-Unit 11 On self-respect.doc

On Self-Respect John Didion 1. 一个干燥的季节，有一次我在摊开的笔记本两页间，用硕大的字写下这么一句话：当一个人 失去了认为是自己最好的幻想之后，纯真就逝去了。尽管现在，许多年后，我惊异于这种否 定了（它）的想法，它本应该在每次发作时都会带来痛苦的回忆，却让我难以名状的回想起 那些特别让人忏悔难过往事的味道。这就是对自尊的曲解。 Once in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect. 2. 我未能入选美国大学优等生荣誉学会，这次失败原本早已料到（我仅仅是没有成绩） ，这点 很清楚，但我却因此而失落了。一直以来我觉得自己就是学科上的 Raskolnikov，因果关系能 束缚别人，却束缚不了我。尽管我只是个毫无幽默感的 19 岁女孩，也早已意识到环境没有 真正的悲剧色彩，但我没有入选美国优等生荣誉学会的那天，确实标志着某种东西的结束， “纯真”也许就是这种东西的最好指代。我失去了阳光总能为我带来希望的坚强信念；也不 再欣然地肯定那些能使我自小就赢得赞许的天生丽质， 它们都赋予了我， 不仅是美国优等生 荣誉学会中的重要人物，还有快乐、光荣和一个好男人的爱情；还失去了某种对诸如优雅的 举止、 干净的头发和在比奈年上公认的能力等等图腾式魔力的虔诚信仰。 我的自尊依附于这 些令人怀疑的护身符上，直到我那一天感受到：如同突然遇到一个吸血鬼，手上却没有十字 架的保护，那种不知所措的惊慌的感觉。 I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, 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 I did not make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful