14
'I'-Confirmation
“我”的确认
1. Late one Sunday in the middle of July, we were sitting in a cafe at the unkempt end of the Portobello Road. It had been a beautiful day, spent largely in Hyde Park, tanning and reading books. But since around five o'clock, I had been sliding into depression. I felt like going home to hide under the bedclothes. Sunday evenings had long saddened me, reminders of death, unfinished business, guilt, and loss. We had been sitting in silence, Chloe reading the papers, I gazing through the window at the traffic and people outside. Suddenly she leaned over, gave me a kiss, and whispered, 'You're wearing your lost orphan boy look again.' No one had ever ascribed such an expression to me before, though when Chloe mentioned it, it at once accorded with and alleviated the confused sadness I happened to be feeling at the time. I felt an intense (and perhaps disproportionate) love for her on account of that remark, because of her awareness of what I had been feeling but had been unable to formulate myself, for her willingness to enter my world and objectify it for me - a gratefulness for reminding the orphan that he is an orphan, and hence returning him home.七月下旬，一个星期天的下午，我们坐在坡托贝罗路上的一家咖啡馆里。那天天气不错，我们一边晒太阳，一边看书，在海德公园度过了大半时光。但是大约从五点起，我的心情不觉间沮丧起来。我一起在抑制想回到家躲在床单下的念头，只是因为没有什么特别的东西让我这样做。一直以来，周日的夜晚都让我悲伤不已；让我想起死亡，想起未竟的事业；让我有罪恶感，有失落。我们就那样默默无语地坐着。克洛艾在读报纸，我看着窗外的车辆行人。突然克洛艾探过身来，吻了我一下，然后低声说：“你又是一脸迷路孤儿的表情。”从前从来没有人这样讲过，但是当克洛艾说时，它立刻就和我当时心中所感受到的那种纷乱而莫名的忧伤不谋而合，并且让忧伤有所减轻。我感到内心对她一阵强烈的（也许这并不成比例）爱——因为她的话语；因为她意识到我当时无法确切阐明的感受；因为她愿意进入我的内心世界，将它具体化。感谢她提醒一位孤儿意识到自己是孤儿，从而为他的心灵找到了一个归宿。
2. Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are saying, in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.也许我们真的并不存在，直到有人目睹我们生存在这个世界；也许我们并不能述说，直到有人能理解我们的语言。从本质上来看，只有被人爱恋时，我们才真正获得了生命。
3. What does it mean that man is a 'social animal? Only that humans need one another in order to define themselves and achieve self-consciousness, in a way that molluscs or earthworms do not. We cannot come to a proper sense of ourselves if there aren't others around to show us what we're like. 'A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character,' wrote Stendhal, suggesting that character has its genesis in the reactions of others to our words and actions. Our selves are fluid and require the contours provided by our neighbours. To feel whole, we need people in the vicinity who know us as well, sometimes better, than we know ourselves.人是“社会的动物”，此言意义何在？它不过表明人们为了界定自己、获得自我意识而彼此需要，这不为软体动物或蚯蚓所有。如果没有周围人的折射告诉我们止于哪里，别人又是始于何处，我们将无法获得对自己的正确意识。斯汤达曾说“一个离群索居的人可以得到一切，但独独没有个性”，也就是说个性诞生在他人对自己的反应之中。因为“I”这个字母不是一个完整的结构，它的流动状须求助于他人给予的轮廓。我需要一个来帮助我承载自己的历史的人，一个对我了如指掌的人，一个了解我有时甚于我自己的了解的人。
