高级英语 Advanced English(张汉熙) 第二册 12.The Discovery of What

The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American

James Baldwin

1 “It is a complex fate to be an American,” Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is. America’s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world – yesterday and today – are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word “America” remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.

2 I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.) I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or even, merely a Negro writer. I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them. (I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him.)

3 In my necessity to find the terms on which my experience could be related to that of others, Negroes and whites, writers and non-writers, I proved, to my astonishment, to be as American as any Texas G. I. And I found my experience was shared by every American writer I knew in Paris. Like me, they had been divorced from their origins, and it turned out to make very little difference that the origins of white Americans were European and mine were African – they were no more at home in Europe than I was.

4 The fact that I was the son of a slave and they were the sons of free men meant less, by the time we confronted each other on Europe soil, than the fact that we were both searching for our separate identities. When we had found these, we seemed to be saying, why, then, we would no longer need to cling to the shame and bitterness which had divided us so long.

5 It became terribly clear in Europe, as it never had been here, that we knew more about each other than any European ever could. And it also became clear that, no matter where our fathers had been born, or what they had endured, the fact of Europe had formed us both, was part of our identity and part of our inheritance.

6 I had been in Paris a couple of years before any of this became clear to me. When it did, I like many a writer before me upon the discovery that his props have all been knocked out from under him, suffered a species of breakdown and was carried off to the mountains of Switzerland, There, in that absolutely Hiroshima landscape, armed with two Bessie Smith records and a typewriter I began to try to recreate the life that I had first known as a child and from which I had spent so many years in flight.

7 It was Bessie Smith, through her tone and her cadence, who helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was a pickaninny, and to remember the things I had never listened to Bessie Smith in America (in the same way that, for years, I would not touch watermelon), but in Europe she helped to reconcile me to being a “nigger”.

8 I do not think that I could have made this reconciliation here. Once I was able to accept my role – as distinguished, I must say, from my “place”—in the extraordinary drama which is America, I was released from the illusion that I hated America.

9 The story of what can happen to an American Negro writer in Europe simply illustrates, in some relief, what can happen to any American writer there. It is not meant, of course, to imply that it happens to them all, for Europe can be very crippling too; and, anyway, a writer, when he has made his first breakthrough, has simply won a crucial skirmish in a dangerous, unending and unpredictable battle still, the breakthrough is important, and the point is that an American writer, in order to achieve it, very often has to leave this country.

10 The American writer, in Europe, is released, first of all, from the necessity of apologizing for himself. It is not until he is released from the habit of flexing his muscles and proving that he is just a “regular guy” that he realizes how crippling this habit has been. It is not necessary for him, there, to pretend to be something he is not, for the artist does not encounter in Europe the same suspicion he encounters here. Whatever the Europeans may actually think of artists, they have killed enough of them off by now to know that they are as real – and as persistent – as rain, snow, taxes or businessmen.

11 Of course, the reason for Europe’s comparative clarity concerning the different functions of men in society is that European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition – of intellectual activity, of letters – and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.

12 On the contrary, we have a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately). An American writer fights his way to one of the lowest rungs on the American social ladder by means of pure bull-headednessand an indescribable series of odd jobs. He probably has been a “regular fellow” for much of his adult life, and it is not easy for him to step out of that lukewarm bath.

13 We must, however, consider a rather serious paradox ; though American society is more mobile than Europe’s, it is easier to cut across social and occupational lines there than it is here. This has something to do, I think, with the problem of status in American life. Where everyone has status, it is also perfectly possible, after all, that no one has. It seems inevitable, in any case, that a man may become uneasy as to just what his status is.

14 But Europeans have lived with the idea of status for a long time. A man can be as proud of being a good waiter as of being a good actor, and in neither case feel threatened. And this means that the actor and the waiter can have a freer and more genuinely friendly relationship in Europe than they are likely to have here. The waiter does not feel, with obscure resentment, that the actor has “made it,” and the actor is not tormented by the fear that he may find himself, tomorrow, once again a waiter.

15 This lack of what may roughly be called social paranoia causes the American writer in Europe to feel – almost certainly for the first time in his life – that he can reach out to everyone, that he is accessible to everyone and open to everything. This is an extraordinary feeling. He feels, so to speak, his own weight, his own value.

