第4章

I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me. I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither Religion, Morality, nor Reason can help me at all.

不用说，我得做的并非就这些，要只有这些就比较好办了。该做的事还多着呢。有陡得多的山要攀登，有深得多的幽谷要穿越。而一切都必须出自我内心。宗教、道德、道理，没有一样能帮得上忙。

Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.

道德帮不了忙。我生来就是个离经叛道的人，是个标新立异、而非循规蹈矩的人。但是我看到一个人错不在于他做什么而在于他成为怎样一个人。好在明白了这一点。

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My Gods dwell in temples made with hands, and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete too complete it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their Heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of Heaven, but the horror of Hell also. When I think about Religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe the Confraternity of the Fatherless one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Everything to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man. But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only that is spiritual which makes its own form. If I may not find its secret within myself, I shall never find it. If I have not got it already, it will never come to me.

宗教帮不了忙。别人信那看不见的，我信摸得着看得到的。我的神他们住在用手建造的庙宇中，我的教义在实际经验的范围内达到了完美与完满的境界，可能太完满了，因为就像很多或所有那些把他们的天堂放在这世上的人，我不但在这世上发现了天堂的美好，也发现了地狱的可怕。要是真还考虑到了宗教，我便觉得想为那些无法信神的人创立一个教团，也许就称为“无父者兄弟会”吧。在这里，有一座圣坛，上面没点蜡烛，有一个神甫，心中不存平安，可以用没受过祝福的面包和不斟酒的圣杯主持圣餐。不管什么，要成为真实，就必须变成宗教。不可知论同信仰一样，也要有它的仪式。它撒下它的殉道者之种，应该结成了圣人之果，它应该天天赞颂，感谢上帝他躲着不让人看见。但不管是信仰还是不可知，都绝不能是外在于我的东西。它的教义必须由我亲自创立。只有创造自己形式的才是属灵的。假使我不能在自己内心发现它的真意，那就永远也发现不了。假使我不是已然找着了它，就永远也找不着了。

Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which I have suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, somehow, I have got to make both of these things just and right to me. And exactly as in Art one is only concerned with what a particular thing is at a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical evolution of ones character. I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank-bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till ones fingertips grow dull with pain,[74.1] the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame—each and all of these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.

道理帮不了忙。讲道理那就等于说，定我罪的法律是错误、是不公正的法律，让我受苦的制度是错误、是不公正的制度。但是，我总得设法使这两样东西显得对我既公正又公平。正如在艺术中，人只关心一个特定的事物在一个特定的瞬间对自己来说是什么；在人性格的道德进化中也一样。我必须使发生在我身上的一切对自己有益。硬板床、恶劣的食物、磨得人手指尖又痛又麻的扯麻絮的硬绳子、从早到晚奴隶般的劳作、似乎是出于常规需要而发出的呵斥命令、使悲哀显得怪异的丑陋衣服、静默、孤单、屈辱——这一切的一切，我都得转化为属灵的精神体验。对肉体的每一丁点降格，我都必须设法变成灵魂的精神升华。

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say, quite simply and without affectation, that the two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. I will not say that is the best thing that could have happened to me, for that phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age that in my perversity, and for that perversitys sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good. What is said, however, by myself or by others matters little. The important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance. The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realised is right.

希望能达到那个境界，使我能够说，简简单单、自自然然地说，我人生有两大转折点：一是父亲送我进牛津，一是社会送我进监狱。我不说这对我是最好不过的事，因为那样的话我听着太苦涩了。我更愿意说，或者听人们说，我是这个时代的产儿，太典型了，以致于因为我的乖张变态，为了我的乖张变态，把自己生命中好的变成恶的，恶的变成好的。然而，自己怎么说，别人怎么说，都无关紧要。重要的事，迫在眉睫的事，我不得不做的事，好让自己在剩下无多的日子里不致凋零残缺，便是将加诸于我的一切尽皆吸收进自己的心性，使之成为我的一部分。既来则安，无怨无惧，也不耿耿于怀。恶大莫过于浮浅。无论什么，领悟了就是。

When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice[76a]. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal[76b]. It would mean that I would be always haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant as much for me as for anyone else—the beauty of the sun and the moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver—would be tainted for me, and lose their healing power and their power of communicating joy[76c]. To reject ones own experiences is to arrest ones own development. To deny ones own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of ones own life. It is no less than a denial of the Soul. For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye[76d] so the Soul, in its turn, has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought, and passions of high import, what in itself is base, cruel, and degrading nay more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.

