Didion《论自尊》翻译
论自尊 | 琼·狄迪恩
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.
在一个干燥的时日里，我扯出一本摊开的笔记本，横跨两面写下了这些词句：当一个人被剥夺了自己喜欢自己的那种幻想时，他便失去了所谓的“天真”。时至今日，我仍惊诧于那颗自我放逐的心，竟仍一笔一划地实录下了它所体验的每一次震颤。回想起那些过往年华的余烬，一种泛着困窘的清明涌上心头。那无非是我悬置的自尊。
I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did not make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.
没被选上优等生荣誉学会，于我而言算得上是一个显而易见却又无可置疑的结果——我的分数本来就够不上。但这一失败却使我心神不宁——我曾多少自认为是学习上的拉斯柯尔尼科夫，能超脱于那些困扰常人的因果关系中。尽管那时的我不过是个缺乏幽默感的十九岁女孩，我也不得不承认这种失败缺乏真正的悲剧性质。无论如何，落选的那一天标志着我心中某些念想的终结，而“天真”或许正是它的名字：曾如此坚信人生路上定会一路绿灯的我总觉得，孩提时分的那些乖巧足以为我在荣誉学会赢得一席之地，甚至在漫漫长路上找到幸福、荣誉，以及一个好人的爱。我失去了那种得体、礼仪、智商测量表上耀眼的分数共同铸就的信仰——天呐，我的自尊竟维系在这些可疑的迷信上！那段日子，我与一个撞见了吸血鬼却手无寸铁的人一样无措而茫然。
Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one’s marked cards – the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.
犹如用借来的证件出境，自我反刍至多也只是件令人不安的事，可我如今觉得，这其实算得上是真正自尊的惟一发端。无论我们用多么美妙的漂亮话来哄自己，自我欺骗永远是最难的欺骗。用来麻痹他人的把戏在自己身上毫不奏效：这是一场与自己的后巷幽会，可是四方灯火通明，你既不会有什么胜利者的微笑，也列不出几条善意清单来给自己贴金。不怀好意的善良、金玉其外的成功、迫于无奈的壮举？你只会浮夸又徒劳地把那几张标记过的底牌哗啦哗啦地洗来洗去。事实就是，自尊与他人的认可毫无关系：毕竟他们轻易就能被蒙蔽；自尊与你的名望也毫无关系：就像白瑞德对郝思嘉说的一样，真正有勇气的人根本用不着它。
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
从另外一方面来看，没有自尊的人就像被锁进了一场冗长的纪录片里，不断重复着自己的失败——无论这失败是真是假。恰好每次放映都会剪进新的、血淋淋的镜头：这个镜头有你一怒之下摔碎的杯子；那个镜头有他脸上受伤的神情；那个镜头有她从外地赶回来，看你又把一件事搞砸。在没有自尊的处境中活着，就像是在一个个失眠的夜晚，怎么也够不到温热的牛奶和安眠药，也找不到那只盖在被子上的安抚的手，于是你只能数着自己干过的和没干过的恶：背叛的信任、撕毁的承诺、因为懒惰、胆怯或漫不经心而永远浪费掉的天赋。无论我们多么努力去欲盖弥彰，我们终究会躺在那声名狼藉的床上，那张我们自己铺的床上。而究竟是安然入睡还是辗转反侧，全然取决于我们是否尊重自己。
To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one’s underwear. There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation. Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samara and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbably candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: “I hate careless people,” she told Nick Carraway. “It takes two to make an accident.”
