No aspect of life in the Twenties has been more commented upon and sensationally romanticized than the so-called Revolt of the Younger Generation. The slightest mention of the decade brings nostalgic recollections to the middle-aged and curious questionings by the young: memories of the deliciously illicit thrill of the first visit to a speakeasy, of the brave denunciation of Puritan morality, and of the fashionable experimentations in amour in the parked sedan on a country road;
在20世纪生活的方方面面中，所谓的青年一代的反抗是人们评论最多和渲染最严重的。只要稍稍提及一下那个年代，就会引起中年人的怀旧回忆和青年人的好奇发问：中年人会回忆起第一次光顾非法经营的酒吧时因违法而带来的绝妙刺激，会回忆起对清教徒式道德的勇敢谴责，会回忆起乡间路上停着的小轿车里发生的新潮的爱情体验。
questions about the naughty, jazzy parties, the flask-toting “sheik”, and the moral and stylistic vagaries of the “flapper” and the “drugstore cowboy.” “Were young people really so wild?” present-day students ask their parents and teachers. “Was there really a Younger Generation problem?” The answers to such inquiries must of necessity be “yes” and “no”- “yes” because the business of growing up is always accompanied by a Younger Generation Problem; “no” because what seemed so wild, irresponsible, and immoral in social behavior at the time can now be seen in perspective as being something considerably less sensational than the degeneration of our jazz mad youth.
青年人会问起奔放的爵士聚会，会问起背着酒葫芦的美男子，会问起摩登女郎和地痞流氓的古怪行为和奇特风格。“那时的青年真的那么狂野吗？”如今的学生向他们的父母和老师问道。“青年一代真的有问题吗？”对这些问题必然有两种答复：“是”或者“不是”——回答“是”，是因为在成长的过程中总是伴随着青年一代的问题；回答“不是”，是因为当时看上去那么狂野、不负责任和不道德的行为，如今看来远远比不上迷恋爵士乐的青年人的堕落行为那样疯狂。
Actually, the revolt of the young people was a logical outcome of conditions in the age. First of all, it must be remembered that the rebellion was not confined to the United States, but affected the entire Western world as a result of the aftermath of the first serious war in a century.
实际上，青年一代的叛逆是当时客观状况的必然结果。首先，必须被铭记于心的是，这种叛逆并不局限于美国，而波及到整个西方世界，因为这是一个世纪里首次重大战争的的毒瘤。
Second, in the United States it was reluctantly realized by some—— subconsciously if not openly—— that our country was no longer isolated in either politics or tradition and that we had reached an international stature that would forever prevent us from retreating behind the artificial walls of a provincial morality or the geographical protection of our two bordering oceans.
其次，在美国一些人不情愿地认识到——如果不是清清楚楚地认识到，也会下意识地认识到——我们国家在政治或传统上不再是孤立的，我们的国际地位使我们不能退缩到狭隘的道德标准的人工围墙之后，也不能退缩到两面临海的地理保护圈之中。
The rejection of Victorian gentility was, in any case, inevitable. The booming of American industry, with its gigantic roaring factories, its corporate impersonality, and its large-scale aggressiveness, no longer left any room for the code of polite behavior and well-bred morality fashioned in a quieter and less competitive age. War or no war, as the generations passed, it became increasingly difficult for our young to accept standards of behavior that bore no relationship to the bustling business medium in which they were expected to battle for success.
摒弃维多利亚时代的文雅是大势所趋，不可避免。美国工业的繁荣，巨大而喧嚣的工厂，企业的不近人情和大规模的挺进使得在相对较安静和竞争力弱的时代中形成的温文尔雅和有良好教养的道德规范失去了立足之地。无论是否会发生战争，随着时代的变迁，我们的年轻人越来越难以接受这种与熙熙攘攘的商业社会格格不入的行为准则，如今的这种环境下，他们要做的就是为成功而战。
The war acted merely as a catalyst agent in this breakdown of the Victorian social structure, and by precipitating our young people into a pattern of mass murder it released their inhibited violent energies which, after the shooting was over, were turned in both Europe and America to the destruction of an obsolescent nineteenth-century society.
在维多利亚社会结构瓦解的过程中，战争仅仅起到了催化剂的作用。年轻人被推向大规模的谋杀战场上，这种被压抑的狂暴力量能够得以释放。战争结束后，在欧洲和美国，这些狂暴能量只能调转枪头，直指腐朽陈旧的19世纪旧社会。
Thus in a changing world youth was faced with the challenge of bringing our mores up to date. But at the same time it was tempted, in America at least, to escape its responsibilities and retreat behind an air of naughty alcoholic sophistication and a pose of Bohemian immorality. The faddishness, the wild spending of money on transitory pleasures and momentary novelties, the hectic air of gaiety, the experimentation in sensation-- sex, drugs, alcohol, perversions- were all part of the pattern of escape, an escape made possible by a general prosperity and a post-war fatigue with politics, economic restrictions, and international responsibilities.
