我当时，如同现在一样看得有多清楚，就不必跟你说了。但我对自己说：“不管怎样，我必须心中存着爱。要是不带着爱进监狱，那我的灵魂该怎么办？”那时从荷洛威给你写了那些信，就是努力要存住爱，让它成为我自己心性的主旨。要是我真想这么做的话，本可以将你痛骂得体无完肤[40a]，本可以用诅咒鞭挞你。我本可以擎起一面镜子，让你看到那样一副你自己都认不出来的嘴脸，看到它在学你那可怕的样子时，才知道那就是你，于是对它、对你自己，一恨到底。还不止于此呢。另一个人的罪孽正算在我的帐上。如果我想这么做的话，本来可以在两场中的哪一场审讯里把那个人推出来而免自己一难，当然不是免于羞辱了，而是免于牢狱之苦。如果我高兴的话，大可以披露原告证人——最重要的那三个——是经过你父亲和他的律师们精心调教过的，不止是如何以守为攻，更是如何以攻为守，处心积虑地、诡计多端地经过排练预演，绝对要把另一个人的所作所为安到我头上[40b]。我本可以使法官当堂把他们一个个赶出证人席的，甚至比裁定那个作假证的卑鄙的阿特金斯更为即决[40c]。我本可以风凉话挂在嘴边，两只手插在兜里，无罪一身轻地走出法庭的[40d]。要我这么做的压力太大了。有人真心地劝我、央求我、哀求我这么做，他们唯一关心的是我的祸福，是我家门的存亡[40e]。但我拒绝了。我不想这么做。对这个决定我从来没有后悔过，即便在监牢里那些最痛苦的时候。那样的举动我不屑为之。肉体之罪算不了什么。如果该治的话，也是留给医生诊治的疾患[40f]。只有灵魂之罪才是可耻的。假使通过这种手段使自己获判无罪，对于我将是永生的折磨。但是你真的就认为自己配得上我那时对你表示的爱吗？真的就认为我有哪一刻觉得你配得上吗？你真的就认为在我们的友谊之中，有哪一段时期你配得上我对你表示的爱吗？真的就认为我有哪一刻觉得你配得上吗？我知道你配不上的。但爱不在市场上交易，也不用小贩的秤来称量。爱的欢乐，一如心智的欢乐，在于感受自身的存活[40g]。爱的目的是去爱，不多，也不少[40h]。你是我的敌人，从来没有谁有过像这样的敌人。我曾把自己的生命给了你，然而为了满足一己私欲，那人情人性中最低下最可鄙的欲望——仇恨、虚荣还有贪婪——你把它丢弃了。在不到三年时间里，你把我完完全全给毁了。为了我自己的缘故，我别无选择，唯有爱你。我知道，假如让自己恨你的话，那在“活着”这一片我过去要、现在仍然在跋涉的沙漠之中，每一块岩石都将失去它的荫影，每一株棕榈都会枯萎，每一眼清泉都将从源头变为毒水。你现在是不是开始明白一些了？你的想象力是不是在从它那漫长的昏睡中苏醒过来？你已经知道恨是什么个样子了。你是不是也开始悟出爱是什么个样子，爱的本质又是什么呢？你要学还不太晚，虽然为了教你，我可能非得这么坐牢不可。
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After my terrible sentence, when the prison-dress was on me, and the prison-house closed, I sat amidst the ruins of my wonderful life, crushed by anguish, bewildered with terror, dazed through pain[41a]. But I would not hate you. Every day I said to myself, “ I must keep Love in my heart today, else how shall I live through the day.” I reminded myself that you meant no evil, to me at any rate[41b]: I set myself to think that you had but drawn a bow at a venture, and that the arrow had pierced a King between the joints of the harness.[41.1] To have weighed you against the smallest of my sorrows, the meanest of my losses, would have been, I felt, unfair. I determined I would regard you as one suffering too. I forced myself to believe that at last the scales had fallen from your long-blinded eyes. I used to fancy, and with pain, what your horror must have been when you contemplated your terrible handiwork. There were times, even in those dark days, the darkest of all my life, when I actually longed to console you. So sure was I that at last you had realised what you had done.
