作者：胡适
出版社：外语教学与研究出版社
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
四十自述(汉英对照)试读：
“博雅双语名家名作”出版说明
1840年鸦片战争以降，在深重的民族危机面前，中华民族精英“放眼看世界”，向世界寻求古老中国走向现代、走向世界的灵丹妙药，涌现出一大批中国主题的经典著述。我们今天阅读这些中文著述的时候，仍然深为字里行间所蕴藏的缜密的考据、深刻的学理、世界的视野和济世的情怀所感动，但往往会忽略：这些著述最初是用英文写就，我们耳熟能详的中文文本是原初英文文本的译本，这些英文作品在海外学术界和文化界同样享有崇高的声誉。
比如，林语堂的My Country and My People（《吾国与吾民》）以幽默风趣的笔调和睿智流畅的语言，将中国人的道德精神、生活情趣和中国社会文化的方方面面娓娓道来，在美国引起巨大反响——林语堂也以其中国主题系列作品赢得世界文坛的尊重，并获得诺贝尔文学奖的提名。再比如，梁思成在抗战的烽火中写就的英文版《图像中国建筑史》文稿（A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture），经其挚友费慰梅女士（Wilma C. Fairbank）等人多年的奔走和努力，于1984年由麻省理工学院出版社（MIT Press）出版，并获得美国出版联合会颁发的“专业暨学术书籍金奖”。又比如，1939年，费孝通在伦敦政治经济学院的博士论文以Peasant Life in China—A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley为名在英国劳特利奇书局（Routledge）出版，后以《江村经济》作为中译本书名——《江村经济》使得靠桑蚕为生的“开弦弓村”获得了世界性的声誉，成为国际社会学界研究中国农村的首选之地。
此外，一些中国主题的经典人文社科作品经海外汉学家和中国学者的如椽译笔，在英语世界也深受读者喜爱。比如，艾恺（Guy S. Alitto）将他1980年用中文访问梁漱溟的《这个世界会好吗——梁漱溟晚年口述》一书译成英文（Has Man a Future? —Dialogues with the Last Confucian），备受海内外读者关注；
此类作品还有徐中约英译的梁启超著作《清代学术概论》（Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period）、狄百瑞（W. T. de Bary）英译的黄宗羲著作《明夷待访录》（Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince），等等。
有鉴于此，外语教学与研究出版社推出“博雅双语名家名作”系列。
博雅，乃是该系列的出版立意。博雅教育（Liberal Education）早在古希腊时代就得以提倡，旨在培养具有广博知识和优雅气质的人，提高人文素质，培养健康人格，中国儒家六艺“礼、乐、射、御、书、数”亦有此功用。
双语，乃是该系列的出版形式。英汉双语对照的形式，既同时满足了英语学习者和汉语学习者通过阅读中国主题博雅读物提高英语和汉语能力的需求，又以中英双语思维、构架和写作的形式予后世学人以启迪——维特根斯坦有云：“语言的边界，乃是世界的边界”，诚哉斯言。
名家，乃是该系列的作者群体。涵盖文学、史学、哲学、政治学、经济学、考古学、人类学、建筑学等领域，皆海内外名家一时之选。
名作，乃是该系列的入选标准。系列中的各部作品都是经过时间的积淀、市场的检验和读者的鉴别而呈现的经典，正如卡尔维诺对“经典”的定义：经典并非你正在读的书，而是你正在重读的书。
胡适在《新思潮的意义》（1919年12月1日，《新青年》第7卷第1号）一文中提出了“研究问题、输入学理、整理国故、再造文明”的范式。秉着“记载人类文明、沟通世界文化”的出版理念，我们推出“博雅双语名家名作”系列，既希望能够在中国人创作的和以中国为主题的博雅英文文献领域“整理国故”，亦希望在和平发展、改革开放的新时代为“再造文明”、为“向世界说明中国”略尽绵薄之力。外语教学与研究出版社人文社科出版分社感谢
乔志高先生哲嗣、胡适纪念馆
对本书出版的支持和帮助自 序
我在这十几年中，因为深深的感觉中国最缺乏传记的文学，所以到处劝我的老辈朋友写他们的自传。不幸的很，这班老辈朋友虽然都答应了，终不肯下笔。最可悲的一个例子是林长民先生，他答应了写他的五十自述作他五十岁生日的纪念；到了生日那一天，他对我说：“适之，今年实在太忙了，自述写不成了；明年生日我一定补写出来。”不幸他庆祝了五十岁的生日之后，不上半年，他就死在郭松龄的战役里，他那富于浪漫意味的一生就成了一部人间永不能读的逸书了！