16 It is as though he suddenly came out of a dark tunnel and found himself beneath the open sky. And, in fact, in Paris, I began to see the sky for what seemed to be the first time. It was borne in on me – and it did not make me feel melancholy – that this sky had been there before I was born and would be there when I was dead. And it was up to me, therefore, to make of my brief opportunity the most that could be made.

17 I was born in New York, but have lived only in pockets of it. In Paris, I lived in all parts of the city – on the Right bank and the Left, among the bourgeoisie and among les miserables, and knew all kinds of people, from pimps and prostitutes in Pigalle to Egyptian bankers in Neuilly. This may sound extremely unprincipled or even obscurely immoral: I found it healthy. I love to talk to people, all kinds of people, and almost everyone, as I hope we still know, loves a man who loves to listen.

18 This perpetual dealing with people very different from myself caused a shattering in me of preconceptions I scarcely knew I held. The writer is meeting in Europe people who are not American, whose sense of reality is entirely different from his own. They may love or hate or admire or fear or envy this country – they see it, in any case, from another point of view, and this forces the writer to reconsider many things he had always taken for granted. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable.

19 This freedom, like all freedom, has its dangers and its responsibilities. One day it begins to be borne in on the writer, and with great force, that he is living in Europe as an American. If he were living there as a European, he would be living on a different and far less attractive continent.

20 This crucial day may be the day on which an Algerian taxi-driver tells him how it feels to be an Algerian in Paris. It ma, y b, e, the d, ay on , which he passes a café terrace and catches a gl, i, mpse , of the tense, intelligent and troubled face of Albert Camus. Or it may be the day on which someone asks him to explain Little Rock and he begins to feel that it would be simpler – and, corny as the words may sound, more honorable – to go to Little Rock than sit in Europe, on an American passport, trying to explain it.

<, /FONT>, 21 This is a personal day, a terrible day, the day to which his entire sojournhas been tending. It is the day he realizes that there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world; that if he has been preparing himself for anything in Europe, he had been preparing himself – for America. In short, the freedom that the American writer finds in Europe brings him, full circle, back to himself, with the responsibility for his development where it always was: in his own hands.

22 Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him – he may be forced to – but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally , the life of a writer depends.

23 The charge has often been made against American writers that they do not describe society, and have no interest in it. They only describe individuals in opposition to it, or isolated from it. Of course, what the American writer is describing is his own situation. But what is Anna Karenina describing if not the tragic fate of the isolated individual, at odds with her time and place?

24 The real difference is that Tolstoy was describing an old and dense society in which everything seemed –to the people in it, though not to Tolstoy – to be fixed forever. And the book is a masterpiece because Tolstoy was able to fathom , and make us see, the hidden laws which really governed this society and made Anna’s doom inevitable.

25 American writers do not have a fixed society to describe. The only society they know is one in which nothing is fixed and in which the individual must fight for his identity. This is a rich confusion, indeed, and it creates for the American writer unprecedented opportunities.

26 That the tension of American life, as well as the possibilities, are tremendous is certainly not even a question. But these are dealt with in contemporary literature mainly compulsively ; that is, the book is more likely to be a symptom of our tension than an examination of it. The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here.

27 Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception. It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter.

28 It is no wonder, in the meantime, that the American writer keeps running off to Europe. He needs sustenance for his journey and the best models he can find. Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of life’s possibilities.

29 In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

第十二课一个发现：做一个美国人意味着什么

詹姆斯鲍德温

亨利詹姆斯曾经说过，"身为一个美国人是一种复杂玄妙的命运。"而一位作家在欧洲作出的最重大的发现就是这种命运究竟复杂到何种程度。美国的历史，其远大志向，其不同凡响的辉煌成就，还有她那更加不同凡响的挫折失败。以及她在世界上的地位--不论是过去还是现在…都是那么深不可测而又无可更改地独一无二，以至于"美国"这个词至今仍是一个陌生的、几乎可以说是完全没有明确定义的、且具有极大争议性的专有名词。世界上似乎还没有人确切地知道这个词的含义，就连我们这些五颜六色、千千万万自称为美国人的人也不例外。

