布罗茨基：赞美厌倦

But should you fail to keep your kingdom

And, like your father before you come

Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,

Believe your pain…

(W. H. Auden, “Alonso to Ferdinand”)

但假使你不能保有自己的王国

并同先辈们一样

处于自责、自嘲的境地时

相信你的苦痛

———————————–

A substantial part of what lies ahead of you is going to be claimed by boredom. The reason I’d like to talk to you about it today, on this lofty occasion, is that I believe no liberal arts college prepares you for that eventuality; Darthmouth is no exception. Neither humanities nor science offers courses in boredom. At best, they may acquaint you with the sensation by incurring it. But what is a casual contact to an incurable malaise? The worst monotonous drone coming from a lectern or the eye-splitting textbook in turgid English is nothing in comparison to the psychological Sahara that starts right in your bedroom and spurns the horizon.

在座诸位的人生中，有很大一部分将为厌倦所占据。我之所以想在今天，在这个高尚的场合，向大家谈论这一话题，是因为我相信没有文科院校让你们做好了应对这一可能性的准备，达特茅斯也不例外。人文学科和科学学科都不提供厌倦相关的课程。最好的情况是，他们可能通过制造厌倦让你熟悉它。但偶尔的接触对无法解决又难以言喻的问题算什么？讲台或是让人眼皮打架的、诘屈聱牙的英文写就的教科书所能带来的最可怕的单调乏味与从卧室出发，蔓延至天际的心灵撒哈拉之间毫无可比性。

Known under several aliases – anguish, ennui, tedium, doldrums, humdrum, the blahs, apathy, listlessness, stolidity, lethargy, languor, accidie, etc – boredom is a complex phenomenon and by large a product of repetition. It would seem, then, that the best remedy against ot would be constant inventiveness and originality. That is what you, young and newflanged, would hope for. Alas, life won’t supply you with that option, for life’s main medium is precisely repetition.

厌倦有许多其他名字——苦恼、倦怠、沉闷、忧郁、乏味、厌烦、漠然、萎靡、迟钝、死气沉沉、衰弱无力、无精打采等等；它是一个复杂的现象，大致是重复造成的。因此，对抗重复枯燥的最佳方法似乎是不断的发明和原创。这正是你们，年轻又初出茅庐的学子所期望的。可惜，生活不会提供这一选项，因为它的主要组成就是重复。

One may argue, of course, that repeated attempts at originality and inventiveness are the vehicle of progress and – in the same breath – civilization. As benefits of hindsight go, however, this one is not the most valuable. For should we divide history of our species by scientific discoveries, not to mention ethical concepts, the result will not be in our favor. We’ll get, technically speaking, centuries of boredom. The very notion of originality or innovation spells out of the monotony of standard reality, of life, whose main medium – nay, idiom – is tedium.

当然，人们可能会说，不断的原创和发明是进步的手段，也是文明的手段。但事后反思，这种手段并不是最富价值的。因为假如我们以科学发现（且不提道德理念）划分人类历史，结果不会令人满意；我们得到的会是严格意义上的好几个世纪的无趣与厌倦。原创性或是创新性的概念已清晰阐释了现实和生活的单一性，它们的主要组成－不，风格－便是单调乏味。

In that, it – life – differs from art, whose worst enemy, as you probably know, is cliché. Small wonder, then, that art, too, fails to instruct you as to how to handle boredom. There are few novels about this subject; paintings are still fewer; and as for music, it is largely non－semantic. On the whole, art treats boredom in a self-defensive, satirical fashion. The only way art can become for you a solace from boredom, from the existential equivalent of cliché, is if you yourselves become artists. Given your number, though, this prospect is as unappetizing as it is unlikely.

