海倫·凱勒自傳《我的生活》第63期
It seems to me that there is in each of us a capacity to comprehend the impressions and emotions which have been experienced by mankind from the beginning. Each individual has a subconscious memory of the green earth and murmuring waters, and blindness and deafness cannot rob him of this gift from past generations. This inherited capacity is a sort of sixth sense—a soul-sense which sees, hears, feels, all in one.
在我看來，自人類出現以來，我們每一個人的內心深處就已經具備了感知種種情緒的經驗。在每一個人的潛意識裏，都會存留有關綠色土地和潺潺流水的記憶，即使失明和失聰，也無法剝奪祖先賜予人類的這份禮物。我們通常會將這種源自遺傳的特質稱之爲第六感——一種集視覺、聽覺、觸覺於一身的“心靈的感覺”。I have many tree friends in Wrentham. One of them, a splendid oak, is the special pride of my heart. I take all my other friends to see this king-tree. It stands on a bluff overlooking King Philip's Pond, and those who are wise in tree lore say it must have stood there eight hundred or a thousand years. There is a tradition that under this tree King Philip, the heroic Indian chief, gazed his last on earth and sky.
我在蘭瑟姆有很多“大樹朋友”，其中有一棵秀美的橡樹可以說是令我引以爲豪的夥伴。我曾帶領我所有的朋友們參觀過這位樹王。這棵聳立在懸崖之上的大樹徑直俯瞰着菲利普國王池塘，那些熟諳樹木知識的人一定會說，這棵樹至少已有八百或者一千年的歷史了。在這棵菲利普國王之樹下面延續着一種傳統——菲利普，這位英勇的印第安酋長，將他臨終的凝望獻給了大地和天空，他已經把自己的精神同自然融爲一體。I had another tree friend, gentle and more approachable than the great oak—a linden that grew in the dooryard at Red Farm. One afternoon, during a terrible thunderstorm, I felt a tremendous crash against the side of the house and knew, even before they told me, that the linden had fallen. We went out to see the hero that had withstood so many tempests, and it wrung my heart to see him prostrate who had mightily striven and was now mightily fallen.
我還有另外一位“樹友”，同莊嚴的橡樹相比，它顯得相當隨和而平易近人——這是一株生長在紅色農莊庭院裏的菩提樹。在一個雷電交加的下午，我感覺房子的一邊似乎受到了劇烈的碰撞，即使沒有人告訴我，我也立刻猜出是菩提樹被雷擊倒了。於是我們都跑到院子裏察看這位“英雄”到底經受了怎樣的磨難，看到它奮勇抗爭後又轟然倒地的景象，我不禁心如刀絞。
But I must not forget that I was going to write about last summer in particular. As soon as my examinations were over, Miss Sullivan and I hastened to this green nook, where we have a little cottage on one of the three lakes for which Wrentham is famous. Here the long, sunny days were mine, and all thoughts of work and college and the noisy city were thrust into the background. In Wrentham we caught echoes of what was happening in the world—war, alliance, social conflict. We heard of the cruel, unnecessary fighting in the far-away Pacific, and learned of the struggles going on between capital and labour. We knew that beyond the border of our Eden men were making history by the sweat of their brows when they might better make a holiday. But we little heeded these things. These things would pass away; here were lakes and woods and broad daisy-starred fields and sweet-breathed meadows, and they shall endure forever.
我決不會忘記我所要描述的那個特別的夏天。我的考試剛一結束，蘇立文小姐和我就急匆匆地趕到了這個“綠色幽境”。蘭瑟姆有三個很出名的湖，我們在其中的一個湖上擁有一所小房子。在這裏，陽光普照的一整天都是屬於我的。有關學院和課業的所有思緒，以及喧囂聒噪的城市生活，統統地被這裏的幽深美景消解殆盡。雖然身在蘭瑟姆，我們仍然捕捉到了世界時事的回聲——戰爭、盟約、社會矛盾。我們聽說了殘酷而不必要的太平洋戰事，也瞭解到了資本和勞工之間日趨激烈的對抗形勢。我們還知道，在我們的伊甸園邊界之外，人類正在揮汗如雨創造着歷史，雖然他們本可以給自己放個假。但是我們很少留意到這些事情，早晚有一天，世事會像過眼雲煙般在我們眼前匆匆消逝；而此處的湖泊和林木，遍佈雛菊的曠野和氣味清新的草地，則延續着其永恆的生命。People who think that all sensations reach us through the eye and the ear have expressed surprise that I should notice any difference, except possibly the absence of pavements, between walking in city streets and in country roads. They forget that my whole body is alive to the conditions about me. The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp of an unseen multitude, and the dissonant tumult frets my spirit. The grinding of heavy wagons on hard pavements and the monotonous clangour of machinery are all the more torturing to the nerves if one's attention is not diverted by the panorama that is always present in the noisy streets to people who can see.
人們都對我的鑑別視覺和聽覺範疇事物的能力備感驚訝，除了能夠發現人行道的斷裂缺失，我還能辨別出城市行走和鄉村漫步之間的差別。人們或許忘記了，我的整個身體都在實時感受着周圍的環境，城市的嘈雜和低沉的隆隆聲常常會撞擊着我的面部神經，我可以感覺到看不見的人羣踏着永無止息的沉重腳步，刺耳的喧囂一點點地侵蝕着寧靜的心靈。沉重的車輪在堅硬的路面上隆隆碾過，機器發出乏味的鏗鏘聲。對於那些耳目俱全，常年在城市中穿梭往來的人而言，假如不是因爲騷動的街道和紛亂的景象轉移了他們的注意力，我想，他們一定會被這種單調的噪音逼瘋的。
