英語經典美文 生命中不能承受之輕
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①If 1)eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness. But, is heaviness truly 2)deplorable and lightness splendid? The heaviest of burdens crushes us. We sink beneath it. It pins us to the ground. The heaviest of burdens is, therefore, 3)simultaneously an image of life’s most intense 4)fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth; the more real and truthful they become.
5)Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being and become only half real, his movements as free as they are 6)insignificant.
What then shall we choose; weight or lightness?
3
I have been thinking about Tomas for many years. But only in the light of these reflections did I see him clearly. I saw him standing at the window of his 7)flat and looking across the courtyard at the opposite walls, not knowing what to do.
He had first met Tereza about three weeks earlier in a small Czech town. They had spent 8)scarcely an hour together. She had accompanied him to the station and waited with him until he boarded the train. Ten days later she paid him a visit. They made love the day she arrived. That night she came down with a fever and stayed a whole week in his flat with the flu. He had come to feel an 9)inexplicable love for this all but complete stranger. She seemed a child to him, a child someone had put in a 10)bulrush basket 11)docked with pitch and sent 12)downstream for Tomas to 13)fetch under the riverbank of his bed.
He knelt down next to her. Her feverous breath quickened and she gave out a weak 14)moan. He pressed his face to hers and whispered calming words into her sleep. And all at once he 15)fancied she had been with him for many years and was dying. He had a sudden clear feeling that he would not survive her death. He would lie down beside her and want to die with her. He pressed his face into the pillow beside her head and kept it there for a long time.
Now he was standing at the window trying to call that moment to account. What could it have been if not love declaring itself to him? But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly 16)exaggerated; he had seen her only once before in his life. Was it simply the 17)hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his 18)inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it? His 19)unconscious was so 20)cowardly that the best partner he could choose for his little comedy were this miserable 21)provincial waitress with practically no chance at all to enter his life.
He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he really wanted was actually quite natural. We can never know what to want because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
There is no means of testing which decision is better because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
②“Einmal ist keinmal”, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German 22)adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
2
……
如果永劫迴歸是最沉重的負擔，那麼我們的生活就能以其全部輝煌的輕鬆，來與之抗衡。可是，沉重便真的悲慘，而輕鬆便真的輝煌嗎？最沉重的負擔壓得我們崩塌了，沉沒了，將我們釘在地上。由此，最沉重的負擔同時也是一種生活最爲充實的象徵。負擔越沉，我們的生活也就貼近大地，越趨近真切和實在。
相反，完全沒有負擔，人變得比大氣還輕，會高高地飛起，離別大地亦即離別真實的生活。他將變得似真非真，運動自由而毫無意義。
那麼我們將選擇什麼呢？沉重還是輕鬆？
3
多少年來，我一直想着托馬斯，似乎只有憑藉回想的折光，我才能看清他這個人。我看見他站在公寓的窗臺前不知所措，越過庭院的目光，落在對面的牆上。
他與特麗莎初識於三個星期前捷克的一個小鎮上，兩人呆在一起還不到一個鐘頭，她就陪他去了車站，一直等到他上火車。十天後她去看他，而且兩人當天便做愛。不料夜裏她發起燒來，是流感，她在他的公寓裏呆了一個星期。對於這個幾乎是完全陌生的人，他慢慢地感到了一種莫名其妙的愛。對他來說，她像個孩子，被人放在樹脂塗覆的草筐裏順水漂來，而他在牀榻之岸順手撈起了她。
他跪在她的牀邊，見她燒得呼吸急促，微微呻吟。他用臉貼在她的臉，輕聲安慰她，直到她睡着。剎那間，他幻想着自己與她在一起已有漫漫歲月，而現在她正行將死去。他突然清楚地意識到自己不能挺過她死去的這一劫，他得躺在她身邊，與她一同赴死。他挨着她的頭，把臉埋在枕頭裏過了許久。
現在他站在窗前，極力回想那一刻的情景。若他所清楚感受到的這種感情不是愛，又會是什麼呢？但這是愛嗎？那種想死在她身邊的情感顯然有些誇張：在這以前他僅僅見了她一面！那麼，明明知道這種愛不甚適當，難道這只是一個歇斯底里的男人感到自欺之需而作出的僞舉嗎？他的無意識是如此懦弱，一個小小的玩笑就使他選擇了這樣一個可憐的、壓根兒不可能進入他生活的鄉間女招待，來作爲他的最佳伴侶！
他生着自己的氣，直到他弄明白自己的茫然無措其實也很自然。我們是永遠也不知道自己要什麼的，因爲人的生命只有一次，我們既不能把它與我們前世相比較，也無法使其在後世完美度過。
沒有比較的基點，因此沒有任何辦法可以檢驗何種選擇更好。我們經歷着生活中突然臨頭的一切，毫無防備，就象演員進入初排。如果生活的第一排練便是生活本身，那生活有什麼價值呢？
“Einmal ist Keinmal”托馬斯自言自語。這句德國諺語說，只發生過一次的事就象壓根兒沒有發生過。如果生命屬於我們只有一次，我們當然也可以說根本沒有過生命。
（譯文參考自作家出版社譯本）
① 這裏提到“eternal return”是指尼采學說裏著名的永劫迴歸觀，套用一個現在用得頗泛的佛家名詞，就是“無間道”：我們的生命、甚至歷史都只是在反覆地重複而已。本選段出自全書的第一章，是作者爲全書定的一個基調——大環境不斷輪迴、不可逆轉的無奈。
② 我認爲這句德國諺語是作者對人類實境的反擊。對於沉重的現實，我們只有選擇輕裝上陣，人生沒有可比性，生命屬於我們只有一次，一切選擇都失去了充足理由的同時，一切結果也都變得十分合理。抓住自己幸福的選擇就是合理的！生命中不能承受之輕
By Milan Kundera
（捷克）米蘭·昆德拉
美式發音 適合泛讀 聽2 說2 讀2寫3 詞3
《生命中不能承受之輕》（1984），是全世界公認最受歡迎的暢銷書之一，也是作者昆德拉才華得到集中體現的一部作品。
這是一部小說，描述了在1968年蘇聯入侵捷克時期（史稱“布拉格之春”），民主改革的氣息演變成專橫壓榨之風潮，捷克普通的知識分子在這個大時代中命運多變的複雜故事。主線有兩條：其一是著名外科醫生托馬斯對國家的誠實和對妻子特麗莎的愛——很重，因爲他要爲此付出巨大的犧牲，名利、自由皆失。其二是托馬斯的情人薩賓娜對生活方式的選擇，以及對托馬斯和弗蘭茨的感情——很輕，因爲她隨心而爲，追求無限制的自由。
這更是一部哲學小說，人物不過是哲學中的代碼，情節也不過是哲學中的情境。作者以一個哲人的睿智將人類的生存情景加以描述和思辯，使故事與哲學渾然一體。或許我們也是這些代碼之一吧，是那沉重卻踏實的“重”呢，還是那輕盈卻虛無的“輕”呢？如何選擇？
About Author:
Milan Kundera (born April 1, 1929, in Brno, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech and French writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile[逃亡] in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting[笑忘書], and The Joke[玩笑].
In 1985, Kundera received the Jerusalem Prize. It has also been rumored[傳聞] that he was considered for the Nobel Prize for literature In 2000, he was awarded the international Herder Prize. In 2007, he was awarded the Czech State Literature Prize.（對於一個被放逐多年的作家，得到本國的承認應是個莫大的安慰。）
Chapter One Lightness and Weight
