标题: 名人英语情书选 [打印本页] 作者: badun 时间: 2008-8-2 10:09
标题: 名人英语情书选
Lawrence Sterne to Miss L.
Yes! I will steal from the world, and not a babbling tongue shall tell where I am. Echo shall not so much as whisper my hiding place. Suffer the imagination to permit it as a little sun-light cottage, on the side of a romantic hill. Dost thou think I will leave love and friendship behind me? No! They shall be my companions in solitude, for they will sit down and rise up with me in the amiable form of my L ... We will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene.
The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our retirement, and produce such fruit as madness and envy and ambition have always killed in the bud. Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L... has seen a polyanthus blow in December ... me friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind. No planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest flowers. God preserve us! How delightful this prospect in idea! We will build and we will plant, in our own way ...simplicity shall not be tortured by art. We will learn of nature how to live ... she shall be our alchemist, to mingle all the good of life in one salubrious draught. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by the kind and tutelary deity. We will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage.
Adieu, my L ...
Return to one who languishes for your society.
[中文译文]
Oh! Think of me, my sweet beloved, so that I may feel it and so that your joy amid your delightful family, your kind friends and admirers may not be changed into bitterness and grief for me. Think of me. of whom you are the life and soul. Think of my love so profound, so pure, and so devoted, and wish I were with you. I am going to bed praying God for you and yours. I trust my prayers will not be fruitless, as I am asking for their happiness and yours, should it be at the cost of my own life. If you knew how I need to know that you are happy, my beloved, almost as much as to know I am loved by you! I love you, more than anything else in the world. Enjoy your success, this evening, my Victor, your beauty, your genius, and be happy with your delightful family. I will be proud and happy myself, provided amid all this you do not forget me. Above all I do not wish to importune or compromise you. I only want to love you to my last sight.
朱丽叶·德鲁埃致维克多·雨果
Your letter of the 1st hath this moment reached me. I answer it according to our agreement, which shall be inviolable. Truly did you say that, at our arising in the morning, Nature assumes a different aspect. Who could have conjectured the circumstances of my last letter? Friend of my soul, this is terrible, dismaying: it makes one's heart sink, it withers vital energy... dear being, I am thine again; the happiness shall again predominate over this fleeting tribute to self-interest. Yet who would not feel now? Oh'twere as reckless a task to endeavor to annihilate perception while sense existed, as to blunt the sixth sense to such impressions as these! ... Forgive me, dearest friend? I pour out my whole soul to you. I write by fleeting intervals: my pen runs away with my senses. The impassionateness of my sensations grows upon me. Your letter, too, has much affected me. Never, with my consent, shall that intercourse cease which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun which has shed warmth on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect of life. Prejudice might demand the sacrifice, but she is an idol to whom we bow not. The world might demand it; its opinion might require; but the cloud which flees over yon mountain were as important to our happiness, to our usefulness. This must never be, never whilst this existence continues; and when time has enrolled us in the list of the departed, surely this friendship will survive to bear our identity to heaven. What is love, or friendship? Is it something material ... a ball, an apple, a plaything ... which must be taken from one to be given to another? Is it capable of no extension, no communication? Lord Kaimes defines love to be a particularization of the general passion. But this is the love of sensation, of sentiment ... the absurdest of absurd vanities: it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is selfcentered, selfinterested: It desires its own interest; it is the parent of jealousy. Its object is the plaything which it desires to monopolize. Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul, and to communicate to others part of this love were to destroy its essence, to annihilate this chain of straw. But love, the love which we worship , ... virtue, heaven, disinterestedness ... in a word, Friendship ... which has as much to do with the senses as with yonder mountains; that which seeks the good of all ... the good of its object first, not because that object is a minister to its Pleasures, not merely because it even contributes to its happiness, but because it is really worthy, because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of abstracting itself, and loving virtue's own loveliness ... desiring the happiness of others not from the obligation of fearing the happiness of others not from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring heaven: but for pure, simple, unsophisticated virtue. You will soon hear again. Adieu, my dearest friend. Continue to believe that when I am insensible to your excellence, I shall cease to exist.
I have your letter, my adorable love. It has filled my heart with joy... since I left you I have been sad all the time. My only happiness is near you. I go over endlessly in my thought of your kisses, your tears, your delicious jealousy. The charm of my wonderful Josephine kindles a living, blazing fire in-my heart and senses. When shall I be able to pass every minute near you, with nothing to do but to love you and nothing to think of but the pleasure of telling you of it and giving you proof of it? I loved you some time ago; since then I feel that I love you a thousand times better. Ever since I have known you I adore you more every day. That proves how wrong is that saying of La Bruyere "Love comes all of a sudden. " Ah, let me see some of your faults; be less beautiful, less graceful, less tender, less good. But never be jealous and never shed tears. Your tears send me out of my mind ... they set my very blood on fire. Believe me that it is utterly impossible for me to have a single thought that is not yours, a single fancy that is not submissive to your will. Rest well. Restore your health. Come back to me and then at any rate before we die we ought to be able to say: "We were happy for so very many days!" Millions of kisses even to your dog.
You know my heart; you know that all there is desire, thought, boding and longing; you live among spirits and they give you divine wisdom. You must nourish me; you give all that in advance, which I do not understand to ask for. My mind has a small embrace, my love a large one; you must bring them to a balance. Love cannot be quiet till the mind matches its growth; you are matched to my love; you are friendly, kind, and indulgent; let me know when my heart is off the balance. I understand your silent signs.
A look from your eyes into mine, a kiss from you upon my lips, instructs me in all, what might seem delighted to learn, - to one who, like me, had experience from those. I am far from you; mine are become strange to me. I must ever return in thought to that hour when you hold me in the soft fold of your arm. Then I begin to weep, but the tears dry again unawares. Yes, he reaches with his love (thus I think) over to me in this concealed stillness; and should not I, with my eternal undisturbed loving, reach to him in the distance? Ah, conceive what my heart has to say to you; it overflows with soft sighs all whisper to you. Be my only happiness on earth your friendly will to me. O, dear friend, give me but a sign that you are conscious of me.