2015考研英语阅读加勒特菲茨傑拉德

　　Garret FitzGerald

　　加勒特菲茨傑拉德

　　Garret FitzGerald, statesman, philosopher,journalist and lover of numbers, died on May 19th,aged 85;

　　政治家，哲学家，记者，大众情人，于5月19日逝世，享年85岁;

　　If you had the good fortune to sit next to Garret FitzGerald at dinnerwrapped round by hisnatural warmth and curiosity, as well as numbed by the sheer volume of Dublin-tincturedwords that tumbled out of himyou might learn many dozens of mind-bogglingly arcanefacts. The quickest way to fly from Reykjavik to Vilnius in 1960, a skill he had honed in hisfirst proper job as an analyst for Aer Lingus; the route of the now-defunct railway fromFarranfore to Reenard via Cahersiveen, the fruit of his love of all train timetables; therelative popularity over time of his own Fine Gael party and the rival Fianna Fail in countycouncils the length and breadth of Ireland, derived from an obsession with opinion polls soimmense that journalists were cautioned not to mention them; and the precisegeographical pattern of the decline in the use of Irish between 1770 and 1870, compiledfrom old census volumes which he would prop on the car dashboard when being driven, onconstituency visits, from place to place.

　　如果你有幸在晚餐时坐在Garret FitzGerald旁边置身于他天生的热情与好奇中，谈定地听着他都柏林味十足的口音在那里滔滔不绝你也许能得知很多神秘的事实，开阔了眼界。 60年代从Reykjavik飞到Vilnius最快的途径;他首次在一份体面的工作中习得的技能;那条已经不存在的铁路通过Cahersiveen 从Farranfore到Reenard;他最喜欢的列车时刻表;共和党对那段出风头的时光和统一党称霸爱尔兰各乡镇委的时候，民意调查里那些说不清道不明的事，有些就是记者也小心地不去提及;以及根据他拜访各选区时，从各地收集到的旧的人口普查宗卷中所得出的1770到1870间爱尔兰语的使用率，下降趋势，在地图板块上的精确表现。

　　What modesty would restrain him from telling youeven in the 674 small-print pages of hisautobiographywas the precise route by which Ireland, while he was cheerfully inhabitingthe corridors of the Seanad and the Dail, moved away from sterile, irredentist sectarianismto become a more open and tolerant place; how the sombre dominance of the Catholicchurch began to recede from the country s moral life; how Ireland opened itself alike toEurope and to foreign investment, eventually finding it could leap off like a tiger; and, mostwonderful and difficult of all, how North and South began to accommodate and make peacewith each other, to such a degree that as he lay dying Queen Elizabeth was in Dublin Castle,trying out a line of Gaelic.

　　那些即使是他也不好意思说出来的在他674页自传中也没提及是爱尔兰各地的精确路线。那会儿他高高兴兴地游走于上议院和下议院，使统一党宗派主义远离枯燥，成为一个更开放、更有肚量的地方;阴沉的天主教支配势力是如何开始退出这个国家的日常生活的;爱尔兰是如何融入欧洲，开展对外投资，最终如龙腾虎跃;以及，最重要的是，如何让南北地区的人民融洽相处。就好像在都柏林的城堡里放倒了衰老的伊丽莎白女王，开拓出了盖尔人的一片天地。

　　His own contribution, because it was the start of these processes, often looked like failure.His referendum to amend slightly the law on abortion was shot down, his referendum tobring in divorce resoundingly defeated; but he had succeeded in broaching the subjects in acivil way. On Northern Ireland, the 1973 Sunningdale power-sharing agreement swiftlycollapsed, and his New Ireland Forum, in which constitutional parties from both sides wereto meet and talk together of the pluralist, inclusive Ireland he longed for, was ruthlesslyscorned by Margaret Thatcher. Even the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, in which Britain acknowledgedfor the first time the Republic s interest in the North, was pictured by unionists as betrayaland by terrorists as encouragement. In fact it was a small, determined step towards theGood Friday agreement 13 years later.