刚进监狱时，有些人劝我忘掉自己是谁。要听了这话就完了[76a]。只有领悟了自己是什么人，我心中才有安宁可言。现在又有些人劝我一出狱就忘掉自己曾经坐过牢。我知道要听了这话也会同样要命的[76b]。这意味着一种不可容忍的耻辱之感将永远紧追我不舍，这意味着那些我跟旁人一样钟爱的事物——日月之美、四季之盛、黎明的音乐、长夜的静谧、绿叶间滴落的雨点、悄悄爬上草地把它缀成银光一片的露珠——这一切在我眼里都将蒙上污渍，失去它们疗治心灵的能力，失去它们传达欢乐的能力[76c]。抵讳自己的经历就是遏止自己的发展。抵赖自己的经历就是让自己的生命口吐谎言。这无异于排斥灵魂。因为就像我们的肉体什么都吸收，既吸收经牧师或圣灵的显现净化过的东西，也吸收世俗不洁的东西，林林总总，都化为力气和速度，化为肌肉优美的动作，化为悦目的皮肤，化为头发、嘴唇、眼睛的线条与色泽[76d]；灵魂同样的，也有它摄取营养的功能，能把本来是下作的、残忍的、堕落的东西，化为高尚的思想和高雅的情怀。不止如此，灵魂还能在这些东西中找到最尊严的方式来伸张自己，也能经常通过本来意在亵渎、毁灭的东西来把自己最完美地彰显出来。

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem to you, one of the things I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all. Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life for which I never was indicted at all. And as for what I have said in this letter, that the gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as for what is evil and perverse[77a], I must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, or should help one, to realise both[77b], and not to be too conceited about either. And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

我不过是一所普通监狱里的一名普通囚犯，这一点我必须老老实实地接受；尽管你也许会觉得奇怪，我要教会自己的事有一件就是，别因此而羞愧。我必须接受这是一个惩罚；假如因为受到惩罚而羞愧，那惩罚受了就跟从来没受过一样。当然，有许多事我没干却被定罪，但也有许多事是我干的因而获罪，还有更多的事我干了却从未被告发过。我在这封信中说了，神是奇怪的，他们惩罚我们，不但因为我们的恶行和堕落变态，也因为我们的美好与善良[77a]。就这一点，我必须接受的事实是，一个人受惩罚，不但因为他作的恶，也因为他行的善。我不怀疑，人这样受罚很有道理。这有助于、或者说应该是有助于对一己之善恶的领悟[77b]，不会因为其中的哪一样而自满自负。假使我这样，就能像自己所希望的那样，不会对受惩罚感到羞愧，那我就能自由地思考、行走、生活了。

Many men on their release carry their prison along with them into the air, hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length like poor poisoned things creep into some hole and die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of Society that it should force them to do so[78a]. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishments on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the mans punishment is over, it leaves him to himself that is to say it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins[78b]. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irredeemable wrong[78c]. I claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, Society should realise what it has inflicted on me and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.

不少人出狱后还带着他们的囚牢踏入外面的天地，当作耻辱秘密地藏在心底，最终就像一头头什么东西中了毒似的，可怜兮兮地爬进哪个洞里死了。他们落到这步田地真是可悲，而社会把他们逼成这样，很不应该，太不应该了[78a]。社会自认有权对个人施以令人发指的惩罚，可它也表现了浮浅这一大恶，领悟不到自己干下了什么事。当那个人受过惩罚之后，社会就撇下他不管了，也就是说把他抛弃了，而这时，社会对那个人所负的最责无旁贷的义务才刚开始呢[78b]。社会真的是愧对自己的行为，避而不敢面对它惩罚过的人，就像有人欠了债还不起就躲起来，或者给人造成了不可挽回、无可补救的损害后就逃之夭夭[78c]。我从我这方面要求，如果我领悟了自己所受的苦，那社会也该领悟它对我所施的惩罚，于是双方就不得再胸怀芥蒂、心存仇恨了。

Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made more difficult for me than for others must indeed, by the very nature of the case, be made so. The poor thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here with me are in many respects more fortunate than I am. The little way in grey city or green field that saw their sin is small[79a] to find those who know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird might fly between the twilight before dawn and dawn itself but for me “the world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth[79b],” [79.1] and everywhere I turn my name is written on the rocks in lead. For I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy[79c], and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if so much as one.

