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A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies.[50.1] You knew, none better, how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was so terrible to me that I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame[50a]. Never, even in the most perfect days of my development as an artist, could I have had words fit to bear so august a burden, or to move with sufficient stateliness of music through the purple pageant of my incommunicable woe. She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured not merely in Literature, Art, Archaeology and Science, but in the public history of my own country in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly[50b]. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record[50c]. My wife, at that time kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent or alien lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irredeemable a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not known me personally, hearing what a new sorrow had come into my broken life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. You alone stood aloof, sent me no message, and wrote me no letter. Of such actions, it is best to say what Virgil says to Dante of those whose lives have been barren in noble impulse and shallow of intention: “Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda, e passa.” [50.2]
一个星期过后，我被转到这里。 三个月过去了，我母亲去世了。你比谁都清楚我对她有多爱，多尊敬。她去世，对我是个如此可怕的噩耗，即便我曾出口成章，也有口说不出内心的哀伤和愧怍[50a]。即使是在我艺术的巅峰时期，也绝对找不出什么词语，载得动这千钧重负；也找不出什么词语，在我那万绪千声﹑沸沸扬扬而又无可言传的悲恸之中，能如音乐的雍容肃穆穿行其间。她和我父亲留给我一个他们已使之高尚荣耀的姓氏，不但在文学、艺术、考古和科学，也在我祖国的历史中，在我民族演进的历史中留名。而我却让那个姓氏永远地蒙羞，让它沦为下贱人流传的下贱笑柄，让它蒙上了耻辱的污秽。我把它丢给了恶人使它成为恶名，我把它丢给了蠢人使它成为愚蠢的别名[50b]。我当时承受的悲苦、现在还在承受的悲苦，用笔写不下，用纸记不完[50c]。我妻子那时对我好，不想让我从不相干的人嘴里听到这噩耗，病得那么厉害还从意大利的热那亚赶到英格兰，亲口把这样一个无可挽回、无可补救的损失婉转地告诉我。那些对我仍存有感情的人无不传话表示同情。甚至那些以前并不认识的人，听到我破碎的生活中又添新愁，也写信来要求把他们的哀思传达给我一二。只有你，冷眼旁观，没传来一句话，没寄来一封信。卫基尔对但丁说起那些没有高尚的冲动也没有深远的意向的人，像你的这种样子，用他的话最好说了：“别提他们，只用眼睛看，再走过去。”
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