本帖最后由 ヮ成熟、羙° 于 2013-8-7 07:54 编辑
论见名人
荷叶/译
我一直不明白许多人怎么会那么热衷于去见名人。你告诉朋友你认识哪个名人，因此而获取的声誉只能证明你自己的渺小。名人形成了一套处世技巧。他们以面具示人，通常是带上令人敬佩的面具，精心掩盖真实的自己。他们表演着人们所期待的角色，经过练习，他们表演得很出色，如果你认为他们对公众的表演与内在一致，那就缺心眼了。
我喜欢一些人，而且是深深的爱慕。但通常我对人感兴趣，不是因为他们自身的缘故，而是因为我的工作。正如康德所嘱咐，我并没有把认识一个人当作终极目标，而是当成一个可能对作家有用的素材。我对无名小卒的关注要胜过名人。他们多数时候更加纯真本色。他们没有必要创造一个形象来保护自己免受公众打扰，也没有必要美化自己以给世人留下美好印象。因为生活在有限的行为圈子里，他们更有机会形成自己的个性；因为从没有进入过公众视线，他们从没想过有什么需要掩盖。他们展示自己的反常行为，因为他们从不认为那有什么反常。毕竟，我们作家要打交道的是平民百姓，那些国王，独裁者，商业巨头，在我们看来都是令人不满意的。写这些人通常是对作家充满诱惑的冒险，伴随他们努力而来的失败说明这种人太特别了，不能作为艺术创作的真正的领域。他们怎么写也不真实，普通大众才是创作的真正沃土。他们的始料不及，他们的奇特异常，他们的变化无穷，提供了无尽的素材。大人物通常是千人一面，小人物才是一连串的矛盾组合。他们为你提供了无穷无尽的素材，惊喜连连。如果需要在一个荒岛上度过一个月，我宁愿和一个兽医而不愿意和一个首相在一起。
附：原文
On Meeting the Celebrated I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated. The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account. The celebrated develop a technique to deal with the persons they come across. They show the world a mask, often an impressive on, but take care to conceal their real selves. They play the part that is expected from them, and with practice learn to play it very well, but you are stupid if you think that this public performance of theirs corresponds with the man within.
I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men in general not for their own sakes, but for the sake of my work. I have not, as Kant enjoined, regarded each man as an end in himself, but as material that might be useful to me as a writer. I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous. They are more often themselves. They have had no need to create a figure to protect themselves from the world or to impress it. Their idiosyncrasies have had more chance to develop in the limited circle of their activity, and since they have never been in the public eye it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal. They display their oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd. And after all it is with the common run of men that we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates are from our point of view very unsatisfactory. To write about them is a venture that has often tempted writers, but the failure that has attended their efforts shows that such beings are too exceptional to form a proper ground for a work of art. They cannot be made real. The ordinary is the writer’s richer field. Its unexpectedness, its singularity, its infinite variety afford unending material. The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you. For my part I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister. | 
发表于 2013-8-7 07:50:14
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发表于 2013-8-8 06:57:26
