老大哥时期的爱情

 

《1984》读书笔记...



刚刚读完了George Orwell的1984。这是一本很出名的书,和Zamyatin的We,Huxley的Brave New World并称为“反乌托邦三部曲”。抛开有关政治的话题,我把它当一个爱情故事来读,借用马尔克斯的书名,我给它起名为Love in the time of Big Brother

以下是我以爱情这条线索做的笔记,你很有可能看的一头雾水... 有兴趣的话建议你去读这本书。



这是一个女追男的故事。Julia故意在Winston面前摔倒,他扶她起来的时候,她塞给他一张纸条,上面只有一句话:

I love you.



两个人第一次见面是在小树林里,胆战心惊。这也是他第一次把她的样子看清楚,他问她:

I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve got a wife that I can’t get rid of. I’ve got varicose veins. I’ve got five false teeth.

I couldn’t care less.

他把他们的结合当作一次政治胜利。

You could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.



他们秘密的租了阁楼,想法设法的聚在一起。聪明的她总是可以弄到好吃的和他一起分享,她化妆给他看,给他弄咖啡,赤裸着依偎着。他们甚至开始谈未来,然而更多的是担心他们迟早会被发现。

There were times when the fact of impending death seemed palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking.

But there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of permanence. So long as they were actually in this room, they both felt, no harm would come to them.



他说如果有一天我们都被抓了,我们不要背叛彼此。

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you — that would be the real betrayal.



当他们两个出现在O’Brien家里的时候,O’Brien忽悠他说他们是一伙的,都是要打倒老大哥。他问Winston是否做好了准备:

You are prepared to give your lives?

Yes.

You are prepared to commit murder?

Yes.

To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?

Yes.

To betray your country to foreign powers?

Yes.

You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases –to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?

Yes.

If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face –are you prepared to do that?

Yes.

You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or a dockworker?

Yes.

You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?

Yes.

You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again?

“No!” broke in Julia.

It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he did not know which word he was going to say. “No,” he said finally.”

他们愿意去死去受尽折磨,也不愿彼此永远的分开。



不出意料,他们都被抓了。原来租给他们房间的人就是思想警察,他们在阁楼里的一言一行其实都一直被监视着。

在备受恐惧和饥饿折磨的时候,他还在想:

He thought: “If I could save Julia by doubling my own pain, would I do it? Yes, I would.

在他被暴打电击打针,受尽一切酷刑毫无尊严的时候,O’Brien问他,“Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?”

他说:

I have not betrayed Julia,” he said.

He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party – everything. And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same.

在百般折磨下,他终于承认2+2=5。他已经学习了,理解了并且接受了老大哥,他已经快被“治愈”了的时候,他梦到了他们第一次见面的场景,他在梦中惊醒,背脊满是汗水,他发现自己大声的喊:

Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!



他还没有完全被治愈,他被送进了Room 101 —“The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”

他们找来他最害怕的老鼠,放在一个笼子里让它们去咬他的脸。他终于背叛了她, 他大声的喊:

Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!

也不知是过了多久他们被治愈了,变成了和其他人一样的人。



他们又见面了,变成了熟悉的陌生人。他发现她的额头到太阳穴之间有一道长疤。他搂住她的腰,曾经那年轻柔软的腰变的粗壮僵硬。他没有想去吻她,她的眼神中也多是憎恶。他们开始说话:

“I betrayed you,” she said baldly.

“I betrayed you,” he said.

She gave him another quick look of dislike.

“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”

“All you care about is yourself,” he echoed.

“And after that, you don’t feel the same towards the other person any longer.”

“No,” he said, “you don’t feel the same.”

他回到咖啡馆,听到了两个人熟悉的那首歌谣,热泪盈眶。



这到底是不是爱情呢?那些勇敢的龌龊的,其实根本就不存在吧。或许他时不时地还会想起那个年轻漂亮有着柔软腰肢的女孩,有过期待和希望,有过温暖和疯狂。
疯狂愚蠢的爱
想触碰又收回手


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