如此说来，生活和艺术不同。各位可能知道，艺术最大的敌人就是俗套。那么，也就不奇怪，艺术同样不能指导你们处理厌倦。有关这一主题的小说相当少；绘画更加；至于音乐，绝大部分是无言的。总而言之，艺术将厌倦当作一种自我防御、具讽刺意味的风格。艺术唯一能让你们从厌倦，从其存在主义的同义词——俗套——中脱身的办法，就是自己成为艺术家。但是，有鉴于你们的年龄，这一前景既无法提起你们的兴致，可能性也极小。

But even should you march out of this commencement in full force to typewriters, easels, and Steinway grands, you won’t shield yourselves from boredom entirely. If repetitiveness is boredom’s mother, you, young and newfangled, will be quickly smothered by lack of recognition and low pay, both chronic in the world of art. In these respects, writing, painting, composing music are plain inferior to working for a law firm, a bank, or even a lab.

但即使你们迈出这个毕业典礼，全力奔向打字机、画架、施坦威大钢琴、你们不会完全免于厌倦。假使重复是厌倦之母，你们，年轻又初出茅庐的学子们，会很快被缺乏认可与微薄的薪水所淹没，这两者在艺术世界里都是长期现象。从这些方面来看，写作、绘画、作曲都不如在律所、银行、甚至是银行工作。

Herein, of course, lies art’s saving grace. Not being lucrative, it falls victim to demography rather reluctantly. For if, as we’ve said, repetition is boredom’s mother, demography (which is to play in your lives a far greater role than any discipline you’ve mastered here) is its other parent. This may sound misanthropic to you, but I am more than twice your age, and I have lived to see the population of our globe double. By the time you’re my age, it will have quadrupled, and not exactly in the fashion you expect. For instance, by the year 2000 there is going to be such cultural and ethnic rearrengement as to challenge your notion of your own humanity.

当然，艺术也有可取之处。由于报酬不丰厚，艺术受到人口结构变化的影响相当缓慢。就像我们说过的一样，如果重复是厌倦之母，人口结构变化（它对各位人生的影响将超过你们在这里学习的任何一门课程）则是它的另一位家长。这话听起来似乎有些反人类，但我的岁数是你们的两倍，在我的有生之年，我已经亲眼目睹地球的人口翻倍。你们到我的年纪时，地球人口会是原来的四倍，其增长方式与你们预想并不完全相同。例如，到2000年时，文化和民族产生的巨变将会挑战你们对自身的认识。

That alone will reduce the prospects of originality and inventiveness as antidotes to boredom. But even in a more monochromatic world, the other trouble with originality and inventiveness is precisely that they literally pay off. Provided that you are capable of either, you will become well off rather fast. Desirable as that may be, most of you know firsthand that nobody is as bored as the rich, for money buys time, and time is repetitive. Assuming that you are not heading for poverty – for otherwise you wouldn’t have entered college – one expects you to be hit by boredom as soon as the first tools of self-gratification become available to you.

单这一点就会减弱原创性和创造作为解决厌倦方式的前景。但即使是在一个更简单的世界中，原创和创造的另一个缺点是，它们会带来切实的回报。只要能做到其中一点，你会很快变得富有。尽管听起来诱人，但在座绝大部分人的亲身经历可能会告诉你们，没有人会比富人感觉更无聊，因为金钱能买来时间，而时间是重复的。假设穷困潦倒不是各位的目标——不然各位也不会来上大学——预计厌倦就会在你们获得第一个满足自我的物品的时候袭来。

Thanks to modern technology, those tools are as numerous as boredom’s synonyms. In light of their function – to render you oblivious to the redundancy of time – their abundance is revealing. Equally revealing is the function your purchasing power, toward whose increase you’ll walk out of this commencement ground through the click and whirr of some of those instruments tightly held by your parents and relatives. It is a prophetic scene, ladies and gentlemen of the class of 1989, for you are entering the world where recording and event dwarfs the event itself – the world of video, stereo, remote control, jogging suit, and exercise machine to keep you fit for reliving your own or someone else’s past: canned ecstasy claming raw flesh.