梁启超先生也曾同样的允许我。他自信他的体力精力都很强，所以他不肯开始写他的自传。谁也不料那样一位生龙活虎一般的中年作家只活了五十五岁！虽然他的信札和诗文留下了绝多的传记材料，但谁能有他那样“笔锋常带情感”的健笔来写他那五十五年最关重要又最有趣味的生活呢！中国近世历史与中国现代文学就都因此受了一桩无法补救的绝大损失了。我有一次见着梁士诒先生，我很诚恳的劝他写一部自叙，因为我知道他在中国政治史与财政史上都曾扮演过很重要的脚色，所以我希望他替将来的史家留下一点史料。我也知道他写的自传也许是要替他自己洗刷他的罪过；但这是不妨事的，有训练的史家自有防弊的方法；最要紧的是要他自己写他心理上的动机，黑幕里的线索，和他站在特殊地位的观察。前两个月，我读了梁士诒先生的讣告，他的自叙或年谱大概也就成了我的梦想了。
此外，我还劝告过蔡元培先生、张元济先生、高梦旦先生、陈独秀先生、熊希龄先生、叶景葵先生。我盼望他们都不要叫我失望。
前几年，我的一位女朋友忽然发愤写了一部六七万字的自传，我读了很感动，认为中国妇女的自传文学的破天荒的写实创作。但不幸她在一种精神病态中把这部稿本全烧了。当初她每写成一篇寄给我看时，我因为尊重她的意思，不曾替她留一个副本，至今引为憾事。
我的四十自述，只是我的“传记热”的一个小小的表现。这四十年的生活可分作三个阶段，留学以前为一段，留学的七年（一九一〇—一九一七）为一段，归国以后（一九一七—一九三一）为一段。我本想一气写成，但因为种种打断，只写成了这第一段的六章。现在我又出国去了，归期还不能确定，所以我接受了亚东图书馆的朋友们的劝告，先印行这几章。这几章都先在《新月》月刊上发表过，现在我都从头校改过，事实上的小错误和文字上的疏忽，都改正了。我的朋友周作人先生，葛祖兰先生，和族叔堇人先生，都曾矫正我的错误，都是我最感谢的。
关于这书的体例，我要声明一点。我本想从这四十年中挑出十来个比较有趣味的题目，用每个题目来写一篇小说式的文字，略如第一篇写我的父母的结婚。这个计划曾经得死友徐志摩的热烈的赞许，我自己也很高兴，因为这个方法是自传文学上的一条新路子，并且可以让我（遇必要时）用假的人名地名描写一些太亲切的情绪方面的生活。但我究竟是一个受史学训练深于文学训练的人，写完了第一篇，写到了自己的幼年生活，就不知不觉的抛弃了小说的体裁，回到了谨严的历史叙述的老路上去了。这一变颇使志摩失望，但他读了那写家庭和乡村教育的一章，也曾表示赞许；还有许多朋友写信来说这一章比前一章更动人。从此以后，我就爽性这样写下去了。因为第一章只是用小说体追写一个传说，其中写那“太子会”颇有用想象补充的部分，虽经堇人叔来信指出，我也不去更动了。但因为传闻究竟与我自己的亲见亲闻有别，所以我把这一章提出，称为“序幕”。
我的这部自述至今没写完。但这几年之中，国内出版了好几部很可读的壮年作家自传。自传的风气似乎已开了。我很盼望我们这几个三四十岁的人的自传的出世可以引起一班老年朋友的兴趣，可以使我们的文学里添出无数的可读而又可信的传记来。我们抛出几块砖瓦，只是希望能引出许多块美玉宝石来；我们赤裸裸的叙述我们少年时代的琐碎生活，为的是希望社会上做过一番事业的人也会赤裸裸的记载他们的生活，给史家做材料，给文学开生路。胡适。二二，六，二七，在太平洋上。PROLOGUE MY MOTHER's BETROTHAL❶
In our village the Princes' Fair held every autumn was one of the most festive of our religious observations. But this year the Princes' Fair was a source of disappointment to many.
Now we saw a troop of umbrella-bearers passing by in the procession. These were only the old satin umbrellas provided by the various families of the village, nothing very novel. Everyone was saying that folks at the Hengyu silk store had had a special umbrella made, studded with real pearls, but they were afraid to produce it for the occasion for fear of Master Three's disapproval.
