恨使人视而不见。 这你并未认识到。爱读得出最遥远的星辰上写的是什么[36a]；恨却蒙蔽了你的双眼，使目光所及，不过是你那个窄狭的、被高墙所围堵、因放纵而枯萎的伧俗欲念的小园子。你想象力缺乏得可怕，这是你性格上唯一真正致命的缺点，而这又是你心中的仇恨造成的。不知不觉地、悄悄地、暗暗地，仇恨啃咬着你的人性，就像苔藓咬住植物的根使之萎黄，到后来眼里装的便只有最琐屑的利益和最卑下的目的。你那本来可以通过爱来扶植的才智，已经被仇恨毒化而萎蔫了。当你父亲第一次中伤我时，是在给你的一封私信中，是把我当作你的一个私人朋友的。一读到那信，看到那下流的威胁和粗鲁的暴虐，我马上就明白，在我并不平安的日子里，潜伏着一个可怕的危险。我告诉过你，你们父子反目成仇由来已久，我可不想成为你们厮杀中的卒子。我还说，我人在伦敦，对他来说逮住了耍起自然要比在霍姆堡的外交大臣过瘾得多[36b]；把我卷进去，哪怕是一会儿，对我都是不公平的；而且我不值得把生命花去同这么一个终日醉酒、潦倒落魄、半疯不癫的人吵架，丢人现眼。可就是无法让你明白。仇恨蒙住了你眼睛。你一口咬定争吵真的与我无关，说你不会让你父亲左右你的私人交往，说我如果出面干涉就太不公平了。在你来见我商量这事之前，就已经给你父亲发了一封粗俗愚蠢的电报作为回复。踏出这一步，当然就令你非得沿着这粗俗愚蠢的道路走下去不可了。生活中致命的错误，其原因不在于人的不可理喻。一个不可理喻的时刻可以是一个人的最佳时刻。错误的原因乃是人的讲求逻辑。二者之间，相去甚远。那封电报制约了其后你与你父亲的整个关系，结果也制约了我的整个生活。而此事的蹊跷之处是那样一封电报就连街边的毛头小子看了也会觉得脸红。从唐突的电报到趾高气扬的律师信，这是个自然的演进过程。给你父亲的那些律师信，结果当然是刺激他变本加厉。你逼得他有进无退，没有选择。你迫使他把这事看成是名誉、或者更可以说是耻辱所系的关键，以求更大的效应。这样他下一次攻击我时便不是在私人信中，也不当我是你的私人朋友，而是在公共场合，当我是一个公共人士了。我只好把他从我家赶出去。他一家挨一家餐馆地找我，想要在大庭广众下污辱我，其行径之恶劣，我如果反击便会身败名裂，不反击照样会身败名裂。在这时，肯定是到了你本人应该出面的关头了，说不会让我为了你而面对如此恶毒的中伤、如此无耻的迫害，你愿意当即放弃同我的任何交往。不是吗？[36c]你现在觉得该这样做了吧，我想。可当时你心中这念头连闪都没闪过。仇恨蒙住了你眼睛。你心中所能想的（当然，除了给你父亲写信拍电报侮辱他）只是买一把荒唐的手枪，结果在伯克莱放了一枪，造成的丑闻，比你的耳朵所能听到的还要难听。的确，想到自己成了你父亲和一个处在我这种地位的人之间大吵大闹的中心，似乎让你很高兴。这念头，我非常自然地认为，是满足了你的虚荣心，使你更自觉了不起。你的身体，这我不感兴趣，可以留给你父亲，你的灵魂，这他不感兴趣，可以留给我。问题要是这样解决，会叫你很不高兴的。你嗅到了当众闹个大丑闻的机会，就赶紧抓住不放。想到要打一场了，而你却会安然无恙，你挺高兴的。就我记得，在那个季节你后来从没那么兴高采烈过。唯一让你失望的似乎是到底没闹出什么事来，我们两人也没再打过照面吵过架。你便以给他拍电报来打发，那样的电文到头来弄得这可怜的家伙只好给你写信，说是已经命令仆人不管什么电报，怎样伪装，一律不得送到他眼前。这难不倒你。你看到这是明信片大派用场的时候了，便大张旗鼓地写起来，对他更是穷追不舍。我不认为他真的会善罢甘休。他身上的家族本能真是太强烈了。你们相互间的仇恨，一样的不可消弭；而我则成了你们的冤大头，既是矛，又是盾[36d]。他渴望招风惹事扬名，这恰恰不只是个性使然，而是出自家族的禀性[36e]。话说回来，他的兴趣要是有哪个时候低落下去，你的信和明信片很快又会煽起他心中那经年累月的邪火。是这样的。而他自然也就更越走越远了。作为私交在私底下中伤了我，作为公众人士在大庭广众攻击了我，他最终决心来个决定性的重拳出击，在我的艺术作品上演之处，把我作为艺术家来进行攻击。在我的一个戏剧的首演之夜，他弄假骗到一个座位，阴谋打断演出，当着观众的面恶语中伤我，污辱我的演员，要在谢幕前人们唤我到台前时无礼下流地用东西扔我，完全是要居心叵测地借我的作品使我名声扫地。纯粹是出于偶然，他难得地酒后吐真言[36f]，在人前吹嘘了几句他的意图。消息传给了警察，他被拒于戏院之外。那时你的机会来了。那就是你的机会。难道你现在还不明白吗，你本该看到这个机会，走出来说，你无论如何不会让我的艺术因为你的缘故而毁于一旦？