我的生活海伦凯勒摘抄 海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第33期

海伦·凯勒自传《我的生活》第33期  

Miss Canby herself wrote kindly
"Some day you will write a great story out of your own head
that will be a fort and help to many." But this kind prophecy has never been fulfilled. I have never played with words again for the mere pleasure of the game. Indeed
I have ever since been tortured by the fear that what I write is not my own. For a long time
when I wrote a letter
even to my mother
I was seized with a sudden feeling of terror
and I would spell the sentences over and over
to make sure that I had not read them in a book. Had it not been for the persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan
I think I should have given up trying to write altogether.
I have read "The Frost Fairies" since
also the letters I wrote in which I used other ideas of Miss Canby's. I find in one of them
a letter to Mr. Anagnos
dated September 29
1891
words and sentiments exactly like those of the book. At the time I was writing "The Frost King
" and this letter
like many others
contains phrases which show that my mind was saturated with the story. I represent my teacher as saying to me of the golden autumn leaves
"Yes
they are beautiful enough to fort us for the flight of summer"—an idea direct from Miss Canby's story.
This habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out again as my own appears in much of my early correspondence and my first attempts at writing. In a position which I wrote about the old cities of Greece and Italy
I borrowed my glowing descriptions
with variations
from sources I have fotten. I knew Mr. Anagnos's great love of antiquity and his enthusiastic appreciation of all beautiful sentiments about Italy and Greece. I therefore gathered from all the books I read every bit of poetry or of history that I thought would give him pleasure. Mr. Anagnos
in speaking of my position on the cities
has said
"These ideas are poetic in their essence." But I do not understand how he ever thought a blind and deaf child of eleven could have invented them. Yet I cannot think that because I did not originate the ideas
my little position is therefore quite devoid of interest. It shows me that I could express my appreciation of beautiful and poetic ideas in clear and animated language.
这种深受周围事物同化的习性令我乐此不疲，我在早期通信和最初的写作中无不透露出同化因素的影响。我曾在自己的作文中写到了希腊和意大利的古老城市，我借用了多姿多彩的生动描述，但是我已经不记得它们的出处了。我知道阿纳戈诺斯先生对古代希腊和罗马的遗蹟情有独钟，并且对它们所创造的古代文明推崇备至。于是，我便从我读过的所有书本中搜集出相关的诗歌和历史，我想这一定会令他很开心。阿纳戈诺斯先生则说我描写古代城市的作文“诗意地再现了其内在特质”。但我并不知晓他是如何看待一个十一岁的盲聋小孩的遣词造句的。总之，我并不认为我有创作的本事，因为我无法创造自己的观点，所以我的作文空泛而无趣也就在所难免了。这反倒提醒了我，我应该使用清晰而生动的语言来描述美好的事物，品评诗意的思想。
Those early positions were mental gymnastics. I was learning
as all young and inexperienced persons learn
by assimilation and imitation
to put ideas into words. Everything I found in books that pleased me I retained in my memory
consciously or unconsciously
and adapted it. The young writer
as Stevenson has said
instinctively tries to copy whatever seems most admirable
and he shifts his admiration with astonishing versatility. It is only after years of this sort of practice that even great men have learned to marshal the legion of words which e thronging through every byway of the mind.