首页 > 其他分享> > 现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——11A - Soldier‘s Heart（士兵心理症）

现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）——11A - Soldier‘s Heart（士兵心理症）

2021-11-04 17:06:39 作者：互联网

Unit 11A - Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart

Louis Simpson

It begins in France in June of 1944.

Men are lying face down on the earth.

The air is filled with sounds, shrieks that came out of the sky and terminate with an explosion.

This may be a matter of seconds.

If the sounds continue, the men will be seen scraping the surface of the earth with shovels and burying themselves in it until, like a species of animal, they vanish from sight.

Or the men are walking up a road in two parallel lines.

They are heavily burdened, carrying rifles, machine guns, and mortars.

If the shrieking from the sky begins, they will turn quickly out of the road and lie face down.

Or they have spread out and are walking in an open field.

An embankment runs across it—the railroad.

There is a brief purring sound, then a rhythmic drumming.

If you should happen to be with these men, it would sound as though the air were being torn.

One of them falls.

The others run forward and crouch in the shelter of the embankment.

Such is the life or death of an infantry soldier in France in the summer of 1944.

These actions will be repeated many times...

the scenery will change, from small fields separated by hedgerows to a flat landscape with windmills to a forest covered with snow.

The soldiers will pass through villages.

Now they are on the banks of a river, and rowing across in rubber boats.

Finally they are among mountains.

I was discharged from the US Army in 1945 and went home.

I returned to the university.

I have a vague recollection of sitting with other students in a room—only a few around a long table.

Some great book was being discussed; it was the course for upper division students known as the Colloquium.

I was reading furiously about... everything.

When I was not reading I was writing stories, essays, poems...

What followed I do not know.

One person had it that I lost my key to the apartment I was sharing, and was found lying unconscious outside the door.

A friend would inform me in a letter that I had been wandering in the streets and picked up by the police, and that I resisted violently.

I was in a hospital ward.

It wasn't an army hospital, but Kings Park on Long Island.

I suppose that was because after the war the veterans' hospitals were too crowded, and the rest had to be put in other places.

What name have they given it now, the illness I had as a result of being shot at and shelled for months on end?

I don't suppose many of our soldiers in the Gulf War have suffered from it—they were spared a long engagement.

After Vietnam it was called "post-traumatic stress disorder."

In World War II it was called "combat fatigue."

In the Great War (I prefer that name, for the Great War was what people at the time thought it was) it was called "shell shock."

In the Civil War it was "soldier's heart."

The name strikes me as the best, for it describes an illness that involved my heart as much as my head.

My heart would beat faster, I would tremble and sweat and, on occasion, pass out.

The patients in this hospital saw very little of the doctors.

There was one who would come now and then, but I don't recall any conversation with him that lasted more than a minute.

There were two women—one was a nurse, the other seemed to have some training in psychology.

Their main duty was to see that the patients were quiet or harmlessly busy playing cards or board games or reading a magazine.

There were also three guards.

Much of the time, especially during the evening and night hours, they ran the ward.

Two of the guards were the kind Chekhov describes in Ward No.6.

One was a skinny man with a dull face.

The trigger finger of his right hand was missing.

Once he waggled the stump under my face with a sly smile.

This, he gave me to understand, was why he had been excused from military service.

The other was stocky and muscular, with a bullet head.

He was dangerous—he liked to beat up the patients.

He informed me that he was the one who had knocked out my front teeth when I was first brought to the ward.

He seemed to think it was a joke I would like to share.

I received shock treatments, and later I was assigned to help the doctor, lifting each patient onto the table.

I watched as the current passed through and the body convulsed.

There has been much controversy over shock treatments—whether or not they did irremediable harm.

Speaking only for myself, I think they brought me out of the fog in which I had been walking.

One of the symptoms of my illness had been hearing voices.

But one day—and this was after I came out of the fog and I was quite calm and rational—

looking out of the cage, the barred windows behind which we lived, at grass and trees and clouds,

I heard a voice say "Praise God, they resist, they resist!"

Who was it who was resisting?

Others like myself, I suppose.

I believe with Shakespeare that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the philosophy of those who serve the world, and who administer its institutions, and grow rich.

When I was finally discharged from Kings Parks, the more evident symptoms of my illness had disappeared

so that I was thought of as a reasonable and levelheaded man.

But the cure would take time.

