到此我已经给你写了这么多、而且写得很详细，好让你领悟到，在我入狱之前，那要命的三年友谊期间，你怎样待我；在我服刑期间，几乎再不用两次月圆就要刑满了，你怎样待我；以及出狱之后我希望怎样对待自己，对待别人。 这信我无法重新构思，也无法重写。怎样写了你就得怎样看[154a]，许多地方被泪水模糊了，一些地方带着激情或悲情的痕迹[154b]；你得尽量地去理解它，包括涂的、改的，等等等等。至于改正和勘误，我之所以这么做，是要让我的话语绝对地把我的思想表达出来，既不因为言过其意，也不因为言不尽意[154c]而出错。语言要人调理，就像一把小提琴；而且，正像嗓音的颤动或琴弦的振动，太多太少都会让音调失真那样，话语太多或太少，都会使意思走样。无论如何，我的信，就它目前这样，一词一语背后都有确定的意思。其中没有一点巧言虚辞。不管什么地方出现涂或改，不管是多么细枝末节，多么用心良苦[154d]，都是因为我着意要传达出我真切的印象，为我的心境寻找到精确的对等语。最早感觉到的，不管是什么，总是最后在纸上成形[154e]。
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I will admit that it is a severe letter[155a]. I have not spared you. Indeed you may say that, after admitting that to weigh you against the smallest of my sorrows, the meanest of my losses, would be really unfair to you, I have actually done so, and made scruple by scruple the most careful assay of your nature[155b]. That is true. But you must remember that you put yourself into the scales.
我承认这封信很不客气[155a]。我对你并不笔下留情。你的确可以这么说我，口头上承认连悲哀中之最轻者、损失中之最小者都拿出来与你斤斤计较，对你会太不公平了，可实际上又这么做了，还把你的本性一分一毫地称量出来[155b]。不错。但必须记住，是你把自己放到天平上来的。
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You must remember that, if when matched with one mere moment of my imprisonment the balance in which you lie kicks the beam, Vanity made you choose the balance, and Vanity made you cling to it. There was the one great psychological error of our friendship, its entire want of proportion. You forced your way into a life too large for you, one whose orbit transcended your power of vision no less than your power of cyclic motion[156a], one whose thoughts, passions and actions were of intense import, of wide interest, and fraught, too heavily indeed, with wonderful or awful consequence[156b]. Your little life of little whims and moods was admirable in its own little sphere[156c]. It was admirable at Oxford, where the worst that could happen to you was a reprimand from the Dean or a lecture from the President[156d], and where the highest excitement was Magdalen becoming head of the river, and the lighting of a bonfire in the quad as a celebration of the august event. It should have continued in its own sphere after you left Oxford. In yourself, you were all right. You were a very complete specimen of a very modern type. It was simply in reference to me that you were wrong. Your reckless extravagance was not a crime. Youth is always extravagant. It was your forcing me to pay for your extravagances that was disgraceful[156e]. Your desire to have a friend with whom you could pass your time from morning to night was charming. It was almost idyllic. But the friend you fastened on should not have been a man of letters, an artist, one to whom your continual presence was as utterly destructive of all beautiful work as it was actually paralysing to the creative faculty[156f]. There was no harm in your seriously considering that the most perfect way of passing an evening was to have a champagne dinner at the Savoy, a box at a Music-Hall to follow, and a champagne supper at Willis’s as a bonne-bouche for the end. Heaps of delightful young men in London are of the same opinion. It is not even an eccentricity. It is the qualification for becoming a member of White’s. But you had no right to require of me that I should become the purveyor of such pleasures for you. It showed your lack of any real appreciation of my genius. Your quarrel with your father, again, whatever one may think about its character, should obviously have remained a question entirely between the two of you. It should have been carried on in a backyard. Such quarrels, I believe, usually are. Your mistake was in insisting on its being played as a tragi-comedy on a high stage in History, with the whole world as the audience, and myself as the prize for the victor in the contemptible contest. The fact that your father loathed you, and that you loathed your father, was not a matter of any interest to the English public. Such feelings are very common in English domestic life[156g], and should be confined to the place they characterise: the home. Away from the home-circle they are quite out of place. To translate them is an offence. Family-life is not to be treated as a red flag to be flaunted in the streets, or a horn to be blown hoarsely on the housetops. You took Domesticity out of its proper sphere, just as you took yourself out of your proper sphere.
