RESTLESS LOVE
不止息的愛
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
約翰·沃爾夫岡·馮·歌德
THROUGH rain, through snow,
Through tempest go!
穿過雨，穿過雪，穿過暴風雨!」
'Mongst streaming caves,
O'er misty waves,On, on! still on!
蒙古流的洞穴，在朦朧的波浪上，
前進，前進!
Peace, rest have flown!
還在!安息，安息已逝!
Sooner through sadness
早穿過悲傷
I'd wish to be slain,
我願被殺死，
Than all the gladness
勝過所有的歡樂
Of life to sustain
All the fond yearning
生命支撐著所有的嚮往
That heart feels for heart,
Only seems burning
那顆心對心的感覺，
只是看似在燃燒
To make them both smart.
讓他們都如此聰明。
How shall I fly?
我該怎麼飛呢?
Forestwards hie?
穿過森林？
Vain were all strife!
爭鬥都是徒勞的!
Bright crown of life.
明亮的生命之冠。
Turbulent bliss,--Love, thou art this!
奔流的幸福——你就是愛！
How to Read a Book
如何閱讀一本書
Joseph Brodsky
約瑟夫·布羅茨基
The idea of a book fair in the city where, a century ago, F』riedrich Nietzsche lost his mind has, in its own turn, a nice ring of madness-a Mijbius ring to be precise (commonly known as a vicious circle), for several stalls in this book fair are occupied by the complete or selected works of this great German. On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author’s existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
一個世紀前，在這座城市舉辦書展的想法，當時尼採已失去了他的思想，在它自己的回合，一個美麗的瘋狂的循環——準確地說，是米耶比烏斯環(通常被稱為惡性循環)，因為在這個書展的幾個攤位上陳列著這位偉大德國人的全集或精選作品。總的來說，無限是出版事業的一個很明顯的方面，如果僅僅因為它將已故作者的存在延伸到他所預想的範圍之外，或者為活著的作者提供了一個他無法衡量的未來。換句話說，這就是商業交易，我們都喜歡的未來是無止境的。
On the whole, books are indeed less finite than
ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors-mainly because they occupy a smaller amount of physical space than those who penned them. Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust. Yet even this form of the future is better than the memory of a few surviving relatives or friends on which one cannot rely, and often it is precisely the appetite for this posthumous dimension which sets one’s pen in motion.
總的來說，書籍的確比我們自己更有限。即使是他們中最糟糕的作者也比他們活得更久——主要是因為他們佔據了一個較小的空間物理空間。他們常常坐在書架上吸收灰塵，而作家自己早已變成了一捧灰塵。然而，然而，即使是這種形式的未來，也比回憶幾位尚存的親人或朋友要好得多，往往者哪個是如此對死後世界的欲望這使人動筆寫作。
Ocean, with pages and pages rustling in every direction, clinging to a raft of whose ability to stay afloat you are not so sure. The alternative therlefore would be to develop your own taste, to build your own compass, to familiarize yourself, as it were, with particular stars and constellations-dim or bright, but always remote.
海洋，一頁又一頁沙沙作響，緊緊抓住一隻木筏，它是否有能力浮在水面上，你卻不敢肯定。因此，另一種選擇將是，培養自己的品味，建立自己的羅盤，像這樣去熟悉特定的星星和星座——暗淡或明亮，但總是遙遠的。
This, however, takes a hell of a lot of time, and you may easily find yourself old and gray, heading for the exit with a lousy volume under your arm. Another alternative-or perhaps just a part of the same-is to rely on hearsay; a friend’s advice, a reference caught in a text that you happen to like.
然而，這需要非常多的時間，你會很容易發現自己老了，頭髮花白了，帶著你那糟糕的聲音走向出口，另一種選擇——或者部分如此——是依靠道聽途說;一個朋友的忠告，朋友的建議，一篇你碰巧喜歡的文章裡的參考。
Although not institutionalized in any fashion (which wouldn’t be such a bad idea), this kind of procedure is familiar to all of us from a tender age. Yet this too proves to be poor insurance, for the ocean of available literature swells and widens constantly.
