來源:?http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/double-solitude
[1]?At eighty-seven, I am?solitary. I live by myself on one floor of the 1803 farmhouse where my family has lived since the Civil War. After my grandfather died, my grandmother Kate lived here alone. Her three daughters visited her. In 1975, Kate died at ninety-seven, and I took over.?Forty-odd?years later, I spend my days alone in one of two chairs. From an overstuffed blue chair in my living room I look out the window at the unpainted old barn, golden and empty of its cows and of Riley the horse. I look at a?tulip; I look at snow. In the?parlor’s?mechanical chair, I write these paragraphs and?dictate?letters. I also watch television news, often without listening, and lie back in the enormous comfort of solitude. People want to come visit, but mostly I refuse them, preserving my continuous silence. Linda comes two nights a week. My two best male friends from New Hampshire, who live in Maine and Manhattan, seldom drop by. A few hours a week, Carole does my laundry and counts my pills and?picks up after me. I look forward to her presence and feel relief when she leaves.?Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns.
[1]在八十七歲時，我是孤獨的。我獨自生活在1803年農舍的一樓，我的家人自內戰以來一直住在這里。祖父去世后，我的祖母凱特一個人住在這里。她的三個女兒來看她。 1975年，凱特在九十七歲時去世，我接手了。四十多年后，我獨自一人在兩把椅子中度過。從我客廳里一張厚厚的藍色椅子上，我看著窗外的未上漆的舊谷倉，金色的空的奶牛和萊利的馬。我看著郁金香;我看著雪。在客廳的機械椅上，我寫下這些段落并指示字母。我也經常看電視新聞，經常沒有聽，而是在孤獨的巨大舒適中躺著。人們想來參觀，但大多數時候我拒絕他們，保持我的持續沉默。琳達每周來兩個晚上。來自新罕布什爾州的兩位住在??緬因州和曼哈頓的最好的男性朋友很少匆忙。每周幾個小時，Carole洗完衣服，算上我的藥，然后撿起來。我期待她的存在，并在她離開時感到寬慰。偶爾，特別是在夜晚，孤獨失去了它的軟實力和寂寞接管。孤獨歸來時，我很感激。
[2]?Born in 1928, I was an?only child. During the Great Depression, there were many of us, and Spring Glen Elementary School was eight grades of children without?siblings.?From time to time?I made a friend during childhood, but friendships never lasted long. Charlie Axel liked making model airplanes out of?balsa wood?and?tissue. So did I, but I was clumsy and dripped cement onto wing paper. His models flew. Later, I collected stamps, and so did Frank Benedict. I got bored with stamps. In seventh and eighth grade, there were girls. I remember lying with Barbara Pope on her bed, fully clothed and apart while her mother looked in at us with anxiety. Most of the time, I liked staying alone after school, sitting in the?shadowy?living room. My mother was shopping or playing?bridge?with friends; my father added?figures?in his office; I?daydreamed.
[2]出生于1928年，我是一個獨生子女。 在大蕭條時期，我們中有很多人，而且Spring Glen小學是八年級沒有兄弟姐妹的孩子。 我不時在童年時代結交朋友，但友誼從未持續很長時間。 查理阿克塞爾喜歡用輕木和紙巾制作模型飛機。 我也是，但我笨拙地將水泥滴在翼紙上。 他的模特飛了起來。 后來，我收集了郵票，弗蘭克本尼迪克特也是如此。 我厭倦了郵票。 在七年級和八年級，有女孩。 我記得她和芭芭拉·波普躺在床上，穿著衣服，分開，而她的母親則焦急地看著我們。 大多數時候，我喜歡放學后獨自一人，坐在陰暗的客廳里。 我的母親正和朋友一起購物或搭橋牌; 我父親在辦公室里添加了數字; 我夢想成真。
[3]?In summer, I left my Connecticut suburb to?hay?with my grandfather, on this New Hampshire farm. I watched him milk seven?Holsteins?morning and night. For lunch I made myself an onion sandwich—a thick slice between pieces of?Wonder Bread. I’ve told about this sandwich before.
[3]夏天，我離開康涅狄格州的郊區與我的祖父在這個新罕布什爾州的農場干草。 我看著他早晚擠奶七個荷斯坦牛奶。 午餐時，我做了一個洋蔥三明治 - 一塊奇妙面包之間的厚片。 我以前告訴過這個三明治。
[4]?At fifteen, I went to Exeter for the last two years of high school.?Exeter?was academically difficult and made Harvard easy, but I hated it—five hundred identical boys living?two to a room. Solitude was scarce, and I labored to find it. I took long walks alone, smoking cigars. I found myself a rare single room and remained there as much as I could, reading and writing. Saturday night, the rest of the school sat in the basketball arena,?deliriously?watching a movie. I remained in my room in solitary pleasure.