　　他自身的那些贡献，作为这一系列的开端看起来总像是个失败。他提出的对流产法的小幅度修改，民意惨淡;他提出的关于离婚的法案遭到民众的强烈抵抗;但他成功地带起了民法方面的课题。在北爱尔兰，1973年的Sunningdale，权利分享协议在签署不久后就瓦解了，而他的新爱尔兰论坛又遭到玛格丽特?撒切尔的强烈鄙视。该论坛实现了他渴望的一幕双方的正式代表就教堂等问题沟通交流。即使是1985年的Anglo-Irish协议也被共和党看做背叛，被恐怖分子视为一种鼓励。英国在该条约中首次公认了共和国在北方的利益，不过事实上只是比13年前的Good Friday协议前进了一小步。

　　A mislaid overcoat

　　一件记不起放在哪的大衣

　　He had the ideal background for conciliation, with a Catholic father from the South and aProtestant mother from the North . Sectarianism was soforeign to him that when he met rank prejudice, he often burst out laughing. Politics was inhis blood, his father having been in independent Ireland s first government in 1922; thoughhe himself wandered into it from academia, reluctant to give partisan speeches in the openair or at dance halls, and quite inept at the plotting and manipulation so dazzlinglydisplayed by his Fianna Fail nemesis, Charles Haughey. Though he was foreign minister from1973-77 and taoiseach twice, in 1981-82 and 1982-87, he remained somehow an innocent,mislaying as he travelled overcoat, pyjamas, watch; and not realising, so carried away washe with his theories for redistributing wealth in Ireland, that to put value-added tax onchildren s shoes might spell suicide at the polls.

　　作为调和主义者，他有个理想的背景，出身天主教的南方父亲和出身新教徒的北方母亲。宗派那些对他来说是如此不着边际，以至于当他接触到等级偏见的内容时经常会突然笑起来。政治早已融入他的血液，他的父亲在1922年曾为爱尔兰独立政府效力;尽管他本人犹豫着要不要从学术界转到政界，心不甘情不愿地在公共场所或舞厅里发表党派性演讲，就那相当笨拙地安排和操作，理所当然的败给了他统一党的对手，Charles Haughey。尽管他在1973-77年间任外长，1981-82及1982-87年间担任总理，但仍保持着纯真的心。就像放错了旅行要用的外套，睡衣和手表，他就带着他的爱尔兰财富再分配理论各处奔走，宣称买童鞋要付增值税，此举可能在民调中引发自杀。

　　Economics was a relatively late interest. He said he learned it at the Irish Times, where hewrote to the end of his life a Saturday column full of figures under the pen-name Analyst.Over 50 years, he reckoned, he produced 2,250,000 words for the Times . History and French were his degree subjects, and hisverbosity in French a source of pride. He embraced the European Economic Communitynot just because it let Ireland reach over Britain to the world, but also because it gave himthe excuse, before meetings in Brussels, to discuss with Fran?ois Mitterrand some puzzlinglacunae in the Catholic intellectual tradition of 19th-century France.

　　《经济学人》是个相对较晚开始的兴趣。他说是在爱尔兰时报上读到里面的文章，他本人直到临终一直以分析家这个笔名投稿，周六专栏里那些数据就是他的作品。他估计在50多年里，为时报写了225万字。作为历史及法文科班出身，他为自己冗长的法语骄傲。他欢迎欧洲经济体不仅是因为经济体使爱尔兰跨过英国，走向世界，也因为这给了他一个借口在布鲁塞尔会议前，与Francois Mitterrand讨论一些关于天主教在19世界法国传统教育里出现的那些令人困惑的空白。

　　He was tender and naive, losing his life-savings on an unwise investment in 1992; yet hewas also tough. Meeting the families of IRA hunger-strikers in the 1980s, he would besympathetic as ever, but would never let himself be swayed by terrorists orcrawthumpers. Though mocked as otherworldly, he stuck to his crusade for a newIrelandreunified or not, as the majority in the North wanted itin which Catholic andProtestant identities would be equally celebrated. For, when all was said and done, he was astatistician first; and when shown any air-traffic controller s chart he could tell, to a highdegree of accuracy, that at such-and-such a time and place the different flightpaths, nomatter how divergent, were bound to cross.

　　此人温柔又天真，在1982年的一次不明智的投资中失去了其一生的积蓄。即使如此，他做事还是雷厉风行。80年代会见那些愤怒罢工者的家属时，他仍会抱有有同情心，但再也不会让自己受恐怖分子或暴徒的影响。尽管被嘲讽为不现实，他仍然卖力地推行他的新爱尔兰革命无论统一与否，介于北方大多数希望如此以天主教徒和新教徒的身份一样庆祝。因此，当一切尘埃落定时，起初他是个统计员，之后当有提及他所知的空中航线，他都能准确的说出，如什么时间、什么地点，不同的航线，无论怎么分散，都必定能越过。