On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

纽约将孤寂与独处当作赠礼，赐予所有向往这份奇特礼物的人们。纽约城内数量庞大的居民中，冲着这份赠礼而来此落脚的绝不在少数;曼哈顿也因此聚集了众多异乡客，他们背井离乡到此闯荡，有的为了寻求庇护，有的为了一展抱负，还有的为了实现心中或大或小的愿望。纽约之所以神秘，便在于它总能赐予这般扑朔迷离的馈赠，能使人万劫不复，也能让人飞黄腾达，皆为运气使然。如果有谁打算碰碰运气，不妨到纽约来。

        New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the inexpungible odor of the long past, so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings.

纽约是艺术、商业、体育、宗教、娱乐、金融中心，将角斗士、福音布道牧师、推销员、演员、股市黄牛和商贾各色人等推上一个紧凑的舞台。城市彰显的特点是带有一种无法抹煞的陈年久远的气味，所以不管你坐在纽约的什么地方，你都会感受到伟大时代和荒诞行状的回声，还有那些奇人怪事和业绩。

        New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along (whether a thousand-foot liner out of the East or a twenty-thousand-man convention out of the West) without inflicting the event on its inhabitants; so that every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul.

纽约就像是一座用特殊材料建造的城市，可以吸纳几乎任何一件发生在此的事情（不论是从东方驶来的长达一千英尺的班轮,还是一次从西方来的两万人大会)，而不对它的居民们产生任何影响。因此，从这个意义来说，每一件事情都是可以任意选择的。纽约人能够在愉快的心情下随意选择他的关注对象，因此也就保持了他心灵的安宁。

        In most metropolises, small and large, the choice is often not with the individual at all. He is thrown to the Lions. The Lions are overwhelming; the event is unavoidable. A cornice falls, and it hits every citizen on the head, every last man in town. I sometimes think that the only event that hits every New Yorker on the head is the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is fairly penetrating — the Irish are a hard race to tune out, there are 500,000 of them in residence, and they have the police force right in the family.

        在大多数或大或小的都会城市里，个人往往是没有选择权的。他必然会同狮子会会员们狭路相逢。狮子会会员无处不在，各种事件避无可避。（被迫生活在名流的喧嚣中，名流的信息和各种事件铺天盖地、无孔不入，简直是避无可避。）一块瓦片坠落，会砸到每个市民的头上，没有谁可以幸免。我有时想，能使每个纽约人都关注的唯一的一件事，大概要算每年一次的劲特里克游行。这场活动渗透到每个角落——其发起者爱尔兰人是个顽固的民族,他们中有500.000人定居在纽约,这其中包括许多警察，你想置之不理可太难了。

         The quality in New York that insulates its inhabitants from life may simply weaken them as individuals. Perhaps it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow; where, when the governor passes, you see at any rate his hat.

纽约城把居民与生活隔绝的特质可能只会弱化个体。也许，个人生活在一个这样的社区更为健康:当屋檐坠落，应当感觉就像砸在自己头上一样;当州长路过，至少能见到他的帽子。

I am not defending New York in this regard. Many of its settlers are probably here merely to escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers — for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

我并不是在为纽约辩护。很多人选择这里落脚也许只是为了逃避现实，而不是面对现实。但是,不管其含义究竟是什么,这份礼物相当难得，而且我也相信这给纽约客的创造力带来了积极的影响——因为在一定程度上，创造就是将大大小小令人分心的事物抛之脑后。

         Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city’s tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation — a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless. I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit (which caused them to break away from their small town), some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution.

尽管纽约常常带给人一种强烈的失落感或被遗弃感，但她却很少显得死气沉沉或乏味无趣，你总会生出如下想法:只需变换一下位置，搬到10个街区以外，或者稍稍破一下财，花掉5美元，你就能立刻重获生机，神采奕奕。许多缺乏自主精神的人纷纷从纽约城的多姿多彩及令人兴奋的活动中寻求支柱，支撑和维系他们的精神和信念。在这个国家的其他地方，这种立竿见影的“重生”机会少之又少——或许只有天气的变化或新到的邮件才能带来些许惊喜。但在纽约，这种机会却是无穷无尽的。在我看来，尽管有不少人来到纽约是因为他们活力过剩，无法宣泄(这促使他们背井离乡，来到纽约)，同时，也不乏一些人是因为精神匮乏才来到纽约，在这里寻求庇护或某种轻而易举就能得到的替代品。

        There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter— the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last — the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference; each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

大致说来，有三个纽约。首先是那些土生土长的男男女女的纽约，他们对这座城市习以为常，认为它有这样的规模和喧嚣，乃是自然而然、不可避免的。其次是家住郊区、乘公交车到市内上班的人们的纽约－－这座城市每到白天就被如蝗的人群吞噬进去，每到晚上又给吐出来。第三是外来人的纽约，他们生于他乡，到纽约来寻求机缘。在这三座充满骚动的城市中，最了不起的是最后一座－－那座被视为最终归宿的城市，视为追寻目标的城市。正是由于这第三座城市，纽约才有了紧张的秉性、诗人的气质、对艺术的执着追求、无与伦比的成就。上班族给纽约带来了潮汐般时涨时落的骚动，当地人保证了纽约的稳固和持续发展，而外来人则赋予纽约以激情。无论是从意大利来到贫民窟开小杂货店的农夫，还是从密西西比州某小镇跑出来躲避邻居的淫秽目光的年轻姑娘，还是从玉米地带满怀酸楚地拎着手稿跑来的小伙子，情况都没有什么两样：每个人都怀着初恋的激情拥抱纽约，每个人都是以冒险家的新奇目光审视纽约，每个人散发出的光和热，足以令爱迪生联合电气公司相形见绌.