在我那可怕的刑判下来后，当囚衣披上身、牢房关上门之后，我坐在自己灿烂生活的废墟中，痛苦使我肝胆俱裂，恐惧使我不知所措，疼痛又令我眼冒金星[41a]。但我不会恨你的。每天我都对自己说：“今天我必须把爱留存心间，否则这一天怎么过？”我提醒自己说你是不怀恶意的，不管怎样，对我是不怀恶意的[41b]。我要自己认为，你不过是贸然张弓，是箭镞射中了一个国王，穿进他铠甲的连接处。要是连我忧伤中之最轻者、损失中之最小者都拿出来同你计较，我觉得，是不公平的。我决心把你也看作是患难者，强迫自己相信，那长久蒙蔽你眼睛的阴翳终于消解了。我曾常常不无心痛地悬想，当你思量自己一手造成的可怕后果时，会是多么的惊惧。即使在那黑暗的日子里，那些我一生中最黑暗的日子里，也有些时候我当真渴望能去安慰你，那样确信你终于领悟到了自己的所作所为。
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It did not occur to me then that you could have the supreme vice, shallowness. Indeed, it was a real grief to me when I had to let you know that I was obliged to reserve for family business my first opportunity of receiving a letter: but my brother-in-law had written to me to say that if I would only write once to my wife she would, for my own sake and for our children’s sake, take no action for divorce. I felt my duty was to do so. Setting aside other reasons, I could not bear the idea of being separated from Cyril, that beautiful, loving, loveable child of mine, my friend of all friends, my companion beyond all companions, one single hair of whose little golden head should have been dearer and of more value to me than, I will not merely say you from top to toe, but the entire chrysolite of the whole world[42a].[42.1] was so indeed to me always, though I failed to understand it till too late.
我那时没想到，你会有这一大恶——浮浅。我当时真的很伤心，但又不得不告诉你，第一次让我收信的机会，因为只能收一封，只好留给有关我家事的信。我妻子的兄弟来信说，只要我给她写一次信，她就会因为我和我们孩子的缘故，不兴讼离婚。我感到有责任这样做。其它理由不说，一想到要同西里尔分开我就受不了。我那漂亮、会疼人又招人疼的孩子，我所有朋友中的朋友、我一切伙伴中的伙伴，他那小小脑袋满头金发中的一根，对我来说都比，不用说从头到脚的你了，都比普天下的宝石[42a]还宝贵——确实一直都是这样的，只是等我明白时已太晚了。
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Two weeks after your application, I get news of you. Robert Sherard, that bravest and most chivalrous of all brilliant beings, comes to see me, and amongst other things tells me that in that ridiculous Mercure de France [43.1], with its absurd affectation of being the true centre of literary corruption, you are about to publish an article on me with specimens of my letters. He asks me if it really was by my wish. I was greatly taken aback, and much annoyed, and gave orders that the thing was to be stopped at once. You had left my letters lying about for blackmailing companions to steal[43a], for hotel servants to pilfer, for housemaids to sell. That was simply your careless want of appreciation of what I had written to you. But that you should seriously propose to publish selections from the balance was almost incredible to me. And which of my letters were they? I could get no information. That was my first news of you. It displeased me.
