Literature and Life(文学与人生)

William Henry Hudson, 1841 ~ 1922, English writer and naturalist

We care for literature primarily on account of its deep and lasting human significance. A great book grows directly out of life: in reading it, we are brought into large, close, and fresh relations with life; and in that fact lies the final explanation of its power.

我们关注文学,主要因为它包含深遂而永恒的人生意义. 伟大的著作往往直接提炼于真实的生活, 通过阅读, 我们对人生有了广阔, 密切且斩新的认识, 这也正是文学的魅力所在.

Literature is a vital record of what men have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for all of us. It is thus fundamentally an expression of life through the medium of language. Such expression is fashioned into the various forms of literary art. But it is important to understand, to begin with, that literature lives by virtue of the life which it embodies. By remembering this, we shall be saved from the besetting danger of confounding the study of literature with the study of philology, rhetoric, and even literary technique.

文学记录了生活中我们所看到的, 所经历的, 以及我们的想法与感觉关于那些我们最关心而且一直关心的事情. 因此它基本上是人生通过语言媒介的表达. 这种表达形成了各种各样的文学作品. 但是我们必须懂得, 文学寄生于它所包含的生活. 紧记这点, 我们就能避免混淆文学和语言学, 修辞学, 甚至写作技巧.