我当初离开美国是因为我曾怀疑自己能否经受住这儿的有色人种问题的狂风暴雨的冲击。(现在我仍然时不时地这样怀疑。)我想使自己不至于仅仅成为一个黑人，或是仅仅只成为一个黑人作家。我想寻求一种什么途径。来使自己的生活经历的特殊性把自己与他人联系起来而不是分离开来。(我同黑人之间也产生了隔阂，就像我同白人之间的隔阂一样严重，当一个黑人开始真正地相信白人对黑人的评价时，常常就会发生这样的情况。)

在我认为有必要去寻求一种能把我的生活经历同别的人一一黑人和白人，作家和非作家--的生活经历联系起来的途径的过程中，我惊奇地发现：自己原来也同任何得克萨斯州士兵一样，是非常爱国的美国人。而且我发现，我在巴黎所认识的每一位美国作家都有我这种感受。他们都同我一样脱离了自己的本源，而且事实证明，这些美国白人的欧洲本源同我的非洲本源竞没有多少差别--他们在欧洲也像我一样感到不自在。

我是奴隶的后代，而他们是自由人的子孙，这种差异则无关紧要。因为我们在欧洲大地上相遇时，都在努力探求着各自的自我价值。当我们终于发现各自的自我价值之后，我们似乎都在感慨：这下可好啦，多少年来造成我们之间的隔阂的遗憾和痛苦之情，我们可再也不用死抱住不放了。

我们美国人彼此间的相互了解超过任何欧洲人所能达到的程度。这一点在本国不曾有人认识到，但一到欧洲，我们便认识得很清楚了。还有一点也显得很清楚：不论我们的祖先源于何处，也不管他们曾有过什么样的遭遇，我们美国黑人和白人都是欧洲造就出来的。这一事实就是我们的身分以及我们的遗传特征的组成部分。

在我认清这些之前，我在巴黎呆了两三年的时间。待到认清这些之后，我就像许多前辈作家发现他的生活支柱全部被人拆掉了一样，遭受了一种精神崩溃的痛苦，不得不到瑞士的高山上去疗养。在那一片晶莹的雪山景色中。我以两张贝西·史密斯的唱片和一台打字机为工具，开始试图把自己孩提时代最初体验到的，多年来又一直想尽力忘却的生活经历再现出来。

是贝西·史密斯用她的音调和节拍帮我发掘出了当我还是个黑人小孩时本就使用过的说话口吻，使我重新忆起了小时候的所闻、所见和所感。我已将这些深深藏在了心底。在美国。我从来不听贝西·史密斯的歌(这与我多年不碰西瓜是同一道理)，但在欧洲，她却使我体会到身为"黑鬼"并没有什么不好。

我觉得自己在美国是体会不到这一点的。一旦我能够接受自己在美国这出不同寻常的戏剧中所扮演的角色--应该指出，这里说的角色是就我的"地位"而言--我便从仇恨美国的幻觉中清醒过来了。

一个美国黑人作家在欧洲所可能遇到的一切只是比较鲜明地显示了任何一位美国作家在欧洲所可能遇到的情况。当然这并不是说所有的人都会遇上同样的情况，因为欧洲也很有可能阻碍人的发展。不管怎么说，当一个作家完成自己的第一次突破时，他只不过是在一次险象环生、旷日持久、胜负难料的战役中打赢了一场有决定意义的小规模战斗。虽则如此，第一次突破仍是很重要的，问题是一个美国作家要实现这一次突破，往往就必得离开自己的国家。

在欧洲，美国作家首先是不必为自己进行辩护的。只有等到他摆脱了要靠屈伸肌肉亮出本领来证明自己是个"正常人"的习惯之后，他才会认识到这一习惯是多么的有害。在欧洲，他不必装模作样地掩饰自己的本来面目，因为艺术家在那里不会像在美国一样遭到怀疑。不论欧洲人对待艺术家的实际态度如何，他们所毁掉的艺术家已经够多的了，而现在他们终于认识到艺术家就像雨、雪、税收和商人一样是真实存在，并且永远会存在的。