感谢现代科技，这些工具的数目就和厌倦的同义词一样繁多。考虑到它们的作用——把健忘交付给无穷无尽的时间——这样的数目引人深思。同样引人深思的是购买力的作用。由于购买力的增加，各位走出毕业典礼礼堂时，伴随你们的是父母或亲戚手中紧握的设备的咔嚓声。这是一个富有预言性的场景，1989届的女士们先生们，你们正要进入一个记录事件比事件本身更为重要的世界——一个由视频、立体声、遥控机、跑步套装和健身机器组成的世界，后者让你保持健康，以便再度体验自己或他人的过往，预先录制的欢乐包裹着新鲜血肉。

Everything that displays a pattern is pregnant with boredom. That apllies to money in more ways than one, both to the banknotes as such and to possessing them. That is not to bill poverty, of course, as an escape from boredom – although St. Francis, it would seem, has managed exactly that. Yet for all the deprivation surrounding us, the idea of new monastic orders doesn’t appear particularly catchy in this era of video-Christianity. Besides, young and newfangled, you are more eager to do good in some South Africa or other than next door, keener on giving up your favorite brand of soda than on venturing to the wrong side of the tracks. So nobody advises poverty for you. All one can suggest is to be a bit more apprehensive of money, for the zeros in your accounts may usher in their mental equivalents.

每一件展现出规律的事物都孕育着厌倦，这一道理在金钱上更是体现得淋漓尽致。当然，这不是把贫穷标榜为厌倦的出口，尽管似乎圣方济各已成功做到了这一点。另外，年轻的初生牛犊们，你们更愿意在南非的某处或其他地方行善，而不是爱邻人；更倾向于放弃自己最喜欢的汽水品牌而不是在错误的轨道上冒险。所以没有人会向你们推荐贫穷。我所能建议的不过是对钱稍不重视些，因为账户中零的数量可能会带来精神上等价的虚空。

As for poverty, boredom is the most brutal part of its misery, and the departure from it takes more radical forms: of violent rebellion or drug addiction. Both are temporary, for the misery of poverty is infinite; both, because of that infinity, are costly. In general, a man shooting heroin into his vein does so largely for the same reason you buy a video: to dodge the redundancy of time. The difference, though, is that he spends more than he’s got, and that his means of escape become as redundant as what he is escaping from faster than yours. On the whole, the difference in tactility between a syringe’s needle and a stereo’s push buttom roughly corresponds to that between the acuteness and dullness of time’s impact upon the have-nots and the haves. In short, whether rich or poor, sooner or later you will be afflicted by this redundancy of time. Potential haves, you’ll be bored with your work, your friends, your spouses, your lovers, the view from your window, the furniture or wallpaper in your room, your thoughts, yourselves. Accordingly, you’ll try to devise ways of escape. Apart from the self-gratifying gadgets mentioned before, you may take up changing jobs, residence, company, country, climate; you may take up promiscuity, alcohol, travel, cooking lessons, drugs, psychoanalysis.

至于贫穷，厌倦是其悲剧中最残忍的一部分，摆脱它需要相当激进的方式：暴力反抗或者沉迷毒品。两者都是暂时的，因为贫穷的苦痛是无尽；而因为这种无穷性，两者的代价都是高昂的。总体上，一个人向自己血管注射海洛因的理由和你们购买碟片的理由是相同的——为了回避无尽的时间。但是，不同之处在于，他付出的远远超过获得的，他采用的方式和比你们更竭力逃离的东西一样多余。总体来说，注射器针头和立体声音响开关触感上的不同反映了时间对穷人和富人的冲击，一则尖锐，一则迟缓。简而言之，无论富有还是贫穷，迟早你们都会被时间的冗余征服。未来物质充裕的各位，你们将会厌倦自己的生活、自己的伴侣、自己的情人、窗户外的景色、房间里的家具或墙纸、你们的思绪、你们自己。相应地，你们会尝试各种逃离的方法。除了之前提到的自我满足的物品，你们可能会变更工作、居住地、公司、国度、气候；你们可能会滥交、喝酒、旅游、学习烹饪、服用药物、接受精神分析。

