广陵集 2020 Diligent Studies in Guangling 2020 第 10 篇 Section 10
九月 浅析读书的价值 September: A Brief Analysis on the Value of Reading
返回 广陵集 2020 Back to Diligent Studies in Guangling 2020随着我们这一代人生活水平的飞速发展，我们与自己的父辈面对着完全不同的生活方式，这在一百年前对我的曾祖父辈而言是不可想象的。
With the rapid elevation of living standards for our generation, we confront a mode of life utterly different from that of our parents, something unimaginable to my great-grandparents a century ago.
然而，在如今中国发达地区的高中校园中似有一种小资情调逐渐抬头。男生永远不嫌鞋多，女生永远不嫌衣服多。这其实不是什么大问题，充其量是资源过度分配的问题。然而，当我们向深处发掘其内因时，似乎当代年轻人对于挫折的不堪一击，对自己观点的刚愎自用闭目塞听，甚至于zc行为都是由此而来。
Yet in high school campuses across developed regions of China today, a certain petit-bourgeois sentiment is quietly raising its head: boys never feel they have enough sneakers, and girls never feel they have enough clothes. In itself, this is not an insurmountable issue, at most a matter of excessive consumer allocation. However, when we probe the root causes beneath, it seems contemporary youth’s utter fragility in the face of setbacks, their stubborn dogmatism and blindness to dissenting opinions, and even ‘zc’ behavior all trace their origin to this ethos.
其实追求小资的生活情调不是什么坏事，谁不想过的轻松一些，做自己想做的事呢？但缺乏指引的青少年往往会误入歧途，从自我陶醉中麻痹自己，在不知为何的恋爱中空度光阴，甚至于，在一次小测验不理想后便痛哭流涕，凡此种种，皆为互联网上繁杂的信息以及缺乏指引的结果。
Pursuing a comfortable, refined lifestyle is not a bad thing; who does not wish to live with ease and pursue their desires? Yet adolescents lacking guidance often wander astray: numbing themselves in self-intoxication, squandering their days in aimless puppy-love romance, and even weeping bitterly over an ordinary quiz. All of these stem from the deluge of chaotic digital information and an absence of guiding values.
所以说为什么我们现在仍要读书？因为读书，能让人静下心来，不受外界信息的影响，向内审视，修炼自己。在这个时代还能静下心来读书，本身就是一件“超出平均”的表现，也正是如此，才能在悄无声息中提升自己。
Why, then, must we still read books today? Because reading enables a person to calm the mind, ward off the noise of external information, inspect within, and cultivate the soul. In this era, to sit in stillness and read is in itself an “above-average” disposition; precisely through this quiet habit can one elevate oneself without fanfare.
从小到大，看书基本上成为了我的一种习惯，但我好像从未思考过到底为什么要阅读。为了考试作文？为了夸耀？为了消遣？也许都有，但我想这都不是我阅读名著的最主要的意图。
From childhood, reading has been my constant companion, yet I had never deeply interrogated why I read. For examination essays? For vanity? For pastimes? Perhaps a measure of each, yet none of these constitutes my primary motive for reading great literature.
为了共情。
It is for empathy.
加缪说过一句话，在这里我就不说了，反正我知道就好，说的就是这个道理。我有着非常强烈的情感需要，快乐了需要情感，难过了也需要情感。而当我自伤自嗟时，一卷名著就能让我的情感得到排遣。
Camus once penned a line—I will not cite it here, for it suffices that I hold it in my heart—that speaks to this truth. I harbor powerful emotional needs: in moments of joy I need emotional resonance, and in moments of despair I need it likewise. When I fall into self-pity and sorrow, a volume of classic literature offers release for my feelings.
但我也因此时时感到自己的渺小。好像前辈把世界已经圈定下来了，我唯一要做的，就是努力学习，去发现前辈的经验就好了。听起来有点奇怪，但实际上就是那样。我不是一般意义上的天才，没有那种超时代的眼光，却拥有天才一般的孤独。
Yet because of this, I often feel my own insignificance. It is as if our forebears had already surveyed and delineated the boundaries of the world; all that remains for me is to study diligently and uncover their wisdom. It sounds somewhat peculiar, but that is the reality. I am no genius in the ordinary sense, possessing no epoch-transcending foresight, yet I harbor the solitude of a genius.
只有阅读。
There is only reading.
以《围城》为例，我的感情经历可以几乎完美地套入围城的壳子里。
Taking Fortress Besieged as an example, my romantic experiences can be mapped almost flawlessly into its fictional framework.
