双语有声阅读：我希望我能相信

 

第 1 页： 美文欣赏

第 2 页： 参考译文

编者按：

 

人需要有一种宗教信仰使他的生活有意义。我希望我也能有这样的信仰，但我的任何信念总会充满困惑和保留看法。然而，我写诗就是努力发掘生活的意义。偶尔，我用诗歌表现自己的经历和感受，从中也明白了我不曾意识到自己已经懂得的道理。因此，对我来说，诗歌创作的冲动表现出来的，不是因为不系统而不太真实的东西……而是一种信仰，那就是，人必须享受生活，探索生活的真谛，提高生活的品质。人可各尽其能，而我则通过写诗尽善尽美地完成我的使命。

 

 

I Wish I Could believe

 

by C. Day Lewis

 

"The best lack all conviction,

While the worst are full of passionate¹ intesity."

 

Those two lines of Yeats for me sum up the matter as it stands today when the very currency of belief seems debased. I was brought up in the Christian² church. Later I believed for a while that communism offered the best hope for this world. I acknowledge the need for belief, but I cannot forget how through the ages great faiths have been vitiated by fanaticism³ and dogmatism, by intolerance and cruelty, by the intellectual dishonesty, the folly⁴, the crankiness or the opportunism of their adherents⁵.

 

Have I no faith at all, then? Faith is the thing at the core of you, the sediment⁶ that's left when hopes and illusions are drained away. The thing for which you make any sacrifice because without it you would be nothing - a mere⁷ walking shadow. I know what my own core is. I would in the last resort sacrifice any human relationship, any way of living to the search for truth which produces my poem. I know there are heavy odds⁸ against any poem I write surviving after my death. I realize that writing poetry may seem the most preposterously⁹ useless thing a man can be doing today. Yet it is just at such times of crisis that each man discovers or rediscovers what he values most. My poet's instinct to make something comes out most strongly then, enabling me to use fear, doubt, even despair as creative stimuli¹⁰. In doing so, I feel my kinship with humanity, with the common man who carries on doing his job till the bomb falls or the sea closes over him. Carries on because of his belief, however inarticulate, that this is the best thing he can do.

 

But the poet is luckier than the layman¹¹, for his job is always a vacation. Indeed, it's so like a religious vacation that he may feel little need for a religious faith, but because it is always trying to get past the trivial and the transient or to reveal these as images of the essential and the permanent, poetry is at least a kind of spiritual activity.

 

Men need a religious belief to make sense out of life. I wish I had such a belief myself, but any creed¹² of mine would be honeycombed with confusions and reservations. Yet when I write a poem I am trying to make sense out of life. And just now and then my experience composes and transmutes¹³ itself into a poem which tells me something I didn't know I knew.

 

So for me the compulsion of poetry is the sign of a belief, not the less real for being unformulated ... a belief that men must enjoy life, explore life, enhance life. Each as best he can. And that I shall do these things best through the practice of poetry.我希望我能相信

 

塞（西尔）·戴·刘易斯

 

 

“优秀的人们信心尽失，

坏蛋们则充满了炽烈的狂热。”

 

对我来说，叶芝的这两行诗概括了今天的现实，信仰的货币似乎已经贬值了。我是在基督教的熏陶下长大的。后来有一段时间我相信共产主义给这个世界带来了最大的希望。我承认信仰的必要性，但我无法忘记历代的伟大信仰是如何因其拥护者的狂热、教条、褊狭、残忍、学术欺诈、愚蠢、偏执或机会主义而遭到损害的。

 

那么，难道我就没有信仰吗？信仰存在于你的心灵深处，当希望和幻想渐渐枯竭，沉淀下来的就是信仰。为了它，你甘愿做出任何牺牲，因为没有它，你的存在就毫无意义——你只不过是一个会行走的影子。我知道我的内心深处有什么。在别无选择的情况下，我愿意牺牲任何人际关系、任何生活方式去寻找使我能创作诗歌的真理。我知道很有可能我写的每一首诗在我死后都不能流传。我也明白诗歌创作在今天或许是一个人所能做的最荒谬、最无用的事情。然而，正是在这样的危难之时，每一个人才能发现或重新发现他最珍视的东西。于是我那诗人渴望创作的本能在胸中涌动，使我能让恐惧、怀疑，甚至绝望激发自己创作。在诗歌创作中，我觉得我和人类，和平凡的人紧密相连，他们坚守着自己的岗位，直到炸弹落下或是海浪席卷而来将他们淹没。坚守是因为他相信这是他最能做的事情，尽管这信仰难以用语言传达。但诗人比普通人幸运，因为他的工作始终是他的天职。他就像肩负着一种宗教使命一样，或许并不需要有宗教信仰，但因为诗歌或是不涉及琐事和瞬息即逝的事物，或是将它们作为本质和永恒的意象，诗歌至少是一种精神活动。

 

人需要有一种宗教信仰使他的生活有意义。我希望我也能有这样的信仰，但我的任何信念总会充满困惑和保留看法。然而，我写诗就是努力发掘生活的意义。偶尔，我用诗歌表现自己的经历和感受，从中也明白了我不曾意识到自己已经懂得的道理。因此，对我来说，诗歌创作的冲动表现出来的，不是因为不系统而不太真实的东西……而是一种信仰，那就是，人必须享受生活，探索生活的真谛，提高生活的品质。人可各尽其能，而我则通过写诗尽善尽美地完成我的使命。

1 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

2 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

3 fanaticism   

n.狂热，盲信

参考例句：

• Your fanaticism followed the girl is wrong. 你对那个女孩的狂热是错误的。
• All of Goebbels's speeches sounded the note of stereotyped fanaticism. 戈培尔的演讲，千篇一律，无非狂热二字。

4 folly   

n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话

参考例句：

• Learn wisdom by the folly of others.从别人的愚蠢行动中学到智慧。
• Events proved the folly of such calculations.事情的进展证明了这种估计是愚蠢的。

5 adherents   

n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙

参考例句：

• He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 sediment   

n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物)

参考例句：

• The sediment settled and the water was clear.杂质沉淀后，水变清了。
• Sediment begins to choke the channel's opening.沉积物开始淤塞河道口。

7 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

8 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

9 preposterously   

adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地

参考例句：

• That is a preposterously high price! 那价格高得出奇！ 来自辞典例句

10 stimuli   

n.刺激（物）

参考例句：

• It is necessary to curtail or alter normally coexisting stimuli.必需消除或改变正常时并存的刺激。
• My sweat glands also respond to emotional stimuli.我的汗腺对情绪刺激也能产生反应。

11 layman   

n.俗人，门外汉，凡人

参考例句：

• These technical terms are difficult for the layman to understand.这些专门术语是外行人难以理解的。
• He is a layman in politics.他对政治是个门外汉。

12 creed   

n.信条；信念，纲领

参考例句：

• They offended against every article of his creed.他们触犯了他的每一条戒律。
• Our creed has always been that business is business.我们的信条一直是公私分明。

13 transmutes   

v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Energy transmutes into matter. 能量变成物质。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Your Light will be so powerful that it repels or transmutes the lower energies. 你们的光将会如此强大，以致于它驱逐或者转变较低的能量。 来自互联网