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Three months later, in June, we are at Goring. Some of your Oxford friends come to stay from a Saturday to Monday. The morning of the day they went away you made a scene so dreadful, so distressing that I told you that we must part. I remember quite well, as we stood on the level croquet-ground with the pretty lawn all round us, pointing out to you that we were spoiling each other’s lives, that you were absolutely ruining mine and that I evidently was not making you really happy, and that an irrevocable parting, a complete separation was the one wise philosophic thing to do[15a]. You went sullenly after luncheon, leaving one of your most offensive letters behind with the butler to be handed to me after your departure. Before three days had elapsed you were telegraphing from London to beg to be forgiven and allowed to return. I had taken the place to please you. I had engaged your own servants at your request. I was always terribly sorry for the hideous temper to which you were really a prey[15b]. I was fond of you. So I let you come back and forgave you. Three months later still, in September, new scenes occurred, the occasion of them being my pointing out the schoolboy faults of your attempted translation of Salome.[15.1] You must by this time be a fair enough French scholar to know that the translation was as unworthy of you, as an ordinary Oxonian, as it was of the work it sought to render. You did not of course know it then, and in one of the violent letters you wrote to me on the point you said that you were under “no intellectual obligation of any kind” to me. I remember that when I read that statement, I felt that it was the one really true thing you had written to me in the whole course of our friendship. I saw that a less cultivated nature would really have suited you much better. I am not saying this in bitterness at all, but simply as a fact of companionship. Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level. The trivial in thought and action is charming. I had made it the keystone of a very brilliant philosophy expressed in plays and paradoxes[15c]. But the froth and folly[15d] of our life grew often very wearisome to me: it was only in the mire that we met: and fascinating, terribly fascinating though the one topic[15.2] round which your talk invariably centred was, still at the end it became quite monotonous to me[15e]. I was often bored to death by it, and accepted it as I accepted your passion for going to music-halls[15f], or your mania for absurd extravagances in eating and drinking, or any other of your to me less attractive characteristics, as a thing, that is to say, that one simply had to put up with, a part of the high price one paid for knowing you. When after leaving Goring I went to Dinard for a fortnight you were extremely angry with me for not taking you with me, and, before my departure there, made some very unpleasant scenes on the subject at the Albemarle Hotel, and sent me some equally unpleasant telegrams to a country house I was staying at for a few days. I told you, I remember, that I thought it was your duty to be with your own people for a little, as you had passed the whole season away from them. But in reality, to be perfectly frank with you, I could not under any circumstances have let you be with me. We had been together for nearly twelve weeks. I required rest and freedom from the terrible strain of your companionship. It was necessary for me to be a little by myself; It was intellectually necessary. And so I confess I saw in your letter, from which I have quoted, a very good opportunity for ending the fatal friendship that had sprung up between us, and ending it without bitterness, as I had indeed tried to do on that bright June morning at Goring, three months before. It was however represented to me — I am bound to say candidly by one of my own friends to whom you had gone in you difficulty — that you would be much hurt, perhaps almost humiliated at having your work sent back to you like a schoolboy’s exercise; that I was expecting far too much intellectually from you; and that, no matter what you wrote or did, you were absolutely and entirely devoted to me. I did not want to be the first to check or discourage you[15g] in your beginnings in literature: I knew quite well that no translation, unless one done by a poet, could render the colour and cadence of my work in any adequate measure: devotion seemed to me, seems to me still, a wonderful thing, not to be lightly thrown away: so I took the translation and you back. Exactly three months later, after a series of scenes culminating in one more than usually revolting, when you came one Monday evening to my rooms accompanied by two of your friends, I found myself actually flying abroad next morning to escape from you, giving my family some absurd reason for my sudden departure, and leaving a false address with my servant for fear you might follow me by the next train. And I remember that afternoon, as I was in the railway-carriage whirling up to Paris, thinking what an impossible, terrible, utterly wrong state my life had got into, when I, a man of world-wide reputation, was actually forced to run away from England, in order to try and get rid of a friendship that was entirely destructive of everything fine in me either from the intellectual or ethical point of view[15h]: the person from whom I was flying being no terrible creature sprung from sewer or mire into modern life with whom I had entangled my days, but you yourself, a young man of my own social rank and position, who had been at my own college at Oxford, and was an incessant guest at my house[15i]. The usual telegrams of entreaty and remorse followed: I disregarded them. Finally you threatened that unless I consented to meet you, you would under no circumstances consent to proceed to Egypt. I had myself, with your knowledge and concurrence, begged your mother to send you to Egypt away from England, as you were wrecking your life in London. I knew that if you did not go it would be a terrible disappointment to her, and for her sake[15j] I did meet you, and under the influence of great emotion[15k], which even you cannot have forgotten, I forgave the past; though I said nothing at all about the future.