你应该记住，只需同我在牢狱中的一个片刻相比，你那一头的天平就要翘到天上去。虚荣心使你选了那一头，虚荣心使你紧抱着那一头。你我的友谊存在着这么一个心理上的大错，即完全不成比例。你硬闯进了一个对你来说是太大了的生活，其轨道之高远，为你的圆周运动能力所不逮，也非你的目力所能及[156a]，其思想、激情和行动举足轻重，备受关注，动辄充满了——的确是充得太满了——令人惊叹或令人敬畏的影响[156b]。你那小小的生活，那些小小的异想天开、喜怒无常，在它自己小小的范围内值得钦佩[156c]。在牛津时值得钦佩。在那里，最糟糕的莫过于被学监数落一顿，被院长训斥一场[156d]；最痛快的莫过于莫德林学院胜了划艇赛，在方院里燃起篝火庆祝这一盛事。你离开牛津后，这本该就在它自己的范围内延续下去的。就你本人，没什么可说的。你是一种非常现代的类型的一个非常完整的标本。只是在同我参照时才显得你错了。你那不顾轻重的挥霍并非犯罪。青春总是意味着挥霍。可耻的是你逼我为你的挥霍付帐[156e]。找个朋友可以从早到晚地陪你消遣，你的这个愿望倒很可爱，简直充满了田园诗意。但你紧拽不放的朋友不该是个文学家、艺术家。对这样的人，你老守在跟前，实在叫创作的官能麻痹瘫痪，这样的厮守，那什么美好的作品都灰飞烟灭了[156f]。你一心一意地认为，消磨一个晚上的最佳方式，是在萨瓦伊开一桌香槟正餐，接着是杂耍剧场里开一个包厢，再接着是在威利斯来一顿香槟夜宵，作为良宵将尽的最后美味。这本无伤大雅。在伦敦，持这个观点的可爱的年轻人成打成堆。这甚至连怪癖也不是。这是怀特俱乐部成员必备的资格。可你无权要求我为你承办诸如此类的宴乐。这表明你毫无眼光来真正欣赏我的才华。同样，你们父子间的争吵，不管其性质如何，显然的本来应该完全是你们两人之间的问题。本该拿到后院去吵才是。这样的事，我相信，通常都是拿到那地方去争去吵的。你的错，在于硬要把它搬上历史的高台演成一出悲喜剧，让全世界作为它的观众，把我当作这场卑鄙的比赛中赏给胜者的奖品。你父亲恨你，你恨你父亲，这样的事英国公众才没兴趣呢。 这类不和在英国家庭生活中司空见惯[156g]，因而应该局限在以此为特征的地方：家里。一出其家庭圈子就不适宜了。易地而为便是冒犯。家庭生活不能当作红旗一面，可以拿到街上张扬，也不是什么号角，可以拿到屋顶上吹得声嘶力竭。你把家事带出了它的正当范围，一如你把自己带出了你的正当范围。156
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And those who quit their proper sphere change their surroundings merely, not their natures. They do not acquire the thoughts or passions appropriate to the sphere they enter. It is not in their power to do so. Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in Intentions,[157.1] are as limited in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more[157a], though all the purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain. There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The martyr in his “shirt of flame” [157.2] may be looking on the face of God, but to him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal-burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe[157b]. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them. 那些舍弃了他们正当的范围的人，改变的不过是他们的周围环境，而非他们的本性。他们并没有获得所进入的那个范围要求的思想或激情。他们做不到这一点。情感力量，正如我在《意图》一书里什么地方说的，在时空范围上同物理能量的力一样有限。小小一个杯子，造出来为了装这一点便只能装这一点，再多就不行了[157a]，哪怕是勃艮第紫色的酒桶个个装满了葡萄酒，西班牙嶙峋的葡萄园采摘的葡萄堆到了踩榨工人的膝盖。最普遍的错误莫过于以为那些引起或促成伟大悲剧的人，都同样怀着与那悲剧气氛相合的情感：没有比这个要他们情感相通的错误更致命了。那披着“火之裳”的殉道者也许在仰望着上帝的脸，但是对那个在堆放柴捆、松开木条要执行火刑的人，整个场面不过如屠夫杀死一条牛、烧炭人伐倒一棵树、挥镰割草的人劈落一朵花罢了[157b]。伟大的激情是留给伟大的灵魂的，伟大的事件只有与之水平相当的人才能理解。
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I know of nothing in all Drama more incomparable from the point of view of Art, or more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than Shakespeare’s drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet’s college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet and he is asked to grapple with the common complexities of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows much[158a]. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly[158b]. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will,[158.1] but to Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making of mows and jests[158c] he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing with action, as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but “words, words, words.” Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided will[158d].
