themerelyverygood课文翻译Unit 8 The Merely Very Good第八单元仅仅不错Jeremy Bernstein杰里米·伯恩斯坦Early in 1981 I received an invitation to give a lecture at a writers' conference that was beingheld someplace on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I don'tremember the exact location, but a study of the map convinces me that it was probably NewHope. My first inclination was to say no. There were several reasons. I was living in New YorkCity and teaching full time. My weekends were precious and the idea of getting up beforedawn on a Saturday, renting a car, and driving across the entire state of New Jersey to delivera lecture was repellent. As I recall, the honorarium offered would have barely covered theexpense. Furthermore, a subject had been suggested for my lecture that, in truth, no longerinterested me. Since I both wrote and did physics, I had often been asked to discuss theconnection, if any, between these two activities. When this first came up, I felt obligated to saysomething, but after twenty years, about the only thing that I felt like saying was that bothphysics and writing, especially if one wanted to do them well, were extremely difficult.早在1981年,我收到过一份邀请我在一次作家年会上做讲座的请柬,这次会议在宾夕法尼亚州特拉华河沿岸过新泽西不远的某地召开。我记不起确切的地点了,但仔细查看地图后我确信应该是在新望市。我最初的意向是拒绝。有多种理出。首先我住在纽约,并担负着全职的教学工作,周末是很宝贵的。一想到周六天不亮就要起床,还要租车,然后驾车穿越整个新泽西州去做个讲座,实在是很厌烦。我回想起所给的酬金几乎还不足以支付行程所需的这些花费。此外,建议我讲的主题实际上我已经不再感兴趣了。我既写作又从事物理学研究,因此人们经常让我谈论两者之间的联系。这个议题最初提出的时候,我觉得还有必要讲一讲。可是二十年过去了,我现在唯一想要说的就是搞物理学和搞写作都极其困难,尤其是在一个人想做得尽善尽美的时候。The conference seemed to be centered on poetry, and one of the things that came to mindwas an anecdote that Robert Oppenheimer used to tell about himself. Since Oppenheimer willplay a significant role in what follows, I will elaborate. After Oppenheimer graduated fromHarvard in 1925, he was awarded a fellowship to study in Europe. Following a very unhappytime in England, where he seems to have had a sort of nervous breakdown, he went toGermany to get his Ph.D.大会的中心议题似乎在诗歌上,于是我想起罗伯特·奥本海默过去讲述的关于他自己的一件事。由于奥本海默将在下面的故事中扮演重要的角色,我会详细讲述他。奥本海默1925年从哈佛毕业后,被授予研究员的资格到欧洲学习。在英国他似乎有些神经衰弱的症状,在那里度过了一段不愉快的时光之后,他去德国攻读博士学位