2017考博英语阅读题源经济学人文章每日精析（三十一）

　　“Readers…will find myths about Kafka exploded,” writes Shelley Frisch in her translator’s preface. Mr Stach himself lauds “the many pieces of the mosaic discovered by others”, a half-century of academic discovery (about Kafka’s first-rate work as an insurance clerk, for example) that Mr Stach now brings to a wider audience. Yet even those immersed in the specialist work benefit from the illumination that Mr Stach’s detailed digging brings.

　　“读者将会发现，关于卡夫卡的一些传说不攻自破，”雪莉-弗里希在译著的前言中说到。赖纳对别人关于卡夫卡一些细碎细节的发现很是赞赏，这些细节可谓是半个世纪之长的文学发现(比如卡夫卡也是一流的保险办事员)，而这些发现现由赖纳先生呈现给更广泛的读者。甚至那些从事专业性工作的人也能从这些细节描述中大获启发。

　　Exploded (理论等)被驳倒的

　　Kafka wrote his famous “Letter to His Father” in 1919, in which he took his father, Hermann, to account for his boorish ways with his son, who became beset by guilt and fear of punishment. But, as Mr Stach vividly shows, loneliness, not humiliation, was Kafka’s first formative experience. Until he was four, his father and mother were busy in the family haberdashery shop 12 hours a day, six and a half days a week. Kafka learned that social relations were fraught and unstable—with great consequence for literature.

　　卡夫卡在1919年写下了著名的“致父亲的一封信”，他在信中告诉父亲—赫尔曼，因为他用野蛮的方式对待自己，自己长期受愧疚、害怕受罚的心情困扰。但是，在施塔赫形象的描述下，卡夫卡在性格形成期中最先体会到的是孤独而不是羞辱。到卡夫卡四岁时，他的父母忙于家里的服饰杂货店，一周只有半天的休息时间，一天工作12个小时。卡夫卡认识到社会关系令人忧虑而不稳定，这对他的文学也产生了巨大的影响。

　　Boorish 野蛮的

　　Great consequence for 产生重要的影响

　　In Mr Stach’s telling, this insecurity was compounded by threats that the observant and highly sensitive Kafka found in the world: an education system based on rigorous exams, and the risk of failing them; a society beset by tensions between Czechs and Germans, in which Jews were often the scapegoats; andnew-fangled machines like aeroplanes, which both delighted and terrified the young author.

　　在施塔赫的叙述中，观察敏锐、十分敏感的卡夫卡的不安全感加剧了，因为他发现了世界存在的各种威胁，比如：以严格考试为基础的教育系统以及考试失败的风险;受捷克和德国之间的紧张局势影响的社会，以及这社会中常常成为替罪羊的犹太人;像飞机这样的新式机器，这些机器让这位年轻的作家既高兴又恐惧。

　　Insecurity 不安全，不牢靠

　　New-fangled 新流行的

　　According to Mr Stach, guilt and punishment preoccupied Kafka from 1912—the year he wrote “The Metamorphosis”, a groundbreaking story—until early 1915. But later works posed a new question: “What do people have to do to be accepted by a group—and why are some never accepted?” For the biographer, this is precisely the theme of “The Castle”, an unfinished novel that Mr Stach calls Kafka’s most brilliant work, written two years before he died of tuberculosis in 1924, aged 40.

　　根据施塔赫所述，从1912年到1915年初，犯错和受罚一直萦绕在卡夫卡心中久久不能不留去。1912年时，他写了一部具有开创性的小说《变形记》。但他在其后的作品提出了一个新的问题：人们必须做些什么才能被群体接受，为什么有些事一直不被接受?

　　Groundbreaking 开创性的

　　In today’s age of backlash against globalisation, the arc that Mr Stach draws between “The Early Years” and Kafka’s later life takes on a new significance. It traces the life of a misunderstood German-speaking Jew in a city run first by an Austrian emperor, then by assertively nationalist Czechs. “We move from guilt to the question of identity,” Mr Stach says. “The question, ‘Who am I?’ is, after all, closely linked to, ‘Where do I belong?’”

　　施塔赫将卡夫卡“早年时期”与卡夫卡后期生活联系起来，这样的联系在当今反全球化的趋势下具有了新的意义。这联系记录了说着德语却为犹太人的卡夫卡的被人误解的一生，卡夫卡所生活在的城市先是被一个奥地利国王统治，而后又辗转到了具有绝对民族主义的捷克人手中。“我们从内疚转移到身份认知问题上，”施塔赫说，“毕竟‘我是谁’这样的问题与‘我从哪来’密切相关”。

　　run 管理 组织

　　Czechs 捷克人

　　The bloody climax of nationalism that followed makes Kafka’s story not a little poignant: he found a true home neither in life nor in death. The difficulty of writing “The Early Years” was a symptom of this. Mr Stach spent years trying to persuade the Israeli heirs of Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, who left Prague for Palestine in the 1930s, to let him read Brod’s diaries. Though he will not say how, Mr Stach got hold of copies of three volumes, rendering new insights about Brod’s and Kafka’s world.

　　在血腥的民族主义高潮下，卡夫卡的故事变得很心酸：他在一生中，直到死都没有成立一个家庭。这也是编写《早年时期》的一个困难之处。施塔赫花好多年时间去说服马克思-布洛德的以色列后嗣，能让他拜读一下这位卡夫卡的好朋友，同时也是卡夫卡遗著的保管者的日志，布洛德从20世纪30年代离开布拉格，去了巴基斯坦。尽管他没有说他是如何得到这些日记，但施塔赫得到了三卷副本，这些副本为解读布洛德和卡夫卡的世界带来了新见解。

　　Literary executor (已故作家的)遗著保管者

　　The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that the Brod manuscripts should be placed in the National Library. This is good news for the public, but ensures that Kafka will remain rootless: his and Brod’s manuscripts will be scattered between Germany, Britain and Israel. And rootlessness breeds indifference. Vienna has neglected the sanatorium where Kafka died. Berlin has left commemoration of Kafka’s time there to private initiatives. And the Czech government sees Kafka more as a tourist magnet than as a cultural icon. Mr Stach concludes that “No state feels responsible for him. That’s absurd.”

　　以色列最高法院最近决定布洛德手稿应该放在国家图书馆。这对公众来说是一好消息，但这决定了卡夫卡依旧漂泊无依：他和布罗德的手稿将被分散到德国、英国和以色列三国之内。他的无根滋养了对他的漠视。维也纳弃卡夫卡临终时所在的疗养院于不顾，柏林不再公众性地纪念卡夫卡曾在其逗留的岁月，而捷克政府更多地将卡夫卡视为旅游吸引点，而非其文化标志。施塔赫先生下结论道，“没有一个国家认为它们应该对卡夫卡负责。这是多么的荒谬。”

　　sanatorium 疗养院

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