There were four troops of K'unshan Opera singers this year, which was not a bad showing. The singers and musicians were all dressed in what was called "half-length gowns," with white bamboo-cloth tops and lower halves made of lake-colored silk. From the small finger of each performer was suspended an exquisite little fan of speckled-bamboo frame, and these fans dangled to and fro beneath the bamboo flutes and mouth-organs as the players marched playing along.
For theatricals this year there were six productions, all of them "straight dramas" and not one comedy. This was also in deference to Master Three's wishes. The boys in the back village had wanted to stage a selection from the naughty "Emerald-Screen Hill," but rather than risk being talked to by Master Three, had changed it to a heroic episode from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. As it was, under the hot sun of the Seventh Month, even the sedate ladies of this show soon appeared bedraggled, and there would not have been much chance for saucy P'an Ch'iao-yün of "Emerald-Screen Hill" to have displayed herself to advantage. Still, in the heart of the assembled onlookers there was this lingering regret: what a pity that that handsome lad Hsiao-Ti from back village was not to have been given a chance to impersonate P'an Ch'iao-yün!
But the greatest let-down of this year was that there were no "elevated floats" at all. The back village folks had long since rehearsed a couple of tableaux for the floats called "The Dragon-Tiger Battle" and "Sweeping the Tombs." No one had expected that when Master Three came home this year and saw the fair grounds he remarked that it would be quite dangerous for youngsters to be play-acting on those highly-raised platforms, lest they fall off under the effect of the heat. He had vigorously opposed it, and the elevated floats had to be dropped.
The noisy bands and the K'unshan Opera troupes passed by one after another, and so did the theatrical productions. Then came the sedan-chair bearing the shrine of the Princes. The onlookers by the wayside prodded their children and shouted to one another: "Bow down! Bow down!" And the multitude of men, women and children, in their homespun cloth of white-and-blue patterns, all clapped their hands together and made obeisance.
Right behind the shrine chair came the pilgrims. Some were dressed in long gowns of summer-cloth, holding the incense sticks cupped in their hands; some in short jackets, bearing incense-burners in which were burnt incense spirals. There were still others with deeper pledges to God which they were here today to redeem by the extreme sacrifice of "hanging incense." These people all wore white cotton jackets on top of red-and-green cotton skirts, so that from the distance you could hardly tell the men from the women. Their incense-burners were hung by brass hooks which were sunk into the flesh of their wrists, smeared with incense ashes to avoid bleeding. This year there were especially many pilgrims who came to "hang incense"—some with the burner hooked to the left wrist, some with one to each wrist, some with only a small incense-burner, while others even had two burners on one wrist in a greater effort to demonstrate their faith by enduring suffering. These were all devout pilgrims with pledges to redeem: they walked for miles behind the shrine chair, the incense-burners hanging from their wrists, and although there were attendants following to cool them off with the fan now and then, a pilgrim would drop by the wayside, prostrate by the heat.* * * * *
Feng Shun-ti held her little brother by the hand and stood beside her aunt on a stone ledge to watch the procession. She was a girl of fourteen, whose home was ten li away in Middle Village. This aunt of hers was married here in Upper Homestead, whose turn it was this year to conduct the fair, and she and her brother had been invited over by the relatives to see the fair.
A daughter of the farm, fourteen-year-old Shun-ti had learned much from the experience of poverty and had early acquired an adult's good sense. As she stood there by the wayside she listened to the various comments on the fair, and it seemed that every sentence had something to do with Master Three. "Master Three is home for the fair this year, and he sure spoilt the fair for us all." "Isn't that the truth? No floats, even!" "Before Master Three got home the opium dens over in Eight Town had all closed down; the gambling places also didn't dare stay open. No gambling, no opium-smoking at a Seventh Month fair—that's something that has not happened in years."
The villagers gathered for the fair carried on with one comment after another, and all of this talk was absorbed by the attentive Shun-ti. She thought in her heart: Master Three must be quite a man, if he can make the gambling and opium places afraid to open their doors.
Now the procession of the fair was over, and the crowd slowly dispersed. Suddenly she heard a voice murmur: "Here comes Master Three!" She looked up, and saw that people were falling back right and left to make way for the newcomer and heard many voices raised in greeting, "Master Three!"
Two men walked up. One was a big, middle-aged man, with bronzed complexion, some short whiskers, and a compelling light in his eyes that made people avoid his glance; he had on a loose-fitting jacket and trousers and a pair of hemp sandals, and in his hand he held a long pipe stick. Walking with him was an old man of lean frame and a graying beard, who wore the same type of short jacket and also held a long pipe.
