The Influence of the Frontier 边疆的影响

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The Influence of the Frontier 边疆的影响
The special quality of American culture arises from what the American land and
climate did to men who brought with them the glories and the burdens of
European culture. Released from the feudal restraints which still clung to
ownership even in the seventeenth century, they were driven by long hunger to
possess land of their own. The hazards of settling that land －taking it from the
Indian by treaty or battle, struggling through trackless forests to find it, hewing
out homes and raising crops with nothing but a few simple tools, dying
sometimes in battle or from weather or hunger －these hazards quickly
changed into Americans the Europeans who survived. It was struggle that
shaped the American spirit.
美国文化的特殊性质来自美国的土地和气候对人的影响，而这些人带到美国的，既有欧洲文
化辉煌的一面和也有其落后的一面。

从十七世纪封建所有制桎梏中解脱出来后，他们渴望
拥有自己的土地。

他们要得到那片梦想的土地就要冒各种各样的风险--通过协商或战斗的方
式从印地安人那里得到土地；或者跋涉人迹罕至的森林找到土地；用简陋的工具砍树盖房开
荒种地；有时会死在战斗中，有时死于天灾或饥饿---这些危险很快地把活下来的欧洲人改
变成美国人。

正是努力拚搏造就了美国精神。

The frontier experience, so strong in its impact, so harsh a teacher, brought new
traits to the fore. The hard conditions of the daily life made for crudeness in
manners. The competition for favorable land (or later for gold), the need to kill
in order to stay alive, the absence of law and order made men touch, brutal
sometimes, and quick to resort to brute strength. This violence has continued in
such aspects of our life as gangsterism, race riots, corrupt politics, union
racketeering and the violent political attack.
边疆的经验影响很大，象一位非常严厉的教师，突出了一些新的特点。

日常生活的艰苦使人
的态度也粗鲁起来。

而他们为了一块好土地争得你死我活（后来争的是金子），必须杀人才
能活下来，没有法律和秩序，人变得粗暴残忍，动不动就使用暴力。

这种暴力还继续存在
于我们生活中的各个方面，比如盗匪、种族骚乱、政治腐败、有组织的敲诈勒索、暴力性
政治攻击。

Hard as the life was, it also offered great riches, sometimes for a small return.
Hence the "get rich quick" philosophy －the belief that hard work and a little
luck would turn all things into gold. Traders got rich furs from the Indians for
mere trinkets. Out of the earth came gold, silver, oil －other than the shower of
gold Zeus rained down upon Danae. Then came the robber barons to make vast
fortunes by manipulating railroads, and finally the gambling in stocks which
affected everyone until the Wall Street collapse in 1929.
尽管生活曾如此艰难，还是提供了大量的财富，有时只要付出很少的代价。

于是有了“快速
致富”的人生哲学---相信努力工作加上一点点运气就能把一切都变成金子。

做买卖的人用廉价的小首饰从印地安人那儿买到了值钱的毛皮。

地里可以挖出金子，银子，石油---而不是宙斯在达那厄下的金雨。

抢劫头目靠着操纵铁路发了横财，再有就是在股票上的赌博，影响了所有的人，直到1929年华尔街股市崩溃。

But the frontier fostered positive traits too. It encouraged energetic activity and dignified labor with the hands. It made of the independent, self-reliant farmer a symbol which still influences our national life. It produced a resourceful, inquisitive, practical-minded type, able to turn his hand to any sort of work, preferring to govern himself in small, easily adaptable to a new environment, relatively free of class distinctions, full of optimism and faith in the country which had rewarded him so well.
但是边疆也培养了好的品质。

它鼓励积极行动，尊重用双手劳动。

它使独立自主、自力更生的农场主成为一个象征，至今仍影响着我们国家的生活。

它造就了随机应变、爱钻研、想法实际的性格，能做任何工作，喜欢从小事做起，容易适应新的环境，相对不受阶级划分的影响，对让他得到好的回报的国家充满乐观主义和信心。

All these traits live on, one way or another, in the contemporary American. The frontier has not disappeared with the spanning of the continent, or the end of homesteading. As a matter of fact, the government still has lands for homesteading which it disposes of at the rate of forty thousand to fifty thousand acres a year. More important, the pioneer spirit is deeply embedded in the American's concept of himself.
所有这些品质还以这样或那样的形式存在于当代美国人身上。

