一想到不但你自己，连我也给你父亲寄律师信，你乐不可支的[148a]。都是你的主意。我又不能对你说你母亲非常反对这么做，因为她用最庄严的许诺约束我，绝对不能告诉你有关她写信的事，而我又愚蠢地信守了我的诺言。难道你还不认为，她不直接同你谈是错的吗？同我暗地里的谈话、偷偷摸摸的通信[148b]，这些全是错的吗？谁都不能把应负的责任推诿给别人。推出去的责任，大大小小最后总要归回到该负的人身上[148c]。你唯一的生活理念，你唯一的人生哲学，如果你还有什么哲学的话，那就是你做的事不管什么，都要由别人承担：我并不单是指的钱财——那无非是你的哲学在日常生活实惠中的运用罢了——我说的是最广泛、最充分意义上的推脱责任。你以此为信条。说起来还真屡试不爽呢。你逼我采取行动，因为你明白，你父亲绝不会对你的生活或人身进行攻击，而这两样我又会护卫到底，并且会大事小事统统往自己身上揽的。你算得还很准。你父亲和我，双方的动机固然不同，却一毫不差地照你所盘算的那样行事。但尽管如此，天晓得你并未能真正的逃脱干系。那 “少年塞缪尔论”，为简洁起见姑妄称之，在一般人当中还可以大行其道。在伦敦可能很有些人会嗤之以鼻，在牛津也免不了遭人讪笑，但这不过是因为在那两地都有些人知道你，而你也人过留名[148d]的缘故。 除了这两个城市中的一小圈人以外，世人都拿你当个好后生看待，差点让那个刁顽卑鄙的艺术家引入歧途，在千钧一发之际被慈祥仁爱的父亲救了下来。听起来很有道理。然而，你知道自己并未逃脱。我说的不是一个傻陪审员问的傻问题，这问题法庭和法官当然不屑理会。谁也不拿它当回事。我指的也许主要是你本人。在你自己看来，而且有一天你将不得不考虑你的为人，你并没有，也不会对事情闹成这样觉得心安理得。暗地里你必定会为自己觉得羞愧难当。用一张厚脸皮面对世界是手绝活，但不时的，当你孤身一人，当观众不在跟前时，我想，就不得不把面具取下来，即使是为了喘口气。要不然，真的，你会憋死的[148e]。
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And in the same manner your mother must at times regret that she tried to shift her grave responsibilities on someone else, who already had enough of a burden to carry. She occupied the position of both parents to you. Did she really fulfil the duties of either[149a]? If I bore with your bad temper and your rudeness and your scenes, she might have borne with them too. When last I saw my wife—fourteen months ago now—I told her that she would have to be to Cyril a father as well as a mother. I told her everything about your mother’s mode of dealing with you in every detail as I have set it down in this letter, only of course far more fully. I told her the reason of the endless notes with “Private” on the envelope that used to come to Tite Street from your mother, so constantly that my wife used to laugh and say that we must be collaborating in a society novel or something of that kind[149b]. I implored her not to be to Cyril what your mother was to you. I told her that she should bring him up so that if he shed innocent blood he would come and tell her, that she might cleanse his hands for him first, and then teach him how by penance or expiation to cleanse his soul afterwards. I told her that if she was frightened of facing the responsibility of the life of another, though her own child, she should get a guardian to help her. That she has, I am glad to say, done. She has chosen Adrian Hope, a man of high birth and culture and fine character[149c], her own cousin, whom you met once at Tite Street, and with him Cyril and Vyvyan have a good chance of a beautiful future.[149.1] Your mother, if she was afraid of talking seriously to you, should have chosen someone amongst her own relatives to whom you might have listened. But she should not have been afraid. She should have had it out with you and faced it[149d]. At any rate, look at the result. Is she satisfied and pleased?
