第3章

But at the time I wrote to you I felt that for both our sakes it would be a good thing, a proper thing, a right thing not to accept the account your father had put forward through his Counsel for .the edification of a Philistine world, and that is why I asked you to think out and write something that would be nearer the truth[48a]. It would at least have been better for you than scribbling to the French papers about the domestic life of your parents. What did the French care whether or not your parents had led a happy domestic life One cannot conceive a subject more entirely uninteresting to them. What did interest them was how an artist of my distinction, one who by the school and movement of which he was the incarnation had exercised a marked influence on the direction of French thought, could, having led such a life, have brought such an action. Had you proposed for your article to publish the letters, endless I fear in number, in which I had spoken to you of the ruin you were bringing on my life, of the madness of moods of rage that you were allowing to master you to your own hurt as well as to mine, and of my desire, nay, my determination to end a friendship so fatal to me in every way, I could have understood it, though I would not have allowed such letters to be published when your fathers Counsel desiring to catch me in a contradiction suddenly produced in Court a letter of mine, written to you in March 93, in which I stated that, rather than endure a repetition of the hideous scenes you seemed to take such a terrible pleasure in making, I would readily consent to be “blackmailed by every renter in London,” it was a very real grief to me that that side of my friendship with you should incidentally be revealed to the common gaze but that you should have been so slow to see, so lacking in all sensitiveness, and so dull in apprehension of what is rare, delicate and beautiful, as to propose yourself to publish the letters in which, and through which, I was trying to keep alive the very spirit and soul of Love, that it might dwell in my body through the long years of that bodys humiliation — this was, and still is to me, a source of the very deepest pain, the most poignant disappointment. Why you did so, I fear I know but too well. If Hate blinded your eyes, Vanity sewed your eyelids together with threads of iron. The faculty “by which, and by which alone, one can understand others in their real as in their ideal relations,” your narrow egotism had blunted, and long disuse had made of no avail. The imagination was as much in prison as I was. Vanity had barred up the windows, and the name of the warder was Hate[48b].

可是在给你写那信时，我觉得为了你也为了我，不接受你父亲通过辩护律师提出的旨在教化庸人俗世的说词，这样是正确的、正当的、应该的。这就是为什么我要你构思写些东西以正一点视听[48a]。对于你，至少也比胡乱给法国报纸写些你父母的家庭生活要好。你父母过去的家庭生活快乐与否，法国人会理睬吗？再也想不出对他们来说比这更无聊的话题了。确实会让他们感兴趣的是，一个像我这么出名的艺术家，一个通过以其为化身的流派和运动而对法国的思潮有过显著影响的艺术家，怎么会过这种生活，而后又去打这样一场官司。我给你写了恐怕有数不清的信，说你是怎样在把我拖向毁灭；说你是怎样放纵自己的喜怒无常，为狂暴的脾气所左右，害我也害己；说我是怎样有心，不，是决心要断绝这完全会置我于死地的友谊。假如你为你的文章而要发表的是我的这些信，那我会理解的，虽然不会允许它们发表的。当你父亲的辩护律师想抓我的把柄时，突然在法庭上出示我的一封信，那是在1 8 9 3年3月写给你的，信中说你既然这么喜欢大吵大闹，那我与其再忍受一轮这可怕的场面，还不如就此“让全伦敦的房客来敲诈”。你我友谊的这一面没想到就公诸于众了，这真的使我非常伤心。但是，对这珍贵的、微妙的、美好的一切，你却如此的不聪不敏、不痛不痒，迟迟不能发现与欣赏，竟至于自己提出要发表这些信件；须知正是在这些信件、通过这些信件，我想保有爱的神与魂，使之存活在我的肉体中，熬过那副肉体蒙受屈辱的漫长岁月而不死。——这曾经是、现在仍然是令我最悲最痛，最最失望的心结。你为什么要这么做，恐怕我是太清楚了。如果仇恨蒙蔽了你的眼睛，那虚荣便是用铁丝把你的眼皮缝在一起了。那种“通过它，只有通过它，才能既以其理想关系也以其真实关系来理解他人”的才能，被你狭隘的利己之心磨钝了，而长久的荒废又使它不复可用了。你的想象力同我的人一样，囚禁在监牢里。虚荣是铁条封住了窗口，看守的名字叫仇恨[48b]。

All this took place in the early part of November of the year before last.[49.1] A great river of life flows between you and a date so distant[49a]. Hardly, if at all, can you see across so wide a waste[49b]. But to me it seems to have occurred, I will not say yesterday, but today. Suffering is one long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life, every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and walk and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape-gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms, or strewn with fallen fruit, we know nothing, and can know nothing[49c]. For us there is only one season, the season of Sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold[49d], but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in ones cell, as it is always midnight in ones heart[49e]. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow[49f]. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing to you, and in this manner writing.

这一切是发生在前年十一月初的事了。那么久远的日子和现在的你，其间横着一条生活的长河[49a]。这茫茫一片荒山野水，你即使看得见，也很难望得穿[49b]。然而在我看来似乎是发生在，我不说是昨天，而是在今天。受苦是一个很长的瞬间。我们无法将它用季节划分。我们只能记录它的心境，按顺序记下它种种心境的回环往复。对于我们，时间本身不是向前推移，而是回旋运转。它似乎在绕着一个哀苦的圆心盘旋。这是一种凝滞的生活，时时事事都由一个不可变的模式控制，我们吃喝、起卧、祈祷、或者至少是为祷告而下跪，都得遵循一条铁的公式：那些一成不变的律法，这种令人麻木的凝滞，使得每一天都暗无天日，都在重复着过去的日子，分毫不变。这种凝滞，似乎让外界的力也与之呼应，而这些力存在的本质，又恰恰在于不断的变化。春种秋收，农人在田里俯身挥镰，果农穿行于藤蔓间采摘葡萄，果园的青草上，残花落时一片片的白，果子掉下又散散的滚了一地：这一切，我们一点也不知道，一点也无法知道[49c]。

对于我们，只有一个季节，悲怆的季节。那太阳、那月亮，似乎都从我们的天穹拿掉了。外面也许是蓝天丽日[49d]，但是透过头顶小小的铁窗那封得严严的玻璃，漏下的只是一点点灰暗的光线。牢房里整天是晨昏不辨，一如内心中整天是半夜三更[49e]。思维也同时间一样，不再有任何运动。你自己早已忘却的事，或者很容易就忘却的事，现在我正身历其境，明天还将再历其境[49f]。记住这个吧，那样你就会明白一点，这封信我为什么写，为什么这样写。

