Alain de Botton
Essays in love
阿兰·德·波顿
《爱情笔记》
1
Romantic Fatalism
爱情宿命论
1. The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. 恋爱时，我们最向往缘分天定。
All too often, forced to share a bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be excused for believing (contrary to all the rules of our enlightened age) that we are fated one day to run into the man or woman of our dreams? 然而，多数时候我们不得不与无法理解我们灵魂的人同榻共枕。如果我们相信（与这个理智时代的所有准则相反），终有一天，命运会安排我们与梦中情人相会；
Can we not be allowed a certain superstitious faith that we will ultimately locate a creature who can appease our painful yearnings? 或者有些迷信地幻想：冥冥之中有一个正是我们无尽思念的人，难道我们不该得到理解和原宥？
Though our prayers may never be answered, though there may be no end to relationships marked by mutual incomprehension, if the heavens should come to take pity on us, then can we really be expected to attribute our encounter with our prince or princess to a mere coincidence? 也许我们的祈祷永无回应，也许彼此的心灵永难沟通，如果上天对我们还有些许怜悯，难道我们不能期盼在一次邂逅中与心仪的王子或公主不期而遇？
Or can we not for once escape logic and read it as nothing other than a sign of romantic destiny?
难道我们不能暂时摆脱理性的责难，仅仅把这当作是爱情的一次无可避免的缘分天定？
2. One mid-morning in early December, with no thought of love or stories, I was sitting in the economy section of a British Airways jet making its way from Paris to London.十二月初的一个上午，十点左右，我坐在英国航空公司喷气式飞机的经济舱里，从巴黎回伦敦，全无体验爱情或是邂逅故事的心理准备。
We had recently crossed the Normandy coast, where a blanket of winter cloud had given way to an uninterrupted view of brilliant blue waters. 飞机刚刚飞越诺曼底海岸的上空，冬天的云层散开退去，下面是一览无遗的碧蓝海水。
Bored and unable to concentrate, I had picked up the airline magazine, passively imbibing information on resort hotels and airport facilities. 我百无聊赖，心绪不宁，随手拿起一本航空杂志，漫无目的地读着上面假日旅店和机场服务设施的介绍。
There was something comforting about the flight, the dull background throb of the engines, the hushed grey interior, the candy smiles of the airline employees.飞机尾部引擎的微微颤动、机舱里宁静的灰暗色调以及乘务员甜甜的微笑令人心情略觉惬意。
A trolley carrying a selection of drinks and snacks was making its way down the aisle and, though I was neither hungry nor thirsty, it filled me with the vague anticipation that meals may elicit in aircraft.
一位乘务员推着饮料和点心从走道上过来了。尽管我不饿也不渴，但在这飞机上，我产生了想吃点东西的感觉。
3. Morbidly perhaps, the passenger on my left had taken off her headphones in order to study the safety-instruction card placed in the pouch in front of her. 我左边的乘客也许有些不适，她取下耳机，仔细研究起面前椅袋里的安全指示卡。
It depicted the ideal crash, passengers alighting softly and calmly onto land or water, the ladies taking off their high heels, the children dexterously inflating their vests, the fuselage still intact, the kerosene miraculously non-flammable.
卡片上介绍了理想的坠机状态：乘客平静地软着陆在地面或水面，女士们脱掉高跟鞋，小孩熟练地给防护衣充气，机身尚未破损，汽油也奇迹般的没有燃烧。
4. 'We're all going to die if this thing screws up, so what are these jokers on about?' asked the passenger, addressing no one in particular.“如果飞机出事，我们都会死掉，这些可笑的安全指示有什么用？”她自言自语道。
'I think perhaps it reassures people,' I replied, for I was her only audience.“这样或许能使人们感觉安全一些，”作为惟一的听众，我回答说。
'Mind you, it's not a bad way to go, very quick, especially if we hit land and you're sitting in the front. “说真的，这倒是不错的死法，快速，特别是当飞机坠地时正好坐在前排。
I had an uncle who died in a plane crash once. Has anyone you know ever died like that?'我有一个叔叔就死于空难。你认识的人有没有那样死的？”
They hadn't, but I had no time to answer for a stewardess arrived and (unaware of the ethical doubts recently cast on her employers) offered us lunch.没有，但我没来得及回答，因为有位乘务员过来（她不知道她的乘客们这会儿正对航空公司的职业道德产生了怀疑）给我们送午餐了。
I requested a glass of orange juice and was going to decline a plate of pale sandwiches when my travelling companion whispered to me, 'Take them anyway. I'll eat yours, I'm starving.'我要了一杯橙汁，正准备把一盘三明治挡回去时，我旁边的这位旅伴小声地说：“拿着，给我吃，我很饿。”
5. She had chestnut-coloured hair, cut short so that it left the nape of her neck exposed, and large watery green eyes that refused to look into mine. 她留着栗色短发，后颈露了出来，水灵清澈、如绿潭一般的大眼睛回避着我的目光。
She was wearing a blue blouse and had placed a grey cardigan over her knees. 她身着蓝色衬衫，膝盖上放着一件灰色羊毛开衫，
Her shoulders were slim, almost fragile, and the rawness of her nails showed they were often chewed.
