In any case, in the course of things the two of them often went for walks. In the version of the story that I heard Oppenheimer tell, they were walking one evening on the walls that surrounded Gottingen and got to discussing Oppenheimer's poetry. I would imagine that the “discussion" was more like an Oppenheimer monologue, which was abruptly interrupted by Dirac, who asked, "How can you do both poetry and physics? In physics we try to give people an understanding of something that nobody knew before, whereas in poetry../' Oppenheimer allowed one to fill in the rest of the sentence. As interesting as it might have been to hear the responses, this did not seem to be the sort of anecdote that would go over especially well at a conference devoted to poetry.
无论如何，那时两个人经常一块散步。在我听说足奥本海默所讲述的那个故事的版本中，一天傍晚他们正在哥廷根周围的城墙上散步，讨论着奥本海默的诗歌。我可以想象，这种“讨论”更像奥本海默的个人独白。狄拉克会突然打断他，问道：“你怎么能够又写诗又搞物理学？在物理学的领域里我们尽力让人们明白从前没人知道的事情，可是诗歌……”。奥本海默意在用后半句未填的内容留给人们广泛的想象空间。尽管听听人们对此的反应可能会很有趣，可这似乎并不是适合在以诗歌为主题的年会上讲的话题。
Pitted against these excellent reasons for my not going to the conference were two others that finally carried the day. In the first place, I was in the beginning stages of a love affair with a young woman who wanted very much to write. She wanted to write so much that she had resigned a lucrative job with an advertising agency and was giving herself a year in which, living on her savings, she was going to do nothing but write. It was a gutsy thing to do, but like many people who try it, she was finding it pretty rough going. In fact, she was rather discouraged. So, to cheer her up, I suggested attending this conference, where she might have a chance to talk with other people who were in the same boat. This aside, I had read in the tentative program of the conference that one of the other tutors was to be Stephen Spender. This, for reasons I will now explain, was decisive.
尽管有这些不去参加会议的冠冕堂皇的理由，另外两个原因最终还是占了上风。首先，我刚刚同一位极其热衷于写作的年轻女士同沐爱河。她对写作是如此热切以至于为此她甚至辞掉了一家广告公司的报酬丰取的工作，给了自己一年时间，在此期间她紧靠积蓄生活，除了写作什么也不做。这么做的确勇气可嘉，可是像许多如此尝试的人一样，她逐渐觉得异常艰难，毫无进展。事实上，她已经有些泄气了。因此，为让她高兴，振作起来，我建议参加这个会，在会上她也许有机会同与她处于相同困境的人谈谈。这个暂且不提，我读到会议的暂定议程，得知其他的导师之一是斯蒂芬·斯彭德。这才决定了我最终的行程，原因我会马上解释。
来源:可可英语 http://www.kekenet.com/daxue/201912/601002.shtml
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