边疆没有随着大陆的联合或自耕农场的消失而消失。

实际上，政府仍有土地用于自耕农场，每年大约卖掉四五万英亩。

更为重要的是，开拓精神已经深深地根植于美国人的自我概念中。

The American Creed 美国人的信条
What then are the ideas or beliefs that shape American character?
那么是什么样的思想或信念塑造了美国人的性格呢？
Says George Satayana: "This national faith and morality are vague in idea, but inexorable in spirit; they are the gospel of work and the belief in progress."
乔治·沙塔亚纳说：“民族的信仰和道德在观念上是含糊的，但在精神上有不可阻挡的力量；它们是工作的原则，是对进步的信念。

”
Clyde Kluckhohn finds implicit in the American creed a faith in the rational, a need for moralistic rationalization, an optimistic conviction that rational effort counts, faith in the individual and his rights, the cult of the common man (not only as to his rights, but as to his massed political wisdom), the high valuation put on change and progress, and on pleasure consciously pursued as a good. 克莱德·克鲁克恩认为，美国人的信条中含有坚信理性，对道德合理化的需要，对理性的努
力重要这一点抱乐观态度和深信不疑，坚信个人及其权利，崇拜普通人（不仅崇拜他的权利，也崇拜他积累的政治智慧），高度评价改革和进步，有意识地把善作为一种快乐来追求。

Equally strong is the American's faith in his institutions. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution lay down the fundamental principles of self-government with such clarity and finality that we are prone to regard them as an American invention, or at any rate as principles and rights which are peculiarly ours. These hallowed documents provide us with basic principles which, thanks to their deistic background, are presented as coeval with creation and incapable of being questioned or upset. Therefore we do not have to agonize over basic principles; they are given us, once for all.
同样，美国人笃信自己的制度。

《独立宣言》和《宪法》用明确和结论式的语言记载下自治政府的基本原则，所以我们就很容易把它们当成是美国人的发明，至少是看成我们独有的原则和权利。

这些被视为神圣的文献能给我们提供基本的原则，由于它们的自然神论的背景，所以人们认为它们和创造性处于同一时代，不会受到质疑，也不会被推翻。

因此我们无需为基本原则感到痛苦；这些原则被赐给我们，能伴我们到永远。

The lack of reflectiveness which observers find in us arises partly from this conviction that our goals are set and do not need to be debated; we have only to work hard in order to reach them. To create, to build －to clear a new field, sink a new mine, start a new civic organization, develop a new business －this is what Americans admire. This is what they dream of. Like all creators, they are suspicious of critics.
观察者们发现，我们缺乏思考，而这部分原因是认为我们的目标是既定的，无须再讨论；我们只要努力达到目标即可。

创造，建设---开辟一个新领域，挖掘新矿，建立新的市民组织，发展一项新的事业---这才是美国人崇拜的。

也是他们梦寐以求的。

与所有的创造者一样，他们不信任批评家。

For this reason, and because they are active participants rather than passive observers, they feel obliged to defend the country against any outside censures, no matter how bitterly they attack its shortcomings themselves. De Tocqueville, much as he admired the United States, found this patriotism irritating. If you stop praising them, he complains, the Americans fall to praising themselves. What he observed, of course, was part of the love and be loved pattern which in spite of its naivete has obvious advantages over the hate and be hated regimen which has determined so much of human history.
基于这个原因，也因为他们是积极的参与者而不是消极的观察家，他们觉得有义务使国家不受外界责难，尽管他们自己抨击起国家毫不留情。

德托奎叶尔虽然十分崇拜美国，但觉得美国人的爱国主义让人难以忍受。

他抱怨说，如果你停止对他们的赞美，美国人就会自己夸自己。

他所看到的当然就是爱与被爱模式的部分表现，虽然这个模式缺乏智慧，但比对人类历史产生重大影响的恨与被恨的制度有显而易见的长处。

Humor 幽默
The sense of humor is often the most revealing aspect of a culture. Surely humor has never been valued more highly in any civilization than in this one. Will Rogers is venerated as a national hero for his pungent, earthy comment on the American scene －for his gift of making Americans see what is ridiculous in themselves. Mark Twain, in many ways our most representative writer, is admired not so much because of his skill at picturing American life as for his humor. It is part of the optimism of our outlook that we prefer comedy to tragedy, and that the funny men get top billing and top salaries on television. 幽默感常常最能体现一种文化真正的一面。