肩头瘦削，显得弱不禁风，从参差不齐的指甲看得出她经常啃手指头。
'Are you sure I'm not depriving you?'“我真的没抢你的午饭？”
'Of course not.'“一点都没有。”
'I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself, my name is Chloe,' she announced and extended her hand across the armrest with somewhat touching formality.“不好意思，我还没有自我介绍呢，我叫克洛艾，”她一边说，一边从扶手上伸过手来与我握了一下，稍显得有些正式，但令人心动。
An exchange of biography followed.接着，我和克洛艾各自介绍了自己的情况。
Chloe told me she'd been in Paris in order to attend a trade fair.克洛艾说她是到巴黎参加一个交易会回来。
For the past year, she'd been working as a graphic designer for a fashion magazine in Soho.她毕业于皇家艺术学院，从去年开始在索霍区的一家时尚杂志社做平面设计。
She'd studied at the Royal College of Art, had been born in York, but moved to Wiltshire as a child, and was now (at the age of twenty-three) living alone in a flat in Islington.她出生在约克郡，但小时候就搬到威尔特郡去了，现在（二十三岁）独自住在伊斯灵顿的一套公寓里。
6. 'I hope they haven't lost my luggage,' said Chloe as the plane began to drop towards Heathrow.“但愿他们没有把我的行李弄丢，”当飞机开始降落在希斯罗机场时，克洛艾说，
'Don't you have that fear, that they'll lose your luggage?'“你会有类似的担心吗？”
'I don't think about it, but it's happened to me, twice in fact, once in New York, and once in Frankfurt.'“没有，不过我倒是碰上过这种事，已经两次了，一次在纽约，一次在法兰克福。”
'God, I hate travelling,' sighed Chloe, and bit the end of her index finger.“唉，我一点也不愿意出行，”克洛艾叹了口气，咬着食指尖，
'I hate arriving even more, I get real arrival angst.“更讨厌回来，我真是有归来恐惧症。
After I've been away for a while, I always think something terrible has happened: all my friends have come together and decided they hate me or my cacti have died.'