For some years I was subject to the sudden onsets I have mentioned:

a heart that beat faster, and shaking, and sweating.

I would imagine shells falling and hear the sound of guns.

I could not stand being confined.

And I had the habits that remain with soldiers.

One in particular: when I went walking I would keep an eye peeled for an enemy position.

If there was an open field I would think, how are we going to get across that?

I imagined lying again on a railroad embankment in Normandy, waiting to be told to go over it in spite of the bullets that were sweeping to and fro directly above me.

That day I was sure I would be killed.

Or I was in a graveyard in Holland with shells falling and the living getting mixed in with the dead.

I was in the Ardennes, standing in a foxhole among trees covered with snow and stamping my feet.

They were freezing.

The university informed me that before I could return I had to be cleared by their doctor.

He picked up a folder and said, "You aren't going to be so taken up with your music, are you?"

The question was probably one of their tricks, to test my sanity.

He spoke again, saying that I ought to go out in the world and "meet the common man."

I was silent.

I had seen the common man...

his guts spilled in a road, his limbs strewn in a field.

The doctor told me that he could not recommend my returning to the college.

It was only on the way home that I realized that he had been looking at the wrong folder.

So I looked for work and found it as a copyboy on a newspaper.

If I stayed with it, I might someday be a reporter.

But this didn't appeal to me.

I didn't have the fascination with gossip that a reporter needs to have—

whether it is about a quarrel between nations or about a politician and his mistress.

Then I worked for an import-export firm.

But this too did not appeal to me;

to succeed in this kind of business you have to think about the money you can make, and I preferred to think about other things.

I went back to the university, but not by the front entrance.

I slipped in by a side door, the School of General Studies, which wasn't so particular about whom they let in.

I took courses in the evening and I worked at writing...

I relived the war almost every night in my dreams.

This continued for years.

After Miriam and I were married, she woke one night to sounds that were coming from different parts of the room:

sounds of battle, shelling and gunfire.

They were coming from me!

I dreamed of encounters with the Germans that I never had.

But I had anticipated such meetings as I walked alone among trees or over fields, carrying a message from G Company to Battalion.

Or I dreamed about horrors...

the field in Holland I had to walk through night after night.

It was strewn with the dead bodies of German infantry and American paratroopers who had shot each other at close range.

I used to think that having such dreams was a thing to be ashamed of.

For what had I suffered in comparison with others?

When I thought of them, the dead, and those who were in wheel-chairs, or blinded, or insane, had I really known war at all?

What have we to complain of who have only known "soldier's heart"?

Nothing, sir, nothing at all.

Why write about such things?

Are they not better forgotten?

After a war, the millions who have been through it want to forget.

It was terrible, and sordid, and boring.

Besides, everyone knows the things you do.

But time passes and the number of those who remember is suddenly diminished.

Who remembers the Great War?

When I was a teacher and the subject of war came up, I would write a name on the blackboard: Somme.

Who, I would ask, had heard of it?

None of the students would answer.

Only one or two knew anything at all about the Great War.

I would tell them that The Somme was a battle in that war, a terrible battle in which thousands were killed or wounded—

sixty thousand casualties in the British army on the first morning alone.

It was hell on earth, but the men who went through it consoled themselves with a thought: Generations will remember what we did here, it will never be forgotten.

Yet not one of the young people in front of me had ever heard of it.

I have not forgotten the men I knew in the 101st Airborne Division.

The men and women I worked with in universities were pale and unreal in comparison.

They were hollow and filled with words.

What was I to think of the new breed of university professors, structuralists, poststructuralists, deconstructionists,

who taught that experience had no meaning, that the only reality was language, one word referring to another, one "sign" to another, with no stop in any kind of truth?

It is right to remember such things as I have described—

in the first place, because those who have lived and died before us should be remembered, insofar as it is possible.

Otherwise our own lives seem worthless.

In the second place, war is a permanent human condition, and men and women will have to face it.

It may help them to know how people no stronger physically or mentally than they have faced it.

The war and its aftermath changed me.

It gave me a respect and affection for the so-called common man that I have never lost.

As if any life were common!

The men I knew in the 101st, most of them, had no education beyond high school.

And they weren't stunning physical specimens either, though they could carry a pack, trench tool, rifle or carbine, machine gun, tripod or ammunition boxes, for miles at a good pace.