        The commuter is the queerest bird of all. The suburb he inhabits has no essential vitality of its own and is a mere roost where he comes at day’s end to go to sleep. Except in rare cases, the man who lives in Mamaroneck or little Neck or Teaneck, and works in New York, discovers nothing much about the city except the time of arrival and departure of trains and buses, and the path to a quick lunch. He is desk-bound, and has never, idly roaming in the gloaming, stumbled suddenly on Belvedere Tower in the park, seen the ramparts rise sheer from the water of the pond and the boys along the shore fishing for minnows, girls stretched out negligently on the shelves of the rocks; he has never come suddenly on anything at all in New York as a loiterer, because he had no time between trains.    He has fished in Manhattan’s wallet and dug out coins, but has never listened to Manhattan’s breathing, never awakened to its morning, never dropped off to sleep in its night. About 400,000 men and women come charging onto to the Island each weekday morning, out of the mouths of tubes and tunnels. Not many among them have ever spent a drowsy afternoon in the great rustling oaken silence of the reading room of the Public Library, with the book elevator (like an old water wheel) spewing out books onto the trays. They tend their furnaces in Westchester and in Jersey, but have never seen the furnaces of the Bowery, the fires that burn in oil drums on zero winter nights. They may work in the financial district downtown and never see the extravagant plantings of Rockefeller Center — the daffodils and grape hyacinths and birches and the flags trimmed to the wind on a fine morning in spring. Or they may work in a midtown office and may let a whole year swing round without sightseeing Governor’s Island from the sea wall. The commuter dies with tremendous mileage to his credit, but he is no rover. His entrances and exits are more devious than those in a prairie-dog village; and he calmly plays bridge while his train is buried in the mud at the bottom of the East River. The Long Island Rail Road alone carried forty million commuters last year; but many of them were the same fellow retracing his steps.

上班族是天下最怪异的人。他们居住的郊区没有自身的勃勃生机，仅仅是他们晚上回来睡觉的栖息所。那些住在马马罗内克、利特尔内克、蒂内克，到纽约上班的人，除个别情况外，对这座城市了无所知，只晓得火车汽车到站离站的时间、去快餐店的路径。这些人整日伏案工作，从来没有闲暇徜徉在暮色之中，意外地走到公园里的观景塔跟前，瞧见湖中突兀而起的防护堤，沿着湖边钓米诺鱼的男孩，大大咧咧地舒展着身子躺在石台上的女孩。他们从未在纽约游游逛逛偶然遇见什么，因为他们从下火车到再上火车，这中间是没有闲工夫的。他们把手伸到曼哈顿的钱包里捞钱，抓到几个微不足道的小钱，但却从未聆听过曼哈顿的鼻息，从未在醒来时见到曼哈顿的早晨，也从未在曼哈顿的夜幕中入睡过。每个工作日的早晨，大约有40万男男女女走出地道口、隧道口，涌上曼哈顿岛。他们之中没有多少人跑到公共图书馆沉寂得只能听到沙沙声的阅览室，懒洋洋地度过一个下午，看着图书传送机像旧水轮一样，将书吐在书盘里。他们在韦斯特切斯特和泽西烧火炉，却从未见过鲍厄里街在气温降至零度的冬夜用油桶烧火取暖。他们可能在市中心的金融区工作，却从未见过洛克菲勒中心那枝繁叶茂的花木－－春光明媚的早晨，黄水仙、风信子和鸢尾花，齐崭崭地迎风摇曳。他们的办公地点可能位于商业区和居住区之间，可是一年到头也没从海堤上眺望过加弗纳斯岛。上班族一生中有惊人的行程，但是从未东游西逛过。他们进进出出的地方比草原犬鼠的地洞群还要曲曲弯弯。即使火车陷进东河底的淤泥中，他们也会若无其事地只管打桥牌。去年，仅长岛铁路就运载了4千万上班族，只不过许多人是反反复复往返乘车罢了。

          The terrain of New York is such that a resident sometimes travels farther, in the end, than a commuter. The journey of the composer Irving Berlin from Cherry Street in the lower East Side to an apartment uptown was through an alley and was only three or four miles in length; but it was like going three times around the world.

纽约的地形比较特别，有时住在城里的人最终走的路可能比上班族还要远。作曲家欧文·柏林是通过一条小巷，从下东区来到住宅区公寓，原本只有三四英里路程，却好像绕着地球走了三圈。