你本来是唯一的一个人，能在丝毫不必蒙羞冒险受辱[47a]的情况下，改变局面，令整个事件改观，在某种程度上反映出真相来的。我当然不期望、确实也不希望你和盘托出你当初是怎样、以及为了什么目的在牛津碰到麻烦后找上我求助的；或者，你是怎样、以及为了什么目的——如果你还真有什么目的的话——将近三年来简直是寸步不离我左右。这段交情对于我，作为一名艺术家、一个有地位的人，甚至是社会的一员，具有偌大的毁灭性；我屡屡要摆脱这交情，个中的始末曲直，本不用像现在这样细算流水帐的[47b]。我也不会要你把那些三天两头你几乎是必闹无疑的场面描述一遍；不会要你把打给我的那一连串绝妙的电报，那一派奇怪地交织着谈情和说钱的文字[47c]，重印出来；也不会要你像我曾经被迫所做的那样，从你的信中摘引那些更是不堪入耳、无情无义的段落。但我仍然认为，你要是能就你父亲的话提出抗议，那于我于你都是有好处的。你父亲对我们友谊的说词，既怪且毒，说到你时是那么荒唐可笑，说到我时又是那么血口喷人。这种说词现在竟然已加载正史：有人引证，有人相信，有人编纂；讲道者以此撰写他的布道文，卫道者以此作为他道德文章的主题。而我呢，曾经令老老少少心动的我呢，却要接受一个笨蛋小丑的判决。我承认，在这封信里，我曾不无苦涩地说过，事情的讽刺在于你父亲有生之年将成为主日学校小册子里头的英雄，你将与少年塞缪尔并列，而我将与雷斯和萨德侯爵为伍。我敢说这再好不过了。我无意抱怨。人在狱中学到了好多，其中之一就是：天下事，是怎样就怎样，该怎样会怎样。我也毫不怀疑，中世纪的麻风病人和《朱斯蒂娜》的作者将比《桑佛德与默顿》更好作伴。
47
48
But at the time I wrote to you I felt that for both our sakes it would be a good thing, a proper thing, a right thing not to accept the account your father had put forward through his Counsel for .the edification of a Philistine world, and that is why I asked you to think out and write something that would be nearer the truth[48a]. It would at least have been better for you than scribbling to the French papers about the domestic life of your parents. What did the French care whether or not your parents had led a happy domestic life? One cannot conceive a subject more entirely uninteresting to them. What did interest them was how an artist of my distinction, one who by the school and movement of which he was the incarnation had exercised a marked influence on the direction of French thought, could, having led such a life, have brought such an action. Had you proposed for your article to publish the letters, endless I fear in number, in which I had spoken to you of the ruin you were bringing on my life, of the madness of moods of rage that you were allowing to master you to your own hurt as well as to mine, and of my desire, nay, my determination to end a friendship so fatal to me in every way, I could have understood it, though I would not have allowed such letters to be published: when your father’s Counsel desiring to catch me in a contradiction suddenly produced in Court a letter of mine, written to you in March ‘93, in which I stated that, rather than endure a repetition of the hideous scenes you seemed to take such a terrible pleasure in making, I would readily consent to be “blackmailed by every renter in London,” it was a very real grief to me that that side of my friendship with you should incidentally be revealed to the common gaze: but that you should have been so slow to see, so lacking in all sensitiveness, and so dull in apprehension of what is rare, delicate and beautiful, as to propose yourself to publish the letters in which, and through which, I was trying to keep alive the very spirit and soul of Love, that it might dwell in my body through the long years of that body’s humiliation — this was, and still is to me, a source of the very deepest pain, the most poignant disappointment. Why you did so, I fear I know but too well. If Hate blinded your eyes, Vanity sewed your eyelids together with threads of iron. The faculty “by which, and by which alone, one can understand others in their real as in their ideal relations,” your narrow egotism had blunted, and long disuse had made of no avail. The imagination was as much in prison as I was. Vanity had barred up the windows, and the name of the warder was Hate[48b].