[4]十五歲的時候，我在高中的最后兩年去了埃克塞特。 埃克塞特在學術上很難，讓哈佛變得容易，但我討厭它 - 五百個完全相同的男孩住在一個房間里。 孤獨是稀缺的，我努力找到它。 我獨自長途跋涉，抽雪茄。 我發現自己是一個罕見的單人房間，盡可能多地留在那里，閱讀和寫作。 星期六晚上，學校的其他人坐在籃球場上，神志不清地看著一部電影。 我獨自一人留在我的房間里。
[5]?At college, dormitory suites had single and double bedrooms. For three years, I lived in one bedroom crowded with everything I owned. During my?senior?year, I managed to?secure?a single suite: bedroom and sitting room and bath. At Oxford, I had two rooms to myself. Everybody did. Then I had?fellowships. Then I wrote books. Finally, to my distaste, I had to look for a job. With my first wife–people married young back then; we were twenty and twenty-three–I settled in Ann Arbor, teaching English literature at the University of Michigan. I loved walking up and down in the lecture hall, talking about Yeats and Joyce or reading aloud the poems of Thomas Hardy and Andrew Marvell. These pleasures were hardly solitary, but at home I spent the day in a tiny attic room, working on poems. My extremely intelligent wife was more mathematical than literary. We lived together and we grew apart. For the only time in my life, I?cherished?social gatherings: Ann Arbor’s culture of cocktail parties. I found myself looking forward to weekends, to crowded parties that permitted me distance from my marriage. There were two or three such occasions on Friday and more on Saturday, permitting couples to migrate from living room to living room. We?flirted, we drank, we chatted–without remembering on Sunday what we said Saturday night.
[5]在大學，宿舍套房有單人和雙人臥室。三年來，我住在一間擠滿了我擁有的東西的臥室里。在我大四的時候，我設法找到了一個套房：臥室，起居室和浴室。在牛津，我有兩個房間給自己。每個人都做到了。然后我有了獎學金。然后我寫了書。最后，令我厭惡的是，我不得不找工作。與我的第一任妻子 - 當時年輕人結婚;我們二十三歲，我在安娜堡定居，在密歇根大學教英語文學。我喜歡在演講廳里走來走去，談論葉芝和喬伊斯，或者大聲朗讀托馬斯·哈代和安德魯·馬維爾的詩歌。這些樂趣幾乎不是孤零零的，但在家里，我在一個小閣樓里度過了一天，在詩歌上工作。我非常聰明的妻子比數學更具數學性。我們住在一起，我們分開了。在我生命中唯一一次，我珍惜社交聚會：安娜堡的雞尾酒會文化。我發現自己很期待周末，到擁擠的聚會，讓我與我的婚姻保持距離。星期五有兩三次這樣的場合，星期六有更多場合，允許夫婦從起居室遷移到起居室。我們調情，我們喝酒，我們聊天 - 周日晚上沒有記住我們說的話。
[6]?After sixteen years of marriage, my wife and I divorced.
[7]?For five years I was alone again, but without the comfort of solitude. I exchanged the?miseries?of a bad marriage for the miseries of?bourbon. I dated a girlfriend who drank two bottles of vodka a day. I dated three or four women a week, occasionally three in a day. My poems?slackened?and stopped. I tried to think that I lived in happy?license. I didn’t.
[6]結婚十六年后，我和妻子離婚了。
[7]五年來我又獨自一人，卻沒有孤獨的安慰。 為了波旁威士忌的苦難，我交換了不良婚姻的苦難。 我約會了一個女朋友，她每天喝兩瓶伏特加。 我一周約會三四個女人，偶爾一天三個。 我的詩松弛了。 我試著認為我住在快樂的執照上。 我沒有。
[8]?Jane Kenyon was my student. She was smart, she wrote poems, she was funny and?frank?in class. I knew she lived in a dormitory near my house, so one night I asked her to?housesit?while I attended an hour-long meeting. (In Ann Arbor, it was the year of breaking and entering.) When I came home, we went to bed. We enjoyed each other,?libertine?liberty as much as pleasures of the flesh. Later I asked her to dinner, which in 1970 always included breakfast. We saw each other once a week, still dating others, then twice a week, then three or four times a week, and saw no one else. One night, we spoke of marriage. Quickly we changed the subject, because I was nineteen years older and, if we married,?she would be a widow so long. We married in April, 1972. We lived in Ann Arbor three years, and in 1975 left Michigan for New Hampshire. She?adored?this old family house.
