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It is only right to state that in any case I would not have accepted the dedication. Though, possibly, it would under other circumstances have pleased me to have been asked, I would have refused the request for your sake, irrespective of any feelings of my own. The first volume of poems that in the very springtime of his manhood a young man sends forth to the world should be like a blossom or flower of spring, like the white thorn in the meadow at Magdalen, or the cowslips in the Cumnor[54.1] fields. It should not be burdened by the weight of a terrible, a revolting tragedy, a terrible, a revolting scandal. If I had allowed my name to serve as herald to the book it would have been a grave artistic error. It would have brought a wrong atmosphere round the whole work, and in modern art atmosphere counts for so much. Modern life is complex and relative. Those are its two distinguishing notes. To render the first we require atmosphere with its subtlety of nuances, of suggestion, of strange perspectives: as for the second we require background. That is why Sculpture has ceased to be a representative art; and why Music is a representative art; and why Literature is, and has been, and always will remain the supreme representative art.
一点也不错，我无论如何不会接受这献诗的。虽然，也许吧，在其它情况下你问了我会高兴，但仍会为了你好而拒绝这一请求的，不管我自己心情如何。一个年轻人，在他青春正盛时呈献给世界的第一部诗集，应该像春天的鲜花，像莫德林学院草坪上的山楂树，像康姆纳田野的立金花；而不该去背负一个可怕可恨的悲剧、一个可怕可恨的丑闻。倘若我让自己的名字用去为诗集的问世报喜，那将是艺术上的一大错误。它将使整个作品裹在一种错误的氛围之中，而现代艺术中氛围又是如此重要。现代生活是复杂的，相对的。这是它的两个显著特征。要表现第一个，我们需要氛围及其微妙的神韵、暗示和奇妙的透视；要表现第二个，我们需要背景。这就是为什么雕塑已不再是一种再现型艺术，而音乐则是；这就是为什么文学是、也一直是、将来永远还是再现型的最高艺术。
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