可是在给你写那信时，我觉得为了你也为了我，不接受你父亲通过辩护律师提出的旨在教化庸人俗世的说词，这样是正确的、正当的、应该的。这就是为什么我要你构思写些东西以正一点视听[48a]。对于你，至少也比胡乱给法国报纸写些你父母的家庭生活要好。你父母过去的家庭生活快乐与否，法国人会理睬吗？再也想不出对他们来说比这更无聊的话题了。确实会让他们感兴趣的是，一个像我这么出名的艺术家，一个通过以其为化身的流派和运动而对法国的思潮有过显著影响的艺术家，怎么会过这种生活，而后又去打这样一场官司。我给你写了恐怕有数不清的信，说你是怎样在把我拖向毁灭；说你是怎样放纵自己的喜怒无常，为狂暴的脾气所左右，害我也害己；说我是怎样有心，不，是决心要断绝这完全会置我于死地的友谊。假如你为你的文章而要发表的是我的这些信，那我会理解的，虽然不会允许它们发表的。当你父亲的辩护律师想抓我的把柄时，突然在法庭上出示我的一封信，那是在1 8 9 3年3月写给你的，信中说你既然这么喜欢大吵大闹，那我与其再忍受一轮这可怕的场面，还不如就此“让全伦敦的房客来敲诈”。你我友谊的这一面没想到就公诸于众了，这真的使我非常伤心。但是，对这珍贵的、微妙的、美好的一切，你却如此的不聪不敏、不痛不痒，迟迟不能发现与欣赏，竟至于自己提出要发表这些信件；须知正是在这些信件、通过这些信件，我想保有爱的神与魂，使之存活在我的肉体中，熬过那副肉体蒙受屈辱的漫长岁月而不死。——这曾经是、现在仍然是令我最悲最痛，最最失望的心结。你为什么要这么做，恐怕我是太清楚了。如果仇恨蒙蔽了你的眼睛，那虚荣便是用铁丝把你的眼皮缝在一起了。那种“通过它，只有通过它，才能既以其理想关系也以其真实关系来理解他人”的才能，被你狭隘的利己之心磨钝了，而长久的荒废又使它不复可用了。你的想象力同我的人一样，囚禁在监牢里。虚荣是铁条封住了窗口，看守的名字叫仇恨[48b]。
48
49
All this took place in the early part of November of the year before last.[49.1] A great river of life flows between you and a date so distant[49a]. Hardly, if at all, can you see across so wide a waste[49b]. But to me it seems to have occurred, I will not say yesterday, but today. Suffering is one long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life, every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and walk and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape-gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms, or strewn with fallen fruit, we know nothing, and can know nothing[49c]. For us there is only one season, the season of Sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold[49d], but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always midnight in one’s heart[49e]. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow[49f]. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing to you, and in this manner writing.
这一切是发生在前年十一月初的事了。那么久远的日子和现在的你，其间横着一条生活的长河[49a]。这茫茫一片荒山野水，你即使看得见，也很难望得穿[49b]。然而在我看来似乎是发生在，我不说是昨天，而是在今天。受苦是一个很长的瞬间。我们无法将它用季节划分。我们只能记录它的心境，按顺序记下它种种心境的回环往复。对于我们，时间本身不是向前推移，而是回旋运转。它似乎在绕着一个哀苦的圆心盘旋。这是一种凝滞的生活，时时事事都由一个不可变的模式控制，我们吃喝、起卧、祈祷、或者至少是为祷告而下跪，都得遵循一条铁的公式：那些一成不变的律法，这种令人麻木的凝滞，使得每一天都暗无天日，都在重复着过去的日子，分毫不变。这种凝滞，似乎让外界的力也与之呼应，而这些力存在的本质，又恰恰在于不断的变化。春种秋收，农人在田里俯身挥镰，果农穿行于藤蔓间采摘葡萄，果园的青草上，残花落时一片片的白，果子掉下又散散的滚了一地：这一切，我们一点也不知道，一点也无法知道[49c]。
对于我们，只有一个季节，悲怆的季节。 那太阳、那月亮，似乎都从我们的天穹拿掉了。外面也许是蓝天丽日[49d]，但是透过头顶小小的铁窗那封得严严的玻璃，漏下的只是一点点灰暗的光线。牢房里整天是晨昏不辨，一如内心中整天是半夜三更[49e]。思维也同时间一样，不再有任何运动。你自己早已忘却的事，或者很容易就忘却的事，现在我正身历其境，明天还将再历其境[49f]。记住这个吧，那样你就会明白一点，这封信我为什么写，为什么这样写。
49
49.2
50
A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies.[50.1] You knew, none better, how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was so terrible to me that I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame[50a]. Never, even in the most perfect days of my development as an artist, could I have had words fit to bear so august a burden, or to move with sufficient stateliness of music through the purple pageant of my incommunicable woe. She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured not merely in Literature, Art, Archaeology and Science, but in the public history of my own country in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly[50b]. