一个自己的房间(外研社双语读库)(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Virginia Woolf 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫

出版社：外语教学与研究出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

一个自己的房间(外研社双语读库)试读：

CHAPTER ONE

第一章

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what, has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; 'I' is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.

但是，你们也许会说，我们要求你讲的是女人和小说——这和一个自己的房间有什么关系呢？我会全力说明的。当初你们要求我讲女人和小说的时候，我就坐在河岸边，开始想这几个字的含义。也许它们只是意味着关于范尼·伯尼的几句评论，再加上几句对简·奥斯汀的评论，对勃朗特姐妹的赞扬，以及对白雪覆盖下的霍沃思牧师公寓的概述；如果有可能，再说一些关于米特福德小姐的俏皮话，恭敬地提一提乔治·艾略特，然后论及加斯克尔夫人，这样就算完事了。但是再看一看，这几个字的含义似乎并不那么简单。“女人和小说”这个题目也许是指女人和她们的样子，这也可能也是你们想要传递的意思，它也许是指女人和她们所写的小说，也许是指女人和关于她们的小说，或者是指这三个意思不知怎的就难解难分地混在了一起，而你们想要我从这个角度来考虑它们。但是当我用最后这种看上去最为有趣的方式开始思考这个主题时，我马上发现，它有一个致命的缺点。我永远也得不出一个结论。我永远也不能在一个小时的演讲之后，给你们一个有价值的纯粹的真理，让你们把它包在笔记本的页张之间，永远保留在壁炉架上，而我知道，这是一个演讲者的第一责任。我所能做的就是，就一个小问题给你们一个观点——一个女人要写小说，她必须有钱，有一个她自己的房间；你们会看到，这就使得女人真正的性格以及小说真正的性质这个大问题得不到解决。我逃避了责任，没有对这两个问题下一个结论，我认为，女人和小说仍是悬而未决的问题。但是为了做一些补偿，我将做我所能做的，给你们解释我这个关于房间和钱的观点是怎么形成的。我将在你们面前，把导致我产生这个想法的思路尽可能充分而自由地展开来。如果我将这一观点背后的想法和偏见也表达出来，你们也许会发现，它们与女人有些关系，与小说也有些关系。无论如何，当一个题目颇具争议时——所有关于性别的问题都是如此——人们也就不指望说出真理了。他只能解释自己所持的那个观点是如何形成的。他只能给听众一个机会，让他们在观察演讲者的局限、偏见、癖好的时候，得出他们自己的结论。在这里，小说包含的真理可能多于事实。因此，我打算，利用一个小说家所有的特权和自由，告诉你们我到这儿来的前两天发生的事情——被你们放在我肩上的题目给压倒后，我如何思考这个题目，如何把它用在我日常生活的里里外外。我不需要说，我将要描述的东西并不存在，“牛津剑桥”是捏造的，“弗恩汉姆”也是，“我”也只是为了方便而给某个并不真实存在的人起的名称。谎话将从我的嘴里流淌出来，但可能也有一些真理掺杂其中；要让你们去寻找这真理，并且决定哪些部分是值得保留的。如果不这样做，你们当然会把它整个扔到废纸篓里，然后忘得一干二净。

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.

那么这就是我（可以叫我玛丽·贝顿，玛丽·西顿，玛丽·卡迈克尔，或者任何你喜欢的名字——这完全不重要），一两个星期前，在十月晴朗的天气里，我坐在河岸边，陷入了沉思。我所说的那个衣领，也就是女人和小说，以及对一个引起各种偏见和强烈情感的题目下结论的需要，把我的头压到了地上。我的左边和右边都长着某种灌木，是金黄色和深红色的，那火一般的颜色明亮夺目，甚至就像是炉火在燃烧。远处的河岸边，垂杨带着永久的悲哀，它们的头发披在肩上。河水倒映着它从天空、桥梁和燃烧的树木中挑选出来的各种东西，一个大学生划着船穿过了这些倒影，但它们很快就又完整地合上了，好像那个大学生从未来过一样。一个人可以在那坐上一昼夜，沉浸在思考中。思考——这是给它的一个它不太配的光荣的名字——已经把它的钓线垂到河里去了。一分钟又一分钟，钓线在倒影和水草之间四处摆动，随着水流漂起沉下，直到——你知道那轻轻地一拉——一个想法忽然聚到了钓线的末端，然后小心地把它拉进来，再把它仔细地摊开。唉，我这摊在草地上的思想看起来多么渺小，多么无足轻重啊，就好像那种被高明的渔夫放回水中的小鱼，好让它长得肥点，有一天值得拿来煮着吃。我现在不拿那个思想来烦你们，虽然你们仔细观察的话，可能会在我说话的过程中发现它。

But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding.

但是无论多么渺小，它依然有它那种神秘的性质——把它放到脑子里，它就立刻变得非常令人兴奋，变得很重要；它猛冲下沉、四处闪现的时候，激起了汹涌的水流和巨大的波动，以至于我不可能再静静地坐着。于是，我急速地穿过一片草地。一个男人的身影立刻出现了。他过来阻拦我。起初我还不明白，这个人看上去很奇怪，穿着常礼服以及晚上穿的衬衫，原来他所做的手势是针对我的。他的脸上写着恐惧和愤怒。是本能而不是理智帮了我的忙；他是教区执事，而我是个女人。这是草皮，小路在那边。这里只允许研究员和学者来，砾石路才是给我的地方。这些想法都是一瞬间产生的。我重回到小路上，教区执事的手臂就放下了，他的脸上恢复了通常的平静；尽管草皮比砾石路走着舒服，但我也没造成什么很大的伤害。不管是什么学院的研究员和学者，我能够针对他们提出的唯一控诉就是，这块草皮被连续压了300年，他们在保护它的时候，把我的小鱼吓得藏了起来。

What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember. The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning. Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment. As chance would have it, some stray memory of some old essay about revisiting Oxbridge in the long vacation brought Charles Lamb to mind—Saint Charles, said Thackeray, putting a letter of Lamb's to his forehead. Indeed, among all the dead (I give you my thoughts as they came to me), Lamb is one of the most congenial; one to whom one would have liked to say, Tell me then how you wrote your essays? For his essays are superior even to Max Beerbohm's, I thought, with all their perfection, because of that wild flash of imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry. Lamb then came to Oxbridge perhaps a hundred years ago. Certainly he wrote an essay—the name escapes me—about the manuscript of one of Milton's poems which he saw here. It was LYCIDAS perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in LYCIDAS could have been different from what it is. To think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led me to remember what I could of LYCIDAS and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one could follow Lamb's footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the manuscript of Thackeray's ESMOND is also preserved. The critics often say that ESMOND is Thackeray's most perfect novel. But the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one, so far as I can remember; unless indeed the eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray—a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the sense. But then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which—but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

是什么想法让我大胆地闯入了草地，我现在已经记不得了。安谧的精神就像云一样从天上降下来，如果说安谧的精神存在于某一个地方的话，那它就是在十月的一个晴朗的早晨，存在于牛津剑桥的庭院和四方形场地里。漫步穿过那些学院，经过那些古老的大厅，当前的不愉快似乎消失了，身体好像被装在一个不可思议的小玻璃房间里，任何声音都不能传进去。同时脑子因为没有接触任何事实（除非再次闯到草地上去），可以自由地沉浸在与这个时刻相协调的各种冥想中。有一篇老文章是讲在漫长的假期重访牛津剑桥，我对这篇文章有零星的记忆，这些记忆碰巧让我想起了查尔斯·拉姆——萨克雷把一封拉姆的信放在他的前额上时说，圣徒查尔斯。确实，在所有死去的文人中（我有了什么想法，就会告诉你们），拉姆是最亲切的之一，人们会想对他说，那么告诉我，你怎么写散文？我认为，他的散文甚至比马克斯·比尔博姆的还要好——尽管后者的散文很完美，这是因为想象力的疯狂闪现，因为文章中天才的像闪电一样的噼啪声，这虽然使他的文章有了缺点，并不完美，但也使它们闪耀着诗意。大约在一百年前拉姆来过牛津剑桥，当然他写了一篇散文——题目我忘了，是关于他在这儿看见的弥尔顿的一首诗的手稿。大概是《利西达斯》，拉姆写道，想到《利西达斯》中的任何一个字都可以被其他的字所取代，他震惊不已。想到弥尔顿改了那首诗里的字，这在他看来似乎是一种渎圣行为。这使我想起我所能记得的《利西达斯》的一部分，并猜测着哪些字弥尔顿可能改过以及他为什么改，以此自娱；接着我想到，拉姆所看的那个手稿离这儿不过几百码，人们可以追随拉姆的脚步，穿过四方院，来到那个著名的图书馆，那件珍宝就保存在那儿。而且，当我向图书馆走的时候，我记起，这个著名的图书馆里也保存着萨克雷的《埃斯蒙德》的手稿。批评家常说，《埃斯蒙德》是萨克雷最完美的小说。但是根据我的记忆，那矫揉造作的文体，以及它对18世纪的模仿，都是束缚人的；除非18世纪的文体对萨克雷而言确实是自然的——这个事实通过看手稿便可以证明，从手稿上可以看出那些修改是为了文体还是为了意思。但是这样，人们就必须决定什么是文体，什么是意思，这个问题——但这时我其实已经到了通往图书馆的大门的门口。我一定是开了门的，因为立刻就有一位表示反对、满头银发的和蔼绅士走了出来，就像守护天使一样挡住了路，不过挥的是黑袍子而不是白翅膀；他一面挥手叫我后退，一面用低声表示遗憾，说女士得由一位本学院的研究员陪着或是带着介绍信才准进这个图书馆。

That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon, and what was one to do? Stroll on the meadows? sit by the river? Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were fluttering red to the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But the sound of music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained magnificently as I passed the chapel door. Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the ancient organ seemed lapped in peace. I had no wish to enter had I the right, and this time the verger might have stopped me, demanding perhaps my baptismal certificate, or a letter of introduction from the Dean. But the outside of these magnificent buildings is often as beautiful as the inside. Moreover, it was amusing enough to watch the congregation assembling, coming in and going out again, busying themselves at the door of the chapel like bees at the mouth of a hive. Many were in cap and gown; some had tufts of fur on their shoulders; others were wheeled in bath-chairs; others, though not past middle age, seemed creased and crushed into shapes so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium. As I leant against the wall the University indeed seemed a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand. Old stories of old deans and old dons came back to mind, but before I had summoned up courage to whistle—it used to be said that at the sound of a whistle old Professor instantly broke into a gallop—the venerable congregation had gone inside. The outside of the chapel remained. As you know, its high domes and pinnacles can be seen, like a sailing-ship always voyaging never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles, far away across the hills. Once, presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns, its massive buildings and the chapel itself was marsh too, where the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Teams of horses and oxen, I thought, must have hauled the stone in wagons from far countries, and then with infinite labour the grey blocks in whose shade I was now standing were poised in order one on top of another, and then the painters brought their glass for the window, and the masons were busy for centuries up on that roof with putty and cement, spade and trowel. Every Saturday somebody must have poured gold and silver out of a leathern purse into their ancient fists, for they had their beer and skittles presumably of an evening. An unending stream of gold and silver, I thought, must have flowed into this court perpetually to keep the stones coming and the masons working; to level, to ditch, to dig and to drain. But it was then the age of faith, and money was poured liberally to set these stones on a deep foundation, and when the stones were raised, still more money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and great nobles to ensure that hymns should be sung here and scholars taught. Lands were granted; tithes were paid. And when the age of faith was over and the age of reason had come, still the same flow of gold and silver went on; fellowships were founded; lectureships endowed; only the gold and silver flowed now, not from the coffers of the king, but from the chests of merchants and manufacturers, from the purses of men who had made, say, a fortune from industry, and returned, in their wills, a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs, more lectureships, more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft.