当然，欧洲人之所以对于人们在社会中所起的不同作用有比较明确的概念，是因为欧洲社会历来就被划分为不同的阶层，而美国社会则从未这样划分过。欧洲作家把自己看作一种古老而光荣的传统--文化活动或文学创作传统--的一部分。在选择这一职业时，他不用去顾虑自己是否会因此而失去所有的朋友。然而，美国却没有这样一种传统。

恰恰相反，我们美国人对于真正的文化活动持有一种根深蒂固的不信任态度(这大概是因为人们担心文化活动会粉碎一一我倒希望如此一一我们死死抓住不放的美国神话)。一个美国作家必须凭着一股十足的牛劲拼命奋斗，并从事一系列难以形容的零工杂活才能勉强爬上美国社会阶梯的最低一级。也许在他成年生活的大部分时间里，他一直在过着"正常人"的生活，要他从这个温水浴池中跨出来，可实在有点不容易。

不过，我们还必须考虑一个相当严重的怪现象：尽管美国社会提供给人们的改变社会地位的机会比欧洲多，但在欧洲人们却比在美国更容易跨越社会和职业界线。我认为，这同美国社会生活中的地位问题不无关系。在一个人人都有地位的地方，也完全可能没有一个人真正有地位。因此，一个人会因为不知自己地位如何而忧心忡忡，这是无论如何都不可逃避的事实。

而欧洲人早已正确接受了地位观念。一个人不论是当个好堂倌还是好演员，都会同样地为自己的地位而感到自豪，而且彼此之间也不会感到有任何威胁。这就意味着，在欧洲，一个演员和一个堂倌之间可以建立起比在美国更自由、更真诚的友谊。堂倌不会因演员的"成名得利"而感到丝毫的怨愤，演员也不用提心吊胆地害怕自己有朝一日会重新当起堂倌。

由于消除了那种可以不那么准确地称之为社会偏执狂的心理，在欧洲的美国作家开始觉得--几乎可以肯定地说是平生第一次产生这种感觉一一他可以接近任何人，也欢迎任何人来接近他，而且也愿意同任何人谈论任何事。这是一种很不寻常的感觉。可以说，他感觉出了自身的分量和价值。

这就好比是他突然问从一条黑暗的隧道中走出，发现自己正置身于辽阔的天空之下。确确实实，我就是在巴黎才仿佛是第一次见到了天空。这使我深深地认识到--但这并没有使我忧伤…那天空在我出生前就已存在，而在我去世之后仍将存在。因此，如何尽可能地充分利用自己短暂的一生，就完全取决于我自己了。

我出生于纽约，但生活范围只限于纽约的一些小角落，而在巴黎，我的生活足迹却遍及全市的每一个角落--在右岸区和左岸区，在有钱的资产阶级中间和"悲惨世界"里的穷人中间。我还结识了各式各样的人物，从皮加叶区的老鸨和妓女到纳伊区的埃及银行家都接触过。这听起来可能很不正经，甚至有点不道德，但我觉得这是正常的。我喜欢与人交谈，与各种各样的人交谈，而几乎每一个人--正如我所希望人们仍然明白的--都是喜欢爱听人讲话的人。

与这些跟我自己大不相同的人的不断交往，破除了我思想上原先并没有意识到的一些偏见。作者在欧洲遇见的一些人并不是美国人，他们对现实的感受同他本人的感受完全两样。对于美国这个国家，他们或是热爱，或是憎恨，或是敬佩，或是畏惧，或是妒忌--反正他们是从另一个不同的角度来看待美国的，这就迫使作者对许多他原以为是理所当然的事情重新加以考虑。这个重新认识的过程是非常痛苦的，但也是很有价值的。

这种自由(指美国作家到欧洲后摆脱了原先的种种束缚和传统观念，等于获得了某种自由一一译者注)，像任何一种自由一样，也带来一些危险和责任。总有一天，在欧洲的美国作家会意识到，而且是强烈地意识到，他是作为一个美国人居住在欧洲的。倘若他是作为一个欧洲人居住在欧洲，那么，他所居住的这块大陆在他心目中的地位就会大不一样，其对他的吸引力也会大打折扣。