当然，我知道以某个观点看，事情对我要比对其他人更困难；从案情的性质看，肯定要更困难的。同我关在一起的那些个苦命的盗贼流浪汉，在好多方面都要比我幸运。不管是在灰色的城市还是在绿色的乡村，他们犯罪毕竟是在小街小巷小地方[79a]；要找个人们对他们干下的事毫不知情的去处，简直用不着走出小鸟在破晓与黎明之间能飞过的距离。但是对于我， “世界缩得只有巴掌大[[79b]”，不管去哪儿，都看到铅铸石雕般地写着我的名字。因为我不是从藉藉无闻跃入一时的罪名昭彰，而是从一种永恒的荣耀跌进一种永恒的耻辱[79c]。我自己有时觉得这似乎说明了，如果真还用得着说明，名闻遐迩与臭名昭著不过是一步之遥，要是真还有一步远的话。

Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something good for me[80a]. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as I possibly can. If I can produce even one more beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots[80b]. And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to Life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass judgment both on themselves and me. I need not say I am not talking of particular individuals. The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered those who know what Beauty is, and those who know what Sorrow is nobody else interests me. Nor am I making my demands on Life. In all that I have said I am simply concerned with my own mental attitude towards life as a whole and I feel that not to be ashamed of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so imperfect. 就我的名字传播所及，到哪儿人们都认得出我来，就我干的蠢事传扬所及，谁都对我的生平了如指掌。但即使这样，我仍然能从中看到对我好的一面[80a]。这将迫使我需要再次彰显我的艺术家身份，而且是越快越好。只消再出哪怕是一部好作品，我就能挡掉恶意攻击者的明枪，胆小鬼嘲讽的暗箭，把侮蔑的舌头连根拔掉[80b]。如果生活还要令我为难，目前肯定是这样，那我同样要叫生活为难。人们必须对我采取某种态度，因此既对他们自己也对我作出判断。不用说我指的不是特定的个人。我有心与之相处的人现在只有艺术家以及受过苦的人：那些知道美是什么的人，那些知道悲怆是什么的人。其他人我一概不感兴趣。我也不会对生活提出任何要求。说的这一切，谈的无非是关于自己对整个生活的心理态度；而我觉得，不因为受过惩罚而羞愧，是必须首先达到的境界之一，为了我自己能臻于完美，也因为我是如此的不完美。

Then I must learn how to be happy. Once I knew it, or thought I knew it, by instinct. It was always springtime once in my heart. My temperament was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. I remember during my first term at Oxford reading in Paters Renaissance[81.1]—that book which has had such a strange influence over my life—how Dante places low in the Inferno those who wilfully live in sadness, and going to the College Library and turning to the passage in the Divine Comedy where beneath the dreary marsh lie those who were “sullen in the sweet air,” saying for ever through their sighs

Tristi fummo

nell aer dolce che dal sol s allegra.[81.2]

I knew the Church condemned accidia, but the whole idea seemed to me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand how Dante, who says that “sorrow remarries us to God,” [81.3] could have been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life[81a].

接着我必须学会快乐。我一度凭直觉懂得快乐，或者以为自己懂得快乐。心中曾一直春意盎然。我的气质与快乐是如鱼得水，生活满满当当的尽是欢娱，就像把酒斟到了杯沿。而今我是从一个全新的立足点来考虑生活，即使是想象一下快乐是什么，常常都极为困难。记得第一个学期在牛津读佩特的《文艺复兴史研究》，那本书对我的生活有着奇特的影响；看到但丁把那些动辄悲悲戚戚的人放在了地狱的下层，就到学院图书馆翻到《神曲》中的那一段，只见在可怕的沼泽地下躺着那些 “在甜美的空气中愁眉苦脸”的人，永远是一声一叹地念叨着：

那时我们愁眉苦脸

而阳光中甜美的空气喜气洋洋。

我知道教会谴责精神上的懒散忧郁，但那时觉得这整个想法似乎颇有妙趣，就这个罪，我猜想，也是哪个对真实生活一点也不了解的牧师编出来的。我也不明白但丁，为什么既然说了 “悲哀让我们与上帝重新结合”，又对那些沉迷于忧伤的人那么狠心，如果真有那样的人的话。当时怎么也想不到，有一天忧伤竟会成为我生活中一个最大的诱惑[81a]。

