好的，這篇文章的中文翻譯如下：
書籍：游擊隊
4 分鐘閱讀
時代雜誌
1950 年 11 月 13 日 12:00 AM GMT-5
射象 (200 頁)——喬治·奧威爾——哈考特-布雷斯出版社 ($2.75)
正如其他作家擁有華麗詞藻的天賦一樣，喬治·奧威爾也擁有誠實的天賦。他的文學標誌是獨一無二的：他抨擊各種知識界的矯揉造作，以暴躁的熱情熱愛個人自由，強烈的平民階層困苦記憶使他與普通民眾緊密相連，他的文風簡潔而犀利，如同冬日的枯樹。
在今年年初去世之前，奧威爾一直在整理他的散文集。《射象》是他完成的部分，是一本精巧的小書，內容包括自傳式回憶、文學批評和隨筆式新聞報導。它具備了奧威爾一貫的優點：幽默、節制、智慧。儘管這只是他的一部小作品，但它加強了《一九八四》給人留下的印象——奧威爾是這個時代少數真正重要的作家之一。
為了當地人。 書中最精彩的一篇文章是同名散文，它簡要回憶了奧威爾在緬甸擔任英國警察時發生的一件事。奧威爾被叫去射殺一頭發狂的馴象。他其實並不想射殺這頭野獸，但在他身後站著一群緬甸人，如果這個白人退縮，他們就會嘲笑他。既然「老爺就得像個老爺的樣子」，奧威爾便向那頭動物的皮肉傾瀉子彈，同時反思道：「當白人變成暴君時，他毀掉的是自己的自由……因為他的統治條件是他一生都要努力給『當地人』留下深刻印象，所以在每一次危機中，他都必須做『當地人』期望他做的事情。他戴著面具，他的臉也長得像那副面具。」
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企業著眼中國龐大的消費市場
中國日報報導
另外兩篇短文完善了奧威爾的自傳式回憶。《絞刑》生動地描繪了一個緬甸罪犯走向絞刑架時，側身避開水坑的情景。這種本能的人類反應讓奧威爾感到「在生命正盛時將其戛然而止的神秘、難以言喻的錯誤」。《窮人如何死去》則是一篇極其簡略的回憶錄，記錄了奧威爾在 20 年代因肺炎住在巴黎一家醫院病房的經歷，這讓他得出了一個諷刺的結論：「最好是死得轟轟烈烈，而且不要太老。」
為了狂熱分子。 奧威爾純粹的文學評論文章都貫穿著一種共同的主線，那就是他厭惡那些思想上的過度，即使是像托爾斯泰和斯威夫特這樣偉大人物的過度，也近乎極權主義的狂熱。在兩篇精彩的文章中，他展示了蔑視和缺乏同情如何導致斯威夫特將理想的慧駰國社會描繪成一個沒有靈魂的機器，以及托爾斯泰嚴苛的道德觀如何使他對莎士比亞悲劇的真相視而不見。*
在批判狂熱之後，奧威爾接著抨擊知識界的偽善。在《政治與英語》中，他痛斥那些粗心大意或自命不凡的輕浮記者、笨拙的政客和含糊不清的官僚，他們正在摧殘英語。在《文學的預防》中，他引誘、抓住並揭露了那些玩弄雙重思想的共產主義知識分子。與大多數用晦澀的研究生學術語寫作的美國評論不同，奧威爾的文學評論是直接面向那些為了樂趣而閱讀的非專業讀者，沒有任何的屈尊俯就或學究氣。
《射象》的最後幾篇文章是奧威爾為社會主義倫敦《論壇報》撰寫的短篇報導。它們雖然簡短卻充滿魅力，涉及各種次要主題，例如嘲諷體育能促進友誼的觀念，同情普通書評人的繁瑣工作，敦促奧威爾的社會主義同伴們放鬆享受春天，並推測為什麼英國的謀殺案不如以前那麼令人興奮了。
奧威爾一生都是反對「令人作嘔的小正統觀念」的游擊戰士。他所堅持的最好地體現在他的一篇文章中：「人性的本質在於不追求完美，有時願意為了忠誠而犯錯，不將禁慾主義推向使友好交往成為不可能的地步，並且最終準備好被生活擊敗和摧毀……」與大多數同時代的人相比，奧威爾正是憑藉這種信念生活、工作和逝去的。
- 七十五歲的托爾斯泰尤其反對《李爾王》，他寧願這齣戲有一個幸福的結局（就像 17 世紀的蹩腳詩人納胡姆·塔特改寫第五幕時所做的那樣，他殺死了邪惡的女兒們，並讓考狄利亞登上王位，李爾王對此感到極大的和公正的滿足）。托爾斯泰還反對莎士比亞劇中那些活潑的弄臣，他們經常給他們笨拙的上司提供明智的建議。奧威爾的猜測是：瘦削、年老、不快樂的列夫·托爾斯泰可能意識到自己與瘦削、年老、不快樂的李爾驚人地相似。
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Books: Guerrilla
4 minute read
TIME
November 13, 1950 12:00 AM GMT-5
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (200 pp.]—George Orwell — Harcourt, Brace ($2.75).
