美文欣赏

编者按：

作为个人，我必须诚实地面对未来，并相信使我们强大的美好事物。我必须对自己、他人和任何地方有着善良意愿的人充满信心，因为自由是真理和信心的孩子。

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Liberty

By James Carey

Perhaps more than anything else in the world, I believe in liberty: liberty for myself, liberty for my fellow men. I cannot forget the legend engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty on Bedlows Island in New York Harbor: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. That is the voice of America.

As one small part of it, one tiny decibel in its sound, I, as a free individual of America, believe in it. It makes no boast of noble ancestry. On the contrary, it admits honestly that each of us in this country, with a possible and qualified exception of our native Indians, is a displaced person. In a particular kind of way, the Indian was our first displaced person. If you and I did not come from abroad ourselves, our forefathers did. The scores that drove them was economic, political, or religious oppression.

Oppression has always strewn the shores of life with wretched human refuse. We who today are the proud people of a proud country are what might be called the reclaimed refuse of other lands. The fact that the flotsam and the jetsam, the persecuted and the pursued of all these other lands, the fact that they came here and, for the most part, successfully started life anew, this renews my faith in the resilience of a human individual and the dignity of man.

There are those who say we should be content with the material benefits we have accrued among ourselves. I cannot accept that for myself. A laboring man needs bread and butter, and cash to pay the rent. But he would be a poor individual, indeed, if he were not able to furnish the vestibule of his mind and his soul with spiritual embellishments beyond the price of a union contract.

I mean by this that I believe it is important for a man to discover, whether he is an electrical worker or an executive, that he is an individual with his own resources and a sense of the dignity of his own person and that of other men. We are separate. We are collective. Man can be strong alone but not indomitable, in isolation. He has to belong to something, to realize he is not created separately or apart from the rest of mankind, whether he is an American or a Mohammedan.

I am stirred by the abundance of the fields, the forest, the streams, and the natural resources they hold. But do these things make me important? Have we wrought the miracle of America because of these riches we hold? I say, no. Our strength—and I can say my strength, too, because I am a part of this whole—lies in a fundamental belief in the validity of human rights. And I believe that a man who holds these rights in proper esteem is greater, whether he is recognized or not.

As an individual, I must face the future with honesty and faith, in the goods things that have made us mighty. I must have confidence in myself, in others, and all men of goodwill everywhere, for freedom is the child of truth and confidence.

参考译文

关于自由

詹姆斯.B.凯里

也许在世界上我最信奉的是自由：自己的自由，同胞的自由。我无法忘记纽约港自由岛上自由女神像底座上的文字：

“给我你那疲惫、贫穷、

蜷曲、渴望自由呼吸的身躯，

可怜的被遗忘在你们海岸的人群。

交给我吧，那些无家可归、颠簸流离的人们；

我在金色之门高举火炬。”

那是美国的声音。作为它的一小部分，它声音中的一个分贝，我，美国的一个自由人，相信这声音。它没有炫耀高贵的祖先，反而坦率承认在这个国家，我们每个人都是被迫流落此处的难民，只有土著印第安人才可能有资格成为例外。（从某种意义上讲，印第安人使我们的首批难民。）如果你我本身不是移民，我们的祖先便是。经济、政治或宗教迫害的皮鞭将可怜的被遗弃的难民逼到生活的边缘。

而今，我们充满自豪，因为我们是这个值得骄傲的国家的公民，我们这些在异国遭到遗弃的人在这里获得了新生。

所有这些难民、遭受迫害和追捕的人从异国来到这里，大多数顺利地开始了新的生活。这一事实使我对人这一个体的活力和人类尊严的信念有了新的认识。

有人说，我们应满足于自然增长的物质利益，我个人无法接受这一说法。劳动者需要面包和黄油，也要钱付房租，但如果他无法用联盟合约规定的价格之外的精神饰物装点心智和灵魂的门廊，他将是个真正的可怜虫。

我的意思是我相信，对一个人来说，无论是个电工还是执行官，重要的是要认识到自己是一个拥有精神财富和尊严的人，是一个尊重他人尊严的人。

我们既是分离的个体，又是集体的一员。人们单枪匹马时可以坚强有力，孤军作战时却容易击败。他必须有归属感，即认识到不管他是美国人还是穆斯林，他并非孤立存在或远离人类其他成员。

我们那广袤的土地、大片的森林、众多的溪流和它们丰富的自然资源让我激动，然而，是那些资源才使我重要吗？我们是凭借那些财富在美国创造的奇迹吗？我要说：“不是。”

我们的力量--也可以说我的力量，因为我是这个整体的一份子--存在于一种最根本的信念，相信人权的有效性。我认为一个人如果恰当地尊重这些权力，不管他获得认可与否，都是伟大的。

作为个人，我必须诚实地面对未来，并相信使我们强大的美好事物。我必须对自己、他人和任何地方有着善良意愿的人充满信心，因为自由是真理和信心的孩子。