[8] Jane Kenyon是我的學生。 她很聰明，她寫詩，她在課堂上很有趣，坦率。 我知道她住在我家附近的一個宿舍里，所以有一天晚上，我參加了一個小時的會議時，她讓她去了房子。 （在安娜堡，這是打破和進入的一年。）當我回到家時，我們去睡覺了。 我們彼此享受，享受自由，就像肉體的快樂一樣。 后來我請她吃飯，1970年總是包括早餐。 我們每周見過一次，還在和別人約會，然后一周兩次，然后每周三到四次，沒見別人。 一天晚上，我們談到了婚姻。 很快我們改變了主題，因為我年紀大了十九歲，如果我們結婚了，她就會成長為寡婦。 我們于1972年4月結婚。我們在安娜堡住了三年，1975年離開密歇根州前往新罕布什爾州。 她崇拜這個古老的家庭住宅。
[9]?For almost twenty years, I woke before Jane and brought her coffee in bed. When she rose, she walked Gus the dog. Then each of us?retreated?to a workroom to write, at opposite ends of our two-story house. Mine was the ground floor in front, next to Route 4. Hers was the second floor in the rear, beside Ragged Mountain’s old pasture. In the separation of our double solitude, we each wrote poetry in the morning. We had lunch, eating sandwiches and walking around without speaking to each other. Afterward, we took a twenty-minute nap, gathering energy for the rest of the day, and woke to our daily fuck. Afterward I felt like?cuddling, but Jane’s?climaxreleased her into energy. She hurried from bed to workroom.
[9]近二十年來，我在簡之前醒來，把咖啡帶到了床上。 當她起身時，她走向了Gus the dog。 然后我們每個人都退回到工作室，在我們兩層樓的房子的兩端寫字。 我是前面的一樓，在4號公路旁邊。她是后方的二樓，旁邊是Ragged Mountain的老牧場。 在我們雙重孤獨的分離中，我們每個人都在早上寫詩。 我們共進午餐，吃三明治，四處走動，沒有互相交談。 之后，我們休息了二十分鐘，在剩下的時間里收集能量，然后醒來，我們每天他媽的。 后來我感覺自己好像擁抱，但簡的高潮讓她精力充沛。 她急忙從床上到工作室。
[10]?For several hours afterward, I went back to work at my desk. Late in the afternoon, I read aloud to Jane for an hour. I read Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” Henry James’s “The Ambassadors” twice, the?Old Testament, William Faulkner, more Henry James, seventeenth-century poets. Before supper I drank a beer and glanced at The New Yorker while Jane cooked, sipping a glass of wine. Slowly she made a delicious dinner—maybe?veal cutlets?with mushroom-and-garlic?gravy, maybe summer’s?asparagus?from the bed across the street—then asked me to carry our plates to the table while she lit the candle. Through dinner we talked about our separate days.
[10]幾個小時后，我回到辦公桌前工作。 下午晚些時候，我向Jane大聲朗讀了一個小時。 我讀過華茲華斯的“序曲”，亨利詹姆斯的“大使”兩次，舊約，威廉福克納，更多亨利詹姆斯，十七世紀的詩人。 晚飯前我喝了一杯啤酒，瞥了一眼紐約人，而簡煮了，喝著一杯酒。 慢慢地，她做了一頓美味的晚餐 - 也許是小牛肉片，里面有蘑菇和大蒜肉汁，也許是街對面床上的夏天蘆筍 - 然后讓我在點燃蠟燭時把盤子拿到桌子上。 通過晚餐，我們談到了我們不同的日子。
[11]?Summer afternoons we spent beside Eagle Pond, on a bite-sized beach among frogs,?mink, and?beaver. Jane lay in the sun, tanning, while I read books in a?canvas sling chair. Every now and then, we would dive into the pond. Sometimes, for an early supper, we?broiled?sausage on a?hibachi. After twenty years of our remarkable marriage, living and writing together in double solitude, Jane died of?leukemia?at forty-seven, on April 22, 1995.
[11]夏天的下午，我們在鷹池旁邊，在青蛙，水貂和海貍之間的一個大小的海灘上度過。 當我在帆布吊椅上看書時，簡躺在陽光下曬黑。 我們時不時地潛入池塘。 有時，為了早餐，我們在hibachi上烤香腸。 經過二十年的卓越婚姻，雙重孤獨地生活和寫作，簡于1995年4月22日在47歲時因白血病去世。
[12]?Now it is April 22, 2016, and Jane has been dead for more than two decades. Earlier this year, at eighty-seven, I grieved for her in a way I had never?grievedbefore. I was sick and thought I was dying. Every day of her dying, I stayed by her side—a year and a half. It was?miserable?that Jane should die so young, and it was?redemptive?that I could be with her every hour of every day. Last January I grieved again, this time that she would not sit beside me as I died.
[12]現在是2016年4月22日，簡已經死了二十多年。 今年早些時候，在八十七歲時，我以一種我從未悲傷過的方式為她感到悲痛。 我病了，以為我快死了。 她垂死的每一天，我一直呆在她身邊 - 一年半。 簡應該如此年輕地死去是一件悲慘的事情，而且我每天每小時都可以和她在一起。 去年一月，我又悲傷了，這一次，我死的時候她不會坐在我旁邊。
