从典籍中找到安慰
Comfort Found in Good Old Books
从典籍中找到安慰
George Hamlin Fitch
乔治.哈姆林.菲奇
作者简介
乔治.哈姆林.菲奇（George Hamlin Fitch，1852—1925），美国作家。在19世纪末到20世纪初的30多年时间里，菲奇在《旧金山纪事报》（San Francisco Chronicle）开设了每周专栏。他的作品还有《现代英语书的力量》（Modern English Books of Power）、《从典籍中找到安慰》（Comfort Found in Good Old Books）等。
本文最初发表于《旧金山纪事报》，后收入1911年出版的《从典籍中找到安慰》一书。文中，菲奇谈及儿子死后，自己从阅读中得到的慰藉：“把书放在触手可及的架上，反复阅读，直到书的智慧与美好渗入你心中......只有这样，你才能武装自己，面对现实命运最残酷的打击。”字里行间的父子情与爱书情会在不经意间触及每个人心底最柔软的角落。
Nothing Soothes Grief Like Sterling Old Books—
How the Sudden Death of an Only Son Proved the
Value of the Reading Habit
没有什么能像典籍一样抚慰悲伤——
独子的突然去世
印证了阅读的价值
For the thirty years that I have spoken weekly to readers of the Chronicle through its book review columns, it has been my constant aim to preach the doctrine of the importance of cultivating the habit of reading good books, as the chief resource in time of trouble and sickness. This doctrine I enforced, because for many years reading has been my principal recreation, and I have proved its usefulness in broadening one’s view of life and in storing up material from the world’s greatest writers which can be recalled at will. But it never occurred to me that this habit would finally come to mean the only thing that makes life worth living.
When one passes the age of forty he begins to build a certain scheme for the years to come. That scheme may involve many things—domestic life, money-getting, public office, charity, education. With me it included mainly literary work, in which I was deeply interested, and close companionship with an only son, a boy of such lovable personal qualities that he had endeared himself to me from his early childhood. My relations with my son, Harold, were not those of the stern parent and the timid son, as Edmond Gosse has depicted with so much unconscious pathos in his Father and Son. Rather it was the relation of elder brother and younger brother.
30年来，我每周都通过《旧金山纪事报》的书评专栏向读者诉说。我一直宣扬培养阅读好书这种习惯的重要性，让人们将好书视为遭受困苦和病痛时的精神寄托。我如此强调这一点，是因为多年以来阅读已成为我的主要消遣；而且，我也证实了阅读的好处，它能让人拓宽眼界，并将世间最伟大作家们的思想储存起来，以便随时调用。但我从未料到，有一天阅读会成为支撑我活下去的唯一动力。
一个人年过不惑后，便会开始为余生作规划。这个规划可能包含很多事，比如家庭生活、赚钱、公职、慈善、教育。我的规划里有自己心爱的文学作品，以及与独生子的亲密关系。这个小家伙的性格实在可爱，他从小时就是我的心头肉。如果说埃德蒙•戈斯在《父与子》[1]中描述了一种严父怯子的关系，在不经意间流露出伤感之情，我和儿子哈罗德则更像是一对亲兄弟。
Hence, when only ten days ago this close and tender association of many years was broken by death—swift and wholly unexpected, as a bolt from cloudless skies—it seemed to me for a few hours as if the keystone of the arch of my life had fallen and everything lay heaped in ugly ruin. I had waited for him on that Friday afternoon until six o’clock. Friday is my day off, my one holiday in a week of hard work, when my son always dined with me and then accompanied me to the theater or other entertainment. When he did not appear at six o’clock in the evening I left a note saying I had gone to our usual restaurant. That dinner I ate alone. When I returned in an hour it was to be met with the news that Harold lay cold in death at the very time I wrote the note that his eyes would never see.
When the first shock had passed came the review of what was left of life to me. Most of the things which I had valued highly for the sake of my son now had little or no worth for me; but to take up again the old round of work, without the vivid, joyous presence of a companion dearer than life itself, one must have some great compensations; and the chief of these compensations lay in the few feet of books in my library case—in those old favorites of all ages that can still beguile me, though my head is bowed in the dust with grief and my heart is as sore as an open wound touched by a careless hand.
...
就在短短十天前，死神突如其来的造访如同晴天霹雳一般，打破了这段维系多年的亲密父子关系。有几个小时，我只觉得人生的支柱崩塌，一切都化为丑陋的废墟。那个周五下午，我等他等到六点。周五是我繁忙的一周里唯一的假日，儿子总是在这天来找我吃饭，然后和我一起上剧院或找点别的乐子。那天晚上他到六点还没露面，所以我留了张字条，说我先去我俩常去的饭馆了。那顿饭是我一个人吃的。一小时后我回到家，才知道就在我留言的时候，哈罗德已永远闭上了双眼，再也没法看见我的留言了。
最初的震惊过后，我开始思考自己的一生还剩下些什么。我曾经因为儿子而在乎的东西，现在已经没有多少意义。对我来说，儿子比我的生命更重要。没有活泼快乐的儿子相伴，我要想重新投入工作，就必须有极大的慰藉。这种慰藉，主要来自我书房里几英尺高的书堆。尽管我被悲伤压得抬不起头，尽管我心里像被人胡乱触碰的伤口一样疼痛，但历代受人喜爱的典籍仍能转移我的注意力。
……
And so, in this roundabout way, I come back to my literary shelves, to urge upon you who are wrapped warm in domestic life and love to provide against the time when you may be cut off in a day from the companionship that makes life precious. Take heed and guard against the hour that may find you forlorn and unprotected against death’s malignant hand. Cultivate the great worthies of literature, even if this means the neglect of the latest magazine or of the newest sensational romance. Be content to confess ignorance of the ephemeral books that will be forgotten in a single half year, so that you may spend your leisure hours in genial converse with the great writers of all time. Dr. Eliot of Harvard recently aroused much discussion of his “five feet of books.” Personally, I would willingly dispense with two-thirds of the books he regards as indispensable. But the vital thing is that you have your own favorites—books that are real and genuine, each one brimful of the inspiration of a great soul. Keep these books on a shelf convenient for use, and read them again and again until you have saturated your mind with their wisdom and their beauty. So may you come into the true Kingdom of Culture, whose gates never swing open to the pedant or the bigot. So may you be armed against the worst blows that fate can deal you in this world.
