评论
打印
Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical;
当然，这种两难的推测纯属假设；
since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE.
既然他不是个恶棍般的波兰贵族，现在假设他是，再来推断他妻子将有什么权力，这未免荒唐。
But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that,
然而纽兰·阿切尔想像力太强，
in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable.
难免不想到他与梅的关系也可能会由于远没有如此严重和明显的原因而受到损害。
What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her,
两个人又怎能真正相互了解呢？因为作为一个“正人君子”，向她隐瞒自己的过去是他的义务，
and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?
而作为已到婚龄的姑娘，她的义务却是把过去的历史向他袒露。
What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them,
假如因某种微妙的原因
they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other?
使他们两人互相厌倦、误解或发生不愉快，那该怎么办呢？
He reviewed his friends' marriages—the supposedly happy ones—and saw none that answered, even remotely,
他回顾朋友们的婚姻——那些被认为是美满的婚姻——发现没有一个（哪怕一点点）符合
to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland.
他为自己与梅·韦兰构想的那种终生相伴的热烈而又温柔的友爱关系。
He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment,
他意识到，作为这种构想的前提条件——她的经验、她的多才多艺、她的判断自由——
which she had been carefully trained not to possess;
她早已被精心训练得不具备了。
and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were:
他预感地打了个冷颤，发现自己的婚姻变得跟周围大部分人完全相同：
a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.
一种由一方的愚昧与另一方的虚伪捏合在一起的物质利益与社会利益的乏味的联盟。
Lawrence Lefferts occurred to him as the husband who had most completely realised this enviable ideal.
他想到，劳伦斯·莱弗茨就是一个彻底实现了这一令人羡慕的理想的丈夫。
As became the high-priest of form, he had formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that,
那位仪态举止方面的权威，塑造了一位给他最大方便的妻子。
in the most conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's wives,
在他与别人的妻子频繁发生桃色事件大出风头的时刻，
she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that "Lawrence was so frightfully strict";
她却照常喜笑颜开，不知不觉，四处游说：“劳伦斯极其循规蹈矩。”
and had been known to blush indignantly, and avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact that Julius Beaufort
有人在她面前提及朱利叶斯·博福特拥有纽约人所说的“外室”时
(as became a "foreigner" of doubtful origin) had what was known in New York as "another establishment."
（籍贯来历不明的“外国人”常常如此），据说她气得脸都红了，并且把目光移开。
Archer tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite such an ass as Larry Lefferts,
阿切尔设法安慰自己，心想他跟拉里·莱弗茨那样的蠢驴决不可同日而语，
nor May such a simpleton as poor Gertrude;
梅也不是可悲的格特鲁德那样的傻瓜；
but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not of standards.
然而这差别毕竟只是属于才智方面的，而不是原则性的。