你知道我的艺术对我意味着什么，它是宏大的首要的意旨，使我得以向自己，而后向世界，展现我自己﹔它是我生命的真实的激情﹔它是爱。拿别的爱同这种爱相比，就像拿泥水比醇酒，拿沼泽地里的萤火虫比长空里的皓月。难道你现在还不明白吗，缺乏想象力就是你性格上真正致命的缺点？你本该做的事并不难，也很清楚地摆在面前，但是仇恨蒙蔽了你的眼睛，使你什么也看不到。你父亲在几近九个月的时间里用最龌龊卑劣的手段污辱迫害我，我不能为此向他道歉。我无法把你从我的生活中甩掉。我再三努力，不惜离开英国到海外，希望能躲开你。可一点也没用。你是唯一一个什么事都做得出来的人。
要解决这局面全在于你了。 你要想报答我的话，那就是大好机会，来稍稍回报一下我对你所有的爱、友情、善意、慷慨和关心。要是你对我作为艺术家的价值能欣赏十分之一，就会这么做了。但是仇恨蒙蔽了你的眼睛。那个 “只要这样、只有这样，我们才能以现实也以理想的关系看待理解他人”的才智，在你心中已经死了。你念念不忘的只是怎样把你父亲关进监狱。用你的话说，要 “看他站在被告席上”，你一心想的就这个。这成了天天挂在嘴边的一句话，每次吃饭都听你说。好啦，你的愿望实现了。不管你要什么，仇恨都一一给了你[36g]，它是个对你疼爱有加的主人。确实的，谁伺候它，它就对谁疼爱有加[36h]。两天里，你同法警一起高坐堂上，一饱眼福地看着你父亲站在中央刑事法庭的被告席上。第三天他的位子由我接替。这是怎么回事？在你们险恶的仇恨之赌中，两人都下注要我的灵魂，可你刚好输了。如此而已[36i]。
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You see that I have to write your life to you, and you have to realise it. We have known each other now for more than four years. Half of the time we have been together: the other half I have had to spend in prison as the result of our friendship. Where you will receive this letter, if indeed it ever reaches you, I don’t know. Rome, Naples, Paris, Venice, some beautiful city on sea or river, I have no doubt, holds you. You are surrounded, if not with all the useless luxury you had with me, at any rate with everything that is pleasurable to eye, ear, and taste[37a]. Life is quite lovely to you. And yet, if you are wise, and wish to find Life much lovelier still, and in a different manner, you will let the reading of this terrible letter — for such I know it is — prove to you as important a crisis and turning-point of your life as the writing of it is to me. Your pale face used to flush easily with wine or pleasure. If, as you read what is here written, it from time to time becomes scorched, as though by a furnace-blast, with shame, it will be all the better for you[37b]. The supreme vice is shallowness[37c]. Whatever is realised is right.