一个著名的图书馆被一个女人诅咒过，这对这个著名的图书馆来说，完全是一件不必在乎的事情。它神圣庄严，心平气和，所有珍品都安全地锁在它的胸中；它沾沾自喜地沉睡着，而且我认为，它会永远这样睡下去。我带着满腔怒火走下台阶的时候，我发誓再也不会激起那些回声，再也不去要求它的热情款待。吃午餐之前还有一个小时，该做些什么呢？在草地上散步？在河边坐着？当然，那是一个可爱的秋天的早上，树叶闪着红色飘落到地上；这两件事做起来都不是什么太苦的事。但是音乐声传入耳朵里。某种仪式或庆典正在进行。我走过小礼拜堂的门前时，风琴正在用美妙的乐声诉着苦。在那种晴朗的天气里，甚至连基督教的悲哀听上去都像悲哀的回想，而不是悲哀本身；连古老风琴的呻吟都好像被平静所包住了。假使我有权进去，我也不希望进去；这次，教堂司事也许会拦住我，大概会要求我交出洗礼证明书，或是教务长的介绍信。不过，这些宏伟建筑的外观常常和其内部一样美丽。而且，看着会众们聚集起来，进去又出来，就已经够有趣的了；他们在礼拜堂的门口忙碌着，就像蜜蜂在蜂房的入口处一样。许多人都戴着方帽子，穿着长袍。有的人肩上戴着一簇簇毛皮；有的人坐在轮椅里被人推着；还有的人，尽管还没过中年，却似乎已经皱成了很奇怪的样子，让人想起了水族馆里巨大的螃蟹和龙虾，它们费了很大劲笨拙地穿过沙子。当我斜靠着墙的时候，这所大学实在像一个避难所，里面有很多稀奇古怪的人；如果把这些人放到斯特兰大街的人行道上，让他们去谋生的话，他们很快就会被淘汰。一些老教务长和老学监的以前的故事又回到了我的脑海中，但是，在我鼓足勇气吹口哨之前——过去据说有一位老教授，一听到口哨声，立刻拔腿就跑——那些值得敬重的会众已经进去了。礼拜堂的外面还是照旧。你知道，它那高高的圆顶和尖塔夜里被点亮后，在几英里之外、群山的那一边都能看到，就像一直在航行永不靠岸的帆船一样。据推测，这个四方院，包括它平整的草坪、厚实的建筑以及礼拜堂本身，曾经也是一片沼泽地，当时青草在风中摇摆，猪在拱土觅食。我想，一队队的牛马一定是从很远的地方用四轮车把石头拉来，然后很多很多的劳力把这些灰色的石块整整齐齐地堆起来，一块叠着一块，我现在就站在这些灰色石头的阴影里。然后，油漆工给窗户装上玻璃，泥瓦匠在房顶上忙了几个世纪，带着油灰、水泥、铲子和泥刀。每一个星期六，都一定有人从皮制的钱袋里倒出一些金子和银子，倒到这些老工匠的手中，因为他们晚上大概要喝啤酒，玩撞柱游戏。我想，一定有源源不断的金银不断地流进这个院子，使得石头不断被运进来，也使得泥瓦匠不停地工作——整平、开沟、挖掘、排水。但是，当时是一个信仰的时代，大量的钱被倒进来，以便把这些石头立在很深的地基上。房子建起来后，皇帝、皇后和显赫的贵族们又从他们的钱柜里拿出了更多的钱，确保这儿唱着圣歌，教着学生。土地有人赏赐；十一税也有人缴纳。但信仰的时代过去，理智的时代到来的时候，仍然有同样多的金银流进来；于是，设立了奖学金，捐赠了讲师基金。只不过，金银现在不是从皇室的钱柜中流出来的了，而是从商人和制造商的钱箱里流出来的，是从那些比如说靠工业发了财的人的钱包里流出来的，在遗嘱中，他们将很大一部分财富回馈给大学，捐给他们，让他们聘请更多的教授和讲师，设立更多的奖学金。当时，他们就是在这些大学里学到了手艺。

Hence the libraries and laboratories; the observatories; the splendid equipment of costly and delicate instruments which now stands on glass shelves, where centuries ago the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Certainly, as I strolled round the court, the foundation of gold and silver seemed deep enough; the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses. Men with trays on their heads went busily from staircase to staircase. Gaudy blossoms flowered in window-boxes. The strains of the gramophone blared out from the rooms within. It was impossible not to reflect—the reflection whatever it may have been was cut short. The clock struck. It was time to find one's way to luncheon.

因此有了图书馆，实验室和观象台，还有昂贵、精致的仪器，它们构成的光彩夺目的设备立在玻璃架子上，而几个世纪之前，就在这里，青草随风摇晃，猪用鼻子拱着土。当然，当我在院子中四处漫步时，金银构建的基础似乎足够深了，铺在野草上的人行道也足够结实。头上顶着托盘的人匆忙地从一个楼梯走到另一个楼梯。窗口花坛中，华丽的花开着。留声机响亮的旋律从里面的屋子里传出来。不可能不去深思——无论深思的是什么，它可能已被打断了。是该去吃午饭的时候了。

It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is part of the novelist's convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the liberty to defy that convention and to tell you that the lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the college cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there with brown spots like the spots on the flanks of a doe. After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent. And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with than the silent servingman, the Beadle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation, set before us, wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult. Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company—in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.

小说家有办法使我们相信，午餐会总是难忘的的，因为有人会说诙谐的话，或是有人会做机智的事，这个事实是很奇怪的。但是他们很少谈及所吃的东西。这是小说家习俗的一部分，就是不去提汤、鲑鱼和小鸭子，好像它们不重要似的，好像没有人曾经吸过一支雪茄或喝过一杯酒似的。但是，在这儿我要冒昧地违背这个习俗，告诉你们，这次午饭是以鳎鱼开始的，它被盛在深深的盘子里，学校的厨子在上面铺了一层床罩似的白色奶油，只是它四处点缀着棕色的小点，像雌鹿胁腹上的点一样。然后上的是山鹑，但是你们若以为它们只是盘子上躺着的两只无毛的棕色的鸟，你们就错了。各种各样且数量繁多的山鹑，带着它们的酱汁、生菜等所有随员而来，其中有味道浓的，也有甜的，全都排列有序。一起来的还有土豆片，它们像钱币一样薄，但又没有那么硬；还有甘蓝，就像玫瑰花蕾一样是一层一层的，却更美味多汁。烤山鹑及其随员刚被吃完，寡言的男佣人，也可能是表现得比较温和的教区执事本人，就把甜食放到我们面前；用餐巾缠绕着的甜食让所有白糖都从大海里涌了出来。如果称它为布丁并且将它与大米、木薯淀粉联系起来，那是对它的一种侮辱。同时，玻璃酒杯中奔涌着黄色和红色的酒，杯子空了，又满了。因此，在脊柱（灵魂所在的地方）的中间，渐渐被点亮的并不是我们称之为才华的那种刺目的微小电光——这种才华在我们的嘴上啪啪地进进出出，而是更深刻、更微妙、更隐蔽的光辉，那是理性交流的色彩浓烈的黄色火焰。不需要着急。不需要才华横溢。不需要成为自己以外的任何人。我们都终将走进天堂与范戴克为伴——换句话说，当一个人点燃一支好烟、坐到窗座的垫子中时，生活看起来多么美好，它的回报多么让人高兴，这个积怨或那个怨愤多么渺小，友谊和与同类朋友的交往又是多么令人钦佩。

If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me. It was as if someone had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different. Meanwhile the talk went on among the guests, who were many and young, some of this sex, some of that; it went on swimmingly, it went on agreeably, freely, amusingly. And as it went on I set it against the background of that other talk, and as I matched the two together I had no doubt that one was the descendant, the legitimate heir of the other. Nothing was changed; nothing was different save only here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said, but to the murmur or current behind it. Yes, that was it—the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves. Could one set that humming noise to words? Perhaps with the help of the poets one could.... A book lay beside me and, opening it, I turned casually enough to Tennyson. And here I found Tennyson was singing:

如果手边刚好有一个烟灰缸，如果一个人没有因为缺少烟灰缸而把烟灰弹到窗外，如果事情与实际状况稍有不同，那么他大概不会看到一只没有尾巴的猫。那只突然出现的、被砍了尾巴的动物轻轻地走过四方院，这一情景侥幸借着下意识的灵性，为我改变了情绪上的看法。好像有人放下了一个罩子。也许是那美妙的白葡萄酒的酒力正在过去。确实，当我看着这只马恩岛猫停在草坪中间，好像它也在质问宇宙时，一些东西看起来欠缺了，一些东西看起来不同了。但是欠缺的是什么，不同的是什么？我在听着谈话的时候，这样问自己。为了回答这个问题，我不得不想象自己离开了这间屋子，回到了过去，而且是回到了战前，并且在我的眼前放置另一个午餐聚会的模型，这个聚会就在离这些房间不太远的另一些房间里举行；但这又是不同的。一切都是不同的。与此同时，客人之间的谈话继续着，客人很多而且很年轻，男女都有。谈话顺利地进行着，进行得很惬意、很自由、很有趣。在谈话继续进行的时候，我把它与另一谈话的背景作了比较，当我把这两场谈话放在一起比较的时候，我毫不怀疑其中一场是另一场的后裔、合法继承人。没有什么发生了改变；没有什么变得不同了，只不过我此时全神贯注地倾听的并不全是讲出的话，而是其背后的窃窃私语抑或气流。对，就是这样——这就是改变。战前，在像这样的一个午餐聚会上，人们所说的事与现在完全一样，但是听起来却不同，因为那个时候的谈话被一种嗡嗡声伴随着，这种嗡嗡声不清晰，但是悦耳、刺激，这改变了话语本身的价值。可不可以用文字表达出那种嗡嗡声呢？或许在诗人的帮助下可以……我身边摆放着一本书，我翻开它，很不经意地翻到了丁尼生。在这儿我发现丁尼生唱道：

There has fallen a splendid tear

一颗美好的泪珠滚落下来，

From the passion-flower at the gate.

