grantandlee高英6课文翻译

大学英语综合教程五

第五单元文章

When Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met in the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, to work out the terms for the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, a great chapter in American life came to a close, and a great new chapter began.

当尤利西兹格兰特和罗伯特李在弗吉尼亚州阿珀马特科斯县城一所不太大的房子的客厅里会面，商讨李所率的北弗吉尼亚军队投降条件时，美国人生活中一个伟大的篇章结束了，一个崭新的重要篇章开始了。

These men were bringing the Civil War to its virtual finish. To be sure, other armies had yet to surrender, and for a few days the fugitive Confederate government would struggle desperately and vainly, trying to find some way to go on living now that its chief support was gone. But in effect it was all over when Grant and Lee signed the papers. And the little room where they wrote out the terms was the scene of one of the poignant, dramatic contrasts in American history

此二人是在实质上终止内战。诚然，其他军队尚未投降，已失去主要支柱的逃亡的邦联政府仍将绝望地徒然挣扎数日，想法寻觅生机。

其实，在格兰特和李签署文件之时，一切都已结束。他们拟定投降条件时用的那间小客厅成了见证美国史上强烈的戏剧性对照的场所。

They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting currents that, through them, had come into final collision.

这两位截然不同的将军都是强有力的人物，他们代表着两股相互冲突的力量的潮流，那两股潮流通过他们最终发生碰撞。

Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in American life.

罗伯特李所仰仗的信念是，古老的贵族观念或许能以某种方式继续存在下去，并左右美国人的生活。

Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition ... the age of chivalry transplanted to a New World which was making its own legends and its own myths. He embodied a way of life that had come down through the age of knighthood and the English country squire. America was a land that was beginning all over again, dedicated to nothing much more complicated than the rather hazy belief that all men had equal rights, and should have an equal chance in the world. In such a land Lee stood for the feeling that it was somehow of advantage to human

society to have a pronounced inequality in the social structure. There should be a leisure class, backed by ownership of land; in turn, society itself should be keyed to the land as the chief source of wealth and influence. It would bring forth (according to this ideal) a class of men with a strong sense of obligation to the community; men who lived, not to gain advantage for themselves, but to meet the solemn obligations which had been laid on them by the very fact that they were privileged. From them the country would get its leadership; to them it could look for the higher values - of thought, of conduct, of personal deportment - to give it strength and virtue.

李是弗吉尼亚州沿海低地人氏，他的生活背景是家庭、文化、传统……，是被移植到这个正在形成自身的传说与神话的新世界的骑士时代。他体现了从骑士和英格兰乡绅时代流传下来的一种生活方式。美国是个一切从头开始的国度，信奉的只不过是一种颇为模糊的信念，即人人拥有平等的权利，在世间应有平等的机会，如此而已。在这样一个国度里，李代表着这样一种情感，即社会结构中保留一种明显的不平等多少有利于人类社会。理应存在一个拥有土地的有闲阶级；反过来，社会本身应以土地为本，视其为财富与势力的主要来源。（根据这一理想）这样一个社会会造就一个对社会有着强烈责任感的阶级，他们不是为自己获利活着，而是为了承担自己的特权所赋予的重大责任活着。国家从他们中觅得领导人员；国家可依靠他们产生更加高尚的价值观念——思想方面的，行为方面的，个人风度方面的——以求国兴德盛。

Lee embodied the noblest elements of this aristocratic ideal. Through him, the landed nobility justified itself. For four years, the Southern states had fought a desperate war to uphold the ideals for which Lee stood. In the end, it almost seemed as if the Confederacy fought for Lee; as if he himself was the Confederacy ... the best thing that the way of life for which the Confederacy stood could ever have to offer. He had passed into legend before Appomattox. Thousands of tired, underfed, poorly clothed Confederate soldiers, long-since past the simple enthusiasm of the early days of the struggle, somehow considered Lee the symbol of everything for which they had been willing to die. But they could not quite put this feeling into words. If the Lost Cause, sanctified by so much heroism and so many deaths, had a living justification, its justification was General Lee.

李体现了这一贵族理想的最高尚的部分。拥有土地的贵族通过他获得存在的理由。四年间，南方各州拼死战斗，以捍卫李所代表的理想。到后来，南部邦联似乎是为李而战；李本人似乎就是南部邦联……似乎是南部邦联所代表的生活方式能提供的菁华。还在来到阿珀马特科斯之前，他已经成为传奇人物了。成千上万疲于征战、忍饥挨饿、征衣褴褛的邦联士兵早已失去了战争伊始的单纯的热情，他们把李视作自己甘愿为之献身的一切的象征。只是他们不善表述这种情感。这一被无数英雄行为、无数阵亡将士神圣化了的注定失败的事业若有其现实的理由证明其是正确的话，那这理由就是李将军。