In fact, you may lump all these together; and for a while that may work. Until the day, of course, when you wake up in your bedroom amid a new family and a different wallpaper, in a different state and climate, with a heap of bills from your travel agent and your shrink, yet with the same stale feeling toward the light of day pouring through your window. You’ll put on your loafers only to discover they’re lacking bootstraps to lift yourself out of what you recognize. Depending on your temperament or the age you are at, you will either panic or resign yourself to the familiarity of the sensation; or else you’ll go through the rigmarole of change once more.

事实上，你们可能会采取所有的手段，而一段时间内这可能会奏效。直到那一天，当然，当你身处新的国家、新的气候中，在新的卧室中醒来，新的家庭和新的墙纸包围着你，旅行中介和办事员送来的支票堆积如山，清晨的阳光从窗棂中倾泻下来时，你有的仍是那种一潭死水的感觉。你会穿上乐福鞋，到头来只发现它们缺少那可以让你离开现实的靴袢。取决于你的性格或者年龄，你会惊慌，或是屈服于这种熟悉的感觉，或是再一次经历繁琐复杂的变化过程。

Neurosis and depression will enter your lexicon ; pills, your medical cabinet . Basically, there is nothing wrong about turning life into the constant quest for alternatives, into leap-frogging jobs, spouses, surroundings, etc., provided you can afford the alimony and jumbled memories. This predicament, after all, has been sufficiently glamorized on screen and in Romantic poetry. The rub, however, is that before long this quest turns into a full-time occupation, with your need for an alternative coming to match a drug addict’s daily fix.

神经衰弱和抑郁症会进入你们的词典，药片会进入你们的药箱。基本上，只要你能承担赡养费和混乱的记忆，把人生变成追逐新鲜事物的马拉松，变成截然不同的岗位、伴侣和环境没有什么不妥。毕竟，荧幕和浪漫主义诗歌已大大美化了种境况。但难题在于，类似的追寻很快就会变成一份全职工作，你会像瘾君子需要每天的毒品一样需要新的替代品。

There is yet another way out of it, however. Not a better one, perhaps, from your point of view, and not necessarily secure, but straight and inexpensive. Those of you who have read Robert Frost’s “Servant to Servants” may remember a line of hos: “The best way out is always through.” So what I am about to suggest is a variation on the theme.

但是，还存在另一种摆脱厌倦的方法。不一定更高明，可能在你们看来，也不一定安全，但它单刀直入，成本低廉。读过罗伯特·弗罗斯特《仆人们的仆人》的同学们可能会记得其中的一句：“经历一切总是摆脱最好的方式。”所以我要建议的是这一主题下的变体。

When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is, the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here, to paraphrase another great poet of the English language, is to exact full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.

当厌倦袭来时，面对它。就让它把自己碾碎，沉浸其中，触到谷底。总体来说，令人不快的事物有一个规律：触底越快，反弹就越快。其中的道理是，用另一位伟大的英语诗人的话来说，正视最坏的情况[ 托马斯哈代，In Tenebris - II]。厌倦值得被这般仔细审视的原因是，以重复、多余、单调为特征的厌倦代表着纯粹的、不掺杂质的时间。

In a manner of speaking, boredom is your window on time, on those properties of it one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. In short, it is your window on time’s infinity, which is to say, on your insignificance in it. That’s what accounts, perhaps, for one’s dread of lonely, torpid evenings, for the fascination with which one watches sometimes a fleck of dust aswirl in a sunbeam, and somewhere a clock tick-tocks, the day is hot, and your willpower is at zero.