自门口的那株西番莲花。

She is coming, my dove, my dear;

她就要来了，我的宝贝，我亲爱的；

She is coming, my life, my fate;

她就要来了，我的生命，我的命运；

The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near';

红玫瑰喊道：“她走近了，她走近了”；

And the white rose weeps, 'She is late’;

白玫瑰泣诉：“她迟到了”；

The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear';

飞燕草倾听着：“我听到了，我听到了”；

And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'

百合低语：“我在等待。”

Was that what men hummed at luncheon parties before the war? And the women?

这就是男人在战前的午餐聚会上吟哦的内容吗？那女人呢？

My heart is like a singing bird

我的心像一只歌唱的鸟，

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

它的巢筑在一根被弄湿的嫩枝上；

My heart is like an apple tree

我的心像一棵苹果树，

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;

它的树枝被密密麻麻的果实压弯；

My heart is like a rainbow shell

我的心像一个五彩的贝壳，

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

在平静的海上戏水；

My heart is gladder than all these

我的心比这些都快乐，

Because my love is come to me.

因为我爱的人已经来到我身边。

Was that what women hummed at luncheon parties before the war?

这就是女人在战前的午餐聚会上吟哦的内容吗？

There was something so ludicrous in thinking of people humming such things even under their breath at luncheon parties before the war that I burst out laughing and had to explain my laughter by pointing at the Manx cat, who did look a little absurd, poor beast, without a tail, in the middle of the lawn. Was he really born so, or had he lost his tail in an accident? The tailless cat, though some are said to exist in the Isle of Man, is rarer than one thinks. It is a queer animal, quaint rather than beautiful. It is strange what a difference a tail makes—you know the sort of things one says as a lunch party breaks up and people are finding their coats and hats.

想起战前人们在午餐聚会上甚至压低嗓音吟哦这些东西，就有了滑稽之处，于是我大笑起来，还要指着那个马恩岛猫，作为我大笑的理由。可怜的小东西没有尾巴，站在草地中间，看起来的确有点滑稽。它真的生来就如此吗？还是在一场事故中失去了它的尾巴？尽管有些人说马恩岛上有没有尾巴的猫，但这些猫要比人们想象的罕见。它是一种奇怪的动物，与其说是漂亮，不如说是有趣。一条尾巴能带来如此大的差别，这很奇怪——你知道，当午餐聚会结束，人们找他们的大衣和帽子时，才会说这样的话。

This one, thanks to the hospitality of the host, had lasted far into the afternoon. The beautiful October day was fading and the leaves were falling from the trees in the avenue as I walked through it. Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night. After the avenue one comes out upon a road—I forget its name—which leads you, if you take the right turning, along to Fernham. But there was plenty of time. Dinner was not till half-past seven. One could almost do without dinner after such a luncheon. It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road. Those words—

由于主人的热情款待，这顿午餐一直持续到下午很晚的时候。那个美丽的十月天渐渐地暗了下来。当我走过林阴道的时候，树上的叶子正在飘落。一扇一扇大门似乎在我身后轻轻地而又断然地关闭了。无数的教区执事把数不清的钥匙插到很好用的门锁里；这座宝库又将安全地度过一个夜晚。走过林阴道之后，便是一条马路——它的名字我忘记了——如果向右转，顺着这条马路就可到达弗恩汉姆。但是还有很多时间。晚餐要到七点半才开始。不过吃过这样一顿午餐后，人们几乎可以不用吃晚餐。很奇怪，一小段诗映入脑海，使得双腿和着它的节拍沿路前行。这些话——

There has fallen a splendid tear

一颗美好的泪珠滚落下来，

From the passion-flower at the gate.

自门口的那株西番莲花。

She is coming, my dove, my dear—

她就要来了，我的宝贝，我亲爱的——

sang in my blood as I stepped quickly along towards Headingley. And then, switching off into the other measure, I sang, where the waters are churned up by the weir:

当我快步走向赫丁利时，它们在我的血液中歌唱。然后转到另外一个音步，在拦河坝搅动着河水的地方，我唱道：

My heart is like a singing bird

我的心像一只歌唱的鸟，

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

它的巢筑在一根被弄湿的嫩枝上；

My heart is like an apple tree...

我的心像一颗苹果树……

What poets, I cried aloud, as one does in the dusk, what poets they were!

我大声地喊着，就像人们在薄暮中大喊一样：多么伟大的诗人，他们是多么伟大的诗人啊！

In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurd though these comparisons are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then. Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into those foaming waters, to compare them. The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason—that my memory failed me—the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties? Why has Alfred ceased to sing

我想，我是带着一种对我们所处的时代的妒忌情绪，进而想知道是否有人能够诚实地说出两位还在世的诗人的名字，他们像丁尼生和克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂那样伟大，尽管这样的比较是愚蠢和荒唐的。看着泛着泡沫的河水，我想，把他们进行对比很显然是不可能的。那首诗之所以让人们如此放纵、如此狂喜，是因为它赞扬了人们过去（或许是在战前的午餐聚会的时候）常常有的某种情感，因此人们可以很容易、很熟悉地作出反应，而不用费事去检查那些情感，或者拿它与他们现在有的任何一种情感作比较。然而还在世的诗人所表达的情感，事实上是此刻正在被制造出来、从我们身上夺去的情感。一开始，人们没有认出这种情感，而且常常因为某种原因害怕它。人们充满渴望地看着它，又带着猜疑和妒忌的情绪拿它和他们所知道的旧情感作比较。由此便产生了现代诗歌的困难，同时也正因为这个困难，对于任何一个优秀的现代诗人，人们最多只能记住他的连续两行诗歌。因为这个原因——我记忆力的衰退，这场争论由于资料的匮乏而显得枯燥乏味。但是，当我继续往赫丁利走的时候，我想道，为什么在午餐聚会上我们停止了低声吟哦？为什么艾尔弗雷德停止了歌唱：

She is coming, my dove, my dear.

她就要来了，我的宝贝，我亲爱的。

Why has Christina ceased to respond

为什么克里斯蒂娜不再作出反应：

My heart is gladder than all these

我的心比这些都快乐

Because my love is come to me?

因为我爱的人已经来到我身边？

Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a shock (to women in particular with their illusions about education, and so on) to see the faces of our rulers in the light of the shell-fire. So ugly they looked—German, English, French—so stupid. But lay the blame where one will, on whom one will, the illusion which inspired Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far rarer now than then. One has only to read, to look, to listen, to remember. But why say 'blame'? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place? For truth... those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion? I asked myself. What was the truth about these houses, for example, dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid, with their sweets and their bootlaces, at nine o'clock in the morning? And the willows and the river and the gardens that run down to the river, vague now with the mist stealing over them, but gold and red in the sunlight—which was the truth, which was the illusion about them? I spare you the twists and turns of my cogitations, for no conclusion was found on the road to Headingley, and I ask You to suppose that I soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to Fernham.

我们是不是应该责怪战争呢？一九一四年八月枪声响起的时候，是不是男人女人的脸上都在彼此的眼中清晰地显示，浪漫被扼杀了？借着炮火的光亮看统治者的脸的确是令人惊愕的（特别是对女人来说，因为她们对教育仍抱有幻想等等）。他们看起来如此丑陋——无论德国的、英国的，还是法国的——都是如此愚蠢。但是无论抱怨什么，不管抱怨谁，如今唤起丁尼生和克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂的灵感，让他们为即将到来的爱人热情歌唱的幻觉要比当时少得多。人们现在只需要去阅读、观察、聆听和记忆。但为什么要“怨”呢？如果它是一种幻觉，为什么不去赞扬那种毁灭了幻觉并且用真实取而代之的灾难呢，无论是什么灾难？因为真实……这些点标志着我在寻找真实的过程中忘记转弯去弗恩汉姆的地方。是的，的确，哪个是真实，哪个是幻觉？我问自己。比如说，什么是关于这些房子的真实呢？薄暮时分它们看着很朦胧，红窗户显出了节日气氛；但是早上九点钟的时候，糖果、鞋带又使它们看上去通红，而且粗俗、污秽。柳树、河流，还有一直延伸到河边的花园，在薄雾静悄悄的笼罩下都是模糊的，但是在阳光下却是红彤彤、金光闪闪的——关于它们，哪些是真实，哪些又是幻觉呢？我不必告诉你们我思想的曲折变化，因为去赫丁利的路上我并没有得出结论。你们可以猜想，我很快就发现自己忘记转弯了，于是又往回走，再到弗恩汉姆去。

As I have said already that it was an October day, I dare not forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden walls, crocuses, tulips and other flowers of spring. Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction—so we are told. Therefore it was still autumn and the leaves were still yellow and falling, if anything, a little faster than before, because it was now evening (seven twenty-three to be precise) and a breeze (from the south-west to be exact) had risen. But for all that there was something odd at work:

既然我已经说过那是十月的一天，我就不敢改变季节并描述花园墙头上悬垂的丁香花、番红花、郁金香以及其他春天的花朵，从而失去你们的尊重并危及小说这个好听的名字。小说必须忠于事实，事实越真实，小说就越好——别人是这样告诉我们的。因此仍旧是秋天，树叶仍旧是黄色的并且不断飘落。如果说有任何变化的话，那就是比以前落得更快了，因为现在已经是傍晚了（确切地说是七点二十三分），而且一阵微风（确切地说是西南风）刮了起来。但是尽管如此，总有一些怪东西在起作用：

My heart is like a singing bird

我的心像一只歌唱的鸟，

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

它的巢筑在一根被弄湿的嫩枝上；

My heart is like an apple tree

我的心像一颗苹果树，

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit…

它的树枝被密密麻麻的果实压弯……

perhaps the words of Christina Rossetti were partly responsible for the folly of the fancy—it was nothing of course but a fancy—that the lilac was shaking its flowers over the garden walls, and the brimstone butterflies were scudding hither and thither, and the dust of the pollen was in the air. A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver grey in the air. It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. The gardens of Fernham lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung, were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now wind-blown and waving as they tugged at their roots. The windows of the building, curved like ships' windows among generous waves of red brick, changed from lemon to silver under the flight of the quick spring clouds. Somebody was in a hammock, somebody, but in this light they were phantoms only, half guessed, half seen, raced across the grass—would no one stop her?—and then on the terrace, as if popping out to breathe the air, to glance at the garden, came a bent figure, formidable yet humble, with her great forehead and her shabby dress—could it be the famous scholar, could it be J—H—herself? All was dim, yet intense too, as if the scarf which the dusk had flung over the garden were torn asunder by star or sword—the gash of some terrible reality leaping, as its way is, out of the heart of the spring. For youth—

