原版英文故事与诗歌：A Game of Go

A Game of Goby Chris RoseTwo people sit down opposite each other to play a game. Between them is a large wooden board. The board is rectangular in shape and it has black lines drawn¹ on it in. There are 19 horizontal lines and 19 vertical² lines, making 361 small black squares on the brown wooden board. Each player has some stones. The man has 180 white stones, and the woman has 181 black stones. All the stones are round and smooth. The white ones are made from the shells of clams³; the black ones are made of slate⁴. They have the stones in wooden bowls next to the board. When it is time to start playing, they slowly take the lids off the bowls.

One of the players is an old man. He is now 89 years old. He has spent all of his life playing this game, which is called Go. There are many other names for this game in the many parts of the world where it is played, but Go is the most common. The man has been playing Go since he was a small child. His father showed him how to place the big heavy stones on the board when he was three years old. He has never stopped playing since then. He is now the most famous player of Go in the world. People from all over the world call him “the Master”. People come from all over the world to play against him. Some people want to try and beat him; most people only want to watch and learn from him. The Master thinks that the game of Go is an art, and he thinks that he is an artist. He does not know how many games of Go he has played in his life, but thinks that even if he has played many thousands of games, then he has still not made anything near the number of possible combinations there are for this game. This game is very very simple, and very very complicated.

The two players place the stones they take from their opponent in the upturned lid of the wooden bowls. It will continue like this until one player can take no more stones. Then they will start to play again. They will play many games, until they eventually know who is the winner.

The other person is a young woman. The young woman has only been playing Go for three years. This is not a very long time It takes years to become an expert in this simple but complicated game. Before this, the woman was an expert at playing computer games. She was a computer games champion, and she won competitions in all types of computer games. She played in tournaments in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Munich, as well as many online tournaments, with people from all over the world. When she thought she could not win any more computer games, she looked for other games to play. She enjoyed playing poker⁵, she became an expert at chess, but nothing captured her imagination like the simplicity⁶ of placing black or white stones on a simple wooden board. She studied hard and practiced a lot, the way she always did. She played to win. She thought of the game as a science. She calculated all the possible variations, using a computer to analyse techniques and strategies. She became a human computer when she played. She played Go the same way she had played computer games – by becoming a machine herself.

Both players are dedicated⁷. Both players are obsessed⁸. Both players think about nothing else but the game of Go from the moment they wake up until the moment they sleep, and even then they do not stop thinking about Go, as they have dreams about great games, in which they always win. Neither is married, neither has ever been in love with anything except the game of Go.

“When I was your age, it would have been impossible for us to play together” he says to her. They speak very little during the game.
“Why?” she asks.
“Young lady, you have not studied the history of this game. In the past, women did not play Go.” There is silence again. She might be irritated by the old man’s comment, but now she is playing Go, and so she feels no emotions. Her mind is not listening to the man, but calculating all the possible ways of placing her next stone. The old man, on the other hand, tries to listen to the woman very carefully. He watches her and studies her, looks at the movements of her hands and of her face. This is not only because he thinks that she is very beautiful, it is also because by understanding a person he knows how they will play. When he understands how a person moves, he understands their character. And when he understands their character, he understands their game. This has always helped him to win.

By placing the stones on the board, they both try to invade each other’s space, each other’s territory. White stones invade a black-bordered area, black stones try to fill a white-bordered area. At the end of each game, the board is a map of two countries, one black and one white. The board is map of their minds. Black and white mix together. Each player is learning something from the other.

He wins the first game, and the second, and the third. The woman’s face shows no emotion, and the man is confused. He agrees to continue playing. She wins the next game, and the man is shocked. This has never happened to him before. He rarely loses, and he has never lost to a woman.

The two players place their stones on the board using only their fingers, not their thumbs. It is necessary to think very carefully about where to put the stones, and to hold them properly. A long time passes between each move. They do not place the stones in the squares, this is not a game like chess or draughts⁹, but on the corners where the lines meet.

The old man worries about the way the young woman is playing the game. He does not recognise her style, her strategy. He can’t read her face; he does not understand her. Sometimes, he thinks that he does not understand the world around him any longer.

“The way I think about the game” says the woman, “is that it is a series of steps for getting what I want.” Again, the old man is surprised. For him, the game is a way of life, life itself, and not a model of life. He worries about the dignity of the game, the elegance¹⁰ of the board. She worries about getting points.

“There is no more beauty any longer. Everything is science and rules. Everything is about winning. Nothing is about playing” he says.
“What sense does a game have if you don’t win?”
“The playing is the sense” replies the man.

People have been playing this game for 3000 years. Sometimes, the two players think, this game will last 3000 years. The man feels like he has been playing Go for 3000 years.

“This game was invented by generals. They used it to work out strategies for war. They used the stones to map out positions” he tells her. “And then they decided¹¹ that is was better to have a game than have a war.”
“Are we at war now?” she asks. He wants to say no, but does not know how to reply.

“There is another story” says the young woman. “Go began when witches threw stones to tell fortunes.”
“Will this game tell our fortune?”
“It is better to play a game than try to tell the future” she says, and he is surprised again. This time he is surprised by how wise her words are.

“The future is a game that has already started. The future is waiting to see who the winner is” he says. “Every move you make determines what will happen in the future.”

They play Go for six months. At the end of six months, they know that their final game is close. The final game will decide who is the winner, and who the loser.

“A game is a metaphor¹² for life.”
“No, life is a metaphor for a game.”

They cannot agree; but it is not necessary. They both look at the Go board in silence. It looks like a work of art, and also a scientific document. It is a map, a map of the game they played, and a map of their thoughts.

“Change is a necessary part of life” thinks the man.
“Playing is as important as winning” thinks the woman.

They start to play their final game.

 

1 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

2 vertical   

adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置

参考例句：

• The northern side of the mountain is almost vertical.这座山的北坡几乎是垂直的。
• Vertical air motions are not measured by this system.垂直气流的运动不用这种系统来测量。

3 clams   

n.蛤；蚌，蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.（在沙滩上）挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The restaurant's specialities are fried clams. 这个餐厅的特色菜是炸蚌。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We dug clams in the flats et low tide. 退潮时我们在浅滩挖蛤蜊。 来自辞典例句

4 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

5 poker   

n.扑克；vt.烙制

参考例句：

• He was cleared out in the poker game.他打扑克牌，把钱都输光了。
• I'm old enough to play poker and do something with it.我打扑克是老手了，可以玩些花样。

6 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

7 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

8 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

9 draughts   

n. <英>国际跳棋

参考例句：

• Seal (up) the window to prevent draughts. 把窗户封起来以防风。
• I will play at draughts with him. 我跟他下一盘棋吧！

10 elegance   

n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙

参考例句：

• The furnishings in the room imparted an air of elegance.这个房间的家具带给这房间一种优雅的气氛。
• John has been known for his sartorial elegance.约翰因为衣着讲究而出名。

11 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

12 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。