OnSelf-Respect
Joan Didion
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in largeletters across two pages of a notebook thatinnocenceends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now,some years later, I marvel that a mind on
the outswith itselfshould竟然have nonetheless madepainstaking record of its everytremor, Irecall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particularashes. It was a matter ofmisplacedmisalignedself-respect.
为什么把背景设置为干旱季节？
1.innocence
想起英特网的纯真年代（”youth of internet”）
2.tremor
News of 160redundancies had sent tremors through the community...
Atremoris a shaking of your body or voice that you cannot control.
He felt a
tremor in his arms...
3.on the outs=on unfriendly terms
Jimwas on the outs with most of the kids on the block．
杰姆和街区的大多数孩子不和。
Mary and Jane
were on the outs．玛丽和简闹翻了
4.should have nonetheless made这里的should是“竟然”
5.ashes (前面提到了delusion，灭了之后留下的自然是灰烬)
自己身上的实例：幻想——破灭——andwhat’s it like.
I had not been elected toPhi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely havebeen more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), butI wasunnerved by it; I had somehow thoughtmyself a kind of academicRaskolnikov,curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others.Although
even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the
situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did not make Phi BetaKappa nonetheless marked the
end of something, and innocencemay well be the word for it. I lost theconviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certaintythat those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a childautomatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor,and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in thetotempower of good manners, clean hair, andproved competence on theStanford-Binet scale.To such doubtfulamulets had my self-respectbeen pinned, and I faced myself that day with thenonplussed
apprehensionof someone who has come across a vampire and has nocrucifix at hand.
6.Phi Beta Kappa---a personwinning high scholastic distinction in an American college or university andbeing elected to membership in a national honor society founded in 1776
有趣词源：
Phi Beta
Kappa(Society), fromphi+beta+kappa,initials of the society's Greek mottophilosophia biou
kybernētēsphilosophy the guide of life
7.Rodya Raskolnikov(a fictional character in Dostoevsky's novel `Crime and Punishment'; he killsold women because he believes he is beyond the bounds of good or evil
8.unnerve
cause (sb) to lose self-control, confidence or courage使（某人）失去自制力﹑信心或勇气: His encounter with the guard dog had completely unnerved
him.他遇上了警卫犬,把他吓坏了. >
unnerving adj: She found the whole interview rather unnerving.她觉得整个面试都让人气馁.
9.totem
Somethingthat is a totem of another thing is a symbol of it. (WRITTEN)
This opera is one of the cultural totems of Westerncivilisation.
10.Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old
that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature当年那个煞有介事的19岁女孩心里也一定清楚：这不能算悲剧
11.Stanford-Binet scale史丹福毕奈儿童智力测验(亦称Stanford-Binettest, Stanford Revision of the Binet scale)
12.amulet
整理护身符同义词：
charm,talisman(pl, -s), good-luck piece; fetish，wishbone:
Whenever
the man rubbed the silver amulet, his number would win
13.nonplussedapprehension
surprise or
puzzle (sb) greatly使（某人）惊讶或困惑: I was completely
nonplussed by his sudden appearance.他突然出现使我大吃一惊.
神奇的英语：
nonplus
v.
confound,perplex, puzzle, confuse, dismay, baffle, stop, check, stun, shock, dumbfoundor dumfound, take aback, astonish, astound,USfaze,Colloqbringup short, flummox, stump:
She wasnonplussed to learn that Simpson had been arrested
这么多的同义词，没有一个比得上nonplus
自尊不是reputation（不管对名声的影响）——reputation是别人给的（“别人”=不可靠）
本段逻辑没有连起来
Although to be driven back upon oneself isan uneasy affairat best, ratherlike trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials,it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings ofreal self-respect. Mostof ourplatitudesnotwithstanding, self-deceptionremains the most difficult deception.The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that
well-lit back alley where one keepsassignations with oneself;no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. Oneshuffles flashily but in vain through one’smarked cards– the kindness done for the wrongreason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seeminglyheroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respecthas nothing to do with the approval of others–whoare, after all, deceived easily enough;has nothing to do with reputation, which, as RhettButler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.
14.at best
其实是个内涵短语
充其量,最好也只不过
搞来一个有趣例句：
At best, he felt
teachers were glorified grief counsellors assigned to help unfortunate kids
cope with the fact of their own stupidity.The
New YorkerFeb
12, 2017
Reality and theword “should” have a relationship that’s touch-and-goat best,though, so you have to expect they’ll harrumph about you.Washington
PostNov
29, 2016
15.like trying to cross a borderwith borrowed credentials
看看人家是怎么说“心虚”的
16.platitudes
A trite or banalremark or statement, especially one expressed as if it were original orsignificant. See Synonyms at cliché
陈腔滥调：陈腐的或平庸的评论或陈述，尤指某人表述它时好象它是新颖的或有意义的
17.assignation
约会,幽会（尤指秘密的或不正当的）: an assignation
with a lover与情人的幽会.
18.The tricks that work on otherscount for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keepsassignations with oneself;
？在别人身上见效的那些门道，在那个无人经过的秘密后街小巷，根本不管用？
后一句：再多的胜利笑容也没用，再多的美好意愿也没用？
19.marked cards？？
？？
没有自尊的生活：失败人生、现编现导、自演自赏，月更周更日日更，不想看也得看完
To do without self-respect, on the otherhand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary thatdeals发牌，出手one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage splicedin for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurton X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston,see how youmuff弄糟this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night,beyond the reach ofwarm milk, thePhenobarbital, and thesleeping hand？on thecoverlet, counting up the sins ofcommissionand omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the giftsirrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long wepostpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortablebed, the one we make ourselves.Whether or not we sleep
in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
这么恶心的人生还能不能好好过下去（to sleep or not to sleep in it=to accept or not to accept）
20.Phenobarbital苯巴比妥(作药用镇静催眠剂)
21.coverlet床罩
22.beyond the reach of
够不着=没有
23.commission
doing (sth wrong or illegal做（坏事或不法的事）): the commission of a crime犯罪
a sin of commission rather than omission违法罪（主动做坏事）而不是疏忽罪.