用某种方式说，厌倦是你窥视时间的窗口，窥视时间那些人们倾向于忽视，又有损于精神平和的特质。简而言之，厌倦是你窥视时间无穷性的窗口，看到自己在时间中无足轻重的窗口。也许，正是这一点使人们惧怕孤单、无聊的夜晚，会在观看阳光中起舞的微尘时思绪联翩，会在当钟表滴答作响，天气炎热时精神倦怠。

Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open. For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life – the one you didn’t get here, on these green lawns – the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. “You are finite”, time tells you in a voice of boredom, “and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.” As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequences and the attendant self-aggrandizement.

一旦这扇窗户打开，不要试着将它关上。相反，就留它洞然大敞。因为厌倦所说的语言就是时间，它能教会各位人生中最宝贵的一课，在这里、在这碧绿的草坪上没上过的一课：你毫不重要。这一教训对你来说很有价值，对你们将要接触的人也是一样。“你是有限的，”时间以厌倦做它的声音，告诉你：“而且无论你做什么，在我看来，都是无用的。” 当然，像音乐一样，这教训可能会过耳就忘；但这种徒劳无功、这种即使拿出最好、最热忱的表现重要性也有限的感受，远远好过对这些后果的错误认知，以及相伴的争名逐利。

For boredom is an invasion of time into your set of values. It puts your existence into its perspective, the net result of which is precision and humility. The former, it must be noted, breeds the latter. The more you learn about your own size, the more humble and the more compassionate you become to your likes , to that dust aswirl in a sunbean or already immobile atop your table. Ah, how much life went into those fleck! Not from your point of view but from theirs. You are to them what time is to you; that’s why they look so small. And do you know what the dust says when it’s being wiped off the table?

因为厌倦是时间对个人价值体系的侵蚀。它将你的存在置于自己的角度，其直接结果就是精确和谦虚。前者，必须注意的是，会孕育后者。对自己的体量了解越深入，你对与自己处境相同的事物，对那在阳光中起舞，拟或是已经在桌面静止不动的微尘就会越谦虚，越富有同情心。啊，有多少生命化为了这些微尘！不是从你的角度，而是从他们的角度。你对它们来说，就像是时间对你来说一样，这就是为什么它们看起来如此渺小。你们知道，当这些微尘从桌上被抹去时会说什么吗？

“Remember me”, whispers the dust.

“记住我”，微尘喃喃道。

Nothing could be farther away from the mental agenda of any of you, young and newfangled, than the sentiment expressed in this two-liner of the German poet Peter Huchel, now dead.

没有什么会比这首两行诗中所表达的情感离你们任何人的所思所想更遥远的了，年轻又初出茅庐的学子们。这首诗的作者，德国诗人彼得胡塞尔，如今已经故去。

I’ve quoted it not because I’d like to instill in you affinity for things small – seeds and plants, grains of sand or mosquitoes – small but numerous. I’ve quoted these lines because I like them, because I recognize in them myself, and, for that matter, any living organism to be wiped off from the available surface. “Remember me”, whispers the dust”. And one hears in this that if we learn about ourselves from time, perhaps time, in turn, may learn something from us. What would that be? That inferior in significance, we best it in sensitivity.

引用这首两行诗并不是因为我想向各位灌输对微小事物——种子和植物、沙粒或蚊蝇——微小但数量众多的事物的喜爱之情。我引用这些诗句是因为我喜爱它们，因为它们在我身上得到了印证；同时，从这个角度来讲，也会在任何将要从存在表面上被抹去的物品中得到印证。“““记住我”，微尘喃喃道。如果我们从时间中学到了一些东西，可能时间就会从我们这里学到什么。那会是什么呢？重要性方面的弱势，我们会在情感中扳回一城。

This is what it means – to be insignificant. If it takes will-paralyzing boredom to bring this home, then hail the boredom. You are insignificant because you are finite. Yet the more finite a thing is, the more it is charged with life, emotions, joy, fears, compassion. For infinity is not terribly lively, not terribly emotional. Your boredom, at least, tells you that much. Because your boredom is the boredom of infinity.