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record[50c]. My wife, at that time kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent or alien lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irredeemable a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not known me personally, hearing what a new sorrow had come into my broken life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. You alone stood aloof, sent me no message, and wrote me no letter. Of such actions, it is best to say what Virgil says to Dante of those whose lives have been barren in noble impulse and shallow of intention: “Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa.” [50.2]
一个星期过后，我被转到这里。 三个月过去了，我母亲去世了。你比谁都清楚我对她有多爱，多尊敬。她去世，对我是个如此可怕的噩耗，即便我曾出口成章，也有口说不出内心的哀伤和愧怍[50a]。即使是在我艺术的巅峰时期，也绝对找不出什么词语，载得动这千钧重负；也找不出什么词语，在我那万绪千声﹑沸沸扬扬而又无可言传的悲恸之中，能如音乐的雍容肃穆穿行其间。她和我父亲留给我一个他们已使之高尚荣耀的姓氏，不但在文学、艺术、考古和科学，也在我祖国的历史中，在我民族演进的历史中留名。而我却让那个姓氏永远地蒙羞，让它沦为下贱人流传的下贱笑柄，让它蒙上了耻辱的污秽。我把它丢给了恶人使它成为恶名，我把它丢给了蠢人使它成为愚蠢的别名[50b]。我当时承受的悲苦、现在还在承受的悲苦，用笔写不下，用纸记不完[50c]。我妻子那时对我好，不想让我从不相干的人嘴里听到这噩耗，病得那么厉害还从意大利的热那亚赶到英格兰，亲口把这样一个无可挽回、无可补救的损失婉转地告诉我。那些对我仍存有感情的人无不传话表示同情。甚至那些以前并不认识的人，听到我破碎的生活中又添新愁，也写信来要求把他们的哀思传达给我一二。只有你，冷眼旁观，没传来一句话，没寄来一封信。卫基尔对但丁说起那些没有高尚的冲动也没有深远的意向的人，像你的这种样子，用他的话最好说了：“别提他们，只用眼睛看，再走过去。”
50
51
Three more months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell-door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is Maytime. My friends come to see me again. I enquire, as I always do, after you. I am told that you are in your villa at Naples, and are bringing out a volume of poems. At the close of the interview it is mentioned casually that you are dedicating them to me. The tidings seemed to give me a sort of nausea of life. I said nothing, but silently went back to my cell with contempt and scorn in my heart. How could you dream of dedicating a volume of poems to me without first asking my permission? Dream, do I say? How could you dare to do such a thing? Will you give as your answer that in the days of my greatness and fame I had consented to receive the dedication of your early work? Certainly, I did so; just as I would have accepted the homage of any other young man beginning the difficult and beautiful art of literature. All homage is delightful to an artist, and doubly sweet when youth brings it. Laurel and bay leaf wither when aged hands pluck them. Only youth has a right to crown an artist. That is the real privilege of being young, if youth only knew it. But the days of abasement and infamy are different from those of greatness and of fame. You have yet to learn that Prosperity, Pleasure and Success may be rough of grain and common in fibre[51a], but that Sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought or motion to which Sorrow does not vibrate in terrible if exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces that the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse.[51.1] It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of Love touches it and even then must bleed again, though not for pain[51b].