49.2

A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies.[50.1] You knew, none better, how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was so terrible to me that I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame[50a]. Never, even in the most perfect days of my development as an artist, could I have had words fit to bear so august a burden, or to move with sufficient stateliness of music through the purple pageant of my incommunicable woe. She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured not merely in Literature, Art, Archaeology and Science, but in the public history of my own country in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly[50b]. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record[50c]. My wife, at that time kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent or alien lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irredeemable a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not known me personally, hearing what a new sorrow had come into my broken life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. You alone stood aloof, sent me no message, and wrote me no letter. Of such actions, it is best to say what Virgil says to Dante of those whose lives have been barren in noble impulse and shallow of intention “Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa.” [50.2]

一个星期过后，我被转到这里。三个月过去了，我母亲去世了。你比谁都清楚我对她有多爱，多尊敬。她去世，对我是个如此可怕的噩耗，即便我曾出口成章，也有口说不出内心的哀伤和愧怍[50a]。即使是在我艺术的巅峰时期，也绝对找不出什么词语，载得动这千钧重负；也找不出什么词语，在我那万绪千声沸沸扬扬而又无可言传的悲恸之中，能如音乐的雍容肃穆穿行其间。她和我父亲留给我一个他们已使之高尚荣耀的姓氏，不但在文学、艺术、考古和科学，也在我祖国的历史中，在我民族演进的历史中留名。而我却让那个姓氏永远地蒙羞，让它沦为下贱人流传的下贱笑柄，让它蒙上了耻辱的污秽。我把它丢给了恶人使它成为恶名，我把它丢给了蠢人使它成为愚蠢的别名[50b]。我当时承受的悲苦、现在还在承受的悲苦，用笔写不下，用纸记不完[50c]。我妻子那时对我好，不想让我从不相干的人嘴里听到这噩耗，病得那么厉害还从意大利的热那亚赶到英格兰，亲口把这样一个无可挽回、无可补救的损失婉转地告诉我。那些对我仍存有感情的人无不传话表示同情。甚至那些以前并不认识的人，听到我破碎的生活中又添新愁，也写信来要求把他们的哀思传达给我一二。只有你，冷眼旁观，没传来一句话，没寄来一封信。卫基尔对但丁说起那些没有高尚的冲动也没有深远的意向的人，像你的这种样子，用他的话最好说了：“别提他们，只用眼睛看，再走过去。”

Three more months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell-door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is Maytime. My friends come to see me again. I enquire, as I always do, after you. I am told that you are in your villa at Naples, and are bringing out a volume of poems. At the close of the interview it is mentioned casually that you are dedicating them to me. The tidings seemed to give me a sort of nausea of life. I said nothing, but silently went back to my cell with contempt and scorn in my heart. How could you dream of dedicating a volume of poems to me without first asking my permission Dream, do I say How could you dare to do such a thing Will you give as your answer that in the days of my greatness and fame I had consented to receive the dedication of your early work Certainly, I did so just as I would have accepted the homage of any other young man beginning the difficult and beautiful art of literature. All homage is delightful to an artist, and doubly sweet when youth brings it. Laurel and bay leaf wither when aged hands pluck them. Only youth has a right to crown an artist. That is the real privilege of being young, if youth only knew it. But the days of abasement and infamy are different from those of greatness and of fame. You have yet to learn that Prosperity, Pleasure and Success may be rough of grain and common in fibre[51a], but that Sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought or motion to which Sorrow does not vibrate in terrible if exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces that the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse.[51.1] It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of Love touches it and even then must bleed again, though not for pain[51b].

三个月过去了。挂在牢门外，上面写着我的名字和刑期，用来记录我每天劳动与表现的日历告诉我，是五月了。

朋友们又来看我了。我照样问起了你。人家说你在那不勒斯的别墅里，正在出一本诗集呢。在会面快结束时，还随口说起那些诗是要献给我的。这消息似乎让我觉得一阵恶心。我一句话没说，默默地回到牢房，满心的鄙夷与蔑视。你怎么会做这样的梦，不事先征得我同意，竟要把一本诗集献给我？做梦，我说了是不是？这样的事你怎么也敢做出来？你会不会拿这样的话回答我：在我名扬天下、飞黄腾达的日子里，不是就答应过接受你把自己早期的作品题献给我？没错，我答应过，就像我答应任何一个刚踏上这条既艰难又美好的文学之路的年轻人，接受他们的敬意。对艺术家来说，一切敬意都是令人愉快的，而来自青年的敬意又一倍增其愉快。月桂之花、月桂之叶，一让苍老的手采摘，便枯萎了。只有青年有权为一位艺术家戴上桂冠。那是年轻人真正的特权，但愿他们明白这个道理。但是蒙羞含辱的日子同名扬天下、飞黄腾达的时候是不一样的。你还得弄明白，发财、享乐、出人头地，这些可以是大路货[51a] ,但悲怆却是所创造的一切中最敏感的。在整个的思想和运动的空间内，只要稍有动静，它便会以既精妙又可怕的律动，与之共振。那敲得薄薄的金箔，能用来检测肉眼看不见的力的方向，可再敏感，相比之下也显得粗糙了。悲怆是一道伤口，除了爱的手，别的手一碰就会流血，甚至爱的手碰了，也必定会流血的，虽然不是因为疼[51b]。

51.2

You could write to the Governor of Wandsworth Prison to ask my permission to publish my letters in the Mercure de France, “corresponding to our English Fortnightly Review.” Why not have written to the Governor of the Prison at Reading to ask my permission to dedicate your poems to me, whatever fantastic description you may have chosen to give of them Was it because in the one case the magazine in question had been prohibited by me from publishing letters, the legal copyright of which, as you are of course perfectly well aware, was and is vested entirely in me, and in the other you thought that you could enjoy the wilfulness of your own way without my knowing anything about it till it was too late to interfere The mere fact that I was a man disgraced, ruined, and in prison should have made you, if you desired to write my name on the fore-page of your work, beg it of me as a favour, an honour, a privilege[52a]. That is the way in which one should approach those who are in distress and sit in shame.