4. Without love, we lose the ability to possess a proper identity; within love, there is a constant confirmation of our selves. It is no wonder that the concept of a God who can see us has been central to many religions: to be seen is to be assured that we exist, all the better if one is dealing with a God (or partner) who loves us. Surrounded by people who precisely do not remember who we are, people to whom we often relate our stories and yet who will repeatedly forget how many times we have been married, how many children we have, and whether our name is Brad or Bill, Catrina or Catherine (and we forget much the same about them), is it not comforting to be able to find refuge from the dangers of invisibility in the arms of someone who has our identity firmly in mind? 没有爱，我们就没有能力定位一个合适的身份；拥有爱，我们就可以确定自我的存在。在宗教中，上帝的注视对每个人都那么重要，这不足为奇，因为被上帝注视，我们就可以确认自己真实存在，如果能与眷爱我们的上帝或心上人交往就更美好无比了，只有在那个对我们来说就是一切的人（我们对那人也是如此）的目光中，我们的存在才获得了合理性。处于那些恰好不记得我们是谁的人当中，处于那些过去曾与我们交往甚多，然而却反复忘记我们结了多少次婚、我们有几个孩子、我们是叫布莱德还是比尔、凯特丽娜还是凯瑟琳（我们也如许忘记他们）的人当中，能够有一个人将我们牢记心头，从而让我们在他/她的臂弯里找到我们精神分裂症的避难所，这难道不让人感到欣慰？
5. It is no coincidence if, semantically speaking, love and interest are almost interchangeable, 'I love butterflies' meaning much the same as 'I am interested in butterflies'. To love someone is to take a deep interest in them, and by such concern to bring them to a richer sense of what they are doing and saying. Through her understanding, Chloe's behaviour towards me gradually became studded with elements of what could be termed 'I'-confirmation. Contained in her understanding of many of my moods, in her knowledge of my tastes, in the things she told me about myself, in her memory of my routines and habits, and in her humorous acknowledgement of my phobias lay a multitude of varied 'I'-confirmations. Chloe noticed that I was a hypochondriac, that I was shy and hated speaking on the phone, was obsessive in my need to get eight hours' sleep a night, hated lingering in restaurants at the end of meals, used politeness as an aggressive defence, and preferred to say 'maybe' rather than yes or no. She would quote me back at myself ('Last time, you said you didn't like that kind of irony...'), patiently holding in mind elements ?both good and bad ?of my character ('You always panic whenever...', 'I've never seen anyone forget petrol as often as you do...'). I was afforded a chance to mature thanks to the insights into my personality that Chloe afforded me. It takes the intimacy of a lover to point out facets of character that others simply don't bother with. There were times when Chloe would tell me frankly that I was defensive or critical, or more colourfully, 'a jumped-up twerp' or 'as nasty as congealed gravy' - and I would be brought face to face with areas of myself that ordinary introspection (in the interests of inner harmony) would have avoided, that others would have been too uninterested to highlight, and that it needed the honesty of the bedroom to reveal.如果从语义上说，爱情和兴趣可以互相替换，这并不是巧合。“我爱蝴蝶”即“我对蝴蝶感兴趣”。爱一个人就是对他们怀有极大的兴趣，由于这种关注，他们的所作所为才获得意义。通过她的理解，克洛艾在与我相处时的行为渐渐添加上了一些可称为“我”的确认的部分。她对我的许多情绪的直觉理解、她知道我的趣味、她对我讲述的一些事、她记得我的日常生活规律和习惯习性，以及她幽默地说出我的那些病态的恐惧，这当中有一大批各种各样的“我”的确认。就如手套反映手的轮廓一样，心上人凸显出我们的性格。克洛艾知道我有疑心病、我害羞、我讨厌打电话、我一天必须睡八小时、我不愿吃完饭还在餐馆逗留、我以礼貌回敬他人的冒犯、我更愿意用“也许”而不直接说“是”或“不是”。她会引述我说过的话（“你上次说你讨厌那种嘲讽的方式……”），记住我做的事——好坏都有——表示她把握了我的性格（“你总是惊慌失措，每当……”“我从来没碰到像你这么经常忘记给车加油的人……”）。因为克洛艾的存在，我更加深刻地透视自我，迈向成熟。是心上人的亲密点出了他人不愿直言的诸多性格特点，点出了也许让我们难以面对的方方面面。克洛艾屡次坦言，我戒心过重，我吹毛求疵，我缺乏友善，我容易妒忌，我可怜的幼稚，我容易否定（实际是正确的）事物。每当这时，我就必须直面普通反省（为了内心和谐）无法触及的方面，直面他人无心关注的方面，直面在卧室里才能真实展露的方面。
