米兰昆德拉《身份》语录 (Milan Kundera <<Identity>> quotations

在今天这个世界里，我们每个人的一举一动都被控制，都被记录下来，那些大商场到处有摄像机监视我们，人们摩肩接踵，接连不断，甚至连做爱都会在第二天被搞调查或做研究的人盘问。。。一个人怎么可能避开监视完全消失，连一点痕迹也不留下？（ ch. 1 ）

In a world where our every move is monitored and recorded. Where in department stores cameras watch you, where jostle you, where a person cannot even make love without being quizzed the next day by researchers and poll-takers, how is it possible that someone could slip out of surveillance and disappear without a trace? (ch.1)

她甚至都不能自杀，因为自杀就意味着背叛，意味着不愿意再等待下去，完全失去耐心。她将会一辈子都生活在一种无尽头的可怕之中。 (ch. 1)

She could not even kill herself, because suicide would be a betrayal, a refusal to wait, a loss of patience. She would be condemned to live until the end of her days in unrelenting horror.(ch.1)

梦将一个人生命中不同的时期化为同等价值，并将人所生活过的一切都拉平，使之具有一种同时性，这让人受不了；梦否认现时的特权地位，使它变得不再那么重要。 (ch. 2)

(That is why she dislikes dreams:) they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a life leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its privileged status. (ch. 2)

我老是在想，死去之后，人还是活着的。我在想，所谓死亡就是做一场无尽的噩梦。 (ch. 3)

I can’t shake off the idea that after death you keep being alive. That to be dead is to live an endless nightmare. (ch.3)

照他的说法，广告就是在隔了很久之后完成这一诗歌目标。它将一些简单的生活用品转化为诗歌。多亏了广告，日常生活开始变得如同歌曲一般美好。(ch. 10)

Advertising, he claims, is realizing that poetic project after the fact. It transforms the simple objects of life into poetry. Thanks to advertising, everydayness has started singing. (ch. 10)

他微笑了，一种表明距离的微笑。这样很有风度。你越有权势，就必须越显得有风度。(ch. 10)

“A smile that indicates a certain distance looks elegant, and the more powerful you are. The you feel an obligation to be elegant. (ch. 10)

他怎么说他爱她，说觉得她很美，也没用。他那情人之眼无法安慰她。因为爱情的目光是一种使她的身体成为惟一的目光。。。。。。不，她需要的不是一种爱情的目光，而是陌生人的、粗鲁的、淫荡的眼光的淹没，这些眼光毫无善意、毫无选择、毫无温柔也毫无礼貌，不可逃脱、不可回避地投注到她身上。正是这种目光将她保持在人的社会群体中，而爱情的目光则将她从中拉出来。(ch. 13)

However much he may tell her he loves her and thinks her beautiful, his loving gaze could never console her. …No, what she needs is not a loving gaze but a flood of alien, crude, lustful looks setting on her with no good will, no discrimination, no tenderness or politeness—setting on her fatefully, inescapably. Those are the looks that sustain her within human society. The gaze of love rips her out of it.  (ch.13)                         

十六七岁的时候，她特别喜欢一个隐喻；是她自己想出来的、听来的，还是从哪里读到的？没有关系。她想成为一种玫瑰香，一种四处扩散的香味，四处去征服。她希望就这样穿透所有男人，并通过男人，去拥抱整个世界。玫瑰四处扩散的香味：那是对艳遇的隐喻。这个隐喻在她即将成人之际开放，就像是对温柔地与男人混杂相处的浪漫许诺，对穿越所有男人之旅的邀请。可是，她天生又并非是一个常换情人的女人，这个朦胧的、抒情的梦，很快就在宁静而幸福的婚姻中沉睡过去。 (ch. 14)

When she was sixteen, seventeen years old, she used to cherish a certain metaphor; had she invented it herself, heard it, read it?  No matter: she wanted to be a rose fragrance, a pervasive, overwhelming fragrance, she wanted to move thus through all men and, by way of the men, to embrace the entire world. The pervasive rose fragrance: a metaphor of adventure. At the threshold of her adult life, that metaphor unfolded like the romantic promise of a sweet promiscuity, like an invitation to the journey through men. But she was not by nature a woman born to run through lovers, and this vague, lyrical dream quickly fell dormant in her marriage, which started off calm and happy.(ch.14)

一个人可以在爱人在场时，因怀念他（她）而痛苦，假如他（她）隐约看到了爱人会不在的将来；爱人的死亡，虽然还看不见，却已经可以感知。(ch. 14)

 Nostalgia?  How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? (ch.14)