你那次可以写信给瓦兹华斯监狱的狱长，征求我的许可把我的信发在“相当于我们英国的《双周评论》”的《法兰西信使》上，为什么这次就不能写信给雷丁的监狱长，征求我的许可，让你把诗题献给我呢？不管你把那些诗说得怎样天花乱坠。是不是因为在那件事上我禁止了有关的杂志发表我的信件，而你当然是再清楚不过了，信的版权那时是、现在还是完全地归我所有；而在这件事上你以为可以不管我，随心所欲地做去，等我知道了要干涉也太晚了？我现在是个蒙羞受辱、穷途潦倒、身陷囹圄之人。单凭这一点，你要是有意要在你作品的扉页写上我的名字，就应该求我予你这个方便、给你这份荣耀、授你这项特权[52a]。一个人本该这样跟那些含垢忍辱的人们商量的。

Where there is Sorrow there is holy ground. Some day you will realise what that means. You will know nothing of life till you do. Robbie, and natures like his, can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and with bowed head I passed him by[53a]. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek[53b]. I have never said one single word to him about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasury-house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears.[53.1] When Wisdom has been profitless to me, and Philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little lowly silent act of Love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity, made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken and great heart of the world[53c]. When you are able to understand, not merely how beautiful Robbies action was, but why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, perhaps, you will realise how and in what spirit you should have approached me for permission to dedicate to me your verses.

悲怆中自有圣洁之境。总有一天你会领悟其中意思。否则就是对生活一无所知。罗比以及像他那种心地的人会明白的。当我夹在两个警察当中从监狱里被带到破产法庭时，罗比等在那长长的、凄凉的过道里，我戴着手铐低着头从他身边走过，这时他能庄重地当众扬起帽子向我致意，这亲切的、简简单单的一个动作，一下子让在场的人鸦雀无声[53a]。比这更小的举动就足以让人进天堂了。正是本着这种精神，正是因着这种爱，圣人会跪下给穷人洗脚，会俯身亲吻麻风病人的脸颊[53b]。这事我从未跟他提过。直到现在我还不知道，他是否意识到自己的举动我甚至是觉察到了没有。这样的事情是无法在形式上以话语正式道谢的。我将它存在内心的宝库中。将它存在那儿，作为我暗暗欠下的一笔债，我很高兴地想，这债是永远也还不清的。将它存在那儿，让滴滴泪珠化作没药与肉桂，使它永远芬芳，永远甜美。在这个智慧于我无益，达观于我无补，引经据典安慰我的话于我如同灰土的时候，那小小的、谦恭的、无声的爱之举动，想起它，就为我开启了所有怜悯的源泉：让沙漠如玫瑰盛开，带我脱离囚牢的孤单与苦痛，让我与世界那颗受伤的、破碎的、伟大的心相依相连[53c]。当你不单单能够理解罗比的举动是怎样的美好，而且还能理解这举动为什么对我意义如此重大，并将永远意义重大时，那么，你也许就能明白本来应该怎样、应该本着一种什么精神，来同我商量，允许你把诗献给我。

It is only right to state that in any case I would not have accepted the dedication. Though, possibly, it would under other circumstances have pleased me to have been asked, I would have refused the request for your sake, irrespective of any feelings of my own. The first volume of poems that in the very springtime of his manhood a young man sends forth to the world should be like a blossom or flower of spring, like the white thorn in the meadow at Magdalen, or the cowslips in the Cumnor[54.1] fields. It should not be burdened by the weight of a terrible, a revolting tragedy, a terrible, a revolting scandal. If I had allowed my name to serve as herald to the book it would have been a grave artistic error. It would have brought a wrong atmosphere round the whole work, and in modern art atmosphere counts for so much. Modern life is complex and relative. Those are its two distinguishing notes. To render the first we require atmosphere with its subtlety of nuances, of suggestion, of strange perspectives as for the second we require background. That is why Sculpture has ceased to be a representative art and why Music is a representative art and why Literature is, and has been, and always will remain the supreme representative art. 一点也不错，我无论如何不会接受这献诗的。虽然，也许吧，在其它情况下你问了我会高兴，但仍会为了你好而拒绝这一请求的，不管我自己心情如何。一个年轻人，在他青春正盛时呈献给世界的第一部诗集，应该像春天的鲜花，像莫德林学院草坪上的山楂树，像康姆纳田野的立金花；而不该去背负一个可怕可恨的悲剧、一个可怕可恨的丑闻。倘若我让自己的名字用去为诗集的问世报喜，那将是艺术上的一大错误。它将使整个作品裹在一种错误的氛围之中，而现代艺术中氛围又是如此重要。现代生活是复杂的，相对的。这是它的两个显著特征。要表现第一个，我们需要氛围及其微妙的神韵、暗示和奇妙的透视；要表现第二个，我们需要背景。这就是为什么雕塑已不再是一种再现型艺术，而音乐则是；这就是为什么文学是、也一直是、将来永远还是再现型的最高艺术。

Your little book should have brought with it Sicilian and Arcadian airs, not the pestilent foulness of the criminal dock or the close breath of the convict cell. Nor would such a dedication as you proposed have been merely an error of taste in Art it would from other points of view have been entirely unseemly. It would have looked like a continuance of your conduct before and after my arrest. It would have given people the impression of being an attempt at foolish bravado an example of that kind of courage that is sold cheap and bought cheap in the streets of shame. As far as our friendship is concerned Nemesis has crushed us both like flies[55a]. The dedication of verses to me when I was in prison would have seemed a sort of silly effort at smart repartee, an accomplishment on which in your old days of dreadful letter-writing — days never, I sincerely hope for your sake, to return — you used openly to pride yourself and about which it was your joy to boast. It would not have produced the serious, the beautiful effect which I trust — I believe indeed — you had intended. Had you consulted me, I would have advised you to delay the publication of your verses for a little or, if that proved displeasing to you, to publish anonymously at first, and then when you had won lovers by your song — the only sort of lovers really worth the winning — you might have turned round and said to the world “These flowers that you admire are of my sowing, and now I offer them to one whom you regard as a pariah and an outcast, as my tribute to what I love and reverence and admire in him.” But you chose the wrong method and the wrong moment[55b]. There is a tact in love, and a tact in literature you were not sensitive to either.

