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伯特兰·罗素<br>方舟子译<br><br><br>有三种简单然而无比强烈的激情左右了我的一生:对<br>爱的渴望,对知识的探索和对人类苦难的难以忍受的怜悯。<br>这些激情象飓风,无处不在、反复无常地吹拂着我,吹过<br>深重的苦海,濒于绝境。<br><br>我寻找爱,首先是因为它使人心醉神迷,这种陶醉是<br>如此的美妙,使我愿意牺牲所有的余生去换取几个小时这<br>样的欣喜。我寻找爱,还因为它解除孤独,在可怕的孤独<br>中,一颗颤抖的灵魂从世界的边缘看到冰冷、无底、死寂<br>的深渊。最后,我寻找爱,还因为在爱的交融中,神秘<br>而又具体而微地,我看到了圣贤和诗人们想象出的天堂的<br>前景。这就是我所寻找的,而且,虽然对人生来说似乎<br>过于美妙,这也是我终于找到了的。<br><br>以同样的激情我探索知识。我希望能够理解人类的心<br>灵。我希望能够知道群星为何闪烁。我试图领悟毕达哥拉<br>斯所景仰的数字力量,它支配着此消彼涨。仅在不大的一<br>定程度上,我达到了此目的。<br><br>爱和知识,只要有可能,通向着天堂。但是怜悯总把<br>我带回尘世。痛苦呼喊的回声回荡在我的内心。忍饥挨饿<br>的孩子,惨遭压迫者摧残的受害者,被儿女们视为可憎的<br>负担的无助的老人,连同这整个充满了孤独、贫穷和痛苦<br>的世界,使人类所应有的生活成为了笑柄。我渴望能够减<br>少邪恶,但是我无能为力,而且我自己也在忍受折磨。<br><br>这就是我的一生。我发现它值得一过。如果再给我一<br>次机会,我会很高兴地再活它一次。<br><br>(摘自罗素自传的前言)<br><br><br>What I have Lived For<br>------Bertrand Russell<br><br>Three passions,simple but overwhelmingly strong,have governed<br>my life:the longing for love,the search for knowledge,and unbearable<br>pity for the suffering of mankind.These passions,like great winds,have<br>blown me hither and thither,in a wayward course,over a deep ocean of<br>anguish,reaching to the very verge of despair.<br><br>I have sought love,first,because it brings ecstasy--ecstasy so<br>great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a<br>few hours of this joy.I have sought it,next,because it relieves<br>loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering<br>consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold<br>unfathomable lifeless abyss.I have sought it,finally,because in the<br>union of love I have seen,in a mystic miniature,the prefiguring<br>vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.This is<br>what I sought,and though it might seem too good for human life,<br>this is what--at last--I have found.<br><br>With equal passion I have sought knowledge.I have wished to<br>understand the hearts of men.I have wished to know why the stars<br>shine.And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which<br>number holds sway above the flux.A little of this,but not much,I<br>have achieved.<br><br>Love and knowledge,so far as they were possible,led upward<br>toward the heavens.But always pity brought me back to earth.Echoes<br>of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.Children in famine,victims<br>tortured by oppressors,helpless old people a hated burden to their<br>sons,and the whole world of loneliness,poverty,and pain make a<br>mockery of what human life should be.I long to alleviate the evil,<br>but I can't ,and I too suffer.<br><br>This has been my life.I have found it worth living,and would<br>gladly live itagain if the chance were offered me.<br><br><br><br> |
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