如果有人抗议说，某些看起来不太可能尊重自己的人——那些无论如何都不可能有自尊的人——似乎也睡得相当安稳，那他就完全没有抓住重点，就像那些认为自尊必然与内衣里没有别针有关的人一样。人们普遍迷信，“自尊”是一种驱蛇的符咒，能把拥有它的人锁在一片没有遭难的伊甸园里，让他们远离陌生的床榻、含糊的对话和寻常的烦恼。可它根本不是。自尊与事物的表象毫不相关，它关乎的是一场单独的和平，一次私下的和解。尽管《萨马拉的幽会》中那个粗心鲁莽、有自毁倾向的朱利安·英格利希，以及《了不起的盖茨比》中那个粗心大意、无可救药地不诚实的乔丹·贝克，看起来都不像是自尊的合格人选，但乔丹·贝克拥有它，而朱利安·英格利希没有。乔丹带着那种（常见于女性而非男性）与自身和解的天赋，度量了自己，与自己达成了和平，并避免任何可能威胁到这和平的事物：“我讨厌粗心大意的人，”她告诉尼克·卡拉威，“事故的发生，得需要两个人。”
Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an excess of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.
像乔丹·贝克一样，拥有自尊的人，对自己的问题也抱持着勇气。他们深知万物的代价。倘若他们选择通奸，就不会因为圣母心泛滥过剩而跑去向受害一方寻求宽恕；他们也不会过度抱怨，那种列为为共同被告而遭受的不公与不应有的困窘。简而言之，有自尊的人表现出一种坚韧，一种道德上的刚毅；他们展现出一种曾被称为“品格”的特质。这种品格，虽然我们天天夸赞，有时却会输给其他那些更能立竿见影、更易获得的美德。其声望日渐式微的佐证是：我们如今只会在提到那些长相平凡的孩子，或者那些在初选中败选的美国参议员时，才会想起这个词。然而，品格——那种愿意为自己的人生承担责任的意愿——正是自尊的源头。
Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land in California involved death and difficulty and dirt. In a diary kept during the winter of 1846, an emigrating twelve-year-old named Narcissa Cornwall noted coolly: “Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filled with strange Indians until Mother spoke out about it.” Even lacking any clue as to what Mother said, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by the entire incident: the father reading, the Indians filing in, the mother choosing the words that would not alarm, the child duly recording the event and noting further that those particular Indians were not, “fortunately for us,” hostile. Indians were simply part of the donnee.
自尊，是我们的祖辈们所了然于胸的，不论他们自己是否拥有它。年幼时，一种特定的纪律被灌输到他们心中——一种感受，即人活于世，靠的是做那些自己并不特别想做的事；是把恐惧和疑虑暂且搁置；是权衡眼前的安逸与获得更大、甚至是无形安适的可能性。在十九世纪的人看来，查理·戈登穿上干净的白制服，在马赫迪的围攻下守住喀土穆，是值得钦佩的，但并无特别之处；去加利福尼亚获取免费土地，需要冒着死亡、艰难和污秽的风险，在他们看来也并非不公。一个名叫 Narcissa Cornwall 的十二岁移民女孩在她1846年冬天写的一页日记中冷静地记述道：“父亲正忙着阅读，他没有注意到屋子里涌进了陌生的印第安人，直到母亲出声提醒。”即便我们对母亲说了什么一无所知，也很难不被整个事件所震撼：父亲在阅读，印第安人鱼贯而入，母亲谨慎择言以免惊动他们，孩子则如实记录下此事，并进一步写道，“对我们来说幸运的是”，那些印第安人并不怀有敌意。印第安人，不过是既定的现实的一部分。
In one guise or another, Indians always are. Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.
无论以何种伪装，印第安人总是如此。这又回到了那个问题：任何值得拥有的东西都有其代价。尊重自己的人，愿意接受印第安人怀有敌意的风险，愿意接受事业可能破产的风险，愿意接受“你嫁给了我，但未必能让你每天都如节日般欢快”的风险。他们愿意投入自身的一部分；他们或许根本不参与牌局，但只要他们参与，他们便深知赢面几何。
That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.