无疑，幽默从来没有象在美国文化中这样重要。

维尔·罗杰斯被尊为民族英雄就是因为他以幽默的方式对美国社会生活尖锐而且朴实的批评---因为他的天才幽默让美国人看到了自己的荒唐可笑之处。

马克·吐温，从各个方面来说都是最能代表美国的作家，人们钦佩他善于描绘美国人生活的技巧，但更佩服他的幽默。

我们喜欢喜剧甚于悲剧，搞笑演员上演节目最多，在电视台的工资最高，这能部分地说明我们的乐观的处世态度。

Humor is the great reliever of tension, the counterbalance to the dash and roar of our fastpaced industrialized life with its whirring machines, traffic snarls and frayed tempers. Humor shows these very things to us in such a way that we can laugh about them.
幽默能很好地消除紧张，调节我们繁忙的工业化生活的快节奏。

这种工业化的生活中，机器飞转，车辆轰鸣，人心浮躁。

幽默让我们以笑的方式看待生活中这些不开心的事。

Nothing is too sacred for the comic transformation; in fact, the more sacred the topic, the stronger the impact. Jokes about the minister are legion. Says the parishioner to the minister who explains that while shaving he was thinking about his sermon and cut his chin: "You should have been thinking about you chin and cut the sermon."
没有什么东西过于神圣，因而不能改编成喜剧；实际上，越是神圣的话题，给人的影响也越大。

关于牧师的笑话数不胜数。

牧师说刮胡子的时候他想着布道所以划破了下巴，于是教区的居民说：“你应该想着自己的下巴，划掉布道辞。

”
That tensions exist in the home life, however, the humorist loves to point out. No joke has the changes rung on it more frequently than that of the woman driver who is usually pictured sitting in the midst of a wrecked car. ("Didn't you see me signal that I'd changed my mind?") Men probably wreck far more cars than women, but it satisfies the male ego to think that women have not yet mastered the machine.
家庭生活中存在的矛盾，幽默者最喜欢指出这些。

最违背常理的笑话，是一位女司机坐在一辆撞得一塌糊涂的汽车里。

（“难道你没看见我发信号表示我已经改变主意了吗？”）男人可能撞坏的汽车比女人撞坏得多得多，但是想到女人连车都不会开，就能满足男性的自尊。

The shop which advertised that it would "Oil sewing machines and adjust tension
in the home for $1" had already relieved the tension through humor once the unintentional double-entendre was recognized.
商店的广告上写“缝纫机上油，调节家中的紧张气氛，收费一美元”，一旦看出广告中不经意中造成的双关语，这个商店已经用幽默缓解了紧张。

A popular variant of the dominant female is the mother-in-law. Year after year the jokes about her continue －evidence not so much of any serious tension as of the Freudian implications －projection of marital friction onto an associated but less immediate object, seeing in the wife's mother the inevitable approach of the mate's old age and hence one's own.
悍妇的一种流行变体是丈母娘。

年复一年，关于她的笑话层出不穷——与其说是证明有什么矛盾，不如说是证明弗洛伊德的观点——婚姻矛盾在相关的但不那么直接的对象上的反映，在妻子的母亲身上看到了配偶以及自身老年的到来的不可避免。

Humor reveals our attitude toward children －our love of their innocently wise comments on life, our delight in the evidences they give of being fully formed individuals with rights and spunk of their own, even to the point of talking back to their parents. (Says the little girl at the table, urged by her mother to eat up her broccol: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.")
幽默显示我们对孩子的态度——我们喜欢他们对生活天真睿智的评价，我们喜欢他们是全面发展的个体，有自己的权利意识和勇气，甚至能反驳自己的父母。

（小女孩坐在饭桌边，妈妈强迫她吃完花椰菜，她说：“我说它是菠菜，我恨死它了。

”）
Can psychiatry help to overcome the frustrations of life? "There's nothing wrong with the average person that a good psychiatrist can't exaggerate," said the comedian, thus confirming our suspicions and making it a little easier for us to put up with ourselves.
精神疗法能有助于克服生活中不称心的事吗？“普通人的一点点小问题到了负责任的精神病医生那里，就被夸大。

