[长难句突破]

In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms.

主体句式：The most powerful mass medium was the church.

结构分析：这个句子有着较多的组成成分。首先，在主句前面的"in, before"引导的两个状语分别表示地点和时间，为整个句子提供一个背景。主句后面which引导的定语从句用来形容church，而从句中that引导的宾语从句是remind的内容，其中包含了that引导的两个并列宾语从句。

Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it.

主体句式：We need someone to tell us...

结构分析：主句前面的"surrounded by promises of easy happiness"是一个用来说明前提的状语。而冒号后面的内容用来说明"Memento mori"的具体含义，remember后面包含三个用that引导的并列宾语从句。

[全文译文]

Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.

This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.

You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.

After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.

People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.

Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy .Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

许多事情让人们觉得艺术家都很古怪的人。而最古怪也许是：艺术家的唯一工作就是探索情感，然而他们还往往关注的那些不好的感情。

情况并非总是如此。艺术的最早形式，像绘画和音乐，都是最适合表达快乐情感的。可是从19世纪的某个时期开始，越来越多的艺术家开始把快乐看成是无意义的、虚伪的、甚至是最无聊的，从华兹华斯的《水仙》到波德莱尔的《恶之花》就可以看出这种变化。

你可能会争辩说艺术变得对幸福如此怀疑是因为在现代社会目睹了太多的苦难，但这并不是因为在早些时起就没有持久的战争、灾难和滥杀无辜的事件。事实上，原因可能正好相反：现在的世界上有着太多幸福。

归根结底，究竟是哪种现代表现形式几乎完全只描绘幸福呢？广告。反幸福艺术的兴起几乎完全与大众传媒同时出现，而且随之兴起还有一种商业文化，在这种文化中，幸福不仅是一个理想，而且还是一种观念。

早期的人们总是被悲痛之所萦绕。他们工作到筋疲力尽，生活几乎没有什么保障，年纪轻轻就命丧黄泉。在西方，在大众传媒和文学普及之前，最有效的大众媒体是教堂，它提醒信徒们，他们的灵魂处于危险之中，他们总有一天会成为蛆虫的食物。因此，他们并不需要艺术再来表现这种失落感。

而现在，普通西方人耳闻目睹的信息不是宗教的，而是商业的，并且永远都是让人快乐的。 快餐食客、新闻主播、发短信的人，他们都在笑着，永远地笑着。我们的杂志会突出刊登满面春风的名人和他们美满幸福的家庭。由于这些信息都有一个目标--即引诱我们打开钱包--这使得幸福这个概念看起来不那么可靠。"欢庆吧！"宣传关节炎良药西乐葆的广告这样号召道，随后我们却发现这种药物能增加心脏病的发病率。

但是我们所忘记的是--我们的经济依于我们的遗忘--幸福并不只是没有痛苦的快乐。带给我们最大快乐的事件同时也会带来巨大的损失和失望。现在，我们被幸福唾手可得的诺言包围着，我们需要艺术像宗教曾经做过的那样告诉我们死亡是难以避免的：记住你会死，一切将会终结，幸福并不等于可以不死，而是要承认会死。这样的信息可能比丁香烟更令人觉得苦涩，然而在某种程度上，它也许是一股清新的气息。