纵览古今戏剧，我不知道还有什么能像莎士比亚对罗森克兰兹和纪尔顿斯丹的刻画那样，达到艺术上无与伦比的高度，或者能在观察精妙的暗示上更胜一筹。他们是哈姆雷特在学校时的朋友，少年的同伴。他们带来的是对往日相处的好时光的回忆。在剧中他们遇到哈姆雷特时，他正脚步踉跄的，肩负着一个令他那种气质的人苦不堪言的重任。死去的人全副披挂的从坟墓里出来，强加给他一个对他来说太伟大又太渺小的使命。他长于幻想，却要他去行动。他有诗人的天性，却要他费尽心思解开俗人们前因后果的纠缠，面对的是生活的现实功利，对此他一无所知，而不是生活的理想本质，对此他又知道多多[158a]。该怎么办他毫无主意，而他傻就傻在装疯卖傻[158b]。刺杀恺撒的布鲁图借疯癫为外衣，遮掩他毅力的尖刀、意志的利剑，但是对哈姆雷特来说，疯癫不过是一副掩饰软弱的面具。通过扮鬼脸说怪话[158c]他借机拖延。 他同行动周旋，就像艺术家同理论周旋。他让自己侦探监视自己应该采取的行动，听着自己的话知道这些不过是“空话、空话、空话”而已。他非但不努力成为自己历史的英雄，反而尽力要成为自己悲剧的观众。他对什么都不相信，包括他自己，而他的疑虑又帮不了忙，因为这不是出自质疑的态度，而是由于意志上的进退失据[158d]。
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Of all this, Guildenstern and Rosenscrantz realise nothing. They bow and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sicklier iteration. When at last, by means of the play within the play and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet “catches the conscience” of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of court-etiquette. That is as far as they can attain to in “the contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.” [159.1] They are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more. Towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning springe set for another, they have met, or may meet with a violent and sudden death. But a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by Hamlet’s humour with something of the surprise and justice of comedy, is really not for such as they. They never die. Horatio who, in order to “report Hamlet and his cause aright to the unsatisfied,”
Absents him from felicity a while
And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,
dies, though not before an audience, and leaves no brother. But Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal as Angelo and Tartuffe,[159.2] and should rank with them. They are what modern life has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship. He who writes a new De Amicitia must find a niche for them and praise them in Tusculan prose.[159.3] They are types fixed for all time. To censure them would show a lack of appreciation. They are merely out of their sphere: that is all. In sublimity of soul there is no contagion. High thoughts and high emotions are by their very existence isolated[159a]. What Ophelia herself could not understand was not to be realised by “Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz,” by “Rosencrantz and gentle Guildestern.” Of course I do not propose to compare you. There is a wide difference between you. What with them was chance, with you was choice[159b]. Deliberately and by me uninvited you thrust yourself into my sphere, usurped there a place for which you had neither right nor qualifications, and having by curious persistence, and by the rendering of your very presence a part of each separate day, succeeded in absorbing my entire life, could do no better with that life than break it in pieces. Strange as it may sound to you, it was but natural that you should do so. If one gives to a child a toy too wonderful for its little mind, or too beautiful for its but half-awakened eyes, it breaks the toy, if it is wilful; if it is listless it lets it fall and goes its way to its own companions. So it was with you. Having got hold of my life, you did not how what to do with it. You couldn’t have known. It was too wonderful a thing to be in your grasp. You should have let it slip from your hands and gone back to your own companions at their play. But unfortunately you were wilful, and so you broke it. That, when everything is said, is perhaps the ultimate secret of all that has happened. For secrets are always smaller than their manifestations. By the displacement of an atom a world may be shaken. And that I may not spare myself any more than you[159c] I will add this: that dangerous to me as my meeting with you was, it was rendered fatal to me by the particular moment in which we met. For you were at that time of life when all that one does is no more than the sowing of the seed, and I was at that time of life when all that one does is no less than the reaping of the harvest[159d].