6. Happiness with other people seems bounded by two kinds of excess: suffocation and loneliness. Chloe had always felt the former to be the greater danger. Oppressed by the judgemental and controlling attitudes of her parents, at school she had dreamt of spending time wholly on her own - and in her year off before university, flew to Arizona on the proceeds of money she had saved up from years of holiday and Saturday jobs. She rented a cabin on the edge of a tiny town she had picked almost at random on a map. She acquired a shelf full of books that she'd always longed to read, and which she intended to work her way through as she watched the sun rise and set over the moonscape. But within a few weeks of arriving, she began to feel the solitude that she had longed for all her life start to work a disorienting and frightening effect on her. The sound of her own voice came as a shock when she heard it in the shops. Her books felt remote and unengaging. She took to staring at herself in the mirror to retain a sense of being. She felt paranoid and ethereal. After only a month, she abruptly decided to leave her cabin for a job as a waitress in a restaurant in Phoenix, unable to bear any longer the feeling of unreality that had descended on her. When she reached Phoenix, social contact was like water to a parched survivor. She launched into conversations whenever she could, delighting in the comfort offered by the simplest exchanges.爱似乎为两种个性消融所束缚——生活在众目睽睽之下的个性消融，存在于孤独寂寞之中的个性消融。克洛艾一直以为前者更危险怕人。早在童年就受到压抑的她曾经把长大成人看作是摆脱那些关注她一举一动的目光的机会。她曾幻想独居乡下，宽敞的白色房屋，明净的阔窗，简洁的家具，这一切标志着她逃离了那个充满难以忍受的目光，从而让她心力交瘁的世界。十九岁，她实现了自己的愿望，离家千里，去了举目无亲的亚利桑那州，住在一个小镇边缘的木屋里。怀着不成熟的浪漫主义想法，克洛艾带去了整整一箱经典小说，打算伴着那荒山景色中的日升日落，去阅读，去评注。然而不到几个星期，她就开始感到自己曾梦寐以求的离群索居令人迷茫，让人害怕，有如幻境。每个星期在小市场上和别人交谈时，她为自己的声音感到震惊。她开始习惯盯着镜子里的自己去获得一种存在的感觉，一种身体有形的感觉。一个月后，她终于无法再忍受那种独居的虚无感，离开小镇去了凤凰城的一家餐馆做女招待。当她到达凤凰城时，迎面而来的社会交往令她惊恐不已，她发现自己连一些基本的问题，诸如她过去干了些什么都无法回答。她已经完全失去了“我”的意识，连自己的经历似乎都无法用语言表述出来。
如果爱情让我们看清自己，那么孤独自守就如同不再使用镜子，让我们凭空想象自己脸上的划痕或麻点的模样。不管有多么糟糕，镜子至少给我们一种自我的感觉，还我们无边的想象一个清楚的轮廓。我们是谁这种感觉并非自我生发，所以待在荒原里的克洛艾充满疑惑，她的性格轮廓已经远离了众人的目光，想象力攫住她，让她成为一个怪物，逐渐变得偏执，充满妄想。他人对我们行为的反应就好比一面镜子，因为它折射出的是我们自己无法认清的自己。他人给予我们自身无法捕捉的东西，给予我们身体有形的意识，给予我们对自己性格的认识，因此，他人必不可少。没有他人提示的答案，我会是谁？（没有克洛艾提示的正确答案，我会是谁？）
