2012年考研英语二新题型 Part B 原文翻译及答案

"Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here," wrote the Victorian sage Thomas Carlyle. Well, not any more it is not.

维多利亚时代的哲人托马斯·卡莱尔写道：‘世界通史，即人类在这个世界所取得成就的历史，归根结底是伟人们在此工作的历史。’然而，如今情况已非如此。

Suddenly, Britain looks to have fallen out with its favorite historical form. This could be no more than a passing literary craze, but it also points to a broader truth about how we now approach the past: less concerned with learning from our forefathers and more interested in feeling their pain. Today, we want empathy, not inspiration.

突然间，英国似乎与其最喜爱的历史形式产生了分歧。这可能只是一时的文学热潮，但也指向一个更广泛的真相：我们如今如何对待过去——不再那么关心从祖先身上学习，而更感兴趣于感受他们的痛苦。今天，我们想要的是共情，而非灵感。

From the earliest days of the Renaissance, the writing of history meant recounting the exemplary lives of great men. In 1337, Petrarch began work on his rambling writing De Viris Illustribus - On Famous Men, highlighting the virtus (or virtue) of classical heroes. Petrarch celebrated their greatness in conquering fortune and rising to the top. This was the biographical tradition which Niccolò Machiavelli turned on its head. In The Prince, he championed cunning, ruthlessness, and boldness, rather than virtue, mercy and justice, as the skills of successful leaders.

从文艺复兴早期开始，历史写作就意味着叙述伟人们的典范人生。1337年，彼特拉克开始撰写他冗长的著作《名人传》，强调古典英雄的德行（或美德）。彼特拉克赞颂他们征服命运、登顶巅峰的伟大。这一传记传统被尼科洛·马基雅维利彻底颠覆。在《君主论》中，他主张诡计、无情和胆量，而非美德、仁慈和正义，才是成功领袖的技能。

Over time, the attributes of greatness shifted. The Romantics commemorated the leading painters and authors of their day, stressing the uniqueness of the artist's personal experience rather than public glory. By contrast, the Victorian author Samuel Smiles wrote Self-Help as a catalogue of the worthy lives of engineers, industrialists and explorers. "The valuable examples which they furnish of the power of self-help, of patient purpose, resolute working, and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formation of truly noble and manly character, exhibit," wrote Smiles, "what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself." His biographies of James Watt, Richard Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood were held up as beacons to guide the working man through his difficult life.

随着时间的推移，伟大的定义发生了变化。浪漫主义者纪念他们时代的杰出画家和作者，强调艺术家个人经历的独特性，而非公众荣耀。相比之下，维多利亚时代的作者塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯在《自助》一书中记录了工程师、实业家和探险家们的有价值人生。斯迈尔斯写道：‘他们所提供的宝贵榜样，展示了自助的力量、坚定的目标、不懈的工作和坚定不移的诚信，由此塑造真正高尚而男子汉的品格，表明了每个人依靠自己所能成就之事。’他为詹姆斯·瓦特、理查德·阿克莱特和乔赛亚·韦奇伍德撰写的传记，被奉为指引工人度过艰难生活的灯塔。

This was a bit bourgeois for Thomas Carlyle, who focused his biographies on the truly heroic lives of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. These epochal figures represented lives hard to imitate, but to be acknowledged as possessing higher authority than mere mortals.

这对托马斯·卡莱尔来说有点资产阶级，他专注于传记写作，聚焦于马丁·路德、奥利弗·克伦威尔和拿破仑·波拿巴的真正英雄人生。这些划时代人物的人生难以模仿，但被公认为拥有高于凡人的权威。

Not everyone was convinced by such bombast. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. For them, history did nothing, it possessed no immense wealth nor waged battles: "It is man, real, living man who does all that." And history should be the story of the masses and their record of struggle. As such, it needed to appreciate the economic realities, the social contexts and power relations in which each epoch stood. For: "Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past."

并非所有人都被这种夸夸其谈所说服。马克思和恩格斯在《共产党宣言》中写道：‘迄今为止所有现存社会的历史都是阶级斗争的历史。’对他们来说，历史本身不做什么，它不拥有巨大财富，也不发动战争：‘是人，真实的、活生生的人，做了这一切。’历史应该是大众的故事及其斗争的记录。因此，它需要理解每个时代所处的经济现实、社会背景和权力关系。因为：‘人们自己创造自己的历史，但他们并不是随心所欲地创造；他们不是在自己选定的条件下创造，而是在直接遇到的、既定的、从过去继承下来的条件下创造。’

This was the tradition which revolutionised our appreciation of the past. In place of Thomas Carlyle, Britain nurtured Christopher Hill, EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. History from below stood alongside biographies of great men. Whole new realms of understanding - from gender to race to cultural studies - were opened up as scholars unpicked the multiplicity of lost societies. And it transformed public history too: downstairs became just as fascinating as upstairs.

这一传统彻底改变了我们对过去的理解。在托马斯·卡莱尔之外，英国培养了克里斯托弗·希尔、EP·汤普森和埃里克·霍布斯鲍姆。底层史与伟人传记并存。随着学者们剖析失落社会的多样性，全新的理解领域——从性别到种族再到文化研究——得以开启。它也改变了公共历史：楼下变得和楼上一样引人入胜。

Petrarch

彼特拉克

Niccolò Machiavelli

尼科洛·马基雅维利

Samuel Smiles

塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯

Thomas Carlyle

托马斯·卡莱尔

Marx and Engels

马克思和恩格斯