也许克里斯蒂娜·罗塞蒂的诗句要对幻想的愚蠢行为负一定的责任——它当然仅仅只是幻想，幻想着丁香花在花园的墙头上摇摆它的花朵，黄粉蝶到处疾飞，花粉在空气中弥散。一阵风吹过来，我不知道是从哪个方向吹来的，刮起了还未长成的嫩叶，因此空中闪着银灰色。这是傍晚时分，各种颜色逐渐变深，紫色和金黄色在窗玻璃上燃烧，像一颗容易激动的心在跳动。这时，因为某种原因世界的美丽都呈现出来了，但是也很快消失了（这时我走进了花园，因为门很不谨慎地开着，而且附近似乎没有教区执事）。世界的美很快就会消失，它有两个刀口，一个是欢笑的，一个是痛苦的，把心切成了两部分。在春天的暮色中，弗恩汉姆的花园展现在我面前，荒芜而又开阔。高高的青草中疏落、随意地点缀着水仙花和蓝铃花，大概在花开得最盛时候也是没有秩序吧，现在被风吹得四处摇摆，用力拽着它们的根部。这些建筑的窗户呈弧形，就像在红砖的海洋中船的窗户一样。在很快飘过的春天的云朵下，这些窗户从柠檬色变成了银色。有人躺在吊床上；有人跑过草地，不过在这种光线里，他们仅仅是鬼魂，一半是我的猜想，一半是我看见的——难道没有人拉住她？然后在阳台上，走来一个佝偻的身影，好像是突然走出来呼吸些空气，看一看花园，她令人畏惧却又很谦恭。从她宽阔的前额和破旧的衣服来看，会不会是那个著名的学者，会不会就是J——H——本人？所有的一切都是朦胧的，但是也很强烈，就像是薄暮披在花园上的围巾被星星或刀剑给割成了数部分——某种可怕现实的切口以它自己的方式由春天的心里跳出来。因为青春——

Here was my soup. Dinner was being served in the great dining-hall. Far from being spring it was in fact an evening in October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining-room. Dinner was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that. One could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next came beef with its attendant greens and potatoes—a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening and women with string bags on Monday morning. There was no reason to complain of human nature's daily food, seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal-miners doubtless were sitting down to less. Prunes and custard followed. And if anyone complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a miser's heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers' veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune. Biscuits and cheese came next, and here the water-jug was liberally passed round, for it is the nature of biscuits to be dry, and these were biscuits to the core. That was all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro; soon the hall was emptied of every sign of food and made ready no doubt for breakfast next morning. Down corridors and up staircases the youth of England went banging and singing. And was it for a guest, a stranger (for I had no more right here in Fernham than in Trinity or Somerville or Girton or Newnham or Christchurch), to say, 'The dinner was not good,'or to say (we were now, Mary Seton and I, in her sitting-room), 'Could we not have dined up here alone?' for if I had said anything of the kind I should have been prying and searching into the secret economies of a house which to the stranger wears so fine a front of gaiety and courage. No, one could say nothing of the sort. Indeed, conversation for a moment flagged. The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes. We are all PROBABLY going to heaven, and Vandyck is, we HOPE, to meet us round the next corner—that is the dubious and qualifying state of mind that beef and prunes at the end of the day's work breed between them. Happily my friend, who taught science, had a cupboard where there was a squat bottle and little glasses—(but there should have been sole and partridge to begin with)—so that we were able to draw up to the fire and repair some of the damages of the day's living. In a minute or so we were slipping freely in and out among all those objects of curiosity and interest which form in the mind in the absence of a particular person, and are naturally to be discussed on coming together again—how somebody has married, another has not; one thinks this, another that; one has improved out of all knowledge, the other most amazingly gone to the bad—with all those speculations upon human nature and the character of the amazing world we live in which spring naturally from such beginnings. While these things were being said, however, I became shamefacedly aware of a current setting in of its own accord and carrying everything forward to an end of its own. One might be talking of Spain or Portugal, of book or racehorse, but the real interest of whatever was said was none of those things, but a scene of masons on a high roof some five centuries ago. Kings and nobles brought treasure in huge sacks and poured it under the earth. This scene was for ever coming alive in my mind and placing itself by another of lean cows and a muddy market and withered greens and the stringy hearts of old men—these two pictures, disjointed and disconnected and nonsensical as they were, were for ever coming together and combating each other and had me entirely at their mercy. The best course, unless the whole talk was to be distorted, was to expose what was in my mind to the air, when with good luck it would fade and crumble like the head of the dead king when they opened the coffin at Windsor. Briefly, then, I told Miss Seton about the masons who had been all those years on the roof of the chapel, and about the kings and queens and nobles bearing sacks of gold and silver on their shoulders, which they shovelled into the earth; and then how the great financial magnates of our own time came and laid cheques and bonds, I suppose, where the others had laid ingots and rough lumps of gold. All that lies beneath the colleges down there, I said; but this college, where we are now sitting, what lies beneath its gallant red brick and the wild unkempt grasses of the garden? What force is behind that plain china off which we dined, and (here it popped out of my mouth before I could stop it) the beef, the custard and the prunes?

我的汤来了。有人正把晚饭端到大饭厅里。离春天还很远，事实上，它只是十月的一个晚上。大家都聚集在大饭厅里。晚饭已经准备好了。这是汤。一碗平淡无奇的肉汤。里面没有什么东西可以引发幻想。透过透明的汤，人们可以看到盘子自身可能带有的任何图案。但是没有图案。盘子上没有装饰。接下来是牛肉，一起上来的还有青菜和土豆——很普通的三合一，使人想到泥泞的菜市场里牛的臀部，边缘卷起并且发黄了的嫩芽，讨价还价和降价出售，以及星期一早上拿着网袋的女人。鉴于供给很充足，而且煤矿工人无疑吃得更少，所以没有理由抱怨我们的日常食物。接下来上的是李子和蛋奶糕。如果有人抱怨说，即使有蛋奶糕来缓和一下，李子仍然是一种不慈悲的蔬菜（它们根本不是水果），李子是多筋的，就像一个守财奴的心一样，而且渗出的液体就像是守财奴的静脉里流动的液体一样，他们在八十年中舍不得喝酒，舍不得穿暖而且也不施舍穷人，如果有人这样抱怨，那么他就该想一想，有些人的慈善慷慨也不过就相当于李子而已。再接下来的是饼干和奶酪，这时水罐子被随意地传来传去，因为饼干的本性就是干的，并且这些是地地道道的饼干。这就是全部。一顿饭就结束了。每个人都擦着地板把椅子推到后面，双开式弹簧门前前后后地猛烈摆动。很快，饭厅里便没有了食物的痕迹，无疑是为第二天的早饭作准备。沿着走廊，爬上楼梯，英国的青年边奔边唱。一位客人，一个陌生人（因为我在弗恩汉姆享有的权力和我在特里尼蒂、萨默维尔、戈廷、纽纳姆或是克赖斯特彻奇享有的权力一样多）能否说“晚饭不好”，或者说（玛丽·西顿和我现在在她的起居室里）：“我们本来不能单独在这里吃饭吗？”如果我说了这样的话，那就是在窥探、调查这个家庭秘密的经济状况了。在生人眼里，这个家庭还穿着欢快和勇敢的漂亮外衣。不，我不能说这种话。的确，谈话一时间变得索然无味了。人的精神状态就是这样，心脏、躯干、大脑都混在一起，而不是装在分开的空间里，无疑一百万年之后它们肯定会分开，因此一顿好的晚餐对于一场好的谈话非常重要。如果一个人没有吃好，他便不能好好地思考，好好地恋爱，好好地睡觉。脊椎里的那盏灯用牛肉和李子是点不着的。我们大概都要进天堂，并且希望范戴克在下一个街角遇到我们——那是一种含糊且合格的心理状态，是一天工作结束后，牛肉和李子在它们之间产生的一种状态。很高兴我的一位教科学的朋友有一个橱子，里面有一个矮胖的瓶子和一些小玻璃杯——（不过应该先有鳎鱼和山鹑）——因此我们能够靠到炉火旁边，补救一天的生活所带来的一些损害。大约一分钟之后，我们自由地围绕着那些奇特而又有趣的东西谈来谈去，那些东西都是一个特定的人不在场时在脑子里形成的，等再次聚会时自然又要讨论一番——某人怎么结婚了，某人怎么没结婚；一个人这么想，另一个人那么想；一个人通过各种知识得到了提升，另一个人很惊人地变坏了——还有对人性、对我们所居住的这个令人惊奇的世界的性质的思考，这些思考是那些谈话很自然的结果。然而，当谈到这些事情的时候，我很羞愧地意识到，有一股潮流很主动地涌出来，并把每件事都引到它自己的目的中去。人们可能会谈论西班牙或葡萄牙，谈论读书或赛马，但不论说什么，那些都不是真正的兴趣所在，真正的兴趣在于约五个世纪前泥瓦匠们在一个高高的屋顶上的情景。皇帝和贵族们用大麻袋把钱财带来，并把它倒进土里。这个情景总是很生动地进入我的脑海并且和另一个场景挨着，那些瘦的牛、泥泞的市场、枯萎的青菜，还有老人多筋的心脏——这两个画面完全不连贯、不相关，而且荒唐可笑，但又总是一起出现，互相争斗，而且使我完全任由它们摆布。如果不想使整个谈话被曲解，那么最好的办法就是把我的想法暴露在空气中，如果能交上好运，它就会枯萎破碎，像人们在温莎打开死皇帝的棺材时他的头颅一样。我很简短地告诉玛丽·西顿——那些年来泥瓦匠们一直在教堂顶上，皇帝、皇后和贵族们扛着用大麻袋装着的金银财宝并把它们铲进土里；然后我们自己时代的那些金融巨头来了，我猜测，他们把支票、债券放到了以前别人存放金锭和粗制金块的地方。我说过，所有那些都埋在学院的地底下；但是这个学院，我们现在坐着的地方，在其堂皇的红砖下面，在花园凌乱的野草下面，埋着些什么呢？在我们吃饭用的那种朴实的瓷器后面，还有（我还没来得及阻止，这些话就已经从我嘴里跳出来了）在牛肉、蛋奶糕以及李子后面，有些什么力量呢？

