自深深处——王尔德致波西的信（四）
作者：奥斯卡·王尔德
自深深处——王尔德致波西的信（四）
I remember sitting in my room and sadly and seriously trying to make up my mind whether or not what you really were what you seemed me to be,
so full of terrible defects, so utterly ruinous both to yourself and to others, so fatal a one to know. For a whole week I thought about it, and wondered if after all I was not unjust and mistaken in my estimate of you. At the end of the week, a letter from your mother was handed in. It expressed to the full of every feeling I myself had about you. She saw that heredity had burdened you with a terrible legacy, he is " the one of my children who has inherited the fatal Douglas temperament, " she wrote of you. She stated that she felt bound to declare that your friendship with me had so intensified your vanity that it become the source of all your faults, and earnestly begged me not to meet you abroad. I wrote to her at once, and told her that I aggreed entirely with every word she had said. I assured her that I have no intention of meeting you.
我记得那时，我坐在房间里，充满悲伤和认真地试图想明白，你究竟是否真的，是一个在我看来，满身都是可怕的缺点，对你自己和别人，都全然是个无法承担的错误，一个连与你相识，都会是致命劫难的人。整整一个星期，我都在思考这件事，想知道是否我有失公允，对你做出了完全错误的评价。那个周末，你母亲的信寄到了。信中的阐述，与我对你的每一个印象都完全一致。她看到，是遗传让你背负了一个可怕的遗产，她这样写你，他是“我孩子中继承了致命的道格拉斯家族性格秉性的那一个。”她挑明，她觉得一定是你与我的交往，极大地增强了你的虚荣心，而这，成为了你一切错误的根源，并诚挚地恳请我别在国外与你见面。我马上给她写了回信，说我完全同意她所说的每一个字。我向她保证我真的没想见你。
自深深处——王尔德致波西的信（四）
In the meantime you are writing to me by every post from Egype. I took not the smallest notice of any of your communications. I read them, and tore them up. Finally, you actually telegraphed to my wife, begging her to use her influence with me to get me to write to you. At her request, I did communicate with you. I remember the wording of my telegram quite well. I said that time healed every wound but that for many months to come I would neither write to you nor see you. You started without delay for Paris, sending me passionate telegrams on the road to beg me to see you once. I declined. Next morning, I received a telegram of some ten or eleven pages.
You stated in it that no matter what you had done to me, you could not believe that I would absolutely decline to see you, you reminded me that for that the sake of seeing me even for one hour you would travell six days and nights across Europe without stopping once on the way, and ended with what seemed to me a threat of suicide, and one not thinly veiled.
与此同时，你在埃及每到一处就我写信。我对你的任何来信都不予理会，看过就撕了。最后，你竟然打电报给我妻子，请求她以她对我的影响，来让我写信给你。在她的要求下，我确实与你联系了。那封电报的内容我记得非常清楚。我说时间会治愈一切伤痛。但从今往后，我既不会写信给你也不会见你了。你毫不迟疑地立刻动身到了巴黎，路上给我发来一封措辞强烈的电报，肯求我再见你一面。我拒绝了。 第二天早上，我就接到了你的一封几乎有10到11页的电报。你声称，不管你对我做了什么，你都不相信，我会狠得下心来完全拒绝见你。你告诉我说，为了能见到我，哪怕只有一个小时，你都将日夜兼程，不作任何停留，在六天内横跨欧洲。而在电报的结尾，依我看来，你是在威胁我，你要自杀，一个毫不掩饰的威胁......
———未完待续
（真念一思译）
（图片来自网络，向原作者致敬致谢！）
自深深处——王尔德致波西的信（四）
网友评论