双语对照 ● What I Have Lived for 我为什么而活
What I Have Lived for 我为什么而活
◎ Bertrand Russell
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable[26]pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
对爱情的渴望，对知识的探寻，对人类苦难无法遏制的同情，是支配我一生的单纯而强烈的三种情感。这些情感就像阵阵狂风，吹拂着四处飘零的我，有时甚至拂过痛苦的海洋，直抵绝望的边缘。
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature[27], the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.
我渴望爱情，有三个原因。首先，爱情给我带来狂喜。这种狂喜是那样有力，我不惜抛弃余下的光阴，只为享受几个小时的爱给我带来的喜悦。其次，我一直在寻找它，因为爱情让我不再孤独。那个经历过可怕孤独的人，他总能穿过世界的边缘，看到冰冷的、无趣的、深不见底的深渊。最后，在我见过的爱的结合中，圣人和诗人所幻想的便是神秘的天堂缩影，这也正是我所追求的。虽然对一般人的生活而言，它有点太美好了，但这就是爱情最终帮我找到的东西。
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, have achieved.
我带着同样的情感探寻知识。我渴望读懂人类的心。我渴望知道为什么星星会发光。而且我还渴望了解毕达哥拉斯的力量。目前，我掌握的不多，就只有一些。
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate[28]in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I can’t, and I too suffer.
爱和知识尽可能地把我带上天堂，可我对人类的怜悯又将我拉回现实世界。痛苦的哭喊声时刻回荡在我的心间。饥荒中的孩童，受统治者压迫的受害者，被儿女视为负担的无助老人，还有全球普遍存在的孤单、贫困和痛苦，这一切的存在都是对人类理想生活的嘲讽。我希望自己有力量减轻这些痛苦，可我无能为力，因为我也是受害者之一。
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
也许这就是我的生活吧！我觉得活着是有意义的。如果再给我一次机会，我会欣然接受这个来之不易的重生的机会。
美丽语录
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start now and make a new ending.
没有人可以回到过去重新开始，但谁都可以从现在开始，书写一个全然不同的结局。