Well, said Mary Seton, about the year 1860—Oh, but you know the story, she said, bored, I suppose, by the recital. And she told me—rooms were hired. Committees met. Envelopes were addressed. Circulars were drawn up. Meetings were held; letters were read out; so-and-so has promised so much; on the contrary, Mr—won't give a penny. The SATURDAY REVIEW has been very rude. How can we raise a fund to pay for offices? Shall we hold a bazaar? Can't we find a pretty girl to sit in the front row? Let us look up what John Stuart Mill said on the subject. Can anyone persuade the editor of the—to print a letter? Can we get Lady—to sign it? Lady — is out of town. That was the way it was done, presumably, sixty years ago, and it was a prodigious effort, and a great deal of time was spent on it. And it was only after a long struggle and with the utmost difficulty that they got thirty thousand pounds together.1So obviously we cannot have wine and partridges and servants carrying tin dishes on their heads, she said. We cannot have sofas and separate rooms. 'The amenities,' she said, quoting from some book or other, 'will have to wait.'2

玛丽·西顿说，大约一八六〇年的时候——但是你知道这个故事，她说，我猜她是对叙述感到厌烦。她告诉我——租了房子。委员会开了会。信封上写好了姓名地址。通告也写出来了。开了会，读了信，某某人许诺了这么多，相反，某某先生一个便士也不给。《星期六评论》一直很无礼。我们怎样才能够筹集到租办公室的钱呢？要不要举行一次义卖呢？难道我们找不到一个好看的女孩坐在前排吗？让我们看看约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒对这件事情说些什么。有没有人可以劝说某某报纸的主编刊登一封信呢？我们能不能请某夫人在信上签名呢？某某夫人不在城里。这大概就是六十年前这件事的处理方式，它需要巨大的努力，而且消耗了大量时间。只是经过一段长时间的挣扎和极端的困难之后，她们才一共募得了三万英镑。1所以很明显我们不能喝酒、吃山鹑，不能雇用头顶着锡盘子的仆人，她说。我们不能买沙发，不能拥有独立的房间。她引用了某本书的一句话，说道：“那些便利设施，不得不再等等。”2

At the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two thousand pounds together, and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds, we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo? There were some photographs on the mantelpiece. Mary's mother—if that was her picture—may have been a wastrel in her spare time (she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face. She was a homely body; an old lady in a plaid shawl which was fastened by a large cameo; and she sat in a basket-chair, encouraging a spaniel to look at the camera, with the amused, yet strained expression of one who is sure that the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed. Now if she had gone into business; had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate on the Stock Exchange; if she had left two or three hundred thousand pounds to Fernham, we could have been sitting at our ease tonight and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography. If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been—that was the snag in the argument—no Mary. What, I asked, did Mary think of that? There between the curtains was the October night, calm and lovely, with a star or two caught in the yellowing trees. Was she ready to resign her share of it and her memories (for they had been a happy family, though a large one) of games and quarrels up in Scotland, which she is never tired of praising for the fineness of its air and the quality of its cakes, in order that Fernham might have been endowed with fifty thousand pounds or so by a stroke of the pen? For, to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether. Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children—no human being could stand it. Consider the facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby. You cannot, it seems, let children run about the streets. People who have seen them running wild in Russia say that the sight is not a pleasant one. People say, too, that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and five. If Mrs Seton, I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you have had of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it? But it is useless to ask these questions, because you would never have come into existence at all. Moreover, it is equally useless to ask what might have happened if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and library, because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty-eight years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her husband's property—a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton and her mothers off the Stock Exchange. Every penny I earn, they may have said, will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband's wisdom—perhaps to found a scholarship or to endow a fellowship in Balliol or Kings, so that to earn money, even if I could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly. I had better leave it to my husband.

那些年复一年工作的妇女想要积累两千英镑都那么困难，而她们用尽了力气才获得了三万英镑，想到这个，我们突然鄙视起我们女人的应受指摘的穷苦。我们的母亲一直在做些什么，都没能给我们留下任何财富？往她们的鼻子上擦粉？透过商店的橱窗往里看？在蒙特卡洛的阳光下招摇？在壁炉架上有几张照片。玛丽的母亲——如果那是她的相片——在闲余时间可能是个挥霍无度的人（她和教堂的一个牧师生了十三个孩子）。但是如果是这样的话，她放荡淫靡的生活并没有在她的脸上留下什么享乐的痕迹。她只是一个很平常的女人，一位披着彩格呢披肩的老太太，披肩用一块大大的多彩浮雕玉石扣住。她坐在柳条椅上，鼓励一只小狗看照相机，脸上带着一种既觉得有趣但又很紧张的神情，因为她知道，按下快门的时候，小狗肯定要动。假如当时她做了生意，或是成了人工丝绸的制造商或者证券交易所的巨头；假如她给弗恩汉姆留下了二三十万英镑，那么我们今晚就可以很舒服地坐着，我们谈话的主题可能就会是考古学、植物学、人类学、物理学、原子的性质、数学、天文学、相对论、地理学。要是西顿夫人，她的母亲，她母亲的母亲学过赚钱的大本领并且留下她们的钱，就像她们的父亲和祖父们一样，来设立专门为女性享用的研究员基金、讲师基金、奖金和奖学金，那该有多好啊！我们也许可以单独在这里很舒服地享用一只禽鸟和一瓶酒。我们也许可以带着不算过分的自信，期望在别人慷慨捐助的职业的庇护下度过愉快而又体面的一生。我们也许可以探险或者写作；或是在世界上受人尊敬的地方悠闲地消磨时日；坐在帕提侬神庙前的台阶上冥想；或是十点到办公室，四点半时舒舒服服地回家写上一首小诗。只是，如果西顿夫人和像她一样的人从十五岁就开始做生意，那就不会有玛丽了——这就是我这篇议论麻烦的地方。我问，玛丽对此怎么想呢？在窗帘之间是十月的夜空，安静而可爱，一两颗星星挂在正在变黄的树上。玛丽会不会为了弗恩汉姆可能得到的一笔五万英镑左右的捐款（这只需钢笔写一画）而准备放弃她的那份秋夜，放弃她的记忆（这个家庭纵然很大，但曾经很幸福）呢？那些在苏格兰游戏和争吵的记忆，而她对苏格兰的新鲜空气和美味糕饼永远都赞不绝口。因为捐助一所大学，必须要对子女进行压制。发了一笔大财同时还生养十三个孩子——没人能受得了。想想事实吧，我们说。首先，婴儿需要九个月才会出生。然后婴儿出生。接着得花费三四个月的时间来喂养婴儿。给婴儿哺乳之后，当然要花费五年的时间陪小孩玩。似乎不应该让孩子们在街上乱跑。曾经有人在俄国看到孩子撒野乱跑，他们就说这种情景令人很不愉快。人们也说，人性是在一至五岁期间形成的。我说，如果西顿夫人一直都在忙于赚钱，那么你对游戏和争吵会留有什么样的记忆呢？对苏格兰，那里的新鲜空气和糕饼，还有其他关于它的事情，你会知道什么呢？问这些问题是没用的，因为你根本就不会存在。而且，如果西顿夫人、她的母亲以及她母亲的母亲，积累了大量财富放在学院和图书馆的地基下面，会发生什么事？问这样的问题也是一样白问，因为第一，对她们来说，挣钱是不可能的；第二，就算可能，法律也会否定她们拥有自己所挣钱财的权利。只是在最近的四十八年以来，西顿夫人才拥有了属于她自己的一个便士。在那之前的所有世纪里，这个便士都会是她丈夫的财产——这个想法可能是西顿夫人、她的母亲、外祖母等不去证券交易所的理由之一。她们可能会说，我赚的每一个便士都被拿走，并按照我丈夫的想法使用——也许会在巴利奥尔或者国王学院设立奖学金或者捐赠研究员基金，因此即使我能赚钱，我对赚钱也没有多大兴趣。我最好还是让我丈夫去赚钱吧。

At any rate, whether or not the blame rested on the old lady who was looking at the spaniel, there could be no doubt that for some reason or other our mothers had mismanaged their affairs very gravely. Not a penny could be spared for 'amenities'; for partridges and wine, beadles and turf, books and cigars, libraries and leisure. To raise bare walls out of bare earth was the utmost they could do.

无论如何，不管是否该归罪于那位看着小狗的老太太，毫无疑问，由于某种原因，我们的母亲们把她们的事情处理得十分不当。一个便士都不能用在“便利设施”上，不能用在山鹑和酒、教区执事和草皮、书和雪茄、图书馆和休闲活动上。她们最多就只能用毫无装饰的泥土砌成毫无装饰的墙。

So we talked standing at the window and looking, as so many thousands look every night, down on the domes and towers of the famous city beneath us. It was very beautiful, very mysterious in the autumn moonlight. The old stone looked very white and venerable. One thought of all the books that were assembled down there; of the pictures of old prelates and worthies hanging in the panelled rooms; of the painted windows that would be throwing strange globes and crescents on the pavement; of the tablets and memorials and inscriptions; of the fountains and the grass; of the quiet rooms looking across the quiet quadrangles. And (pardon me the thought) I thought, too, of the admirable smoke and drink and the deep armchairs and the pleasant carpets; of the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space. Certainly our mothers had not provided us with anything comparable to all this—our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds, our mothers who bore thirteen children to ministers of religion at St Andrews.

我们就这样站在窗边谈着，像成千上万的人每晚都在往下看一样，俯视着我们下面那座著名的城市的圆屋顶和塔楼。在秋天的月光之下，这座城市非常美丽，非常神秘。古老的石头看上去非常地洁白，非常地神圣庄严。人们会想到收集在那下面的书籍；想到了年长的高级教士和名人的画像，它们挂在镶了壁板的屋子里；想到那些能会在人行道上投下奇怪的球形和月牙形影子的彩色窗户；想到那些匾额、纪念碑和碑文；想到喷水池和青草；想到对着静谧的四方院的那些安静的房间。而且（请原谅我的想法）我也想到值得赞美的烟、饮料以及深深的扶手椅，还有舒适的地毯，想到温文尔雅、和蔼和高贵，它们是奢侈、独处和空间的产物。当然我们的母亲们没有给我们任何可以和这些相比的东西——我们的母亲们积聚三万英镑都是困难的，我们的母亲们为圣安德鲁斯的牧师们生了十三个孩子。

So I went back to my inn, and as I walked through the dark streets I pondered this and that, as one does at the end of the day's work. I pondered why it was that Mrs Seton had no money to leave us; and what effect poverty has on the mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind; and I thought of the queer old gentlemen I had seen that morning with tufts of fur upon their shoulders; and I remembered how if one whistled one of them ran; and I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were laid asleep—prone, horizontal, dumb. Nobody seemed stirring in the streets of Oxbridge. Even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand—not a boots was sitting up to light me to bed, it was so late.