7. It was a long time before I was in any position to help Chloe to feel understood. Only slowly did I begin to unearth, from among the millions of words she spoke and actions she performed, the great themes of her life. In our knowledge of others, we are necessarily forced to interpret clues, we are like detectives or archaeologists who piece together stories from fragments, tracing the origins of a murder from a kitchen towel and a lemon squeezer or a civilization from a gardening implement and an earring. I often got it wrong. For example, it was a while before I quite appreciated the role of self-denial in her life. One morning in my flat, as we were having breakfast, she told me she had been ill in the night, had crept out of bed and driven to a chemist, all without waking me up. My first reaction was bewildered anger. Why had she not said something? Was our relationship really so distant that she couldn't wake me up even in a crisis? But my anger (only a form of jealousy) was crude, it failed to take into account what I only gradually learnt: how deep-seated and pervasive was Chloe's inclination to suffer in silence. She would have to have been near death before waking me, for everything about her wished not to place responsibility on others. Once I had located this strand in her nature, other aspects could be understood as related manifestations of it: her lack of acknowledged anger towards her parents (an anger that allowed itself expression only in savage irony), her self-deprecation, her harshness towards self-pitying people, her sense of duty, even her way of crying (muted sobs rather than hysterical wailing).经过很长时间我才能把握克洛艾的性格，才能看清她在自己的故事中扮演的角色，那是从她自己的生活中展现性格的故事。我只能慢慢地从她万千言语和行动中发现她犹如丝线般的个性，捕捉蕴涵着她的丰富性和支点。要了解一个人，我们必须由点到面地诠释。要完全了解一个人，从理论上说，必须与此人共度生命中的分分秒秒，分分秒秒地深入他们的内心。然而我们无法做到这些，于是我们就成了侦探和分析家（心理侦探）把条条线索拼成一个整体。然而我们通常都来得太晚，罪行已经犯下，木已成舟，从而不得不从沉淀下来的迹象中重新描述过去，有如我们梦醒时分释梦一样。
如同医生用手触及病人的身体一样，我凭着直觉去了解克洛艾的灵魂深处。我只能通过外在的表象听诊内在的东西，试图寻找心情陡坏、刻骨仇恨或欣喜若狂的缘由，从中知晓克洛艾的目标，总有慢一拍的感觉。比如说，我需要一段时间才能了解到克洛艾宁愿独自承受痛苦，而不愿惊扰别人的个性。一天早上，克洛艾告诉我说，她头天晚上病得厉害，甚至还开车去一家通宵诊所看了病，她一直轻手轻脚，怕吵醒我。我的第一个感觉就是充满困惑的气愤——为什么她对我一声不吭？我们的关系真的疏远到甚至危急的情况下她也不愿把我叫醒？但是我的生气（只是一种妒忌）并不成熟，它没有考虑到我日后将逐渐了解到的诸多东西，即克洛艾宁可责备自己、痛斥自己也不愿回击或叫醒他人，这些是她根深蒂固而又反常的性格特征。她甚至奄奄一息也不会叫醒我，因为她不希望别人为她担负任何责任。一旦我了解了她性格中为样的特点，那么她行为的众多方面都可被理解成是这些特点的体现——她从未对父母的无情有过一点怨言（最多只有几句挖苦之词），她对工作的投入，她的自我贬低，她对自怜之人的鄙视，她的责任感，甚至她哭泣的方式（无声的啜泣，而不是歇斯底里的号啕）。
8. Like a telephone engineer sitting on the edge of a manhole with a jumble of cables in his lap, I slowly learnt to identify some key threads in Chloe's personality. I began to recognize her hatred of stinginess every time we were in a group in a restaurant. I began sensing her desire not to be trapped, the desert-escapist side of her nature. I admired her constant visual creativity, which showed itself not just in her work, but in the way she would lay the table or arrange a bowl of flowers. I began detecting her awkwardness with other women and her greater ease with men. I recognized her fierce loyalty to those she considered her friends, an instinctive sense of clan and community. With such characteristics, Chloe slowly assumed a complex coherence in my mind, someone with consistency and a degree of predictability, someone whose tastes in a film or a person I could now begin to guess without asking.如同电话技师从混乱的导线中找出主线一样，我从变化着的克洛艾的行为中辨别她的主要性格。我开始发现每当我们和别人一起在餐馆吃饭时，她讨厌付帐时的僵持，宁可一个人包揽也不愿意看到为了区区小钱而争执不下；我开始感觉到她不愿受束缚的渴望、她天性中想逃到荒原的一面；我钦佩她视觉上永不枯竭的创造力，这不仅体现在她的工作上，同样也体现在她摆放餐具或花束的方式上；我开始注意到她与其他女人打交道时的笨拙、和男人们在一起的轻松自如；我看到她对那些她自认为是朋友的人极度忠诚，有着本能的团队观念。通过对这些性格的把握，克洛艾在我的思想中渐渐成型，具有了整体意义。她成了一个稳定的、让我多少可以把握一点的人，一个我无须询问就可以猜出她对某部电影和某个人的看法的人。