你看到我不得不把你的生活写出来给你，而你非得领悟它不可。 我们到现在认识已有四年多了。有一半的时间我们在一起；而另一半我得因为我们的友谊而在牢中度过。你会在什么地方收到这封信，如果这信当真到了你手上，我不知道。罗马，那不勒斯，巴黎，威尼斯，我不怀疑，会是在你驻足的哪个美丽的滨海或沿河城市。包围着你的，即使不全是同我在一起时的那种无用的奢侈，怎么说样样也是令眼耳口腹欢愉[37a]的东西。生活对你是很可爱的。然而，如果你聪明，并希望找到更可爱得多而且是另一种方式的生活的话，你会让读这封可怕的信——我知道是很可怕的——成为你生活中一个重要的突变和转折点，就像我写这封信那样。想当时，酒和欢娱很容易就上了你那苍白的脸。假如读着这信上所写的，会不时地使羞愧像炉火中爆出的火花那样让你脸上发烧，那对你就更好了[37b]。恶大莫过于浮浅[37c]。无论什么，领悟了就是。
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I have now got as far as the House of Detention, have I not? After a night passed in the Police Cells I am sent there in the van. You were most attentive and kind. Almost every afternoon, if not actually every afternoon till you go abroad, you took the trouble to drive up to Holloway to see me. You also wrote very sweet and nice letters. But that it was not your father but you who had put me into prison, that from beginning to end you were the responsible person, that it was through you, for you, and by you that I was there, never for one instant dawned upon you. Even the spectacle of me behind the bars of a wooden cage could not quicken that dead unimaginative nature. You had the sympathy and the sentimentality of the spectator of a rather pathetic play[38a]. That you were the true author of the hideous tragedy did not occur to you. I saw that you realised nothing of what you had done. I did not desire to be the one to tell you what your own heart should have told you, what it indeed would have told you if you had not let Hate harden it and make it insensate. Everything must come to one out of one’s own nature. There is no use in telling a person a thing that they don’t feel and can’t understand. If I write to you now as I do it is because your own silence and conduct during my long imprisonment have made it necessary. Besides, as things had turned out, the blow had fallen upon me alone. That was a source of pleasure to me. I was content for many reasons to suffer, though there was always to my eyes, as I watched you, something not a little contemptible in your complete and wilful blindness. I remember your producing with absolute pride a letter you had published in one of the halfpenny newspapers about me. It was a very prudent, temperate, indeed commonplace production. You appealed to the “English sense of fair play,” or something very dreary of that kind, on behalf of “a man who was down.” It was the sort of letter you might have written had a painful charge been brought against some respectable person with whom personally you had been quite unacquainted. But you thought it a wonderful letter. You looked on it as a proof of almost quixotic chivalry. I am aware that you wrote other letters to other newspapers that they did not publish. But then they were simply to say that you hated your father. Nobody cared if you did or not. Hate, you have yet to learn, is, intellectually considered, the Eternal Negation. Considered from the point of view of the emotions it is a form of Atrophy, and kills everything but itself[38b]. To write to the papers to say that one hates someone else is as if one, were to write to the papers to say that one had some secret and shameful malady: the fact that the man you hated was your own father, and that the feeling was thoroughly reciprocated, did not make your Hate noble or fine in any way. If it showed anything it was simply that it was an hereditary disease. 我现在讲到拘留所了，是不是？ 在警察局关了一夜后，用车就把我送到那里了。你对我很关心很好。几乎每天下午，如果不是真的每天下午的话，都不辞辛苦地驾着车来荷洛威看我，直到你出国。你还写信来，说些很好听的话。可是，让我进监狱的不是你父亲而是你，此事从头到尾都该你负责，是由你起的事，为了你的缘故，被你所害，我才身陷此地：这一点，你从来就没明白过。甚至是看到我被锁在木制囚笼中，也无法唤醒你那死去的、没有想象力的心性。作为一出颇有点令人伤心的戏剧的观众，你看了同情动情[38a]，但却没想到自己便是这一出骇人听闻的悲剧的真正作者。看得出你一点也没领悟到自己干下了什么事。我不想扮演这个角色，来告诉你本该由你自己的心告诉你的事。的确，你要是没让自己的心因为仇恨而变硬变麻木的话，它是会告诉你的。凡事都得出自一个人自己心性的领悟。要是他感觉不到或理解不了，那跟他说也没用。我之所以这么写信跟你说，如果这有必要的话，那是因为你在我漫长的囚禁期间的行为，你的沉默。而且，事情闹到头，打击全落到我一个人身上。这倒是令我高兴的一件事。有许多理由让我甘心受苦，虽然看你时，你那份被仇恨蒙蔽而彻底的顽梗的麻木，在我眼里总觉得很有些可鄙。记得你曾得意非常地掏出一封你在一家半便士报纸上发表的关于我的信。那是一篇非常四平八稳、不痛不痒，的确是很平庸的文字。你为一个 “被击倒的人”说话，呼吁 “英国人的公平意识”，或者诸如此类无聊的东西。像这种信，如果一个可尊敬的人士惨遭指控，你即使不认识他也可能会写的。可你觉得这封信写得很好，把它看作几乎是堂吉诃德式的骑士精神的证明。我知道你还写了别的信到别的报纸，他们没发表就是。但那时他们只不过说是你恨你父亲罢了。没人管你恨不恨的。仇恨，你还不知道呢，以心智论是永恒的否定，以感情论是萎缩退化的一种形式，它消灭一切，除了自己[38b]。写给报纸说恨某个人，就像写给报纸说自己有什么秘密的、羞于启齿的痼疾似的。你恨的人是自己的父亲，而且完全是相互的仇恨，这无论如何不会使你的仇恨显得高尚或美好。如果说其中显示了什么的话，那就是，这仇恨是个遗传病。
