SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH (III) By George Herbert Palmer

Secondly, “Welcome every opportunity for writing.” Important as I have shown speech to be, there is much that it cannot do. Seldom can it teach structure. Its space is too small. Talking moves in sentences, and rarely demands a paragraph. I make my little remark, —a dozen or two words, —then wait for my friend to hand me back as many more. This gentle exchange continues by the hour; but either of us would feel himself unmannerly if he should grasp an entire five minutes and make it uninterruptedly his. That would not be speaking, but rather speech-making. The brief groupings of words which make up our talk furnish capital practice in precision, boldness, and variety; but they do not contain room enough for exercising our constructive faculties. Considerable length is necessary if we are to learn how to set forth B in right relation to A on the one hand, and to C on the other, and while keeping each a distinct part, we are to be able through their smooth progression to weld all the parts together into a compacted whole. Such wholeness is what we mean by literary form. Lacking it, any piece of writing is a failure; because, in truth, it is not a piece, but pieces. For ease of reading, or for the attainment of an intended effect, unity is essential—the multitude of statements, anecdotes, quotations, arguings, gay sportings, and appeal, all “bending one way their precious influence.” All this dominant unity of the entire piece obliges unity also in the subordinate parts. Not enough has been done when we have huddled together a lot of wandering sentences, and penned them in a paragraph, or even when we have linked them together by the frail ties of “and, and.” A sentence must be compelled to say a single thing; a paragraph, a single thing;an essay, a single thing. Each part is to be a preliminary whole, and the total a finished whole. But the ability to construct one thing out of many does not come by nature. It implies fecundity, restraint, an eye for effects, the forecast of finish while we are still working in the rough, obedience to the demands of development, and a deaf ear to whatever calls us into the bypaths of caprice; in short, it implies that the good writer is to be an artist.
第二点，“欢迎每一次的写作机会”。尽管口头言说的重要性我们已经做了讨论，但它也并非万能。它不能教人谋篇布局，因为言语间隔太短。口头谈话以句为单位进行，基本上用不着段落。我说句话——十几二十个词，然后就等着朋友回给我几十个词。这种温和的交流可持续几小时。但如果一方连续说上五分钟不间断，另一方就会感觉他没礼貌。那样就不是谈话了，而是演讲。简短的单词组合构成的日常交流提供了极好的机会锻炼我们用词准确、胆大和丰富，但它无法提供足够的空间提升我们的组织能力。如果我们要阐明B与A以及B与C的关系，就必须要很长的表达。虽然每一个部分都是独立的，我们要能通过流畅的语言组织把部分整合成紧密联系的整体。这一整体就是我们常说的文体。少了它，任何写作都是败笔，因为事实上，它不是一篇文章，而是很多个片段的杂糅。为便于阅读，或达到一种预期的效果，整体性是必要的——一系列的陈述、轶事、引语、论证、幽默嘲讽、诉求，都“共同朝着一个方向发挥作用”。文章的统一性也要求各个部分具有统一性。把散乱的句子拼在一起，凑成一个段落，甚至只用无力的连接词“和，和”把它们联系在一起，这样做远远不够。一句话必须只说一件事；一个段落必须只说一件事；一篇文章也必须只说一件事。每一个部分是一个初步的整体，整篇文章就是一个完成的整体。然而，基于一堆东西组织出一件事情的能力不是与生俱来的。它需要有创造性，同时又能自我约束，关注效果，能在草稿阶段就预测结局，还要遵循发展主题的各类需求，同时做到对任何引人入歧途的突发奇想充耳不闻。简言之，好的作家需要是艺术家。