关于这一切，纪尔顿斯丹和罗森克兰兹全然不知。 他们鞠着躬，陪着假笑和真笑，一个说什么另一个便用更恶心的话回应重复出来。最后，借助戏中戏和这两个傀儡的相互调笑，哈姆雷特把国王的“良心抓住了”，把这无耻之徒吓得魂不附体，赶下了宝座。这个举动在纪尔顿斯丹和罗森克兰兹看来不过是颇费苦心地违反了宫廷规矩罢了。在“以合适的情感观照生活之奇景”中，他们只能达到这个程度。他们眼看就触到哈姆雷特的心机所在了，却一点也不知道。告诉他们也没什么用。他们是小小的杯子，只装得下这么些，再多就不行了。在戏快终场时，有暗示说这两人中了本来为另外一个人而设的圈套，他们死得或者会死得很惨、很突然。但这样一种悲剧性结局，虽然借助哈姆雷特的幽默带上了一点意外和喜剧性的罪有应得，真正却不是给他们的。他们永远不死。而霍拉旭，为了“把哈姆雷特和他的事业如实向那些尚未尽兴的人报告”，
就暂且免他去享福，
在这冷酷的世界上痛苦地留口气，
他却死了，虽然没在观众面前死，也没留下弟兄。但纪尔顿斯丹和罗森克兰兹却长生不老，如同《一报还一报》中的安吉罗和莫里哀笔下的答尔丢夫，并且应该与他们地位相等。他们就是现代生活对古心古意的友谊理想所做的贡献。如果有谁要写一篇新的《论友谊》，应该为他们找个位置，用图斯库卢姆散文的风格把他们褒奖一番。他们这些类型的人什么时候都应时应景。谴责他们反而显得缺乏欣赏力了。他们只不过是逸出了自己的范围，如此而已。灵魂的崇高是无法蔚成风气的。高远的思想，高尚的情感，从来就和者乏人[159a]。莪菲利亚本人不明白的，“纪尔顿斯丹和好人罗森克兰兹”或者“罗森克兰兹和好人纪尔顿斯丹”也领悟不了。当然我并不是说要将你们相比较。你和他们差别太大了。他们是机会使然，而你是成心为之[159b]。故意地，不请自便地，你冲进我的范围，篡夺了一个你既无权又无资格占据的位子。凭着你那出奇的顽梗，没有一天不守在我跟前一阵，终于把我的整个生活吸走了，除了把它糟践得支离破碎又能怎样。尽管你听着可能会觉得奇怪，但你这么行事却是很自然的。如果把一件玩具给一个小孩，这玩具对那颗小小的心来说太过美妙了，对那双懵懵懂懂的眼睛来说太过美丽了，要是小孩任性，就把玩具摔了；要是小孩满不在乎，就让玩具掉落在一旁，自己找伙伴玩去了。 你就是这样。攥住了我的生活，又不知道怎么办才好。你知道不了的。这生活太美妙了，你是不该把它握在手里的。你本该松手放开它，找你自己的伙伴玩去。但不幸的是你很任性，于是把它摔了。这一点，归根结底，也许就是所发生的一切事情的最终秘密所在。因为秘密总是比外在的表露要小。调换一个原子可以震撼一个世界。关于这一点，我同你一样难辞其咎[159c]，在此要补一句：碰上你，对我是危险的，而在那个特定时候碰上你，对我则成了致命，因为在你生命所处的那个时候，所作所为不过是撒种入土罢了，而我生命所处的，却正是一切都在收成归仓的季节[159d]。
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There are some few things more about which I must write to you. The first is about my Bankruptcy. I heard some days ago, with great disappointment I admit, that it is too late now for your family to pay your father off, that it would be illegal, and that I must remain in my present painful position for some considerable time to come. It is bitter to me because I am assured on legal authority that I cannot even publish a book without the permission of the Receiver to whom all the accounts must be submitted. I cannot enter into a contract with the manager of a theatre, or produce a play without the receipts passing to your father and my few other creditors. I think that even you will admit now that the scheme of “scoring off” your father by allowing him to make me a bankrupt has not really been the brilliant all-round success you imagined it was going to turn out. It has not been so to me at any rate, and my feelings of pain and humiliation at my pauperism should have been consulted rather than your own sense of humour, however caustic or unexpected. In point of actual fact, in permitting my Bankruptcy, as in urging me on to the original trial, you really were playing right into your father’s hands, and doing just what he wanted. Alone, and unassisted, he would from the very outset have been powerless[160a]. In you—though you did not mean to hold such a horrible office—he has always found his chief ally.
