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When Joshua Knobe was younger, he knew an indie rock musician who sang sorrowful, “heart-rending things that made people feel terrible,” he recalled recently.
乔书亚·诺布最近回想起，年轻的时候他认识一位独立摇滚音乐人，这位音乐人会唱那种悲伤的、“令人心碎的、让人感觉很难受的歌”。
At one point he came across a YouTube video, set to her music, that had a suicidal motif.
有一次，他偶然看到了一段YouTube视频，视频配的就是她的音乐，主题是关于自杀的。
“That was the theme of her music,” he said, adding, “So I had this sense of puzzlement by it, because I also felt like it had this tremendous value.”
“这就是她音乐的主题，”诺布说，并补充道，“所以我对她的音乐感到有些困惑，因为我也觉得这种音乐有巨大的价值。”
This is the paradox of sad music: We generally don’t enjoy being sad in real life, but we do enjoy art that makes us feel that way.
这就是悲伤音乐的悖论：我们通常不喜欢在现实生活中感到悲伤，但我们喜欢让我们感到悲伤的艺术。
Countless scholars since Aristotle have tried to account for it.
自亚里士多德以来，无数学者试图解释这一现象。
Maybe we experience a catharsis of negative emotions through music.
也许通过音乐，我们体验到一种负面情绪的宣泄。
Maybe there’s an evolutionary advantage in it, or maybe we’re socially conditioned to appreciate our own suffering.
也许这会带来进化上的优势，或许社会让我们习惯于欣赏自己的痛苦。
Maybe our bodies produce hormones in response to the fragmentary malaise of the music, creating a feeling of consolation.
也许当音乐引起不可名状的愁绪时，我们的身体会产生荷尔蒙，从而让人感到一种慰藉。
Dr. Knobe is now an experimental philosopher and psychologist at Yale University — and is married to that indie rock musician who sang those heart-wrenching songs.
诺布博士现在是耶鲁大学的实验哲学家和心理学家，而且和那位唱心碎歌曲的独立摇滚音乐人结婚了。
In a new study, published in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, he and some colleagues sought to tackle this paradox by asking what sad music is all about.
在发表在《美育》期刊上的一项新研究中，他和几位同事试图通过探究悲伤音乐到底是什么来解决这一悖论。
Over the years, Dr. Knobe’s research has found that people often form two conceptions of the same thing, one concrete and one abstract.
多年来，诺布博士的研究发现，人们常常对同一事物形成两种概念，一种是具体的，另一种是抽象的。
For example, people could be considered artists if they display a concrete set of features, like being technically gifted with a brush.
例如，如果人们表现出一些具体的特点，比如在使用画笔的技巧方面很有天赋，那么他们就可以被视为艺术家。
But if they do not exhibit certain abstract values — if, say, they lack creativity, curiosity or passion and simply recreate old masterpieces for quick profit — one could say that, in another sense, they are not artists.
但是，如果他们没有表现出某些抽象的价值--比如说，他们缺乏创造力、好奇心或激情，只是为了快速获利而复制已有的杰作--那么从另一种意义上说，他们可能不算艺术家。
Maybe sad songs have a similarly dual nature, thought Dr.Knobe and his former student, Tara Venkatesan, a cognitive scientist and operatic soprano.
诺布博士和他之前的学生塔拉·文卡蒂森认为，或许悲伤的歌曲也有类似的二元性。文卡蒂森是一位认知科学家，也是唱歌剧女高音的歌手。
Certainly, research has found that our emotional response to music is multidimensional; you’re not just happy when you listen to a beautiful song, nor simply made sad by a sad one.
当然，研究发现，我们对音乐的情感反应是多维的，当你听一首优美的歌时，你不会只感到快乐，当你听悲伤的歌时，也不会只感到悲伤。
In 2016, a survey of 363 listeners found that emotional responses to sad songs fell roughly into three categories:
2016年，一项对363名听众的调查发现，对悲伤歌曲的情绪反应大致分为三类：
grief, including powerful negative feelings like anger, terror and despair; melancholia, a gentle sadness, longing or self-pity; and sweet sorrow, a pleasant pang of consolation or appreciation.
悲痛，其中包括愤怒、恐惧和绝望等强烈的负面情绪；忧郁，这是一种温和的悲伤、渴望或自怜；还有甜蜜的悲伤，即感到一阵心痛且愉悦的安慰或对音乐的欣赏。
Many respondents described a mix of the three. (The researchers called their study “Fifty Shades of Blue.”)
许多受访者对自己情绪的描述是这三类情况的混合。（研究人员将这项研究称为“五十度蓝”。）