但是担任克洛艾的镜子并不总是那么容易。这面镜子不能像真正的镜子那样如影随形。这是一面主动反映他人形象的镜子，一面移动不定的搜索镜，一面寻找移动物体的形状、寻找他人极其复杂的性格的镜子。这是一面握在手里的镜子，握住镜子的手因为有自己的兴趣和关心的事物，所以并非一成不变——真实存在的那个人与我们期盼的影像是重叠吻合的吗？你在她身上发现了什么？理智问着镜子；你想从她身上发现什么？心灵问着镜子。
9. The problem with needing others to legitimate our existence is that we are very much at their mercy to have a correct identity ascribed to us. If, as Stendhal says, we lack a character without others, then the other with whom we share our bed must be a skilled intermediary or we will end up feeling deformed and misrepresented. But do not others by definition always distort us ?whether for better or worse?“我”的确认其危险在于我们需要他人来认可我们的存在，从而是否给予我们正确的评价也就完全听任他人了。如果如斯汤达所说，没有他人我们就没有个性，那么与我们同床共枕的人一定是一面上乘的镜子——否则我们最终将残缺不全。如果爱我们的人全然误解我们，如果爱我们的人缺乏与我们的共鸣，否定我们的某一方面，那么一切又会怎样？此外，还有更大的疑虑：出于好或坏的用心，他人是否会（因为镜子表面永远都凹凸不平）歪曲我们的本来面目？
10. Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are. Our selves could be compared to an amoeba, whose outer walls are elastic, and therefore adapt to the environment. It is not that the amoeba has no dimensions, simply that it has no self-defined shape. It is my absurdist side that an absurdist person will draw out of me, and my seriousness that a serious person will evoke. If someone thinks I am shy, I will probably end up shy; if someone thinks me funny, I am likely to keep cracking jokes.我们会因为他人的看法而给自己定格，所以不同人会使我们获得不同的自我感觉。这种自我可以比作是一只变形虫，它的外壳可以灵活伸缩，从而适应环境。这并非是说变形虫没有大小，它只是没有自己界定的形状。我有荒诞主义者的一面，于是有人会认为我是荒诞主义者；我有严肃的一面，于是我又成了一个严肃的人。如果有人认为我害羞，那么我可能一直要害羞下去；如果有人认为我滑稽有趣，我则可能不停地讲笑话。这是一个循环的过程。
11. When Chloe had lunch with my parents, she was silent throughout the meal. I later asked her what was wrong, but she herself couldn't understand. She had tried to be lively and yet the suspicions of the two strangers facing her across the table had stopped her from expanding into her usual self. My parents had not been overtly nasty, yet their stiffness had prevented Chloe from rising above monosyllabicity. It was a reminder that the labelling of others is usually a silent process. Most people do not openly force us into roles, they merely suggest that we adopt them through their reactions to us, and hence surreptitiously prevent us from moving beyond whatever mould they have assigned us.克洛艾曾和我父母一起吃过一顿午饭，然而她自始至终一言未发。回到家后，我问她是怎么回事。她说自己也搞不懂。她曾试着活跃些，有趣点，但是桌子对面的两位陌生人让她产生的疑虑使她不能展示一贯的自己。我的父母并没有明显的过错，但他们身上却有一种东西令她一句话都说不出。这表明他人为我们的个性贴示标签并不是一个非常显露的过程。多数人不会强迫我们成为什么样的人，他们只是通过自己的反应表示出这一点，因此就这样轻而易举地将我们钳制在既定的模式之中。
