在《朗读者》和《见字如面》等文学类节目火爆朋友圈时，大洋对面其实也静静躺着一个小而美的网站“Letters of Note”(书信集)。里面有很多非常经典的书信往来。最近有空会翻译一些出来，权当小品...或许，这些书信会吸引你去看一些书，或一些电影，或是去了解一个你曾经闻所未闻的人...无论如何，都足矣...这就是跨越文化的文字的力量吧。
下面这封信是1960年闻名全球的巴黎“莎士比亚书店”拥有者乔治·惠特曼写给安妮·弗兰克的公开信
（安妮是《安妮日记》的作者，于1945年在纳粹集中营中被杀害。《安妮日记》记载了安妮在13岁到15岁之间，跟随自己的犹太家庭躲避德国纳粹搜捕期间的生活点滴，重现了那个特殊时代下一个天真又热烈的灵魂眼中的世界。）。
亲爱的安妮·弗兰克：
如果我把这封信寄往邮局，它也永远无法送到你手中了，因为你已从这世界上消失离我们而去。所以，我想将这封信写给这个世界，写给那些读过你日记的人，让他们知道只要我们还活着，而且心中永远都记着你这位未曾谋面的小妹妹，你便将永远不会从这世上真正的消失。
你曾想到巴黎花一年时间学艺术史，若你的确成行，可能你在沿巴黎圣母院一路走下来时会发现圣朱利安教堂旁的那个小书店。你的法语应该不错，可以看得懂门口挂着的那个告示，上面写着“可爱的狗，进来祷告”。上面写的“狗”其实并不是一只狗，而是诗人弗朗索瓦·维隆。他逃亡多年，却依然爱着他的城市并最终回到它的怀抱。他常坐在火堆边，旁边是一只有特殊名字的小猫。如果你知道这只小猫的名字叫“凯蒂”，或许你会很开心吧，对，就和你日记中那个想象出来的朋友凯蒂名字一样。（译者注：《安妮日记》里，安妮总是以给“凯蒂”写信的语气开始一篇日记，凯蒂是她幻想出来的好朋友）
在我们的这个小书店中，每个人都像家人一样，不论是来自于中国的女孩儿或是世界各地的男孩儿们都坐在阅读室里与巴黎当地人交谈，或是与受邀居住于贵宾室的国外作家一起共进下午茶。
还记得么，你曾担心自己内心的矛盾纠结，担心自己的身体里住着两种完全不同的性格：一个妖娆但对这世界认知浅薄，另一个却安静并坚强的爱着和试着去了解关于这世界的一切。其实，我们都有双重性格：我们希望获得和平，但在“自我防御”的名义下，却一步步走上了“自我毁灭”。我们建造了无数武器装备，超过了过往历史中使用过的数量之和。一旦军国主义者认为不屑于去通过谈判来消除国家之间的分歧，而这些人又不被民主所约束，他们就可能随时把人类置于终极末日之中，在这样的末日世界里，死亡的城市散发着致命的核辐射，周围遍布着由死掉的植物和有毒的杂草组成的丛林。
苏联将军尼古拉·塔伦斯基认为，一次核战可以毁掉人类文明的一半人口以及相应的物质基础，因此战争已经无法成为一种解决政治分歧的手段了。（译者注：意思是，国家都被炸没了，还谈什么“政治分歧”）。
一个小女孩儿在13岁到15岁之间写下的日记中藏着的梦想，在现在这个时代比数百万士兵和数以千计的军工厂都更为重要。士兵和军工厂曾被战争狂人用来打造千年帝国（讽刺的是）却连10年都没能存在下来。
你的日记曾没有被任何其他人读过，但德国警察将你抓走时掉落在了地板上，现在却有32种语言版本并被全世界数百万人阅读着。
当大多数人死去时，在这世上留不下任何痕迹，他们的思想将被忘却，抱负不为人所知。而你的死，却像离开了自己的家庭，将自己融入到了整个人类家庭之中，成为了全人类记忆的一部分。
乔治·惠特曼
译者按：
二战是残酷的，对德国如此，对欧美亚各洲如此，对犹太人尤甚。
但在《安妮日记》中，你读到的是一个蓬勃而热烈的灵魂时时跳动。
不论外面的世界如何阴霾，我们能守住的，最少，还有我们灵魂中的那篇净土，就像，安妮一样。
Dear Anne Frank,
If I sent this letter to the post office it would no longer reach you because you have been blotted out from the universe. So I am writing an open letter to those who have read your diary and found a little sister they have never seen who will never entirely disappear from earth as long as we who are living remember her.
You wanted to come to Paris for a year to study the history of art and if you had, perhaps you might have wandered down the quai Notre-Dame and discovered a little bookstore beside the garden of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. You know enough French to read the notice on the door - Chien aimable, Priere d'entrer. The dog is not really a dog at all but a poet called Francois Villon who has returned to the city he loved after many years of exile. He is sitting by the fire next to a kitten with a very unusual name. You will be pleased to know she is called Kitty after the imaginary friend to whom you wrote the letters in your journal.
Here in our bookstore it is like a family where your Chinese sisters and your brothers from all lands sit in the reading rooms and meet the Parisians or have tea with the writers from abroad who are invited to live in our Guest House.
Remember how you worried about your inconsistencies, about your two selves - the gay flirtatious superficial Anne that hid the quiet serene Anne who tried to love and understand the world. We all of us have dual natures. We all wish for peace, yet in the name of self-defense we are working toward self-obliteration. We have built armaments more powerful than the total of all those used in all the wars in history. And if the militarists who dislike negotiating the minor differences that separate nations are not under the wise civilian authority they have the power to write man's testament on a dead planet where radioactive cities are surrounded by jungles of dying plants and poisonous weeds.
Since a nuclear could destroy half the world's population as well as the material basis of civilization, the Soviet General Nikolai Talensky concludes that war is no longer conceivable for the solution of political differences.
A young girl's dreams recorded in her diary from her thirteenth to her fifteenth birthday means more to us today than the labors of millions of soldiers and thousands of factories striving for a thousand-year Reich that lasted hardly more than ten years. The journal you hid so that no one would read it was left on the floor when the German police took you to the concentration camp and has now been read by millions of people in 32 languages. When most people die they disappear without a trace, their thoughts forgotten, their aspirations unknown, but you have simply left your own family and become part of the family of man.
George Whitman
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