精读5第二版课文翻译(4)

What could be easier than to write articles and to buy Persian cats with the profits? But wait a moment. Articles have to be about something. Mine, I seem to remember, was about a novel by a famous man. And while I was writing this review, I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come between me an my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her. You who come off a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her--you may not know what I mean by The Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draft she sat in it--in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all--I need not say it--she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty--her blushes, her great grace. In those days--the last of Queen Victoria--every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered:“My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the art and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of our own. Above all, be pure.” And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money--shall we say five hundred pounds a year? --so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, If I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly-—tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her. Though I flatter myself that I killed her in the end, the struggle was severe; it took much time that had better have been spent upon learning Greek grammar; or in roaming the world in search of adventures. But it was a real experience; It was an experience that was bound befall all women writers at that time. Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.

But to continue my story. The Angel was dead; what then remained? You may say that what remained was a simple and common object--a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah, but what is “herself”? I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill. That indeed is one of the reasons why I have come here--out of respect for you, who are in process of showing us by your experiments what a woman is, who are in process of providing us, by your failures and succeeded, with that extremely important piece of information.

But to continue the story of my professional experiences. I made one pound ten and six by my first review; and I bought a Persian cat with the proceeds. Then I grew ambitious. A Persian cat is all very well, I said; but a Persian cat is not enough. I must have a motorcar. And it was thus that I became a novelist--for it is a very strange thing that people will give you a motorcar if you will tell them a story. It is a still stranger thing that there is nothing so delightful in the world as telling stories. It

is far pleasanter than writing reviews of famous novels. And yet, if I am to obey your secretary and tell you my professional experiences as a novelist, I must tell you about a very strange experience that befell me as a novelist. And to understand it you must try first to imagine a novelist’s state of mind. I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist’s chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living--so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings round, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination. I suspect that this state is the same both for men and women. Be that as it may, I want you to imagine me writing a novel in a state of trance. I want you to figure to yourselves a girl sitting with a pen in her hand, which for minutes, and indeed for hours, she never dips into the inkpot. The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl’s fingers. Her imagination had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber. And then there was a smash. There was an explosion. There was foam and confusion. The imagination had dashed itself against something hard. The girl was roused from her dream. She was indeed in a state of the most acute and difficult distress. To speak without figure, she had thought of something, something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say. Men, her reason told her, would be shocked. The consciousness of what men will say of a woman who speaks the truth about her passions had roused her from her artist’s state of

unconsciousness. She could write no more. The trace was over. Her imagination could work no longer. This I believe to be a very common experience with women writers--they are impeded by the extreme conventionality of the other sex. For though men sensibly allow themselves great freedom in these respects, I doubt that they realize or can control the extreme severity with which they condemn such freedom in women.

These then were two very genuine experiences of my own. These were two of the adventures of my professional life. The first--killing the Angel in the House--I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my own experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet. The obstacles against her are still immensely powerful--and yet they are very difficult to define. Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she has still many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time entering?

四、女性的职业弗吉尼亚?伍尔夫

l.你们的秘书邀请我时对我说你们妇女服务团关注的是女性就业问题，她提议我讲一讲我就业的亲身体验。我是女性，这是事实；我有工作，这也是事实。但我又有什么职业体验呢?这很难讲。我从事的是文学职业，与其他职业相比，当然不包括戏剧行业，在文学职业里几乎没有什么女性体验，我的意思是几乎没有女性特有的体验。多年前，路已开辟出来。许多知名的女性---范妮?伯尼、阿芙拉.贝恩、哈丽雅特?马蒂诺、简?奥斯汀、乔治?艾略特---和许多不知名以及已被人忘记的女性在我之前铺平了道路并指导我向前走。因此，在我从事写作时，几乎没有物质障碍。写作这个职业既受人尊敬又没有危险。写字的沙沙声不会打破家庭的和平，写作也不需要什么家庭开销。花16便士买的纸足够用来写莎士比亚的所有戏剧---要是你有那样的才智的话。作家不需要钢琴和模特，不用去巴黎、维也纳和柏林，也不需要家庭教师。当然，廉价的写作用纸是女性作为作家成功而先于其他职业的原因。

2．我讲讲我的故事，那只是个平常的故事。你们自己设想一个姑娘，手里握着一支笔坐在卧室里。从十点钟到一点钟她只是不停地由左向右写，然后她想到做一件既省钱又省力的事---把那些纸张放进信封，在信封的一角贴上一张一便士的邮票，把信封投进拐角的一个红色邮筒。我就是这样成了一名撰稿人。我的努力在下个月的第一天得到了回报---_那是我一生中非常快乐的一

天。我收到了编辑寄来的一封信，里面装有一张一英镑十先令六便士的支票。为了让你们了解我不值得被称作职业女性，对人生的艰难和奋斗知之甚少，我得承认我没用那笔钱买食物、付房租、买袜子和肉，而是出去买了一只猫，一只漂亮的波斯猫，这只猫不久就引起了我和邻居间的激烈争端。

