萨凡纳

编 译 |Snow

I, Ward Allen, may have been wrong. Before you check to see if the fire of hell has been turned to ice, let me emphasize that I would do, or have done, nothing different in my life. But it seems that perhaps our world met a fork in the road, and the world took one path, and I took the other.

我，沃德·艾伦，可能错了。在你检查地狱之火是否已结冰之前，让我强调一下，在我的生命中，我将要做或已经做过的，其实并没有不同。但是，我们的世界似乎遇到了一个岔路口，我与世界分道扬镳。

Perhaps this is an inevitable result, and each of us are doomed to find ourselves on a path alone in the end, especially those of us who find the world as it was to be a close to perfect place. Those who accepted that the affairs of men are like those of a river, where time and tide are the ultimate shapers of a life, where procreation, migration and even death are spokes of the same wheel, that turns in heaven's vault just the way it should. But there are others who are determined to reshape that wheel and turn back the tide, and they appear ready to do it.

也许这是一个不可避免的结果，每个人注定都要孤独终老，尤其是我们当中那些发现世界是近乎完美之地的人。有些人认为人类诸事就像河流一样，在这里，时间和潮汐是生命的终极塑造者，在这里，生育、迁徙甚至死亡都是同一个车轮的辐条，在天堂的天穹中以应有的方式转动。但是，还有其他一些人决心重塑这一趋势，扭转乾坤，他们似乎已经做好了准备。

Maybe they are right, representing as they do, an impulse in the breast of man that drives our species toward restless industry. Maybe we are here to remake everything, reshape everything, create our new idea of perfection, and leave God's idea to the dim shades of history. And maybe I, having fought against that new idea, rejected that idea, found that idea abhorrent, maybe I was wrong.

也许他们是对的，正如他们所做的那样，代表着人类内心的一种冲动，驱使我们这个物种走向永不停歇的产业。也许我们在这里重塑一切，改造一切，创造我们完美的新观念，并把上帝的想法留在暗淡的历史光影中。也许我曾经反对过，拒绝过这个想法，甚至觉得这个想法很可恶，也许我错了。

But I do not think so. Because I believe if we have grown as a species, it has been because of the test of wildness, and if we succeed in remaking wildness into mildness, then we will begin todiminish.But all I have accomplished, is a broken knuckle or two, and hurting myself and my own more than those who are the target of my calumny.

但我不这样认为。因为我相信，如果我们作为一类物种生长，那是对野性的考验，如果我们成功地将野蛮荒凉改造成温和无邪，那么我们就会开始退化。但我所做的一切，不过是摔坏了一两个关节，比起那些成为我诽谤对象的人，对自己和自己造成的伤害更大。

So perhaps I'd do better to take mypokeson these pages and take direction from the Bard"Let therebe gall enough in the ink".It's worth a try.

所以，也许我最好还是在这些书页上留下我的印记，从巴德的“让墨水里有足够的胆汁”中找到方向。这值得一试。