这就是无足轻重的意义所在。如果只有摧毁斗志的厌倦才能让你意识到这一点，那就问候它。你不重要，因为你是有限的。然而某件事物越有限，它便越是充盈着活力、感情、欢乐、恐惧和同情。因为无限并不十分活跃，情感也不十分丰富。你的厌倦，至少，能向你说明这些。因为你的厌倦是对无限的厌倦。

Respect it, then, for its origins – as much perhaps as for your own. Because it is the anticipation of that inanimate infinity that accounts for the intensity of human sentiments, often resulting in a conception of a new life. This is not to say that you have been conceived out of boredom, or that the finite breeds the finite (though both may ring true). It is to suggest, rather, that passion is the privilege of the insignificant.

那么，尊重厌倦，为了它的起源，也许也为了你自己的起源。因为正是对那死气沉沉的无穷的预测构成了人类情感的强度，通常的结果是新生命。这不是说厌倦孕育了你，或是有限带来有限（尽管两者听起来可能都是真的）。这是说，热爱是无足轻重一族的特权。

So try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain – physical more than psychological, passion’s frequent aftermath; although I wish you neither. Still, when you hurt you know that at least you haven’t been deceived (by your body or by your psyche). By the same token, what’s good about boredom, about anguish and the sense of the meaninglessness of your own, of everything else’s existence, is that it is not a deception.

所以试着留住热爱，将冷淡留给星辰。热爱，总之，是对抗厌倦的一剂良药。疼痛，当然，是另一种。热情常见的后遗症是，身体所受的折磨多于精神。尽管我希望你们免于经历两者，但受到伤害时，至少你知道自己没有被（自己的身体或是精神）欺骗。同理可证，厌倦、痛苦，自身毫无意义、任何事物存在毫无意义的感觉的好处在于，它不是自欺欺人。

You also might try detective novels or action movies – something that leaves you where you haven’t been verbally/visually/mentally before – something sustained, if only for a couple of hours. Avoid TV, especially flipping the channels: that’s redundancy incarnate. Yet should those remedies fail, let it on, “fling your soul upon the growing gloom.” Try to embrace, or let yourself be embraced by, boredom and anguish, which anyhow are larger than you. No doubt you’ll find that bosom smothering, yet try to endure it as long as you can, and then some more. Above all, don’t think you’ve goofed somewhere along the line, don’t try to retrace your steps to correct the error. No, as the poet said, “Believe your pain”. This awful bearhug is no mistake. Nothing that disturbs you is. Remember all along that there is no embrace in this world that won’t finally unclasp.

你们可能还会尝试侦探小说或是动作片——某些能让你去到语言、视觉、精神上不曾去到过的地方的事物，某些能持续的事物，哪怕效力只维持一两个小时。不要看电视，特别是频繁换台——这一行为是多余的化身。假使这些解决方法失效了，就随它去，“把灵魂丢给增长的阴郁”。试着去拥抱厌倦和痛苦，或是让自己被它们拥抱，尽管这两者比你更庞大。你必然会发现那个怀抱令人窒息，但是要试着坚持得尽可能久，然后再坚持一会。不要想你在过程中某个环节能弄虚作假，不要试着重走前路以修正错误。不，就像诗人说过的一样，“相信你的苦痛。”这样笨拙的熊抱不是错误。任何困扰你的事都不是。要记住，世界上没有不会松手的拥抱。

If you find all this gloomy, you don’t know what gloom is. If you find this irrelevant, I hope time will prove you right. Should you find this inappropriate for such a lofty occasion, I will disagree.