因此我回到了我的小旅馆去，在走过那些黑暗的街道时，我想想这，想想那，就像一个人结束一天的工作时那样。我想着，西顿夫人为什么没有钱留给我们；穷困对脑子有什么影响；财富对脑子有什么影响；我想起那天早上看见的肩上镶着一簇簇绒毛的奇怪的老绅士们；我记起，如果有人吹口哨，他们中间的一个人就会跑；想起教堂中风琴发出的低沉的回响和图书馆关闭的大门；我想到被锁在门外是多么地不痛快；我又想到被锁在里头也许更糟；我还想到一种性别的人的安全和富足，以及另一性别的人的贫困和不安全；想起传统和缺乏传统分别对一位作家的脑子有什么影响；最后我想，该是时候把这一天弄皱的皮，连着它的议论、印象、怒气和欢乐，一起卷起来抛到树篱里去。上千颗星星在空阔的蓝色天空中闪过。人仿佛独自呆在一个不可捉摸的社会里。人们都睡着了——俯卧着、平躺着、安静无声。牛津剑桥的街上一个人都没有。甚至旅馆的大门都是由于一只无形的手的触摸而弹开的——旅馆里没有一个杂役等我回来，为我照明、送我回屋，夜是那样地深了。

[1] 'We are told that we ought to ask for 30,000 at least.... It is not a large sum, considering that there is to be but one college of this sort for Great Britain, Ireland and the Colonies, and considering how easy it is to raise immense sums for boys' schools. But considering how few people really wish women to be educated, it is a good deal.’—LADY STEPHEN, EMILY DAVIES AND GIRTON COLLEGE.“我们被告知，我们至少得要三万英镑……考虑到大不列颠、爱尔兰以及殖民地仅有一所这样的学院，考虑到为男子学校筹集大笔款项是多么地容易，这就并不是一个很大的数额。但是再想一想有几个人真正希望女人接受教育，那这个数额就是很大的。”——斯蒂芬夫人，《埃米莉·戴维斯与格顿学院》

[2] Every penny which could be scraped together was set aside for building, and the amenities had to be postponed. —R. STRACHEY, THE CAUSE.

所凑集起来的每一个便士都得留出来用在建筑校舍上，便利设施只好以后再说。——R. 斯特雷奇，《事业》

CHAPTER TWO

第二章

The scene, if I may ask you to follow me, was now changed. The leaves were still falling, but in London now, not Oxbridge; and I must ask you to imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across people's hats and vans and motorcars to other windows, and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large letters WOMEN AND FICTION, but no more. The inevitable sequel to lunching and dining at Oxbridge seemed, unfortunately, to be a visit to the British Museum. One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth. For that visit to Oxbridge and the luncheon and the dinner had started a swarm of questions. Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?—a thousand questions at once suggested themselves. But one needed answers, not questions; and an answer was only to be had by consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, who have removed themselves above the strife of tongue and the confusion of body and issued the result of their reasoning and research in books which are to be found in the British Museum. If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth?

如果我可以要求你们跟随我的话，现在这个场景改变了。树叶还在飘落，不过现在是在伦敦，而不是在牛津剑桥，并且我必须请你们想像一个房间，这个房间像成千上万的其他房间一样有一扇窗户，隔着人的帽子、货车以及汽车，可以望见别的窗户。房间里的桌子上有一张白纸，上面写着几个大字“女人和小说”，其余什么都没有。不幸的是，在牛津剑桥吃过午饭和晚饭后，似乎不可避免地要去造访大英博物馆。人们必须要把这些印象里私人的、偶然的东西过滤出去，以此得到纯净的液体——真理的精油。因为那次在牛津剑桥的访问以及午餐和晚餐引发了一大堆的问题。为什么男人喝酒，而女人喝水呢？为什么这一性别的人这么富足，而那一性别的人那么贫穷呢？贫穷对小说有什么影响呢？艺术品的创造需要什么条件呢？——上千个问题立刻全冒出来了。不过，人们需要的是答案而不是问题。找到答案的唯一办法就是，去请教有学问、不带偏见的人，这些人超脱了口舌的争辩、肉体的困惑，并把他们推理和研究的结果发表在大英博物馆的书中。我拿起一本笔记本和一支铅笔，问自己，如果真理不在大英博物馆的书架上，那么它到底在何处？

Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring, I set out in the pursuit of truth. The day, though not actually wet, was dismal, and the streets in the neighbourhood of the Museum were full of open coal-holes, down which sacks were showering; four-wheeled cabs were drawing up and depositing on the pavement corded boxes containing, presumably, the entire wardrobe of some Swiss or Italian family seeking fortune or refuge or some other desirable commodity which is to be found in the boarding-houses of Bloomsbury in the winter. The usual hoarse-voiced men paraded the streets with plants on barrows. Some shouted; others sang. London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern. The British Museum was another department of the factory. The swing-doors swung open; and there one stood under the vast dome, as if one were a thought in the huge bald forehead which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names. One went to the counter; one took a slip of paper; one opened a volume of the catalogue, and ..... the five dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and bewilderment. Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? Here had I come with a notebook and a pencil proposing to spend a morning reading, supposing that at the end of the morning I should have transferred the truth to my notebook. But I should need to be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders, desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all this. I should need claws of steel and beak of brass even to penetrate the husk. How shall I ever find the grains of truth embedded in all this mass of paper? I asked myself, and in despair began running my eye up and down the long list of titles. Even the names of the books gave me food for thought. Sex and its nature might well attract doctors and biologists; but what was surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex—woman, that is to say—also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women. Some of these books were, on the face of it, frivolous and facetious; but many, on the other hand, were serious and prophetic, moral and hortatory. Merely to read the titles suggested innumerable schoolmasters, innumerable clergymen mounting their platforms and pulpits and holding forth with loquacity which far exceeded the hour usually alloted to such discourse on this one subject. It was a most strange phenomenon; and apparently—here I consulted the letter M—one confined to the male sex. Women do not write books about men—a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper. So, making a perfectly arbitrary choice of a dozen volumes or so, I sent my slips of paper to lie in the wire tray, and waited in my stall, among the other seekers for the essential oil of truth.

作好了这样的准备，带着这样的自信和求知欲，我开始了对真理的探求。虽然那天实际上并没有下雨，却是很阴沉，大英博物馆周围的街上到处都是打开的储煤室，一麻袋一麻袋的煤被倒下去。四轮马车停了下来，把许多用绳子捆着的箱子放在人行道上，箱子里面装的可能是某个瑞士人或者意大利人全家的衣服。他们大概是冬天要到布卢姆斯伯里一带的家庭旅馆里去寻求好运、避难场所，或者其他某种合意的东西。一些平常就嗓音粗哑的人们推着装满植物的手推车，招摇地行走在街上。有些人喊，其他的人唱。伦敦就像一个作坊。伦敦就像一台机器。我们就像织布的梭子，在朴素的底子上被人穿来穿去以织出花样。大英博物馆是这个工厂的另一部分。推开双开式弹簧门，站在那个巨大的圆屋顶下面，好像自己是那个大而秃的前额里的一个思想，前额被一条写满了名人名字的精美带子缠绕着。走到柜台，拿起一个纸条，打开一本目录，并且……这六个点表明在不连续的五分钟内所体会到的惊愕、诧异和迷惑。你们知道一年之中人们会写出多少关于女人的书吗？你们知道其中有多少是男人写的吗？你们有没有意识到，你们或许是天地万物中被讨论得最多的动物？我带着一本笔记本、一支铅笔来这里，打算花费一个早上的时间来阅读，认为在早晨结束时，我可以将真理转移到我的笔记本上。但是我想，要应对这一切，我必须是一群大象和一大群蜘蛛。我是在绝望之际提到了据说是寿命最长和眼睛最多的动物。我需要钢爪铜喙才能穿透那层外壳。可是怎样才能在这一大堆纸中找到那一丁点儿的真理呢？我问自己，然后绝望地开始上上下下地看那长长的书单。甚至连那些书名都启发我深思。性别及其本质很可能引起了医生和生物学家的注意，但是令人吃惊并难以解释的事实是，性别——也就是说女人——也引起了讨人喜欢的散文家、手指灵巧的小说家、有硕士学位的青年、没有学位的男人以及除了不是女人之外没有任何明显资历的男人的关注。这其中有些书，从表面来看，是轻浮而琐屑的；但是从另一方面来说，许多书都是严肃的并带有预言性的，有教育意义并且起激励作用的。仅仅看看那些书名就使人想起，数不清的男教师、数不清的神职人员走上讲台和布道坛，滔滔不绝地讲着，所花的时间远远超过平常拨给这个题目的时间。这是一个非常奇怪的现象，而且很显然——这里我查阅了字母M栏——这种现象只出现在男性身上。女人不写关于男人的书——对这一事实我不禁带着安慰表示欢迎，因为如果我不得不先读完男人写的关于女人的所有书，然后读完女人写的关于男人的所有书，那么一百年开一次花的世纪树将会开两次，然后我才能下笔。因此，我十分随意地选了大概十二本书，把我的小纸条送到金属丝托盘里去，然后坐在我的座位上等着，周围是其他寻找真理精油的人。

What could be the reason, then, of this curious disparity, I wondered, drawing cart-wheels on the slips of paper provided by the British taxpayer for other purposes. Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women? A very curious fact it seemed, and my mind wandered to picture the lives of men who spend their time in writing books about women; whether they were old or young, married or unmarried, red-nosed or hump-backed—anyhow, it was flattering, vaguely, to feel oneself the object of such attention provided that it was not entirely bestowed by the crippled and the infirm—so I pondered until all such frivolous thoughts were ended by an avalanche of books sliding down on to the desk in front of me. Now the trouble began. The student who has been trained in research at Oxbridge has no doubt some method of shepherding his question past all distractions till it runs into his answer as a sheep runs into its pen. The student by my side, for instance, who was copying assiduously from a scientific manual, was, I felt sure, extracting pure nuggets of essential oil every ten minutes or so. His little grunts of satisfaction indicated so much. But if, unfortunately, one has had no training in a university, the question far from being shepherded to its pen flies like a frightened flock hither and thither, helter-skelter, pursued by a whole pack of hounds. Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question—Why are some women poor?—until it became fifty questions; until the fifty questions leapt frantically into midstream and were carried away. Every page in my notebook was scribbled over with notes. To show the state of mind I was in, I will read you a few of them, explaining that the page was headed quite simply, WOMEN AND POVERTY, in block letters; but what followed was something like this:

