Banquet Speech after His Award
获Noble奖后的晚宴讲话
Banquet Speech after His Award
维·苏·保奈尔
[2005年2月21日]
语言精华的体现当数文学，而文学家的讲话经常闪现出智慧的灵光。
Our Majesties, your royal Highnesses, honored laureates,
Ladies and gentlemen:
国王、王后陛下,诸位殿下,尊敬的Noble奖得主们,女士们、先生们:
One of the things that happen to people who get the Nobel Prize, is that they also get a lot of media attention. Many interviews, too many, so many that I began to feel now that I've lost the capacity for spontaneous thought I need the questions and since there not going to be my questions now, I thought I would began the two minute speech which is meat to be light, like the old fashion comedian, the man you know to whom things happened on the way to the studio.
Noble奖的获得者总会遇到这样的情况:招来了媒体的广泛注意。多不胜数的采访，多得应接不暇，多的开始让我觉得已经丧失了自发思考的能力了。我渴望有人提问,而因为此刻将不会有任何提问,我想我应该开始我的两分钟演讲一一这演讲会是轻松活泼的,就如老牌的喜剧演员,笑话就发生在他去演播室的路上。
Well then. Something happened to me, on the to Stockholm:
好,那就开始吧。在来斯德哥尔摩的路上发生了一件事:
The strap of my wristwatch broke, and for some surreal moments I found myself looking at my watch on the floor of the plane. This is no metaphor, here is the strapless watch. What did it mean? What was the awful symbolism? The fact that all through, this grand Nobel week, I was to be without my watch. The great Caesar landing in Egypt fell flat on his face in the wet shore-you can imagine the consternation of his officers, until the great and resourceful man shouted, Africa I've got you! Some centuries later, the Emperor Ju1ian, training one morning with his soldiers, lost the wicker part of his shield, he was left holding only the grip or the handle. How terrible for everybody until the Emperor shouted, what I have I hold!
我的手表表带断了。于是,有好几个离奇的时刻,我发现自己凝视着躺在飞机地板上的手表。这并不是比喻,没有表带的手表就在这里。这是什么意思呢?其骇人的象征意义又是什么呢?结果是,整个隆重的Noble周,我都没有带手表了。伟大的恺撒大帝登陆埃及时脸朝地直挺挺地跌倒在潮湿的海滩上一一你可以想象得到他手下的官兵是怎样的惊惶失措一一直至后来这个充满雄韬伟略的男子大声呼喊:"非洲,我把你弄到手了!"几个世纪以后,尤里安大帝在一天早上练兵时,盾牌的柳织部分掉了,只剩下把手或者说手柄拿在手上,当时所有人都觉得多么的可怕啊,然而大帝最后高声呼喊:"我拥有的,我都抓住了!"
Not having the resourcefulness of these great men, I could find no words to make the bad symbolism good, until tonight, when I understood, that time was to stop for me, during this Nobel week, and that when it began again it will be truly new. Now my strapless watch benign again, tells me without threat-that my time is running out, my two minutes are up.
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The Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
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Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from this earth.
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