海倫·凱勒自傳《我的生活》第52期

　　But the examinations are the chief bugbears of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, until like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formulae and indigestible dates—unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science and you were buried in the depths of the sea.

　　不妨說，各種各樣的考試正是我大學(xué)生涯面臨的首要難題。雖然我曾經(jīng)面對過許多次考試，而且每次都把它們打得大敗而回，但是它們總是再次反撲，并且用挑釁的表情大肆要挾。直到像鮑勃·阿克萊斯這樣的人物出現(xiàn)以后，我才感覺到信心又漸漸回到了指端。就在這些考驗降臨前夕，你的腦子里面塞的全都是神秘的公式和令人難以消化的椰棗——面對味道不佳的食品，你真想把自己連同書本和科學(xué)一起葬入大海深處。

　　At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It happens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, these faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinitetrouble invariably fail you at a pinch.

　　終于，恐懼時刻降臨，如果你覺得自己準(zhǔn)備就緒，那么你實在是搶到了一個有利位置，這就是說，你能夠在恰當(dāng)?shù)臅r間召喚到你思想的潛能，從而有助于你向更高的層次邁進(jìn)。有一種情況是經(jīng)常發(fā)生的——任憑你百般召喚也無人理睬。而最令人感到困惑和懊惱的是，正當(dāng)你需要調(diào)動記憶和縝密的鑒別力的當(dāng)口，你所有的這些能力竟然振翅高飛，離你而去了。也就是說，你已經(jīng)在不知不覺間儲存了如此多的問題，而這些問題總會在緊要關(guān)頭將你拉下馬。

　　"Give a brief account of Huss and his work." Huss? Who was he and what did he do? The name looks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget of historic facts much as you would hunt for abit of silk in a rag-bag. You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top—you saw it there the other day when you were looking up the beginnings of the Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds and ends of knowledge—revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of government; but Huss—where is he? You are amazed at all the things you know which are not on the examination paper. In desperation you seize the budget and dump everything out, and there in a corner is your man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious of the catastrophe which he has brought upon you.

　　“請對哈斯和他的功績做簡要說明。”哈斯是誰?他都做了些什么?這個名字看起來似曾相識。于是，在你儲備的歷史事件中，你上下求索，其過程好似在一個塞滿碎布頭的口袋中尋找一小塊絲綢。你確信這個信息就在距你思維階梯頂端不遠(yuǎn)的地方——你曾在查找“宗教改革運動”初期歷史時見到過它。但是現(xiàn)在它究竟藏在哪里?于是，你翻出所有零零碎碎的知識儲備——宗教革命，教會分裂，集體屠殺，政權(quán)體制——可是“哈斯”這個人在哪里呢?你會驚奇地發(fā)現(xiàn)，你所了解的那些事件并沒有在試卷上表現(xiàn)出來。失望之余，你只得攫取知識儲備，還要把你所學(xué)過的每一樣?xùn)|西悉數(shù)查驗，終于，你要找的人就躲藏在一個角落里——他靜靜地沉浸在自己的思緒之中，全然沒有意識到加負(fù)在他人身上的精神磨難。

　　Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.

　　就在這時，監(jiān)考官卻通知你考試結(jié)束時間已到。于是，懷著滿腔憤懣，你一腳把思維的殘片踢到角落里;你的頭腦里塞滿了革命性的計劃——你想廢除教授們的神圣特權(quán)，為什么他們能隨意提問而無須經(jīng)過被提問者的同意?

　　It comes over me that in the last two or three pages of this chapter I have used figures which will turn the laugh against me. Ah, here they are—the mixed metaphors mocking and strutting about before me, pointing to the bull in the china shop assailed by hailstones and the bugbears with pale looks, an unanalyzed species! Let them mock on. The words describe so exactly the atmosphere of jostling, tumbling ideas I live in that I will wink at them for once, and put on adeliberate air to say that my ideas of college have changed.

　　在這一章的最后兩三頁里，我已經(jīng)隱約提到了幾個人物——他們一定會轉(zhuǎn)過身來嘲笑我。哈，這正是他們的風(fēng)格——在我面前趾高氣揚，用混合了種種隱喻的言辭冷嘲熱諷;他們用手指著那頭因遭受冰雹襲擊而闖進(jìn)瓷器店的公牛，以及各種面色慘白的怪物，說這是一些未經(jīng)鑒別的物種!讓他們嘲笑去吧。如果用十分準(zhǔn)確的語言來描述我的生存環(huán)境，那么，面對磕磕絆絆、四處沖撞的思想意識，我會這樣說：我已經(jīng)對它們視而不見，而且，我還要故作深沉地說，我已經(jīng)完全轉(zhuǎn)變了對大學(xué)的看法。

　　While my days at Radcliffe were still in the future, they were encircled with a halo of romance, which they have lost; but in the transition from romantic to actual I have learned many things I should never have known had I not tried the experiment. One of them is the precious science ofpatience, which teaches us that we should take our education as we would take a walk in the country, leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort. Such knowledge floods the soul unseen with a soundless tidal wave of deepening thought. "Knowledge is power." Rather, knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man’s progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies of life.

　　我在拉德克利夫?qū)W院的學(xué)習(xí)生涯仍處在來日方長的(起步)階段，但是浪漫的光環(huán)已然褪去。從浪漫到現(xiàn)實的轉(zhuǎn)變過程中，我所獲頗豐，可以說，如果沒有實踐經(jīng)驗，你永遠(yuǎn)也不會了解到事物的真諦。在諸多經(jīng)驗之中，最寶貴的就是關(guān)于“忍耐的學(xué)問”。“忍耐”教給我們這樣一種求學(xué)心態(tài)——我們應(yīng)該把接受教育的過程視做一次鄉(xiāng)間散步，從容不迫之間，我們的思想就會敞開胸懷，盡情地接納天地萬物。這樣求得的知識猶如一波無聲的思想潮汐，將我們的靈魂悄然浸潤。“知識就是力量”固然正確，但是，知識更應(yīng)該是愉快的，因為要擁有知識——特別是廣博、深奧的知識——就需要我們具備去蕪存真、點石成金的本事。了解人類進(jìn)步過程中的思想和行為，你就會觸摸到幾個世紀(jì)以來最偉大的人性脈搏;如果你感覺不到脈搏的律動和爬向天國的腳步，那么你一定是個對生命的和弦充耳不聞之輩。