三个月过去了。挂在牢门外，上面写着我的名字和刑期，用来记录我每天劳动与表现的日历告诉我，是五月了。
朋友们又来看我了。我照样问起了你。人家说你在那不勒斯的别墅里，正在出一本诗集呢。在会面快结束时，还随口说起那些诗是要献给我的。这消息似乎让我觉得一阵恶心。我一句话没说，默默地回到牢房，满心的鄙夷与蔑视。你怎么会做这样的梦，不事先征得我同意，竟要把一本诗集献给我？做梦，我说了是不是？这样的事你怎么也敢做出来？你会不会拿这样的话回答我：在我名扬天下、飞黄腾达的日子里，不是就答应过接受你把自己早期的作品题献给我？没错，我答应过，就像我答应任何一个刚踏上这条既艰难又美好的文学之路的年轻人，接受他们的敬意。对艺术家来说，一切敬意都是令人愉快的，而来自青年的敬意又一倍增其愉快。月桂之花、月桂之叶，一让苍老的手采摘，便枯萎了。只有青年有权为一位艺术家戴上桂冠。那是年轻人真正的特权，但愿他们明白这个道理。但是蒙羞含辱的日子同名扬天下、飞黄腾达的时候是不一样的。你还得弄明白，发财、享乐、出人头地，这些可以是大路货[51a] ,但悲怆却是所创造的一切中最敏感的。在整个的思想和运动的空间内，只要稍有动静，它便会以既精妙又可怕的律动，与之共振。那敲得薄薄的金箔，能用来检测肉眼看不见的力的方向，可再敏感，相比之下也显得粗糙了。悲怆是一道伤口，除了爱的手，别的手一碰就会流血，甚至爱的手碰了，也必定会流血的，虽然不是因为疼[51b]。
51
51.2
52
You could write to the Governor of Wandsworth Prison to ask my permission to publish my letters in the Mercure de France, “corresponding to our English Fortnightly Review.” Why not have written to the Governor of the Prison at Reading to ask my permission to dedicate your poems to me, whatever fantastic description you may have chosen to give of them? Was it because in the one case the magazine in question had been prohibited by me from publishing letters, the legal copyright of which, as you are of course perfectly well aware, was and is vested entirely in me, and in the other you thought that you could enjoy the wilfulness of your own way without my knowing anything about it till it was too late to interfere? The mere fact that I was a man disgraced, ruined, and in prison should have made you, if you desired to write my name on the fore-page of your work, beg it of me as a favour, an honour, a privilege[52a]. That is the way in which one should approach those who are in distress and sit in shame.
你那次可以写信给瓦兹华斯监狱的狱长，征求我的许可把我的信发在“相当于我们英国的《双周评论》”的《法兰西信使》上，为什么这次就不能写信给雷丁的监狱长，征求我的许可，让你把诗题献给我呢？不管你把那些诗说得怎样天花乱坠。是不是因为在那件事上我禁止了有关的杂志发表我的信件，而你当然是再清楚不过了，信的版权那时是、现在还是完全地归我所有；而在这件事上你以为可以不管我，随心所欲地做去，等我知道了要干涉也太晚了？我现在是个蒙羞受辱、穷途潦倒、身陷囹圄之人。单凭这一点，你要是有意要在你作品的扉页写上我的名字，就应该求我予你这个方便、给你这份荣耀、授你这项特权[52a]。一个人本该这样跟那些含垢忍辱的人们商量的。
52
53
Where there is Sorrow there is holy ground. Some day you will realise what that means. You will know nothing of life till you do. Robbie, and natures like his, can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and with bowed head I passed him by[53a]. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek[53b]. I have never said one single word to him about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasury-house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears.[53.1] When Wisdom has been profitless to me, and Philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little lowly silent act of Love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity, made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken and great heart of the world[53c]. When you are able to understand, not merely how beautiful Robbie’s action was, but why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, perhaps, you will realise how and in what spirit you should have approached me for permission to dedicate to me your verses.
悲怆中自有圣洁之境。总有一天你会领悟其中意思。否则就是对生活一无所知。罗比以及像他那种心地的人会明白的。当我夹在两个警察当中从监狱里被带到破产法庭时，罗比等在那长长的、凄凉的过道里，我戴着手铐低着头从他身边走过，这时他能庄重地当众扬起帽子向我致意，这亲切的、简简单单的一个动作，一下子让在场的人鸦雀无声[53a]。比这更小的举动就足以让人进天堂了。正是本着这种精神，正是因着这种爱，圣人会跪下给穷人洗脚，会俯身亲吻麻风病人的脸颊[53b]。这事我从未跟他提过。直到现在我还不知道，他是否意识到自己的举动我甚至是觉察到了没有。这样的事情是无法在形式上以话语正式道谢的。我将它存在内心的宝库中。将它存在那儿，作为我暗暗欠下的一笔债，我很高兴地想，这债是永远也还不清的。将它存在那儿，让滴滴泪珠化作没药与肉桂，使它永远芬芳，永远甜美。在这个智慧于我无益，达观于我无补，引经据典安慰我的话于我如同灰土的时候，那小小的、谦恭的、无声的爱之举动，想起它，就为我开启了所有怜悯的源泉：让沙漠如玫瑰盛开，带我脱离囚牢的孤单与苦痛，让我与世界那颗受伤的、破碎的、伟大的心相依相连[53c]。当你不单单能够理解罗比的举动是怎样的美好，而且还能理解这举动为什么对我意义如此重大，并将永远意义重大时，那么，你也许就能明白本来应该怎样、应该本着一种什么精神，来同我商量，允许你把诗献给我。
