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Bibliotherapy has been popular in the form of the nonfiction self-help book for several decades now. But lovers of literature have been using novels as salves — either consciously or subconsciously — for centuries.
圖書理療早就以勵志自助類書籍的形式風靡數十載，而文學愛好者有意無意地把小說當成良藥的歷史更是已有上百年。
Our belief in the effectiveness of fiction as the purest and best form of bibliotherapy is based on our own experience with patients and bolstered by an avalanche of anecdotal evidence.
我們堅信小說是圖書理療中最純粹且有效的藥，這個信念是建立在我們積累的臨床經驗之上，還有這數不清的傳聞佐證。
Sometimes it’s the story that charms; sometimes it’s the rhythm of the prose that works on the psyche, stilling or stimulating. Sometimes it’s an idea or an attitude suggested by a character in a similar quandary or jam.
有些小說的魔力在于故事情節，有些是它的文字以安撫或撩撥的方式治療心理癥狀，有些治療則是小說中身陷類似困境的人物提供了某種想法和態度。
If you lived on a planet as small as the Little Prince’s planet, Asteroid B-612 – so small that you’d have to take great care, after you’d finished washing and dressing each morning, to dig out any baobab shoots that had appeared overnight lest they take over your planet; and that one day you watched the sunset forty-four times, just by moving your chair; you’d be living a simple life that would inculcate in you the habit of carefulness.
因為如果你住的星球小的和小王子的B-612行星一樣，小到每天早上梳洗更衣后，必須仔細挖掉昨晚長出的猴面包樹苗，免得他們占領整個星球；小到只要挪一挪椅子，就可以在一天內欣賞四十四次日落。那么你會在這種簡單的生活里養成細心的習慣。
You would water the one flower that grew on your planet every day, and never forget. You would take the trouble, before you went away on a trip, to rake out your volcanoes, even the extinct one.
你會每天給星球上的一株花澆水，也不會在遠行前忘記把所有的火山口都疏通一下，包括那座死火山。
Because you would know that it’s the time and care you spend on things that makes them important. And that if you didn’t take this care, you’d wake up one day to find yourself surrounded by things that were sad, feeling their unimportance themselves.
讀過這本書你會明白，對事物傾注的時間和關注才是使它們變得重要的關鍵，而如果不投入關心，有天醒來你會發現周圍的事物都會變得悲傷，因為它們感到自己不受重視。
Whatever the size of your planet when you begin reading The Little Prince, we guarantee it will have shrunk and become much more like Asteroid B-612 by the end. And that afterwards you will live your life with more care.
不管開始讀《小王子》時你的星球有多大，我們保證讀到最后，你的星球都會縮小，變得像B-612號行星一樣，而你也會更細心地過好每一天。
The insights themselves are still nebulous, as learning gained through reading fiction often is—but therein lies its power. In a secular age, I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks.
這些感悟本身有些朦朧，但是閱讀小說所帶來的感悟往往都是這樣模糊——不過這也正是它們的力量所在。在這個世俗的時代，讀小說恐怕是少數幾種能讓我們超脫自我的方式了，它似乎縮小了自我與宇宙之間的距離。
Reading fiction makes me lose all sense of self, but at the same time makes me feel most uniquely myself. As Woolf, the most fervent of readers, wrote, a book “splits us into two parts as we read,” for “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego,” while promising “perpetual union” with another mind.
讀小說讓我忘記自我，同時又讓我能感受到最獨特的自我。就像書癡弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫所寫的：“讀書時，我們好像被書分割成了兩半，因為閱讀在一方面消除我們的自我，但同時又許諾我們與另一個思想的永久結合。”
