Beyond Life

                              超越生命

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!

我希望我的生命——唯一我确信属于自己的生命，要有对称性[1]，或即便没有对称性，至少也要设法让它明确些。我只希望我的行为能被自己所理解，这个要求肯定不为过！然而，这个宇宙存在的作用是什么，其运行的目的何在，以及我为什么在这里，甚至我在这里更应做些什么，这一切都是无法参透的。冥冥之中我似乎感到我是被派来完成某项交给我的任务的，但那是什么任务我不得而知。的确，迄今为止，过去的这些年里我都做了些什么？有些书可以拿来示人，作为增值，作为某种我把它创造出来之前它尚不存在的东西；而这些书加在一起甚至可以取代我被葬的身体的体积了。这样，我这条生命的逝去对于人类来说就不会有物质上的损失了。但是，回首来时路，我的生命历程却似一股涓涓细流一般毫无规律：她所遇到的每一块鹅卵石、每一处岩石罅隙、每一棵草根都可以让它偏转、导引它的方向。似乎我所做过的一切事情都不是经过预先谋划的，而只不过是它们发生在我身上了而已。现在我知道了，在我余下的生命中，我将必须每天早晨剃须修面，而我所准备做的事终究不过如此！

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. 

我一直在最大限度地利用我的物质条件，但时至今日我仍然看不出，即便我的历程与现在的多么不同，它就会更明智一些，哪怕更可行一些：但物质的东西跟活动在我身上的这个生命本身毫不相干。既然如此，它们又为什么会指导、或加强、或引起、或阻止生命中的每个行为呢？我所要抗争的是物质的暴戾——即生命为了避免凋逝而对于食物、书籍、火、衣物、肉体、抚摸和居所的绝对需求。是的，我在此所做的、所不做的一切都不够明确，我也看不到任何对称性的迹象——我以为，假如我的历程有任何具体的动机来引导的话，生命就一定会呈现出对称性。可以说，这个历程不过是混日子而已，眼前完全看不到任何目标，对于这场混战没有人能给出、也无从获得任何的解释。似乎活下去对于我来说只是成为一个习惯而已。

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 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. 

我希望我的生命中还有美。我见过落日之美和春木之美，还有潜水女人美丽的眼睛，但现在这些偶见的令人愉悦的光影已不再令我惊悚。我要我自己生命中的美，而不是光顾于它的这些偶然情形。在我看来我的生命中曾有过许多美好的行为，那是很久以前，我年轻的时候，置身于一群友善的姑娘中，这是个现已不复存在的世界。她们个个都比现今的任何一个女孩子更可爱。因为现在的女人们都只差不多算是好看。而据我所知，她们的容貌在最美好的时候却被千方百计地处理和修改过了。但是我宁愿这个在我身体上活动着、渴望着的生命本身能够实现些许美好，哪怕只是昙花一现的表现。比如一只蝴蝶的生命本身就是一个优美的姿态：而且，由于其本身的优美可人是彻底而完美的，所以我羡慕这种由其生存方式本身所带来的亮丽的振翅；而我所能做到的最接近我理想的事情不过是循规蹈矩地支付各种账单、对妻子恭敬有礼、捐助有意义的慈善事业——不过，这些做法似乎还不太够。还有我的书，我知道的，在我的和别人的书的许多书页中有“经防腐处理而珍藏起来的”[2] 美，我可以随意去阅读它们。但是，仅仅在纸上做些标记，理解它们，满足不了我与生俱来的欲望。总之，我迷恋那种完美无缺的美，所有的诗人都预言它存在于某个地方，却又不无忧虑地认为，人们所理解的生命根本就无法拥有它，也无从预见它。

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 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. 

