Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook thatinnocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.

曾经在一个干燥的季节里，我烦躁地在摊开的笔记本上奋力写道：当一个人喜欢自己的妄想被剥夺时，无辜感也就逝去了。尽管多年以后的现在，我惊异于自我异化的大脑原本应该记住每一次痛苦，但竟然没有。不过即使这样，我依然可以清晰地嗅到了如尘埃般、令人尴尬的那些瞬间的味道。那是放错位了的自尊。

I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others. Although even the humorless nineteen-year-old that I was must have recognized that the situation lacked real tragic stature, the day that I did not make Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something, and innocence may well be the word for it. I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and proved competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the nonplussed apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.

我未能入选美国大学优等生荣誉学会，这次失败原本早已料到（我仅仅是没有成绩），这点很清楚，但我却因此而失落了。一直以来我觉得自己就是学科上的Raskolnikov，因果关系能束缚别人，却束缚不了我。尽管我只是个毫无幽默感的19岁女孩，也早已意识到环境没有真正的悲剧色彩，但我没有入选美国优等生荣誉学会的那天，确实标志着某种东西的结束，“纯真”也许就是这种东西的最好指代。我失去了阳光总能为我带来希望的坚强信念；也不再欣然地肯定那些能使我自小就赢得赞许的天生丽质，它们都赋予了我，不仅是美国优等生荣誉学会中的重要人物，还有快乐、光荣和一个好男人的爱情；还失去了某种对诸如优雅的举止、干净的头发和在比奈年上公认的能力等等图腾式魔力的虔诚信仰。我的自尊依附于这些令人怀疑的护身符上，直到我那一天感受到：如同突然遇到一个吸血鬼，手上却没有十字架的保护，那种不知所措的惊慌的感觉。

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self- deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one’s marked cards – the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.

尽管遭遇挫折，大不了就是一件不安的事情，就好像试图拿着借来的证件过境一样，但在我看来，现在第一要紧的事就是重新建立真正的自尊。尽管我们大多数的陈词滥调都表明自欺是没有用的。对别人起作用的小把戏，实质上毫无用处，因为在亮堂堂的后巷，自己清楚自己干了些什么：这儿没有迷人的微笑，没有什么好心好意粉饰自己，只有直白的面对自己。在心底飞快地回想那些做的不合适的事情——另有企图的做好事，没付出真正努力就获得成功，倍感羞愧而做成的英雄事迹，自尊与他人的赞许没有关联，别人毕竟还是很好欺骗的；自尊也同名誉无关，正如白瑞德告诉斯佳丽那样，勇敢的人没有名誉也能完成。这是一个令人很难过的事实。

To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.

另一方面，没有自尊的去做事，就像做一个不情愿的观众，观看记录自己失败的冗长的记录片一样，这种失败既有现实的，又有虚幻的。每回想起一个失误就发现更多的失误。例如：生气时你摔碎了玻璃；看那，某人脸上有你打过的痕迹；下一幕中，某人从休斯敦回来，你没有接待他。没有自尊的活着就如同某个晚上躺着睡不着，没有温牛奶、安眠药和拍着手入眠，数着因小罪疏忽造成的罪行、背叛的信任、巧妙违背的谎言，和由于懒惰、怯懦或粗心而无可挽回的浪费了的才能。无论我们躲避多久，最终还是要独自睡在那张自己给自己做的声名狼藉的不舒服的床上。我们能否会睡在其上，当然就要看我们能否尊重自己了。

To protest that some fairly improbable people, some people who could not possibly respect themselves, seem to sleep easily enough is to miss the point entirely, as surely as those people miss it who think that self-respect has necessarily to do with not having safety pins in one’s underwear. There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation. Although the careless, suicidal Julian English in Appointment in Samara and the careless, incurably dishonest Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby seem equally improbably candidates for self-respect, Jordan Baker had it, Julian English did not. With that genius for accommodation more often seen in women than men, Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace: “I hate careless people,” she told Nick Carraway. “It takes two to make an accident.”

有人反对说：相当一部分不大可能发生上述情况的没有自尊的人，似乎睡的挺安稳。他们完全没有理解自尊的重要性，确如那些根本就没有自尊的人，他们认为自尊和在贴身内衣里不带安全别针之间有着必然的联系。还有一种常见的迷信，认为自尊是一种驱邪的信物，有了自尊就能在永恒的伊甸园里有一席之地，一般还能避开死亡之床、捉摸不透谈话和麻烦。事实上并非如此。自尊和这些没有什么关系，相反却和独自的平静、个人的和谐有关。尽管在《萨马拉的会合》中马虎、自杀了的Julian English和《伟大的盖茨比》中粗心、不忠实的Jordan Baker看起来都能成为更有自尊的典型。但实际上，Jordan Baker有自尊，而Julian English没有。女人比男人有更强的适应能力，凭着这种天赋，Jordan有她自己的一套方法，创造了她自己的宁静，并避开了对其宁静的威胁，“我憎恶粗心的人”，她对Nick Carraway说“一般要两个人出事故”。

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. The know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an excess of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.