这个有决定性意义的一天，可能就是当一个阿尔及利亚出租车司机对他讲起作为一个阿尔及利亚人生活在巴黎有何种感受的那一天，也可能是他路过某一家露天小吃店的平台，一眼瞥见艾伯特·加缪那张紧张、睿智而又苦闷的面孔的那一天，还有可能是有人请他讲述一下小石城的事情的那一天。这时，他就会感觉到，与其拿着美国护照坐在欧洲向人们讲述小石城的事情，倒不如亲身投入到小石城的民主斗争中去来得干脆--或者说光荣，尽管这个词听起来有些不新鲜。

这是他个人生活中有重大意义的一天，是可怕的一天，也是他的整个羁旅生涯目标所向的一天。就是在这一天，他终于认识到，在这个多灾多难的世界上并不存在什么太平乐土;如果说他一直在欧洲训练自己准备承担什么重任的话，他实际是在为美国而训练自己。总而言之，美国作家在欧洲找到的自由，带着他绕了整整一圈后，又回到了自己身边。用其自身发展的责任把自己又带回到了自由原本所在之处--他自己手中。

即使是一头最不可救药的迷途小牛也必有其降生地点。他也许会脱离那曾生养他的群体--或许是被迫如此一一但是，无论他走到哪里，他身上总会带着他的出身标志，这是无论如何也抹不掉的。我认为了解这一点，甚至像那些最坚强的人那样，不论地位如何，能视之为乐事，是很重要的。说实在的，一个作家的命运便取决于他对这一点能否接受。

人们常常指责美国作家们.说他们不描写社会，对社会问题不感兴趣。他们只喜欢描写与社会对立的个人，或是与社会相脱离的个人。诚然，美国作家所描写的是他个人的情况，但《安娜·卡列宁娜》中所描写的，如果说不是那个与时代和社会格格不入的孤立个人的悲惨命运，那又到底是什么呢?

真正的区别在于：托尔斯泰所描写的是一个古老而结构严密的社会，在那个社会中，一切事物--在该社会的成员看来，不过不包括托尔斯泰一一似乎都是一成不变的。这部著作之所以成为一部伟大作品是因为托尔斯泰能够探索出，并且使我们清楚地看到一些潜在的规律，这些规律对那个社会起着实际的支配作用并使安娜的悲惨结局成为必然之事。

美国作家并没有一个一成不变的社会可供他们描写。他们所了解的社会只是一个万事皆变、人人为出人头地而奋斗的社会。这确实是一个五彩缤纷、错综复杂的社会，它为美国作家提供了前所未有的创作机会。

美国生活的极度紧张和它提供的无限的发展机会已经是尽人皆知、毫无疑问的事实了。但当代文学作品中对这些问题的描写却很带勉强性。也就是说，这些作品不是对我们社会中的紧张生活的深入分析，倒更像是这种紧张生活的直接反映。天晓得，现在该我们对自己进行一番检查的时候了。但如果我们要将自己从美国神话中解放出来，并设法弄清楚这个国家的现实情况究竟是怎样的，我们也就只能这样做。

每个社会其实都是由一些潜在的规律，由一些人们没有说出来但却深深感觉到并看作是理所当然的事物所支配的，我们的社会也不例外。要弄清这些规律和事物，就要由美国作家来努力。在一个非常喜爱冲破禁忌却又不能由此从中解脱出来的社会，要弄清这些，不会是一件容易的事。

难怪在此期间美国作家不断跑到欧洲去。他的人生历程需要精神食粮，他也需要可能找到的最好的模式。欧洲有着我们还没有的东西，一种生活的神秘而又不可抗拒的极限感，一句话，一种悲剧感。而我们也有着他们十分需要的东西--一种认为生活大有可为的新认识。

在努力把旧世界的看法和新世界的看法结合起来的过程中，不是政治家，而是作家，是我们最强的一支力量。虽然我们迄今还未全信，可是内心的生活确是真正的生活，而人们那种海市蜃楼般的梦幻却对世界有着实实在在的影响。

(选自《没有人知道我的名字》)