12. A few years before, Chloe had for a time gone out with an academic at London University. The analytical philosopher, who had written five books and contributed to many scholarly journals, had left her with a sense of total mental inadequacy. How had he done this? Chloe couldn't tell. Without ever expressly saying anything critical, he had succeeded in shaping the amoeba according to his preconceptions, namely, that Chloe was a beautiful young student who should leave matters of the mind to him. And so, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Chloe had begun unconsciously acting on the verdict of her character, handed out like a covert end-of-term report by the wise philosopher who had written five books and contributed to many scholarly journals. She had ended up feeling exactly as stupid as she was believed to be.几年前，克洛艾在伦敦大学读书时认识一位学者。这位精神分析学家已经有五部著作问世，此外还为很多学术杂志撰稿。他留给了克洛艾一份遗产——一种不确定的感觉，认为自己神经不正常。他是怎么做到这一点呢？克洛艾同样搞不懂。甚至不需要语言，这位哲学家就成功地根据他的成见塑造着克洛艾这只变形虫，也就是说，作为一个漂亮的年轻学生，克洛艾应该把有关自己思想方面的事交给他。于是，如同本身自会成为事实的预言一样，克洛艾开始无意识地按判定的性格行事，就像这位著书五部、为很多学术杂志撰稿的聪明哲学家完成的学期报告一样。克洛艾最后感到自己就像哲学家说的那样傻瓜透顶。
14.Children are always described from a third-person perspective ('Isn't Chloe a cute/ugly/intelligent/stupid kid?') before they gain the ability to influence their own definitions. Overcoming childhood could be understood as an attempt to correct the false stories of others. But the struggle against distortion continues beyond childhood. Most people get us wrong, either out of neglect or prejudice. Even being loved implies a gross bias - a pleasant distortion, but a distortion nevertheless. Like Narcissus, we are doomed to disappointment in gazing at our reflection in the watery eyes of another. No eye can wholly contain our 'I'. We will always be chopped off in some area or other, fatally or not.人生的发展顺序意味着，人从来都是先有第二人称视角的评说（“克洛艾不是一个机灵/丑陋/聪明/愚蠢的孩子吗？”），其后自身才获得影响评说的能力。结束童年时代可被理解为是努力更正他人，或给我们讲故事的父母对我们的错误评说。但是这种对评说的斗争会一直延续下去，这是一场围绕着判定我们是谁的宣传战，许多利益集团争着宣布他们对事实的看法，要求人们倾听他们的说法。但现实还是扭曲的现实——要么出于敌人的妒忌，要么出于漠不关心者的忽视，要么是我们以自己为中心的盲目。甚至爱上一个人也包括一种不成熟的先入之见，远离了真正的理解所需的中立态度，是一个没有多少根据的决定：心上人是世界上最有天赋、最漂亮的人儿——虽然是一个令人愉快的歪曲，但终究是歪曲。通过他人来确认自己就如看哈哈镜一般：矮小的个头突然一下子三米高，瘦弱的女人变成了庞然大物，胖子却又苗条了，我们有了长颈鹿的脖子大象的脚，一副难看的样子或圣徒般的庄严面孔，一个很大或很小的脑袋，一双美腿或根本没有腿。就如那喀索斯那样，看着自己在另一双水汪汪的眼睛中的映影时，我们注定有些失望，没有谁的眼睛能完全容下我们的“我”。我们总会被致命地或无关大局地砍去某一部分。
14. When I told Chloe my idea that people's personalities in relationships were a bit like amoebas, she laughed and told me she'd loved drawing amoebas at school.当我告诉克洛艾说，人的个性有点像变形虫时，她笑了起来，告诉我说，她读书时就喜欢画变形虫，说着就拿起一支铅笔。
"Here, give me the newspaper,' she said, reaching in her bag for a pencil. I'll draw you the difference between what shape my amoeba-self has at the office and what shape it has with you.'“把报纸给我，我给你画出我这只变形虫在办公室里时和与你在一起时的不同。”
Then she drew the following: 于是，她画出了以下的图形：
'What are all the wiggly bits?' I asked.“那些凹凹凸凸的地方代表什么？”我问。
'Oh, that's because I feel wiggly around you.'“噢，那是我与你在一起时感到的变化不定。”
'What?'“什么意思？”
'Well, you know, you give me space. I feel more complicated than in the office. You're interested in me and you understand me better, so that's why I made it wiggly, so that it's sort of natural.'“你知道，你给我空间，所以我感到比在办公室里时复杂一些。你对我有兴趣，你更了解我，所以我就把它画得凹凸不平，这样才有些接近事实。”