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I remember again, when an execution was put into my house, and my books and furniture were seized and advertised to be sold, and Bankruptcy was impending, I naturally wrote to tell you about it. I did not mention that it was to pay for some gifts of mine to you that the bailiffs had entered the home where you had so often dined. I thought, rightly or wrongly, that such news might pain you a little. I merely told you the bare facts[39a]. I thought it proper that you should know them[39b]. You wrote back from Boulogne in a strain of almost lyrical exultation. You said that you knew your father was “hard up for money,” and had been obliged to raise ￡1500 for the expenses of the trial, and that my going bankrupt was really a “splendid score” off him, as he would not then be able to get any of his costs out of me! Do you realise now what Hate blinding a person is[39c]? Do you recognise now that when I described it as an Atrophy destructive of everything but itself, I was scientifically describing a real psychological fact? That all my charming things were to be sold: my Burne-Jones drawings: my Whistler drawings: my Monticelli : my Simeon Solomons: my china: my Library with its collection of presentation volumes from almost every poet of my time, from Hugo to Whitman, from Swinburne to. Mallarme, from Morris to Verlaine; with its beautifully bound editions of my father’s and mother’s works; its wonderful array of college and school prizes, its editions de luxe, and the like; was absolutely nothing to you. You said it was a great bore: that was all. What you really saw in it was the possibility that your father might ultimately lose a few hundred pounds, and that paltry consideration filled you with ecstatic joy[39d]. As for the costs of the trial, you may be interested to know that your father openly said in the Orleans Club that if it had cost him ￡20,000 he would have considered the money thoroughly well spent, he had extracted such enjoyment, and delight, and triumph out of it all. The fact that he was able not merely to put me into prison for two years, but to take me out for an afternoon and make me a public bankrupt was an extra-refinement of pleasure that he had not expected. It was the crowning-point[39e] of my humiliation, and of his complete and perfect victory. Had your father had no claim for his costs on me, you, I know perfectly well, would, as far as words go, at any rate have been most sympathetic about the entire loss of my library, a loss irreparable to a man of letters, the one of all my material losses the most distressing to me. You might even, remembering the sums of money I had lavishly spent on you and how you had lived on me for years, have taken the trouble to buy in some of my books for me. The best all went for less than ￡150: about as much as I would spend on you in an ordinary week. But the mean small pleasure of thinking that your father was going to be a few pence out of pocket made you forget all about trying to make me a little return, so slight, so easy, so inexpensive, so obvious, and so enormously welcome to me, had you brought it about. Am I right in saying that Hate blinds people? Do you see it now? If you don’t, try to see it[39f].