同样的，你母亲必定也会不时地后悔把重大的责任推给别人，而那个人自己的负担已经不轻了。 对于你，她是身兼父母之责的人，可她是否真的履行了或父或母的义务[149a]？假如你的坏脾气、你的粗鲁、你的大吵大闹我忍受了，她也该忍受才是。上一次见到我妻子时——十四个月前的事了——我告诉她要对西里尔负起既是母亲也是父亲的责任。我把你母亲对待你的方式，详详细细告诉了她，就跟在这封信里说的一样，只是当然要完整得多了。我说了那注明“私信”、自你母亲那里不断送到泰特街家里的短笺，到底是为的什么。那些信源源不绝，弄得我妻子都笑了，说我们一定是在合写一部社会小说或者诸如此类的东西[149b]。我恳求她不要像你母亲待你那样待西里尔，对他的教养要使他日后万一流了无辜之人的血后，会回来告诉她，这样她就能先为他洗净双手，再教他过后如何通过忏悔或赔偿来洗净灵魂。我告诉她，假如不敢对另一个人的生活负责，虽然这个人是她的亲生孩子，那就得请个监护人协助。这一点，我很高兴地说，她办到了。选的监护人是亚德里安? 霍普，出身高贵，富有教养，性格温良[149c]，又是她的表亲，你曾在泰特街见过他一面。有了他，西里尔和维维安的美好前程就很有希望了。你母亲，如果她怕同你严肃地交谈，就应该在亲戚中找个说的话你或许听得进的人。但她首先不应该害怕，本该同你开诚布公，面对现实[149d]。不管怎样，看看后果吧。你说她能满意，能快活吗？
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I know she puts the blame on me. I hear of it, not from people who know you, but from people who do not know you, and do not desire to know you. I hear of it often. She talks of the influence of an elder over a younger man, for instance. It is one of her favourite attitudes towards the question, and it is always a successful appeal to popular prejudice and ignorance. I need not ask you what influence I had over you. You know I had none. It was one of your frequent boasts that I had none, and the only one indeed that was well-founded. What was there, as a mere matter of fact, in you that I could influence? Your brain? It was undeveloped. Your imagination? It was dead. Your heart? It was not yet born. Of all the people who have ever crossed my life you were the one, and the only one, I was unable in my way to influence in any direction[150a]. When I lay ill and helpless in a fever[150b] caught from tending on you, I had not sufficient influence over you to induce you to get me even a cup of milk to drink, or to see that I had the ordinary necessaries of a sickroom, or to take the trouble to drive a couple of hundred yards to a bookseller’s to get me a book at my own expense. When I was actually engaged in writing, and penning comedies that were to beat Congreve for brilliancy, and Dumas fils for philosophy, and I suppose everybody else for every other quality, I had not sufficient influence with you to get you to leave me undisturbed as an artist should be left. Wherever my writing room was, it was to you an ordinary lounge, a place to smoke and drink hock-and-seltzer[150c] in, and chatter about absurdities. The “influence of an elder over a younger man” is an excellent theory till it comes to my ears[150d]. Then it becomes grotesque. When it comes to your ears, I suppose you smile—to yourself. You are certainly entitled to do so. I hear also much of what she says about money. She states, and with perfect justice, that she was ceaseless in her entreaties to me not to supply you with money. I admit it. Her letters were endless, and the postscript “Pray do not let Alfred know that I have written to you” appears in them all. But it was no pleasure to me to have to pay every single thing for you from your morning shave to your midnight hansom[150e]. It was a horrible bore. I used to complain to you again and again about it. I used to tell you—you remember, don’t you?—how I loathed your regarding me as a “useful” person, how no artist wishes to be so regarded or so treated; artists, like art itself, being of their very essence quite useless. You used to get very angry when I said it to you. The truth always made you angry. Truth, indeed, is a thing that is most painful to listen to and most painful to utter[150f]. But it did not make you alter your views or you mode of life. Every day I had to pay for every single thing you did all day long. Only a person of absurd good nature or of indescribable folly would have done so. I unfortunately was a complete combination of both[150g]. When I used to suggest that you mother should supply you with the money you wanted, you always had a very pretty and graceful answer. You said that the income allowed her by your father—some ￡1500 a year I believe—was quite inadequate to the wants of a lady of her position, and that you could not go to her for more money than you were getting already. You were quite right about her income being one absolutely unsuitable to a lady of her position and tastes, but you should not have made that an excuse for living in luxury on me: it should on the contrary have been a suggestion to you for economy in you own life. The fact is that you were, and are I suppose still, a typical sentimentalist. For a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. To propose to spare your mother’s pocket was beautiful. To do so at my expense was ugly[150h]. You think that one can have one’s emotions for nothing. One cannot. Even the finest and the most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for[150i]. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought—the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul— and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life[150j]. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge[150k]. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism. And delightful as cynicism is from its intellectual side, now that it has left the Tub for the Club[150l],[150.1] it never can be more than the perfect philosophy for a man who has no soul. It has its social value, and to an artist all modes of expression are interesting, but in itself it is a poor affair, for to the true cynic nothing is ever revealed.