你的小书，本来应该带着西西里岛的神韵和阿卡狄亚的田园风味，而不是罪犯被告席的龌龊和囚牢的恶浊。你提议的这样一种献诗，还不只是艺术品味的错误；从别的观点来看也是完全不恰当的。它会显得像是你在我被捕前后的举止态度的延续。它会给人一种印象，认为这是愚蠢地虚张声势，是那种在人所不齿的偏街小巷被贱卖贱买的勇气。就我们的友谊而言，复仇女神已把你我像苍蝇似的打得稀烂[55a]。在我身陷囹圄时献诗给我，实在像是一种自以为聪明的耍贫嘴，在过去你还只是写信的那些个可怕的日子里——为了你好我真心希望那些日子是一去不复返了——你常常公开以这种耍贫嘴的顶撞功夫为荣，很得意地自我吹嘘。这样做，不会产生我料想——我确实相信——你所属意的那种严肃的、美好的效果。你要是征求了我的意见，我会劝你暂缓一阵出版你的诗集；如果不喜欢这样的话，最初可以先匿名出版，等你的歌为你赢来了仰慕者——唯一一种值得争取的仰慕者——那时你可以转过身来对世界说道：“你们赞赏的这些花是我种的，现在我要把它们献给一个人，这个人你们把他遗弃了、赶走了，我以这些花来表达对他人品的热爱、尊敬和钦慕。” 但是，你选的方式错了，选的时间也不对[55b]。爱是讲策略的，文学是讲策略的：这两样你都不敏感。

I have spoken to you at length on this point in order that you should grasp its full bearings, and understand why I wrote at once to Robbie in terms of such scorn and contempt of you, and absolutely prohibited the dedication, and desired that the words I had written of you should be copied out carefully and sent to you. I felt that at last the time had come when you should be made to see, to recognise, to realise a little of what you had done[56a]. Blindness may be carried so far that it becomes grotesque, and an unimaginative nature, if something be not done to rouse it, will become petrified into absolute insensibility, so that while the body may eat, and drink, and have its pleasures, the soul, whose house it is, may, like the soul of Branca d'Oria in Dante, be dead absolutely.[56.1] My letter seems to have arrived not a moment too soon. It fell on you, as far as I can judge, like a thunderbolt[56b]. You describe yourself, in your answer to Robbie, as being “deprived of all power of thought and expression.” Indeed, apparently, you can think of nothing better than to write to your mother to complain. Of course, she, with that blindness to your real good that has been her ill-starred fortune and yours, gives you every comfort she can think of, and lulls you back, I suppose, into your former unhappy, unworthy condition while as far as I am concerned, she lets my friends know that she is “very much annoyed” at the severity of my remarks about you. Indeed it is not merely to my friends that she conveys her sentiments of annoyance, but also to those — a very much larger number, I need hardly remind you—who are not my friends and I am informed now, and through channels very kindly-disposed to you and yours, that in consequence of this a great deal of the sympathy that, by reason of my distinguished genius and terrible sufferings, had been gradually but surely growing up for me, has been entirely taken away. People say “Ah he first tried to get the kind father put into prison and failed now he turns round and blames the innocent son for his failure. How right we were to despise him How worthy of contempt he is” It seems to me that, when my name is mentioned in your mothers presence, if she has no word of sorrow or regret for her share — no slight one — in the ruin of my house, it would be more seemly if she remained silent. And as for you—dont you think now that, instead of writing to her to complain, it would have been better for you, in every way, to have written to me directly, and to have had the courage to say to me whatever you had or fancied you had to say It is nearly a year ago now since I wrote that letter. You cannot have remained during that entire time “deprived of all power of thought and expression.” Why did you not write to me You saw by my letter how deeply wounded, how outraged I was by your whole conduct. More than that you saw your entire friendship with me set before you, at last, in its true light, and by a mode not to be mistaken. Often in old days I had told you that you were ruining my life. You had always laughed. When Edwin Levy[56.2] at the very beginning of our friendship, seeing your manner of putting me forward to bear the brunt, and annoyance, and expense even of that unfortunate Oxford mishap of yours, if we must so term it, in reference to which his advice and help had been sought, warned me for the space of a whole hour against knowing you, you laughed, as at Bracknell I described to you my long and impressive interview with him. When I told you how even that unfortunate young man who ultimately stood beside me in the Dock had warned me more than once that you would prove far more fatal in bringing me to utter destruction than any even of the common lads whom I was foolish enough to know, you laughed, though not with such sense of amusement. When my more prudent or less well-disposed friends either warned me or left me, on account of my friendship with you, you laughed with scorn. You laughed immoderately when, on the occasion of your father writing his first abusive letter to you about me, I told you that I knew I would be the mere cats paw of your dreadful quarrel and come to some evil between you. But every single thing had happened as I had said it would happen, as far as the result goes. You had no excuse for not seeing how all things had come to pass. Why did you not write to me Was it cowardice Was it callousness What was it The fact that I was outraged with you, and had expressed my sense of the outrage, was all the more reason for writing. If you thought my letter just, you should have written. If you thought it in the smallest point unjust, you should have written. I waited for a letter. I felt sure that at last you would see that, if old affection, much-protested love, the thousand acts of ill-requited kindness I had showered on you, the thousand unpaid debts of gratitude you owed me — that if all these were nothing to you, mere duty itself, most barren of all bonds between man and man, should have made you write[56c]. You cannot say that you seriously thought I was obliged to receive none but business communications from members of my family. You knew perfectly well that every twelve weeks, Robbie was writing to me a little budget of literary news. Nothing can be more charming than his letters, in their wit, their clever concentrated criticism, their light touch they are real letters they are like a person talking to one they have the quality of a French causerie intime and his delicate modes of deference to me, appealing at one time to my judgment, at another to my sense of humour, at another to my instinct for beauty or to my culture[56d], and reminding me in a hundred subtle ways that once I was to many an arbiter of style in Art, the supreme arbiter to some, he shows how he has the tact of love as well as the tact of literature. His letters have been the little messengers between me and that beautiful unreal world of Art where once I was King, and would have remained King, indeed, had I not let myself be lured into the imperfect world of coarse uncompleted passions, of appetite without distinction, desire without limit, and formless greed. Yet, when all is said, surely you might have been able to understand, or conceive, at any rate, in you own mind, that, even on the ordinary grounds of mere psychological curiosity, it would have been more interesting to me to hear from you than to learn that Alfred Austin[56.3] was trying to bring out a volume of poems, or that Street[56.4] was writing dramatic criticisms for the Daily Chronicle, or that by one who cannot speak a panegyric without stammering Mrs Meynell[56.5] had been pronounced to be the new Sibyl of Style.