'OK, I see, so what's this straight side?'“我明白了，那么这条直直的边呢？”
'Where?'“哪儿？”
'Up in the north-west of the amoeba.'“在变形虫的东北边那个部分。”
'You know I never did much geography. But yeah, I think I see it. Well, you don't understand everything about me, do you? So I thought I'd better make it more realistic. The straight line is all the sides of me you don't understand or don't have time for and stuff.'“你要知道我的地理连普通考试都没通过。对了，我想我明白了其中的原因。你并不了解我的一切，对不对？所以我觉得最好还是画得真实一点。这条直线代表我还不为你所了解，或者说是还没有时间和素材去了解的一面。”
'Oh.'“原来如此。”
'Christ, don't make that long face, you wouldn't want to know what could happen if that line went squiggly! And don't worry, if it was that serious, I wouldn't be squidged here with you being such a happy amoeba.'“看在上帝的份上，请不要把脸拉得那么长。要是那条直线给画成了波浪线，你不会再想要知道我什么了！别担心，如果真有那么严重，我这会儿就不会是这样一只快乐的变形虫了。”
15. What did Chloe mean by her amoebic straight line? Just that I could not wholly understand her, an unsurprising but still sobering reminder of the limits of empathy. What was frustrating my efforts? Perhaps that I was constrained to fathoming her through my existing conceptions of human nature. My knowledge of her was necessarily filtered through my own past. Like a European who orients himself in a Rocky Mountain landscape by saying, 'This looks just like Switzerland,' I might only have grasped the source of one of Chloe's depressed moods by thinking, 'It's because she's feeling x... like my sister when...' To comprehend her, I had to rely on an understanding of human nature that had been shaped by my biology, class, and psychological biography.克洛艾画一条直线意味着什么？只是 意味着我不可能全部了解她——也许并不奇怪，但提醒着我和她之间的共鸣也有限。是什么使我的努力变为徒劳？我只能通过或借助自己关于人类本质的一点概念透视克洛艾。对克洛区的了解只是我希望了解他人的诸多方面的一个变体；对克洛艾的了解得须借助我过去的社会阅历。就像一位在落基山脉中确定方位的欧洲人会说“这儿看起来像瑞士”一样，当克洛艾心情沮丧时，我也只能这样想：“这是因为她感到X……就像我姐姐……”我和各色男女交往的经验都用来了解克洛艾——我对人性所有非常主观的，从而也被扭曲的理解都派上了用场，这些理解是建立在我的生物学、阶级观念、国家观念以及性格分析法知识之上的。
16. To illustrate how we can only ever pick up on certain elements in our beloveds' characters, we might compare the way we look at them to a barbecue skewer. For instance, I was able to skewer (or appreciate or relate) to Chloe's: 心上人的目光可以被看作是串肉扦。面对我们复杂的性格，每一位心上人只会关注一部分，而忽略其他部分。举例说，当我注视克洛艾时，我关注到的（或我欣赏的或我理解的或我认同的）部分是：
--irony ?colour of eyes ?gap between two front teeth --intellect ?talent for baking bread ?relationship with her mother ?social anxiety ?love of Beethoven ?hatred of laziness ?taste for camomile tea ?objection to snobbery ?love of woollen clothes ?claustrophobia ?desire for honesty ——好嘲弄人-眼睛的颜色-两颗门齿的间距-聪慧-烤面包的技术-对社会问题的忧虑-喜爱贝多芬的音乐-讨厌惰性-爱喝黄春菊花茶-反感势利小人-喜欢毛料衣服-患有幽闭恐惧症-希望诚实不二
Yet this was far from comprising everything about her. Had I been a different barbecue skewer, I might have had more time for her: 但这些并不是克洛艾的全部。如果换一根串肉扦，我也就成了另一位情人，也许会在她身上体察到另外的东西：
