The Summing Up

写作回忆录

William Somerset Maugham

威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆

作者简介

威廉·萨默塞特·毛姆（William Somerset Maugham，1874—1965），英国著名小说家，其文章常在讥讽中潜藏对人性的怜悯与同情。毛姆的不少作品均为中国读者耳熟能详，如《月亮和六便士》（The Moon and Sixpence）和《刀锋》（The Razor's Edge）等。《人性的枷锁》（Of Human Bondage）更是倾尽其毕生心血的巨著，奠定了他伟大小说家的地位。2006年底，由影星爱德华·诺顿和娜奥米·沃茨领衔主演，改编自毛姆小说《面纱》（The Painted Veil）的同名电影上映，再度掀起“毛姆热”。

本文节选自1938年出版的《写作回忆录》（The Summing Up）。文中，毛姆开列了自己的“已读书单”，并谈及自己读到烂书也难以“半途而废”的阅读习惯。爱书人的种种“怪癖”或许能使你会心一笑。

At eighteen I knew French, German and some Italian, but I was extremely uneducated and I was deeply conscious of my ignorance. I read everything that came my way. My curiosity was such that I was as willing to read a history of Peru or the reminiscences of a cowboy as a treatise on Provencal poetry or the Confessions of St. Augustine. I suppose it gained me a certain amount of general knowledge which is useful for the novelist to have. One never knows when an out-of-the-way bit of information will come in handy. I made lists of what I read and one of these lists by some accident I still have. It is my reading for two months and, but that I made it only for myself, I could not believe that it was veracious. It shows that I read three of Shakespeare's plays, two volumes of Mommsen's History of Rome, a large part of Lanson's Literature Francaise, two or three novels, some of the French classics, a couple of scientific works and a play of Ibsen's. I was indeed the industrious apprentice.

18岁时，我已懂得法语、德语和一些意大利语，但我极度无知，而且深知自己的无知。我碰见什么书都读。为了满足永无止境的好奇心，我愿意读秘鲁的历史、牛仔的回忆录，也愿读研究普罗旺斯抒情诗的论文以及圣奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》。我猜，这些书让我获得了一些对小说家有用的常识。一些不同寻常的知识，说不定什么时候就能派上用场。我把读过的书都列了书单，其中一张书单意外地留到了今天，上面记录了我两个月读的书。我列书单只给自己看，但我不敢相信上面写的是真的——我在两个月里读了三部莎士比亚戏剧、两卷蒙森的《罗马史》、朗松《法国文学史》的大部分、两三部小说、一些法国经典名著、几部科学著作和一部易卜生的戏剧。那时我真是个勤奋的学徒。

 

During the time I was at St. Thomas's Hospital I went systematically through English, French, Italian and Latin literature. I read a lot of history, a little philosophy and a good deal of science. My curiosity was too great to allow me to give much time to reflect upon what I read; I could hardly wait to finish one book, so eager was I to begin another. This was always an adventure, and I would start upon a famous work as excitedly as a reasonable young man would go in to bat for his side or a nice girl goes to a dance. Now and then journalists in search of copy ask me what the most thrilling moment of my life is. If I were not ashamed to, I might answer that it is the moment when I began to read Goethe's Faust.

我在圣托马斯医院时，系统地阅读了英国、法国、意大利和拉丁文学。我读了很多历史书、一点哲学书和一大堆科学著作。我的好奇心太过旺盛，让我无暇回味读过的书;我还没读完手头的书，就迫不及待地翻开另一本书。这简直就是一场探险。我开始读一本名著时，就像理智的小伙准备为自己一方击球，或是漂亮的姑娘参加舞会一样激动不已。常有为某本书做调研的记者问我，我一生中最激动的时刻是何时。如果我不是羞于吐露真情，我可能这么回答：是我开始读歌德的《浮士德》时。

I have never quite lost this feeling, and even now the first pages of a book sometimes send the blood racing through my veins. To me reading is a rest as to other people conversation or a game of cards. It is more than that; it is a necessity, and if I am deprived of it for a little while I find myself as irritable as the addict deprived of his drug. I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. That is putting it too low. I have spent many delightful hours poring over the price list of the Army and Navy Stores, the lists of second-hand booksellers and the A.B.C. All these are redolent of romance. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

我从未失去这种感觉。即使是现在，有时一本书的前几页还会让我热血沸腾。阅读对我来说是休息，就像聊天或打牌对其他人来说是休息一样。不仅如此，阅读是我的必需品。如果我离开书一小会儿，就会像瘾君子离开毒品一样急躁易怒。过不了多久，我就宁愿去读日程表或书籍目录，也不愿意没东西可读。这是把它们贬得太低了。我会花几个小时浏览军用物品商店的价目表、二手书店的书单和字母表，并且乐在其中。它们散发着浪漫的气息，比一半的小说都有趣多了。

 

I have put books aside only because I was conscious that time was passing and that it was my business to live. I have gone into the world because I thought it was necessary in order to get the experience without which I could not write, but I have gone into it also because I wanted experience for its own sake. It did not seem to me enough only to be a writer. The pattern I had designed for myself insisted that I should take the utmost part I could in this fantastic affair of being a man. I desired to feel the common pains and enjoy the common pleasures that are part of the common human lot. I saw no reason to subordinate the claims of sense to the tempting lure of spirit and I was determined to get whatever fulfillment I could out of social intercourse and human relations, out of food, drink and fornication, luxury, sport, art, travel, and as Henry James says, whatever. But it was an effort and I have always returned to my books and my own company with relief.