So the war gave me poetry.

I had a driving need to write...

a few lines for a poem, a paragraph of prose...anything!

Even at the university there were very few who felt about things as I did.

What did that matter?

What if the only thing I could do was held in contempt by others, or met with indifference?

Most people cared nothing about the kind of writing that mattered to me more than anything else.

They were deaf to the music.

So what!

I was alive and doing what I liked.

参考译文——士兵心理症

士兵心理症

路易斯•辛普森

这一切开始于1944年6月的法国。

士兵们面朝下趴在地上，

空气里充满了各种声音，炸弹划破天空发出尖响，以震耳欲聋的爆炸声结尾。

这可能只是瞬间发生的事情。

如果这些声音持续下去，你就会看到士兵们用战锹挖地，把自己隐藏到里面，像动物一样从视线中消失。

要么士兵们成两路纵队沿着公路前进。

他们负荷很重，扛着步枪、机枪和迫击炮。

如果空中的呼啸声再次响起，他们就会迅速离开公路，卧倒在地上。

要么他们分散开，在一大片开阔的地上前进。

一道路堤从中穿过——是一条铁路。

这时传来了一阵短促而低沉的声响，紧接着就是一阵有节奏的撞击声。

如果你恰好和这些人在一起，听起来就像天空正在被撕裂。

一个人倒下去，

其他人继续往前冲去，蹲在路堤旁，以它作为掩护。

这就是1944年夏天一个步兵在法国经历的生和死的考验。

这些行动会不断重复多次……

只是周遭景物不同，从灌木树篱分隔开的小块农田到遍布风车的辽阔平原，再到白雪皑皑的森林地带。

士兵们穿过座座村庄，

此时来到河畔，划着橡皮艇渡河。

他们最终又挺进到崇山峻岭之间。

1945年，我从美国陆军复员回家乡，

重返大学读书。

我还模糊地记得，我和其他学生一起坐在一间教室里——其实只是几个学生围坐在一张长桌子旁边，正在讨论着某部名著。

这门课是高年级学生上的，被称作“学术研讨会”。

我在如饥似渴地阅读着各类书籍。

我不看书时便写小说、散文、诗歌……

接下来发生了什么我就不知道了。

有人说，我弄丢了和别人合住的公寓房门钥匙，被人发现时已昏倒在门外。

一个朋友在信中告诉我，我一直在大街上徘徊，被警察带走，我还激烈地反抗了。

我住进了一间医院的病房。

这不是一家军队医院，而是长岛上的“国王公园”。

我认为，这是因为战后退伍军人医院爆满，剩下的人员只好安排到别的地方。

我的病是在枪林弹雨中连续战斗几个月的结果，现在给这个病起了什么名称?

我想，在海湾战争中我们的士兵没有多少人会得上这种病一他们没有长期与敌人交火。

越南战争结束后，这种病被称作“创伤后应激障碍”；

在第二次世界大战中被称为“战斗疲劳症”；

在“伟大战争”（我喜欢“伟大战争”这个名称，因为当时人们就是这样看待这场战争的）期间被称作“炮弹震荡症”；

在内战时被称作“士兵心理症”。

这个病名给我的印象最深，因为它说明了这个疾病既涉及我的大脑，也涉及我的心脏。

我常常会心跳加快，浑身发抖、流汗，有时还昏倒。

这家医院的病人们很少见到医生。

有一位医生时常来，但我不记得和他有过一分钟以上的谈话。

有两位妇女——一位是护士，另一位看来受过心理学培训。

她们的主要职责是保证病人安静，能忙于打牌、下棋、看杂志这样的无害性活动。

另外还有三个警卫人员，

他们大多时间在管理病房，特别是在夜晚。

有两个警卫是契诃夫在《第六病室》中描写的那种人物。

一个瘦骨嶙峋，长着一副毫无表情的面孔，

右手食指缺了一截。

有一次，他狡猾地笑着，把他那只断指在我面前晃了晃。

他要让我明白，这就是他免于服役的原因。

另一个是个矮小结实、肌肉发达的家伙，脑袋长得像个子弹头。

他是个危险的人物——他喜欢殴打病人。

他告诉我，当我第一次被送到病房时，就是他打掉了我的门牙。

他似乎觉得这是一个我喜欢听的笑话。

我接受了电击疗法，后来又被分配去帮助医生，把每位病人抬到电击台上。

我看到电流接通后，病人的身体抽搐着。

人们对于电击疗法有很大争议——它是否会对人体造成无可弥补的伤害。

就我而言，我觉得电疗让我摆脱了一直所处的混沌状态。

我的一个病症是不断听到各种声音，

可是，有一天——那是在我走出头脑中的迷雾，恢复了冷静和理智后——

我透过我们病房中带栅栏的窗户从这牢笼中向外看，看见了草地、树木和白云，

听到一个声音在说“感谢上帝吧，他们顶住了，他们顶住了！”