这一点我已经详细地对你说了，以便你对它能充分了解，从而理解我为什么会当即写信给罗比，提到你时口气是那么鄙夷不屑，并绝对禁止你的题献，而且希望能把我说你的这些话细心抄出来寄给你。我感到终于是时候了，得让你对自己干下的事有所了解，有所认识，有所领悟[56a]。蒙蔽之深会变成怪异；而一份没有想象力的心性，如果不去唤醒的话，会变成石头般的冥顽不灵。如此一来，肉体可以吃可以喝可以享乐，而以肉体为寓的灵魂，会像但丁笔下布兰卡德奥里亚的灵魂那样，永无复活之日了。我的信你似乎收到得正是时候。就我判断，那些话对你像是五雷轰顶[56b]。在给罗比的回信中你自己说了，“失去了所有思想和表达的能力”。的确，看那样子你除了写信给你母亲告状外，想不出更好的什么了。她本来就因为看不到怎样才是真的对你好而铸成了自己和你的不幸，这下当然是想方设法安慰你，我想是把你又哄回了早先那种不肖也不中用的样子。至于我这头呢，她告诉我的朋友，说我这样对你严词贬责使她“非常的不高兴”。的确，她不但把这不高兴跟我朋友说了，还跟别人——我几乎不用提醒你了，是更多得多的人——说了，这些人并非我的朋友。而现在，我已通过那些同你和你家相交甚厚的渠道听说了，本来由于我的过人才华以及所受的非人折磨，人们对我的同情在渐渐不断地增加，但是出了这件事，这同情已荡然无存。人们说：“呵！他早先想把那慈祥的父亲弄进监狱不成，现在又转过来把这失败怪罪到那无辜的儿子头上。真是活该被咱们看不起！多么不识抬举的人！” 在我看来，当有人在你母亲面前提到我的名字时，假如她对自己在我的家破人散中所应负的那份责任——不小的一份呢——没什么悲伤和遗憾之词可说的话，那也请她保持沉默为好。至于你——难道你现在还想不通吗，当时要是不写信向她告状，而是直接写给我，有那个勇气把你要说或认为要说的话统统说出来，这样做不管从哪方面看对你都更好吗？我写那封信到现在快一年了。你不可能在这期间一直“失去所有思想和表达的能力”吧。为什么不写信给我呢？从我的信中你看到你所做的一切对我的伤害有多深，令我有多生气。还不止如此呢；你看到，你同我的友谊，前前后后巨细无遗地摆在了眼前，终于本色毕露，毫不含糊。过去我常常说，你这样要把我毁了。你听了总是一笑。在你我交往之初，爱德文列维看到当你在牛津不幸落难时——如果我们非把它称为落难不可的话——是怎样把我推出去为你担忧受过、出面甚至出钱；在我就这事向他请教求助时，他花了整整一个小时规劝我不要同你认识来往。在布莱克奈尔我跟你讲了同他的那次令人难忘的长谈，你听了一笑。我曾告诉你，即使那个最终和我一起站在被告席上的不幸的年轻人，也都不止一次地警告过我，说你将来会比任何人，甚至比我傻乎乎认识的那些普通男孩，都要致命得多，终将置我于身败名裂的死地。你听了一笑，虽然这次没觉得那么好玩。当我那些为人更谨慎或者相交不甚厚的朋友，因为我同你的友谊，要么对我忠言相劝要么离我而去，你知道后不屑地一笑。当你父亲第一次在给你的信中咒骂我时，我告诉过你，我知道自己不过是你父子交恶中的卒子而已，最终是遭殃。你听了狂然大笑。但结果是，我说了要发生的事，大大小小无不全发生了。你没有理由说不知道这一切的始末曲直。为什么你不给我写信？是怯懦吗？是无动于衷吗？是什么呢？我对你发脾气，在信中发了脾气，这更应该是你写信的理由啊。如果认为我信中说的有理，你应该写了信来。如果认为我说的有一点点的不合理，你应该写了信来。我等着一封信。我确实感到，你终究会明白的，如果旧日的感情、那世人颇不以为然的爱、我千百次向你表示的善而不得善报的盛意、你千百次欠我的尚未回报的人情，倘若这一切你认为是不值一提的话，那么光是履行义务，这人与人之间最无情意可言的契约关系，也该使你动笔了[56c]。你不至于当真认为，我除了家人的事务信函外，不让收到任何东西了吧。你非常清楚地知道，每隔十二星期罗比都写信给我，说一点文坛消息。再没有什么比他的信更令人如沐春风了：那份机智，那些精辟的批评，那轻巧的笔触——这才真叫写信，就像在跟人谈天，很有法国人称之为“密友闲聊”的况味。他把对我的敬服表现得含蓄优雅，一会儿诉诸我的理性判断，一会儿投合我的幽默感，一会儿与我的审美直觉呼应，一会儿与我的文化修养合拍[56d]，处处微妙地让我记起自己曾经在许多人眼里是品评艺术风格的一方盟主，对一些人来说是最高盟主。他既显示了自己文学的策略，也显示了他爱的策略。他的信是我与那个美丽的非现实的艺术世界之间的小小信使，在那个世界里我曾经尊贵为王。的确，本来会继续为王的，只是我让自己受诱惑，掉进了一个不完美的世界，掉进了粗鄙而不圆满的激情、正邪不辨的嗜好、没有止境的欲望、散漫无定的贪婪之中。然而，该说的都说了之后，肯定你自己心中怎么也会理解，也会想得到，即使是基于好奇这一普普通通的心理，我也很想收到你的消息，胜过听到艾尔弗列德奥斯汀要出一本诗集，斯特利特在给《每日纪事》写剧评，或者是由一个读一篇颂词也要口吃的人宣称梅纳尔太太为新一位掌管风格的女判官等诸如此类的新闻。

Ah had you been in prison—I will not say through any fault of mine, for that would be a thought too terrible for me to bear—but through fault of your own, error of your own, faith in some unworthy friend, slip in sensual mire, trust misapplied, or love ill-bestowed, or none, or all of these —do you think that I would have allowed you to eat your heart away in darkness and solitude without trying in some way, however slight, to help you to bear the bitter burden of your disgrace Do you think that I would not have let you know that[57a] if you suffered, I was suffering too that if you wept, there were tears in my eyes also and that[57a] if you lay in the house of bondage and were despised of men, I out of my very griefs had built a house in which to dwell until your coming, a treasury in which all that men had denied to you would be laid up for your healing, one hundredfold in increase If bitter necessity, or prudence, to me more bitter still, had prevented my being near you, and robbed me of the joy of your presence, though seen through prison-bars and in a shape of shame, I would have written to you in season and out of season in the hope that some mere phrase, some single word, some broken echo even of Love might reach you[57b]. If you had refused to receive my letters, I would have written none the less, so that you should have known that at any rate there were always letters waiting for you. Many have done so to me. Every three months people write to me, or propose to write to me. Their letters and communications are kept. They will be handed to me when I go out of prison. I know that they are there. I know the names of the people who have written them. I know that they are full of sympathy, and affection, and kindness. That is sufficient for me. I need to know no more. Your silence has been horrible. Nor has it been a silence of weeks and months merely, but of years of years even as they have to count them who, like yourself, live swiftly in happiness, and can hardly catch the gilt feet of the days as they dance by, and are out of breath in the chase after pleasure. It is a silence without excuse a silence without palliation. I knew you had feet of clay. Who knew it better When I wrote, among my aphorisms, that it was simply the feet of clay that made the gold of the image precious,[57.1] it was of you I was thinking. But it is no gold image with clay feet that you have made of yourself[57c]. Out of the very dust of the common highway that the hooves of horned things pash into mire you have moulded your perfect semblance for me to look at[57d], so that, whatever my secret desire might have been, it would be impossible for me now to have for you any feeling other than that of contempt and scorn, for myself my feeling other than that of contempt and scorn either. And setting aside all other reasons, your indifference, your worldly wisdom, your callousness, your prudence, whatever you may choose to call it, has been made doubly bitter to me by the peculiar circumstances that either accompanied or followed my fall.

