8．Birth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

                      William Wordsworth (1770—1850)：Ode: Intimations of Immortality

参考译文：

诞生

出生犹如入睡与遗忘；

伴同我们升起的灵魂，

这远方来的生命之星，

已经沉落在别的地方；

不是在全然的疏漏中，

不是在全然的裸露中，

而是在蔓生的云辉里

我们来自宇宙这家乡：

襁褓时天堂就在身旁！

                              英国诗人威廉·华兹华斯：《不朽的征兆》

9．Childhood

Childhood is less clear to me than to many people: when it ended I turned my face away from it for no reason that I know about, certainly without the usual reason of unhappy memories. For many years that worried me, but then I discovered that the tales of former children are seldom to be trusted. Some people supply too many past victories or pleasures with which to comfort themselves, and other people cling to pains, real and imagined, to excuse what they have become.

I think I have always know about my memory. I know when it is to be trusted and when some dream or fantasy entered on the life, and the dream, the need of dream, led to distortion of what happened. And so I knew early that the rampage angers of an only child were distorted nightmares of reality. But I trust absolutely what I remember about Julia.

                                             Lillian Hellman (1905—1984)：Julia

参考译文：

童年

我小时候的记忆比许多人模糊：不知道为什么，童年一结束，我就别过脸去，但我知道决不是因为有着痛苦回忆这种常见的原因。关于这一点，多年来便困扰着我，但后来我发现，旧时儿事，通常不足以为信。有些人搬出好些昔日的盛事趣事来聊以自慰，有些人则念念不忘或真实或想象而来的痛苦，把它当成自己何以变得如此的口实。

我想我一向清楚自己的记性，知道那一段时间的记忆是可以相信的，明白生活中在何时又掺进了梦想或幻想。做过的梦和对梦想的需要，扭曲了发生的事件。我也很早就了解到，独生子之所以大吵大闹，是做恶梦之后所扭曲的结果。然而，对于茱丽亚的回忆，我百分之百相信是确实无误的。

                                       美国女作家莉莲·海尔曼：《茱丽亚》