这样子的一种自尊是一种纪律、一种内化于心而无法伪造的习惯，需要花费时间去发展、训练和引导。有一次别人对我说，若是想要把自己从哭泣中解救出来，那就把自己的头装进牛皮纸袋里。这恰好有其生理学上的合理性，和供氧有关；但单是其心理作用就已无法估量：把头装进一个袋子里时，你几乎不可能继续把自己想象成《呼啸山庄》里那个为情所困的凯瑟琳！很多方法虽然本身并不起眼，却都能帮助我们树立自尊。比如冲冷水澡就能让我们从颅内高潮，不论是自怨自艾还是性欲的痴迷中清醒过来。
But those small disciplines are valuable only insofar as they represent larger ones. To say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by a crash program in cricket; to give formal dinners in the rain forest would be pointless did not the candlelight flickering on the liana call forth deeper, stronger disciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have known it.
但是，这些细微的约束之所以有价值，仅因为它们代表着更大的纪律。“滑铁卢战役胜利于伊顿公学的操场上”并不是说假如拿破仑学了怎么打板球，就不会战败；热带雨林中的正式晚宴是毫无意义的，除非那在藤蔓上摇曳的烛光，能够唤起更深、更坚韧的纪律，那些早已根植于心的价值观。这是一种仪式，帮助我们铭记自己是谁，我们是什么。而为了铭记，一个人首先必须知晓。
注：“滑铁卢战役胜利于伊顿公学的操场上”是一句著名的格言，据说源自毕业于伊顿公学的威灵顿公爵（但实际并非如此）。伊顿公学是英国最著名的两所公学之一（另一所是哈罗公学），而威灵顿公爵正是在滑铁卢击败了拿破仑。这句格言被广泛接受的解读是：正是因为在伊顿这类学校里参与板球等集体运动，使英国青年在中学时代便培养出了高度的纪律性与强烈的团队精神，而这被认为是他们在滑铁卢击败拿破仑军队的主要原因。尽管中学时代的板球运动在塑造英国青年的品格方面确实发挥了重要作用，但它对最终胜利的贡献是间接的。因此，我们不能从这句名言中推断出：如果拿破仑在短时间内集中精力学习板球，就能避免他在滑铁卢的失败。
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.
拥有自尊，本质上就是确信自己有内在价值；一旦拥有它，你就拥有了一切：去分辨、去爱，以及去保持冷漠。否则就如同自我囚禁，既没有能力去爱，也没有能力去保持冷漠。要是我们不尊重自己，我们一方面不得不鄙视那些资源如此匮乏，竟与我们为伍的人；又鄙视那些洞察力如此拙劣，竟对我们致命的弱点视而不见的人。另一方面我们又是如此囿于我们所见到的他人，荒谬地去形塑一种他人眼中的形象——只因我们自己的自我形象站不住脚。我们把取悦他人哄骗成一种富有魅力的特质：富有同情心的天资、愿意付出的决心。你是亚瑟王，我可以是你的桂妮薇儿；你是安妮苏利文，我也当然可以是你的海伦凯勒——再离谱的角色我都接，再错位的期待我都满足！然而任由那些我们轻视的人摆布，从来注定是一个悲剧的角色——每一次失败都会催生出新的绝望，因为我们必须立刻揣摩并满足施加在我们身上的下一个要求。
It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
有的人把这种现象称为“自我的异化”。异化过了头，我们便再也不会与他人来往，因为每一句话都可能意味着索取。我们根本不敢想象，自己居然可以说“不”，而且不会立刻被自我憎恶淹死——这种念头对我们来说太陌生了。这样，每一次邂逅都带来过分的请求，以至于抽离灵魂，榨干意志。甚至对细枝末节的关注，好比一封没能回答的信，都会带来不成比例的愧疚，以至于根本无从谈起回信这件事。真正的、强大的自尊藏于那种分得清未应答的信件之轻重缓急的生活态度、不沉溺于他人期望的自我解放、把自己赎回来的行为。而没有自尊的人到最后会发现最可怕的一幕：你逃到天涯海角想找回自己，结果推开门——屋里空无一人。