啊！要是换成了你在监狱——我不说是因为我的过失，要是这样那太可怕了，我承受不了的——而是因为你自己的过失，你自己的错误：交错朋友、信错人、爱错人、在人欲的泥淖中失足，或者这些都不是，或者这些都是——在这种情况下，你想我会让你在黑暗与孤寂中凄惨度日，而不想办法，哪怕是多么微不足道的办法，帮助你去承受耻辱的重压吗？你想我会不让你知道吗[57a]，你受苦，我与你同在受苦；你哭泣，我眼中也会充满热泪？你想我会不让你知道吗[57a]，假如你幽困于缧绁之室，为人所不齿，我会用满心的悲哀去构筑一处宝屋，百倍加添地存起世人不让你得到的一切，等着你的归来，伴着你的康复？如果出于令人痛苦的需要或谨慎，对于我这是更加的痛苦，我不得与你接近，被剥夺了与你相见的快乐，即使是透过铁窗看看里面囚首垢面的你都不行，我也会一年四季地给你写信，希望哪怕是一些只言片语，甚至不过是爱的不成声的回音，也许会传到你那儿[57b]。即使你拒绝收我的信，我也会照写不误，这样你就会知道，不管怎样总是有信在等着你。不少人都这样写信给我。每过三个月人们都给我写信，或提出要给我写信。他们的信件都存在那里，等我出狱时交给我。我知道信都在那儿。我知道写信人的名字。我知道信中充满了同情，以及关爱，以及善意。这就够了。我不需要知道得更多。你的沉默令人寒心。不止是几星期或几个月，而是几年的杳无只字；几年了，即使是像你这样的人也得算一算，你们快活的时光过得飞快，日子翩翩而过，几乎赶不上它们闪光的舞步，追欢寻乐跑得你们上气不接下气。这沉默没有道理，这沉默无可辩解。我知道你有不为人知的弱点，犹如塑像的泥足。有谁知道得更清楚呢？在我的格言警句中，有一个是这样写的，正是泥足才使金身变得宝贵。我当时想的就是你。但是，你给自己塑造的形象并非泥足金身[57c]。那些两角四蹄的畜牲把大路上的泥尘践踏成泥淖，你正是用这泥淖之泥维妙维肖地塑成自己的人像给我看[57d]，这样一来，不管我曾经对你怀有什么秘密的向往，现在对你，除了鄙夷和蔑视外，不可能有别的感情了，而对自己，也只有鄙夷和蔑视了。别的理由不提也罢，就你的无动于衷、你的伧俗乖巧、你的无情无义、你的小心谨慎，随你高兴怎么说都成，只要一想到我落难当时及以后的种种怪事，这一切就令我倍觉苦涩。

Other miserable men, when they are thrown into prison, if they are robbed of the beauty of the world, are at least safe, in some measure, from the worlds most deadly slings, most awful arrows.[58.1] They can hide in the darkness of their cells, and of their very disgrace make a mode of sanctuary. The world, having had its will, goes its way, and they are left to suffer undisturbed. With me it has been different. Sorrow after sorrow has come beating at the prison doors in search of me[58a]. They have opened the gates wide and let them in. Hardly, if at all, have my friends been suffered to see me. But my enemies have had full access to me always. Twice in my public appearances at the Bankruptcy Court, twice again in my public transferences from one prison to another, have I been shown under conditions of unspeakable humiliation to the gaze and mockery of men. The messenger of Death has brought me his tidings and gone his way, and in entire solitude, and isolated from all that could give me comfort, or suggest relief, I have had to bear the intolerable burden of misery and remorse that the memory of my mother placed upon me, and places on me still. Hardly has that wound been dulled, not healed, by time, when violent and bitter and harsh letters come to me from my wife through her solicitor. I am, at once, taunted and threatened with poverty. That I can bear. I can school myself to worse than that. But my two children are taken from me by legal procedure.[58.2] That is and always will remain to me a source of infinite distress, of infinite pain, of grief without end or limit. That the law should decide, and take upon itself to decide, that I am one unfit to be with my own children is something quite horrible to me. The disgrace of prison is as nothing compared to it. I envy the other men who tread the yard along with me. I am sure that their children wait for them, look for their coming, will be sweet to them.

别人进监狱受苦，如果说被剥夺了人间美好的东西，他们至少还是安全的，从某种程度上说，世上最要命的明枪暗箭是够不着他们了。他们可以躲在牢房的黑暗中，耻辱本身就成了他们的一种避难所。世界遂心如意了，继续走它的路，他们就留在那里无人打搅地受着苦。而我就不同了。悲怆如潮，一阵一阵地敲打着层层牢门找我来[58a]。那些人把牢门洞开，让它涌进来。我的朋友，即使有的话，也很少能获准来看我。而我的敌人想来的话，却总是通行无阻。两次在破产法庭、又有两次在转监狱途中，我都在众目睽睽之下抛头露面，忍着说不出的奇耻大辱，任由世人嘲弄。死神的使者传达了他的消息之后，走了，我孑然一身，与世隔绝中有什么来安慰、来排解我的丧母之痛？思念母亲，悲哀和愧悔那难以忍受的重负我唯有一个人承担，我仍在承担。没等那伤痛因为光阴流转而减轻，更别说伤口愈合，我妻子便通过律师寄来了一封封气势汹汹的信。我这样同时受人以贫穷相激相逼。这个我挺得住。比这更糟的我都能咬咬牙挺过去。但我的两个孩子被法庭判走了。这是，也将永远是个令我无限沮丧、无限痛苦、无限悲伤的心结。法律竟会如此裁决，竟敢如此裁决，认为我不适合同亲生孩子在一起，这不禁令人毛骨悚然。牢狱之耻同这相比都算不了什么。我羡慕院里同我走步放风的人。他们的子女肯定在等着、盼着他们归来，而且会好好地待他们。

The poor are wiser, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive[59a] than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a mans life, a misfortune, a casualty, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is “in trouble” simply[59b]. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of Love in it. With people of our rank it is different. With us prison makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly my right to air and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when we reappear[59c]. To revisit the glimpses of the moon[59.1] is not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and help us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain[59d].