我又记起来了，当要在我家执行破产令时，我的书和家具查封了登广告出售，破产在即，我自然写了信告诉你。我没说是因为要偿还我给你买礼物的款项，法警才进入这所你曾如此经常地在这儿进餐的房子。我想，不管想对了还是想错了，这消息也许会让你不好受一下。我只是把事情如实告诉你[39a]，觉得这些事理应让你知道[39b]。你从布伦回了一封信，听那口气高兴得简直像写抒情诗似的。说是你知道你父亲“缺钱”，不得已筹措了1500镑的诉讼费，我这一破产，真是让他 “大失一分”，因为没法从我这儿拿到一点诉讼费了！你现在明白了吗，仇恨可以把人蒙蔽到什么地步[39c]？你现在看出了吗，当我说仇恨是一种破坏性的萎缩，它除了本身，会破坏一切时，我是在科学地描述一个真确的心理事实？我所有的好东西都要卖掉了：伯恩－琼斯的画、韦斯勒的画、蒙蒂塞利的画、西米恩?所罗门的画、各种瓷器，还有我的藏书，里头有当今世界几乎每一位诗人作品的赠阅本：从雨果到惠特曼、从斯温伯恩到马拉美、从莫里斯到魏尔伦，还有我父母著作装订精美的版本，还有从小学到大学历次的奖章奖品，还有各式豪华版书籍等等。这一切在你眼里一钱不值。你说这无聊透了，就这样。你从中真正看到的，是你父亲最终可能要破财几百英镑，这鸡毛蒜皮的破费就让你乐不可支的[39d]。至于说诉讼费，你也许有兴致听听，你父亲曾在奥利安斯俱乐部公开说过，如果花上个20000英镑他会觉得太值得了，闹了一场，痛痛快快、高高兴兴来了个大获全胜。他不但让我在监狱里蹲了两年，还有一个下午让我当众出丑，宣布破产，这倒是他始料不及的锦上添花。我的羞辱，他的得意，莫过于此[39e]。如果不是你父亲要将诉讼费转嫁于我的话，那我心里再明白不过了，起码就口里说的听来，你无论如何会对我痛失所有藏书而深表同情的。对一个文学家来说，这是无可挽回的损失，在所有物质损失中，这是最令我心疼的。 记起这些年我是怎样大把大把地在你身上花钱，供你养你，你甚至可能会出点力为我买回一些书来。那些书最好的以不到150英镑全卖了：差不多是我平常一周内为你花的钱。可是一想到要从你父亲兜里掏出几个便士了，这琐屑卑微的快感令你忘记了去为我做出一点回报，一点小小的回报，这样的轻而易举、不花大钱，却又会这样的有目共睹，令我求之不得。我说仇恨蒙蔽了人的眼睛错了吗？你现在看到了吗？要是还没有，就瞪大眼睛看吧[39f]。
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How clearly I saw it then, as now, I need not tell you. But I said to myself: “At all costs I must keep Love in my heart. If I go into prison without Love what will become of my Soul?” The letters I wrote to you at that time from Holloway were my efforts to keep Love as the dominant note of my own nature. I could if I had chosen have torn you to pieces with bitter reproaches[40a]. I could have rent you with maledictions. I could have held up a mirror to you, and shown you such an image of yourself that you would not have recognised it as your own till you found it mimicking back your gestures of horror, and then you would have known whose shape it was, and hated it and yourself for ever. More than that indeed. The sins of another were being placed to my account. Had I so chosen, I could on either trial have saved myself at his expense, not from shame indeed but from imprisonment. Had I cared to show that the Crown witnesses—the three most important — had been carefully coached by your father and his solicitors, not in reticences merely, but in assertions, in the absolute transference, deliberate, plotted, and rehearsed, of the actions and doings of someone else on to me[40b], I could have had each one of them dismissed from the box by the Judge, more summarily[40c] than even wretched perjured Atkins was.[40.1] I could have walked out of Court with my tongue in my cheek, and my hands in my pockets, a free man[40d]. The strongest pressure was put upon me to do so. I was earnestly advised, begged, entreated to do so by people whose sole interest was my welfare, and the welfare of my house[40e]. But I refused. I did not choose to do so. I have never regretted my decision for a single moment, even in the most bitter periods of my imprisonment. Such a course of action would have been beneath me. Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured[40f]. Sins of the soul alone are shameful. To have secured my acquittal by such means would have been a life-long torture to me. But do you really think that you were worthy of the love I was showing you then, or that for a single moment I thought you were? Do you really think that at any period in our friendship you were worthy of the love I showed you, or that for a single moment I thought you were? I knew you were not. But Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster’s scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive[40g]. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less[40h]. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, Hatred and Vanity and Greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me from every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you. I knew, if I allowed myself to hate you, that in the dry desert of existence over which I had to travel, and am travelling still, every rock would lose its shadow, every palm tree be withered, every well of water prove poisoned at its source. Are you beginning now to understand a little? Is your imagination wakening from the long lethargy in which it has lain? You know already what Hate is. Is it beginning to dawn on you what Love is, and what is the nature of Love? It is not too late for you to learn, though to teach it to you I may have had to go to a convict’s cell.
