A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (Excerpt) 双语

    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 part ridge 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.

    心灵，身体和大脑共同组成人类的躯壳，它们浑然一体，不能独立存在，这种状态就算再过一百万年也不会改变，因此，对于一场优质的交谈来说，一顿好饭的作用非常重要。少了一顿好饭，人就不能好好思考，好好去爱，好好睡觉。牛肉和梅干并不能点亮我们的灵魂之光。我们大概进入了极乐世界，凡·戴克大概就在下一个街角等待——一天的工作结束后，靠牛肉和梅干催生的只有这张模棱两可的勉强心境。好在我这位科学教师朋友家里有个橱柜，里面放着一个大酒瓶，几只小酒杯——（但应该还有鳎目鱼或山鹑之类的下酒菜）——于是我们才能坐在炉火旁，部分修复我们经过一天生计后受伤的心灵。

    Before that I had made my living by cadging odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kinder garten. Such were the chief occupations that were open to women before 1918. I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide—a small one but dear to the possessor—perishing and with it my self, my soul,—all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. However, as I say, my aunt died; and whenever I change a ten shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off, fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver in to my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bit terness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, forever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs—the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people's fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children's lives. Walk through the Admiralty Arch (I had reached that monument), or any other avenue given up to trophies and cannon, and reflect upon the kind of glory celebrated there. Or watch in the spring sunshine the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that five hundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine. These are unpleasant instincts to harbour, I reflected. They are bred of the conditions of life; of the lack of civilization, I thought, looking at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge, and in particular at the feathers in his cocked hat, with a fixity that they have scarcely ever received before. And, as I realized these drawbacks, by degrees fear and bitterness modified themselves into pity and toleration; and then in a year or two, pity and toleration went, and the greatest release of all came, which is freedom to think of things in themselves. That building, for example, do I like it or not? Is that picture beauti ful or not? Is that in my opinion a good book or a bad? Indeed my aunt's legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton re commended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky.

    在这之前，我靠给报社做临时工为生，一会儿报道这里有艳舞表演，一会儿报道那里有人结婚；我还帮人填信封地址，给老妇人念书听，制作假花，教幼儿园里的小朋友识字，挣上几个英镑。1918年以前，妇女能做的工作主要就是这些。我不必强调这些工作有多难，你们或许认识做过这些工作的人；我更不必强调靠这种工作挣钱生活有多难，你们自己或许也做过。但比起这些，更可怕的是那些日子在我心中留下的恐惧和酸楚，它们至今还在折磨我。比如，你做着自己并不想做的工作，像个奴隶，要处处说好话，看人脸色，虽然没人强迫你这么做，但如果你不做，就会付出巨大的代价，你根本冒不起这个险。然后我想到我那小小的才能，觉得它是自己的宝贝，要是就这么埋没了，我的身体和灵魂也会随之消逝，所有的一切都像生了一层锈，春天的繁花被吞没，树木从芯子开始腐烂。然后，我姑姑去世了。每次我破开一张十先令钞票，锈蚀就会褪去一层，我心中的恐惧和酸楚就会减轻一点。我一边把找零的银币放进钱包，一边回想过去的苦日子，发现一份稳定的收入竟然能给人的心境带来这么大的变化。世界上没有任何力量可以夺走我手中的五百英镑。我将永远拥有食物，房子和衣物。我不需要付出精力和苦力，心中的憎恨和痛苦也消失了。我不恨任何男人，反正他们无法伤害我；我不用取悦任何男人，反正他们无法给我什么。因此，我发现自己对人类另一半的态度发生了微妙的变化。完全否定某个阶级或性别都是一件很荒唐的事情。一个庞大的群体永远不必为自己的所作所为负责，驱动他们的是不可控制的本能。那些大家长和教授也要面对无穷无尽的难处和可怕的问题。在某种程度上，他们受到的教育和我受到的一样失败。他们因此产生巨大的缺陷。没错，他们确实有钱有权，但胸中永远住着一只秃鹰，不断撕扯他们的肝脏，啄食他们的肺——这就是他们本能的占有欲，是狂暴的抢夺欲，驱使他们时刻窥觊他人的领地和利益；建造要塞，插上旗帜；制造战舰和毒气；献上自己和子孙们的性命。穿过海军拱门（我已经走到纪念碑前），或任何一条摆满战利品和大炮的街道，想一想哪里歌颂的荣耀。浊者站在春日的阳光里，看着股票经纪人和大律师走进室内，忙着挣钱，挣钱和挣更多的钱，可每年五百英镑就足够一个人在阳光下活得好好的。我想，他们身上一定存在某种讨厌的本能。这是生活条件的产物，是文明程度不高的结果，我一边想一边看着剑桥公爵的雕像，尤其是他三角帽上的羽毛，恐怕它从未被这样凝视过。意识到这些问题之后，我的恐惧和酸楚就化为了怜悯和宽容，又过了一两年，怜悯和宽容也消失了，我获得了一种最大的解脱，那是客观看待事物的自由。比如那边的建筑我喜不喜欢？那幅画好不好看？这本书好还是坏？米尔顿建议女人寻找一位高大威猛的绅士，用永恒的爱慕换来自己的归宿。而我不用这么做，因为我姑姑的遗产为我开辟了一片广阔的新天地。

    To have lived a free life in London in the six teenth century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination.

    对于一个女诗人或女剧作家来说，要想在16世纪的伦敦过上自由的生活，要承受巨大的精神压力，面临两难的选择，甚至被逼上绝路。就算她侥幸活下来，她的想象力也会变得紧张，病态，写出来的东西一定会扭曲，变形。