20. Random Thoughts 随感录
This matter of other people’s learning and ccomplishments has been worrying me for some time. I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or to do in half a dozen life-times. To begin with, unless these people chance to be obvious invalids like Stevenson or Tchehov, they are always tremendous athletes with surprising strength, powers of endurance, and so forth.
一直以来，对别人学识渊博及造诣之深，我感到很不理解。只要你随便读一读哪一位重要人物的传记，就总会发现他的学问和才能，就算我活六辈子也休想学到和做到。首先，除了碰到像史蒂文森或契诃夫那样的，有明显残疾的人以外，他们总是成绩顶呱呱的运动员，他们有着惊人的气力、耐力。
They could all walk and run and climb our heads off, even when they were seventy. Then they all have the gift of tongues. You never catch a glimpse of them sitting down to learn a new language, not even running an eye over its irregular verbs, yet it is admitted that they speak any number with an astonishing fluency and purity of accent. They never confine themselves to one science, but are inevitably masters of several. The big book of Nature they know by heart. Only the other day I was reading an account of a great novelist, a most sophisticated and subtle person, and was told that he knew the name and habits and history of every wild flower and plant and tree and bird in the country. Nor is that all. There is not one of these bigwigs who is not (I quote the customary phrases) a sensitive and accomplished musician, or an extraordinarily fine amateur water-colourist, or the possessor of a magnificent prose style. We are always told that, had circumstance been different, their talents were such that they need only have given their serious attention to one or other of these arts to have procured for themselves lasting and perhaps world-wide reputation. So runs the legend of the eulogists.
他们即使年届七旬，在走路，跑步，翻山越岭时我们都赶不上他们。其次，他们大都是语言方面的天才。你从来没有看见他们坐下来学习一种新的语言，甚至连不规则动词表也没有看见他们浏览—下。但是大家都认为他们随便可以讲几种语言，不仅流利，而且发音纯正。他们一般都精通几门，而不会使局限在一门科学里。大自然这部巨著被他们熟记于心。不久以前，我还读到一位杰出的小说家的事迹。他是一位非常老练而又精细的人，据说他熟悉乡村每一种野花野草、树木和禽鸟的名称、习性和生活史。除此之外，请原谅我用一些套语来形容，这些大人物都是富于灵感的音乐大师，或是精妙绝伦的业余水彩画家，或是风格优美的文体家。更使我们感到惊讶的是，要是他们的境遇不同，只要他们认真从事这门或那门艺术，凭着他们的才能，而且日后一定会获得不朽的声誉，再者还会享誉全球。这些对他们的描述真是神乎其神。
I am baffled. How is it done? I ask the question again, my voice rises to a scream of envy and vexation. Consider what is involved in this matter (so lightly touched upon and dismissed) of music or water-colour painting or fine writing, what years of serious application, of drudgery at the keyboard, the easel, or the writing-desk. It is one thing to strum on the piano, as you and I do, faking the left-hand passages as we go along, or to daub a few patchy water colours, or to paste on to clumsy prose some old spangles of rhetoric, and it is quite another thing to be an accomplished musician or artist or writer. If the first were meant, I could understand it; but the second —— and as a mere recreation, too! And then to add the athleticism, the sciences, the tongues, the natural history! I am bewildered and crushed. The very idle rumour of fellow-creatures so wonderfully gifted makes me dwindle in my own estimation to the size of a gnat.
但是我被搞糊涂了。他们凭什么做得到?我再次想问这个问题，甚至忌妒和烦恼得要遥问苍天。我们应该仔细地想一想一首乐曲、一幅水彩画或一篇美妙的文章究竟意味着什么(这一点却被他们轻轻带过或略而不论)，这需要很多年专心致志地在键盘上、在画架上或者在写字台上辛勤操作，这样才能有所成就。而像你我这样，胡乱弹奏钢琴曲，同时还用左手插入即兴的过门，或者不管色彩是否协调，乱涂几笔蘸上水彩，或者在一篇粗制滥造的散文里贴上几句闪闪烁烁的陈词滥调是一回事；而要成为一个有成就的音乐家、画家或作家，却是另一回事。要是那指的是前者，我可以理解；但是如果指的是后者呢?——尚且还不过是作为一种业余的消遣!更不用说他们还要从事体育运动，研究各门科学，学习各种语言，或者博物学!这使我迷惑不解，而且佩服得五体投地。这就是使我自己越看越小，小得像个小蚊虫的原因。他们有如此神奇的天赋!正像传说中讲的那样。 |