Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded Tatler and Spectator magazines.
约瑟夫·艾迪生（1672年5月1日~1719年6月17日），英国散文家、诗人、剧作家以及政治家。艾迪生的名字在文学史上常常与他的好朋友理查德·斯蒂尔一起被提起，两人最重要的贡献是创办两份著名的杂志《闲谈者》与《旁观者》。
Thoughts in Westminster Abbey
西敏寺遐想
When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.
每当我幽默感过头的时候，就经常去西敏寺走走。是个阴郁的地方，它的用途，加之庄严肃穆的建筑物和长眠于此已故之人的境遇，很容易让人产生某种悲哀的情绪，或更确切地说是某种思虑，那地方其实并不让人生厌。
I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died.
昨天下午，我在墓地、回廊和教堂间闲逛，走过几个墓区，看着墓碑和碑文，自娱自乐。大多碑文只记录所埋之人的生死年月，别无他文。他的整个人生以两次事件勾画，如同芸芸众生。我不自禁地看着这些生存的记载，用黄铜或云石制就，作为对已故之人的一种讽刺：可以追思的，是他们曾经出生，然后去世。
They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by “the path of an arrow”, which is immediately closed up and lost.
这使我想起了史诗中描述的几位人物，他们有响当当的名字，不为了别的，为的就是被杀，以悲情的英雄末路闻名于世。这些事迹在圣经中以“箭之轨迹”加以很好的描述，生命即刻终结、丧失。
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermix with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other has a place in the composition of a human body.
去教堂的路上，看见有人挖墓，于是驻足观赏；看着一铲一铲的坟土被挖出，骨头支离破碎，头颅混杂着的新鲜烂泥，那个曾几何时在某个地方还是完整的人体。
Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, are blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
我开始思忖，在这座古老教堂步行道的下面，有无数的人困惑地躺在那里。男人与女人，朋友与敌人，牧师与士兵，修道士与受俸者，就这样支离破碎地凑在一起，化为一群等同的众生；美女、强汉、年轻人，与老人、弱者、畸形人不加分别地躺在这杂乱的坟堆上。
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[图像来源：百度]