我知道她将罪怪到我头上。这事我听人说了，不是认识你的人，而是不认识、也不想认识你的人。我常常听人说了。她讲到年长者对年轻人的影响，比如说。对这个问题，这是她最喜欢采取的态度之一，并且总能迎合公众的偏见和无知。我用不着问你，我对你有过什么影响。你知道我对你毫无影响的。这是你常常用来夸口的一件事情，而且确实是唯一有根有据的一件。事实上，你又有什么东西我影响得了的？你的头脑？发育还不全呢。你的想象力？死了。你的心？还没长出来呢。我平生所遇的人当中，你是一个，唯一的一个，我一点也无法影响、无法左右的人[150a]。当我因为照料你的病而染疾发烧无人在旁[150b]时，并没有足够的影响力说得动你，为我哪怕是弄来一杯牛奶，或者是通常病人所需的物件，或者是驾车到一两百码外的书店，用我自己的钱帮忙买一本书来。当我切实在写作时，笔下喜剧，论文采将胜过康格里夫，论哲理将超过小仲马，其他方方面面我想也无人能出其右，可就是没有足够的影响力叫得动你，别来打搅我，让我像艺术家所应该的那样安静独处。无论我的写作室在哪儿，在你都是间平常的娱乐室，一个抽烟喝酒[150c]的地方，一个闲聊奇谈怪事的地方。“年长者对年轻人的影响”，这论调多好听，但传到我耳朵就不行了[150d]。于是成了怪论一则。传到你耳朵时，我想你听了会笑的——暗自窃笑。你当然有权笑了。我也听到她许多关于钱财的谈论。她声称，而且是非常的理直气壮，说她不断地央求我不要给你钱。这我承认。她来的信无休无止，封封都带一句“务请别让阿尔弗莱德知道我写信给你”。但样样东西为你掏腰包，从早晨的剃须膏到夜半的马车费，我可一点也不喜欢[150e]。简直扫兴透顶。对此我每每啧有烦言。我常对你说——你还记得不是？——我多么讨厌你把我当成个“有用的”人，搞艺术的多么不喜欢被人这么看，这么对待；艺术家，如同艺术本身，就其本质而言是很没用的。这话你听了常常大发脾气。真话总是让你生气。的确，真话是最难听得进耳也最难说得出口的[150f]。但这并未使你的人生观或生活方式有所改变。每一天，我都要为你那一整天里干的每一件事掏钱。只有好心好到荒唐的地步，或者愚蠢得不像话的人，才会这么做。而我不幸的是二者集于一身[150g]了。我常建议你母亲应该提供你所需的钱，这时你总是回答得很好听，很有风度。你说你父亲给她的钱——我相信是一年1500英镑左右——对于她这种身份的女士是很不够的，你不能在已经拿的钱之外再向她要了。你说得不错，她的进项与她这样的身份和品味是极不相称的，可这也不该成为你靠我的钱花天酒地的借口啊。恰恰相反，这应该提醒你自己的生活要保持节俭才是。事实上你当时是，我猜现在仍然是，一个典型的自作多情的人。因为一个人若自作多情，无非是想既享受感情的痛快，又不用为此破费。提议别让你母亲掏腰包是美好的。不掏她的腰包来掏我的腰包则是丑陋的[150h]。你以为人可以白白地获得感情。不行的。即使是最美好、最富有自我牺牲精神的感情，也不是白送上门的[150i]。奇怪的是，使之美好的，正是这一点。匹夫之辈的心智和感情生活是非常可鄙的。就像他们从一种思想的流动图书馆——一个没有灵魂的时代的 “时代精神”——借来理念，一周过后又污渍斑斑地将其归还那样，他们总是想法赊购感情，等账单送来了又拒绝支付。 你不该还停留在那种生活观念中[150j]。一旦你必须花费去偿付一种感情时，就会明白它的质量，并因为明白了它的质量而得到长进[150k]。还要记住，自作多情的人内心里总是玩世不恭的。的确，自作多情不过是玩世不恭的公假日罢了。尽管从心智方面看犬儒主义的玩世不恭还挺讨人喜欢的，但既然该主义已经爬出了木盆钻进了俱乐部[150l]，那它永远只能是给一个没有灵魂的人的绝妙哲学。它有它的社会价值，而对艺术家来说一切表达方式都是有意思的，但就其本身而言，它是很贫乏的，因为对十足的犬儒主义者来说没有一样东西是明白的。
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I think that if you look back now to your attitude towards you mother’s income, and your attitude towards my income, you will not feel proud of yourself, and perhaps you may some day, if you don’t show your mother this letter, explain to her that your living on me was a matter in which my wishes were not consulted for a moment. It was simply a peculiar, and to me personally most distressing, form that your devotion to me took. To make yourself dependent on me for the smallest as well as the largest sums