因此，在一个不断变化的世界中，青年人面临着使我们的道德观念与时俱进的挑战。但同时，青年人——至少美国的青年人——被诱使逃避责任，堕落到以酒度日，老于世故的生活作风之中，摆出波西米亚式伤风败俗的姿态，追求时髦，为了获得短暂的快乐和瞬间的新奇而挥金如土，纵情狂欢，寻求感官刺激——性、毒品、酒精、性变态——这些都是逃避责任的表现，普遍的繁荣、战后对政治经济限制和国际责任的厌倦使得这种逃避成为可能。
Prohibition afforded the young the additional opportunity of making their pleasures illicit, and the much-publicized orgies and defiant manifestos of the intellectuals crowding into Greenwich Village gave them a pattern and a philosophic defense for their escapism. And like most escapist sprees, this one lasted until the money ran out, until the crash of the world economic structure at the end of the decade called the party to a hault and forced the revelers to sober up and face the problems of the new age.
禁酒令使得青年们有了更多机会寻求非法作乐的快感。大批知识分子涌入格林威治村，他们的放纵行为和挑衅宣言被大肆渲染，为他们的逃避主义提供了模式和哲学辩护。就像大多数逃避主义者的狂欢一样，这次持续到资金耗尽，直到本年代末期世界经济结构土崩瓦解才停下来，迫使饮酒狂欢者冷静下来面对新时代的问题。
The rebellion started with World War 1. The prolonged stalemate of 1915-1916, the increasing insolence of Germany toward the United States, and our official reluctance to declare our status as a belligerent were intolerable to many of our idealistic citizens, and, with typical American adventurousness enhanced somewhat by the strenuous jingoism of Theodore Roosevelt, our young Men began to enlist under foreign flags. In the words of Joe Williams, in John Dos Passos' USA, they “wanted to get into the fun before the whole thing turned belly up.” For military service, in 1916-1917, was stil a romantic occupation. The young men of college age in 1917 knew nothing of modern warfare. The strife of 1861-1865 had popularly become, in motion picture and story, a magnoliascented soap opera, while the one-hundred-days' fracad with Spain in 1898 had dissolved into a one-sided victory at Manila and a cinematic charge up San Juan Hill.
这种叛逆行为始于第一次世界大战。1915年至1916年旷日持久的僵局，德国对美国表现的越来越傲慢，而我们的政府迟迟不愿宣战，这让我们的理想主义公民无法容忍。在典型的美国式冒险精神和一定程度上西奥多罗斯福的极端爱国主义精神的影响下，我们的青年开始应征入伍到外国军队中。用约翰所著的《美利坚合众国》中的人物乔的话说，他们“想趁着在战争结束之前，去找点乐子。”1916年至1917年，参军仍然是一件富有浪漫主义色彩的职业。1917年处于上大学年龄的年轻人对现代战争一无所知。 1861年至1865年的纷争在电影和叙述故事中变成了通俗的弥漫着木兰花香味般的肥皂剧。1898年发生的长达100天嗯美西战争则淡化成了美国在马尼拉取得单方面的胜利或者说是冲上圣胡安山的镜头画面。
Furthermore, there were enough High school assembly orators proclaiming the character-forming force of the strenuous life to convince more than enough otherwise sensible boys thay service in the European conflict would be of great personal value, in addition to being idealistic and exciting. Accordingly, they began to join the various armies in increasing numbers, the “intellectuals” in the ambulance corps, others in the infantry, merchant machine, or whatever else they could find a place. Those who were reluctant to serve in a foreign army talked excitedly about Preparedness, occasionally considered joining the National Guard, and rushed to enlist when we finally did enter the conflict. So tremendous was the storming of recruitment centers that harassed sergeants actually pleaded with volunteers to “go home and wait for the draft,” but since no self-respecting person wanted to suffer the disgrace of being drafted, the enlistment craze continued unabated.