还要有温柔——但在生活中追求它难道不看似一件矫情的事吗？在我看来，人们似乎并不相互喜欢。的确，作为理性动物的人类，他们何以如此呢？所有的婴儿当然都暂时拥有一份娇嫩[3] ：由此，儿童们也获得了一份逐渐减少的收益，尽管回想起你的童年来，你会想起那是一段总的来说有些孤独、颇受人摆布的时光。但所有成年人之间的互不信任简直难以形容。在求爱中，我承认，有种短暂的例外情形，极像是温柔，有时那是诚实的谎言造成的结果，但更多的时候它是男人和女人之间永无休止的斗争中的一段埋伏期。结婚的双方彼此之间根本谈不上温柔，你会发现：如果他们相互之间客客气气，那么往往是这样：除了身体上的接触外，他们的关系是一种非常平淡的亲情关系。无论如何，我感觉自己的妻子始终是个谜，一个我以为不值得了解的斯芬克斯之谜；而说来让我颇感庆幸的是，她对我也了解甚少，对我的事没有表现出变态的兴趣来。这并非说如果我病了，她不会千方百计、体贴入微地护理我，或如果她溺水，我不会紧随她跳入水中，而无论我游泳游得多么拙劣：我的意思是，只要没有这样的大灾大难，我们彼此之间只是心平气和地容忍对方罢了，从没想过更多；而我们长大后会不可避免地同家人们分开，他们的生活和兴趣早已跟我们的不同。跟他们见面时我们总是有意识地有所保留，做作地谈话；而且，他们知道关于我们的很多事，这令我们懊恼。至于我其他的朋伴们，我发现世俗的习惯统治着我们的一切交往，甚至同孩子们的交往，我们所做的和所说的或多或少都是人们意料之中的。我知道，我们彼此间一直都互不信任，即使在显然没有必要的时候，也总是本能地隐藏或者歪曲我们的真实想法和情感。就我个人而言，我不喜欢人类，因为总的来看我没有发现人类普遍拥有的任何品质，使其成为一个值得赞誉和热爱的种群。然而，对于书中的一些人物——像米勒曼特小姐、特洛伊的海伦、贝拉·威尔佛、梅露希娜和比阿特丽克斯·埃斯蒙德[4] ——我也许会聪明地流露出些许温柔和爱怜之辞，一半是因为他们配得上，一半是因为我知道他们不会怀疑我“古怪”或是别有用心。

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 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.

    我时常希望能了解跟我的生活相关的哪怕任何一种现象的真相。这各种声音和色彩的景象是真的在穿过这里，抑或它只是我头脑中的一种幻觉？比如，你怎么知道你没有在梦见我呢？在那些你承认做过的梦中，我确信你一定想象过、看到和听到过一些人，这些人当时在你看来像我现在对于你一样真真切切。我是说，就像我所做的，你看到了一样！然而我如此不假思索脱口而出的所谓“我”又为何物呢？如果你要试图形成一个关于“你自己”的概念，关于你以为它寄居在、并部分地控制着你的血肉之躯的那么个东西的概念，你会遇到一团行走的赘物：一旦你从脑子里撇开了这些外在的东西——你的衣装、你的肢体、你的躯干、你学来的习惯、你的欲望，以及你那些先天的特性和你的偏见，还有所有其他附属物，这些东西如果单独考虑起来，你就会意识到它们本不是你自己的一部分，那么，在你最终的居留处——珍珠色的脑细胞中，除了一种接收各种感官刺激（而且你知道其中大部分的感官刺激都是虚幻的）的功能之外，似乎已所剩很少。无疑，只是作为一种易受蒙骗的意识而暂时存在于无数的难解之谜当中，是一种困境，并不令人羡慕。而这个生命——我所始终顽强坚守的东西——归根结蒂不过如此。然而，我听到人们谈论“真理”[6] 时他们甚至用可观的赌注赌定他们对它的了解：但我要站在“戏谑的比拉多”一边，重复那句被人淡忘的、有历史记载以来从未得到过解答的问题[6] 。 

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…

还有，最后，我渴望文明。我以为这是这个世界上最稀缺的品质了。事实上，也许它根本就不存在。一个真正文明的人——一位思想豁达、对他人对于自己的缺点和错误的指责能泰然处之，并且在任何事情上都不受任何非理性的盲目偏见所引导的凡人，在这个男人和女人的世界中恐怕只能被看做一个怪物了。我们所有人，彷佛都本能地无法容忍不熟悉的东西：我们讨厌它的粗鄙：小男孩们会嘲笑一顶戴得不合时令的草帽，而几乎与此相同的理念促使着他们的长辈们把传教士派到异教徒中去……