3．什么会比写文章并用赚得的钱买波斯猫来得更容易?但再想一想，文章得有内容。我好像记得我的文章是评论一部名人写的小说。在写那篇评论时，我发现要想写书评我就必须和某个鬼怪做斗争。这个鬼怪是个女子，在我逐渐对她有进一步了解后，我用一个有名的诗歌里的女主人公的名字“家里的天使”来称呼她。就是她，在我写评论时，总是在我和我的写作之间制造麻烦。就是她总是打扰我，浪费我的时间，如此地折磨我，最终我杀死了她。你们年轻快乐的这一代人可能没听说过她---你们可能不知道我说的“家里的天使”是什么意思。我要简单地讲一讲。她有极强的同情心，非常有魅力，一点都不自私，做高难度的家务非常出色，天天作自我牺牲。如果有只鸡，她就吃鸡腿，如果屋里通风，她就坐在风口。总之，她就是这样的人，没有自己的想法和期望，总是准备为他人的想法和期望作出牺牲。首要的是---我不需要这么说--- 她纯洁。纯洁被认为是她的最美之处---她爱脸红，典雅大方。在那时，维多利亚时代后期，每个家庭都有天使。我刚一提笔写字就会遇见她。她那翅膀的影子映在纸上，在屋子里我能听到她裙子沙沙作响。也就是说，我一拿起笔写那位名人的书评，她就会悄悄地溜到我身后悄声对我说：“亲爱的，你是个年轻姑娘，你在给男人写的书写评论。要有同情心，要温柔，要奉承，要说假话，要使用女性全部的小伎俩。不要让任何人看出你有自己的见解。首要的是要纯洁。”她就这样引导我的写作。下面我要说说多少是我自己决定做的一件事情，当然做此事的功劳主要还应归功于我那了不起的祖先，是他们给我留下了一笔财产---比如说每年500英镑吧---这样我就不必完全靠女人的魅力去谋生了。我对她发起突然进攻，扼住她的喉咙。我尽最大努力杀死她。要是因此被带上法庭的话，我的辩护词就是我是自卫，如果我不杀死她，她就会杀死我，她会拔掉我进行写作的心。因为我发现在写作时，要是没有自己的见解，不能真实表达人与人之间的关系、道德和性的话，你一本小说的评论都写不出来。依照“家里的天使”，所有这些问题女性都不能公开和自由地讨论。她们必须使用魅力，必须作出让步，更直接地说，她们想要成功就必须说假话。因此，无论何时在纸上感到有她的翅膀或光晕的影子，我就会拿起墨水瓶，向她砸去。她不容易死去，她那非真实的特性对她是极大的帮助。杀死鬼怪要比杀死真实的人艰难多了。在我认为我已杀死她时，她就会悄悄地溜回来。尽管我自己确信我最终杀死了她，但搏斗得很激烈，消耗的时间要比学希腊语语法或周游世界体验冒险经历的时间多多了。但是，这是真实的体验，这种经历在那时会降临到所有女作家的头上。杀死“家里的天使”是女作家职业中的一部分。

4．继续讲我的故事。天使死后，还有什么东西留下来了呢?你们会说留下的是一个简单又普通的物体--- 一个年轻姑娘坐在有墨水瓶的卧室里。换句话说，既然她已经摆脱掉说假话的错误观念，那么这个年轻姑娘可以做回自己了。噢，什么是“她自己”呢?我的意思是什么是妇女。我向你们保证我不知道，我相信你们也不知道。我相信，只有妇女在人类知识所涉及的全部文艺艺术和专业领域中用创造形式表达自己的情感后，她们才知道什么是妇女。这就是我来这里的原因之一，出于对你们的敬重。你们通过实验在向我们展示什么是妇女；你们通过自己的成功与失败在为我们提供重要的信息。

5．下面接着讲我的职业体验。我的第一篇评论赚了一英镑十先令六便土，我用那笔钱买了一只波斯猫。接下来我雄心勃勃，我说，波斯猫不错，但还不够，我一定要有一辆汽车。我就这样成为一名小说家---要是你给人们讲故事他们就会给你一辆汽车，这可是很奇怪的事情。更奇怪的事情是世界上没有比讲故事更令人快乐的事情了，讲故事远比写评论有趣。然而，如果听从秘书的建议，讲述我作为小说家的职业体验的话，我必须告诉你们我的一个很奇怪的经历。要想明白这一点，你们必须想像小说家的意识状态。如果我说小说家的重要愿望是尽量处于无意识状态，我希望我没有泄露行业秘密。他得使自己处于持久的昏睡状态，他想要过一种最安静、最有规律的生活。他希望在他写作时，每天见的人、读的书、做的事都是相同的，这样任何事物都不会打破他生活的幻想，也不会扰乱他的四处探求以及对那令人难以捉摸的东西即想像力的突然发现。我认为这种状态对于男人和女人是一样的。尽管如此，我请你们想像我在迷睡的状态中写小说。请你们想像一个女孩坐在桌旁，手里握着笔，几分钟甚至几小时都未曾动过墨水瓶。当我想到这女孩时，脑海里浮现出一个形象：一个深深的湖边有一位钓鱼者，他手握鱼竿，沉浸在梦境中。她在让想像力自由自在地在位于无意识的最深层的世界的各个角落畅游。现在这种体验来了，我认为这种体验发生在女人身上要比发生在男人身上平常得多。鱼竿在女孩的手指间快速地转动，她的想像力被冲跑了。想像力搜寻了池塘、池塘的最深处以及最大的鱼生活的暗处。就在这时传来了猛烈撞击声、爆炸声，出现了水花，一片混乱。想像力撞到了坚硬的东西。那个女孩从睡梦中惊醒，她陷入了一种最深刻、最艰难的痛苦状态。不用修辞手段、直截了当地说，她想到了一件事情，一件不适合女人讲的有关身体和激情的事情。她的理智告诉她，男人会感到震惊的。她意识到男人们会如何议论一个敢讲有关激情真话的女人，这使她从艺术家的无意识状态中惊醒了。她再也写不下去了，迷睡结束了，想像力也不再起作用。我认为这