在你申请后两周，我得到了你的消息。罗伯特?舍拉德，这位最勇敢最侠义的好人，前来看我，除了别的事外，也告诉我那份荒唐的《法兰西信使》，及其作为文学腐败的真正中心是如何扭捏作态，说你就要在上面发表一篇文章谈我的事，还要附上我的一些信件。他问我是否真的希望这么做。我听了大吃一惊，非常恼火，命令这事马上停止。你曾经把我的信四处乱放，让你那一伙人偷了来敲诈[43a]，让旅馆的仆人窃取，让家里的佣人出卖。那不过是你对我写给你的信掉以轻心，无法欣赏罢了。而你竟然认真提出把剩下的信选出来发表，这几乎使我不敢相信。你会选些什么信呢？我无从知道。这是我得到的关于你的第一则消息。它让我很不愉快。
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The second piece of news followed shortly afterwards. Your father’s solicitors had appeared in the prison, and served me personally with a Bankruptcy notice, for a paltry ￡700, the amount of their taxed costs. I was adjudged a public insolvent, and ordered to be produced in Court. I felt most strongly, and feel still, and will revert to the subject again, that these costs should have been paid by your family. You had taken personally on yourself the responsibility of stating that your family would do so. It was that which had made the solicitor take up the case in the way he did. You were absolutely responsible. Even irrespective of your engagement on your family’s behalf you should have felt that as you had brought the whole ruin on me, the least that could have been done was to spare me the additional ignominy of bankruptcy for an absolutely contemptible sum of money, less than half of what I spent on you in three brief summer months at Goring. Of that, however, no more here. I did through the solicitor’s clerk, I fully admit, receive a message from you on the subject, or at any rate in connection with the occasion. The day he came to receive my depositions and statements, he leant across the table — the prison warder being present — and having consulted a piece of paper which he pulled from his pocket, said to me in a low voice: “Prince Fleur-de-Lys[44.1] wishes to be remembered to you.” I stared at him. He repeated the message again. I did not know what he meant. “The gentleman is abroad at present,” he added mysteriously. It all flashed across me, and I remember that, for the first and last time in my entire prison-life, I laughed. In that laugh was all the scorn of all the world. Prince Fleur-de-Lys! I saw — and subsequent events showed me that I rightly saw — that nothing that had happened had made you realise a single thing[44a]. You were in your own eyes still the graceful prince of a trivial comedy, not the sombre figure of a tragic show. All that had occurred was but as a feather for the cap that gilds a narrow head, a flower to pink the doublet that hides a heart that Hate, and Hate alone, can warm, that Love, and Love alone, finds cold. Prince Fleur-de-Lys! You were, no doubt, quite right to communicate with me under an assumed name. I myself, at that time, had no name at all. In the great prison where I was then incarcerated I was merely the figure and letter of a little cell in a long gallery, one of a thousand lifeless numbers, as of a thousand lifeless lives[44b]. But surely there were many real names in real history which would have suited you much better, and by which I would have had no difficulty at all in recognising you at once? I did not look for you behind the spangles of a tinsel vizard only suitable for an amusing masquerade. Ah! had your soul been, as for its own perfection even it should have been, wounded with sorrow, bowed with remorse, and humble with grief, such was not the disguise it would have chosen beneath whose shadow to seek entrance to the House of Pain! The great things of life are what they seem to be, and for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, are often difficult to interpret. But the little things of life are symbols. We receive our bitter lessons most easily through them[44c]. Your seemingly casual choice of a feigned name was, and will remain, symbolic. It reveals you.