是什么原因造成了这种奇特的差异呢？我揣度着，一面在英国纳税人用于其它用途的小纸条上画着车轮。根据这个目录来看，为什么男人对女人的兴趣要比女人对男人的兴趣大得多？这看起来如此奇怪，于是我开始猜想那些把时间花费在写关于女人的书上的男人的生活。无论他们是年老的还是年轻的，结了婚的还是没结婚的，红鼻子的还是驼背的——无论如何，感觉到自己这样地被人关注是有点沾沾自喜的，只要这些关注不是全来自于那些老弱病残。我这样想着，一直到这些不相干的思想因为一大堆书滑到我面前的桌子上而告一段落。现在麻烦开始了。一个在牛津剑桥接受过研究工作训练的学生肯定有某种方法，能引导他的问题越过分心的事而归到它的答案中去，就像把羊赶入羊圈中一样。例如，我确信，坐在我旁边的那个正在认真抄写一本科学手册的学生，他每隔十分钟左右就提取出一些有价值的精油。他因满意而发出微弱的咕哝声，这正表明了这一点。但是如果一个人不幸没有在大学时得到训练，问题不但不会被赶回到它的“羊圈”里，反而会像一群受惊的羊一样被一群猎狗追逐着，仓皇失措地东奔西跑。教授、男教师、社会学家、神职人员、小说家、散文家、新闻记者以及那些除了不是女人以外没有其他资历的男人追逐着我那简单而且单一的问题——为什么有些女人贫穷？——直到它变成五十个问题；直到那五十个问题狂乱地跳到河流正中被冲走。我笔记本中的每一页都潦草地写满了笔记。为了表明我当时的心境，我将把其中的一些念给你们听，需要说明的是，笔记的标题很简单，就是用大写字母写的“女人和贫困”，但是接下来的内容却是这样的：

Condition in Middle Ages of,

中世纪女人的状况，

Habits in the Fiji Islands of,

斐济岛女人的习惯，

Worshipped as goddesses by,

被男人当作女神来崇拜的女人，

Weaker in moral sense than,

道德观念较男人弱的女人，

Idealism of,

女人的理想主义，

Greater conscientiousness of,

女人更为勤恳，

South Sea Islanders, age of puberty among,

南太平洋诸岛女人的发育年龄，

Attractiveness of,

女人的吸引力，

Offered as sacrifice to,

女人被用作祭品，

Small size of brain of,

女人的脑部体积小，

Profounder sub-consciousness of,

女人的下意识更深，

Less hair on the body of,

女人的体毛较少，

Mental, moral and physical inferiority of,

女人的智力、道德和体力低下，

Love of children of,

女人对孩子的爱，

Greater length of life of,

女人的寿命较长，

Weaker muscles of,

女人的肌肉较无力，

Strength of affections of,

女人爱情的力量，

Vanity of,

女人的虚荣心，

Higher education of,

女人的高等教育，

Shakespeare's opinion of,

莎士比亚的女人观，

Lord Birkenhead's opinion of,

伯肯黑德勋爵的女人观，

Dean Inge's opinion of,

英奇教长的女人观，

La Bruyere's opinion of,

拉布吕耶尔的女人观，

Dr Johnson's opinion of,

约翰逊博士的女人观，

Mr Oscar Browning's opinion of, ...

奥斯卡·布朗宁先生的女人观……

Here I drew breath and added, indeed, in the margin, Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. But, I continued, leaning back in my chair and looking at the vast dome in which I was a single but by now somewhat harassed thought, what is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women. Here is Pope:

在这里我歇了口气，并且在边上的空白处切实地加了一句：为什么塞缪尔·巴特勒说，“聪明的男人从来不谈他们对女人的看法”？而很显然，聪明的男人从来不说除女人之外其他的事情。但是，仰靠着我的椅子，望着巨大的圆屋顶——我是里面的一个思想，不过现在这思想有点儿窘困，我继续想道，很不幸的是，聪明人对女人的意见从未一致过。蒲柏说：

Most women have no character at all.

大多数的女人一点个性都没有。

And here is La Bruyere:

拉布吕耶尔说：

Les femmes sont extremes, elles sont meilleures ou pires que les hommes—

女人总是走极端，不是比男人好就是比男人坏。

a direct contradiction by keen observers who were contemporary. Are they capable of education or incapable? Napoleon thought them incapable. Dr Johnson thought the opposite.3Have they souls or have they not souls? Some savages say they have none. Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account. 4Some sages hold that they are shallower in the brain; others that they are deeper in the consciousness. Goethe honoured them; Mussolini despises them. Wherever one looked men thought about women and thought differently. It was impossible to make head or tail of it all, I decided, glancing with envy at the reader next door who was making the neatest abstracts, headed often with an A or a B or a C, while my own notebook rioted with the wildest scribble of contradictory jottings. It was distressing, it was bewildering, it was humiliating. Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.

这两个人处于同一时代，都是敏锐的观察家，却有着截然相反的观点。女人到底能不能受教育呢？拿破仑认为她们不能。约翰逊博士的想法正好相反。3她们究竟有没有灵魂？有些野蛮人说没有。相反，有些人断言女人几乎就是神，并因此崇拜她们。4有些圣人认为她们的头脑较浅薄；另一些则认为她们的意识更深刻。歌德尊敬她们；墨索里尼鄙视她们。不管朝哪儿看，男人都在思考女人，而且看法总是不同。我断定，把这些都弄清楚是不可能了。我羡慕地瞥了一眼隔壁那位读者，他把摘要写得那么工整，摘要上端往往都写着A、B或C，而我自己的笔记本则一团糟，涂满了极为潦草的相互对立的摘记。这让人烦恼，让人不知所措，同时又让人觉得丢脸。真理从我的指缝间溜走了。一滴都没有剩下。

I could not possibly go home, I reflected, and add as a serious contribution to the study of women and fiction that women have less hair on their bodies than men, or that the age of puberty among the South Sea Islanders is nine—or is it ninety?—even the handwriting had become in its distraction indecipherable. It was disgraceful to have nothing more weighty or respectable to show after a whole morning's work. And if I could not grasp the truth about W.(as for brevity's sake I had come to call her) in the past, why bother about W. in the future? It seemed pure waste of time to consult all those gentlemen who specialize in woman and her effect on whatever it may be—politics, children, wages, morality—numerous and learned as they are. One might as well leave their books unopened.

我想我不能就这样回家，要在“女人与小说”的研究上加上这些：女人的体毛比男人少一些，或者南太平洋诸岛上女人的发育年龄是九岁——还是九十岁？这也算是一种重大的贡献，尽管笔迹因注意力分散而变得难以辨认。工作了整个早晨却没有干出一点有分量、可以拿得出手的成绩是不光彩的。而且，假使我还不能领会以前的关于W.（简便起见，我用“女人”这个单词的第一个字母"W"来代替女人）的真理，又何必为将来的W.烦恼呢？请教那些对女人及其在政治、孩子、工资、道德等方面的影响有专门研究的绅士们似乎是在白白浪费时间，纵使他们人数众多，学问也很高深。人们恐怕也不会翻开他们的书。

But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled THE MENTAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL INFERIORITY OF THE FEMALE SEX. He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built; he had a great jowl; to balance that he had very small eyes; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained. Could it be his wife, I asked, looking at my picture? Was she in love with a cavalry officer? Was the cavalry officer slim and elegant and dressed in astrakhan? Had he been laughed at, to adopt the Freudian theory, in his cradle by a pretty girl? For even in his cradle the professor, I thought, could not have been an attractive child. Whatever the reason, the professor was made to look very angry and very ugly in my sketch, as he wrote his great book upon the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. Drawing pictures was an idle way of finishing an unprofitable morning's work. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psychoanalysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom—all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had. It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon; it was the professor's statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially remarkable, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man—I looked at the student next me—who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight. One has certain foolish vanities. It is only human nature, I reflected, and began drawing cartwheels and circles over the angry professor's face till he looked like a burning bush or a flaming comet—anyhow, an apparition without human semblance or significance. The professor was nothing now but a faggot burning on the top of Hampstead Heath. Soon my own anger was explained and done with; but curiosity remained. How explain the anger of the professors? Why were they angry? For when it came to analysing the impression left by these books there was always an element of heat. This heat took many forms; it showed itself in satire, in sentiment, in curiosity, in reprobation. But there was another element which was often present and could not immediately be identified. Anger, I called it. But it was anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions. To judge from its odd effects, it was anger disguised and complex, not anger simple and open.

但在我思考的时候，我又很倦怠、绝望，不知不觉地画了幅画，而这个画画的地方是用来像我邻座那样写结论的。我画了一张脸，一个人体。那是冯·X教授的脸和身体，他正在写着他的伟大著作——《女人的智力、道德和体力的低下》。他在我的图画里不是一个能吸引女人的男人。他身体笨重，下巴很大；为了与此协调，他长了一双很小的眼睛；他的脸很红。 他的神情表明，他正在某种情感的驱动下写作。这种情感促使他把笔往纸上戳，像是要在写字时戳死某个害虫，甚至把它弄死了还不能满足，还要继续戳。尽管这样，让他生气发怒的缘由仍未消散。看着这幅画，我猜度，难道是因为他太太吗？难道她爱上了一个骑兵军官？而那军官身材修长，举止文雅，穿着俄国羔皮衣？若采用弗洛伊德的理论，是不是他在孩提时代就被一个漂亮女孩嘲笑过？因为我觉得这位教授在孩提时代也不会是一个有吸引力的孩子。不管是哪种缘由，在我的素描中，这位教授在他的伟大著作中描写妇女智力、道德和体力上的低下时，看上去非常愤怒、非常丑陋。一上午的工作徒劳无益，画图画是结束这一上午工作的一种闲散的方式。然而有时候，就是在我们无所事事时，在我们的幻想中，被淹没的真理会浮上来。通过心理学的基本练习（还不能称其为心理分析来抬高它的身价），我从笔记本上看出，这幅生气的教授的素描是我在气头上画出来的。在我胡思乱想的时候，怒气夺去了我的铅笔。不过怒气正在那里做什么呢？兴趣、困惑、娱乐、无聊——所有这些情绪我都可以感受到并把它们一一道出，因为整个上午它们一个接着一个涌上心头。难道怒气那条黑蛇就潜伏在那里面吗？对，素描说，怒气就潜伏在里面。它使我清楚明白地注意到那本书、那句话，是它们激怒了那魔鬼。那就是教授针对女人在智力、道德、体力上的低下所作的陈述。我心跳加快。脸颊发烧。气得满脸通红。尽管这是件傻事，但也不足为奇。没人愿意听说自己天生就不如这样一个小男人——我看着我旁边这个学生——他喘着粗气，戴着打好结的领带，而且两个星期没刮胡子了。每个人都会有某些愚蠢的虚荣心。我想这不过是人的天性，然后开始在这位发怒的教授的脸上画车轮，画圆圈，直到他看起来像一个着了火的小丛林，或者是燃烧的彗星——总之，活脱脱一个幽灵，既没有人的外表，也没有人的意义。现在，这位教授仅仅是汉普斯特德石南荒原上燃烧的柴把而已。不久我的怒气就得到了解释并消散了，不过好奇心未减。教授们的怒气又如何解释呢？他们为什么生气？每当要分析这些书留下的印象时，总会有一种激昂的成分。这种激昂表现出来的方式有很多：讽刺、伤感、好奇、责备。但也有另外一种成分，它经常出现而且不能被立即识别出来。我称之为怒气。但它是这样的怒气——钻到下面和别的各种情绪混在一起。根据它造成的奇特效果来判断，这怒气不是简单率性的怒气，而是化了装的、复杂的怒气。