While I was in Wandsworth Prison I longed to die. It was my one desire[82a]. When after two months in the Infirmary I was transferred here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit suicide on the very day on which I left prison. After a time that evil mood passed away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a King wears purple never to smile again[82b] to turn whatever house I entered into a house of mourning to make my friends walk slowly in sadness with me to teach them that melancholy is the true secret of life to maim them with an alien sorrow to mar them with my own pain. Now I feel quite differently. I see it would be both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still longer in order to show their sympathy, or, if I desired to entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs and funeral baked meats[82c]. I must learn how to be cheerful and happy[82d]. 在瓦兹华斯监狱时我真想死。一心想死[82a]。在医院里呆了两个月后便转到这里，发现自己身体渐渐好转，气得不得了，下决心出狱当天就自杀。过了一阵，心中的这股恶气消了，我决心活下去，但要像君王坐在宝座上那样，坐定愁城，永不再微笑[82b]。不管进哪家房子都要让那一家变得像刚死了人似的，不管哪个朋友跟我走在一起都要愁冗冗的举步维艰。要让他们知道悲愁乃生活的真正秘密，要让他们的心因为一份与己无干的悲怆而凋零，要让他们的日子因为我的痛苦而残缺。现在我的感受就大不一样了。我看到，要是自己整天郁郁寡欢地拉长脸，弄得朋友探访时得把脸拉得更长以示同情；或者一招待他们，就请人家坐下来默默地品尝苦涩的药草、火葬场烤出的肉块——要是那样就太忘恩负义、太对不住人家了[82c]。我必须学会欢乐，学会快乐[82d]。

The last two occasions on which I was allowed to see my friends here I tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my cheerfulness in order to make them some slight return for their trouble in coming all the way from town to visit me. It is only a slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel certain, that pleases them most[83a]. I saw Robbie for an hour on Saturday week, and I tried to give the fullest possible expression to the delight I really felt at our meeting. And that, in the views and ideas I am here shaping for myself, I am quite right is shown to me by the fact that now for the first time since my imprisonment I have a real desire to live.

上两次允许在这里会朋友时，我就尽可能地显得快乐。我显得快乐，以此作为对他们大老远从伦敦来看我的一个小小的回报。我知道，只不过是个小小的回报，但我感到，这肯定是最让他们高兴的回报[83a]。我一周前的星期六同罗比会面了一个钟头，努力把相见时的真心欢乐尽情表达出来。这么做，以我在这里为自己酝酿的思想观点看，还是很对的，而入狱以来第一次真心想活下去，对我便是明证。

There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it[84a]. I see new developments in Art and Life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is I think you can guess what it is[84b]. It is the world in which I have been living.

摆在面前的有这么多事情要做，无论如何也得让我完成一些，否则就此死去，真会是天大的悲剧[84a]。我看到了艺术与生活新的发展，而每个发展都是一个新的完美的方式。我渴望活下去，探索这一于我简直就是新天地的世界。你想知道这新的世界是什么吗？我想你也猜得出[84b]。就是我一直以来生活的这个世界。

Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. I used to live entirely for pleasure[85a]. I shunned sorrow and suffering of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible, to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy. My mother, who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me Goethes lines[85b]—written by Carlyle in a book he had given her years ago—and translated, I fancy, by him also

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,

Who never spent the midnight hours

Weeping and waiting for the morrow,

He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.

[85c] [85.1]

They were the lines that noble Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation and exile[85.2] they were the lines my mother often quoted in the troubles of her later life I absolutely declined to accept or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. I could not understand it[85d]. I remember quite well how I used to tell her that I did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and watching for a more bitter dawn. I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates had in store for me that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I was to do little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me and during the last few months I have, after terrible struggles and difficulties, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. Clergymen, and people who use phrases without wisdom, sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things that one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt dimly through instinct, about Art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension[85e]. 如此说来，悲怆，以及它所教给人的一切，便是我的新世界。我过去曾经只为享乐痛快而活[85a]，对种种悲伤和痛苦避而远之。我讨厌这些，下决心尽可能不去理睬，也就是说，把它们当作不完美的方式，不属于我生活架构的一部分，不在我的哲学中有一席之地。我母亲生前能全面理解生活，常常给我引歌德的几句诗[85b] ——那是卡莱尔在多年前送给她的一本书中写的——我猜也是卡莱尔自己翻译的：