于是，辗转良久之后，我又回到书架前，提醒那些被亲情和友爱包围的人，为有朝一日失去生命中的至亲作好准备。有时，死神的毒手会令你陷入孤独无助的境地，你须要注意提防这种时刻的到来。与文学作品中的伟大人物为伴吧，即使这意味着要忽略最新的杂志或耸人听闻的传奇故事。忽略那些不出半年就会被人遗忘的应时之作吧，这样你才能利用闲暇时间与历代文豪亲切交谈。最近，哈佛大学艾略特博士的“五英尺书架”[2]引起了热议。在我看来，他所谓的必读书有三分之二不必读。但关键在于，你得有自己的喜好——每本货真价实的书都蕴含伟人的思想，能给读者带来启迪。把这些书放在触手可及的架上，反复阅读，直到书的智慧与美好渗入你心中。只有这样，你才能进入真正的文化领域——它的大门永远不会向卖弄学问或抱有偏见的人敞开。也只有这样，你才能武装自己，面对现实命运最残酷的打击。
Who turns in time of affliction to the magazines or to those books of clever short stories which so amuse us when the mind is at peace and all goes well? No literary skill can bind up the brokenhearted; no beauty of phrase satisfy the soul that is torn by grief. No, when our house is in mourning, we turn to the Bible first—that font of wisdom and comfort which never fails him who comes to it with clean hands and a contrite heart. It is the medicine of life. And after it come the great books written by those who have walked through the Valley of the Shadow, yet have come out sweet and wholesome, with words of wisdom and counsel for the afflicted. One book through which beats the great heart of a man who suffered yet grew strong under the lash of fate is worth more than a thousand books that teach no real lesson of life, that are as broken cisterns holding no water, when the soul is athirst and cries out for refreshment.
This personal heart-to-heart talk with you, my patient readers of many years, is the first in which I have indulged since the great fire swept away all my precious books—the hoarded treasures of forty years. Against my will it has been forced from me, for I am like a sorely wounded animal and would fain nurse my pain alone. It is written in the first bitterness of a crushing sorrow; but it is also written in the spirit of hope and confidence—the spirit which I hope will strengthen me to spend time and effort in helping to make life easier for some poor boys in memory of the one dearest boy who has gone before me into that “undiscovered country,” where I hope someday to meet him, with the old bright smile on his face and the old firm grip of the hand that always meant love and tenderness and steadfast loyalty.
在痛苦的时候，有谁会求助于杂志，或者求助于你平心静气、万事顺意时读着玩的小故事？没有哪种文学技巧能弥补破碎的心灵，没有哪种优美的表达能抚慰悲伤的灵魂。没错，它们都没用。当全家沉浸于哀悼之中，我们首先会求助于《圣经》。只要有一双洁净的手和一颗忏悔的心，这智慧与慰藉的源泉就绝不会让你失望。它是生命的良药。接下来，我们向伟大的作品求助。这些书的作者曾走过“死亡笼罩的幽谷”[3]，他们写下的书却如此动人、如此有益身心。书中充满睿智的话语和忠告，为苦难者带来帮助。有些人在命运的锤打下变得坚强，这种人呕心沥血写的一本书胜过一千本没有揭示人生真谛的书。对焦渴难耐、高呼求水的灵魂来说，没有揭示人生真谛的书就像破裂的蓄水池，无法提供水源。
长期支持我的耐心的读者们，这次和你们谈论私事，是自从大火吞噬了我40年来收集的珍贵藏书之后，我第一次这样放纵自己的情感。我就像受伤的孤兽，喜欢自己疗伤；这次放纵情感，实非我的本意。这篇文章是我在第一波悲痛来袭时写成的，也是带着希望和信心写成的——但愿这种希望和信心能让我坚强起来，让我投入时间和精力，去帮助那些可怜的孩子摆脱艰苦的生活，以此纪念比我早进入“未知国度”的爱子。但愿有朝一日，当我与爱子在天国重逢时，他会像过去一样，露出灿烂的笑容并紧紧地拉住我的手，那曾一直是我俩友爱、温情和坚定忠诚的象征。
[1] 埃德蒙.威廉.戈斯（Sir Edmund William Gosse，1849—1928），英国诗人、评论家，《父与子》（Father and Son）是他1907年出版的自传。
[2] “五英尺书架”，指前哈佛大学校长查尔斯.艾略特（Charles Eliot）1909年出版的《哈佛经典》。全书共51册，收集的经典包容颇丰，从古希腊的悲剧和哲学到19世纪的达尔文进化论皆有。全书刚好放满一个五英尺长的书架，“五英尺书架”因此得名。
[3] 此处源自《圣经.诗篇》23:4，原句为“我虽走过死亡笼罩的幽谷，却无惧邪恶”（Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil）。
