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是常事—我会感动，但多责不在我。我从不鼓励这样的一时冲动，还会尽量让她们恢复平静，以便保持与她们的夫君一一如果认识的话――的友谊，或者与她们本人的适度关系。不过，这种事比你想像的要少，因为每次我到已婚明友的府上做客，都刻意携一位靓女同行。这些女孩各行各业都有：模特啦、舞女啦、新星啦、演员啦、职业网球手啦、歌手啦、富家女啦什么的，还有自由世界许多国家外交官的女儿们，真的是形形色色。我的玩伴往往都像一个模子铸出来的，几乎都是个子高挑、肤色健康、身段苗条、金发碧眼的可爱美人，用我一个喜欢调侃的朋友的说话，她就像歌中走出来的“来自伊帕内玛的女孩”。她们都敏感聪慧，擅长玩帆船和澳式自由泳。她们完美无瑕，因为即使是大腿内侧或锁骨上边的美人痣也让我扫兴。她们还必需呵气如兰，即使在凌晨三点也要像正午时分那样清新(我从不约见节食的女人，因为节食会使她的呼吸带酸味儿)。自然，腋毛令我反感，金色细软绒毛倒是偶尔可以接受。听起来我有点自命不凡。但我不是。我是那种，怎么说呢，正统的人，喜欢尽善尽美，像被某种磁力吸引着，去追求那种柏拉图式的理想的、纯粹的美妙。 （集体讨论，蒋骁华、孔昊执笔）
Beyond Life
超越生命[美] 卡贝尔 著
I want my life, the only life of which I am assured, to have symmetry or, in default of that, at least to acquire some clarity. Surely it is not asking very much to wish that my personal conduct be intelligible to me! Yet it is forbidden to know for what purpose this universe was intended, to what end it was set a-going, or why I am here, or even what I had preferably do while here. It vaguely seems to me that I am expected to perform an allotted task, but as to what it is I have no notion. And indeed, what have I done hitherto, in the years behind me? There are some books to show as increment, as something which was not anywhere before I made it, and which even in bulk will replace my buried body, so that my life will be to mankind no loss materially. But the course of my life, when I look back, is as orderless as a trickle of water that is diverted and guided by every pebble and crevice and grass-root it encounters. I seem to have done nothing with pre-meditation, but rather, to have had things done to me. And for all the rest of my life, as I know now, I shall have to shave every morning in order to be ready for no more than this!
我愿此生，我唯一确知的此生，能和谐地度过；若此愿不遂，至少也该活得有几分清醒。希望自己之所作为能被自己了解，这肯定不算要求过分。不过有些奥秘却不容你去了解，诸如宇宙宏旨之所在，乾坤归宿在何方，我为何置身于此间，于此间该做何事等。我隐约觉得此生被指望去履行一项既定使命，但这是项什么使命，我却一无所知。而且真正说来，我在过去的岁月里又有过什么作为呢？有那么几本书可显示为生命之赢余，可显示为在我创作其之前这世间未曾有过的东西，其体积甚至可置换我入土后的那副躯壳，
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从而使我生命之结束不致给人类造成物质损失。但当回首往昔，我发现自己的生命历程就像溪流之蜿蜒漫无定向，触石砄草根则避而改道，遇岩缝土隙则顺而流之。我似乎做任何事都未经事先考虑，而是任凭事务来摆布自己。且据我眼下所知，在我的整个余生，我每日清晨得剃须也仅仅是为了翌日清晨得剃须。
I have attempted to make the best of my material circumstances always; nor do I see to-day how any widely varying course could have been wiser or even feasible: but material things have nothing to do with that life which moves in me. Why, then, should they direct and heighten and provoke and curb every action of life? It is against the tyranny of matter I would rebel—against life’s absolute need of food, and books, and fire, and clothing, and flesh, to touch and to inhabit, lest life perish. No, all that which I do here or refrain from doing lacks clarity, nor can I detect any symmetry anywhere, such as living would assuredly display, I think, if my progress were directed by any particular motive. It is all a muddling through, somehow, without any recognizable goal in view, and there is no explanation of the scuffle tendered or anywhere procurable. It merely seems that to go on living has become with me a habit.
