43-1 I do not know the reasons that led to them

回过头来看一下，我发现我写的关于查理斯·思特里克兰德的这些事似乎很难令人满意。我把自己知道的一些事情记载下来，但是我写得并不清楚，因为我不了解它们发生的真实原因。最令人费解的莫过于思特里克兰德为什么决心要做画家这件事，看来简直没有什么道理可寻。尽管从他的生活环境一定找得出原因来，我却一无所知。从他的谈话里我任何线索也没有获得。如果我是在写一部小说，而不是叙述我知道的一个性格怪异的人的真人真事，我就会编造一些原因，解释他生活上的这一突变。我会描写他童年时期就感到绘画是自己的天职，但迫于父亲的严命或者必须为谋生奔走，这个梦想遭到破灭；我也可以描写他如何对生活的桎梏感到痛恨，写他对艺术的热爱与生活的职责间的矛盾冲突，用以唤起读者对他的同情。这样我就可以把思特里克兰德这个人写得更加令人敬畏。或许人们能够在他身上看到另一个普罗米修斯。我也许会塑造一个为了替人类造福甘心忍受痛苦折磨的当代英雄。这永远是一个动人心弦的主题。

Looking back, I realise that what I have written about Charles Strickland must seem veryunsatisfactory. I have given incidents that came to my knowledge, but they remainobscure because I do not know the reasons that led to them. The strangest, Strickland'sdetermination to become a painter, seems to be arbitrary; and though it must have hadcauses in the circumstances of his life, I am ignorant of them. From his own conversationI was able to glean nothing. If I were writing a novel, rather than narrating such facts as Iknow of a curious personality, I should have invented much to account for this change ofheart. I think I should have shown a strong vocation in boyhood, crushed by the will ofhis father or sacrificed to the necessity of earning a living; I should have pictured himimpatient of the restraints of life; and in the struggle between his passion for art and theduties of his station I could have aroused sympathy for him. I should so have made him amore imposing figure. Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a newPrometheus. There was here, maybe, the opportunity for a modern version of the herowho for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned. It is alwaysa moving subject.