另外，高中集会上相当多的演说家宣扬艰辛生活对性格塑造的作用，这使得原本机智的小伙子们相信，入伍参加欧洲战争除了增添理想主义色彩和激动人心之外，还能实现人生价值。因此，他们开始成批地加入各种各样的部队，“知识分子”加入救护队，其他人加入步兵团，商船舰队，或者任何能够谋一位置的部队。那些不愿意服役于外国军队的人兴奋得谈论“时刻准备着”，偶尔也会考虑加入国民自卫队，当我们国家最终参战时，他们争分夺秒地参军入伍。各个征兵入伍站点迎来络绎不绝的人前来报名参军，这给军士们造成很大困扰，他们实际上还恳求志愿者们“回家等待征召”，但是有自尊的人士都不愿意忍受被征召的耻辱，参军热仍持久不衰。
Naturally, the spirit of carnival and the enthusiasm for high military adventure were soon dissipated once the eager young men had received a good taste of twentieth-century warfare. To their lasting glory, they fought with distinction, but it was a much altered group of soldiers who returned from the battlefields in 1919. Especially was this true of the college contingent, whose idealism had led them to enlist early and who had generally seen a considerable amount of action.
一旦这些满怀激情的年轻人饱尝了20世纪战争的滋味，他们的狂欢精神和追求军事冒险的热情就自然而然地快速消散了。为了永恒的荣誉，他们在战场上表现得相当出色，但是有一批在1919年从战场上返回的士兵却发生了巨大的变化。大学里的分谴队尤其如此。他们的理想主义使他们早早入伍，他们可称得上是屡经沙场。
To them, it was bitter to return to a home town virtually untouched by the conflict, where citizens still talked with the naive Fourth-of-July bombast they themselves had been guilty of two or three years earlier. It was even more bitter to find that their old jobs had been taken by the stay-at-homes, that business wad suffering a recession that prevented the opening up of new jobs, and that veterans were considered problem children and less desirable than non-veterans for whatever business opportunities that did exist. Their very homes were often uncomfortable to them; they had outgrown town and families and had developed a sudden bewildering world-weariness which neither they nor their relatives could understand.
对他们来说，回到没有遭受过战争袭击的家乡是一件令人痛苦的事情，家长的人们像庆祝独立日一样天真地高唱着爱国腔调，他们在两三年前也犯过同样的错误。令他们更痛苦的是，他们发现原有的工作岗位被那些待在家里的人所顶替了，而经济正处于萧条期，不可能再增加新的就业机会。退伍军人被认为是问题青年，现有的任何工作机会都倾向于给那些非入伍人士。正是自己的家乡让他们苦不堪言；他们长大成熟了，再也不能适应自己的家乡和家人了，由此产生了一种突如其来的迷茫的厌世感，这令他们自己及家人都无法理解。
Their energies had been whipped up and their naivete destroyed by the war and now, in sleepy Gopher Prairies all over the country, they were being asked to curb those energies and resume the pose of self-deceiving Victorian innocence that they now felt to be as outmoded as the notion that their fighting had “made the world safe for democracy.” And, as if home town conditions were not enough, the returning veteran also had to face the sodden, Napoleonic cynicism of Versailles, the hypocritical do-goodism of Prohibition, and the smug patriotism of the war profiteers. Something in the tension-ridden youth of America had to “give” and, after a short period of bitter resentment, it “gave” in the form of a complete overthrow of genteel standards of behavior.
他们的能量被战争所激起，他们的天真被战争所摧毁。如今，在全国沉睡的落后地区，他们被要求克制那些能量，恢复自欺欺人的维多利亚式的天真状态。他们认为维多利亚式的天真就像战争已“使世界的民主有了保障”的观念一样，都过时了。而且，似乎不只有家乡的情况让他们难以忍受，退伍军人还要面对《凡尔赛条约》那令人心情沉重的拿破仑犬儒主义，面对禁酒令虚伪的行善主义，面对发战争财者自鸣得意的爱国主义。重压下的美国青年必然要爆发，在经历短暂的强烈泄愤之后，以一种彻底推翻文雅的行为准则的形式爆发出来了。
Greenwich Village set the pattern. Since the Seventies a dwelling place for artists and writers who settled there because living was cheap, the village had long enjoyed a dubious reputation for Bohemianism and eccentricity. It had also harbored enough major writers, especially in the decade before World War 1, to support its claim to being the intellectual center of the nation. After the war, it was only natural that hopeful young writers, their minds and pens inflamed against war, Babbittry, and “Puritanical” gentility, should flock to the traditional artistic center (where living was still cheap in 1919) to pour out their new-found creative strength, to tear down the old world, to flout the morality of their grandfathers, and to give all to art, love and sensation.
