Meaning of Life

几年前读中文版，关注点都在主线剧情上：主角对绘画难以自拔的激情和对世俗彻头彻尾的脱离。最近重读英文版，反而是其他两个地方让我印象深刻。

一个是Blanche的死和对于爱情的讨论。

作者关于爱情的看法：
“Love is absorbing; it takes the lover out of himself; the most clear-sighted, though he may know, cannot realize that his love will cease; it gives body to what he knows is illusion, and, knowing it is nothing else, he loves it better than reality. It makes a man a little MORE than himself, and at the same time a little less. He ceases to be himself.”

爱情是给予，是最聪明的人变得愚蠢，是知晓一切皆是幻象仍然充满热情的相信，是不再成为自己。而Strickland则是爱情的反面：他比最自私的人还要更冷漠几分。除了绘画，自身、他人以及人类世俗的种种一切，通通都不值得他关心。因此，他对Blanche死讯的坦白并不令人惊讶：

“I don't want love. I haven't time for it. It's weakness. I am a man, and sometimes I want a woman. When I've satisfied my passion I'm ready for other things. I can't overcome my desire, but I HATE it; it imprisons my spirit; I look forward to the time when I shall be free from all desire and can give myself without hindrance to my work. Because women can do nothing except love, they're given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. I know lust. That's normal and healthy. Love is a disease.

When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. She has a small mind, and she resents the abstract which she is unable to grasp. She is occupied with material things, and she is jealous of the ideal. The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account-book. ... With infinite patience she prepared to snare me and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone. ”

对于Strickland，欲望是可恨的本能，摆脱情欲的束缚是为了更加自由的思考和工作。和他相比，大多数人对于爱情的执着近乎病态：作为空虚人生里唯一的闪光之处，他们赋予爱情至高无上的地位；他们软弱的思想里充满了物质生活的琐碎，嫉妒一切抽象的事物以及理想，把牢牢控制另一半当作自己生命里头等重要的大事；他们对于被控制的人真正的需求漠不关心，只在乎这个人是否属于自己；他们声称自己愿意付出一切，却不肯做那一件他真正需要的事情：放他自由。

She wanted to bring me down to her level. 这段话我反反复复读了几遍。不是不明白Strickland对于自由的渴望，但是我也完全可以理解Blanche对于感情的执着。悲剧大概就意味着我们不能用对错来判断任何一方。不论Strickland是否真的太过冷血，Blanche是否软弱又执着，理想或自由是否高于一切，爱情是否不切实际，人性是否空虚庸俗...只想感慨这两个人似乎完全不可能理解对方。

Blanche能够付出的所有，对Strickland来说都不具有任何意义；而她所希望收获的回报，则和对方的渴求背道而驰。她越努力，对方就越本能的抗拒。这是一场注定悲剧的搏斗。旁观者可以感到她的痛苦，然而就连这种痛苦都根本没办法被Strickland所理解。

“She strove to ensnare him with comfort and would not see that comfort meant nothing to him. She was at pains to get him the things to eat that he liked, she would not see that he was indifferent to food. ... She pursued him with attentions, and when his passion was dormant sought to excite it, for then at least she had the illusion of holding him. Perhaps she know with her intelligence that the chains she forged only aroused his instinct of destruction, but her heart, incapable of reason, made her continue on a course she know was fatal. She must have been very unhappy. But the blindness of love led her to believe what she wanted to be true, and her love led was so great that it seemed impossible to her that it should not in return awake an equal love.”

但最残酷的是什么呢？不是旁观者的感慨，不是Blanche的死和痛苦，也不是一个家庭的破碎，而是作者冷静的表达这一切都毫无意义，是任何人的感受、心碎和死亡对于旁人、对于世界来说通通都毫无意义。生活继续进行，世界照样旋转，即使最亲近的人也无法分担一丝一毫。一切皆是徒劳。

“The cruelest thing of all was that in fact it made no great difference. The world went on, and no one was a penny the worse for all that wretchedness. ... It all seemed useless and inane.”

然而如果每个人的生活多多少少都是徒劳，至少我们要追求一些理解聊以慰藉。可惜，如果天才似如Strickland也只是在过世后才得到认可，那我们我们普通人大概只会对人生更失望一点。

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

所以我也反复读了好几遍医生Abraham的故事。他找到了他的Alexandria，抛弃了高薪，前途，漂亮的大房子和一切大多数人看似美好的未来。他像Strickland一样不被理解，可是他大概也像Strickland一样，有着不需要被理解的幸运。如果不能被理解，至少理解自己吧。

“I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual.“