每次离开一段时间，我就总担心家里会发生什么可怕的事情，要么水管破了，要么工作丢了，或仙人掌死了。”
'You keep cacti?'“你养仙人掌？”
'Several.“有好几盆呢，
I went through a cactus phase a while back.已经养了一段时间了。
Phallic, I know, but I spent a winter in Arizona and sort of got fascinated by them.我知道有人说这属于阴茎崇拜，不过我曾在亚利桑那过了一个冬天，是在那儿迷上仙人掌的。
Do you have any interesting plants?'你养宠物吗？”
'Only an aspidistra, but I do regularly think all my friends might hate me.'“养过金鱼。……”
7. The conversation meandered, affording us glimpses of one another's characters, like the brief vistas one catches on a winding mountain road--this before the wheels hit the tarmac, the engines were thrown into reverse, and the plane taxied towards the terminal, where it disgorged its cargo into the crowded immigration hall. By the time I had collected my luggage and passed through customs, I had fallen in love with Chloe.我们天马行空地闲聊，微妙地捕捉彼此的性情，犹如漫步在蜿蜒崎岖的山间小径，轻掠淡远山色。直到飞机轮胎落地，引擎反向转动，飞机滑向航站楼，准备将乘客卸在拥挤的入境大厅。当取好行李，通过海关检查时，我已经爱上了克洛艾！
8. Until one is close to death, it must be difficult to declare anyone as the love of one's life. But only shortly after meeting her, it seemed in no way out of place to think of Chloe in such terms. On our return to London, Chloe and I spent the afternoon together. Then, a week before Christmas, we had dinner in a west London restaurant and, as though it was both the strangest and most natural thing to do, ended the evening in bed. She spent Christmas with her family, I went to Scotland with friends, but we found ourselves calling one another every day - sometimes as many as five times a day - not to say anything in particular, simply because both of us felt we had never spoken like this to anyone before, that all the rest had been compromise and self-deception, that only now were we finally able to understand and make ourselves understood--that the waiting [messianic in nature] was truly over. I recognised in her the woman I had been clumsily seeking all my life, a being whose qualities had been foreshadowed in my dreams, whose smile and whose eyes, whose sens of humour and whose taste in books, whose anxieties and whose intelligence perfectly matched those of my ideal. 惟有生命走到尽头，我们才能知道自己的爱之所在。但是与克洛艾相识不久，我就似乎找到了爱的归宿。我惟一能交代的就是在我回到伦敦后过了几天，克洛艾和我共度了一个下午的时光。接着，在圣诞节前的几个星期里，我们总是一起在伦敦西区的餐馆共进晚餐，然后去她的房间做爱，欢度良宵。好像这一切既是最陌生却又是最自然不过的事情。她和家人一起过圣诞节，我和朋友去了苏格兰，但我们却每天都要跟对方通电话，有时一天竟达五次之多。并不是特意要说点什么，只是因为我们都感到自己从未与人这样交流过，以前都在奉行中庸之道，在自欺欺人，只是到现在这一刻，我们才最终领悟了另一个人，也才最终为对方所领悟。等待（本质上是对救世主的等待）终于结束了。我意识到，她就是我痴痴寻找了一生的女子，一个符合我梦想的精灵。她的微笑、她的双眸、她的幽默、她的阅读品味、她的焦虑、她的智慧，她所有的一切都与我的理想完全吻合。
9.It was perhaps because we came to feel we were so right for one another [she did not just finish my sentences, she completed my life] that I was unable to contemplate the idea that meeting Chloe had been simply a coincidence. I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with the ruthless skepticism some would say it demanded. Not normally superstitious, Chloe and I seized upon a host of details, however trivial, as confirmation of what intuitively we already felt: _that we had been destined for one another_. We learnt that both of us had been born around midnight [she at 11.45 p.m., I at 1.15 a.m.] in the same month of an even-numbered year. Both of us had played clarinet and had had parts in school productions of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ [she had played Helena, I had played an attendant to Theseus]. Both of us had two large freckles on the toe of the left foot, and a cavity in the same rear molar. Both of us had a habit of sneezing in bright sunlight and of drawing ketchup out of its bottle with a knife. We even had the same copy of Anna Karenina on our shelves (the old Oxford edition) ?small details, perhaps, but were these not grounds enough on which believers could found a new religion? 