每当奥运前夕，总有各种各样的sports & beyond sports的声音，即将来临的东京奥运会，议论与批评甚嚣尘上。而重温乔治·奥威尔关于体育的视角正是时候；在本文中，奥威尔对体育能促进各国友谊持怀疑态度，批判了过分掺杂政治和民族主义，而忽略体育本身的体育比赛现状。
Now that the brief visit of the Dynamo football team has come to an end, it is possible to say publicly what many thinking people were saying privately before the Dynamos ever arrived. That is, that sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will, and that if such a visit as this had any effect at all on Anglo-Soviet relations, it could only be to make them slightly worse than before.
既然迪纳摩足球队的短暂来访已经结束，现在可以把许多有识之士在迪纳摩造访前私下说过的话公开来说了。在他们看来，体育是敌意永恒的源泉，而如果这种来访能对英苏关系造成任何影响，那只可能是雪上加霜。
Even the newspapers have been unable to conceal the fact that at least two of the four matches played led to much bad feeling. At the Arsenal match, I am told by someone who was there, a British and a Russian player came to blows and the crowd booed the referee. The Glasgow match, someone else informs me, was simply a free-for-all from the start. And then there was the controversy, typical of our nationalistic age, about the composition of the Arsenal team. Was it really an all-England team, as claimed by the Russians, or merely a league team, as claimed by the British? And did the Dynamos end their tour abruptly in order to avoid playing an all-England team? As usual, everyone answers these questions according to his political predilections. Not quite everyone, however. I noted with interest, as an instance of the vicious passions that football provokes, that the sporting correspondent of the russophile News Chronicle took the anti-Russian line and maintained that Arsenal was not an all-England team. No doubt the controversy will continue to echo for years in the footnotes of history books. Meanwhile the result of the Dynamos' tour, in so far as it has had any result, will have been to create fresh animosity on both sides.
即使是报纸也无法掩盖这一事实：四场比赛中至少有两场引起了许多负面情绪。在场的人告诉我，在同阿森纳的比赛中，一个英国球员和俄国球员大打出手，然后观众对裁判发出嘘声。又有人告诉我，同格拉斯哥的比赛，简直从一开始就是一片混战。接着又出现了对阿森纳球员组成的争议，这在如今民族主义盛行的年代尤为典型。阿森纳究竟是俄国人所说的“全英班”（译注：全由英格兰人组成的球队），还是如英国人所说，仅仅是个联赛球队？还有，迪纳摩匆匆结束英伦之旅是为了避免碰上“全英班”吗？一如既往，每个人都会根据自己的政治倾向来回答这些问题。不过也不尽然。我饶有兴趣地注意到，亲俄媒体《新闻纪事报》的体育记者一改常态，坚称阿森纳并不是“全英班”，这也是足球催生残暴激情的例子。无疑，这一争议将持续多年，在历史书的脚注中回响。同时，迪纳摩此次来访的结果，如果有任何结果的话，将会是为双方创造了新的敌意。
And how could it be otherwise? I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.
还可能会如何？每当听到人们说体育可以创造国家间的友谊，或说只要各国人民能在板球或足球场上相遇，就不愿在战场上交锋时，我总是感到惊奇。一个人即使不能从具体事例（如1936年奥运会）（译注：二战前夕在纳粹德国举办的奥运会）中认识到国际间的体育比赛将导致疯狂的仇恨，也至少能从常理中推断出来。
Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
现今开展的体育比赛几乎都是竞争性的。参加比赛就是为了取胜，而如果不全力争胜，比赛便失去了意义。在乡间草地上，当你们分成两边，且不涉及集体主义情感时，才有可能单纯地为娱乐和锻炼进行比赛。但是一旦涉及荣誉问题，一旦想到你的失败会给集体丢脸，最野蛮的战斗本性就会被激发出来。就连只参加过学校足球赛的人都知道这点。国际级别的体育比赛堪称一场模拟战争。但是事情的关键不在于运动员的行为，而在于观众及其身后各个国家的态度。这些国家醉心于这种荒唐的赛事，还煞有介事地相信——至少在短期如此——跑跑、跳跳、踢踢球就是对民族品德的检验。
Even a leisurely game like cricket, demanding grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will, as we saw in the controversy over bodyline bowling and over the rough tactics of the Australian team that visited England in 1921. Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners, is far worse. Worst of all is boxing. One of the most horrible sights in the world is a fight between white and coloured boxers before a mixed audience. But a boxing audience is always disgusting, and the behaviour of the women, in particular, is such that the army, I believe, does not allow them to attend its contests. At any rate, two or three years ago, when Home Guards and regular troops were holding a boxing tournament, I was placed on guard at the door of the hall, with orders to keep the women out.