--interest in healthy eating ?ankles ?love of outdoor markets ?mathematical talent ?relationship with her brother --love of nightclubs ?thoughts on God?enthusiasm for rice --Degas ?skating ?long country walks ?objection to music in the car ?taste for Victorian architecture ——热衷于健康饮食-脚踝-爱逛露天市场-有数学天赋-姐弟关系-喜欢夜总会-对上帝的看法-偏爱米饭-欣赏德加-爱好滑冰-乡村远足-反感车载音乐-喜爱维多利亚时代的建筑
17. Though I felt myself attentive to the complexities of Chloe's nature, I must have been guilty of great abbreviations, of passing lightly over areas I simply did not have the empathy or maturity to understand. I was responsible for the greatest but most unavoidable abbreviation of all, that of only being able to participate in Chloe's life as an outsider, someone whose inner world I could imagine, but never directly experience. However close we might be, Chloe was in the end another human being, with all the mystery and distance this implied, the inevitable distance embodied in the thought that we must die alone.虽然我感到自己非常投入地探究克洛艾的复杂性格，但由于无法与克洛艾产生共鸣，或由于我的不成熟，必然还会有很多缩略的时刻和领域不为我了解。对于最不可避免而又缩略最多的方面，我只能作为局外人与克洛艾的生活发生联系，她的内心生活我可以想象，但无法亲身感受，对于这一些，我感到愧疚。我们被我/你两极分成了我和非我。所有的神秘感和距离感都暗示着（体现在我们只能独自死去的想法之中的不可避免的距离感……），不论我们贴得多近，克洛艾终究还是另一个人。
18. We long for a love in which we are never reduced or misunderstood. We have a morbid resistance to classification by others, to others placing labels on us (the man, the woman, the rich one, the poor one, the Jew, the Catholic, etc.). To ourselves, we are after all always un-labelable. When alone, we are always simply 'me', and shift between sides of ourselves effortlessly and without the constraints imposed by the preconceptions of others. But hearing Chloe one day talk of 'this guy I was seeing a while back', I was saddened to imagine myself in a few years' time (another man facing her across the tuna salad) being described merely as 'this architect guy I was once seeing...' Her casual reference to a past lover provided the necessary objectification for me to realize that, however special I was to her, I still existed within certain definitions ('a guy', 'my boyfriend') ?and that in Chloe's eyes, I was necessarily a simplified version of myself.我们渴望没有直线分界的爱情，渴望自身性格不被削减的爱情。我们病态地拒绝他人给我们分类，拒绝他人给我们贴上标签（男人、女人、富人、穷人、犹太人、天主教徒等等）。我们的拒绝与其说是因为标签的不正确，还不如说是由于标签无法精确地反映不可分类的主观感觉。对我们自己而言，我们永远不可能被贴上标签。当我们孤身一人，我们就是一个纯粹的“我”，我们在被标示的几种角色之间毫不费力地转换，全无他人的成见强加给我们的约束。有一次，当我听到克洛艾说“这家伙我几年前认识”的时候，我突然非常难过，想象自己在几年后（另一个男人与她隔着仙人掌面对而坐）也将被她描述成“这家伙我以前认识……”。她随意地提起过去的情人给我提供了必要的参照，使我意识到无论此时我对她来说是多么特殊，我仍然只存在于某些定义（“一个家伙”，“一位男友”）之中，我只是（无论多么特殊）克洛艾眼中的一个映像而已。
19. But as we must be labelled, characterized, and defined by others, the person we end up loving is the good-enough barbecue skewerer, the person who loves us for more or less the things we deem ourselves to be lovable for, who understands us for more or less the things we need to be understood for. That Chloeba and I were together implied that, for the moment at least, we had been given enough room to expand in the ways our complexities demanded.但是由于我们必须由他人来贴上标签、赋予个性、给出定义，我们最终爱上的人从定义上说就是足够好的串肉扦，有人爱我们多少是由于我们有需要理解的地方。克洛艾的灵魂和我走到一起表明，至少眼下我们已经获得足够的空间，以我们天生的流状所需要的方式来发展。