三个月后，是六月，我们在戈灵。有个周末你一些牛津的朋友来了，从星期六呆到星期一。他们临走的那天上午，你又当众大吵了一番。太可怕太气人了，我告诉你我们非分手不可。记得很清楚，我们站在平坦的槌球场上，四周是一片漂亮的草坪，我给你指出，我们正在互相作践对方，你绝对是在把我往绝路上拖，而我也明显地没让你真正幸福，一刀两断才是上策[15a]。午餐后你闷闷不乐地走了，给管家留了一封最恶语伤人的信，要他在你走后交给我。可不出三天，你又从伦敦拍电报来，求我宽恕，让你回来。我已租了那个地方让你高兴，照你的要求雇了你自己的仆人。那可怕的脾气总让我为你遗憾得不得了，你自己也深受其害[15b]。我喜欢你。因此就让你回来，原谅了你。又过了三个月，是九月，你又闹了几场，事缘我给你指出了你试译《莎乐美》中犯的小学生般的错误。你现在应该是个不错的法语学者，看得出那译文既配不上它想移译的原作，也配不上你这个普通的牛津生。你那时当然不知道了，给我写信谈论此事时言辞暴烈，在一封信中说过你对我“并无任何心智上的亏欠”。记得读这句话时，我觉得在我们的整个友谊中你写给我的就这个是真的。我看到一个教养较少的人对你真的会更合适得多。这么说绝无怨你怪你的意思，只是道出过从交往的事实而已。归根结底一切人际交往的纽带，不管是婚姻还是友谊，都是交谈，而交谈必须有一个共同的基础。如果双方的文化教养迥异，那唯一可能的共同基础只能建立在最低的层面上。思想和行为上的琐屑讨人喜欢。我曾用这一点来作为一个非常睿智的人生哲学的基石，在剧本和悖语[15c]中加以表达。但是我们生活中的蠢话傻事[15d]却常常变得令人烦不胜烦：我们只是在泥淖中相遇。你谈话时总是围绕着的那个话题虽然引人入胜，引人入胜得不得了，但到头来我还是觉得腻味[15e]。我常常被它烦得要死，但却接受了它，就像接受了你要去杂耍剧场[15f]的狂热，接受了你荒唐地大吃大喝的癖好，以及别的在我看来不那么有趣的脾气；也就是说，我干脆当它为一个不得不忍受的东西，当它为同你认识所要付出的高昂代价的一部分。离开戈灵后我到第纳德两周，你因为我没带上你而大为光火，在我动身前在阿尔伯玛尔旅馆就这事同我大闹了几场，搞得非常不愉快，而后又往我小住几天的一所庄园发了几封同样令人不快的电报。我记得跟你说过，你理应同家人相聚一阵，因为整个夏季你都是在别处过的。但是实际上，坦白地告诉你吧，我无论如何不能让你呆在我身边。我们在一起已经有十二个星期了，我需要休息，需要从与你相处那可怕的压力下解脱出来。我有必要自己一个人呆一阵子。是心智上的必要。因此我坦白，在你的信中，也就是上面所引的那封，我看到了一个非常好的机会，来了结你我之间突然冒出来的这段致命的友谊，让它了结而不留忿懑。这正是我三个月前在戈灵的那个明媚的六月上午的确想做的。然而却有话传来——我应该坦诚地说是我的一个朋友，你在落难时求助过他——说是假如我把你的译作像小学生的练习一样送回去，你会觉得很伤心，或许几乎是无颜见人，说是我在心智上对你太过苛求了，还说不管你写什么，做什么，你的心都是完完全全向着我的。你在文学中刚刚起步，我不想成为第一个刹你的车、泼你冷水[15g]的人。我知道得很清楚，除非是由一位诗人执笔，否则没有哪个译文可以说能充分地传达出我作品的色彩与节奏。心意的奉献﹐在我看来﹐过去是、现在仍然是一件不能轻言丢弃的好事。因此，我把你﹐连同你的译文一起接了回来。刚好又是三个月过后，又是当众闹了几场，最后积聚成一场特别令人嫌恶的争吵。那是个星期一晚上，你由两个朋友陪着到我房间里来闹。第二天早晨，我简直是身不由己地躲开你飞逃出国，编了些荒唐的理由向家人说明我的仓促离去，给仆人留了个假地址，怕你搭下一班火车尾随而至。记得那天下午，我坐在火车车厢里向巴黎飞驶而去，心想自己的生活怎么会弄成如此一塌糊涂；我堂堂一个世界知名人士，竟然就这么被迫逃离英国，为的是甩掉一段友情，这友情在心智和道德上都会把我内心美好的东西破坏殆尽[15h]；这个我飞奔逃离的人，这个我同他纠缠了那么多日子的人，并非什么从阴沟泥潭里蹦到现代生活中的怪物，而是你本人，一个社会地位同我一样、上的是同一所牛津学院的年轻人，一个我的座上常客[15i]。同往常一样的那些哀求悔过的电报跟着就来了。我不予理睬。最后你威胁说，除非我答应见你，否则你绝不答应动身去埃及。我在你的同意和配合下，曾亲自央求你母亲送你离开英国到埃及去，怕你在伦敦把自己糟蹋坏了。我知道你要是不去，会令她大失所望的。看在她的份上[15j]我真的见了你。情之所至[15k]，甚至连你大概都忘不了的，我原谅了过去的一切，虽然将来会怎样我一句不说。
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