如果你们认为这些令人沮丧，你们并不知道真正的沮丧是什么。如果你们认为这些无关紧要，我希望时间会证明你们是正确的。如果你们觉得这个话题与这一崇高的场合格格不入，我不会认同。

I would agree with you had this occasion been celebrating your staying here; but it marks your departure. By tomorrow you’ll be out of here, since your parents paid only for four yearsm not a day longer. So you must go elsewhere, to make your careers, money, families, to meet your unique fates. And as for that elsewhere, neither among stars and in the tropics nor across the border in Vermont is there much awareness of this ceremony on the Dartmouth Green. One wouldn’t even bet that the sound of your band reaches White River Junction .

我赞同这个仪式是为了纪念各位在这里度过的岁月，但它标志着大家的离开。明天，你们就将离开达特茅斯，因为你们的父母只支付了四年的学费，一天都没有多。所以你们必须去往其他地方，去创造自己的事业、财富、家庭，去迎接自己独一无二的命运。从这个角度上来说，在浩瀚星河中、热带雨林中，在佛蒙特州境内，没有地方比达特茅斯的草坪更重视这场仪式。甚至不会有人认为你们乐队的声音能抵达白河车站。

You are exiting this place, members of the class of 1989. You are entering the world, which is going to be far more thickly settled than this neck of the woods and where you’ll be paid far less attention than you have been used to for the last four years. You are on your own in a big way. Speaking of your significance, you can quickly estimate it by pitting your 1,100 against the world’s 4.9 billion. Prudence, then, is as appropriate on this occasion as is fanfare.

你们将要离开这里了，1989届的各位同学。你们即将踏入社会，这个社会的人口远比这片森林中的树木更稠密；你们将受到的关注，要远少于你们过去四年习惯的。你们将在相当程度上完全依靠自己。至于各位的重要性，大家可把1100名毕业生与全球49亿人口相比，做一个快速的估算。谨慎，这样看来，和嘹亮的号角声一样适合这个场合。

I wish you nothing but happiness. Still, there is going to be plenty of dark and, what’s worse, dull hours, caused as much by the world ourside as by your own minds. You ought to be fortified against that is some fashion; and that’s what I’ve tried to do here in my feeble way, although that’s obviously not enough.

我祝愿你们的前路只有幸福快乐。但是，在外部世界和个人观点的共同促成下，未来有很多时光会是黑暗的，甚至会是枯燥的。你们应该拒绝这是某种必然的思维。这就是我想以自己的方式实现的，尽管一己之力明显不够。

For what lies ahead is a remarkable but wearisome journey; you are boarding today, as it were, a runaway train. No one can tell you what lies ahead, least of all those who remain behind. One thing, however, they can assure you of is that it’s not a round trip. Try, therefore, to derive some comfort from the notion that no matter how unpalatable this or that station may turn out ot be, the train doesn’t stop there for good. Therefore, you are never stuck – not even when you feel you are; for this place today becomes your past. From now on, it will only be receding for you, for that train is in constant motion. It will be receding for you even when you feel that you are stuck… So take one last look at it, while it is still its normal size, while it is not yet a photograph. Look at it with all the tenderness you can muster , for you are looking at your past. Exact, as it were , the full look at the best. For I doubt you’ll have it better than here.

因为你们面前是一段非凡但又使人厌倦的旅程。你们今天踏上的，是一节脱缰的列车。没有人能告诉你们前方有什么，至少对仍留在后面的人是如此。但是，他们可以向你们保证一件事情：这是一段有去无回的旅程。那么，试着从这一点上获得一些安慰：无论这个或者那个站点多么令人难以接受，列车不会永远在彼处停驻。因此，你永远不会停滞不前——哪怕当你感觉如此时。因为今天的此地将变成你的过去。从现在开始，对你来说，当下只会不断后退，因为列车在不断前行。它会后退，即使是在你感觉被困住的时候…所以最后再看它一眼，当它还是正常大小的时候，当它还不是一幅照片的时候，怀着所有你可以用上的温柔去看它，因为你所凝望的是自己的过去。去正视最好的情况，因为我不确定未来会比现在更好。