题图 : ThePixabay
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Many things make people think artists are weird. But the weirdest may be this: artists’ only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.
很多事，让人们觉得艺术家是奇怪的一群人。但是————奇葩的事可能是：艺术家要做的**的工作是去探索人的情感，但他们选择的却是那些负面情感。
This wasn’t always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere from the 19th centuryonward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless,phonyor, worst of all, boring, as we went from Wordsworth’s daffodils to Baudelaire’s flowers of evil.
onward: continuing or moving forward.
phony: not real or true, false, and trying to trick people
但并不总是这样，————早的艺术形式，比如绘画和音乐，是————适合表达快乐的。但是从19世纪某个时期开始，更多的艺术家把快乐看作是无意义的、虚假的、————坏的、无聊的。我们从威廉·华兹华斯的咏水仙和波德莱尔的邪恶之花就可以看出来。
You could argue that / art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery. But it’s not /as if earlier times didn’t knowperpetualwar, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
as if : 好像...似的

perpetual: continuing for a long period of time without interruption.
你可以认为艺术变得开始怀疑快乐，是因为现在的我们经历了太多的痛苦。但这不表明我们之前没有经历频繁的战争、毁灭和无辜所带来的痛苦一样。事实上，原因可能正好相反，如今我们生活的这个世界有着太多的快乐。
After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated todepictinghappiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks theemergenceof mass media, and with it, a commercial culture / in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
depict: to show an image of sb/sth in a picture, to describe sth in words.
emergency: a sudden serious and dangerous event or situation which needs immediate action to deal with it.
emergence: the fact of sb/sth coming out from a dark,confined or hidden place.
总之，有哪一种现代的表现形式是完全致力于表达快乐的？答案是广告。反快乐艺术的兴起完全可以追溯到大众媒体的出现，和随之而来的商业文化。在那儿，快乐不仅是一种理想，也是一种意识形态（空想）。
People (in earliereras)were surrounded byremindersof misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat forworms.Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be abummertoo.
era : a period of time, usually in history, that is different from other periods because of particular characteritics or events.
reminder: sth that makes you think about or remember sb/sth.
worshipper : 朝拜者 崇拜者
worm: a long thin creature with no bones or legs, that lives in soil.
bummer: a disappointing or unpleasant situation.
在以前，人们被痛苦记忆缠绕着。他们工作到精疲力尽，生活没有保障，早早就死去。而在西方拥有大众传播和教育普及之前，————有影响力的大众媒介是教堂。在那里，不断提醒朝拜的人们---灵魂在危险当中，某天他们成为虫子的食物。鉴于此，他们完全不需要让他们的艺术变得也如此糟糕。
Today the messages (the average Westerneris surrounded with) are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling. Our magazinesfeaturebeaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have anagenda—to lure us to open our wallets—they make the veryidea of happiness seem unreliable. “Celebrate!”commanded(the ads for thearthritisdrug Celebrex,) before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
feature: to include a particular person or thing as a special feature.
agenda: a plan of things to be done, or problems to be addressed.
lure : to persuade or trick sb to go somewhere or to do sth by promising them a reward.
commanded: to tell sb to do sth.
arthritis: 关节炎
very 名次 : 表强调，正是、恰好、甚至。
今天围绕在普通西方大众周围的事物不是信仰，而是商业和永远的快乐。吃快餐的人，新闻主持人、短信服务商，所有都作出微笑的表情。我们的杂志会刊登光鲜艳丽的名流和幸福快乐的家庭。因为这些信息有一个任务---去引诱我们花钱---这样的信息会让快乐的理念看上去不可靠。在我们能发现它会增加心脏病的风险之前，治疗关节炎的C药广告还宣传到‘庆祝吧’！
But what we forget—what our economy depends on us forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things (that bring the greatest joy) carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need art to tell us, as religion once did,Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It’s a message even more bitter than aclovecigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
但是，我们忘了的是开心不仅仅是没有痛苦的快乐---我们的经济是依赖和需要我们的遗忘。那些能带来很多快乐的事儿，同时也伴随着————大可能的失去和失望。在今天，那些十分容易就得到快乐的许诺包围着我们，这就需要艺术来告诉我们，就像曾经信仰所告诉的一样，记住自己终有一死，所有都会结束，而快乐的到来也不会否认这些，而是伴随这些一起到来。这样的寓意，比C烟还苦涩，但不管怎么样，它仍是一股新鲜空气。
Congratulations.
It is not your aptitude but your attitude that decides your altitude.