阅读时间2025.4.21 Sunday 6:30-10:32am.
农历乙巳年三月廿四日卯时辰时许
大约临摹《孙子兵法》70分钟，大约阅读《中华书法一本通》50分钟，另外阅读《新编英美文学选读》1小时，阅读《如何独立思考》1小时，共计4小时2分钟。
今天，暂且尝试翻译Walden的第六章部分内容，如下：
Chapter 6 Visitors
第六章 访客
I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.
我想，我至爱社会。并且，我已做够准备，让自己像吸血鬼一样，用我自己方式，吸附在从旁而过的满血人们身上。我自然不是隐士，但是，如果事有必要前往，我可能是酒吧的坚定常客，只不过心有所属，“身在曹营心在汉”。
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.
我房中有三把“交椅”，一把给独处，一把给“朋友”，一把给“社会”。当有大量不速之客到来时，只有第三把“社会”交椅给他们，然而他们只能站着，以便节省空间。
It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.
多少伟大男性女性，将坐拥斗室，令人惊叹不已。我有25或者30“平”的灵魂栖息地，而且，我们还未来得及意识到，我们同别人心灵接近，就已经擦肩而过。
Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants.
我们房间各处，包括公共和私人空间两类，在他们几乎无数的房间，他们大厅、他们地窖，为所谓和平，而存储着红酒和其余军需品。在我看来，他们某种程度上挥霍无度。
They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.
One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words.
You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.
Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. I
n my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear,—we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other’s undulations.
If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heatand moisture may have a chance to evaporate.
If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.
As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough.
My “best” room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order.
网友评论