我感觉我们是如此地天造地设（她不仅将我的话语补充完整，她还使我的生命不再残缺），以至我不能认为邂逅克洛艾只是一次偶然的巧合。我失去了带着无情的怀疑论——虽然有人认为它是必要的——来思考命定这个问题的能力。这不是所谓的迷信，克洛艾和我找到诸多的细节，不管多么微不足道，来证实我们直觉的感受：我们注定为彼此而生。我们都出生在双数年份的同一个月的午夜前后（她是在晚上十一点四十五分，我是在凌晨一点十五分）；我们都学过竖笛；都在学校排演过《仲夏夜之梦》（她演海伦娜，我演忒修斯）；我们左脚脚趾上都有两颗大大的斑点；同一个后臼齿上都有条裂缝；我们都会在阳光下打喷嚏；都喜欢用餐刀挑出番茄酱；甚至我们的书架上都有同一个版本的《安娜·卡列尼娜》（牛津出的老版本）。也许不过是细枝末节，但凡此种种的一致，难道还不足以让信徒们建立起一种新的宗教吗？
10. We attributed to events a narrative logic they could not inherently have possessed. We mythologized our aircraft encounter into the goddess Aphrodite's design, Act One, Scene One of that primordial narrative, the love story. From the time of each of our births, it seemed as though the giant mind in the sky had been subtly shifting our orbits so that we would one day meet on the Paris-London shuttle. Because love had come true for us, we could overlook the countless stories that fail to occur, romances that never get written because someone misses the plane or loses the phone number. Like historians, we were unmistakably on the side of what had actually happened.我们赋予事件本身并不具有的情节性。克洛艾和我把飞机上的相遇神化为爱神阿弗洛狄忒的安排，充满古典和神秘气息，是爱情故事的第一场第一幕。自我们降临凡尘，宇宙中就有一位伟大的神灵在微妙地改变我们的运行轨道，终使我们能于这一天邂逅在巴黎至伦敦的班机上。一切于我们已经如愿成真，所以我们可以忽略那没有发生的无数故事，忽略因为错过飞机或忘了电话号码而未曾得以书写的浪漫。就如历史学家一样，坚守既成的事实，就必然万无一失。
11. We should, of course, have been more sensible. Neither Chloe nor I flew regularly between the two capitals nor had been planning our respective trips for any length of time. Chloe had been sent to Paris at the last minute by her magazine after the deputy editor had happened to fall sick, and I had gone there only because an architectural conference in Bordeaux had finished early enough for me to spend a few days in the capital with a friend. The two national airlines running services between Charles de Gaulle and Heathrow offered us a choice of six flights between nine o'clock and lunchtime on our intended day of return. Given that we both wanted to be back in London by the early afternoon of December 6th, but were unresolved until the very last minute as to what flight we would end up taking, the mathematical probability at dawn of us both being on the same flight (though not necessarily in adjoining seats) had been a figure of one in six.我们本应更理性地看待此事。克洛艾和我都不是经常来往于巴黎和伦敦，此次旅行也都不在各自原本的计划当中。克洛艾在最后一刻被她的杂志社派去巴黎，因为副主编恰巧病了。而我之所以去，则是由于在波尔多的建筑任务碰巧早早完成，才使我有足够的时间到巴黎，在姐姐那儿逗留几天。在我们计划回英国那天，两国的航空公司从戴高乐机场到希斯罗机场共有六趟九点至午时的航班。虽然我们都打算在十二月六日下午早些时候回到伦敦，但都是在最后一分钟才确定到底乘哪架班机。这样，从六号拂晓算起，我们乘坐同一次班机（不一定是相邻座位）的数学概率就是三十六分之一。
