对我们今人来说，只须了解：这种新艺术形式的内在魔力及其起源，在于满足一种完全非美感的需要，在于以乐观精神对人类本身的礼赞，在于认为原始人是天性良善爱好艺术的人们，——
For us, it is enough to have perceived that the essential charm, and therefore the genesis, of this new art form lies in the gratification of an altogether nonaesthetic need, in the optimistic glorification of man as such, in the conception of the primitive man as the man naturally good and artistic--
这一歌剧原理，已经逐渐变成一种迫人的、可怕的要求，在现代社会主义运动当前，我们再也不能忽视这点。“良善的原始人”要求他的权利：一个乐土的远景呵！
a principle of the opera that has gradually changed into a threatening and terrible demand which, in face of contemporary socialist movements, we can no longer ignore. The "good primitive man" wants his rights: what paradisiacal prospects!
此外，我还要提出一个同样明显的证据，以证实我这样的观点：即，歌剧和我们的亚历山德里亚文化建立在同一原理上。
Besides this I place another equally obvious confirmation of my view that opera is based on the same principles as our Alexandrian culture.
歌剧是理论家的产物，是批评界中外行人的而不是艺术家的产物：那是全部艺术史上一件最惊大的事实。
Opera is the birth of the theoretical man, the critical layman, not of the artist: one of the most surprising facts in the history of all the arts.
绝无音乐修养的听众要求首先必须听懂歌词，所以认为，只有当发明了一种唱法，其词句支配着对位的旋律，有如主人支配奴仆那样，那时才能指望音乐的再生。
It was the demand of thoroughly unmusical hearers that before everything else the words must be understood, so that according to them a rebirth of music is to be expected only when some mode of singing has been discovered in which text-word lords it over counterpoint like master over servant.
因为，据说词句远贵于伴奏的旋律系统，正如灵魂远贵于肉体。
For the words, it is argued, are a much nobler than the accompanying harmonic system as the soul is nobler than the body.