Shun-ti's aunt whispered to her, saying, "The dark one is Master Three; the other is Master Yüeh-chi, whose school is right in front of our house. They say Master Three is a government official in the North, way beyond the Great Wall, where no human beings live and where it's so cold in the winter your nose gets frozen off and so hot in the summer mosquitoes are as big as flies. Master Three is a man who can stand all the hardships and fears no sun nor wind. He has lived these many years outside the Great Wall; his face got burnt as black as Lord Pao the Great Judge."
By this time, Master Three and Master Yüeh-chi had come up in front of the group and, having paused to exchange a final word, Master Three walked on down the slope by himself. Master Yüeh-chi turned to greet Shun-ti's aunt, and walked home with the three of them.
Seeing Shun-ti, Master Yüeh-chi asked, "Sister Ts'an, is this your Brother Chin-tsao's little girl?"
"Yes. Shun-ti! Ch'eng-hou! Come and greet Master Yüeh-chi."
Catching sight of Shun-ti's long braided hair, Master Yüeh-chi exclaimed, "Sister Ts'an, look at this young lady's hair, reaching all the way to the ground. It speaks of good fortune! Good fortune! Promised to any family yet?"
At this query Shun-ti's face flushed a deep red and, taking her little brother by the hand, she ran on ahead, oblivious of her aunt.
The good woman quickened her steps, calling after them, "Watch out you don't fall!" and, turning to Master Yüeh-chi, "No, not promised to anyone yet. She's a fine girl, that child, and quite understanding. Our Brother Chin-tsao always wanted to find her a nice husband, so she is fourteen now and still not promised to any family."
"Why don't you look up her Eight Characters for me?" Master Yüeh-chi said to the aunt. "And let me take a reading for her and see. Don't forget about it."
When he reached his own home he turned around and reminded her: "Don't forget, now. Ask Brother Ts'an to have the girl's Eight Characters copied for me."❷
Shun-ti stayed in Upper Homestead until the end of the fair, and then her uncle took the sister and brother back to Middle Village. In the hot and long day of the Seventh Month, they did not start on their journey until about sunset and by the time they had walked the ten li or so to reach home it was not yet completely dark.
Shun-ti's mother had just locked the cow in the barn, and she now hustled to entertain the uncle and put him up for the night.
"Papa not home yet?" asked Shun-ti.
" Chieh-chieh, let's go and meet him!" Without waiting for the mother's reply, brother and sister dashed out of the house.
When they came to the edge of the village they spied their father coming toward the village with a load of rocks. They ran up calling, "Papa," and sister and brother each took a rock from the father's load and carried it after him. The father carried his load to an old building site on his land, where he emptied the rocks onto the slightly sunken ground. Then he jumped in and laid the rocks level before he shouldered his carrying-pole and empty baskets and made his way home.
"Was that the third load?" asked Shun-ti.
Her father nodded without comment, but only asked the children how they liked the fair and if the show was any good, as they walked home together.* * * * *
Shun-ti's father was surnamed Feng, with the given name of Chin-tsao. His family, for generations peasants, had by dint of bitter struggle managed to acquire a modicum of property, consisting of a few mou of land and a house of their own. When Chin-tsao reached the age of thirteen or fourteen the "Long-Hair Bandits" of the T'aip'ing Rebellion descended on Hweichow, and Middle Village, being on the highway in the northern countryside of the town of Chich'i, was completely burned to the ground by the Long Hairs. All the members of Chin-tsao's family, old and young, were killed except himself, and he was kidnapped. In the army of the Long Hairs the men saw that he was a hardy, able little boy and so they had the words "T'aip'ing Heavenly Kingdom" tattooed on his face so that he would not run away. An army tailor took pity on the boy and took him in as an apprentice. Chin-tsao learned to have a fine hand at tailoring and he got by for years in the Long Hair camps, following the rebels from Chich'i to Ningkuo and to Kwangteh before he finally managed to make his escape. But because he had a tattooed face, which meant a reward for anyone who turned him in to the government, he did not dare show his face in broad daylight. Each day he would hide in broken-down houses until nightfall before he would dare take to the road. Thus he endured all hardships and finally made his way back to his native village, only to find that nothing was left but scorched earth and some charred ruins, and of able-bodied males in the village only twenty or thirty had survived.
Chin-tsao proved himself a hard-working young man. After his return home he searched out the neglected fields of the family farm and set about ploughing and planting with all his might. With his spare energy he worked the fields for other families and plied his tailoring trade. It was not ten years before he had built himself a home from the half-burnt remains of a brick house and had taken himself a wife. Now husband and wife both worked hard and ate bitterness and in time managed to put away some money and raised a family of their own.