穷苦的人比我们更有智慧，更慈悲，更仁厚，更善解人意[59a]。在他们眼里，进监狱是人生的一出悲剧，一个不幸，一场灾祸，别人应该同情才是。一个人进了监狱他们只说是“出事了” [59b]。他们总是这么说的，话语间表露了完美的爱的智慧。而我们这种地位的人就不同了。一进监狱便遭人唾弃。我，像我目前这样，几乎连得到空气和阳光的权利也没有了。我们一出现便扫人家的兴。等到从监狱里放出来，就成了不受欢迎的人[59c]。再看看那时隐时现的月色都不行。我们的亲生孩子被带走了。人性天伦美好的纽带断了。我们的儿子还活在世上，而我们却难逃孤老独居的命运。就这一样本可以治愈我们的创伤、帮助我们振作、本可以让受伤的心纾解、让痛苦的灵魂安宁的亲情，却不让我们得到[59d]。

And to all this has been added[60a] the hard, small fact that by your actions and by you silence, by what you have done and by what you have left undone, you have made every day of my long imprisonment still more difficult for me to live through. The very bread and water of prison fare you have by your conduct changed[60b]. You have rendered the one bitter and the other brackish to me. The sorrow you should have shared you have doubled, the pain you should have sought to lighten you have quickened to anguish[60c]. I have no doubt that you did not mean to do so. I know that you did not mean to do so. It was simply that “one really fatal defect of your character, your entire lack of imagination.”

而百上加斤的是[60a]这一不大但不可否认的事实：你的行为、你的沉默、你所做的和没来得及做的一切，使我漫长的牢狱之苦更变得度日如年了。就是狱中的饭食饮水，也因为你的所作所为而变味了[60b]。你让我的饭变苦让我的水变涩。本该与我分担的伤悲你却令它倍增其悲；本该为我排遣的痛苦你却使它苦上加苦[60c]。我毫不怀疑你并非有意。我知道你并非有意。这只不过是 “你性格上唯一真正致命的缺点，你的毫无想象力”而已。

And the end of it all is that I have got to forgive you. I must do so. I dont write this letter to put bitterness into your head, but to pluck it out of mine[61a]. For my own sake I must forgive you. One cannot always keep an adder in ones breast to feed on one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of ones soul[61b]. It will not be difficult at all for me to do so, if you help me a little. Whatever you did to me in old days I always readily forgave. It did you no good then. Only one whose life is without stain of any kind can forgive sins. But now when I sit in humiliation and disgrace it is different. My forgiveness should mean a great deal to you now. Some day you will realise it. Whether you do so early or late, soon or not at all, my way is clear before me. I cannot allow you to go through life bearing in your heart the burden of having ruined a man like me. The thought might make you callously indifferent, or morbidly sad. I must take the burden from you and put it on my own shoulders.

归根结底我又非得饶恕你不可。不这样不行。我写这封信，不是要让你心生怨怼，而是要摘除自己心中的芥蒂[61a]。为了自己，我必须饶恕你。一个人，不能永远在胸中养着一条毒蛇；不能夜夜起身，在灵魂的园子里栽种荆棘[61b]。要我饶恕你一点不难，只要你帮我一把。在过去无论你对我做了什么，我总是很乐意地原谅你。那时对你一点好处也没有。只有自己的生活毫无瑕疵的人才能饶恕罪过。但现在，我含屈受辱，情况就不同了。现在我饶恕你，对你应该是意义重大了吧。有一天你会领悟的。无论领悟得或早或迟，很快或根本领悟不了，我都清楚我该怎么做。你毁了一个像我这样的人，但我不能让你心头压着这负担过一辈子。这负担可能会使你变得麻木冷酷，或者凄凄惨惨。我必须把这重负从你心头举起，放上我自己的肩头。

I must say to myself that neither you nor your father, multiplied a thousand times over, could possibly have ruined a man like me that I ruined myself and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand[62a]. I am quite ready to do so. I am trying to do so, though you may not think it at the present moment. If I have brought this pitiless indictment against you, think what an indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as what you did to me was, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

我必须告诉自己，不管是你还是你父亲，即使再强大千百倍，也不可能摧毁一个像我这样的人；是我自己毁了自己——不管是大人物还是小人物，如果不是自己毁自己，别人谁也毁不了的[62a]。我很愿意这么对自己说，正下决心这么对自己说，虽然你这时可能没这么想。假如我这么无情地谴责过你，想想我又是多么无情地谴责了自己。你对我做的一切已够可怕了，我对自己做的则更为可怕。

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope[63a].

我曾经是我这个时代艺术文化的象征。我在刚成年时就意识到了这一点，而后又迫使我的时代意识到这一点。很少有人能在有生之年身居这种地位，这么受到承认。这样的象征关系，如果真有人看到的话，那通常也是史学家或批评家；等看到时，那个人，那个时代，已然作古。而我就不同。我自己感觉到了，也使别人感觉到了。拜伦曾是个象征性人物，但他象征的是他那个时代的激情，及其激情的萎顿。我所象征的则更为崇高，更为永恒，更为重大，更为广博[63a]。

The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art I altered the minds of men and the colours of things[64a] there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterisation drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty to truth itself I gave what is false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence[64b]. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram[64c]. 诸神几乎给了我一切。天赋、名望、地位、才华、气概。我让艺术成为一门哲学，让哲学成为一门艺术；我改变人的心灵、物的颜色[64a]；我所言所行，无不使人惊叹；戏剧，这本是最为客观的艺术形式，在我手里却成为像抒情诗和商籁诗那样抒个人情怀的表达方式，同时范围更为开阔、人物更为丰富；戏剧、小说、韵律诗、散文诗、微妙含蓄或奇妙非凡的对白，我笔之所至，无不以美的新形态展现其美；我让真实本身不但显其真，同样也显其假，亦真亦假，以此作为它天经地义的内涵，显明了无论真假，都不过是心智存在的形式[64b]。我视艺术为最高的现实，而生活不过是一个虚构的形态；我唤醒了这个世纪的想象力，它便在我身边创造神话与传奇；万象之繁，我一言可以蔽之，万物之妙，我一语足以道破[64c]。

Along with these things, I had things that were different. I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both[65a]. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetops. I ceased to be Lord over myself. I was no longer the Captain of my Soul,[65.1] and did not know it. I allowed you to dominate me, and your father to frighten me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute Humility just as there is only one thing for you, absolute Humility also. You had better come down into the dust and learn it beside me.

