【昝重奇】How I Write—By Bertrand Russell_昝重奇吧

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IP属地:河北

1楼2013-01-22 19:26回复

I cannot pretend to know how writing ought to be done, or what a wise critic would advise me to do with a view to improving my own writing. The most that I can do is to relate some things about my own attempts.
我不能假装自己知道如何写作，或佯称认识一个精明的批评家指点我需要以某种方式去改进我的文体。我顶多能够做到的就是把握各种尝试与一些事情之间的必然联系做个见证而已。

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体2楼2013-01-22 19:26

Until I was twenty-one, I wished to write more or less in the style of John Stuart Mill. I liked the structure of his sentences and his manner of developing a subject. I had, however, already a different ideal, derived, I suppose, from mathematics. I wished to say everything in the smallest number of words in which it could be said clearly. Perhaps, I thought, one should imitate Baedeker rather than any more literary model. I would spend hours trying to find the shortest way of saying something without ambiguity, and to this aim I was willing to sacrifice all attempts at aesthetic excellence.
直到21岁之前，我希望在写作上多少按照约翰米尔的风格行事，我喜欢他的句型结构以及发展一个主题的方式。不过当时我已有别的想法，我想大概是引申自数学吧：我希望用最少量的此便能够把每一件事情说得一清二楚。也许当时我觉得与其模仿任何书卷气较重的模式，还不如效法出版商贝德克尔发行的旅游指南。我坑花时间设法找出最简洁的方法把某些事情毫不含糊地表达出来，而为了达到这个目的，我愿意牺牲追求美学上优点的一切企图。

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体3楼2013-01-22 19:27

Very gradually I have discovered ways of writing with a minimum of worry and anxiety. When I was young each fresh piece of serious work used to seem to me for a time-perhaps a long time-to be beyond my powers. I would fret myself into a nervous state from fear that it was never going to come right. I would make one unsatisfying attempt after another, and in the end have to discard them all. At last I found that such fumbling attempts were a waste of time. It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of sub-conscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking. Sometimes I would find, after a time, that I had made a mistake, and that I could not write. the book I had had in mind. But often I was more fortunate. Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my sub-consciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what had appeared as if in a revelation.

渐渐地，我找到以一种最低程度的焦虑与不安的心情从事写作的方式。在我年轻时，每每对于一个新的严肃作品我总是用掉一段时间——也许是一段长时间——感到好像非我的能力所能及。我会把自己从恐惧——害怕自己写的永远不对头——折磨至一个神经质状态。于是我作出一次又一次无法令自己满意的重写尝试，而最后不得不把他们一一丢弃。我终于发现这种胡乱摸索的努力只是在浪费时间。看来对我较为适合的方式是，在第一次思考一本书的主题之后，随之对这个主题给与认真的考虑，然后要有一段潜意识的酝酿时间，那是不能仓促行事的，而要说有什么区别的话，那就是我会过分地深思熟虑。有时在过了一段时间后，我会发现自己出了错，以致无法写出我想要的书。不过我的运气一向较好。通过一个极其专心的阶段把问题深植于我的潜意识之后，他便开始秘密地成长，直到解决方案带着使人不能理解的清晰度突然浮现出来，因此剩下的只不过是把看来仿佛是某种神示的内容书写出来罢了。

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体5楼2013-01-22 19:27

随后的几段没翻译完。。先贴出来吧。。

IP属地:河北

6楼2013-01-22 19:28

The most curious example of this process, and the one which led me subsequently to rely upon it, occurred at the beginning of 1914. I had undertaken to give the Lowell Lectures at Boston, and had chosen as my subject "Our Knowledge of the External World". Throughout 1913 I thought about this topic. In term time in my rooms at Cambridge, in vacations in a quiet inn on the upper reaches of the Thames, I concentrated with such intensity that I sometimes forgot to breath and emerged panting as from a trance. But all to no avail. To every theory that I could think of I could perceive fatal objections. At last, in despair, I went off to Rome for Christmas, hoping that a holiday would revive my flagging energy. I got back to 'Cambridge on the last day of 1913, and although my difficulties were still completely unresolved I arranged, because the remaining time was short, to dictate as best as I could to a stenographer. Next morning, as she came in at the door, I suddenly saw exactly what I had to say, and proceeded to dictate the whole book without a moment's hesitation.

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体7楼2013-01-22 19:28

I do not want to convey an exaggerated impression. The book was very imperfect, and I now think that it contains serious errors. But it was the best that I could have done at that time, and a more leisurely method (within the time at my disposal) would almost certainly have produced something worse. Whatever may be true of other people, this is the right method for me. Flaubert and Pater, I have found, are best forgotten so far as I am concerned.

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体8楼2013-01-22 19:29

There are some simple maxims-not perhaps quite so simple as those which my brother-in-law Logan Pearsall Smith offered me-which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end. Take, say, such a sentence as the following, which might occur in a work on sociology: "Human beings are completely exempt from undesirable behaviour-patterns only when certain prerequisites, not satisfied except in a small percentage of actual cases, have, through some fortuitous concourse of favourable circumstances, whether congenital or environmental, chanced to combine in producing an individual in whom many factors deviate from the norm in a socially advantageous manner". Let us see if we can translate this sentence into English. I suggest the following: "All men are scoundrels, or at any rate almost all. The men who are not must have had unusual luck, both in their birth and in their upbringing." This is shorter and more intelligible, and says just the same thing. But I am afraid any professor who used the second sentence instead of the first would get the sack.

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体10楼2013-01-22 19:29

This suggests a word of advice to such of my hearers as may happen to be professors. I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. Take the statement: "Some people marry their deceased wives' sisters". I can express this in language which only becomes intelligible after years of study, and this gives me freedom. I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language "understanded of the people". In these days, when our very lives are at the mercy of the professors, I cannot but think that they would deserve our gratitude if they adopted my advice.

IP属地:河北

本楼含有高级字体11楼2013-01-22 19:29

有人看到了。。需要翻译的话再说。。

IP属地:河北

12楼2013-01-22 19:30

谢谢楼主了！

13楼2017-02-21 22:56

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【昝重奇】How I Write—By Bertrand Russell

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