lent you in your own eyes all the charm of childhood, and in the insisting on my paying for every one of your pleasures you thought that you had found the secret of eternal youth[151a]. I confess that it pains me when I hear of your mother’s remarks about me, and I am sure that on reflection you will agree with me that if she has no word of regret or sorrow for the ruin your race has brought on mine it would be better if she remained silent[151b]. Of course there is no reason she should see any portion of this letter that refers to any mental development I have been going through, or to any point of departure I hope to attain to. It would not be interesting to her. But the parts concerned purely with your life I should show her if I were you.
我想，如果你现在回顾一下你怎么看待你母亲的收入，以及怎么看待我的收入，你不会觉得脸上有多少光彩的；假如你不把这封信拿给你母亲看的话，那或许有一天会向她解释，你花我的钱，可从来就没问过我愿不愿意给你钱。这不过是你用来向我表示专一不二而采用的一种不伦不类的方式罢了，对我个人来说是可悲可恼之极。大钱小钱的全找我要，你自己看着好像小孩般的天真可爱，你的玩和乐，样样硬要我付钱，你以为是找着了永远不用长大的秘密[151a]。坦白说，听你母亲把我说成那样我很懊恼，我相信反省一下你就会同意我说的，你们家给我们家带来的祸患，对此她要是没有遗憾或悲哀的话好说，那还是免开尊口为好[151b]。当然，没有理由要她看这封信中任何谈到我所经历的任何心理演变、或希望达致的任何人生新起点的那些部分。这些对她不会有什么意思。但假如我是你的话，就要把那些纯粹同你的生活有关的部分拿给她看。
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If I were you, in fact, I would not care about being loved on false pretences. There is no reason why a man should show his life to the world. The world does not understand things. But with people whose affection one desires to have it is different. A great friend of mine—a friend of ten years’ standing — came to see me some time ago and told me that he did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot concocted by your father. I burst into tears at what he said[152a], and told him that while there was much amongst your father’s definite charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures and strange passions, and that unless he accepted that fact as a fact about me and realised it to the full[152b], I could not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. It was a terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his friendship on false pretences. I have said to you that to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse[152c].
