雙語散文|夏丐尊——中年人的寂寞
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中年人的寂寞
我已是一個中年的人。一到中年，就有許多不愉快的現(xiàn)象，眼睛昏花了，記憶力減退了，頭發(fā)開始禿脫而且變白了，意興，體力，什么都不如年青的時候，常不禁會感覺到難以名言的寂寞的情味。尤其覺得難堪的是知友的逐漸減少和疏遠，缺乏交際上的溫暖的慰藉。不消說，相識的人數(shù)是隨了年齡增加的，一個人年齡越大，走過的地方當過的職務越多，相識的人理該越增加了?？墒窍嘧R的人并不就是朋友。我們和許多人相識，或是因了事務關系，或是因了偶然的機緣——如在別人請客的時候同席吃過飯之類。見面時點頭或握手，有事時走訪或通信，口頭上彼此也稱“朋友”，筆頭上有時或稱“仁兄”，諸如此類，其實只是一種社交上的客套，和“頓首”“百拜”同是儀式的虛偽。這種交際可以說是社交，和真正的友誼相差似乎很遠。
真正的朋友，恐怕要算“總角之交”或“竹馬之交”了。在小學和中學的時代容易結成真實的友誼，那時彼此尚不感到生活的壓迫，入世未深，打算計較的念頭也少，朋友的結成全由于志趣相近或性情適合，差不多可以說是“無所為”的，性質比較地純粹。二十歲以后結成的友誼，大概已不免攙有各種各樣的顏色分子在內(nèi)；至于三十歲四十歲以后的朋友中間，顏色分子愈多，友誼的真實成分也就不免因而愈少了。這并不一定是“人心不古”，實可以說是人生的悲劇。人到了成年以后，彼此都有生活的重擔須負，入世既深，顧忌的方面也自然加多起來，在交際上不許你不計較，不許你不打算，結果彼此都“鉤心斗角”，像七巧板似地只選定了某一方面和對方去接合。這樣的接合當然是很不堅固的，尤其是現(xiàn)代這樣什么都到了尖銳化的時代。
在我自己的交游中，最值得系念的老是一些少年時代以來的朋友。這些朋友本來數(shù)目就不多，有些住在遠地，連相會的機會也不可多得。他們有的年齡大過了我，有的小我?guī)讱q，都是中年以上的人了，平日各人所走的方向不同。思想趣味境遇也都不免互異，大家晤談起來，也常會遇到說不出的隔膜的情形。如大家話舊，舊事是彼此共喻的，而且大半都是少年時代的事，“舊游如夢”，把夢也似的過去的少年時代重提，因談話的進行，同時會聯(lián)想起許多當時的事情，許多當時的人的面影，這時好像自己仍回歸到少年時代去了。我常在這種時候感到一種快樂，同時也感到一種傷感，那情形好比老婦人突然在抽屜里或箱子里發(fā)見了她盛年時的影片。
逢到和舊友談話，就不知不覺地把話題轉到舊事上去，這是我的習慣。我在這上面無意識地會感到一種溫暖的慰藉。可是這些舊友一年比一年減少了，本來只是屈指可數(shù)的幾個，少去一個是無法彌補的。我每當聽到一個舊友死去的消息，總要惆悵多時。
學校教育給我們的好處不但只是灌輸知識，最大的好處恐怕還在給與我們求友的機會上。這好處我到了離學校以后才知道，這幾年來更確切地體會到，深悔當時毫不自覺，馬馬虎虎地過去了。近來每日早晚在路上見到兩兩三三的攜著書包，攜了手或挽了肩膀走著的青年學生，我總艷羨他們有朋友之樂，暗暗地要在心中替他們祝福。
Mid-life Loneliness
I am already a middle-aged man. At middle age, I feel sad to find my eyesight and memory failing, my hair thinning and graying, and myself no longer mentally and physically as fit as when I was young. I often suffer from a nameless loneliness. The most intolerable of all is the lack of friendly warmth and comfort due to the gradual passing away and estrangement of more and more old pals.Needless to say, the number of acquaintances increases with one's age. The older one gets, the more widely travelled one is and the more work experience one has, the more acquaintances one is supposed to have. But not all acquaintances are friends. We come to know many people either in the way of business or by mere chance — say, having been at the same table at a dinner party. We may be on nodding or hand-shaking terms, call each other "friend", sometimes write to each other with the salutation of "Dear So-and-So", etc., etc. All these are, in fact, nothing but civilities of social life, as hypocritical as the polite formula dunshou (kowtow) or baibai (a hundred greetings) used after the signature in old-fashioned Chinese letter-writing. We may call them social intercourse, but they seem to have very little in common with genuine friendship.
Real friendship between two persons originates perhaps from the time of life when they were children playing innocently together. Real friendship is easily formed in primary or middle school days when, being socially inexperienced and free from the burden of life, you give little thought to personal gains or losses, and make friends entirely as a result of similar tastes and interests or congenial disposition. It is sort of "friendship for friendship's sake" and is relatively pure in nature. Friendship among people in their 20's, however, is more or less coloured by personal motives. And friendship among those aged over 30 becomes correspondingly still less pure as it gets even more coloured. Though this is not necessarily due to "degeneration of public morality", I do have good reasons to call it the tragedy of life. People at middle age, with the heavy burden of life and much experience in the ways of the world, have more scruples about this and that, and cannot choose but become more calculating in social dealings till they start scheming against each other. They always keep a wary eye, as it were, on each other in their association. Such association is of course fragile, especially in this modern age of prevailing sharp conflicts.
Of all my friends, those I have known since childhood are most worthy of remembrance. They are few in number. Some of them live far away and we seldom have an opportunity to see each other. Some of them are older than I am, and some a few years younger. But all of us are in late mid-life. Since we have each followed a different course in life, our ways of thinking, interests and circumstances are bound to differ, and often we lack mutual understanding somehow or other in our conversation. Nevertheless, when we talk over old times, we will always agree on things in the past — mostly about things in our childhood days. While we retell the dream-like childhood days in the course of our conversation, numerous scenes and persons of bygone days will unfold again before our eyes, and we will feel like reliving the old days. Often at this moment, I'll feel at once happy and sad — like an old lady suddenly fishing out from her drawer or chest a photo of her taken in the bloom of her youth.
When chatting away with my old friends, I am in the habit of unwittingly channeling the topic of conversation toward things of former days. From that I unknowingly derive some sort of warm solace. But old friends are dwindling away year by year. They are originally few in number, so the disappearance of any of them is an irreparable loss to me. The news of any old pal's death will invariably make me sad in my heart for a long, long time.
The imparting of knowledge is not the sole advantage of school education. Its greatest advantage is perhaps the opportunity it affords us for making friends. It was not until I had already left school that I began to realize this advantage. And in recent years I have come to understand it even more deeply. I much regret having carelessly frittered away my school days without making many friends. Recently, every morning or evening, whenever I see school kids with satchels walking in twos and threes, hand in hand or shoulder to shoulder, I always envy them for enjoying happy friendship, and inwardly offer them my best wishes.
這篇雜感是我國著名文學家、教育家夏丐尊于1934年11月發(fā)表在由他主編的《中學生》雜志上。文章用平淡樸素的語言訴說了中年人的苦惱，感嘆“真實的友誼”不可多得，字里行間流泄出對當時社會現(xiàn)狀的不滿。
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