Now something of this large requirement which composition makes, the young writer instinctively feels, and he is terrified. He knows how ill-fitted he is to direct “toil coöperant to an end”; and when he sits down to the desk and sees the white sheet of paper before him, he shivers. Let him know that the shiver is a suitable part of the performance. I well remember the pleasure with which, as a young man, I heard my venerable and practiced professor of rhetoric say that he supposed there was no work known to man more difficult than writing. Up to that time I had supposed its severities peculiar to myself. It cheered me, and gave me courage to try again, to learn that I had all mankind for my fellow-sufferers. Where this is not understood, writing is avoided. From such avoidance I would save the young writer by my precept to seek every opportunity to write. For most of us this is a new way of confronting composition—treating it as an opportunity, a chance, and not as a burden of compulsion. It saves from slavishness and takes away the drudgery of writing, to view each piece of it as a precious and necessary step in the pathway to power. To those engaged in bread-winning employments these opportunities will be few, for only practice breeds ease; but on that very account let no one of them pass with merely a second-best performance. If a letter is to be written to a friend, a report to an employer, a communication to a newspaper, see that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The majority of writings are without these pleasing adornments. Only the great pieces possess them. Bear this in mind, and win the way to artistic composition by noticing what should be said first, what second, and what third.
现在，年轻的作家本能地意识到上述写作要求的重要性，并为之恐惧。他知道自己这样迈向“辛劳的一生”是多么欠缺准备。他坐在桌前，看着一页白纸，不寒而栗。要让他知道，不寒而栗是正常的。我清楚地记得自己还是年轻小伙子的时候，十分崇拜一位有着丰富经验的修辞学老师，他说在他看来人类所知道的所有工作中没有比写作更难的了，那一刻我特别开心。在那之前我一直以为只有我写作时才举步维艰。老师的话鼓舞了我，使我有勇气再次尝试，因为我知道全人类都和我同病相怜。不明白这一点就不要写作。不写作，年轻的作家就也不用遵循我的上述准则，不用寻找机会去写作了。对于大部分人来说，这才是面对写作的新方式——把写作当作一种机遇，一个机会，而不是强加的负担。这样一来，写作就不会缺乏独创性，也不再是一桩苦差事。相反，每一部分都会是珍贵而必要的台阶，让我们通往驾驭写作的路。对于那些靠写作吃饭的人而言，基本不会有这样的机会，因为只有把写作当作练习才会是自然的。但是说到这一点，不能因为练习就可以是二等品然后蒙混过关。不管是写给朋友的信件，写给老板的报告，还是写给报纸的通讯，都要懂得有开头，有发展，有结尾。大多数写作都没有这么合意的结构，这些都是优秀作品的专有。记住，要让作品有美感，必须要注意首先写什么，其次写什么，然后写什么。

I cannot leave this subject, however, without congratulating the present generation on its advantages over mine. Children are brought up to-day, in happy contrast with my compeers, to feel that the pencil is no instrument of torture, hardly indeed to distinguish it from the tongue. About the time they leave their mother's arms they take their pen in hand. On paper they are encouraged to describe their interesting birds, friends, and adventures. Their written lessons are almost as frequent as their oral, and they learn to write compositions while not yet quite understanding what they are about. Some of these fortunate ones will, I hope, find the language I have sadly used about the difficulty of writing extravagant. And let me say, too, that since frequency has more to do with ease of writing than anything else, I count the newspaper men lucky because they are writing all the time, and I do not think so meanly of their product as the present popular disparagement would seem to require. It is hasty work undoubtedly, and bears the marks of haste. But in my judgment, at no period of the English language has there been so high an average of sensible, vivacious and informing sentences written as appears in our daily press. With both good and evil results, the distinction between book literature and speech literature is breaking down. Everybody is writing, apparently, in verse and prose; and if the higher graces of style do not often appear, neither on the other hand do the ruder awkwardnesses and obscurities. A certain straightforward English is becoming established. A whole nation is learning the use of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances it is doubly necessary that anyone who is conscious of feebleness in his command of English should promptly and earnestly begin the cultivation of it.
然而关于这个主题，我必须要祝贺当下的一代，因为比起我的年代，他们优势多多。如今孩子的成长，比我们那一代要幸福。他们不会觉得铅笔是折磨人的工具，口和笔基本没有区别。从他们离开母亲怀抱的那一刻，他们手中就已经握着笔了。他们被鼓励在纸上描述他们感兴趣的小鸟、朋友及探险经历。他们的写作课基本和口语课一样多。他们在还不知道写作是什么的时候就开始学习写作。其中的一些幸运儿，希望他们会发现我悲哀地用来描述写作之难的语言有些铺陈过度。我还想说，因为写作的熟练程度与频率最为相关，我认为新闻工作者非常幸运，因为他们一直在写作。现在对新闻产品普遍会有贬低，但我并不认为对他们要有如此苛刻的要求。毫无疑问，新闻写作是非常仓促的工作，带有仓促的印记。但在我看来，新闻出版的英语书写中达意、生动、信息量大的句子比比皆是，这比以往任何时代出现的频率都要高。书面文学和口头文学之间的界限正逐渐打破，这一现象既有好的影响，也有不好的影响。大家似乎都在写作，不管是韵文还是散文；如果说高质量的写作不会经常出现，另一方面粗鲁拙劣晦涩的写作也不多见。一种简单直接的英语文体正在确立其地位。整个民族都在学习书面文学。在这种情况下，那些意识到自己英语薄弱的人就更有必要立即认真地培养自己的语言能力。