在归国船上与已有未婚夫的鲍小姐的追逐寻欢，就显示了方鸿渐玩世不恭，荒唐苟且的一面。他很怪鲍小姐行为不检，但对鲍小姐的勾引又觉得十分兴奋。因此，“他们俩的交情，像热带植物一样迅速生长”。方鸿渐只觉得自己要鲍小姐，“但并不爱她”，“不爱她”却和她发生了说不清的关系，鲍小姐把他玩弄而不理睬他后，他心头直冒火“失望，遭欺骗的情欲，被损伤的骄傲，都不肯平伏，像不倒翁，按下去又竖起来，反而摇摆的更厉害”。他明明被玩弄了，心头的火还没有平息，却又安慰自己“并没有吃亏”，“占了便宜”。
On the voyage back to China, pursuing pleasure with Miss Bao, who already had a fiancé, exposed Fang Hongjian’s cynical, absurd, and drift-along disposition. He blamed Miss Bao for improper conduct, yet felt thoroughly stimulated by her seduction. Thus, “their friendship grew as swiftly as tropical vegetation.” Fang Hongjian merely felt that he wanted Miss Bao, “yet did not love her”; “not loving her,” he still drifted into an ambiguous liaison. Once Miss Bao toyed with him and cast him aside, fire flared in his heart: “Disappointment, deceived desire, and wounded pride refused to be appeased, like a roly-poly toy that springs back up when pushed down, wobbling all the more violently.” Clearly played for a fool, the fire in his chest still smoldering, he consoled himself that he “had not lost out” and had “taken advantage.”
“鲍小姐谈不上心和灵魂，只是块肉，因为她没有心，只能算日子久了，肉会变味。”反而自鸣得意起来。
“Miss Bao possessed neither heart nor soul, being merely a piece of meat; having no heart, with the passing of time the meat simply spoiled.” And he actually grew smug over the rationalization.
她又惯性地给自己撑起一个强势的气场，摆出姿态，做成是她甩了方鸿渐，而不是方鸿渐不要她的事实。她倒是做到了，孙柔嘉回家后也怀疑起丈夫当年的叙述是否可靠。只是比起以前不露痕迹却又处处无法掩饰自然流露的强势，此刻的苏文纨更像是用自己的言行举止来刻意维护着自己高人一等的强势，也就意味着以前她那种与生俱来的强势现在已经在慢慢消逝，要靠自己的精心维护才能在人前勉强充下场面了。
She habitually propped up an imposing aura, striking a posture to make it seem as though she had dumped Fang Hongjian rather than Fang Hongjian rejecting her. She succeeded at it, and Sun Roujia began to doubt the reliability of her husband’s past accounts upon returning home. Yet compared to her past effortless superiority, the present Su Wenwan was straining to maintain her elevated dominance through deliberate mannerisms—meaning the innate strength she once possessed was fading, requiring calculated staging to save face in public.
纵然现在变得似乎更加“高高在上”，但是连方鸿渐都会觉得她“变得多少俗”，这个以前即使强势也还称得上“女生”的苏文纨，此刻倒是成为真正的“女人”了。
Though she seemed even more “aloof and superior,” even Fang Hongjian felt she had “grown somewhat vulgar”; this Su Wenwan, who in the past could still be called a “young girl” despite her haughtiness, had at this juncture turned into a full-fledged “woman of the world.”
当他失去一生中最心爱的女性——唐晓芙时，心瘦弱到了极点宛如与活人幽明隔绝的孤鬼，瞧着阳世的乐事，自己插不进，但方鸿渐此时却毫无力挽狂澜的勇气。只是呐呐的说：“你说的对，我是个骗子，我不敢再辩，以后决不来讨厌了。”然后站起来就走。在这把握幸福的关键时刻，他不是积极主动的去争取和解释，却把本存幸福的爱情结束的那么轻率，这不能不说是发自他那本性的怯懦。
When he lost the woman he loved most in his life—Tang Xiaofu—his spirit was withered to the extreme, like a lonely phantom severed from the realm of the living, peering at earthly joy without the power to enter; yet Fang Hongjian lacked the courage to turn the tide. He merely mumbled: “You are right, I am a fraud; I dare not argue further, and will never trouble you again.” Then he rose and departed. At this crucial moment of grasping happiness, instead of proactively explaining and fighting for it, he ended a promising romance with such reckless haste—which can only be chalked up to his innate cowardice.
他还没有在事业的挫折中清醒过来，便受到孙柔嘉的诱惑，而逃避到了“一个自己并没确认是否爱他的孙柔嘉的婚姻中”，以为这里是一个可以逃避失败和压抑，追求自由生活的幸福港湾，或许是孙柔嘉在婚前过于心计。婚后，方鸿渐忽然发现自己娶的好像是另外一个人，新家和旧家的矛盾又激化了他们之间的冲突，再加上他们性格不同，的确很难相容，终于不离而散，他丢下昨日的失望，怀着对明天莫名的期盼，方鸿渐终于冲出了家庭的围城。
Before recovering from his career setbacks, he succumbed to Sun Roujia’s subtle maneuvers, fleeing into “a marriage to Sun Roujia without having confirmed whether she loved him,” imagining it as a haven from failure and oppression where he could pursue freedom—perhaps Sun Roujia had been too calculating before the wedding. After marriage, Fang Hongjian abruptly discovered that he seemed to have wed an entirely different woman; friction between the new household and the old family intensified their clashes, compounded by incompatible temperaments. In the end they drifted apart without formal divorce; casting off yesterday’s disillusionment and harboring an inexplicable hope for tomorrow, Fang Hongjian finally broke out of the besieged fortress of family.