”滑稽演员说的话证实了我们的怀疑，使我们宽容自己容易了一些。

The thirst for humor drives advertisers to resort to it, in the hope of catching an audience long since jaded by all the other appeals. "You die －we do the rest," an undertaker advertises. What welcome relief from the usual unctuousness of his kind!
人们渴望幽默，促使广告商利用这一点，以期长时间吸引观众，而对其他广告都不感兴趣。

“你去死——剩下的交给我们”，是殡仪馆的广告。

平常这类广告虚情假意，现在多么受人欢迎，令人轻松！
American humor, in short, confirms the importance of mating and the family, the high status of women and children, the pace and tension of life, and above all the love of humor itself as an approach to life more to be prized than riches, a gift to be cherished and applauded. The minister uses it in his sermons, the doctor in his healing, the lawyer in his pleading, the teacher in his teaching.
About the worst thing we can say of a man is that he has no sense of humor. For humor is regarded as an essential part of "the American way."
总之，美国人的幽默强调婚姻和家庭的重要性，妇女儿童的地位，生活的节奏和紧张，并且首要的是强调热爱幽默本身，将其看成一种生活态度，比财富更珍贵；看成一种天赋，值得珍视和为之喝彩。

牧师布道，医生治病，律师辩护，教师讲课，都离不开幽默。

我们对一个人最差的评语，就是他没有幽默感。

因为幽默被认为“美国方式”最重要的方面。

It helps to equalize, and we believe in equality. It is often a symbol of freedom, for it permits the common man to speak freely of his leaders; it helps him cut them down to size. It deflates stuffed shirts. It allows us to look at ourselves in perspective, for when we laugh at ourselves we have surmounted our shortcomings. And in a land where new contacts are always being made, humor provides a quickly available emotional unity －not subtle or regional but universal, one which lets us feel immediately at home anywhere. It is the grammar of confidence, the rhetoric of optimism, the music of brotherhood.
幽默可以让大家平等，而我们相信平等。

幽默常常是自由的象征，因为它可以使老百姓无所顾忌地跟领导说话；幽默使他能把领导降低到与自己平等的地位。

幽默让自命不凡的人无地自容。

幽默让我们能透视自己，因为自嘲就是克服自己的缺点。

我们总是要和新人打交道，幽默就提供了快速有效的情感上的和谐——不是微妙的，也不是地域性的，而是普遍的，让我们很快在任何地方都无拘无束。

幽默是自信的法则，是乐观主义的修辞，是友谊的音乐。

What is an American? 美国人是什么？
"I can't make you out," Henry James has Mrs. Tristram say to the American, "whether you are very simple or very deep." This is a dilemma which has often confronted Europeans. Usually they conclude that Americans are childish. But one cannot accurately call one society mature, another immature. Each has its own logic.
亨利·詹姆斯让特里斯瑞姆太太对美国人说，“我真搞不懂你，是太幼稚还是太深沉。

”这是欧洲人经常碰到的难题。

通常他们的结论就是美国人很孩子气。

可是没人能说准确地说一个社会成熟，另一个社会不成熟。

每一个社会都有自己的逻辑。

What is it then that makes Americans recognizable wherever they go? It is not, we hope, the noisy, boasting, critical, money-scattering impression made by one class of tourists. The only thing to be said in their defense is that, released from the social restraints which would make them act very differently at home, they are bent on making the most of this freedom.
那么是什么东西使得美国人无论走到哪里都能被人认出来呢？我们希望，不是一种美国游客给人留下的印象，吵吵嚷嚷，自吹自擂，挑三拈四，挥金如土。

唯一可以为他们开脱的说法是：一旦脱离了使他们在国内以非常不同的方式行事的种种社会约束，他们就下定决心充分享受这种自由。

Americans carry with them an appearance which is more a result of attitude
than of clothing. This attitude combines a lack of class consciousness, a somewhat jaunty optimism and an inquisitiveness which in combination look to the European like naivete. Also a liking for facts and figures, an alertness more muscular and ocular than intellectual, and above all a desire to be friendly. (Let us, for the moment, leave out of the picture such stigmata as gum chewing, too much smoking, and an urge to compare everything with Kansas City or Keokuk.) 美国人有一种外观，与其说是衣着的结果，不如说是态度的结果。

