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Having now recognized that Euripides failed in founding the drama solely on Apollinian elements and that,
instead, his anti Dionysian tendency led him towards inartistic naturalism,
we are ready to deal with the phenomenon of aesthetic Socratism.
那末，我们现在要进一步探讨欧里庇德斯的审美苏格拉底主义的性质：
Its supreme law may be stated as follows: "Whatever is to be beautiful must also be sensible" --a parallel to the Socratic notion that knowledge alone makes men virtuous.
他的最高审美原则是“唯知为美”，这可以媲美苏格拉底的格言“唯知是德”。
欧里庇德斯拿着这个标准在手上，来衡量戏曲的一切成份——语言，性格，戏曲结构，歌队音乐——而按照这个原则订正它们。
What in Euripidean, as compared with Sophoclean tragedy, has been so frequently censured as poetic lack and retrogression is actually the straight result of the poet's incisive critical gifts, his audacious personality.
我们在习惯上往往认为，欧里庇德斯的诗比诸索福克勒斯的诗是缺点和退步，而这点多半是他的深入的批判过程和大胆的判断之结果。
The Euripidean prologue may seen to illustrate the efficacy of that rationalistic method.
欧里庇德斯的序幕，可以作为这种合理主义方法的后果的例证。
Nothing could be more at odds with our dramaturgic notions than the prologue in the drama of Euripides.
再没有甚么比欧里庇德斯的悲剧序幕更违反今日的舞台技巧了。
To have a character appear at the beginning of the play, tell us who he is, what preceded the action,
在一剧的开始，总有一个人物登场来自报家门，说明剧情因由，
what has happened so far, even what is about to happen in the course of the play--a modern writer for the theater would reject all this as a wanton and unpardonable dismissal of the element of suspense.
以前曾发生甚么事情，甚至以后在剧情发展中将会发生甚么事情；现代剧作家定必认为这种手法是恶意的，不可饶恕的破坏悬宕效果。
Now that everyone knows what is going to happen, who will wait to see it happen?
不错，我们既然知道不久将发生的一切事情，谁肯耐心等待它实现呢？
Especially since, in this case, the relation is by no means that of a prophetic dream to a later event.
何况一个预言的梦总是同后来发生的事实吻合，这样的因果关系决不会使人兴奋的。
But Euripides reasoned quite otherwise.
然而，欧里庇德斯却完全从另一角度来考虑。
According to him, the effect of tragedy never resided in epic suspense, in a teasing uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.
他的悲剧效果绝不是靠史诗的悬宕。靠引起你对现在与未来之事猜疑莫决的兴趣，
It resided, rather, in those great scenes of lyrical rhetoric in which the passion and dialectic of the protagonist reached heights of eloquence.
它倒是靠雄辨和抒情的重大场面，在这种场面，主角的激情和辩才扬起波澜壮阔的洪潮。
Everything portended pathos, not action.
一切都是为激情，而不是为剧情作好准备。
