But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction - what, has thatgot to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction, I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant.
不过,你们或许会问,我们请你来谈谈妇女与小说——可是,这与自己的房间又有什么关系呢?我会与大家说一说这其中的究竟。在我收到邀请,要我来谈谈妇女与小说这个主题后,我坐在河边,开始琢磨这几个字眼的确切含意。
They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done.
或许,这几个字就是说,我可以点评一番范妮·伯尼的小说,多说上几句简·奥斯汀,再称颂一下勃朗特姐妹,简单描述一下冰天雪地里的霍沃斯故居。如若可能,再打趣一下米特福德小姐,充满敬意地引上几句乔治·艾略特,还要提一下盖斯凯尔夫人,这样,大概就可以收场了。
But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three areinextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light.
可转念一想,这几个字似乎又另有深意。妇女与小说这个主题,大概是要谈一谈妇女和她们的形象——也许这才是你们的本意;不然,就大致是要说说妇女和她们所写的小说;或者,是妇女和那些描写妇女的小说。又或是,这三个方面你中有我,我中有你,难分彼此——而你们就是想请我从这一角度来考虑这个问题——这种方式似乎最为有趣。
But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion.
可一旦开始从这个角度思考,我很快便发现它有一个致命的缺点,那就是我永远无法得出结论。
I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever.
我也无法尽到自己应尽的责任,在我看来,站在这儿为你们做演讲,让你们在一个小时之后,能在笔记中记下方寸的真知,可以放在壁炉台上留作永久的纪念,才是我首要的责任。
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point — a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.
我所能做的,只是对一个次要问题跟大家谈谈我的看法:一个女人如果打算写小说的话,那她一定要有钱,还要有一间自己的房间。而这种看法,正如你们会看到的一样,并未解决何谓妇女、何谓小说的重大问题。
I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions - women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money.
所以,我并不打算就这两个问题得出什么结论,在我看来,妇女与小说的问题仍旧悬而未决。不过为了稍作补偿,我打算尽己所能,向大家说明关于房间和钱的观点,我是从何得来的。
I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction.
我会把自己的思绪如何归结于此,原原本本、毫不掩饰地向诸位讲明。或许,只要我把这种说法背后的种种观点,或者说种种偏见,向大家一一道破,你们就会发现,这和妇女和小说都不无关系。
At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial - and any question about sex is that - one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, theidiosyncrasies of the speaker.
不管怎么说,一个备受争议的话题——但凡一个问题牵扯到性别便会如此——很难指望有谁能道出些真理来。我们能做的只是把自己何以得出某种观点,且不管这种观点是什么,如实地说出来。我们只能让我们的听众,在领略了演讲者的局限、偏见或是癖好之后,得出自己的结论。
Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here - how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life.
在这种情况下,小说,跟事实相比,倒有可能包含更多的真理。所以,我打算充分发挥自己身为作家的自由和特权来跟大家谈谈,在我来这儿之前的两天里发生的故事——谈谈我自己,在知道了你们所赐的这个主题之后,是如何地不堪重负,如何地绞尽脑汁。
I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; ‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being.
在我日常生活的里里外外,都在为此伤脑筋。显而易见,我将要说的一切纯属虚构:牛桥大学只是杜撰,芬汉姆学院也是如此,而所谓的“我”也不过是为了方便起见的称谓,并非实有其人。
Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.
我也会信口开河,但其中并非没有些许的真理,这就要你们来细心甄别、去伪存真,要你们来决定,是否也有些话值得牢记在心。倘若没有,你们大可把这些统统丢进废纸篓,把今天的一切统统抛在脑后。
Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please — it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought.
接下来就说说一两周前的事,那是在十月的一个好天气里,我(姑且叫我玛丽·伯顿,玛丽·希顿,玛丽·卡米克尔,或是随便什么你们中意的名字——这无关紧要)坐在河边,陷入了沉思。
That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground.
刚刚说到我肩上的重负,就是妇女与小说这个主题,还要为这个一说起来就会引出各种成见和偏爱的主题下一个结论,这压得我抬不起头来。
To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.
在我的两旁,生长着一丛丛不知名的灌木,金黄与绯红的色彩,斑驳而闪亮,看上去仿佛燃烧跳跃的火焰。对岸,杨柳垂绦,随风拂动,在永恒的哀婉中轻声啜泣。
Notes:
got/ be to do with
to relate to (something); to be about (something) 与......相关
That's your problem: it is nothing with me!
那是你的问题,不关我的事。
inextricably
in a way that is unable to be separated, released, or escaped from
Fact is inextricably commingled linked with fiction.
事实与虚构混杂难分。
shrink the/ one's duty
flee from/ ignore the duty; wriggle out of/ shrink responsibility 逃避责任
In dealing with climate change, the rich word is shrinking its duty.
在处理气候变化问题方面,一些富裕国家在逃避责任。
train of though
a series of thoughts or ideas that someone is having 思路
You interrupted my train of thought.
你打断了我的思路。
idiosyncrasies
a strange or unusual habit, way of behaving, or feature that someone or something has 癖好,怪癖;特征
She often cracks her knuckles when she's speaking - it's one of her little idiosyncrasies.
她讲话时常常将指节捏得咔咔作响,这是她的一个小怪癖。
太好了
很喜欢小玫瑰的声音
好好听!!!
是我爱的声音啊![](http://s1.xmcdn.com/css/img/face/d_taikaixin.gif)
![](http://s1.xmcdn.com/css/img/face/d_taikaixin.gif)
![](http://s1.xmcdn.com/css/img/face/d_taikaixin.gif)