George Orwell had the gift of honesty as other writers have the gift of the satin phrase. His literary mark was his own: he sniped at all kinds of intellectual cant, loved personal freedom with an irascible passion, felt himself tied to ordinary people by strong memories of plebeian discomfort, and wrote in a style as bare and sharp as a winter tree.
Before he died early this year, Orwell was working on a collection of his essays. Shooting an Elephant, the portion he completed, is a trim little book of autobiographical reminiscence, literary criticism and incidental journalism. It has all the customary Orwell virtues: humor, moderation, intelligence. Though one of his minor works, it reinforces the impression left by Nineteen Eighty-Four—that Orwell was one of the few genuinely important writers of these times.
For the Natives. The best piece in the book is the title essay, a slender recollection of an incident during Orwell’s days as a British constable in Burma. Orwell had been called out to shoot a tame elephant gone rogue. He did not really want to shoot the beast, but behind him stood a crowd of Burmans ready to jeer if the white man faltered. Since “a sahib has got to act like a sahib,” Orwell pumped his bullets in the animal’s hide, reflecting “that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys . . . For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
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Two other sketches round out Orwell’s autobiographical reminiscences. A Hanging is a stark glimpse of a Burmese criminal who, as he walks to the gallows, steps aside to avoid a puddle. This instinctive human reaction overwhelms Orwell with “the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.” How the Poor Die is a severely underwritten memoir of Orwell’s stay (as a pneumonia patient) in a Paris ward in the ’20s, which leads him to the wry conclusion that “it’s better to die violently and not too old.”
For the Fanatics. Orwell’s purely literary essays are bound by a common thread of dislike for those excesses of thought, even the excesses of such greats as Tolstoy and Swift, which fringe on totalitarian fanaticism. In two brilliant essays he shows how scorn and lack of pity led Swift to portray the ideal Houyhnhnm society as a soulless mechanism, and how Tolstoy’s harsh morality blinded him to the truth of Shakespeare’s tragedies.*
After fanaticism, Orwell attacks intellectual humbug. In Politics and the English Language he excoriates the light-fingered journalists, heavy-handed politicos and potato-mouthed bureaucrats who, through carelessness or snobbery, are maiming the English language. In The Prevention of Literature he baits, hooks and dries the doublethink Communist intellectuals. Unlike most American criticism, which is written in a weird graduate school code, Orwell’s literary essays are directed, without condescension or pedantry, to the non-expert who reads for pleasure.
The last pieces in Shooting an Elephant are short articles that Orwell wrote for the socialist London Tribune. Slight but charming, they flit about a variety of minor subjects, taking a poke at the notion that sports breed good will, pitying the chores of a regular book reviewer, urging Orwell’s fellow socialists to let go and enjoy the spring, speculating on why English murders are not as exciting as they used to be.
All his life, Orwell was a guerrilla fighter against “smelly little orthodoxies.” What he stood for is best expressed in one of his essays: “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life . . .” More than most of his fellows, Orwell lived, worked and died by this creed.
* The 75-year-old Tolstoy particularly objected to King Lear and would have preferred the play to have had a happy ending (such as 17th-Century Poetaster Nahum Tate gave it when he rewrote Act V to kill off the wicked daughters and put Cordelia on the throne to Lear’s vast and righteous satisfaction). Tolstoy also objected to Shakespeare’s exuberant Fools, who frequently give sound advice to their stumbling betters. Orwell’s suspicion: gaunt, old, unhappy Leo Tolstoy may have sensed his own remarkable resemblance to gaunt, old, unhappy Lear.
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