The onster 怪才.doc

Deems Taylor: The Monster 怪才 He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body — a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.他身材矮小，头却很大，与他的身材很不相称——是个满脸病容的矮子。他神经兮兮，有皮肤病，贴身穿比丝绸粗糙一点的任何衣服都会使他痛苦不堪。而且他还是个夸大妄想狂。He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. 他是个极其自负的怪人。除非事情与自己有关，否则他从来不屑对世界或世人瞧上一眼。对他 来说，他不仅是世界上最重要的人物，而且在他眼里，他是惟一活在世界上的人。他认为自己是世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一、最伟大的思想家之一、最伟大的作曲家 之一。To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.听听他的谈话，仿佛他就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬、柏拉图三人于一身。想要听到他的高论十分容易，他是世上最能使人筋疲力竭的健谈者之一。同他度过一个 夜晚，就是听他一个人滔滔不绝地说上一晚。有时，他才华横溢；有时，他又令人极其厌烦。但无论是妙趣横生还是枯燥无味，他的谈话只有一个主题：他自己，他 自己的所思所为。 He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for hours, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with him, for the sake of peace.他狂妄地认为自己总是正确的。任何人在最无足轻重的问题上露出丝 毫的异议，都会激得他的强烈谴责。他可能会一连好几个小时滔滔不绝，千方百计地证明自己如何如何正确。有了这种使人耗尽心力的雄辩本事，听者最后都被他弄 得头昏脑涨，耳朵发聋，为了图个清静，只好同意他的说法。It never occurred to him tha