《无意中的剽窃》

《Unconscious Plagiarism》

马克·吐温

Mark Twain

这是霍姆斯七十寿辰（1879年12月3日）时，马克·吐温在波斯顿为他祝寿的致词。霍姆斯在美国杂志《大西洋月刊》的创始人。

主席先生、女士们、先生们：

为了能够亲自为霍姆斯博士祝寿，再远的路程我也愿意赶来。因为我一直对他怀着一种特别亲切的感情。收到一生中第一封某个大人物写来的信，对每个人来说可都是件大事。这一点你们大家应该都有亲身体验。而且，以后再多名人的信，都不会让这封信黯然失色，也不会使你淡忘当时那种惊喜和感激之情。时光的流逝也不会让它在你心目中变得平常或无谓。

给我写信的第一个大人物，就是我们的来宾------奥列弗·温德尔·霍姆斯。他也是第一个被我偷了一点东西的大文豪（笑声）。而且这就是我给他写信然后他给我回信的原因。我的第一本书刚出版的时候，一个朋友跟我说：“你的献词写得很简练。”我回答说：“是啊，我觉得是的。”我的朋友又说：“在你的《傻子国外旅行记》出版前，我就一直很欣赏它呢。”我自然要问了：“你这话什么意思？你以前就见过这篇献词吗？”“呃，几年前霍姆斯博士为他的《多调之歌》写的献词就是这样啊。”当然啦，我听到这句话后，第一个冲动就是想要了他的小命。不过，想了想，我还是对他说可以先饶他一小会儿，给他一个机会让他证实自己的话。我们来到一家书店，发现他说的还都是真的。我的的确确几乎原封不动地偷了那篇献词。当时，我真不知道怎么会发生这种怪事，因为我敢肯定，任何一个有像茶匙那样一丁点脑子的人都会有一点尊严，绝不会有意地去剽窃别人的思想；有像茶匙那样一丁点儿脑子的人都会这样，而我呢-------一些崇拜者可是常常说我的脑子有一个篮子那样大，不过他们不肯说出那篮子的大小罢了。（笑声）

无论如何，后来我还是把这事想明白了，解开了这个谜题。两年前，我在桑威奇岛休养过几个星期。在那里反反复复地读了霍姆斯博士的诗集，直到那些诗在我脑子里满得要溢出来了。而那篇献词就堆在最上面，要拿来用真是太方便不过了（笑声），所以我就这样不知不觉地把它偷来了。说不准我还偷了那本诗集的别的部分呢，因为很多人跟我讲，那本书有些地方还挺有点诗意。于是，我就理所当然地给霍姆斯博士写了封信，说我并不是有意偷他的东西。他给我回信，十分宽容地告诉我不要紧，没有什么关系。还说我们所有人都会不知不觉地使用读来或听来的思想，而且还以为那就是自己的原创的呢。他用令人愉快的方式说出了一个真理，还轻柔地抚慰了我的痛处，以致我很高兴自己犯了这个错，因而才有幸得到他的信。后来，我拜访了他，告诉他如果觉得我的什么见解是他做诗的好素材，那他只管用就是了（笑声）。这样，他就会看出来我可不是个小气鬼；所以说，我们一开始就挺合得来的。

打那以后，我见过霍姆斯博士很多次；最近他说------哎呀，我离题万里了。我应该向你们，我的同行、广大民众的老师们，表达我对霍姆斯博士的祝福。我想说，看到博士仍然朝气蓬勃、精力旺盛，我真是高兴极了。一个人的老迈，不在于年岁多少，而在于身心的衰弱。所以，我希望，很多很多年以后，人们才真正有机会说：“他老了”。（掌声）

《Unconscious Plagiarism》

Mark Twain

This is the speech for holmes’s seventy birthday (1879, December 3,)by Mark Twain in Boston. Holmes is the founder of magazine in American.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would have traveled a much greater distance than I have come to witness the paying of honors to Dr. Holmes. For my feeling toward him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letter enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.

Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest----Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever stole anything from (laughter). And that is how I came to write to him and he to me. When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, “The dedication is very neat.” “Yes,” I said, “I thought is  was.” My friend said, “I always admired it, even before I saw it in the ”. I naturally said, “What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?” “Well, I saw it first some years ago as Dr. Holmes’s dedication to his .” Of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man’s remains for burial(laughter), but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two, and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a bookstore, and he did prove it, I had really stolen the dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing had happened; for I knew one thing, for a dead certainty, that a certain amount of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people’s ideas. That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man,----and admirers had often told me I had nearly basketful, though they were rather reserved as to the size of the basket.(laughter)

However, I thought the thing out and solved the mystery. Two years before I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and reread Dr. Holmes’s poems until my mental reservoir was filled up with them to the brim. The dedication lay on top and handy (laughter). So by and by I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. Well, of course, I wrote Dr. Holmes and told him I hadn’t meant to steal, and he wrote back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done; and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way and salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather glad I had committed the crime, for the sake of the letter. I afterward called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine that stuck him as being good protoplasm of poetry (laughter). He could see by that there wasn’t anything mean about me; so we got along right from the start.

I have met Dr. Holmes many times since; and lately he said: however, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got on my feet to do. That is, to make my compliments to you, my fellow teachers of the great public, and likewise to say I am right glad to see that Dr. Holmes is still in his prime and full of generous life; and as age is not determined by years, but by trouble and infirmities of mind and body, I hope it may be a very long time yet before any can truthfully say, “ He is growing old.”(Applause)