12. Chloe later told me that she had intended to take the ten thirty Air France flight, but a bottle of shampoo in her bag had happened to leak as she was checking out of her room, which had meant repacking the bag and wasting a valuable ten minutes. By the time the hotel had produced her bill, cleared her credit card and found her a taxi, it was already nine fifteen, and the chances that she would make the ten thirty Air France flight had receded. When she reached the airport after heavy traffic near the Porte de la Villette, the flight had finished boarding and, because she didn't feel like waiting for the next Air France, she went over to the British Airways terminal, where she booked herself on the ten forty-five plane to London, on which (for my own set of reasons) I happened also to have a seat.克洛艾后来告诉我说，她本来打算乘坐十点半的法航班机，但由于退房时包里的一瓶洗发香波漏了，不得不重新装包，耗去了宝贵的十分钟。当旅店打好账单，用信用卡结完账，再为她叫来一辆出租车时，已经九点十五分，要搭上十点半的法航班机已经很赶。当她总算通过维耶特门附近拥堵的交通到达机场时，那架航班已经停止登机了。因为不想再等下一趟，于是她就去了英国航空公司候机楼，买了十点四十五分飞往伦敦的机票。我（因为种种私人原因），乘坐的也正好是那架航班。
13. Thereafter, the computer so juggled things that it placed Chloe over the wing of the aircraft in seat 15A and I next to her in seat 15B. What we had ignored when we began speaking over the safety-instruction card was the minuscule probability that our discussion had been reliant upon. As neither of us were likely to fly Club Class, and as there were a hundred and ninety-one economy class seats, and Chloe had been assigned seat 15A, and I, quite by chance, had been assigned seat 15B, the theoretical probability that Chloe and I would be seated next to one another (though the chances of our actually talking to one another could not be calculated) worked itself out as 220 in 36,290, a figure reducible to a probability of one in 164.955.接着，售票处的计算机是如此地造化弄人，把克洛艾安排在位于机翼边的15A座，而我则在旁边的15B座（见图1.1）。当我们开始谈论那张安全指示卡时，完全没有想到两人对话的可能性其实极其微小。我们都不可能乘坐头等舱，在有一百九十一个座位的经济舱里，克洛艾被安排坐15A，而我，极可能是出于偶然，被安排坐15B。从理论上说，克洛艾和我相邻而坐的可能性（虽然我们相互交谈的机率无从算起）是110/17847，也就是1/162.245。
图1.1 英国航空公司波音767
British Airways Boeing 767
14. But this was of course only the probability that we would be seated together if there had been just one flight between Paris and London, but as there were six, and as both of us had hesitated between these six, and yet had chosen this one, the probability had to be further multiplied by the original one chance in six, giving a final probability that Chloe and I would meet one December morning over the English Channel in a British Airways Boeing, as one chance in 989.727.但这个数字只是基于当巴黎和伦敦之间只有一趟航班时，我和克洛艾互为邻座的可能性。而实际巴黎和伦敦之间有六趟航班，并且我俩都曾在这六趟之间犹豫不决，到最后一刻才选择了这一班，所以这个可能性必须乘以三十六分之一的机会。这样，克洛艾和我在十二月份的一个早上，乘坐英国航空公司的波音飞机飞越英吉利海峡时邂逅的最终可能性为1/5840.82。
15. And yet it had happened. The calculation, far from convincing us of rational arguments, only backed up the mystical interpretation of our fall into love. If the chances behind an event are enormously remote, yet it occurs nevertheless, may one not be forgiven for invoking a fatalistic explanation? Flicking a coin, a probability of one in two prevents me from turning to God to account for the result. But when it is a question of a probability of one in 989.727, it seemed impossible, from within love at least, that this could have been anything but fate. It would have taken a steady mind to contemplate without superstition the enormous improbability of a meeting that had turned out to alter our lives. Someone (at 30,000 feet) must have been pulling strings in the sky.然而一切还是发生了。以上的计算远没有让我们信服理性的论证，只是支持了对我们相爱的神秘诠释。如果事物演变成现实的可能性小而又小，但仍然实实在在发生了，那么给予它一个宿命的解释又何错之有？抛掷硬币那种百分之五十的可能性，不足以让我相信上帝操纵论，但是面对克洛艾和我所涉的这种小而又小的可能性，即相遇的概率只有1/5840.82，这除了是命运的安排，再无其他可能。它让我们执着地去思量，这场改变我们生活的邂逅，其发生背后那巨大的不可能性。一定有人在（三万英尺的高空）摆弄我们的命运。