 她因自己毫无艳遇而高兴。艳遇是一种拥抱世界的方式。她不再希望拥抱世界。她不再去想这个世界。(ch. 14)

She relished the utter absence of adventures. Adventure: a means of embracing the world. She no longer wanted to embrace the world. She no longer wanted the world. (ch.14)

她因没有艳遇、没有艳遇的欲望而幸福，高兴。她想起自己的隐喻，于是看到一朵迅速凋谢的玫瑰，就像在一部快镜头播放的电影中，很快就只剩下一小根花茎，黑黑的，永远地消失在了他们共进晚餐的夜晚的白色世界中：玫瑰融化在白色之中。(ch. 14)

She relished the happiness of being adventureless and without desire for adventures. She recalled her metaphor and saw a rose withering, rapidly as in a time-lapse film until all that was left of it was a skinny blackish twig, and disappearing forever in the white universe of their evening: the rose diluted in the whiteness. (ch. 14)

 

记住自己的过去，一直将它藏在身上，这可能是保持人们所说的自我的一贯性的必要条件。为了使自我不至于萎缩，为了使自我保持住它的体积大小，就必须时时浇灌记忆，就像浇灌盆里的花儿一样，而这种灌需要跟一些过去的见证人，也就是说跟朋友们保持固定而有规律的接触。(ch. 16)

Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self.  To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. (ch. 16)

 朋友是我们的镜子，我们的记忆；我们对他们一无所求，只是希望他们时时擦亮这面镜子，让我们可以从中看看自己。(ch. 16)

They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it. (ch.16)

在真理和朋友之间，我永远选择朋友。(ch. 16)

I liked to say: between the truth and a friend, I always choose the friend. (ch. 16)

友情对我来说，证明了存在着比意识形态、宗教、民族更强烈的东西。(ch. 16)

Friendship, to me, was proof of the existence of something stronger than ideology, than religion, than the nation.(ch.16)

友情是男人的问题，是他们的罗曼蒂克的事。(ch. 16)

Friendship is a problem for men. It’s their romanticism. (ch.16)

我们因为孩子才依恋这个世界，考虑这个世界的未来，参与它的那些喧哗，那些骚动，把它的那些不可救药的愚蠢之事当回事。(ch. 19)

The child makes us care about the world, think about its future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoil, take its incurable stupidity seriously. (ch.19)

眼睛，心灵的窗户、脸部的美的中心、一个个体特性的聚合点；但同时又是一种视觉工具，需要不断地洗涮、湿润，用一种含有盐的成分的特殊液体来保护。(ch. 21)

The eye: the window to the soul; the center of the face’s beauty; the point where a person’s identity is concentrated; but at the same time an optical instrument that requires constant washing, wetting, maintenance by a special liquid dosed with salt.(ch.21)

每一个职业都创造出它的思维方式，它的存在方式。一个医生跟农民想的不一样，一个军人跟一个老师的举止不一样。今天我们都是一样的，我们都被我们面对工作的那种一致的无所谓而联合在一起。这种无所谓成了热情。这是我们时代的惟一的共同热情。(ch. 26)

Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think differently from a peasant, a soldier would behave differently from a teacher. Today we’re all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.(ch.26)

两个人相爱，愿意只有他们两人，与世隔绝，这是很美的事情。但他们用什么来滋养每天的面对面相见？世界虽然实在让人瞧不起，但他们需要这个世界来进行谈话。(ch. 26)

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world; that is very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.(ch.26)

我们惟一的自由是在苦涩与快乐之间选择，既然我们的命运就是一切的毫无意义，那就不能作为一种污点带着它，而是要善于因之而快乐。(ch. 43)

Freedom?  As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom. You’re free to melt your own individuality into the cauldron of the multitude either with a feeling of defeat or with euphoria.(ch. 43)

我的目光再也不放开你。我要不停地看着你。(ch. 51)

I’ll never let you out of my sight again. I’m going to keep on looking at you and never stop.(ch.51)

我怕我的眼睛眨。我怕在我那目光熄灭的一秒钟里，在你的位置上突然滑入一条蛇、一只老鼠，滑入另一个人。(ch. 51)

I get scared when my eye blinks. Scared that during that second when my gaze is switched off, a snake or a rat or another man could slip into your place.(ch.51)

他试着抬起身来，用嘴唇去接触她。她摇摇头：“不，我只想看着你。”接着又说：“我要让灯光整夜亮着，每夜都亮着。”（ch. 51）

He tried to raise himself a little to touch her with his lips.  She shook her head: “ No , I just want to look at you.”  And then: “I’m going to leave the lamp on all night. Every night.”  (ch. 51)