即使是板球这样需要优雅而非力量的休闲比赛，都能产生不少敌意，正如我们从快速投球战术与1921年澳洲板球队访英时采用的粗野战术的争议中看到的。足球就更糟了，比赛中每个人都会受伤，而各国的风格又不尽相同，这对外国人似乎不太公平。最糟糕的还是拳击。白人与有色人种间在双方观众面前的拳赛是世上最恐怖的景象之一。但是拳击的观众往往令人作呕，尤其是女性观众的行为，我相信甚至会让军队都禁止其入场。至少，两三年前，地方军和正规军举办拳击锦标赛时，我曾受命在大厅守门，禁止妇女入内。
In England, the obsession with sport is bad enough, but even fiercer passions are aroused in young countries where games playing and nationalism are both recent developments. In countries like India or Burma, it is necessary at football matches to have strong cordons of police to keep the crowd from invading the field. In Burma, I have seen the supporters of one side break through the police and disable the goalkeeper of the opposing side at a critical moment. The first big football match that was played in Spain about fifteen years ago led to an uncontrollable riot. As soon as strong feelings of rivalry are aroused, the notion of playing the game according to the rules always vanishes. People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don't intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and “rattling” opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
在英格兰，对体育的痴迷已经够糟糕的了，但在体育比赛和民族主义刚刚兴起的国家，这份感情更加狂热。在印度、缅甸等国，足球比赛需要警察组成警戒线来防止观众闯入球场。在缅甸，我亲眼见过一方的支持者冲破警戒线，在关键时刻限制住对方守门员的行动。约十五年前，西班牙举行的首场大型足球赛就导致了骚乱。一旦强烈的竞争感被激发出来，遵守规则的理念往往消失殆尽。人们希望看到一方高高在上，而另一方惨遭羞辱，却忘记了通过作弊或者观众干预而达到的胜利是毫无意义的。观众就算不赤膊上阵，也希望通过为己方喝彩、用嘘声和骂声惹恼对方球员的方式来影响比赛。严肃的体育比赛与公平竞赛无缘。它同仇恨、嫉妒、自吹自擂、漠视规则与围观暴力时的施虐快感密切相关：换言之，它是一场没有硝烟的战争。
Instead of blahblahing about the clean, healthy rivalry of the football field and the great part played by the Olympic Games in bringing the nations together, it is more useful to inquire how and why this modern cult of sport arose. Most of the games we now play are of ancient origin, but sport does not seem to have been taken very seriously between Roman times and the nineteenth century. Even in the English public schools the games cult did not start till the later part of the last century. Dr Arnold, generally regarded as the founder of the modern public school, looked on games as simply a waste of time. Then, chiefly in England and the United States, games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige. Also, organised games are more likely to flourish in urban communities where the average human being lives a sedentary or at least a confined life, and does not get much opportunity for creative labour. In a rustic community a boy or young man works off a good deal of his surplus energy by walking, swimming, snowballing, climbing trees, riding horses, and by various sports involving cruelty to animals, such as fishing, cockfighting and ferreting for rats. In a big town one must indulge in group activities if one wants an outlet for one's physical strength or for one's sadistic impulses. Games are taken seriously in London and New York, and they were taken seriously in Rome and Byzantium: in the Middle Ages they were played, and probably played with much physical brutality, but they were not mixed up with politics nor a cause of group hatreds.
与其喋喋不休地宣扬足球场上公平、健康的对抗，或者吹嘘奥运会促进各国团结的重要作用，倒不如对现代体育热的起源与发展一探究竟。大多数现代体育项目历史悠久，但体育在罗马时代到十九世纪之间似乎不太受重视。即使是在英国公立学校，体育热也是从上世纪末才开始的。阿诺尔德博士，公认的现代公立学校的创始人，认为体育竞赛纯粹是在浪费时间。后来，主要在英美两国，体育被打造为需要雄厚资本支持的活动，能够吸引大量观众，激发野蛮的热情，它的影响在国与国之间传递。足球和拳击，这两项竞争最激烈的运动，是流传最广的。毫无疑问，这一切与民族主义的崛起密不可分；或者说，有关于现代社会一个愚蠢而癫狂的习惯——将自己等同于强大的集体，并从竞争与声誉的角度看待一切事物。另外，有组织的体育运动在城市中更容易欣欣向荣，因为城里人的生活普遍缺少运动，或者至少相对封闭，缺乏创造性劳动的机会。在乡下，小男孩和年轻人有不少方式消耗多余的能量，他们散步、游泳、打雪仗、爬树、骑马，并从事各种各样残害动物的运动，比如钓鱼、斗鸡、捕鼠。在大城市里，人们要想发泄自己的身体力量和施虐冲动，就必须投身于集体活动。体育运动在伦敦和纽约受到重视，一如它们在罗马和拜占庭：中世纪人们也从事这些运动，或许身体冲撞更加暴力，但却没有掺杂政治，也不会引起集体间的仇恨。
If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators. I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will “lose face”.
如果想给目前世界上肆虐的敌意火上浇油，最好的办法莫过于举办一系列犹太人和阿拉伯人、德国人和捷克人、印度人和英国人、俄国人和波兰人、意大利人和南斯拉夫人之间的足球赛，每场比赛都叫上10万各国观众。当然，我并不是说体育是国际竞争的主要原因之一；大规模的体育运动本身，不过是民族主义源头的另一个产物。不过，当你派出一支11人的队伍，号称是国家冠军，去与对手比拼，然后让两边都认为失利的国家将会丢脸——这样必将会使事情更糟。
I hope, therefore, that we shan't follow up the visit of the Dynamos by sending a British team to the USSR. If we must do so, then let us send a second-rate team which is sure to be beaten and cannot be claimed to represent Britain as a whole. There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators
因此，我希望我们不要步迪纳摩的后尘，再派一支英国球队到苏联。如果非要如此，那就派一支二线队吧，它肯定会被击败，也代表不了整个英国。麻烦事已经够多了，我们没必要火上浇油，再去鼓励年轻人在疯狂观众的呐喊中互踹小腿。
作者简介：乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell，1903-1950），英国左翼作家，新闻记者和社会评论家，著有《动物庄园》和《一九八四》，以批判假社会主义之名、行极权主义之实的斯大林主义著称。本文写于1945年。
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