That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Preface and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words … Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.
那天夜里，在我租的房間里，我一邊讓熱水沖著水池里的豬肉燒豆罐頭，一邊打開《序言集》讀了起來。書的文體，那干凈、利落、有力的句子令我大為震驚。他為什么要那樣寫？他又是如何寫成那個樣子的？在我的想像里，這個人是個兇猛的惡魔，用他的筆四處撻伐，心中充滿了仇恨，對美國的一切大加譴責(zé)，對歐洲的或德國的一切大加頌揚，嘲笑人的缺點，嘲弄上帝，嘲弄權(quán)威。這是怎么回事？我站起身來，想弄清楚隱藏在這些詞義背后的現(xiàn)實……是的，這個人在戰(zhàn)斗，用文字戰(zhàn)斗。他把文字當(dāng)作武器，使用起它們來，就像人們使用棍棒一樣。文字可以成為武器嗎？可以，因為在這里它們就是武器。那么，說不定我也可以把文字當(dāng)作武器使用了？不，這使我害怕。我接著往下讀。令我驚愕的不是他說了些什么，而是天底下竟有人敢這么說。
I ran across many words whose meanings I did not know, and I either looked them up in a dictionary or, before I had a chance to do that, encountered the word in a context that made its meaning clear. But what strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
我碰到許多我不認(rèn)識的詞，有時我查字典，有時，還沒來得及查，就在另一邊上下文中又見到了，這個上下文將該詞的意思表明得清清楚楚。可這是一個多么奇怪的世界？當(dāng)我讀完這本書的時候，我深深感到，不知怎的，我把生活中某些非常重要的東西忽略了。我曾經(jīng)想學(xué)寫作，曾經(jīng)非常喜歡去感受事物，曾經(jīng)聽任我的原始想像力遨游，但是生活中的種種遭遇漸漸地將我這種愛幻想的沖動磨滅掉了。而如今，這種沖動又重新抬頭了。我渴望書，渴望新的觀察和了解世界的方法。這不是一個相信不相信我所讀的書的問題，而是感受一種新的東西，并受其影響，這東西使得世界的面貌變了樣。
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