对于偶然事件，人们可以通过两种途径进行解释。哲学的观点坚持奥卡姆剃刀原则，只着眼于主要原因，认为事物背后的诱因不能复杂化，除了认可严格吻合的因果关系，避免夸大出更多的原因，也就是说，要探究事物发生的最直接原因。就我们的情况而言，应探究的是克洛艾和我被安排在同一架飞机上相邻而坐的可能性，而不是火星和太阳之间的位置关系，或浪漫宿命的故事情节。然而神秘主义观点会情不自禁用更为宽泛的理论来解释事件。一面镜子落下墙来，碎成千万片，缘何如此？又有怎样的含义？于哲学家而言，不过是一点微震，或是遵循物理法则的某种力量（根据一个可以计算的概率）正好使其落下而已。然而在神秘主义者看来，这面破碎的镜子却含义无穷，可能至少是七年厄运的标志，是神对上千个罪孽降下的报应，是上千个惩罚的预示。
上帝一百年前就已死去，如今这个世界，是计算机而不是神谕在预测未来。爱情宿命论在危险地转向神秘主义。我认为克洛艾和我是命中注定要在一架飞机上相遇，为的是而后的相爱，这表明，我尚停留在通过查看杯中的茶叶渣或观察水晶球来占卜命运的阶段。如果上帝不掷骰子，他或她肯定无法与命定的爱人相会。
16. From within love, we conceal the chance nature of our lives behind a purposive veil. We insist that the meeting with our redeemer, objectively haphazard and hence unlikely, has been prewritten in a scroll slowly unwinding in the sky. We invent a destiny to spare ourselves the anxiety that would arise from acknowledging that the little sense there is in our lives is merely created by ourselves, that there is no scroll (and hence no preordained fate awaiting) and that who we may or may not be meeting on aeroplanes has no sense beyond that we choose to attribute to it--in short, the anxiety that no one has written our story or assured our loves.然而，迷失在爱情中的我们提议说，某些事情之所以发生，是因其不可避免，借此来化解偶然性带来的全部恐惧，从而给我们乱糟糟的生活以持续下去的目标和方向，这是可以理解的。虽然骰子会摇出不同的数，我们却执意要摇到那表明终有一天我们会相爱的必要数字方肯罢休。尽管客观地说，我们的相遇是那么偶然，以至几无可能，但我们还是不得不相信，与我们践约者的不期而遇，早已被写在从天空中缓缓打开的卷轴之上。因此，那一刻（不管到现在还是怎样的悄无声息）最终会把那个被选中的人儿呈现给我们。趋于将事物视为命运的安排会有怎样的后果？也许只会走向它的反面，对偶然性产生焦虑，害怕生活中的细微感觉只是我们自己的想象，根本不存在什么卷轴（从而也没有预定的命运等在那儿），除了我们主观附会，发生什么或不发生什么（在飞机上邂逅或不邂逅某个人儿）并没有任何意义。简而言之，这焦虑就是，根本没有上帝在安排我们的故事，于是我们的爱情也没有上帝来给予保证。
17. Romantic fatalism protected Chloe and me from the idea that we might equally well have begun loving someone else had events turned out differently, shocking given how closely love is bound up with a feeling of the necessity and uniqueness of the beloved. How could I have imagined that the role Chloe came to play in my life could equally well have been filled by someone else, when it was with her eyes that I had fallen in love, and her way of draining pasta, combing her hair, and ending a phone conversation? 爱情宿命论无疑是一个神话或一种幻觉，但是我们没有理由将之斥为胡言乱语。神话除却主要信息也许还有重要的含义，我们没有必要为了知道希腊诸神关于人类思想的深刻论断而去笃信他们。如果认为克洛艾和我命中注定会相遇，当然荒谬可笑，但是如果我们已经把发生的许多事情视为了命运的安排，也理应得到谅解。在我们天真的信念里，我们只是不想让自己产生这种想法：如果航空公司的计算机没有将我们的座位安排在一起，我们同样也会相爱。当爱情是如此牢牢依附于爱人的独一无二时，这种想法绝无生存的空间。当我爱上的是她的眼睛、她点烟的动作、她接吻的方式、她听电话的样子和她盘弄头发的姿势时，我怎么可能想象克洛艾在我生命中的位置能够被他人取代？
因为这爱情宿命论，我们便不用考虑那个不可理解的论断：人们总是先有爱的需要，然后再去爱一个特定的人；我们选择的伴侣必定在相遇的人当中，如果给予不同的范围，不同的航班，不同的时间或事件，那么我爱上的人可能不是克洛艾——既然我已经爱上了她，我便不会再作如此思量。
18.My mistake was to confuse a destiny to love with a destiny to love a given person. It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable. But my fatalistic interpretation of the start of our story was at least proof of one thing: that I was in love with Chloe. The moment when I would feel that our meeting or not meeting was in the end only an accident, only a probability of one in 989.727, would also be the moment when I would have ceased to feel the absolute necessity of a life with her - and thereby have ceased to love her.我的问题在于，将注定去爱和注定爱上一位特定的人混作一团，错误地认为，于我，不可避免的，不是爱，而是克洛艾。但是对于故事开端的宿命论诠释，至少证实了一件事，那就是我爱上了克洛艾。待我觉得两人陌路相识或是擦肩而过的时刻，最终不过是一个偶然，只有1/5840.82的可能性时，也就是我不再觉得必定要与她共度人生，从而也不再爱她的时刻。