除了这些，我还有不同的一些东西。我让自己受诱惑，糊里糊涂地掉进声色的放浪而不能自拔，以作为一个纨绔子弟、花花公子、风流人物自快，让身边围着一些不成器的小人。挥霍自己的才华，把一个永恒的青春抛掷，让我莫名其妙地觉得快活。在高峰顶上呆腻了，便成心下到谷底，寻求新的刺激。在思想范畴中我视作似非而是的悖论，在激情领域中成了乖张变态的情欲。欲望，到头来，是一种痼疾，或是一种疯狂，或两者都是[65a]。对别人的生死我变得漠不关心，只要自己高兴就快活一下，过后便掉头走了。我忘了，日常生活中每一个细小的行为都能培养或者败坏品格，因此，一个人在暗室里干的事，总有一天要在房顶上叫嚷出去的。我不再主宰自己，不再执掌自己的灵魂，也不认识它了。我让你支配我、让你的父亲吓唬我，终于弄得脸面丢尽。对于我，只剩下一样东西了：绝对的谦卑；对于你，同样只剩下一样东西了：也是绝对的谦卑。你最好还是下来，在屈辱中与我一道学这功课。

I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at terrible and impotent rage bitterness and scorn anguish that wept aloud misery that could find no voice sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said

Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark

And has the nature of Infinity.[66.1]

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility[66a].

我身受铁窗之苦已快两年了。在我心性的深处升起狂乱的绝望，哀绝的情状不忍卒睹：无力的暴怒、苦涩的鄙夷、欲哭无泪的哀伤、欲唤无声的苦痛、欲说无言的悲怆。人间苦情我一一尝遍了，我比华兹华斯本人更能理解他诗句的意思：

苦难悠悠，朦胧中，暗地里

原是无穷尽。

但是，想到我的苦难无穷无尽虽然有时会觉得痛快，我可不想叫自己无端去受苦。现在我发现，藏在我心性深处有什么东西在告诉我，世界上没有什么是无意义的，而受苦是最不可能没有意义的。这个东西藏在我心性的深处，就像野地里的宝藏。它就是谦卑[66a]。

It is the last thing left in me, and the best the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived the starting-point for a fresh development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor later[67a]. Had anyone told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must do so[67b]. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, a Vita Nuova[67.1] for me. Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot give it away, and another may not give it to one. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.

我内心所剩下的，这是最后一样，这也是最好的一样东西了：是我达致的终极发现，是我柳暗花明的起点。因为是出于自己，我知道它来得正是时候。不迟，也不早[67a]。如果是别人告诉我的，我会反驳。如果是别人带给我的，我会拒绝。既然是自己发现的，我便想存于心间。必须这样[67b]。就这一样东西，蕴含了生活的要素，新生活的要素，蕴含了我的新生。天下万物唯有它最奇怪。给别人不行，别人要给你也给不了。想获得它也不行，除非把自己已有的东西全都放弃。只有在失去了一切之后，才能知道自己拥有它。

Now that I realise that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I have got to do, what, in fact, I must do. And when I use such a phrase as that, I need not tell you that I am not alluding to any external sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an individualist than I ever was[68a]. Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with. And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from any possible bitterness of feeling against you.

既然我领悟了自己心中的谦卑，就很清楚要做什么，事实上是必须做什么。我用了“必须”，不用说指的并非任何外在的制约或命令。这些我概不接受。我远比以往任何时候都更是个有主见的自为主义者[68a]。除非出自本人，否则任你什么东西对我一点价值也没有。我的心性在寻找一个新的自我实现的方式。这是我唯一关心的。而第一件我要做的事，便是把自己从对你任何可能的怨恨中解脱出来。

I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless[69a]. Yet there are worse things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I tell you that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against you or against the world I would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door[69b]. If I got nothing at the house of the rich, I would get something at the house of the poor. Those who have much are often greedy. Those who have little always share. I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart[69c]. The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. You can see to what intensity of individualism I have arrived, or am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and “where I walk there are thorns.” [69.1]

我是完完全全的身无分文，实实在在的无家可归[69a]。可世界上还有比这更惨的呢。实话告诉你，与其心怀对你或世人的怨恨出这监狱，我还不如高高兴兴地挨家挨户要饭去[69b]。如果从大户人家要不到，从穷人家里也会要到一点的。东西很多的人常常贪婪成性，自己没什么的人总是与人分享。只要心中存有爱，我不介意夏天里在凉气袭人的草地上过夜，冬天里在干草堆边、在大谷仓下避寒[69c]。身外之物对我似乎是毫无意义了。你看，我的自为主义已经达到一种多么强烈的地步，或者更应该说是正在达到这种地步，因为路途还远着呢，而 “我行走的地方布满荆棘”。

Of course I know that to ask for alms on the highway is not to be my lot, and that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it will be to write sonnets to the Moon. When I go out of prison, Robbie will be waiting for me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate, and he is the symbol not merely of his own affection, but of the affection of many others besides. I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that, if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books, and what joy can be greater After that, I hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty. But were things different had I not a friend left in the world were there not a single house open to me even in pity had I to accept the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury still as long as I remained free from all resentment, hardness, and scorn, I would be able to face life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within it sick with hate. And I shall really have no difficulty in forgiving you. But to make it a pleasure for me you must feel that you want it. When you really want it you will find it waiting for you.

当然我知道自己命中不会到大路边乞讨，如果当真躺在了冰凉的草地上过夜，那也是要给月亮写商籁诗。出狱那天罗比会在大铁门的那边等我的，而他所象征的，不止是他一个人的关爱，还有其他好多人的呢。相信有一年半的时间我不管怎样还是不会饿肚子的。这样的话，即使没写出好书来，至少也可以读些好书。还有比这更令人愉快的事吗？之后我希望能重整我的创作能力。可要是事与愿违：要是在这世界上变得无亲无故，千家万户也无人同情无人接纳，我唯有破衣遮身沿门托钵；即使这样，只要胸不存块垒，不为怨恨和鄙夷所困，我便能满怀信心，泰然直面人生，远胜过锦缎加身，裹着一个为仇恨所苦的灵魂。要我宽恕你，真的是一点也不难。但要我因为宽恕你而快乐，首先你必须感到需要我的宽恕。当你真的想要时，会发现它在等着你。