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。
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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 world’s 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。
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The poor are wiser, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive[59a] than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man’s 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]。
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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。
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And the end of it all is that I have got to forgive you. I must do so. I don’t 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 one’s breast to feed on one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one’s 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。
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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。
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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]。
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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]。
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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。
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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]。
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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。
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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。
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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]
