英汉文学翻译（一）
On the Difference Between Wit and Humor
By Charles S. Brooks
勇敢的心第一部I am not sure that I can draw an exact line between wit and humor. Perhaps the distinction is so subtle that only tho persons can decide who have long white beards. But even an ignorant man, so long as he is clear of Bedlam（混论）, may have an opinion.
I am quite positive that of the two(指机智与幽默), humor is the more comfortable and more livable quality. Humorous persons, if their gift is genuine and not a mere shine upon the surface, are always agreeable companions and they sit through the evening best. They have pleasant mouths turned up at the corners（比喻他们能把艰涩的话说明白）.皇后图片 To the corners the great Master of marionettes has fixed the strings and he holds them in his nimblest fingers to twitch them at the slightest jest（把幽默者比喻成“the great Master of marionettes ”,“he holds them in his nimblest fingers to twitch them”比喻幽默者运用他精彩绝
伦的语言表达艺术把话形象生动地说出来）. But the mouth of a merely witty man is hard and sour（话语艰涩） until the moment of its discharge. Nor is the flash（比喻头脑中一闪而过的灵光） from a witty man always comforting, whereas a humorous man radiates a general pleasure（夸张比喻油然而生的满足感）and is like another candle in the room.
氧分子
I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too often employed against me, whereas humor is always an ally. It never points an impertinent（粗鲁的；） finger into my defects. Humorous persons do not sit like explosives on a fu（比喻像熔炉里的炸药）. They are safe and easy comrades. But a wit's tongue is as sharp as a donkey driver's stick. I may gallop（疾驰） the faster for its prodding（刺激）, yet the touch behind is too persuasive for any comfort.
Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring no（夸张比喻，带有灵敏嗅觉的精简结构）, whereas humor has a kindly eye and comfortable girth（夸张比喻幽默有温柔的眼睛和舒适的周长）. Wit, if it be necessary, us malice（恶意）to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a sol
o, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is 不经之谈的意思diffu（弥漫）like sunlight. Wit keeps the ason's fashions and is preci in the phras and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homespun endures the wind. Wit ts a snare（陷阱）, whereas humor goes off （突发（声音））whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at table, but humor rves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles, wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer. But 蚂蝗it（要弄明这个代词指的是什么，其实就是a workaday world） is a workaday world in which we live, where we get mud upon our boots and come weary to the twilight（比喻我们在生活里遇到不如意的时候）--it is a world that grieves and suffers from many wounds in the years of war: and therefore as I think of my acquaintance, it is tho who are humorous in its best and truest meaning rather than tho who are witty who give the more profitable companionship.
And then, also, there is wit that is not wit. As someone has written:
Nor ever noi for wit on me could pass,
When thro' the braying I discern'd the ass.
（这个举例只能按字面翻译，大概作者就是想说有种机智不是机智的现象）
I sat lately at dinner with a notoriously witty person (a really witty man) whom our hostess had introduced to provide the entertainment. I had read many of his reviews of books and plays, and while I confess their wit and brilliancy, I had thought them to be hard and intellectual and lacking in all that broader ba of humor which aims at truth. His writing--catching the bad habit of the time--is too ready to proclaim a paradox and to asrt the unusual, to throw aside in contempt the valuable haystack（干草堆） in a fine arch for a paltry（无价值的）needle. His reviews are ldom right--as most of us e the right--but they sparkle and hold one's interest for their perversity（邪恶）and unexpected turns.
In conversation I found him much as I had found him in his writing--although, strictly speaking, it was not a conversation, which requires an interchange of word and idea and is turn about. A conversation should not be a market where one lls and another buys. R
ather, it should be a bargaining back and forth, and each person should be both merchant and buyer. My rubber plant for your victrola(手摇留声机), each offering what he has and eking his deficiency. It was my friend B--- who fairly（简直） put the ca（假设）when he said that he liked so much to talk that he was willing to pay for his audience by listening in his turn.
But this was a speech and a lecture. He lood on us（loo something on/upon someone/something）from the cold spigot（水龙头）健康幼儿园of his intellect a steady flow of literary（文学的） allusion（比喻）--a practice which he profess（公开） to hold in scorn--and wit and epigram（警句）非洲鼓教案. He emed torn from the page of Meredith（像从梅雷迪斯这本书里面走出来的人物一样）. He talked like ink. I had believed before that only people in books could talk as he did, and then only when their author had blotted and scratched their performance for a venth time before he nt it to the printer. To me it was an entirely new experience, for my usual acquaintances are good common honest daytime woollen folk（毛原民风斗篷）[132] and they ldom average better than one bright thing in an evening.
At first I feared that there might be a break in his flow of speech which I should be obliged to fill. Once, when there was a slight pau--a truffle（松露） was engaging him--I launched a frail remark; but it was swept off at once in the renewed torrent. And riously it does not em fair. If one speaker insists--to change the figure--on laying all the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another to carry the tar pot and fill in the chinks（裂缝）. When the evening was over, although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botch in the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue dry with disu.
Now I would not ek that kind of man as a companion with whom to be becalmed in a sailboat, and I would not wish to go to the country with him, least of all to the North Woods or any place outside of civilization. I am sure that he would sulk（生气愠怒） if he were deprived of an audience. He would be crotchety（想入非非的）at breakfast across his bacon. Certainly for the woods a humorous man is better company, for his humor in mischance comforts both him and you. A humorous man--and here lies the heart of the matter--a humorous man has the high gift of regarding an annoyance in the very stroke of
it as another man shall regard it when the annoyance is long past. If a humorous person falls out of a canoe he knows the exquisite jest while his head is still bobbing in the cold water. A witty man, on the contrary, is sour until he is changed and dry: but in a week's time when company is about经典短语, he will make a comic story of it.