第二则消息很快就来了。你父亲的律师在监狱里露面，当面递送了一份破产通知，就为了区区的七百镑，他们报的费用数额。我被判为公开破产，必须出庭。我强烈认为，现在仍这样认为，等下还会重提此事，这些费用该由你家支付。你曾以个人担保，明言你家会支付的。就因你这么说了，律师才承接这个案子的。你绝对应该负责。即使不因为你代表你们家所作的承诺，你也应该感到，既然你已弄得我身败名裂，那至少也该让我免于这雪上加霜的破产之耻吧，何况是因为这根本不足挂齿的一点钱，还不到短短的三个月夏天里我在戈灵为你花的一半呢。关于这一点，在这里暂且不多说了。我完全承认，从律师楼的职员那里收到过你关于这件事的口信，怎么说也是同这事有关联的口信。他来取我的证言和声明的那天，从桌那边探过身来——看守当时在场——从衣袋里拿出一张字条看了看，低声对我说：“百合花王子向你问好。” 我瞪着眼睛看他。他又把话重复了一遍。我不知道他说的是什么。“那位先生目前在国外，”他神秘地补了一句。我恍然大悟，记得在我的囚徒生活中，那是第一次也是最后一次笑了。天下所有鄙夷尽在那一笑中了。百合花王子！我看到了——而以后的事情说明我没看错——所发生的这一切，丝毫没让你有一丁点的领悟[44a]。你在自己眼里仍然是一出小喜剧中风度翩翩的王子，而非一出悲剧演出中忧郁伤心的人物。所发生的一切，只不过是帽子上的一根羽饰，装点着一个气度狭隘的脑袋，只不过是别在马甲上的一朵花，遮掩着一颗仇恨，只有仇恨，才能温暖的心。那颗心中，爱，只有爱，会觉得寒冷。百合花王子！你用个假名同我联系，当然是无可厚非的事。我自己呢，在那时，什么名字也没有。在当时被囚禁的那个大监狱里，我不过是在长长的一条走廊里，一间小小的单人牢房门上的数字和字母罢了，千百个无生命的号码中的一个，千百条没生活的生命中的一条[44b]。但是在真实的历史中肯定有许多真实的名字吧，对你会更合适得多，用了我也会不费力地一下就认出你来？我并未在那些只适用于化装舞会上取乐的光怪陆离的假面后寻找你。啊！要是你的灵魂因为哀愁而伤痛，因为愧悔而谦卑，因为悲苦而沉重——为求其灵修臻于完美甚至应该这样的——那就不会选择这么一个伪装，想躲在这么一个暗影中潜入这悲苦之地！生活中的大事是因为它们显得大，因为这一点，虽然你听着可能觉得奇怪，大事往往难以阐释。但是生活中的小事却是象征。我们最容易通过小事吸取人生的惨痛教训[44c]。你似乎是不经意地选择了一个假名，这件事当时是、并将依然是具有象征性的。它把你揭穿了。
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Six weeks later a third piece of news arrives. I am called out of the Hospital Ward, where I was lying wretchedly ill, to receive a special message from you through the Governor of the Prison. He reads me out a letter you had addressed to him in which you stated that you proposed to publish an article “on the case of Mr Oscar Wilde,” in the Mercure de France (“a magazine,” you added for some extraordinary reason, “corresponding to our English Fortnightly Review”) and were anxious to obtain my permission to publish extracts and selections from — what letters? The letters I had written to you from Holloway Prison! The letters that should have been to you things sacred and secret beyond anything in the whole world[45a] [45b]! These actually were the letters you proposed to publish for the jaded decadent to wonder at[45b], for the greedy feuilletoniste to chronicle[45b], for the little lions of the Quartier Latin to gape and mouth at[45b]! Had there been nothing in your own heart to cry out against so vulgar a sacrilege you might at least have remembered the sonnet he wrote who saw with such sorrow and scorn the letters of John Keats sold by public auction in London and have understood at last the real meaning[45b] of my lines
I think they love not Art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart[45c]
That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat.[45.1]
For what was your article to show? That I had been too fond of you? The Paris gamin was quite aware of the fact. They all read the newspapers, and most of them write for them. That I was a man of genius? The French understood that, and the peculiar quality of my genius, much better than you did, or could have been expected to do. That along with genius goes often a curious perversity of passion and desire? Admirable[45d]: but the subject belongs to Lombroso[45e] rather than to you. Besides, the pathological phenomenon in question is also found amongst those who have not genius. That in your war of hate with your father I was at once shield and weapon to each of you? Nay more, that in that hideous hunt for my life, that took place when the war was over, he never could have reached me had not your nets been already about my feet[45f]? Quite true[45g]: but I am told that Henri Bau?r had already done it extremely well.[45.2] Besides, to corroborate his view, had such been your intention, you did not require to publish my letters; at any rate those written from Holloway Prison.