是谁在抵抗呢？

我想，是像我一样的人们。

我赞成莎士比亚说过的话，对于那些服务于这个世界、管理它的各种机构、并因此而发财的人来说，天上和人间有太多在他们的哲学中永远想象不到的东西。

在我最终从“国王公园”出院时，那些比较明显的病症已经消失，

因此我被认为是一个通情达理、头脑冷静的人。

不过，治愈尚需时间。

有几年，我前面提到过的病症会突然发作:

心脏快搏，浑身发抖，盗汗。

我时常想象到炮弹落地，听到枪声大作。

我无法忍受被幽闭的感觉，

还保持着当兵时养成的习惯，

特别是在散步时，我常常留神监视着敌人阵地。

如果有一片开阔的地方，我就想，我们如何才能通过呢？

我曾想象着自己正在诺曼底趴在铁路路基上，尽管头上弹雨横飞，还等待着命令冲过去。

那天，我断定自己必死无疑。

我还会想象到自己正呆在荷兰的一片墓地里，头上弹片在飞落，地上生者与死者的尸体混在一起，难以分辨。

有时我在阿登高原，站在白雪覆盖的树林里的一个散兵坑里，跺着脚，

我的脚都冻僵了。

大学通知我，我返校前需经校医批准。

校医拿起一个文件夹，说道：“你不会忙着搞音乐，是吧？”