从未就着悲哀吃过面包，

从未在夜半时分饮泣

痛哭着苦等明朝，

就不懂得啊，你在天的神力[85c]。

这些诗句，尊贵的普鲁士王后，就是被拿破仑百般苛待的普鲁士王后，在羞辱与流放中曾常常引用。这些诗句，我母亲在晚年的烦恼中常常引用；我却决绝地不承认、不接受其中蕴含的巨大真理。那时还明白不了[85d]。记得很清楚我常常对她说，我不想就着悲哀吃面包，也不想有哪个夜里痛哭着苦等一个更苦的黎明。我根本不知道，那就是命运之神等着我的一个特别安排；的确，我生命中将会有整整一年，过的日子与这没什么两样。但命运就是这么派给我了；最近几个月来，经历了可怕的挣扎与磨难，才读得懂隐含在痛心疾首之后的一些功课。教士们，还有那些用警句却不带智慧的人们，有时把受苦说得很神秘。受苦其实是一种启示，让人明白以前从未明白的事理，让人从一个新的立足点去思考整个历史。关于艺术，过去凭直觉隐隐约约感到的东西，现在以心智和感情领悟了，再清晰不过地洞察了，刻骨铭心地体味了[85e]。

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great Art [86a]. What the artist is always looking for is that mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible in which the outward is expressive of the inward in which Form reveals[86b]. Of such modes of existence there are not a few youth and the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one moment at another, we may like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike, and in the morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones and colours, modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was realised in such plastic perfection by the Greeks. Music, in which all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example of what I mean but Sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and Art.

我现在看到了，悲怆，这人类所能达致的最高情感，既是一切伟大艺术所归的类型，也是一切伟大艺术必经的考验 [86a]。艺术家一直在寻找的，就是这种灵肉合一而不可分的存在方式：外在为内在的表达，形式为内容的揭示[86b]。这种存在的方式为数不少：有一阵，青春和专注于青春的那些艺术可以作为我们的一个典范；换个时候，我们也许会想到现代的风景画艺术，它印象的微妙与敏感，所暗示的一个寓于外在事物中的精神一个大地与天空、雾霭与城市皆为其外衣的精神，以及它的种种情调、气氛和色彩的不同常态的交汇感应，通过绘画的形象，为我们展现了希腊人如此完美地用雕塑展现的内涵。音乐呢，因为全部主题都吸收在表达之中而不能与之分离，是个复杂的例子；一朵花或一个小孩，则是说明我的意思的简单例子。但是，悲怆乃生活与艺术的终极类型。86

Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous[87a]. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask[87b]. Truth in Art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself it is no Echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is the well of silver water[87c] in the valley that shows the Moon to the Moon and Narcissus to Narcissus[87d]. Truth in Art is the unity of a thing with itself the outward rendered expressive of the inward the soul made incarnate the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to Sorrow. There are times when Sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other[87e], but out of Sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

欢乐与欢笑背后可能藏着一种性情，一种粗俗、刻薄、冷酷的性情[87a]。但悲怆的背后却永远是悲怆。痛苦，不像痛快，是不戴面具的[87b]。艺术的真实，不在于本质的意念和偶然的存在之间的任何对应；不是形与影的相似，或者说形式本身同映在水晶中的那个形式的相似；也不是空山回音，或者幽谷中的一汪清水[87c]，把月亮倒映给月亮，把水仙倒映给水仙[87d]。艺术的真实是事物同其本身的整合，达成的外形表达着内涵，使灵魂获得肉身，使肉体充满精神。基于这个理由，就不存在能与悲怆相提并论的真实。有些时候悲怆似乎是我唯一的真实。其他的可能是眼睛或口腹的幻觉，变出来蒙蔽一个撑坏另一个[87e]。但天地万象，是以悲怆建造的，一个孩子、一颗星星的诞生，都伴随着疼痛。

More than this, there is about Sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality. I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relations to the very secret of life. For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything[88a]. When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably directed all our desires towards pleasure, and seek not merely for “a month or twain to feed on honeycomb,” [88.1] but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorant the while that we may be really starving the soul.

