外刊精读| 纽约时报：对圣诞节的怀旧之情

Hi你好！圣诞快乐！

本篇为纽约时报Opinion板块的专栏作家Ross Douthat所写，原文地址为：Opinion | A Middle-Aged Christmas - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

A Middle-Aged Christmas 人已中年，回顾圣诞

The meaning of Christmas nostalgia in the middle of life’s journey 走在人生旅途半中央，对圣诞节的怀旧感何去何从？

首先看个词：nostalgia名词，意思就是怀旧，念旧。比如一股强烈的怀旧之情：a sense/wave/pang of nostalgia再比如，我很想念我的大学时代：I’m filled withnostalgia for my own college days.

其次注意一下这的middle-aged和 in the middle of life’s journey都可以表示“人到中年”。

Marching toward middle age is asequence of older-than moments, when you realize that you’ve passed somefamous age that seemed impossibly distant as a child. First you pass theprodigies: Older than William Pitt the Younger when he became prime minister,older than Donna Tartt when she published “The Secret History,” older thanAlexander the Great when he conquered Persia. Then come the athletes: When you reach yourlater 30s, you realize that if you had actually become a baseballstar, you would now be Kirk Gibson gimping to the plate, an old man inbaseball years.

参考译文：步入中年是一系列比年龄大的时刻，当你意识到你已经度过了某个特定的年龄，而这个年龄在孩提时代似乎遥不可及。首先，你会比那些神童还年长:比当上首相的威廉·皮特(William Pitt)年纪大，比唐娜·塔特(Donna Tartt)出版《秘史》时年纪大，比亚历山大大帝(Alexander theGreat)征服波斯时年纪大。然后是运动员:当你快到30岁的时候，你会意识到，如果你真的成为了一名棒球明星，你现在就会是柯克·吉布森(Kirk Gibson)跛着脚走向本垒板，一个棒球时代的老人。

这里我们首先积累如何表达“步入中年”：march toward middle age; 以及后面的reach your later 30s;

注意一个词gimp，应该来源于gimpy，他可能无法在词典中查到，英文解释看一下就明白了：Gimpy is aderogatory term（贬义） forsomeone who has a limp. 这个词非常负面，了解就好，自己不要使用。

Marching toward middle age is asequence of older-than moments, when you realize that you’ve passed some famousage that seemed impossibly distant as a child. 很喜欢第一句啊，读两遍品品。

This year, at 41, I picked up “A Child’sChristmas in Wales,” the great exercise in Yuletide nostalgia, which I’vealways read in an edition with terrific Trina Schart Hyman illustrations toaccompany Dylan Thomas’s poetic prose. The first of those illustrations depictthe book the way it reads — as an old man’s reminiscences, deliveredto a grandson in the mythopoetic style: Years and years and years ago,when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales … it snowed and it snowed.

参考译文：今年，41岁的我买了一本《威尔士儿童的圣诞节》(A Child’sChristmas in Wales)，这是一本体现圣诞季节怀旧情怀的好书，我经常会在一本附有特瑞娜·夏特·海曼(Trina Schart Hyman)绝妙插图的书里读到它，配上迪伦·托马斯(Dylan Thomas)的诗歌散文。第一张插图描述了这本书的阅读方式——作为一位老人的回忆录，以神话诗人的风格送给孙子:很多很多年以前，当我还是个孩子的时候，当威尔士有狼的时候……雪下了又下。

注意depict这个词，完全可以和illustrate; outline; display; paint等等词互换，在考研和雅思图表作文中会用到！

然后是reminiscence这个词表示回忆录，追忆。可以和nostalgia一起记忆。

An illustration by Trina Schart Hyman from “A Child’sChristmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas.Credit...R. MichelsonGalleries

But this year, I realized that I’m nowolder than Thomas was when he wrote “A Child’s Christmas,” just before hisuntimely death at the age of 39.

参考译文：但今年我意识到，我现在比托马斯创作《一个孩子的圣诞节》(A Child’sChristmas)时还要老。托马斯在39岁时英年早逝。

The kind of nostalgia the Welsh poetsummoned in his little book is likely to be uniquely powerful this year. Formany people, the experience of Christmas is always measured against a memorypalace handed down from childhood — different scenes from differentyears piled together in a vision of what the holiday should be, compared towhich the exhausting grown-up reality usually falls short. In 2020 thatfalling-shortmay feel particularly painful, because separation and isolation shadow somany Christmases this year.