My third precept shall be, “Remember the other person.” I have been urging self-cultivation in English as if it concerned one person alone, ourself. But every utterance really concerns two. Its aim is social. Its object is communication; and while unquestionably prompted halfway by the desire to ease our mind through self-expression, it still finds its only justification in the advantage somebody else will draw from what is said. Speaking or writing is, therefore, everywhere a double-ended process. It springs from me, it penetrates him; and both of these ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what I mean? That is an important question. Is what I say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by him who hears? This is a question of quite as great consequence, and much more likely to be forgotten. We are so full of ourselves that we do not remember the other person. Helter-skelter we pour forth our unaimed words merely for our personal relief, heedless whether they help or hinder him whom they still purport to address. For most of us are grievously lacking in imagination, which is the ability to go outside ourselves and take on the conditions of another mind. Yet this is what the literary artist is always doing. He has at once the ability to see for himself and the ability to see himself as others see him. He can lead two lives as easily as one life; or rather, he has trained himself to consider that other life as of more importance than this, and to reckon his comfort, likings, and labors as quite subordinated to the service of that other. All serious literary work contains within it this readiness to bear another's burden. I must write with pains, that he may read with ease. I must

Find out men's wants and wills,
And meet them there
第三条准则是“想着他人”。我一直在强调英语学习中的自我培养，这似乎只涉及一方，也就是我们自己。但实际上每一话语都涉及两方，其目标是社会性的，其目的是交流。毫无疑问，尽管说话时我们半路上会被自我表现的欲望驱使，但只有当另外一方能够从说话中有所获取时，才能够为说话找到正当理由。因此，任何言说或写作都是双向的过程，从我开始，向他渗透，双方都需要给予关注。我所说的就是我想说的吗？这是一个重要的问题。我所说的话组织得够清晰，足以让听到的人都理解吗？这个问题同样事关重大，但却更容易被人忽略。我们只顾及表现自己，而忘记了对方。我们匆忙地说出那些毫无目的的话，只为一己轻松，不去考虑它们是帮助还是阻碍听话人的理解。我们大多数人都极为缺乏想象力，无法从自己的世界走出，去接受另一种思想，而文学艺术家却一直致力于此。他能够轻松自如地把两种生活合二为一；或者说，他已经能够让自己把别人的生活看得更为重要，并且认为自己的舒适、喜好和劳动都是从属于为他人服务的。所有认真的文学作品随时都在担此重任。我必须痛苦地写作，让他人能够轻松阅读。我必须找出他人的所想所需，然后去满足他们。

