来源: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/double-solitude
[1] At eighty-seven, I am solitary. I live by myself on one floor of the 1803 farmhouse where my family has lived since the Civil War. After my grandfather died, my grandmother Kate lived here alone. Her three daughters visited her. In 1975, Kate died at ninety-seven, and I took over. Forty-odd years later, I spend my days alone in one of two chairs. From an overstuffed blue chair in my living room I look out the window at the unpainted old barn, golden and empty of its cows and of Riley the horse. I look at a tulip; I look at snow. In the parlor’s mechanical chair, I write these paragraphs and dictate letters. I also watch television news, often without listening, and lie back in the enormous comfort of solitude. People want to come visit, but mostly I refuse them, preserving my continuous silence. Linda comes two nights a week. My two best male friends from New Hampshire, who live in Maine and Manhattan, seldom drop by. A few hours a week, Carole does my laundry and counts my pills and picks up after me. I look forward to her presence and feel relief when she leaves. Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns.
[1]在八十七岁时，我是孤独的。我独自生活在1803年农舍的一楼，我的家人自内战以来一直住在这里。祖父去世后，我的祖母凯特一个人住在这里。她的三个女儿来看她。 1975年，凯特在九十七岁时去世，我接手了。四十多年后，我独自一人在两把椅子中度过。从我客厅里一张厚厚的蓝色椅子上，我看着窗外的未上漆的旧谷仓，金色的空的奶牛和莱利的马。我看着郁金香;我看着雪。在客厅的机械椅上，我写下这些段落并指示字母。我也经常看电视新闻，经常没有听，而是在孤独的巨大舒适中躺着。人们想来参观，但大多数时候我拒绝他们，保持我的持续沉默。琳达每周来两个晚上。来自新罕布什尔州的两位住在缅因州和曼哈顿的最好的男性朋友很少匆忙。每周几个小时，Carole洗完衣服，算上我的药，然后捡起来。我期待她的存在，并在她离开时感到宽慰。偶尔，特别是在夜晚，孤独失去了它的软实力和寂寞接管。孤独归来时，我很感激。
[2] Born in 1928, I was an only child. During the Great Depression, there were many of us, and Spring Glen Elementary School was eight grades of children without siblings. From time to time I made a friend during childhood, but friendships never lasted long. Charlie Axel liked making model airplanes out of balsa wood and tissue. So did I, but I was clumsy and dripped cement onto wing paper. His models flew. Later, I collected stamps, and so did Frank Benedict. I got bored with stamps. In seventh and eighth grade, there were girls. I remember lying with Barbara Pope on her bed, fully clothed and apart while her mother looked in at us with anxiety. Most of the time, I liked staying alone after school, sitting in the shadowy living room. My mother was shopping or playing bridge with friends; my father added figures in his office; I daydreamed.
[2]出生于1928年，我是一个独生子女。 在大萧条时期，我们中有很多人，而且Spring Glen小学是八年级没有兄弟姐妹的孩子。 我不时在童年时代结交朋友，但友谊从未持续很长时间。 查理阿克塞尔喜欢用轻木和纸巾制作模型飞机。 我也是，但我笨拙地将水泥滴在翼纸上。 他的模特飞了起来。 后来，我收集了邮票，弗兰克本尼迪克特也是如此。 我厌倦了邮票。 在七年级和八年级，有女孩。 我记得她和芭芭拉·波普躺在床上，穿着衣服，分开，而她的母亲则焦急地看着我们。 大多数时候，我喜欢放学后独自一人，坐在阴暗的客厅里。 我的母亲正和朋友一起购物或搭桥牌; 我父亲在办公室里添加了数字; 我梦想成真。
[3] In summer, I left my Connecticut suburb to hay with my grandfather, on this New Hampshire farm. I watched him milk seven Holsteins morning and night. For lunch I made myself an onion sandwich—a thick slice between pieces of Wonder Bread. I’ve told about this sandwich before.
[3]夏天，我离开康涅狄格州的郊区与我的祖父在这个新罕布什尔州的农场干草。 我看着他早晚挤奶七个荷斯坦牛奶。 午餐时，我做了一个洋葱三明治 - 一块奇妙面包之间的厚片。 我以前告诉过这个三明治。
[4] At fifteen, I went to Exeter for the last two years of high school. Exeter was academically difficult and made Harvard easy, but I hated it—five hundred identical boys living two to a room. Solitude was scarce, and I labored to find it. I took long walks alone, smoking cigars. I found myself a rare single room and remained there as much as I could, reading and writing. Saturday night, the rest of the school sat in the basketball arena, deliriously watching a movie. I remained in my room in solitary pleasure.