词汇(Vocabulary)

controversial (adj.) : stirring up controversy;debatable引起争论的

motley (adj.) : of many colors or patches of color;having or composed of many different or clashing elements：heterogeneous杂色的;斑杂的;混杂的，杂乱的

identity (n.) : the condition or fact of being a specific person or thing;individuality个性;个人的特征

prop (n.) : a rigid support，as a beam，stake，or pole，placed under or against a structure or part支柱;支持物;撑材

alabaster (n.) : a translucent，whitish，fine-grained variety of gypsum，used for statues，vases，etc.雪花石膏

cadence (n.) : inflection or modulation in tone;any rhythmic flow of sound声音的抑扬顿挫;声调;节奏

pickaninny (n.) : .a negro child黑人小孩

cripple (v.) : frustrate，hinder;make unable or unfit to act，function effectively，etc.使损伤;使丧失活动能力;使失去战斗力;削弱

breakthrough (n.) : a strikingly important advance or discovery in any field of knowledge or activity突破;重大发现;惊人进展

skirmish (n.) : a brief fight or encounter between small groups，usually an incident of a battle：any slight。unimportant conflict;brush小规模战斗;小冲突

rung (n.) : any of the crosspieces constituting the steps of a ladder梯级

lukewarm (n.) : (of liquids，etc.)barely or moderately warm(液体等)微温的

paradox (n.) : a statement that seems contradictory，unbelievable.or absurd but that may actually be true in fact反论

paranoia (n.) : a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions，as of grandeur，or，esp. ，persecution，often, except in a schizophrenic state，with an otherwise relatively intact personality妄想狂;偏执狂

accessible (adj.) : easy to approach or enter易接近的;易进去的

pocket (n.) : a small area or group of a specified type小块地区;凹地;小圈子

pimp (n.) : one who is an agent for a prostitute or prostitutes and lives off their earnings;procurer拉皮条的人;为妓女拉客的人;妓院老板

perpetual (adj.) : continuing indefinitely without interruption：unceasing;constant不断的;重复不停的

preconception (n.) : bias or prejudice偏见

terrace (n.) : an unroofed paved area，immediately adjacent to a house，etc.露天平台;阳台

corny (adj. [cloolq.]) : unsophisticated，old-fashioned，trite，banal，sentimental，etc.过时的;陈腐的

sojourn (n.) : a brief 0r temporary stay;visit旅居;短期访问

incorrigible (adj.) : not corrigible;that cannot be corrected。improved，or reformed，esp. because firmly established, as a habit不可救药的;难以纠正的;根深蒂固的

efface (v.) : rub out，as from a surface;erase;wipe out;obliterate(从表面)擦掉，擦去，抹去;消除(痕迹)

fathom (v.) : measure the depth of;get to the bottom of; understand thoroughly测深;追根究底;弄清…的真相

unprecedented (adj.) : having no precedent or parallel;unheard-of;novel前所未有的;无前例的;新奇的

compulsive (adj.) : of，having to do with，or resulting from compulsion强迫的;有强迫力的

taboo (n.) : any social prohibition or restriction that results from convention or tradition(社会习俗或传统习惯方面的)禁忌;避讳

sustenance (n.) : that which sustains life;nourishment;food食物;营养物

inexorable (adj.) : that cannot be moved or influenced by persuasion or entreaty;unrelenting不退让的，不屈不挠的;不为所动的

sorely (adv.) : urgently;greatly;extremely迫切地;极其;非常

wed (v.) : unite or join closely密切结合

arm (n.) : any combatant branch of the military forces兵种;军种

intangible (adj.) : that cannot be easily defined，formulated，or grasped;vague难以确定(或捉摸、掌握)的;模糊的;不明确的

短语(Expressions)

at bottom : fundamentally，actually根本上，实际上

例：At bottom I don't trust him.实际上我并不信任他。

in nigllt(from) : escaping from逃避，逃开

例：She has to face what she is always in flight from now.她现在必须面对自己一直在逃避的事情了。

in reHef : in sharp contrast浮雕一般，鲜明地，显著地

例：The peaks stood out in bold relief against the azure sky.在蓝天的映衬下，山峰的轮廓极为明显。

be borne.m on/upon sb.: if a fact is borne in 0n someone,they re-alize that it is tree(事实等)为某人所认识的

例：It was borne in on us how close we had been to disaster.我们已认识到灾难迫在眉睫。