格林威治村树立了榜样。自从70年代开始，格林威治村就因为生活成本低廉而成为艺术家和作家的栖息之地，这个地方因玩世不恭和古怪奇特而臭名远扬。这里也有足够多的大作家，尤其是在第一次世界大战之前的那个年代，因此它也成为全国知识分子的集聚地。战争过后，那些满怀希望的年轻作家自然而然地涌入到这个传统的艺术中心（1919年那里的生活成本仍然很低廉），他们的思想和作品充斥着对战争、低级趣味和“清教徒式”文雅的反抗，他们在此倾泻新获得的创作力量，诋毁旧世界，蔑视他们祖父时代的道德规范，把自己的一切奉献给艺术、爱和感觉。
Soon they found their imitators among the non-intellectuals. As it became more and more fashionable throughout the country for young persons defy the law and the conventions and to add their own little matchsticks to the conflagration of “flaming youth”, it was Greenwich Village that fanned the flames. “Bohemian” living became a fad. Each town had its “fast” set which prided itself on its unconventionality, although in reality this self-conscious unconventionality was rapidly becoming a standard feature of the country club class-and its less affluent imitators- throughout the nation.
很快，他们就在知识分子以外的阶层发现了效仿者。在全国各地，年轻人蔑视法律和传统，给“燃烧着的青年”的大火填薪，这变得越来越时髦，正是格林威治村煽风点火，助长事态的发展。波西米亚式的生活方式成为了一种时尚，每一个城镇都有一群放荡不羁的人，他们对自己的反常行为而洋洋自得,尽管这种有意识的反常行为已经成为全国乡村俱乐部富人以及不那么富裕的效仿者的标志。
Before long the movement had become officially recognized by the pulpit(whic denounced it), by the movies and magazines(which made it attractively naughty while pretending to denounce it), and by advertising(which obliquely encouraged it by selling everything from cigarettes to automobiles with the implied promise that their owners would be rendered sexually irresistible). Younger brothers and sisters of the war generation, who had been playing with marbles and dolls during the battles of Belleua Wood and Chateau-Thierry, and who had suffered no real disillusionment or sense of loss, now began to imitate the manners of their elders and play with the toys of vulgar rebellion. Their parents shocked, but belong long they found themselves and their friends adopting the New gaiety. By the middle of the decade, the “wild party” had become as commonplace a factor in American life as the flapper, the Model T, or the Dutch Colonial home in Floral Heights.
不久以后，这场运动得到了相关方面的正式认可，其中有神职人员（以谴责的方式）、电影和杂志（假装对其谴责，实则把其没规没矩的行为展现得惟妙惟肖）、广告（通过销售从香烟到汽车各种各样的产品，这些产品暗指买主具有不可抵挡的性魅力，从而起到了推波助澜的作用）。在贝洛伍德战斗和战役期间，参战青年的弟弟妹妹们还在玩石子和布娃娃，他们没有真正经历过幻想破灭的失落感的痛苦，现在开始模仿他们的兄长的行为，玩起了引足以起民愤的东西。他们的父母感到很震惊，但不久后便发现自己和朋友们都接受了这种新的作乐方式。到了20年代中期，这种“狂欢式的聚会”就变得和摩登女郎， T型车或弗拉落花园的荷兰殖民风格的房子一样，成为美国生活中司空见惯的事物了。
Meanwhile, the true intellectuals were far from flattered. What they had wanted was am America more sensitive to art and culture, less avid for material gain, and less susceptible to standardization. Instead, their ideas had been generally ignored, while their behavior had contributed to that standardization by furnishing a pattern of Bohemianism that had become as conventionalized as a Rotary luncheon. As a result, their dissatisfaction with their native country, already acute upon their return from the war, now became even more intolerable. Flaming diatribes poured from their pens denouncing the materialism and what they considered to be the cultural boobery of our society. An important book rather grandiosely entitled Civilization in the United States, written by “thirty intellectuals” under the editorship of Harold E. Stearns, was the rallying point of sensitive persons disgusted with America.
同时，真正的知识分子完全没有感到受宠若惊。他们希望美国成为一个对艺术和文化更加敏感，对物质更加淡薄，不易受标准化影响的国家。但是，他们的思想被忽视了，而正是他们的行为导致了这种标准化的产生，他们提供波西米亚式的模式，而这种模式如同扶轮国际午餐会一样变得约定俗成。因此，他们从战场回家时就怀有对祖国的强烈不满，如今更是令他们无法忍受。强烈的不满情绪从他们的作品中喷涌而出，谴责着物质主义以及在他们眼里的社会上的文化愚人。一部由“三十位知识分子”合撰、思特恩编剧的巨著被堂而皇之地命名为《美国的文明》，其中汇集了憎恶美国的敏感人士的言论。
The burden of the volume was that the best minds in the country were being ignored, the art was unappreciated, and that big business had corrupted everything. Journalism was a mere adjunt to moneymaking, politics were corrupted and filled with incompetents and crooks, and American family life so devoted to making money and keeping up with the Joneses that it had become joyless, patterned, hypocritical, and sexually inadequate. These defects would disappear if only creative art were allowed to show the way to better things, but since the country was blind and deaf to Everything save the glint and ring of the dollar, There was little remedy for the sensitive mind but to emigrate to Europe where “they do things better.” By the time Civilization in the United States was published(1921), most of its contributions had taken their own advice and were living abroad, and many more of the artistic and would-be artistic had followed suit.