事实上，假如我是你的话，不会介意装假而得人喜爱。 一个人没有理由非得把自己的生活向全世界公开。世界是不明白事理的。但是对那些你想博得他们关爱的人，就不同了。有一个很好的朋友，十年的老交情了，早些时候来看望我，说对我的指摘他一点也不信，要我知道他认为我是清白的，被你父亲炮制的毒计陷害了。听了他的话，我泪如雨下[152a]，对他说，尽管你父亲振振有词告我的罪状里面有好多是不实之词，是恶毒地嫁祸于人，但我在生活中还是曾经纵情于反常变态的肉体享受和怪异的情欲，除非他实事求是地接受并完完全全地了解这一事实[152b]，否则我就不可能再同他为友，甚至不能与他交往。他听了大吃一惊，但我们还是朋友，而我不是靠装假讨得这份友情。我对你说过，讲真话是件痛苦的事。被迫讲假话还要痛苦得多[152c]
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I remember as I was sitting in the dock on the occasion of my last trial listening to Lockwood’s[153.1] appalling denunciation of me—like a thing out of Tacitus, like a passage in Dante, like one of Savonarola’s indictments of the Popes at Rome[153.2]—and being sickened with horror at what I heard. Suddenly it occurred to me, “How splendid it would be, if I was saying all this about myself !” I saw then at once that what is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it. A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life[153a]. So with you. You would be much happier if you let your mother know a little at any rate of your life from yourself. I told her a good deal about it in December 1893, but of course I was forced into reticences and generalities. It did not seem to give her any more courage in her relations with you. On the contrary. She avoided looking at the truth more persistently than ever. If you told her yourself it would be different. My words may perhaps be often too bitter to you. But the facts you cannot deny. Things were as I have said they were[153b], and if you have read this letter as carefully as you should have done you have met yourself face to face.
记得在最后那场审讯中我坐在被告席上，听着洛克伍德律师对我所作的骇人听闻的谴责——听着就像塔西佗的口气、像但丁写的哪一段、像萨沃那洛拉对罗马教皇的控诉——听着他的话，我毛骨悚然。 突然间，心中冒起一个念头：“假如是我自己在这么说自己，那该有多好！” 于是豁然看到，怎么说一个人并不重要。重要的是，谁说的。一个人最辉煌的时刻，我毫不怀疑，是他跪倒在地，双手捶胸，将一生的罪孽和盘托出之时[153a]。在你也一样。如果你亲口把自己的生活不管怎样说一些给你母亲听，现在也会觉得畅快得多。我在18 9 3年的十二月跟她说了很多，但当然有的不得不避而不谈，有的只能泛泛而谈。在如何处理同你的关系上，这似乎没给她增添什么勇气。恰恰相反。她反而对真相更是讳莫如深了。假如是你自己说的，那就会不一样。也许我的话你听了常会觉得太逆耳。但事实是无可抵赖的。我说的并无添油加醋[153b]。如果你把这封信像你应该的那样认认真真看了，那就是与本人直面相对了。
153
154
I have now written, and at great length, to you in order that you should realise what you were to me before my imprisonment, during those three years’ fatal friendship: what you have been to me during my imprisonment, already, within two moons of its completion almost: and what I hope to be to myself and to others when my imprisonment is over. I cannot reconstruct my letter, or rewrite it. You must take it as it stands[154a], blotted in many places with tears, in some with the signs of passion or pain[154b], and make it out as best you can, blots, corrections and all. As for the corrections and errata, I have made them in order that my words should be an absolute expression of my thoughts, and err neither through surplusage nor through being inadequate[154c]. Language requires to be tuned, like a violin: and just as too many or too few vibrations in the voice of the singer or the trembling of the string will make the note false, so too much or too little in words will spoil the message. As it stands, at any rate, my letter has its definite meaning behind every phase. There is in it nothing of rhetoric. Wherever there is erasion or substitution, however slight, however elaborate[154d], it is because I am seeking to render my real impression, to find for my mood its exact equivalent. Whatever is first in feeling comes always last in form[154e].