As I write, I must unceasingly study what is the line of least intellectual resistance along which my thought may enter the differently constituted mind; and to that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling, my meaning. Will this combination of words or that make the meaning clear? Will this order of presentation facilitate swiftness of apprehension, or will it clog the movement? What temperamental perversities in me must be set aside in order to render my reader's approach to what I would tell him pleasant? What temperamental perversities in him are to be accepted by me as fixed facts, conditioning all I say? These are the questions the skilful writer is always asking.
写作时，我必须不停地审视每一行字，尽量保证这些话不遭抵触，而且还能让我的思想进入到不同的思想中去。为了做到这一点，我必须在不削弱我本意的情况下，微调我的意思。这样组词或那样组词能让意思明白吗？这种表达顺序是有助于快速理解还是会阻碍理解？为了顺从读者的阅读方式，让他感受语言的愉悦，我要搁置自己性情中的哪些任性呢？而且，我要接受读者性情中的哪些任性，并将它们作为固定的事实来进行自我调整呢？这些都是娴熟的作家一直自问的问题。

And these questions, as will have been perceived already, are moral questions no less than literary. That golden rule of generous service by which we do for others what we would have them do for us, is a rule of writing too. Every writer who knows his trade perceives that he is a servant; that it is his business to endure hardships if only his reader may win freedom from toil, that no impediment to that reader's understanding is too slight to deserve diligent attention, that he has consequently no right to let a single sentence slip from him unsocialized—I mean, a sentence which cannot become as naturally another's possession as his own. In the very act of asserting himself he lays aside what is distinctively his. And because these qualifications of the writer are moral qualifications, they can never be completely fulfilled so long as we live and write. We may continually approximate them more nearly, but there will still always be possible an alluring refinement of exercise beyond. The world of the literary artist and the moral man is interesting through its inexhaustibility;and he who serves his fellows by writing or by speech is artist and moral man in one. Writing a letter is a simple matter but it is a moral matter and an artistic; for it may be done either with imagination or with raw self-centerdness. What things will my correspondent wish to know? How can I transport him out of his properly alien surroundings into the vivid impressions which now are mine? How can I tell what I long to tell and still be sure the telling will be for him as lucid and delightful as for me? Remember the other person, I say. Do not become absorbed in yourself. Your interests cover only the half of any piece of writing; the other man's less visible half is necessary to complete yours. And if I have here discussed writing more than speech, that is merely because when we speak we utter our first thoughts, but when we write, our second, or better still, our fourth; and in the greater deliberation which writing affords I have felt that the demands of morality and art, which are universally imbedded in language, could be more distinctly perceived. Yet none the less truly do we need to talk for the other person than to write for him.
这些问题，不只是文学问题，同时也是道德问题。欲取之，必先予之。这一黄金法则同样适用于写作。每一位懂行的作家都有为仆意识。忍受艰难是他的职责，这样他的读者才能免于辛劳。不能让读者付出哪怕一点点的精力去排除理解障碍。因此他无权说出不考虑他人的言语——我是指那些不能顺理成章地被他人接受的语言。在坚持己见的同时，他把自己的与众不同搁置在一边，因为这些都是作家的道德素养，所以只要我们还活着并还在写作，它们就不可能得以充分发挥。我们可能会持续靠近这些特质，但仍然还会有更高一级的改进吸引我们。文学艺术家与道德之人的世界因无穷尽而变得有趣。那些通过写作或演讲服务于人的都是艺术家，同时也是道德之人。写信是一件简单的事情，但也包含着道德和艺术，因为我们既可以充满想象地完成它，也可以以自我为中心粗糙地去写。收信人想知道什么？我怎样才能把他从对他而言完全陌生的环境中带出来，继而进入我的生动感觉里？我怎样才能把我所有渴望讲的话讲出来，同时还能保证他和我一样明白愉悦？我想说：想着他人。不要一味专注于自己的世界。你的兴趣只能占据写作的一半；属于对方的那一半隐藏其中，是写作得以完整的必要部分。如果此处我谈写作的篇幅多过口头言说，也只是因为说话时我们发出的是最直接的思想，但写作则表达的是再思甚至是三思后更成熟的想法。深思熟虑之间，我已更加明显地感受到写作在道德和艺术方面的要求，而这是语言的普遍要求。但不是说我们说给别人听时就不用像写给别人看时那么要求严格。