我愿意把书搁下，只因为意识到时光飞逝，生活才是人生要务。我走进这个世界，不仅因为我觉得需要获取经验作为写作素材，还因为我也为了体验人生而去体验。我似乎不满足于只做个作家。我为自己设计的人生道路要求我竭力享受生而为人的一切精彩。我想要痛常人之痛，乐常人之乐。我认为没有理由让感官的欲求屈从于精神的诱惑。我决定尽可能从以下方面寻求满足：社交、佳肴、美酒、通奸、奢侈品、体育、艺术、旅游，以及亨利·詹姆斯1说的“无论什么”。但这要耗费精力，所以我总是如释重负地回到书的身旁。

And yet, though I have read so much, I am a bad reader. I read slowly and I am a poor skipper. I find it difficult to leave a book, however bad and however much it bores me, unfinished. I could count on my fingers the number of books that I have not read from cover to cover. On the other hand there are few books that I have read twice. I know very well that there are many of which I cannot get the full value on a single reading, but in that they have given me all I was capable of getting at the time, and this, though I may forget their details, remains a permanent enrichment. I know people who read the same book over and over again. It can only be that they read with their eyes and not with their sensibility. It is a mechanical exercise. It is doubtless a harmless occupation, but they are wrong if they think it an intelligent one.

然而，尽管读了许多书，我却是个糟糕的读者。我读书很慢，又不会跳读。无论一本书有多糟糕，无论它令我多厌烦，都很难让我半途而废。我没有从头读到尾的书可谓屈指可数;但读过两遍的书也没几本。我很清楚，很多书只读一遍无法获得其全部价值，但因为它们已经使我得到了那时能有的收获，所以尽管我可能淡忘书中的细节，但却保留了永恒的财富。我知道有些人反复读同一本书。这只可能是他们读书过眼不过心。这是一种机械化的活动。这无疑是一种无害的消遣，但如果他们觉得这是明智之举，那就大错特错了。

 

In my youth, when my instinctive feeling about a book differed from that of authoritative critics I did not hesitate to conclude that I was wrong. I did not know how often critics accept the conventional view and it never occurred to me that they could talk with assurance of what they did not know very much about. It was long before I realized that the only thing that mattered to me in a work of art was what I thought about it. I have acquired now a certain confidence in my own judgment, for I have noticed that what I felt instinctively forty years ago about the writers I read then, and what I would not heed because it did not agree with current opinion, is now pretty generally accepted. For all that I sill read a great deal of criticism, for I think it a very agreeable form of literary composition. One does not always want to be reading to the profit of one's soul and there is no pleasant way of idling away an hour or two than reading a volume of criticism. It is diverting to agree; it is diverting to differ; and it is always interesting to know what an intelligent man has to say about some writer, Henry More, for instance, or Richardson, whom you have never had occasion to read.

年轻时，当我对某本书的直觉看法与权威评论家不同时，我会毫不犹豫地认为自己错了。我不知道评论家持有成见的情况是多么普遍，也不知道他们对自己不熟悉的事物也能品头论足。过了很久我才意识到，艺术作品对我的唯一意义在于我对它的看法。如今，我对自己的判断力有了些许自信，因为我注意到：40年前我对一些作家的直觉看法，当时因为不符合主流观点，我没有太过留心。如今，这些看法已经普遍被人接受。尽管如此，我仍会读大量的书评，因为我认为它是一种很令人愉快的文学创作形式。一个人不会总想着阅读要对灵魂有益。想要消磨一两个小时，没有比读一本书评更愉快的事了。无论是看法一致还是意见不同，它都可供消遣。知道一位智者怎么看待某些你没读过他的书的作家——比如亨利·莫尔或理查森——总是件有趣的事情。

But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second hand they can be of small service to you. I do not read a book for the book's sake, but for my own. It is not my business to judge it, but to absorb what I can of it, as the amoeba absorbs a particle of a foreign body, and what I cannot assimilate has nothing to do with me. I am not a scholar, a student or a critic; I am a professional writer and now I read only what is useful to me professionally. Anyone can write a book that will revolutionize the ideas that have been held for centuries on the Ptolemies and I shall contentedly leave it unread; he can describe an incredibly adventurous journey in the heart of Patagonia and I shall remain ignorant of it. There is no need for the writer of fiction to be an expert on any subject but his own; on the contrary, it is hurtful to him, since, human nature being weak, he is hard put to it to resist the temptation of inappositely using his special knowledge.

然而，书中唯一重要的东西是它对你的意义;对于书评家来说，它或许有别的意义，有更深的含义，但从提供间接信息的方面看，它对你帮助不大。我不是为书读书，而是为我自己读书。评判书的好坏不关我的事;我要吸收自己能吸收的部分，就像变形虫吸收异物一般，无法吸收的部分则与我无关。我不是学者、研究者或书评家;我是一名职业作家，现在只读对写作有用的书。任何人都可以写一本书，颠覆几个世纪以来关于托勒密王朝2的看法，我可以开开心心地不去读它;别人可以描写在巴塔哥尼亚中心地带的奇妙冒险之旅，我则可以对此一无所知。小说家只要精通本职就好，无需样样在行;反过来说，样样在行对他有害无益;因为人性软弱，他很难抵制诱惑，会滥用自己的特殊知识。

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1．亨利·詹姆斯（Henry James，1843—1916），在美国出生的英国小说家，出身名门望族。其作品的基本主题是新大陆的旺盛生机与旧世界的腐败堕落之间的冲突。

2．托勒密王朝（前323—前30），希腊人在埃及建立的王朝，由亚历山大大帝部将托勒密所建，其亡国之君是著名的埃及艳后克利奥帕特拉七世。