一
1—Many things make people think artists are weird.
2—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.
译文：
许多事情使人们认为艺术家是怪异的。但最怪异的或许是这件：艺术家唯一的工作就是探究情感，然而他们却选择聚焦于那些令人感觉糟糕的情感。
二
1—This wasn’t always so.
2—The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy.
3—But somewhere from the 19th century onward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, phony or, worst of all, boring, as we went from Wordsworth’s daffodils to Baudelaire’s flowers of evil.
译文：
情况并非总是如此。最早期的艺术形式，如绘画和音乐，是最适合表达喜悦的。但大约从19世纪以来，更多的艺术家开始把幸福看作是无趣的、虚幻的、甚至是使人厌烦的情感，正如我们从华兹华斯的《水仙花》到波德莱尔的《恶之花》所体验到的一样。
三
1—You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery.
2—But it’s not as if earlier times didn’t know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents.
3—The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
译文：
你可能会辩称艺术越来越质疑幸福是因为现代社会经历了如此多的苦难。但早期社会又不是没有经历过连年战乱、天灾人祸和屠杀无辜。事实上，原因可能恰恰相反：当今世界有太多令人作呕的幸福。
四
1—After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising.
2—The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
译文：
别忘了，几乎完全致力于描绘幸福的唯一现代表达形式是什么?是广告。反幸福艺术的兴起几乎完全与大众传媒同步，与之相伴而生的还有一种商业文化，在这种文化中，幸福不仅是一种理想，更是一种意识形态。
五
1—People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery.
2—They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young.
3—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 for worms.
4—Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be abummertoo.
译文：
早期时代的人们被苦难提示信息团团包围。他们工作到筋疲力尽，生活几乎没有任何保障，且年纪尚轻便会逝去。在西方，在大众传播和教育普及之前，最强有力的大众传媒是教堂，在这里，信徒们会被提醒：他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们有朝一日将沦为腐尸被蠕虫啮噬。鉴于这一切，他们根本不需要艺术也成为一件恼人之物。
六
1—Today the messages the average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy.
2—Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling.
3—Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes.
4—And since these messages have an agenda—to lure us to open our wallets—they make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable.
5—“Celebrate!” commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
译文：
如今围绕普通西方人的信息不是宗教的，而是商业的，且永远都是幸福的。快餐食客、新闻主播、发短信者，都在微笑、微笑、微笑。我们的杂志特载满面春光的名人以及完美住宅里的幸福家庭。由于这些信息有着特定的目的——诱使我们打开钱包——它们使得“幸福”这一概念看起来不可靠。“欢庆吧!”关节炎药西乐葆的广告这样鼓动道，之后我们才发现，它会增加心脏病的发病风险。
七
1—But what we forget—what our economy depends on us forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain.
2—The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment.
3—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.
4—It’s a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.
译文：
但是我们所忘记的——我们的经济依赖的是我们的忘记——是：幸福并非是没有痛苦的快乐。带来最大欢乐的东西很可能带来最大的损失和失望。如今，周围到处都是对唾手可得的幸福的承诺，我们需要艺术来告诫我们，正如宗教曾经告诉我们，人终有一死，万事皆会结束，幸福不在于否定这一点而在于忍受它。这是甚至比丁香烟还要苦涩的启示，但不知何故，却带来了一缕清新的空气。
