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All this took place in the early part of November of the year before last.[49.1] A great river of life flows between you and a date so distant[49a]. Hardly, if at all, can you see across so wide a waste[49b]. But to me it seems to have occurred, I will not say yesterday, but today. Suffering is one long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life, every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and walk and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape-gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms, or strewn with fallen fruit, we know nothing, and can know nothing[49c]. For us there is only one season, the season of Sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold[49d], but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always midnight in one’s heart[49e]. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow[49f]. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing to you, and in this manner writing.
这一切是发生在前年十一月初的事了。那么久远的日子和现在的你，其间横着一条生活的长河[49a]。这茫茫一片荒山野水，你即使看得见，也很难望得穿[49b]。然而在我看来似乎是发生在，我不说是昨天，而是在今天。受苦是一个很长的瞬间。我们无法将它用季节划分。我们只能记录它的心境，按顺序记下它种种心境的回环往复。对于我们，时间本身不是向前推移，而是回旋运转。它似乎在绕着一个哀苦的圆心盘旋。这是一种凝滞的生活，时时事事都由一个不可变的模式控制，我们吃喝、起卧、祈祷、或者至少是为祷告而下跪，都得遵循一条铁的公式：那些一成不变的律法，这种令人麻木的凝滞，使得每一天都暗无天日，都在重复着过去的日子，分毫不变。这种凝滞，似乎让外界的力也与之呼应，而这些力存在的本质，又恰恰在于不断的变化。春种秋收，农人在田里俯身挥镰，果农穿行于藤蔓间采摘葡萄，果园的青草上，残花落时一片片的白，果子掉下又散散的滚了一地：这一切，我们一点也不知道，一点也无法知道[49c]。
对于我们，只有一个季节，悲怆的季节。 那太阳、那月亮，似乎都从我们的天穹拿掉了。外面也许是蓝天丽日[49d]，但是透过头顶小小的铁窗那封得严严的玻璃，漏下的只是一点点灰暗的光线。牢房里整天是晨昏不辨，一如内心中整天是半夜三更[49e]。思维也同时间一样，不再有任何运动。你自己早已忘却的事，或者很容易就忘却的事，现在我正身历其境，明天还将再历其境[49f]。记住这个吧，那样你就会明白一点，这封信我为什么写，为什么这样写。
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49.2