参考译文：这位威尔士诗人在他的小书中所唤起的那种怀旧情绪，在今年可能会变得格外强烈。对许多人来说，圣诞节的体验总是与儿时流传下来的记忆宫殿相比较——不同年代的不同场景堆积在一起，形成一个节日应该是什么样子的愿景，与之相比，在令人精疲力尽的成人世界中往往是达不到的。到2020年，这种差距可能会让人感到特别痛苦，因为今年的许多圣诞节都笼罩在分离和孤立的阴影中。

儿时流传下来的：handed down from childhood, hand sth down tosb意思就是把…传给（后代），比如xx是父子相传：be handed down fromfather to son

Fall short of sth表示不符合、达不到某个标准，也就是我们说的“有差距拖后腿”，后面呼应也替换成了名词falling-short。

Separation表示无法跟家人在一起的分离，isolation表示自己独处一室的孤独。这就是今年因为疫情大家所能感受到的圣诞。Shadow作动词，就表示笼罩..投下阴影。活在xx的阴影下，就可以说是xx shadows my life.

But who feels this nostalgic pain most sharply?I had grown so used to thinking of “A Child’s Christmas” as agrandfatherly book that it’s striking to recognize it as the work of a man ofmy own age, like me a writer and a father of young children (though unlike me aliterary celebrity living a wild and dissolute New York life). His Christmasclassic poses as a fond glance backward from old age, but really its nostalgiabelongs to the chaotic, high-stress middle of life’s journey — the mostunhappy phase of life, at least if you believe the social scientists.

参考译文：但谁最能感受到这种怀旧的痛苦？能写出《一个孩子的圣诞节》这样的书，那作者一定以及是我这个年龄段的了，是作家也是父亲，对于这种看法我已经见怪不怪了(尽管我是一个文学名人，在纽约过着狂野放荡的生活)。他的圣诞pose非常经典，用慈爱的目光回首老年时光，但实际上它的怀旧之情属于人生旅途中混乱、高压力的阶段——人生中最不快乐的阶段，至少如果你相信社会科学家的话。

把chaotic和high-stress一起归类进词条，用来形容混乱的中年再好不过了。当然我觉得这个两个词也蛮适合现在的20+。

这里出现了nostalgia的形容词nostalgic，当你想说我很怀念xx，那就是：I feel quite nostalgic for xx；这里的nostalgic pain就是思念之苦，怀旧之痛~而sharply这个程度副词就可以表示出“最感同身受”的意思。

So what should themiddle-aged, in particular, make of their Christmas nostalgia, their annualDecember ache? One answer is that it’s a gift: A glowing coalcarried through cold grown-up nights, a memory of innocence and a counterpointto the compromised selves that we become with age. In middle age, you start torecognize that the choices you’ve made in adulthood can’t be easily unwound,that you might become a person you didn’t mean to be — waking up in another20 years as the villain of your own story, Ebenezer Scroogebefore the visitation.

参考译文：那么，中年人应该如何看待他们对圣诞节的怀旧之情呢?一个答案是，它是一份礼物:在寒冷的成人夜晚，一块燃烧着的煤，一段纯真的记忆，一种我们随着年龄而变得妥协的自我的对比。到了中年，你开始意识到，你在成年时所做的选择是不能轻易解除的，你可能会成为一个你不想成为的人——在另一个20年里醒来，成为你自己故事中的恶棍，埃比尼泽·斯克鲁奇在来访之前。

学一个很实用的口语句型：what do you make of it? 你怎么看？你的意见是？完全替换掉what’s youropinion?

这里说annual December ache年度12月心头痛，也是和nostalgic pain相呼应，毕竟怀旧时，心会痛的~ache就是疼痛的意思，不过它在外刊中会经常比喻表示“困难，挫折，问题”，平时多多注意。

在学一个写作句型，当作文中需要提出解决方案，你可别说solution了，answer其实非常好用，直接记下来：One answer is that …

我们总说，我们最终长大，都变成了自己曾厌恶的人，这就是become a person youdidn’t mean to be, 本无意~

换句话说，我们变成了自己剧本中的那个恶棍。the villain of your own story中的villain就是恶棍，坏蛋的意思，他在外刊中还可以表示背后的原因、罪魁祸首，通常是负面的。

由于篇幅原因，就讲到这里~还剩了几段，要是我不犯懒的话，明后天写写吧哈哈哈哈哈哈哈。

Merry Christmas~ 爱你们~