是女作家非常普遍的切身体验---另一性别非常传统的观念阻碍着她们。尽管男人们理智上在这些方面给自己极大的自由，我认为他们未必会认识或控制他们谴责女人这种自由时的猛烈程度。

6．这些就是我自己的两种真实体验，我职业生涯中的两个异乎寻常的经历。第一个---杀死“家里的天使”，我认为我已经解决了，她死了。但第二个---真实地讲述我的身体和激情，我认为还没有解决。我认为任何女性都还没有解决这个问题。不利于她的那些障碍还有很强大的力量，也很难给它们下定义。从外表看，什么比写书更容易呢?从外表看，有什么障碍会阻碍女人而不是男人呢?从内心精神方面看，情况颇为不同。妇女还要与许多鬼怪展开斗争。还有许多偏见需要克服。当然，我认为，女人不用杀死鬼怪，不用击碎岩石就能够坐下来专心写书还需要很长时间。如果在文学领域---女性最自由的职业里情况如此的话，那么在你们第一次从事的新职业里情况又会如何呢?

7．如果有时间，这些就是我要问你们的问题。当然，如果我重点强调我的职业体验的话，那是因为我相信，尽管方式不同，它们也是你们的体验。即使道路名义上是宽阔的--- 没有任何事情可以阻碍妇女成为医生、律师和公务员，但我相信前面仍有许多鬼怪和障碍若隐若现。讨论和界定这些障碍是十分重要的。因为只有如此我们才能共同努力克服困难。除此之外。还有必要讨论我们为之奋斗，为之与难以克服的障碍作斗争的目的。那些目的是什么，对这个问题我们不能想当然，而要不断地提出疑问和进行审视。在我看来，在这里，在这个被有史以来第一次从事这么多种不同职业的妇女所包围的大厅里，整个状况都非常耐人寻味，而且还有重要意义。在这个迄今为止专门由男人控制的房子里，你们已经赢得了自己的房间。尽管不可能不付出很大的劳动和努力，你们能够自己付房租了，能够每年挣自己的500英镑。但是，这种自由才刚刚开始，房间是你的，但里面空无一物。房间还需要置办家具，需要装饰物，需要有人与你分享。你准备置办什么样的家具，准备进行什么样的装修，准备和谁一起合用这个房间，有什么条件?我认为这些问题非常重要，非常耐人寻味，因为有史以来你们第一次提出这些问题，第一次自己能够决定这些问题的答案。我非常愿意留下来和你们一起讨论这些问题并找到答案。但今晚不行，我的时间到了，就讲到这里吧。

(国永荣译．边娜审校)

5.Love is a FallacyMax Shulman

1 Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow as you will meet in a month of Sundays, unfettered the informal essay with his memorable Old China and Dream's Children. There follows an informal essay that ventures even beyond Lamb's frontier, indeed, \perhaps more appropriate.

2 Vague though its category, it is without doubt an essay. It develops an argument; it cites instances; it reaches a conclusion. Could Carlyle do more? Could Ruskin ?

3 Read, then, the following essay which undertakes to demonstrate that logic, far from being a dry, pedantic discipline, is a living, breathing thing, full of beauty, passion, and trauma --Author's Note

4 Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious , acute and astute--I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemist's scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And--think of it! --I was only eighteen. 5 It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Butch, my roommate at the University of Minnesota. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough young fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type.Unstable.Impressionable.Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that come, s along, to, surrender y, , , , , , ourself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it--this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey.

6 One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. \ 7 \ 8 \ 9 \

10 I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. \

11 \Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can't get a raccoon coat.\ 12 \ 13 \ 14 \

15 He leaped from the bed and paced the room, \ 16 \They're unsightly. They--\

17 \ 18 \

19 \

20 My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. \ 21 \

22 I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to set my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn't have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.

23 I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions but I was not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.

24 I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer's career. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

25 Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions but I felt sure that time would supply the lack She already had the makings.

26 Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding, At table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the KozyKampusKorner eating the specialty of the house--a sandwich that contained scraps of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut--without even getting her fingers moist.

27 Intelligent she was not. in fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.

28 \

29 \

30 \ 31 \ 32 \ 33 \

34 I nodded with satisfaction. \ 35 \

36 \ 37 \

38 \

39 \could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?\

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