通译双语文库:朗读者Part 3 第4章

朗读者|The Reader

Part 3 第4章|Part 3 Chapter 4

属类：双语小说【分类】世界名著 -[作者: 本哈德-施林克] 阅读：[13823] 登录会员即可添加到文库收藏夹，方便以后查看

《字+字- 页+页- 字+字- 页+页- 》

做完候补官员之后，我必须要选择一门职业，但我没有马上做出选择。葛特茹德马上就当上了法官。她手头上要做的事堆积如山，而我能呆在家里照看朱丽雅，这令我们感到高兴。当葛特茹德克服了最初的困难、朱丽雅又入了幼儿园后，我的决定就迫在眉睫了。

After my state exam, I had to decide on a profession within the law. I gave myself a little time; Gertrud, who immediately began working in the judiciary, had her hands full, and we were happy that I could remain at home and take care of Julia. Once Gertrud had got over all the difficulties of getting started and Julia was in kindergarten, I had to make a decision.

我很难做出决定。在对汉娜的法庭审判中我所看到的种种法律角色，看不出有适合我的。对我来说，诉讼与辩护同样都被滑稽地简单化了，而判决又是所有简单化中最滑稽的。我认为，我也不适合在管理部门做政府官员。我作为候补官员在州政府工作过，我发现它的办公室、走廊、气味和公务员都很苍白、无味、单调。

I had a hard time of it. I didn’t see myself in any of the roles I had seen lawyers play at Hanna’s trial. Prosecution seemed to me as grotesque a simplification as defense, and judging was the most grotesque oversimplification of all. Nor could I see myself as an administrative official; I had worked at a local government office during my training, and found its rooms, corridors, smells, and employees gray, sterile, and dreary.

这样一来可供选择的法律职业也就所剩无几了。我真不知道我会做什么，如果不是一位法学史教授给我提供了在他手下工作的机会的话。葛特茹德说，我的选择是一种逃避，是对生活的挑战和责任的逃避。她说得有道理，我是逃避了，逃避使我感到轻松。

That did not leave many legal careers, and I don’t know what I would have done if a professor of legal history had not offered me a research job. Gertrud said it was an evasion, an escape from the challenges and responsibilities of life, and she was right. I escaped and was relieved that I could do so.

我的这个选择不是永久性的，我对她，也对自己这样说。我还年轻，教几年法学史之后，仍旧能找到各种实惠的法律职业，但是，这却成了我的永久性的选择。随着第一次逃避而来的是第二次逃避，也就是说，我从大学换到一家研究机构，我在那儿寻找并发现了一个我可以从事我喜欢的法学史研究的避风港。在那儿，我不需要任何人，也不打搅任何人。

After all, it wasn’t forever, I told both her and myself; I was young enough to enter any solid branch of the legal profession after a few years of legal history. But it was forever; the first escape was followed by a second, when I moved from the university to a research institution, seeking and finding a niche in which I could pursue my interest in legal history, in which I needed no one and disturbed no one.

结果我不但没有逃避掉，反而与过去更接近了。作为法学史家，我所接触的过去，其生动性并不逊色于现实生活。局外人可能会认为，人们对过去只能观察，而对现实才能参与，但事实并非如此。

Now escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. And the past I arrived in as a legal historian was no less alive than the present. It is also not true, as outsiders might assume, that one can merely observe the richness of life in the past, whereas one can participate in the present.

从事历史研究意味着在过去与现实之间架起桥梁，在历史与现实两方面进行观察，活跃于二者之间。我所研究的领域之一是第三帝国法，在这里，过去与现实如何在现实生活中难解难分，特别显而易见。

Doing history means building bridges between the past and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides. One of my areas of research was law in the Third Reich, and here it is particularly obvious how the past and present come together in a single reality.

在这里，人们逃避的不是过去，而正是现实和将来，人们没有把注意力坚定地集中在现实和将来上。人们对历史遗产茫然无知，不知我们深深地打上了历史的烙印，我们生活在历史中。

Here, escape is not a preoccupation with the past, but a determined focus on the present and the future that is blind to the legacy of the past which brands us and with which we must live.

我沉浸在历史中时能够得到一种满足感。虽然它对现实并没有什么意义，我还是不想隐瞒它。我第一次产生这种满足感是在我研究启蒙教育法和启蒙教育法律草案的时候。之所以要制定这些法律是因为人们相信，从此以后世界有了好秩序，从此世界会变得更好。

In saying this, I do not mean to conceal how gratifying it was to plunge into different stretches of the past that were not so urgently connected to the present. I felt it for the first time when I was working on the legal codes and drafts of the Enlightenment. They were based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world, and that therefore the world can be brought into good order.

看到从这种信念中制定出维护良好秩序的条文，看到这些条文又变成了美好的法律，而它们又将以自身的美来证明它们的真，我感到幸福。很久以来我就坚信，尽管出现了可怕的倒退和挫折，但法律会越来越进步，会变得越来越美，越来越真，越来越理智，越来越人道。

To see how legal provisions were created paragraph by paragraph out of this belief as solemn guardians of this good order, and worked into laws that strove for beauty and by their very beauty for truth, made me happy. For a long time I believed that there was progress in the history of law, a development towards greater beauty and truth, rationality and humanity, despite terrible setbacks and retreats.

自从我发现我的这种信念不过是幻想而已后，我的法律演进现变得完全另一样。这个演进虽有目的地，但它经过种种震动、困惑和失去理智后到达的这个目的地，正是通向另一个目的地的起点，但在尚未到达这个新目的地时，又不得不重新开始。

Once it became clear to me that this belief was a chimera, I began playing with a different image of the course of legal history. In this one it still has a purpose, but the goal it finally attains, after countless disruptions, confusions, and delusions, is the beginning, its own original starting point, which once reached must be set off from again.

我当时又重读了《奥德赛》。我在中学时就读过这本书，在我的记忆中，它讲的是一个返乡者的故事。但是，它讲的并不是一个返乡者的故事。相信一个人不可能再次过同一条河的希腊人怎么能相信返乡之事呢？奥德修斯回来不是为了留下，而是为了重新出发。《奥德赛》是一部运动史，这个运动是有目的的，同时又无目的，是成功的，同时又是徒劳的。法律的历史与此有什么区别呢？

I reread the Odyssey at that time, which I had first read in school and remembered as the story of a homecoming. But it is not the story of a homecoming. How could the Greeks, who knew that one never enters the same river twice, believe in homecoming? Odysseus does not return home to stay, but to set off again. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?