不止于此，关于悲怆，还有一个严酷的、非同一般的现实。我说过我曾是我这个时代艺术与文化的象征。而同我一起呆在这不幸的地方的每一个不幸的人，无不象征着生活的真谛。因为生活的真谛即是受苦。藏在万事万物背后的就是这个[88a]。涉世之初，甜美的是如此甜美，苦涩的是如此苦涩，我们必然会一心向往欢娱和快乐，追求的不止是“一两个月只吃蜜糖过活”，而是一辈子不尝别的，不知道这么一来，我们可真的让灵魂挨饿了。

I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful personalities I have ever known[89.1] a woman, whose sympathy and noble kindness to me both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment have been beyond power and description one who has really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than anyone else in the whole world has and all through the mere fact of her existence through her being what she is, partly an ideal and partly an influence, a suggestion of what one might become, as well as a real help towards becoming it, a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea, one for whom Beauty and Sorrow walk hand in hand and have the same message. On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me so, but I could not believe her. I was not in the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. Now it seems to me that Love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world[89a]. I cannot conceive any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the worlds have indeed, as I have said, been built out of Sorrow, it has been by the hands of Love, because in no other way could the Soul of man for whom the worlds are made reach the full statue of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but Pain for the beautiful Soul[89b]. 记得曾经同我所认识的一个心灵最美好的人谈过这事：是一位女士，在我遭难坐牢的前前后后，她对我的同情和崇高的善心好意非笔墨所能书，非一般人所能及。她真正地帮助了我，虽然她自己并不知道，帮我忍受磨难的重负。天底下再没有谁对我的帮助有她大。而这帮助，凭借的不过是她的存在而已；凭借着她之为她：既是个理想又是个影响，既暗示了人可能达到的境界，又真的扶持你去达到这个境界。她的心灵使空气飘香，能把属于精神的东西变得简单又自然，一如阳光和大海；对于她，美与悲相携而行，传递着同一个信息。眼下我心中所想的这次谈话中，记得清清楚楚我跟她说了，就伦敦一条小巷里的苦，便足以说明上帝不爱世人，只要什么地方有人悲伤，哪怕不过是一个小孩，在某个小花园里，为自己犯的或不是自己犯的过错而哭泣，造化脸上就整个儿黯然无光了。我那是大错特错。她说了，可我无法相信。我那时还没达到那个境界，能有这样的信仰。现在我似乎看到了，世界之所以悲深苦重，唯一可能的解释是因为某种爱[89a]。想不出还有别的什么解释。我信了，没有别的解释。而如果真的像我所说万象是用悲怆建造的，那造出这一切的是爱的双手。因为没有别的什么途径，能让万象为之而设的人的灵魂达到至善至美的境界。痛快享乐，是为了美好的肉体；而痛苦伤心，则是为了美好的灵魂[89b]。

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God[90a]. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summers day. And so a child could. But with me and such as I am it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet[90b]. It is so difficult to keep “heights that the soul is competent to gain.” [90.1] We think in Eternity, but we move slowly through Time and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not speak again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into ones cell, and into the cell of ones heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep ones house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is ones chance or choice to be[90c]. And, though at present you may find it a thing hard to believe, it is true none the less that for you, living in freedom and idleness and comfort, it is more easy to learn the lessons of Humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going down on my knees and washing the floor of my cell. For prison-life, with its endless privations and restrictions, makes one rebellious. The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks ones heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns ones heart to stone. One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. And he who is in a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of which the Church is so fond—so rightly fond, I dare say—for in life, as in Art, the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul, and shuts out the airs of heaven. Yet I must learn these lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are on the right road, and my face set towards the “gate which is called Beautiful,” [90.2] though I may fall many times in the mire, and often in the mist go astray.

当我说我信了这些道理时，口气太大了。远远的，犹如一粒美轮美奂的珍珠，看得见那是上帝的城池[90a]。那城是如此美妙，好像一个小孩子在夏日里一天便可以到达似的。小孩子可以。但是我，像我现在这样，就不同了。一个道理，人可以片刻间顿然领悟，但又在沉甸甸地跟在后头的深更半夜里失去[90b]。要守住“灵魂所能登上的高峰”，谈何容易。我们思想着的是永恒，但慢慢通过的却是时间。而对铁窗内的我们时间过得有多慢，就不用再说了；也不用再说那爬回监狱牢房、爬进心底牢房的疲惫与绝望。那疲惫与绝望如此奇怪，驱不散，抹不掉，好像只能装点洒扫房屋让它们进来，就像接一个不受欢迎的客人、一个厉害的主子，或者一个奴隶，我们是阴差阳错或咎由自取地成了奴下之奴[90c]。虽然一时间你可能觉得难以相信，但对于你这依然是千真万确的：自由自在、无所事事、舒舒服服地过着日子，学会谦卑的功课要比我容易，我每天一早就得双膝跪地，擦洗牢房的地板。因为监狱生活那道不尽的艰辛、数不完的条规，使人产生叛逆心理。最可怕的不在于这令人心碎——心生来就是要碎的——而在于这使人心变成石头。有时人会觉得，如果不绷着铁板一样的脸皮，翘着不屑的嘴角，这一天就挨不到黑。而心怀叛逆的人，借用教堂里很喜欢用的一句话说，受不到神的恩典——我敢说，教堂喜欢这句话是很有道理的——因为生活同艺术一样，叛逆的心境使灵魂闭塞，将灵气堵住。然而这功课我要学的话，就必须在这个地方学，而且要是脚踏在正道上，脸朝定那“名叫美的门”，心中就必然会充满喜乐，尽管常常也会在泥淖中失足跌倒，在迷雾中失去方向。