24.Whether or not we sleep in itdepends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
不懂
这张床是指什么，为什么终会来到这张床边？
本段是讲对自尊的误解
有自尊才能睡在这张床上。但是，“没有自尊的人也睡得很香”
To protest that some fairlyimprobablepeople, some people who could not possibly respectthemselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to missthe
point？entirely, as surely as thosepeople miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do withnot havingsafety pins in one’s underwear.There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm againstsnakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in someunblightedEden, out of strange beds, ambivalentconversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to dowith the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a privatereconciliation. Although the careless, suicidalJulian EnglishinAppointment in Samaraand the careless, incurably dishonestJordan
BakerinThe Great Gatsbyseem equallyimprobably candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English didnot. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than men,Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace:“I hate careless people,” she toldNick Carraway. “It takes two to makean accident.”
25.unblighted blight=mar损坏（某事物）;损害:a career blighted by ill-health因体弱多病所影响的事业.
26.Appointment
in Samara=a novel (1934) by John O'Hara.
直接点题：最后一句。
（引入：地道（之盗）亦自尊？）盗亦有型格，有moral nerve.
Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respecthave thecourage of their
mistakes.They know the price of things. If they choose to commitadultery, they do not then go running, in an excess of bad conscience, toreceiveabsolutionfrom thewrongedparties; nor do they complain unduly ofthe unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being namedco-respondent. In brief, people with self-respectexhibit a certain toughness, a kind ofmoral
nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which,althoughapproved in the abstract, sometimesloses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues.The measure of its slipping prestige is
thatone tends to think of it only in connection withhomely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferablyin the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character –the willingness to accept
responsibility for one’s own life – is thesource from which self-respect springs.
27.absolution（尤指基督教中,由教士对某人）宣布赦罪,解罪:grant
sb absolution赦免某人的罪*pronounce absolution宣读赦罪文.
28.wronged,被冤枉的treated unfairly or unjustly:the wronged party in the dispute.
29.co-respondent, in a DIVORCE
case, someone accused of having sex with the husband or wife of the person who
wants to get divorced（旧时离婚诉讼中被控通奸的）共同被告
30.homely简单的;平常的:a homely woman朴素的女子
31.“从……中就可以看出地位不再”The
measure of its slipping prestige is that…
比如，古希腊时“beauty”形容内外兼修的卓越人士，现代社会，“beauty”只能用于形容女性，并且只形容外表。从这一点就可以多少体会到这个词发生了什么事，以及，女性发生了什么事（or men the judge, for that matter?）
那么我造句：The measure of its (beauty’s)slipping prestige is that the word “beauty”, once used to applaud the highestexcellence of a whole person during the golden age of the classic Grace, M orF, was pinned exclusively to women and women’s appearance only.
举例
Self-respect is something that ourgrandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled inthem, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things onedoes not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, byweighing immediate comforts against
the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. It seemed to thenineteenth century admirable, butnot remarkable（不是什么大不了的事）,thatChinese
Gordonput on a clean white suit and heldKhartoumagainst the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land inCalifornia involved death and difficulty and dirt. In a diary kept during the winterof 1846, an emigrating twelve-year-old named Narcissa Cornwall noted coolly:“Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filledwith strange Indians until Mother spoke out about it.” Even lacking any clue asto what Mother said, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by the entireincident: the father reading, the Indians filing in, the mother choosing thewords that would not alarm, the child duly recording the event and notingfurther that those particular Indians were not, “fortunately for us,” hostile.Indians were simply part of thedonnee.
Charles George("Chinese Gordon";
"Gordon Pasha"), 1833-85, British general: administrator in Chinaand Egypt.
donnee?
price of self-respect
In one guise or another, Indians alwaysare. Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has itsprice. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that theIndians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison maynot turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re marriedto me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play atall, but when they do play, theyknow the odds.
discipline
That kind of self-respect is a discipline,a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxedforth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put myhead in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, somethingto do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect aloneis incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneselfCathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is asimilar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imaginemaintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.
small yet valuable disciplines
(waterloo might be anindividual value, a small one, but it represent larger ones)
But those small disciplines are valuableonly insofar as they represent larger ones. To say that Waterloo was won on theplaying fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by acrash program in cricket; to give formal dinners in the rain forest would bepointless did not the candlelight flickering on the liana call forth deeper, strongerdisciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping usto remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have knownit.
建立自尊的前提：了解自己内在的价值。否则只能自我封闭自我麻痹、听任别人评判。
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worthwhich constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the abilityto discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be lockedwithin oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we donot respect ourselves, we arethe one hand一方面forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consortwith us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. Onthe other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determinedtolive out – since our
self-image is untenable – their false notion of us.We flatter ourselvesby thinking this compulsion to please othersan attractive traitthink的宾补: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness togive. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’sAnnie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role tooludicrous不要弄混lucrative. At the mercy of those wecannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they arebegun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining andmeeting the next demand made upon us.
alienation from self
错误：不知向内找，向外找不着
It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” Inits advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone mightwant something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is anidea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves,drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letterarouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of thequestion. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from theexpectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great,the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers thefinal turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one athome.