雖然沒有任何制度化的方式(這也不是一個壞主意)，這種程序是我們所有人從小就熟悉的。然而，這也被證明是一種拙劣的保險，因為可獲得的文學作品的海洋在不斷膨脹和擴大。
The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one
becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction. Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed and laconic intensity of poetic diction.
讀詩越多，寬容越少，因為任何形式的冗長，就是在政治上或者哲學話語，無論是歷史上的，社會上的研究或小說藝術也是這樣。散文的好風格總是以精確、速度和簡潔著稱，還有詩歌措辭的強度。
A child of epitaph and epigram, conceived indeed as a short cut to any conceivable subject matter, poetry to prose is a great disciplinarian. It teaches the latter not only the value of each word but also the mercurial mental patterns of the species, alternatives to linear composition, the knack of omitting the self-evident, emphasis on detail, the technique of anticlimax.
它是墓志銘和警句的結晶，確實被認為是任何可以想到的主題的捷徑，從詩歌到散文是一位偉大的紀律嚴明者。它教給後者的不僅是每個詞的價值，還有物種多變的心理模式，線性構圖的替代，省略不言而喻的技巧，強調細節，以及反高潮的技巧。
The truth of the matter is that poetry simply happens to be older than prose and thus has covered a greater distance. Literature started with poetry, with the song of a nomad that
predates the scribblings of a settler.
事情的真相是，詩歌只是碰巧比散文更古老，因此跨越了更長的距離。文學始於詩歌，始於遊牧民的歌聲，甚至早於拓荒者的塗鴉。
And although I have compared somewhere the difference between poetry and prose to that between the air force and the infantry, the suggestion that I make now has nothing to do with either hierarchy or the anthropological origins of literature. All I am trying to do is to be practical and spare your eyesight and brain cells a lot of useless printed matter. Poetry, one might say, has been invented for just this purpose-for it is synonymous with economy. What one should do, therefore, is repea.t, albeit in miniature, the process that took place in our civilization in the course of two millennia. It is easier than you might think, for the body of poetry is far less voluminous than that of prose.
雖然我曾經把詩歌和散文的區別比作空軍和步兵的區別，但我現在提出的建議與等級制度或文學的人類學起源無關。我所做的一切都是實用的，從大量無用的印刷品中保護你的視力和腦細胞。有人可能會說，詩歌就是為了這個目的而發明的——因為它是經濟的同義詞。因此，我們應該做的是重複注射。儘管只是一個文化縮影，但我們的文明在兩千年的過程中發生了巨大的變化。詩歌的主題遠比你想像的要深遠，因為詩歌的主體遠沒有散文那麼龐大。
What’s more, if you are concerned mainly with contemporary literature, then your job is indeed a piece of cake. All you have to do is to arm yourselves for a couple of months with the works of poets in your mother tongue, preferably from the first half of this century. I suppose you』ll end up with a dozen rather slim books, and by the end of the summer you-that is, your literary taste-will be in great shape.
更重要的是,如果你主要關注當代文學，那麼你的工作確實是小菜一碟。你們所要做的就是用母語詩人的作品武裝自己幾個月，最好是本世紀上半葉的詩歌。我猜你最後會有一打相當薄的書，到夏天結束的時候，你——也就是你的文學品味——將會 變得非常好。
How to choose a good book
如何挑選一本好書？
另外，也想在這裡給大家分享一下最近讀到的一篇關於如何挑選好書的文章。我自己平時在路過書店的時候非常頭痛，特別是一些小說，因為我們都是標題黨，很容易被標題所吸引，但是買回家卻並不是自己想像中的好看。如何真正地選到一本真正心儀的書籍呢？大家不妨從以下幾個步驟出發：
我們要如何做出選擇呢？當你把這些步驟做完，你自然能總結出來，一本小說的一頁是否成功地吸引了你的注意，最後，別忘了，書籍是用來享受的。希望大家都有好的閱讀享受。
快到聖誕節啦，提前祝朋友們聖誕快樂，平安喜樂，溫暖幸福常隨心間。
如果您也喜歡閱讀，如果您有想要閱讀分享的優質文章，或者您感興趣的話題推薦，歡迎留言交流。
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