Their first-born was a daughter. Coming right after a great upheaval, daughters were not particularly welcome, so this one was named Shun-ti(Toward Brother) in the fond hope that she would bring a little brother at the next birth. Several years later it did come about that a son was born to the Feng family, and they were all very happy.
As a man, Chin-tsao was most good-hearted; he was much in demand in nearby villages for his workmanship as a tailor, and everybody knew him to be an honest, industrious man. People from other villages greeted him with respect and called him Brother Chin-tsao.
But all these years there was a great unfulfilled desire in Chin-tsao's heart. It had always been his wish to rebuild his family heritage, the old ancestral home that had been burned down by the Long Hairs. All his folks had been killed, leaving him alone to survive, and he felt that Heaven had spared him for just this purpose—to restore the ancestral property. He had made a secret pledge to himself: he would build on the site of the old house a new one that would be bigger and even more elaborate.
He had put in a great deal of his spare time, cleaning away the rubble from where the old house used to stand and digging up the ground, preparatory to raising a new foundation on which to erect a building that would be high and dry. He would rise every day before dawn; daybreak would find him by the village stream picking out rocks to carry home in big loads for the filling of his building site. He would go back and forth until he brought three loads each morning before he would go to work on the farm; in the evening after work-hours he would go back for three more loads before sitting down to his supper. When the busy season was over and he hired himself out to other villages to work as a tailor he would also fill his daily quota of three loads of rocks every morning before going about his trade and another three loads after the evening meal before he would rest for the day.
This was the daily schedule he had set himself, the fulfillment of a pledge well known to his wife and children. The women of the family could not help him carry rocks and they could not persuade him to have more rest, and it would be of no use even if they tried. Sometimes when he was really fatigued after having moved his rocks, he would slump back on his bamboo chair and smoke his pipe stick, his eyes fixed on his teen-age daughter and small son, breathing a long quiet sigh.
Shun-ti was already a sensible girl, and she felt sick in her heart at the sight of her father bent over such toil and labor. She often hated herself for not being a man so that she could go to the stream to carry rocks for her father. All she could do was to be at the edge of the village each morning and evening to meet her father, and to take one or two rocks from his load and help carry them to the building site, in this way to share a bit of his chores.
Even as they watched it daily the ground level was raised higher and higher, but building materials like bricks and tiles and lumber were nowhere to be had. The new house that would be so magnificent remained in the family's dreams. Sometimes Shun-ti would actually dream that she was a man, and that she was returning home to visit her parents from her post as a high official. She was returning to the new house that had already been completed, and she alighted from her sedan-chair in front of its shiny black-lacquered doors. But once she stepped off the sedan-chair it seemed again that the high official was not she herself but her younger brother.❸
That year Shun-ti reached the age of seventeen.
One afternoon Chin-tsao was engaged in his tailoring over at Chang Family Shop, three li away, when in walked a middle-aged woman who called out, "Uncle Chin-tsao!" He recognized her to be Sister Hsing-wu of Upper Homestead, whose maternal home was not far from Middle Village and whom he had known since childhood. She was Master Three's aunt on the paternal side; her husband Master Hsing-wu being one of Eight Town's well-known gentry, she was known everywhere as "Master Hsing-wu's Lady."
Chin-tsao invited her to sit down, and she forthwith announced: "What a coincidence! I was on my way to Middle Village to see you and when I had come as far as Chang Family Shop I was told that you are working here. Really a coincidence! Uncle Chin-tsao, what I wanted to see you about was to have your Shun-ti's Eight Characters written out for me."
Chin-tsao asked for whose family it was intended.
Master Hsing-wu's Lady said: "You know, we are thinking of our eldest nephew, Brother Three."
"Master Three?"
"Yes. Brother Three is forty-seven this year, and his first married, Jade-ring, has been dead these ten years or more. Jade-ring had left him a heap of children—three sons and three daughters—all grown up now. But being an official away from home, he found it really inconvenient without a helpmate. So he had written home and asked that we fixed him up to be married again."
Chin-tsao replied: "What call a farmer's daughter has to aim to be an official lady? I beg you not even to mention this thing."
Master Hsing-wu's Lady said: "This Brother Three of ours is rather odd-tempered. He wrote home this year particularly insisting that he wished to take the daughter of a farming family for a wife."
"What reason is there in that?"
"He said that the daughter of a farming family would have good health and would not be a consumptive like Jade-ring. He also said that one who comes from a farming family would know what it means to struggle against hardships."
Chin-tsao said: "This thing would never work. First of all, we are no match for any official family. Secondly, my old lady would not think
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