英語專業八級翻譯輔導

If people mean anything at all by the expression "untimely death", they must believe that some deaths run on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely---a long life is thought to be a full one. But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measure of that life was still to be taken.

History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The idea that the life cut short is unfilled is illogical because lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue.

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如果人們藉"英年早逝"這一字眼真的意欲表達什麼含義的話，他們必然相信某些人的'辭世可以算是壽終正寢，而另一些人則"死不逢時" 。死於年邁很少被冠以"死不逢時"之名，因為能度過漫長的一生被認為是甚為圓滿的。反之，如果所碰到的是一位年輕人之死，人們會以為這位年輕人風華正茂，前途無可限量，生命的倒計時尚未真正開始。

當然，歷史否定這一切。在諸多較為著名的"英年早逝"的情形中，我們會憶起瑪麗蓮.夢露與詹姆斯.迪恩斯之死，其生命並不因其短暫而有損其圓滿。對於約翰.濟慈年方26便溘然長逝這一事實，文人墨客們皆痛不欲生，但他們中僅有半數人詼諧地認為，設若他們也死於這一年齡，其一生可視為失敗。視英年早逝為不圓滿，這一觀念有悖於邏輯，因為衡量生命的尺度乃是留給世界的印記，是生命的力度及其美德。