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I will begin by telling you that I blame myself terribly. As I sit here in this dark cell in convict clothes, a disgraced and ruined man, I blame myself[4a]. In the perturbed and fitful nights of anguish, in the long monotonous days of pain, it is myself I blame[4b]. I blame myself for allowing an unintellectual friendship, a friendship whose primary aim was not the creation and contemplation of beautiful things, to entirely dominate my life. From the very first there was too wide a gap between us. You had been idle at your school, worse than idle at your university.[4c] You did not realise that an artist, and especially such an artist as I am, one, that is to say, the quality of whose work depends on the intensification of personality, requires for the development of his art the companionship of ideas, and intellectual atmosphere, quiet, peace, and solitude[4d]. You admired my work when it was finished: you enjoyed the brilliant successes of my first nights, and the brilliant banquets that followed them[4e]: you were proud, and quite naturally so, of being the intimate friend of an artist so distinguished: but you could not understand the conditions requisite for the production of artistic work. I am not speaking in phrases of rhetorical exaggeration but in terms of absolute truth to actual fact when I remind you that during the whole time we were together I never wrote one single line[4f]. Whether at Torquay, Goring, London, Florence or elsewhere, my life, as long as you were by my side, was entirely sterile and uncreative[4g]. And with but few intervals you were, I regret to say, by my side always.
一开头我要告诉你我拼命地怪自己。坐在这黑牢里，囚衣蔽体，身败名裂，我怪我自己[4a]。暗夜里辗转反侧，苦痛中忽睡忽醒，白日里枯坐牢底，忧心惨切，我怪的是自己[4b]。怪自己让一段毫无心智的友情，一段其根本目的不在创造和思考美好事物的友情，完完全全左右了自己的生活。从一开始，你我之间的鸿沟就太大了。你在中学就懒散度日，更甚于在大学时期[4c]。你并没有意识到，一个艺术家，尤其是像我这样的艺术家，也就是说，作品的质量靠的是加强个性的艺术家，其艺术的发展要求思想的默契，心智的氛围，安详悠静的独处[4d]。我的作品完成后你会钦佩赞赏：首演之夜辉煌的成功，随之而来辉煌的宴会，都让你高兴[4e]。你感到骄傲，这很自然，自己会是这么一位大艺术家的亲密朋友，但你无法理解艺术作品得以产生的那些必备条件。我不夸大其词，而是绝对实事求是地要你知道，在我们相处的那个时候，我一行东西都没写[4f]。无论是在托基、戈灵、伦敦、佛罗伦萨，还是其它地方，只要你在身旁，我就才思枯竭，灵感全无[4g]，而除了那么几次以外，我很遗憾地说，你总是呆在我身旁。
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