龙萍的译文（评论者：侯国金）：

  Appetite

食欲 

Laurie Lee

劳瑞.李[h1] 

  1.One of the major pleasures in life is appetite, and one of our major duties should be to preserve it. Appetite is the keenness of living; it is one of the senses that tells you that you are still curious to exist, that you still have an edge on your longings and want to bite into the world and taste its multitudinous flavors and juices.

生活一主要[h2] 的乐趣源自食欲。而我们的主要职责之一就是要保持良好的食欲。食欲是一种对生活的强烈渴望；食欲是一种感觉，它告诉你，你对生存仍然好奇，对生活仍满怀憧憬；你还想去品尝世间的千滋百味[h3] 。

2. By appetite, of course, I don’t mean just the lust for food, but any condition of unsatisfied desire, any burning in the blood that proves you want more than you’ve got, and that you haven’t yet used up your life. Wilde said he felt sorry for those who never got their heart’s desire, but sorrier still for those who did. I got mine once only, and it nearly killed me, and I’ve always preferred wanting to having since
   说道[h4] 食欲，当然了，它并不单单指对食物的欲望，而是指无法满足的任何欲望，任何在你的血液中燃烧着的强烈欲望，它证明你想要得到比你已拥有的更多，证明你还没有燃尽你的生命。王尔德曾说过，他为那些从未能实现过自己心愿的人而感到难过，但是也为那些实现了自己心愿的人悲哀。我曾有一次，也是唯一的一次，实现了自己的心愿，但那几乎要了我的命，所以我总是喜欢有所期望而非曾经拥有[h5] 。

3.For appetite, to me, is this state of wanting, which keeps one’s expectations alive. I remember learning the lesson long ago as a child, when treats and orgies were few, and when I discovered that the greatest pitch of happiness was not in actually eating a toffee but in gazing at it beforehand. True, the first bite was delicious, but once the toffee was gone one was left with nothing, neither toffee nor lust. Besides, the whole toffeeness of toffees was imperceptibly diminished by the gross act of having eaten it. No, the best was in wanting it, in sitting and looking at it, when one tasted an inexhaustible treasure-house of flavors.

食欲对我而言，是一种向往的状态，让人能不断地去期待渴求。记得很久以前，在我还是一个毛头小子的时候，就已懂得了这个道理。那时请客和聚餐都很少。我发现最幸福的时刻不是吃着太妃糖，而是在我先前直钩钩地盯着它瞧的那一段[h6] 。诚然，咬第一口觉着是非常美味的，但是糖一吃完就什么也没有了，没有的不仅是太妃糖，那欲望也随之消失。除此之外，那种“太妃”般的感觉也不知不觉地跟着太妃糖一起咽了下去。是啊，最妙的还是在想吃糖的那会，坐在那儿，盯着它，就像[h7] 是品尝着无尽的珍馐美味。

4.So, for me, one of the keenest pleasures of appetite remains in the wanting, not the satisfaction. In wanting a peach, or a whisky, or a particular texture or sound, or to be with a particular friend. For in this condition, of course, I know that the object of desire is always at its most flawlessly perfect. Which is why I would carry the preservation of appetite to the extent of deliberate fasting, simply because I think that appetite is too good to lose, too precious to be bludgeoned into insensibility by satiation and over-doing it.

所以，对我来说，食欲所带来的最大乐趣就在于向往，而不是满足。如想吃桃，想喝威士忌，想要块特别的布料[h8] ，想听某种奇妙的声音[h9] ，或是想密友聊一聊。当然在这种情形下，我很清楚，所渴求的事物总是完美得无懈可击。而我又为何用有意地禁食来保持好的食欲呢？其实原因很简单。我认为好的食欲是如此的美妙切不可失，它又是如此的珍贵切不能因饱足和纵欲而变得淡寡。

5. For that matter, I don’t really want three square meals a day—I want one huge, delicious, orgiastic, table-groaning blow-out, say every four days, and then not be too sure where the next one is coming from. A day of fasting is not for me just a puritanical device for denying oneself a pleasure, but rather a way of anticipating a rare moment of supreme indulgence.