这本书的主题是这个国家最有才华的人被忽视，艺术得不到赏识，大企业败坏所有的一切。新闻业成了赚钱的工具；政治腐败，其中都是些无能的人和骗子；美国的家庭生活围绕着赚钱，不断与爱炫富的邻居攀比，导致生活毫无乐趣，一成不变，虚伪不堪，夫妻间缺少鱼水之欢。但是如果让有创造性的艺术来指明通向美好事物的道路的话，这些缺陷就会荡然无存。但是因为这个国家除了对闪亮亮和响当当的美金感兴趣以外，对其他任何事物都置若罔闻，因此对那些敏感人士来说，除了移民到“做得更好的”欧洲，别无他法。在《美国的文明》出版之际，大多数撰稿人已经按照自己的意愿移居国外，并且许多艺术家和准艺术家也纷纷效仿。
It was in their defiant, but generally short-lived, European expatriation that our leading writers of the Twenties learned to think of themselves, in the words of Gertrude Stein, as the “lost generation”. In no sense a movement in itself, the “lost generation” attitude nevertheless acted as a Common denominator of the writing of the times. The war and the cynical power politics of Versailles had convinced these young Men and women that spirituality was dead; they felt as stunned as John Andrews, the defeated aesthete in Dos Passos' Three Soldiers, ad rootless as Hemingway's wandering alcoholics in The Sun Also Rises. Besides Stein, Dos Passos, and Hemingway, there were Lewis, Ezra, S, M, H, T, E, M, and many other novelists, dramatists, poets and critics who tried to find their souls in the Antibes and on the Left Bank, who directed sad and bitter blasts at their native land and who, almost to a man, drifted back within a few years out of sheer homesickness, to take up residence on coastal islands and in New England farmhouses and to produce works ripened by the tempering of an older, more sophisticated society.
正是在极具反抗性但总的来说时间比较短的旅居欧洲期间，我们20世纪的大作家们逐渐了解自己，用泰的话说，就是“迷惘的一代”。“迷惘的一代”本身不是一场运动，但他们的观念构成了当时文学作品的共同特征。战争和《凡尔赛条约》愤世嫉俗的强权政治使这些年轻的男男女女相信精神世界已经消亡；他们想帕索斯的《三个士兵》中描述的受打击的唯美主义者约翰一样感到震惊，像海明威的《太阳照常升起》中描述的流浪酒鬼那样无所寄托。除了……和其他许多小说家，戏剧家，诗人和评论家，他们都曾在法国的试图寻找过自己的灵魂，都对自己的祖国进行过悲痛的抨击。几年之后由于思乡情切回到沿岸岛屿和新英格兰的农场上居住，在经历更了加艰难困苦的社会磨练之后，创作出鸿篇巨制。
For actually the “lost generation” was never lost. It was shocked, supported for a time, bitter, critical, rebellious, iconoclastic, experimental, often absurd, more often misdirected- but never “lost.” A decade that produced, in addition to the writers listed above, such figures as Eugenr... and innumerable others could never be written off as sterile, even by itself in a moment of self-pity. The intellectuals of the Twenties, the “sad young men,” ad F called them, cursed their luck but didn't die; escaped but voluntarily returned; flayed the Babbitts but loved their country, and in so doing gave the nation the livelist, freshest, most stimulating writing in its literary experimence.
实际上，“迷惘的一代”并非迷惘。他们一度感到震惊不已、孤独无依，尖酸刻薄，叛逆无道，喜欢尝试，往往有些荒唐，更常常接近胡闹——但从未迷惘过。这个时代除了造就了以上提及的作家外，还造就了如下文豪……和无数其他作家，尽管处在这个充满自怨自艾的年代，这些作家也不会因为这个荒芜的年代而被抹杀。20世纪的知识分子被F成为“悲哀的青年一代”，他们诅咒运气，但没有因此消亡；他们逃离家乡，但又自愿回归；他们痛斥市侩，但却热爱自己的祖国。因此这个国家造就了最具有生气，最令人耳目一新和最具有刺激性的文学作品。