我总想善用身边的物质环境，因时至今日我也不知有任何迥异之做法会更为明智可行。然身外之物与涌动于我心中的那种生命毕竟无关。既如此，为何人之一举一动又常为身外之物所引所趋，所扬所抑？我所厌恶的正是这种物质之主宰—这种为了生命苟存于世而对食物、书本、炉火、衣衫等身外之物以及灵魂借以寓居之肉体的纯粹需求。的确，我在世界之全部所为或忍而不为之事都不甚明了，无论何处我都看不到丝毫和谐，而我认为，我的人生历程若有任何特定目标之指引，定会显现出那种明澈和谐。但不知何故，我眼前无可辨之目标，一直在浑然度日，而且对这种蹉跎或茫然也无从解说。活下去似乎已成了我的一种习惯，仅此而已。
And I want beauty in my life. I have seen beauty in a sunset and in the spring woods and in the eyes of divers women, but now these happy accidents of light and color no longer thrill me. And I want beauty in my life itself, rather than in such chances as befall it. It seems to me that many actions of my life were beautiful, very long ago, when I was young in an evanished world of friendly girls, who were all more lovely than any girl is nowadays. For women now are merely more or less good-looking, and as I know, their looks when at their best have been painstakingly enhanced and edited. But I would like this life which moves and yearns in me, to be able itself to attain to comeliness, though but in transitory performance. The life of a butterfly, for example, is just a graceful gesture: and yet, in that its loveliness is complete and perfectly rounded in itself, I envy this bright flicker through existence. And the nearest I can come to my ideal is punctiliously to pay my bills, be polite to my wife, and contribute to deserving charities: and the program does not seem, somehow, quite adequate. There are my
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books, I know; and there is beauty “embalmed and treasured up” in many pages of my books, and in the books of other persons, too, which I may read at will: but this desire inborn in me is not to be satiated by making marks upon paper, nor by deciphering them. In short, I am enamored of that flawless beauty of which all poets have perturbedly divined the existence somewhere, and which life as men know it simply does not afford nor anywhere foresee. 我希望生活中有美。我曾在落日余晖、春日树林和女人的眼中看见过美，可如今与这些光彩邂逅已不再令我激动。我期盼的是生命本身之美，而非偶然降临的美的瞬间。我觉得很久以前我生活行为中也充溢着美，那时我尚年轻，置身于一群远比当今姑娘更为友善可爱的姑娘之中，置身于一个如今已消失的世界。时下女人不过是多少显得有几分姿色， 而据我所知，她们最靓丽的容颜都经过煞费苦心的设色缚彩。但我希望这在我心中涌动并期盼的生命能绽放出自身之美，纵然其美丽会转瞬即逝。比如蝴蝶的一生不过翩然一瞬，但在这翩然一瞬间，其美丽得以完善，其生命得以完美。我羡慕一生中有这种美丽闪烁。可我最接近我理想生活的行为只是付账单一丝不苟，对妻子相敬如宾，捐善款恰宜至当，而这些无论如何也远远不够。当然，还有我那些书，在我自己撰写以及我可随意翻阅的他人所撰写的书中，都有美“封藏”于万千书页之间。但我与生俱来的这种欲望并不满足于在纸上写美或从书中读美。简而言之，我所迷恋的那种无暇之美，那种天下诗人在忐忑中发现存在于某处的美，那种世人所知的凡尘生活无法赐予也无法预见的美。
And tenderness, too—but does that appear a mawkish thing to desiderate in life? Well, to my finding human beings do not like one another. Indeed, why should they, being rational creatures? All babies have a temporary lien on tenderness, of course: and therefrom children too receive a dwindling income, although on looking back, you will recollect that your childhood was upon the whole a lonesome and much put-upon period. But all grown persons ineffably distrust one another. In courtship, I grant you, there is a passing aberration which often mimics tenderness, sometimes as the result of honest delusion, but more frequently as an ambuscade in the endless struggle between man and woman. Married people are not ever tender with each other, you will notice: if they are mutually civil it is much: and physical contacts apart, their relation is that of a very moderate intimacy. My own wife, at all events, I find an unfailing mystery, a Sphinx whose secrets I assume to be not worth knowing: and, as I am mildly thankful to narrate, she knows very little about me, and evinces as to my affairs no morbid interest. That is not to assert that if I were ill she would not nurse me through any imaginable contagion, nor that if she were drowning I would not plunge in after her, whatever my delinquencies at swimming: what I mean is that, pending such high crises, we tolerate each other amicably, and never think of doing more. And from our blood-kin we grow apart inevitably. Their lives and their interests are no longer the same as ours, and when we meet it
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is with conscious reservations and much manufactured talk. Besides, they know things about us which we resent. And with the rest of my fellows, I find that convention orders all our dealings, even with children, and we do and say what seems more or less expected. And I know that we distrust one another all the while, and instinctively conceal or misrepresent our actual thoughts and emotions when there is no very apparent need. Personally, I do not like human beings because I am not aware, upon the whole, of any generally distributed qualities which entitle them as a race to admiration and affection. But toward people in books—such as Mrs. Millamant, and Helen of Troy, and Bella Wilfer, and Mélusine, and Beatrix Esmond—I may intelligently overflow with tenderness and caressing words, in part because they deserve it, and in part because I know they will not suspect me of being “queer” or of having ulterior motives.
