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At the end of a month, when the June roses are in all their wanton opulence, I will, if I feel able, arrange through Robbie to meet you in some quiet foreign town like Bruges, whose grey houses and green canals and cool still ways had a charm for me, years ago. For the moment you will have to change your name. The little title of which you were so vain— and indeed it made your name sound like the name of a flower—you will have to surrender, if you wish to see me; just as my name, once so musical in the mouth of Fame[170a], will have to be abandoned by me, in turn. How narrow, and mean, and inadequate to its burdens is this century of ours ! It can give to Success its palace of porphyry, but for Sorrow and Shame it does not keep even a wattled house in which they may dwell: all it can do for me is to bid me alter my name into some other name, where even mediaevalism would have given me the cowl of the monk or the face-cloth of the leper behind which I might be at peace[170b].
在一个月将过,当六月的玫瑰开得如痴如狂时,要是我觉得行的话,会通过罗比安排,在国外找个宁静的小城同你见面,像布鲁日这样的地方,那里青灰的房子和碧绿的运河,以及凉爽寂静的小街,都令我心动,几年前的事了。 到那时你必须换个名字。那个你如此得意的小小头衔,的确使你的名字听着像一种花的名字,必须放弃,要是想见我的话。就像我的名字,曾经为名誉之神津津乐道的名字[170a],我也一样必须舍弃。我们所处的这个世纪,面对它应该担待的责任,显得多么的小器吝啬,心力不足啊!它可以为成功筑起金碧辉煌的殿堂,却不留一处茅屋给悲怆和羞耻容身:为我它能做的只有命我改名换姓,而即使在中世纪,我也会得到一块僧侣的头巾或麻风病人的面布,遮颜求得一份安心[170b]。
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