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I hope to live long enough, and to produce work of such a character, that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, “Yes: this is just where the artistic life leads a man.” Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin:[127.1] both of them men who passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante, the other a man with the soul of that beautiful white Christ that seems coming out of Russia. And for the last seven or eight months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from the outside world almost without intermission, I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison through men and things, that has helped me beyond my possibility of expression in words; so that while for the first year of my imprisonment I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say “What an ending! What an appalling ending!” now I try to say to myself, and sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say, “What a beginning! What a wonderful beginning!” It may really be so. It may become so. If it does, I shall owe much to this new personality that has altered every man’s life in this place[127a].
我希望有生之年能写出这类作品，这样在生命的最后时刻就能够说，“是的，这正是艺术生命把人带到的地方。” 在我本人经验中所碰到的两个最为完美的生命，是魏尔伦和克鲁泡特金亲王，两个都是在监狱中度过许多年头的人了。第一位是自但丁之后仅有的基督诗人，另一位具有似乎是出自俄罗斯的那种美好的白人基督之魂。而最近七八个月来，尽管外界几乎不断地给我带来很大的烦恼，我却因为人和事的缘故直接认识了一个新来这监狱工作的人，他对我的帮助之大，难以用语言表达。因此，虽然在囚禁的第一年里，我什么事都没做，也记得是什么事都没做，整天只是在无奈的绝望中绞着双手，口里说着：“完了！全完了！”可现在我尽量要对自己说，而且在不那么自我折磨的时候还当真诚心诚意地说了：“重新开始！好好的重新开始！”也许真是这样。也许真会这样。果真这样的话，那么对这一位在这种地方改变了每一个人生活的新来的好人，我欠下他太多了[127a]。
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