展。事實上，她已經有些泄氣了。因此，為讓她高興，振作起來，我建議參加這個會，在會上她也許有機會同與她處于相同困境的人談談。這個暫且不提，我讀到會議的暫定議程，得知其他的導師之一是斯蒂芬·斯彭德。這才決定了我最終的行程，原因我會馬上解釋。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/daxue/201912/601002.shtml
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