Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was one of the most noticeable figures in the world of literature.

For more than 40 years she made it morally necessary to know everything—to read every book worth reading, to see every movie worth seeing.

40多年来，她一直认为在道德上有必要去了解一切事物——阅读每一本值得阅读的书，观看每一部值得观看的影片。

When she was still in her early 30s, publishing essays in such important magazines as Partisan Review,

30岁出头的时候，她在《党派评论》等重要杂志上发表文章 ,

she appeared as the symbol of American culture life, trying hard to follow every new development in literature, film and art.

成为美国文化生活的象征，她紧跟文学、电影和艺术的每一个新发展。

With great effort and serious judgment, Sontag walked at the latest edges of world culture.

桑塔格以极大的努力和严谨的判断，行走在世界文化的最前沿。

Seriousness was one of Sontag's lifelong watchwords, but at a time when the barriers between the well-educated and the poorly-educated were obvious, she argued for a true openness to the pleasure of pop culture.

严谨是桑塔格一生的座右铭之一，但在那个时代，受过良好教育和受教育程度较低的人之间存在明显障碍，她主张真正开放流行文化的乐趣。

In Notes on Camp, the 1964 essay that first made her name, she explained what was then a little-known set of difficult understandings, through which she could not have been more famous.

她在1964年写的《关于坎普的札记》，是她的成名之作，文中她解释了当时鲜为人知的一系列难以理解的东西，这篇文章让她名声大噪。

"Notes on Camp", she wrote, represents "a victory of 'form' over 'content', 'beauty' over 'morals'".

她在书中写道，“关于坎普的札记代表了‘形式’战胜‘内容’，‘美’战胜‘道德’”。

By conviction she was a sensualist, but by nature she was a moralist, and in the works she published in the 1970s and 1980s, it was the latter side of her that came forward.

她被认为是一个感性主义者，但从本质上讲，她是一个道德家，在她上世纪七八十年代出版的作品中，她作为道德家的本质就显现出来了。

In Illness as Metaphor—published in 1978, after she suffered cancer—she argued against the idea that cancer was somehow a special problem of repressed personalities, a concept that effectively blamed the victim for the disease.

得了癌症之后，她于1978年出版了《疾病的隐喻》，文中她反驳的观点是癌症在某种程度上是压抑个性而产生的特殊问题，这种观点实际上是将疾病归咎于受害者。

In fact, re-examining old positions was her lifelong habit.

事实上，重新审视旧观点是她一生的习惯。

In America, her story of a 19th century Polish actress who set up a perfect society in California, won the National Book Award in 2000.

2000年，桑塔格的《在美国》为她赢得了国家图书奖。小说讲述的是19世纪波兰女演员在加州建立一个乌托邦社会的故事。

But it was an all-purpose cultural view that she made her lasting fame.

但是，她以一种全能的文化观念，使自己的名声经久不衰。

"Sometimes," she once said, "I feel that, in the end, all I am really defending ... is the idea of seriousness, of true seriousness."

“有时候，”她曾说道，“我觉得，我最终真正在捍卫的是严谨、真正的严谨。”

And in the end, she made us take it seriously too.

而且最终，她让我们也严谨起来。