This new life,[91.1] as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call it, is, of course, no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends—as we were strolling round Magdalens narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the June before I took my degree—that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul[91a]. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun gilt side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from the lips of pain, remorse that makes one walk in thorns[91b], conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head[91.2], the anguish that chooses sackcloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each one of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all. I dont regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does to the full[91c]. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its secrets for me also.

这新生，由于热爱但丁我有时喜欢这么叫它，当然了，绝不是新的生活，它不过是我以往的生活通过发展和进化的延续罢了。记得在牛津时同一个朋友说过——那是个六月的早晨，在我拿到学位之前我们正沿着莫德林学院那些莺歌燕舞的小路散着步——说我要尝遍世界这个园子里每棵树结的果，说我要心怀这份激情走出校门踏进世界[91a]。的的确确，我是这样地走出校门，这样地生活了。我犯的唯一错误，是把自己局限在那些以为是长在园子向阳一面的树当中，避开另一边的幽幽暗影。失败、羞辱、穷困、悲哀、绝望、艰难、甚至眼泪、从痛苦的嘴唇断断续续冒出来的话语、令人如行荆丛[91b]的悔恨、良心的谴责、最终要受惩罚的自轻自贱、柴灰蒙头的悲愁、披麻布饮苦胆的悲情——这一切都是我所害怕的。正因为决心不过问这些，后来才被迫一样一样轮番将它们尝遍，被迫以它们为食，真的，有几个月别的什么也吃不上。我一点也不后悔曾经为享乐而活过。我尽情活了个痛快，就像人不管什么都要做个痛快[91c]。什么快乐都经历过了。我把灵魂的明珠投进杯中的酒里。我踏着长笛的乐音行在享乐之路上。我过着蜜糖般的日子。但如果继续过着同样的生活就不对了，因为这会限制心性的发展。我只有往前走，园子的另一半同样也有它的秘密留给我。

Of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my art. Some of it is in “The Happy Prince” some of it in “The Young King,” [92.1] notably in the passage where the Bishop says to the kneeling boy, “Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art” a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a phrase a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of Doom that like a purple thread runs through the gold cloth of Dorian Gray in “The Critic as Artist” it is set forth in many colours in The Soul of Man it is written down simply and in letters too easy to read it is one of the refrains whose recurring motifs make Salome so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad in the prose-poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the “Pleasure that liveth for a Moment” has to make the image of the “Sorrow that abideth for Ever” it is incarnate[92a]. It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of ones life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol.

当然所有这一切在我的作品中已有先兆，已有预示。有的在《快乐王子》中；有的在《年轻国王》中，特别是主教对跪着的男孩说的那一句：“难道制造不幸的神，不比你聪明吗？”这话写的时候我以为不过是普通一句话罢了；有很多则隐藏在《道林格雷》中那像紫线缝金衣般穿过整篇的厄运这一主旨中；在《作为艺术家的批评家》中，这预示又呈现为多种色调；在《人的灵魂》中则写得直截了当、一目了然；在《莎乐美》中，又像副歌的迭句一样，其多次重现的主题使剧本变得像一部音乐作品，把它串成了一首叙事曲在那首散文诗里, 说那个人不得不用铸《快乐如过眼烟云》塑像的青铜去铸《悲怆地久天长》的塑像，这预示就铸成了具象[92a]。不可能会是别的了。在一个人的生命中，每时每刻的做人，不但取决于他曾经怎样，也同样取决于他即将怎样。艺术是一个象征，因为人是一个象征。