Whatever the reason, all these books, I thought, surveying the pile on the desk, are worthless for my purposes. They were worthless scientifically, that is to say, though humanly they were full of instruction, interest, boredom, and very queer facts about the habits of the Fiji Islanders. They had been written in the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth. Therefore they must be returned to the central desk and restored each to his own cell in the enormous honeycomb. All that I had retrieved from that morning's work had been the one fact of anger. The professors—I lumped them together thus—were angry. But why, I asked myself, having returned the books, why, I repeated, standing under the colonnade among the pigeons and the prehistoric canoes, why are they angry? And, asking myself this question, I strolled off to find a place for luncheon. What is the real nature of what I call for the moment their anger? I asked. Here was a puzzle that would last all the time that it takes to be served with food in a small restaurant somewhere near the British Museum. Some previous luncher had left the lunch edition of the evening paper on a chair, and, waiting to be served, I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr justice—commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry. I knew that he was angry by this token. When I read what he wrote about women—I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself. When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument; and the reader cannot help thinking of the argument too. If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a canary yellow. So be it, I should have said. But I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry. Or is anger, I wondered, somehow, the familiar, the attendant sprite on power? Rich people, for example, are often angry because they suspect that the poor want to seize their wealth. The professors, or patriarchs, as it might be more accurate to call them, might be angry for that reason partly, but partly for one that lies a little less obviously on the surface. Possibly they were not 'angry' at all; often, indeed, they were admiring, devoted, exemplary in the relations of private life. Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. Life for both sexes—and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self. By feeling that one has some innate superiority—it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney—for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination—over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment of the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, 'The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!'The exclamation, to me so surprising—for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex?—was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself.

不管理由是什么，审视桌上那一大堆书时，我想，就我的目的而言，所有这些书都没什么价值。也就是说，虽然从人类角度来看，这些书中充盈着教导、趣味、无聊以及关于斐济岛居民习性的一些十分古怪的事实，从科学上讲它们是无价值的。它们是在红色的情感之光下写成，而不是在白色的真理之光下。因此我必须把它们放回到中间的桌子上去，好让它们都回到位于大蜂房中的各自的巢室。我从一上午的工作中检索到的所有内容就是那个愤怒的事实。那些教授们——我这样把他们归并在一起——着实生气了。放回书后，我站在廊柱下，四周都是鸽子和史前的独木舟；我反复地问自己，但是为什么，为什么他们那么生气呢？就这样，我一边问着自己，一边踱着步子走出去，去找地方解决午餐。现在这个被我叫做“他们的怒气”的东西，它的真实性质到底是什么呢？我问道。这个谜团会一直持续下去，直到大英博物馆附近什么地方的一家小饭馆把饭菜端上来。之前某位用过午餐的客人把晚报的午刊留在了椅子上，我在等饭菜上来时，无所事事地读了读大标题。一行大字母像丝带一样横穿报纸。有人在南非取得了高分。小一点的字母声称，奥斯汀·张伯伦现在在日内瓦。一把肉斧在地窖里被发现，上面有人的头发。某某法官在离婚法庭上斥责妇女的无耻。散布在报纸各处的还有其他新闻。一个电影女演员在加利福尼亚的一个山顶上被人用绳子吊下来，悬在半空中。未来将会是多雾天气。我想，即便是在地球上短暂停留的旅客，如果捡起这张报纸，也能从这零碎的证据中看出，英国是被父权制统治。任何一个心智健全的人都会觉察出那位教授的统治地位。他就是权力，就是金钱，就是影响力。他是这份报纸的老板、主编、审稿人。他是外交大臣，是法官。他是板球运动员，拥有赛马用的马和游艇。他是发给股东百分之两百红利的公司的董事。他留下了几百万财产，捐助他曾管理过的慈善机构和大学。他把女明星吊在半空中。他将决定肉斧上的头发是不是人的头发，是开释那个杀人犯还是定他死罪，是将他吊死还是还他自由。除了雾以外，他好像掌控着所有的事。可是他生气了。从这一点上，我知道他生气了。当读到他写的关于女人的文字时，我想的并不是他说的话，而是他本人。如果辩论者不带感情地争论，那么他想的只是论据；他的读者想着的不禁也是他的论据。如果他不带感情地写了关于女人的文字，用无可争辩的证据来证实自己的论点，并且毫无迹象表明他所希望的结果是此而非彼，那么人们也不会生气，人们会接受事实，就像承认豌豆是绿的、金丝雀是黄的一样。如果是这样的话，我就会说，就那样吧。可是我生气了，因为他生气了。我一边翻阅晚报一边在想，有这般权力的人也会生气，未免太荒唐了吧。我疑惑，难道怒气是权力带来的、为人所熟知的幽灵？譬如就说那些富人吧，他们生气是因为他们怀疑穷人想要夺取他们的财富。可那些教授们呢，或者叫他们族长可能更准确些，他们生气大概部分是因为那个理由，部分是因为一个在表面上看来不太明显的理由。可能他们根本就没有“生气”；确实，他们常常赞美别人，待人忠实，是私人生活中的典范。也可能在那位教授稍有点过分地强调女人的低下时，他所关心的并不是她们的低下，而是他自己的优越。而那才是他过分强调、急于庇护的东西，因为对他而言，它就是一颗价格极为罕见的宝石。生活，对于男女两性来说——我看着他们在人行道上用肩膀挤出一条路——都是艰苦的、困难的，是一场永久的斗争。需要超乎寻常的勇气和力量。或许我们是幻觉的产物，我们更需要的是对自己的信心。没有自信，我们就犹如躺在摇篮里的婴儿。那么，我们要怎么样才能最快地生成这种无法估量而又极其可贵的自信呢？那就是去想别人不如自己。认为自己天生比别人优越——可能是说财富、地位，或者直挺挺的鼻子，甚至一张罗姆尼所作的祖父的画像——因为人类想象力的那些可怜花样是无穷无尽的。因此对一个需要征服、需要统治的族长来说，这种多数人（实际上是人类的一半）天生都不如他的感觉尤为重要。这种优越的感觉一定是他权力的主要来源之一。但是我想，还是让我把这种观察的角度转到现实生活中去。它是不是有助于解释人们在日常生活的边缘中所注意到的一些心理上的困惑？它能解释我那天的惊讶吗？那天，Z——最通情达理、最谦和的一个人，拿起一本丽贝卡·韦斯特的书，读了一段就叫喊起来：“这个坏透了的女权主义者！竟说男人都是势利眼！”他的喊叫让我大为惊讶，为什么韦斯特小姐对男人作了一句不中听但却很可能正确的评语就成了坏透了的女权主义者呢？这声喊叫不仅是他受伤的虚荣心发出的喊叫，也是一种抗议，抗议对他自信的力量的某种侵犯。

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheep skins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that selfassurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.

女人这几百年来好像都是用来做镜子的，这镜子拥有神奇而又宜人的力量，能把男人的身形照成其天生大小的两倍。如果没有这种力量，只怕世界现在还只是沼泽和丛林。我们所有战争的光荣史就不会为人所知。只怕我们依然在残余的羊骨上画着鹿的图形，拿火石换取羊皮或任何能迎合我们质朴口味的简单装饰品。超人和命运之手就不会存在。俄国沙皇和德国皇帝就根本不会戴上了皇冠又失去皇冠。无论这些镜子在文明社会里有什么用途，它们对于暴力和英勇的行为来说是必需的。这就是为什么拿破仑和墨索里尼都如此强调女人的低下，因为假使她们不低下，他们就不能被放大。这也在一定程度上解释了女人对于男人的必要性。还可以用来解释女人的批判使他们如何地不安，而且她对他们说这本书不好，这幅画没有生气，或者其他什么毛病的时候，与一个男人作出同样的批评相比，她们都一定会导致更大的痛苦，并激起更大的愤怒。因为她一说实话，镜子里的身形就会缩小，他在生活中的合适程度就会降低。如果他在吃早餐、午餐时没能看见比自己的真实尺寸至少大一倍的自己，又怎能继续作出判断、教化土生土长者、制定法律、撰写书籍、身穿礼服在宴会上演讲呢？我就这样揣摩着，同时弄碎了面包，搅动着咖啡，并时不时看看路上的行人。镜子的幻象至关重要，因为它能激发生命力，刺激神经系统。倘若把它拿走，男人也许会死，就像被夺走了可卡因的瘾君子一样。我望着窗外，思考着，人行道上有一半的人都在那幻影的魔力下大步奔向工作的地方。早晨，在镜子那令人愉快的光线下，他们戴上了帽子，穿好了衣服。这样，他们开始了充满自信、精神振奋的一天，相信会收到史密斯小姐的茶会的邀请。他们一边走进房间，一边对自己说，“我比这里一半的人都要优越”，也正因为如此，他们说话时富有自信，这种自信在公众生活中产生了深远的影响，并在私人头脑的边缘留下了怪异的注解。

But these contributions to the dangerous and fascinating subject of the psychology of the other sex—it is one, I hope, that you will investigate when you have five hundred a year of your own—were interrupted by the necessity of paying the bill. It came to five shillings and ninepence. I gave the waiter a ten-shilling note and he went to bring me change. There was another ten-shilling note in my purse; I noticed it, because it is a fact that still takes my breath away the power of my purse to breed ten-shilling notes automatically. I open it and there they are. Society gives me chicken and coffee, bed and lodging, in return for a certain number of pieces of paper which were left me by an aunt, for no other reason than that I share her name.

另一性别的心理是个危险而又吸引人的话题，但是对这一话题的这些贡献——希望等到你们每年有五百英镑自己的收入时，也研究一下这个话题——在必须付饭钱的时候被打断了。饭钱是五先令九便士。我递给侍者一张十先令的票子，他拿去找钱。我的钱包里还有一张十先令的票子；我注意到它了，因为这仍然是个让我激动得透不过气来的事实——我的钱包有自动产生十先令钞票的魔力。我每次打开它，钞票必定在那儿。社会提供给我鸡肉和咖啡、床和住所，来换取我一个姑妈留给我的若干纸张。这些纸张留给了我，只因为我和她名字一样，再没有其他理由。

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was

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