[4]十五岁的时候，我在高中的最后两年去了埃克塞特。 埃克塞特在学术上很难，让哈佛变得容易，但我讨厌它 - 五百个完全相同的男孩住在一个房间里。 孤独是稀缺的，我努力找到它。 我独自长途跋涉，抽雪茄。 我发现自己是一个罕见的单人房间，尽可能多地留在那里，阅读和写作。 星期六晚上，学校的其他人坐在篮球场上，神志不清地看着一部电影。 我独自一人留在我的房间里。
[5] At college, dormitory suites had single and double bedrooms. For three years, I lived in one bedroom crowded with everything I owned. During my senior year, I managed to secure a single suite: bedroom and sitting room and bath. At Oxford, I had two rooms to myself. Everybody did. Then I had fellowships. Then I wrote books. Finally, to my distaste, I had to look for a job. With my first wife–people married young back then; we were twenty and twenty-three–I settled in Ann Arbor, teaching English literature at the University of Michigan. I loved walking up and down in the lecture hall, talking about Yeats and Joyce or reading aloud the poems of Thomas Hardy and Andrew Marvell. These pleasures were hardly solitary, but at home I spent the day in a tiny attic room, working on poems. My extremely intelligent wife was more mathematical than literary. We lived together and we grew apart. For the only time in my life, I cherished social gatherings: Ann Arbor’s culture of cocktail parties. I found myself looking forward to weekends, to crowded parties that permitted me distance from my marriage. There were two or three such occasions on Friday and more on Saturday, permitting couples to migrate from living room to living room. We flirted, we drank, we chatted–without remembering on Sunday what we said Saturday night.
[5]在大学，宿舍套房有单人和双人卧室。三年来，我住在一间挤满了我拥有的东西的卧室里。在我大四的时候，我设法找到了一个套房：卧室，起居室和浴室。在牛津，我有两个房间给自己。每个人都做到了。然后我有了奖学金。然后我写了书。最后，令我厌恶的是，我不得不找工作。与我的第一任妻子 - 当时年轻人结婚;我们二十三岁，我在安娜堡定居，在密歇根大学教英语文学。我喜欢在演讲厅里走来走去，谈论叶芝和乔伊斯，或者大声朗读托马斯·哈代和安德鲁·马维尔的诗歌。这些乐趣几乎不是孤零零的，但在家里，我在一个小阁楼里度过了一天，在诗歌上工作。我非常聪明的妻子比数学更具数学性。我们住在一起，我们分开了。在我生命中唯一一次，我珍惜社交聚会：安娜堡的鸡尾酒会文化。我发现自己很期待周末，到拥挤的聚会，让我与我的婚姻保持距离。星期五有两三次这样的场合，星期六有更多场合，允许夫妇从起居室迁移到起居室。我们调情，我们喝酒，我们聊天 - 周日晚上没有记住我们说的话。
[6] After sixteen years of marriage, my wife and I divorced.
[7] For five years I was alone again, but without the comfort of solitude. I exchanged the miseries of a bad marriage for the miseries of bourbon. I dated a girlfriend who drank two bottles of vodka a day. I dated three or four women a week, occasionally three in a day. My poems slackened and stopped. I tried to think that I lived in happy license. I didn’t.
[6]结婚十六年后，我和妻子离婚了。
[7]五年来我又独自一人，却没有孤独的安慰。 为了波旁威士忌的苦难，我交换了不良婚姻的苦难。 我约会了一个女朋友，她每天喝两瓶伏特加。 我一周约会三四个女人，偶尔一天三个。 我的诗松弛了。 我试着认为我住在快乐的执照上。 我没有。
[8] Jane Kenyon was my student. She was smart, she wrote poems, she was funny and frank in class. I knew she lived in a dormitory near my house, so one night I asked her to housesit while I attended an hour-long meeting. (In Ann Arbor, it was the year of breaking and entering.) When I came home, we went to bed. We enjoyed each other, libertine liberty as much as pleasures of the flesh. Later I asked her to dinner, which in 1970 always included breakfast. We saw each other once a week, still dating others, then twice a week, then three or four times a week, and saw no one else. One night, we spoke of marriage. Quickly we changed the subject, because I was nineteen years older and, if we married, she would be a widow so long. We married in April, 1972. We lived in Ann Arbor three years, and in 1975 left Michigan for New Hampshire. She adored this old family house.
