Editor’s Remark:Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, Bertrand Russell was
the most outstanding logician, mathematician, pacifist, and analytic
philosopher of the last 20th century. He summed up his 97 years of a remarkable
life experience, dramatic and thought-provocative,
in the Prologue to his Autobiography (in
three volumes totaling 1000 pages). The
Prologue is composed of only five short paragraphs; it is presented in a
typically Russell prose style that reads more poetic than poetry. It is here,
for the first time perhaps, freely rendered into a Chinese verse by Suncrates.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell Prologue : What I Have Lived for |
《羅素自傳》楔子 浮生為何度? 孫格拉底譯 |
Three passions, simple but
overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for
knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of
mankind. These passions, like
great winds, have blown me hither
and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of
anguish, reaching to the very verge of
despair. I have sought love, first, because it
brings ecstasy ―― ecstasy so great that I would often have
sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this
joy. I have sought it, next, because it
relieves loneliness―― that terrible
loneliness in which one shivering
consciousness looks over the rim of
the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the
union of love I have seen, in a
mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision
of the heaven that saints and poets have
imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might
seem too good for human
life, this is what--at last--I
have found. With equal passion I have sought
knowledge. I have wished to
understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to
apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds
sway above the flux. A little of this, but
not much, I have achieved. Love and
knowledge, so far as they were
possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain
reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons,
and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should
be. I long to alleviate
this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth
living, and would gladly live
it again if the chance were
offered me. Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970) wan the Nobel prize for literature for his Marriage and
Morality and was the co-author with Alfred North Whitehead of Principia
Mathematica. Return to the Bertrand
Russell Society Home Page |
狂情熱意三種, 單純而勢猛, 沛然莫禦難抗衡, 主我一生沉浮: 慕悅、求知、憫世。 憫世苦, 不勝悲! 茲三者,勁發如颶風, 吹我到西東, 湍激流乖, 飄過焦慮之深洋, 直抵絕望之邊崖。 慕悅一為享激情。 激喜使人狂, 哪怕此楽只片嚮, 便拼卻餘生一切、 將換更何妨! 慕悅二為解孤寂。 孤獨使人怖, 寂寥心顫抖, 霎瞬飛越世盡頭。 俯瞰萬仞深淵, 無生地、又名死亡谷, 冰冷冷,陰森森, 不可測度。 慕悅三為儗升天。 情密密,一體融, 預參了詩人圣者天堂境, 具體而微,妙洽重玄。 此事古難全, 竟為我覓見。 細思量:忒煞嬌妍, 何似在人間! 求知熱,不遜前: 下愿盡知人心一切底蘊與奧窔, 上愿洞曉長庚繁星底事吐輝耀? 看試手,敢與畢公共比高, 數理袖乾坤, 御生滅無常道。 算只有小成些許, 愧無多曉。 愛與知,逞神通, 挈我飛天,直上重霄九! 悲憫情,念眾苦, 驅我還地、按下雲頭。 大地遍野是泣鴻: 一聲聲,一絲絲, 震得我心弦顫抖: 饑童嗷嗷誰為哺? 蒼生無辜釁暴酋; 老朽無助人棄厭; 兒女視之如贅疣。 嘆世界寂寞打孤城, 冷清清、凄慘慘, 一片戚愁; 把人生究應當何似 戲弄個飽,嘲弄個透! 我何嘗不望稍舒罪惡、孽造減? 爭奈何、小子無能焉! 且休道眾生皆苦, 低聲問:我獨何免? 如是浮生一世將了。 俱往矣!尚值一活否? 姑頷首。 待得來生重見, 蒙天不棄, 便再活它個一遍, 固所愿! |