这个问题大概是他们的第一个把戏，是要考察我的精神是否正常。

他又说，我应该到外面的世界走一走，“见一见普通人”。

我没有吭声，

心想，我可见过普通人……

他的肠子流到了路上，肢体被抛撒到田地里。

校医告诉我，他不会推荐我回到大学学习。

在我回家的途中，我才意识到，他一直在看着别人的病例，不是我的。

于是，我便开始寻找工作，在一家报社找到一份抄抄写写的工作。

如果我干下去，也许有一天会成为一名记者。

但是我对这种工作不感兴趣。

我并不热衷于社会花边新闻，而这是作为一名记者所必须具备的条件——

不管是有关国家之间的争端，还是关于某个政客和他的情妇的花边新闻，记者都要感兴趣。

随后，我为一家进出口公司工作，

可这份工作也吸引不了我；

要是想在这种事业上取得成功，你要会算计能赚多少钱，我宁愿想些其他的事情。

我又回到了大学，但不是被正规录取，

而是走了边门，进了综合教育学院，这所学院录取学生并不那么挑剔。

我晚上上课，并且致力于写作……

几乎每天晚上我都要在梦里重温那场战争。

这种状态持续了若干年。

我和米丽娅姆结婚后的一天夜里，她被来自室内各个角落的声音吵醒：

战斗的声音，枪炮声。

这些声音都是从我嘴里发出的！

我在梦里遭遇了我从未战斗过的德国军队。

不过，当年我从连部往营里送信而单独走在树林里或穿过田野时，我曾预料过这种遭遇。

我有时梦见恐怖的事物……

梦见荷兰的那片我一夜接一夜地走过的田野，

那里到处都是德国步兵和美国伞兵近距离射击后留下的尸体。

我过去认为，做这些梦我感到惭愧，

因为与其他人比起来，我受的罪又算得了什么呢？

当我想起他们，那些阵亡的、坐在轮椅上的、战争中失明的或精神失常的人们时，我就想，我真的了解战争吗？

我们这些仅受到“士兵心理症”困扰的人有什么可抱怨的呢？

没有，先生，根本没有。

为什么要写这些事情呢？

忘掉它们不更好吗？

一场战争过后，数百万经历战争的人都想忘掉这一切。

战争是恐怖的、肮脏的、乏味的。

除此之外，大家都知道你做了什么。

可随着时光的流逝，能记得这场战争的人数骤然减少。

有谁还记得“伟大战争”呢？

我在教学时谈到战争的话题，在黑板上写了一个名字：索姆河。

我问学生，谁听说过这个名字？

没有人回答，

竟然只有一两个学生知道“伟大战争”。

我告诉他们，那次战争中，在索姆河有过一次战役，这是一场惨烈的战役，成千上万人伤亡——

仅第一天上午英国军队就伤亡6万人。

那真是人间地狱，但经历过这场战争的人们怀着这样一种想法来宽慰自己：后人将会铭记我们在这里做出的牺牲，永远不会忘却。

然而我面前的年轻人竟然没有一个听说过这个名字。

我仍然记得我认识的101空降师的军人们。

相比之下，我在大学里的同事们显得苍白、不真实。

他们虽然健谈，但空话连篇。

我该如何看待新一代的大学教授、结构主义者、后结构主义者、解构主义者呢？

他们向学生传授说经验毫无意义，他们认为语言是唯一真实的东西，用一个词来表达另一个词，用一个符号代表另一个符号，只是与真理相去甚远。

铭记我所叙述的这些事情是有益的。

首先，我们应尽可能不遗忘那些前辈与逝者，

否则我们自己的生命就似乎毫无价值。

其次，战争是人类永远要面对的处境，人人都得面对它。

这会帮助人们了解在体力和精神上都与他们相差无几的人是如何面对战争的。

战争及其后遗症改变了我，

使我对所谓的普通人产生了一种尊敬，多了一份感情，这种尊敬与感情我从未失去过，

因为没有一个人的生命是普通的！

我在101空降师认识的多数军人只上过中学，

他们也不是特别强壮的人物，但能背起行装、挖战壕的工具、步枪或卡宾枪、机枪、三脚架或弹药箱，以相当快的速度行军数英里。

就这样，战争为我带来诗歌，

使我产生强烈的写作欲望……

几行诗，一段散文……任何东西！

即使在大学里，也很少有人与我有相同的感受。

这又有什么关系呢？

假如我唯一能做的事情受到轻视或冷遇，那又有什么？

写作对我来说比其他任何事情都要重要，

可大多数人对此却不屑一顾，对美妙的文字置若罔闻。

这又算得了什么！

我还活着，而且在做我喜欢做的事情。

Key Words:

rhythmic ['riðmik]

adj. 有节奏的，有韵律的

crouch [krautʃ]

vi. 蹲伏，蜷伏；卑躬屈膝 vt. 低头；屈膝

scenery ['si:nəri]

n. 布景，风景，背景

recollection [.rekə'lekʃən]

n. 记忆，回想，回忆

unconscious [ʌn'kɔnʃəs]

adj. 失去知觉的

tremble ['trembl]

n. 战悚，颤抖

muscular ['mʌskjulə]

adj. 肌肉的，肌肉发达的

ward [wɔ:d]

n. 守卫，监护，受监护人，病房，行政区

controversy ['kɔntrəvə:si]

n. (公开的)争论，争议

confined [kən'faind]

adj. 幽禁的；狭窄的；有限制的；在分娩中的

fro [frəu]

adv. 向那边，向后，离开，回来

spite [spait]

n. 恶意，怨恨

gossip ['gɔsip]

n. 流言蜚语，闲话，爱说长道短的人

battalion [bə'tæljən]

n. 营，军队，大批

sordid ['sɔ:did]

adj. 肮脏的，破烂的，利欲薰心的，色彩暗淡的

diminished [di'miniʃt]

adj. 减退了的；减弱的 v. 减少；削弱

hollow ['hɔləu]

n. 洞，窟窿，山谷

affection [ə'fekʃən]

n. 慈爱，喜爱，感情，影响

prose [prəuz]

adj. 散文的

tripod ['traipɔd]

n. (摄影机的)三脚架，三脚用具，三足鼎

contempt [kən'tempt]

n. 轻视，轻蔑

indifference [in'difərəns]

n. 不重视，无兴趣，漠不关心

参考资料：

现代大学英语精读(第2版)第四册:U11A Soldier's Heart(11)_大学教材听力 - 可可英语

标签：me,Heart,精读,would,had,第四册,they,were,was
来源： https://blog.csdn.net/hpdlzu80100/article/details/121146391