我也渴望柔情—但对生活如此奢求难道不是自作多情？我发现世人彼此间从不相互喜欢。的确，作为理性动物，他们为何要相互喜欢呢？婴儿当然都有权得到短期柔情贷款，而且在童年时期还会有逐日递减的柔情进账，然而你回忆往事时就会发现，童年大体上是一段孤独寂寞且屡屡受骗的时期。但成人都莫可名状地相互猜疑。我承认，男女求爱时会有一时间的失常，而这种失常往往装扮成柔情蜜意，因此有时还让人误以为是真情，但更多时候会变成男女间无休止争斗的伏笔。你会注意到，已婚男女通常不会柔情缱绻，双方能以礼相待就不错了，除两性身体接触外，夫妻关系往往都不愠不火。以我妻子为例，我横竖都觉得她就像斯芬克司，一个永远也猜不透的谜，而我想也没必要去探究她那些秘密。并且就像我并无欣慰地述说的一样，她对我同样知之甚少，对我的私事也没有表现出任何病态的兴趣。但这并非说一旦我罹病，她会因惧怕传染而置我于不顾，也并非说万一她溺水，我会因不善游泳而不下水施救。我的意思是说，除非到紧要关头，我俩会彼此容忍，和睦相处，但绝不会想到更进一步。我们与亲属的关系也势必日渐疏远。因各自生活已不同，彼此情趣已相异，故见面时存心话说三分且多说套话。再说他们还知晓我们不想被别人抖露的底细。至于其他熟人，甚至包括未成年人，我发现彼此间交往全然是蹈常袭故，我们的所言所行似乎都不会超出对方之所料。我知道我们始终都互不信任，虽然有时毫不必要，我们仍本能地隐藏或伪装真实的思想感情。就我个人而言，我不喜欢人类，因为从总体上看，我不知这个物种有何共同的品质使其值得被人钦慕。但对书中那些人—例如米拉曼特夫人、特洛伊的海伦、贝拉·威尔弗、比阿特丽克丝·埃斯蒙德等—我却能不失理性地满怀柔情，表达一腔爱慕之意，这一则是因为她们值得我爱慕，二则是因为我知道她们不会怀疑我“变态”或别有用心。
And I very often wish that I could know the truth about just any one circumstance connected with my life. Is the phantasmagoria of sound and noise and color really passing or is it all an illusion here in my brain? How do you know that you are not dreaming me, for instance? In your conceded dreams, I am sure, you must invent and see and listen to persons who for the
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while seem quite as real to you as I do now. As I do, you observe, I say! and what thing is it to which I so glibly refer as I? If you will try to form a notion of yourself, of the sort of a something that you suspect to inhabit and partially to control your flesh and blood body, you will encounter a walking bundle of superfluities: and when you mentally have put aside the extraneous things—your garments and your members and your body, and your acquired habits and your appetites and your inherited traits and your prejudices, and all other appurtenances which considered separately you recognize to be no integral part of you,—there seems to remain in those pearl-colored brain-cells, wherein is your ultimate lair, very little save a faculty for receiving sensations, of which you know the larger portion to be illusory. And surely, to be just a very gullible consciousness provisionally existing among inexplicable mysteries, is not an enviable plight. And yet this life—to which I cling tenaciously—comes to no more. Meanwhile I hear men talk about “the truth”; and they even wager handsome sums upon their knowledge of it: but I align myself with “jesting Pilate,” and echo the forlorn query that recorded time has left unanswered.
我还常常祈愿，愿我能了解关于我生活的哪怕任何一点真相。这变化的声色光彩是在真正掠过，还是我脑海中的一种幻觉？譬如你何以知晓此刻我不是你梦中之幻象？毫无疑问，你在你坦言的梦中肯定遇见过人，且眼观其行，耳闻其声，当时他们于你肯定就像现时之我一样真实。注意，我说像现时之我一样真实！那么，我这口口声声称之谓的“我”又当是何物？若你设法去感知你自己为何物，那种你觉得寓于你体内并肆意支配你肉体的东西又为何物，那将有一大堆活生生的多余物与你不期而遇—诸如你的衣衫裙袍、手足躯干、习性胃口、禀性偏见以及其他所有附属物，那些你逐一视之便会承认其并非你不可或缺的多余之物—而若是你从心中将这些多余物抹去，那在你珍珠色的脑细胞了，在你最终的寓所之中，几乎就只剩下一种感知能力，可你知道，这种感知多半都是幻觉。而毋庸置疑，仅仅作为一种极易受骗的知觉，暂居于神秘莫测的迷幻之中，这并非一种令人羡慕的境况。然而这种生命—这种我死死黏附的生命—也不过如此这般。但与此同时我却听世人在谈论“真理”，他们甚至花大价钱为其所知的真理担保；可我愿与“爱逗趣的彼拉多”为伍，重复那几个几乎没法回答且上千年来无人回答的疑问。 Then, last of all, I desiderate urbanity. I believe this is the rarest quality in the world. Indeed, it probably does not exist anywhere. A really urbane person—a mortal open-minded and affable to conviction of his own shortcomings and errors, and unguided in anything by irrational blind prejudices—could not but in a world of men and women be regarded as a monster. We are all of us, as if by instinct, intolerant of that which is unfamiliar: we resent its impudence: and very much the same principle which prompts small boys to jeer at a straw-hat out of season induces their elders to send missionaries to the heathen…
最后我还企求高雅。我认为高雅乃世间最珍贵的品质。其实然，高雅或许并不存在于现
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