This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends—pretty bits of silk and velvet; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to touch always predominated. Likewise my compositions are made up of crude notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to acknowledge defeat.
這件百衲衣由各種各樣的碎布頭制成，雖然不乏精美的絲綢和天鵝絨，可是這些拼湊的碎片始終不能令人滿意。同樣，我的作文也是既有我自己的粗鄙見解，也不乏一些大家的真知灼見。在我看來，寫作的最大困難就在于，我們要用理性的語言去表達(dá)自身混亂的思緒、不成熟的情感和幼稚的觀念，可以說，這基本上屬于一種本能行為。嘗試寫作的過程就像拼湊中國的七巧板和九連環(huán)一樣復(fù)雜。我們在腦海中勾勒出一幅圖案，我們希望借助文字表達(dá)其含義，但是在通常情況下，文字并不適用于這個范疇，或者說，文字同那幅圖案不相匹配。盡管如此，我們依舊鍥而不舍地努力嘗試，因為我們知道別人已經(jīng)取得了成功，我們不愿意承認(rèn)自己是失敗者。
There is no way to become original, except to be born so, says Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost King" trammel my efforts.
史蒂文森說：“人如果生來就沒有創(chuàng)作才能，那他一輩子也創(chuàng)作不出什么東西。”盡快創(chuàng)造出自己的替代品，雖然這些替代品只是頭戴假發(fā)面具的矯飾文字。或許有朝一日，我自己的思想和人生經(jīng)驗也會盡顯本色。在學(xué)習(xí)寫作的過程中，我滿懷信心，堅持不懈，并且盡量不讓《冰雪之王》的苦澀記憶變成我學(xué)習(xí)之路上的阻礙。
So this sad experience may have done me good and set me thinking on some of the problems of composition. My only regret is that it resulted in the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.
對我而言，這個慘痛的經(jīng)歷未嘗不是一件好事，它讓我對作文中所暴露的問題做出更加深入的思考。我唯一感到遺憾的是，我因此失去了最親愛的朋友阿納戈諾斯先生的友誼。
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