[8] Jane Kenyon是我的学生。 她很聪明，她写诗，她在课堂上很有趣，坦率。 我知道她住在我家附近的一个宿舍里，所以有一天晚上，我参加了一个小时的会议时，她让她去了房子。 （在安娜堡，这是打破和进入的一年。）当我回到家时，我们去睡觉了。 我们彼此享受，享受自由，就像肉体的快乐一样。 后来我请她吃饭，1970年总是包括早餐。 我们每周见过一次，还在和别人约会，然后一周两次，然后每周三到四次，没见别人。 一天晚上，我们谈到了婚姻。 很快我们改变了主题，因为我年纪大了十九岁，如果我们结婚了，她就会成长为寡妇。 我们于1972年4月结婚。我们在安娜堡住了三年，1975年离开密歇根州前往新罕布什尔州。 她崇拜这个古老的家庭住宅。
[9] For almost twenty years, I woke before Jane and brought her coffee in bed. When she rose, she walked Gus the dog. Then each of us retreated to a workroom to write, at opposite ends of our two-story house. Mine was the ground floor in front, next to Route 4. Hers was the second floor in the rear, beside Ragged Mountain’s old pasture. In the separation of our double solitude, we each wrote poetry in the morning. We had lunch, eating sandwiches and walking around without speaking to each other. Afterward, we took a twenty-minute nap, gathering energy for the rest of the day, and woke to our daily fuck. Afterward I felt like cuddling, but Jane’s climaxreleased her into energy. She hurried from bed to workroom.
[9]近二十年来，我在简之前醒来，把咖啡带到了床上。 当她起身时，她走向了Gus the dog。 然后我们每个人都退回到工作室，在我们两层楼的房子的两端写字。 我是前面的一楼，在4号公路旁边。她是后方的二楼，旁边是Ragged Mountain的老牧场。 在我们双重孤独的分离中，我们每个人都在早上写诗。 我们共进午餐，吃三明治，四处走动，没有互相交谈。 之后，我们休息了二十分钟，在剩下的时间里收集能量，然后醒来，我们每天他妈的。 后来我感觉自己好像拥抱，但简的高潮让她精力充沛。 她急忙从床上到工作室。
[10] For several hours afterward, I went back to work at my desk. Late in the afternoon, I read aloud to Jane for an hour. I read Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” twice, the Old Testament, William Faulkner, more Henry James, seventeenth-century poets. Before supper I drank a beer and glanced at The New Yorker while Jane cooked, sipping a glass of wine. Slowly she made a delicious dinner—maybe veal cutlets with mushroom-and-garlic gravy, maybe summer’s asparagus from the bed across the street—then asked me to carry our plates to the table while she lit the candle. Through dinner we talked about our separate days.
[10]几个小时后，我回到办公桌前工作。 下午晚些时候，我向Jane大声朗读了一个小时。 我读过华兹华斯的“序曲”，亨利詹姆斯的“大使”两次，旧约，威廉福克纳，更多亨利詹姆斯，十七世纪的诗人。 晚饭前我喝了一杯啤酒，瞥了一眼纽约人，而简煮了，喝着一杯酒。 慢慢地，她做了一顿美味的晚餐 - 也许是小牛肉片，里面有蘑菇和大蒜肉汁，也许是街对面床上的夏天芦笋 - 然后让我在点燃蜡烛时把盘子拿到桌子上。 通过晚餐，我们谈到了我们不同的日子。
[11] Summer afternoons we spent beside Eagle Pond, on a bite-sized beach among frogs, mink, and beaver. Jane lay in the sun, tanning, while I read books in a canvas sling chair. Every now and then, we would dive into the pond. Sometimes, for an early supper, we broiled sausage on a hibachi. After twenty years of our remarkable marriage, living and writing together in double solitude, Jane died of leukemia at forty-seven, on April 22, 1995.
[11]夏天的下午，我们在鹰池旁边，在青蛙，水貂和海狸之间的一个大小的海滩上度过。 当我在帆布吊椅上看书时，简躺在阳光下晒黑。 我们时不时地潜入池塘。 有时，为了早餐，我们在hibachi上烤香肠。 经过二十年的卓越婚姻，双重孤独地生活和写作，简于1995年4月22日在47岁时因白血病去世。
[12] Now it is April 22, 2016, and Jane has been dead for more than two decades. Earlier this year, at eighty-seven, I grieved for her in a way I had never grievedbefore. I was sick and thought I was dying. Every day of her dying, I stayed by her side—a year and a half. It was miserable that Jane should die so young, and it was redemptive that I could be with her every hour of every day. Last January I grieved again, this time that she would not sit beside me as I died.
[12]现在是2016年4月22日，简已经死了二十多年。 今年早些时候，在八十七岁时，我以一种我从未悲伤过的方式为她感到悲痛。 我病了，以为我快死了。 她垂死的每一天，我一直呆在她身边 - 一年半。 简应该如此年轻地死去是一件悲惨的事情，而且我每天每小时都可以和她在一起。 去年一月，我又悲伤了，这一次，我死的时候她不会坐在我旁边。
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