Freya Stark - Happiness Consists in Love 汉译

Who can say in remoteness of time, in what difference of earthly shape, love first come to us as a stranger in the jungle? We, in our human family, know him through dependence in childhood, through possession in youth, through sorrow and loss in their season. In childhood we are happy to receive; it is the first opening of love. In youth we take and give, dedicate and possess—rapture and anguish are mingled, until parenthood brings a dedication that, to be happy, must ask for no return. All these are new horizons of content, which the lust of holding, the enemy of love, slowly contaminates. Loss, sorrow and separation come, sickness and death; possession, that tormented us, is nothing in our hands; it vanishes. Love’s elusive entrenchment, his ubiquitous pretence, again become apparent; and in age we may reach a haven that asking for nothing knows how to enjoy.

爱这东西，不管是在多么远古的时代，不管是采取怎样现世的形态出现，总好像在森林中遇到的陌生人一样，是一个谁也不能了解的哑谜。属于人类的我们，在孩童时代，由于依赖爱自己的人而认识爱；在青年时代，由于占有所爱的人而认识爱，于是时候一到，由于失去了所爱的人感到悲伤而认识爱。在孩童时代我们很高兴来接受；这是爱的最早的端倪。在青年时代我们有取有予，有献身有占有——悲喜交集，直到做了父母时，对儿女那种献身的爱，心甘情愿，不望报答。这一切都是令人满足的爱的新境界，可惜不免要为与爱为敌的所有欲，慢慢地加以污损。失去了爱的痛苦，离别的悲哀，随即到来，还有疾病和死亡。以前那种使我们受苦的占有，已不在我们掌握之中，而早烟消云散了。爱的难于捉摸的魅力，它那不即不离的灵性，再度变得明显起来，及来到老年，我们就可能达到一个由于不求报答，故能体味到那种平静无波的爱的佳境。