鉴于此，我真的不想日食三餐—我只希望每隔四天能够吃上一顿丰盛佳肴，然后呢也没有必要知下一顿美味待到何时。禁食一天对我而言绝非是实施一种否定自我愉悦的，清教徒般的戒律，相反这是一种让我体验瞬间极度放纵感的方式。

6.Fasting is an act of homage to the majesty of appetite. So I think we should arrange to give up our pleasures regularly—our food, our friends, our lovers—in order to preserve their intensity, and the moment of coming back to them. For this is the moment that renews and refreshes both oneself and the thing one loves. Sailors and travelers enjoyed this once, and so did hunters, I suppose. 

    禁食是出于对食欲至上的一种敬仰。所以我觉得为了保存住那份强烈的感觉，我们应该时不时地，把对食物，以及对朋友，对爱人的喜爱放一放[h10] ，以待重新回到他们身边。那一刻旧爱重生，将更加珍爱。远航和远行者们都曾经历，深知其味，我想猎人们大概也是如此。

7.Part of the weariness of modern life may be that we live too much on top of each other, and are entertained and fed too regularly. Once we were separated by hunger both from our food and families, and then we learned to value both. The men went off hunting, and the dogs went with them; the women and children waved goodbye. The cave was empty of men for days on end; nobody ate, or knew what to do. The women crouched by the fire, the wet smoke in their eyes; the children wailed; everybody was hungry. Then one night there were shouts and the barking of dogs from the hills, and the men came back loaded with meat. This was the great reunion, and everybody gorged themselves silly, and appetite came into its own; the long-awaited meal became a feast to remember and an almost sacred celebration of life.

现代生活的有些乏味可能是由于我们彼此太过于依耐[h11] ，太过于寻欢作乐并且无节制地大吃大喝。一旦饥饿将我们与食物和家人分离，我们就会懂得珍惜两者。男人们外出打猎，狗紧随其后；女人和孩子向他们挥手告别。很多天过去了，男人们都没有回到山洞。没有人吃东西，也没有人知道该干什么。女人围着火蜷缩在一起，被烟熏了的眼睛湿润了[h12] ，孩子们也哭泣着，每个人都很饿。一天夜晚，山里传来阵阵狗吠声，男人们满载着肉[h13] 归来。这是盛大的团圆，每个人都狼吞虎咽，食欲大开。这期待已久的一餐成为了一次无限感怀的盛宴，一次神圣无比的生命庆典[h14] 。

8.Now we go off to the office and come home in the evenings to cheap chicken and frozen peas. Very nice, but too much of it, too easy and regular, served up without effort or wanting. We eat, we are lucky, our faces are shining with fat, but we don’t know the pleasure of being hungry any more.

现在每天晚上，我们下班回家吃廉价的鸡肉和速冻[h15] 豌豆。那很不错，但是那也太腻味了，太随意平常了点，完全没费什么心思准备，也没有什么可期待。我们吃着东西，我们还挺幸运，我们的脸上泛着油光[h16] ，但是我们全然不知饥饿是种怎样的愉悦。

9.Too much of anything—too much music, entertainment, happy snacks, or time spent with one’s friends—creates a kind of impotence of living by which one can no longer hear, or taste, or see, or love, or remember. Life is short and precious, and appetite is one of its guardians, and loss of appetite is a sort of death. So if we are to enjoy this short life we should respect the divinity of appetite, and keep it eager and not to much blunted.

任何东西太多---太多的音乐，太多的娱乐，太多的零食，太多和朋友相处的时间---都会使人无力生存下去[h17] 。他再不能去听，去尝，去看，去爱和去记。生命是短暂而又珍贵的，而食欲是生命的保卫者。食欲丧失也是一种死亡。所以如果我们要享受这短暂的人生，我们就应该尊重食欲的神圣，让它永远兴奋，永不麻木。[h18] 

10.It is a long time now since I knew that acute moment of bliss that comes from putting parched lips to a cup of cold water. The springs are still there to be enjoyed—all one needs is the original thirst.

     很久以前我就知道了，[h19] 幸福的时刻是在干渴的嘴唇浸入冰[h20] 水里的那瞬间。缕缕清泉将被[h21] 尽情享用---你所需要做的只是保持那一份原始的饥渴[h22] 。

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