六周之后又来了第三则消息。我从病重躺卧的医院病房被叫了出来，去听一则你通过监狱长传给我的口信。他读出一封你写给他的信，信中说你提出要发表一篇《奥斯卡?王尔德一案》的文章，发在《法兰西信使》上（该“杂志”，你出于某种特殊原因补充说， “相当于我们英国的《双周评论》”），很想得到我的许可发表一些信的摘要或选段——哪些信？是我从荷洛威监狱给你写的那些信！那些信本该是你在这整个世界上最弥足珍贵、最秘不可宣的东西[45a] [45b]！这些就是你提出要发表的信，让那些饱食终日的颓废派们看了称奇[45b]，供那些贪得无厌的专栏作家们搜集猎奇[45b]，叫《拉丁季刊》的小名流们目瞪口呆、乱说一气[45b]。如果你自己心中没有什么会疾呼反对如此下流的亵渎之举，那至少也该记得那个人在伦敦看到约翰? 济慈的信在公开拍卖，悲伤与鄙夷之余写下的那首商籁诗，而最终能理解我诗句的真意[45b]：
……我看他们对艺术并不钟情
打碎了一位诗人水晶般的心灵[45c]
一任那些委琐的小眼睛虎视眈眈。
你的文章想要搬出些什么来呢？ 说我太喜欢你了？这一点巴黎的浪子知道得很清楚。他们都看报，其中大多也给报社写东西。说我是个天才？这一点法国人明白，还有我天才的独到之处，他们比你所了解的，或者人们可能希望你会了解的，要明白得多。说天才常常伴随着情感和欲望上莫名的乖张变态？佩服佩服[45d]，但这课题是隆布洛索的专长[45e]，不是你的。况且，这一病理现象也见于没有天才的人群。说在你和你父亲仇恨的争战中，你们各自都拿我既当盾又当矛？还有呢，说在你们的争战结束后对我的那场追魂夺命的恶毒攻击中，要不是你的网撒到了我脚边，他是根本逮不着我的[45f]？这倒不假[45g]，但有人告诉我亨利?波厄已经著文把这一点说得再清楚不过了。而且，要证实他的观点，如果这是你的目的，那也用不着发表我的信，怎么说也用不着发表在荷洛威监狱里写的信。
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Will you say, in answer to my questions, that in one of my Holloway letters I had myself asked you to try, as far as you were able, to set me a little right with some small portion of the world? Certainly, I did so. Remember how and why I am here, at this very moment. Do you think I am here on account of my relations with the witnesses on my trial? My relations, real or supposed, with people of that kind were matters of no interest to either the Government or Society. They knew nothing of them, and cared less. I am here for having tried to put your father into prison. My attempt failed of course. My own Counsel threw up their briefs. Your father completely turned the tables[46a] on me, and had me in prison, has me there still. That is why there is contempt felt for me. That is why people despise me. That is why I have to serve out every day, every hour, every minute of my dreadful imprisonment. That is why my petitions have been refused[46b].
为了回答我的这些问题，你会不会说，我自己在荷洛威监狱里写的一封信中，要你尽可能在小小一部分世人面前还我一些清白？ 没错，我是说了。记住我为什么此时此刻会在这里。你认为我在这里是因为同那些原告证人的关系吗？我同那种人的关系，不管是真的还是猜的，政府和社会都不感兴趣。这些人他们根本不知道，更不会去注意。我在这里，是因为本想把你父亲关进监狱。当然我失败了。我的辩护律师撒手认输了。你父亲反败为胜[46a]，把我给关进了监狱，还关着呢。这就是为什么我被人看不起。这就是为什么人们鄙视我。这就是为什么我得一天一天、一小时一小时、一分钟一分钟地服完这可怕的徒刑。这就是为什么我要求提前释放的请愿书都被拒绝了[46b]。46
47
You were the only person who, and without in any way exposing yourself to scorn or danger or blame[47a], could have given another colour to the whole affair: have put the matter in a different light: have shown to a certain degree how things really stood. I would not of course have expected, nor indeed wished you to have stated how and for what purpose you had sought my assistance in your trouble at Oxford: or how, and for what purpose, if you had a purpose at all, you had practically never left my side for nearly three years. My incessant attempts to break off a friendship that was so ruinous to me as an artist, as a man of position, as a member of society even, need not have been chronicled with the accuracy with which they have been set down here[47b]. Nor would I have desired you to have described the scenes you used to make with such almost monotonous recurrence: nor to have reprinted your wonderful series of telegrams to me with their strange mixture of romance and finance[47c]; nor to have quoted from your letters the more revolting or heartless passages, as I have been forced to do. Still, I thought it would have been good, as well for you as for me, if you had made some protest against your father’s version of our friendship, one no less grotesque than venomous, and as absurd in its reference to you as it was dishonouring in its reference to me. That version has now actually passed into serious history: it is quoted, believed, and chronicled: the preacher has taken it for his text, and the moralist for his barren theme: and I who appealed to all the ages have had to accept my verdict from one who is an ape and a buffoon. I have said, and with some bitterness, I admit, in this letter that such was the irony of things that your father would live to be the hero of a Sunday-school tract: that you would rank with the infant Samuel: and that my place would be between Gilles de Retz and the Marquis de Sade.[47.1] I dare say it is best so. I have no desire to complain. One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are, and will be what they will be. Nor have I any doubt but that the leper of mediaevalism, and the author of Justine, will prove better company than Sandford and Merton.[47.2]