这种态度中，有对阶级的不屑，有洋洋得意的乐观主义，还有一种求知欲，加在一起就被欧洲人认为是幼稚浅薄的人。

还有，他们喜欢用事实和数字说话，虽然身手敏捷，但头脑相对迟钝，最重要的是他们喜欢结交朋友。

（让我们暂时不去想他们嚼口香糖，抽香烟太多的样子，还有他们总是把每一样东西都和美国的堪萨斯城比一比的欲望。

）
To boil it down to the briefest summary, American characteristics are the product of response to an unusually competitive situation combined with unusual opportunity.
归根结底，最简洁地说，美国人的性格，就是对具有非常机遇的非常竞争环境作出反应的结果。

Americans are a peculiar people. They work like mad, then give away much of what they earn. They play until they are exhausted, and call this a vacation. They live to think of themselves as tough-minded business men, yet they are push-overs for any hard luck story. They have the biggest of nearly everything including government, motor cars and debts, yet they are afraid of bigness. They are always trying to chip away at big government, big business, big unions, big influence. They like to think of themselves as little people, average men, and they would like to cut everything down to their own size. Yet they boast of their tall buildings, high mountains, long rivers, big state, the best country, the best world, the best heaven. They also have the most traffic deaths, the most waste, the most racketeering.
美国人是一个与众不同的民族。

他们拼命地工作，然后花掉了大量辛苦赚来的钱。

他们玩得筋疲力尽，并称之为度假。

他们向来把自己想成硬心肠的商人，可是任何不幸的故事都会使他们受骗。

几乎所有最大的东西他们都有：政府，汽车和债务，可他们害怕庞大。

所以他们总是要想办法除去大的政府，大的买卖，大的团体，大的影响力。

他们愿意把自己看成是小人物，平平常常的人，喜欢一切都是平等的。

他们吹嘘自己的高楼大厦，高山，大河，吹嘘自己是大国，是最好的国家，是最好的世界，最好的天堂。

同时，他们的车祸最多，浪费最多，骗子也最多。

When they meet, they are always telling each other, "Take it easy," then they rush off like crazy in opposite directions. They play games as if they were fighting a war, and fight wars as if playing a game. They marry more, go broke more often, and make more money than any other people. They love children, animals, gadgets, mother, work, excitement, noise, nature, television shows, comedy, installment buying, fast motion, spectator sports, the underdog, the
flag, Christmas, jazz, shapely women and muscular men, classical recordings, crowds, comics, cigarettes, warm houses in winter and cool ones in summer, thick beefsteaks, coffee, ice cream, informal dress, plenty of running water, do-it-yourself, and a working week trimmed to forty hours or less.
美国人一见面就对彼此说：“放轻松点，”然后就向相反的方向狂奔。

他们做游戏象打仗一样，打起仗来象做游戏。

跟任何人相比，他们结婚次数更多，离婚的频率更高，赚的钱更多。

他们爱孩子，爱动物，爱小玩艺，爱母亲，爱工作，爱激动，爱吵吵嚷嚷，爱大自然，爱看电视节目，爱看喜剧，买东西喜欢分期付款，喜欢快节奏，爱买票看体育比赛，同情弱者，热爱国旗，爱过圣诞节，听爵士乐，爱看身材好的女子和肌肉发达的男人，爱收藏经典唱片，爱凑热闹，看连环画，抽烟，喜欢房子冬暖夏凉，爱吃切得厚厚的牛排，爱喝咖啡，吃冰淇淋，穿着随便，喜欢自来水一直淌着，一切自己动手，一周工作时间限制在40小时以内。

They crowd their highways with cars while complaining about the traffic, flock to movies and television while griping about the quality and the commercials, go to church but don't care much for sermons, and drink too much in the hope of relaxing －only to find themselves stimulated to even bigger dreams.
他们一边抱怨交通拥挤，一边把车都挤到高速公路上；一边抱怨影视质量不好，商业化气息太浓，却成群结队地去看电影电视；常去教堂却不大关心布道，酒喝得太多，为的是要放松——结果却发现酒精使他们更想入非非。

There is of course, no typical American. But if you added them all together and then divided by 226 000 000 they would look something like what this chapter has tried to portray.
当然没有典型的美国人。

但是如果你把他们加在一起，然后用226 000 000来除，他们的样子就象这一章要描述的。