就像Jordan Baker那样，有自尊的人能勇敢的面对他们的错误。他们知道犯错的代价，如果他们选择了与人通奸，完后并不跑掉，而是良心发现的去获得受害方的宽恕；他们也不过多的抱怨不公平，及被人指责为通奸的不应得的难堪。简而言之，有自尊的人展现给我们一种坚强、一种道德的勇气；显示出以前所谓的性格，也就是在理论上被赞同，有时却让位于更多变的柔弱特性。自尊的日渐衰弱的重要性体现在人们常常把它仅仅与丑孩子和那些在初选就被淘汰下来的美国参议员联系起来。可是，这种乐意接受个人生活中的责任的品格，正是自尊的源泉。

Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts. It seemed to the nineteenth century admirable, but not remarkable, that Chinese Gordon put on a clean white suit and held Khartoum against the Mahdi; it did not seem unjust that the way to free land in California involved death and difficulty and dirt. In a diary kept during the winter of 1846, an emigrating twelve-year-old named Narcissa Cornwall noted coolly: “Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filled with strange Indians until Mother spoke out about it.” Even lacking any clue as to what Mother said, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by the entire incident: the father reading, the Indians filing in, the mother choosing the words that would not alarm, the child duly recording the event and noting further that those particular Indians were not, “fortunately for us,” hostile. Indians were simply part of the donnee.

我们的祖辈清楚地知道什么是自尊，不管他们是不是拥有自尊。在很小的时候，他们就灌输了一定的训练和意识：活着就要去做自己并不是特别想做的事情，一面要忍受恐惧和担忧，一面又要权衡今生今世的幸福和来生来世的更大不可能得到的幸福。1846年冬天里的一篇日记里，12岁的移民孩子Narcissa Corwall 冷静地写道：“爸爸忙着看报并没有注意到房子里到处都是陌生的印第安人，一直到妈妈告诉他。”有关妈妈到底说了什么，这里并没有具体记录，即使如此，也能对整个事件留下深刻的印象：爸爸读着报纸，印第安人鱼贯而入，妈妈小心翼翼地说尽量不惊动他们的话，孩子适时地记录了这件事，而没有任何关于这些印第安人对我们不友好、敌意的话语。印第安人只是这个主题的一部分。

In one guise or another, Indians always are. Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that the Indians will be hostile, that the venture will go bankrupt, that the liaison may not turn out to be one in which every day is a holiday because you’re married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.

无论怎样装扮，印第安人总是在那里。而且，应该意识到这个问题：任何事都是要付出代价。自尊的人情愿接受：印第安人有敌意的冒险，投资的倒闭和并非因为你嫁给了我而使每天都成为假日的婚姻。他们乐于拿个人的东西冒险：他们也许不会去赌博，但只要赌了就知道其中的机会。

That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.

那种自尊是一种修养，不能伪装，却能进一步培养训练和谆谆教诲的心态。以前，我有一种哭的对策，就是把头放进纸袋里。所以如此有其确切的生理原因：生物需要氧气正常运作；但光有生理效应也不足以解释；很难继续想象自己就是《呼啸山庄》里的把头套在食品袋里的凯瑟琳。所有的小的修养，虽然本身并不重要，但它们都有相似之处，想象获得任何的陶醉，令人同情、肉欲的冲着冷水澡。

But those small disciplines are valuable only insofar as they represent larger ones. To say that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is not to say that Napoleon might have been saved by a crash program in cricket; to give formal dinners in the rain forest would be pointless did not the candlelight flickering on the liana call forth deeper, stronger disciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have known it.

但那些小训练只有当它们代表着更大的美德时才有价值。如果说滑铁卢战役在伊顿学院的操场上进行的话，也并不是说拿破仑能通过调整打板球的紧急计划而获胜；如果树藤上闪烁的烛光不能唤起更深、更坚强的修养和以前灌输的美德的话，那么在雨林中举行正式的会餐将毫无意义。自尊是一种仪式，帮助我们记住我们是谁，我们是干什么的。为了记住它，人本来早已知道了自尊。

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

有了组成的内在价值的感觉，就可能已经拥有了一切：区分的能力，爱和保持平淡的能力。缺乏自尊如同自我封闭，同时不能拥有爱和保持平常心。如果我们不再拥有自尊：那么一方面我们被迫轻视那些与我们联系较少、对我们的致命弱点缺少了解的人；另一方面，我们尤其受我们所见的每一个人的束缚：注定受他们观点的影响而活着，因为我们自己的自我形象是那么不堪一击，这种自我形象是他们对我们的错误观念。我们自欺欺人，把这种被迫去讨好别人当作一个优秀品质：一种想象的移情作用的关键，我们自愿对这些做出强有力的证明。当然，我对polo而扮演Francesca，会为任何一个人的Annie Sullivan而扮演Helen Keller：任何期待怎么离谱都不过分，任何角色怎么离奇都不过分。受这些人的支配，我们只能轻视，只能扮演注定要失败的角色，在这些角色未开始之前，每次失败在占卜和预见对我们所做的下一个要求的急需条件下都会产生新的失望。

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

这是一种有时被称为“自我疏远”的现象，达到严重程度时，我们会因为某人可能要某样东西，而不再给他回电话。而那种接了别人的电话一口回绝但又不陷入自责的情况，就另当别论了。每次经历都需要消耗很多东西：消磨勇气，消耗意志。一封信不回就耿耿于怀，内疚越积越多，所以回信就不可能了，对于未回信件要给予它适当的重要性，把我们从别人的期待中解脱出来，找回自我，这只有自尊的人才能做到。没有了自尊，我们终将发现我们处于螺母滑丝般的困境：我们总是跑出去寻找自我，却往往只能发现一个空虚内心。