I really felt something of the emotion that had caught him. I was strangely impressed. It was as though I were suddenly transported into a world in which the values were changed. I stood by, at a loss, like a stranger in a land where the reactions of man to familiar things are all different from those he has known. Stroeve tried to talk to me about the picture, but he was incoherent, and I had to guess at what he meant. Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. He had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with unsuspected powers. It was not only the bold simplification of the drawing which showed so rich and so singular a personality; it was not only the painting, though the flesh was painted with a passionate sensuality which had in it something miraculous; it was not only the solidity, so that you felt extraordinarily the weight of the body; there was also a spirituality, troubling and new, which led the imagination along unsuspected ways, and suggested dim empty spaces, lit only by the eternal stars, where the soul, all naked, adventured fearful to the discovery of new mysteries.
激动着施特略夫的那种感情我确实体会到了；他说的这些话奇怪地把我打动了。我好象突然被带进一个全部事物的价值都改变了的世界里。我茫然不知所措地站在一旁，好象一个到了异乡的陌生人，在那里，一个人对于他所熟悉的事物的各种反应都与过去的不同了。施特略夫尽量想把他见到的这幅画描述给我听，但是他说得前言不搭后语，许多意思都只能由我猜测。思特里克兰德已经把那一直束缚着的桎梏打碎了。他并没有象俗话所说的“寻找到自己”，而是寻找到一个新的灵魂，一个具有意料不到的巨大力量的灵魂。这幅画之所以能显示出这样强烈、这样独特的个性，并不只是因为它那极为大胆的简单的线条，不只是因为它的处理方法（尽管那肉体被画得带有一种强烈的、几乎可以说是奇妙的欲情），也不只是因为它给人的实体感，使你几乎奇异地感觉到那肉体的重量，而且还因为它有一种纯精神的性质，一种使你感到不安、感到新奇的精神，把你的幻想引向前所未经的路途，把你带到一个朦胧空虚的境界，那里为探索新奇的神秘只有永恒的星辰在照耀，你感到自己的灵魂一无牵挂，正经历着各种恐怖和冒险。
If I am rhetorical it is because Stroeve was rhetorical. (Do we not know that man in moments of emotion expresses himself naturally in the terms of a novelette?) Stroeve was trying to express a feeling which he had never known before, and he did not know how to put it into common terms. He was like the mystic seeking to describe the ineffable. But one fact he made clear to me; people talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it. The false emphasis with which they try to deck their worthless thoughts blunts their susceptibilities. Like the charlatan who counterfeits a spiritual force he has sometimes felt, they lose the power they have abused. But Stroeve, the unconquerable buffoon, had a love and an understanding of beauty which were as honest and sincere as was his own sincere and honest soul. It meant to him what God means to the believer, and when he saw it he was afraid.
如果我在这里有些舞文弄墨，使用了不少形象比喻，这是因为施特略夫当时就是这么表达他自己的。（估量大家都知道，一旦感情激动起来，一个人会很自然地玩弄起文学词藻来的。）施特略夫企图表达的是一种他过去从来没经历过的感觉，如果用一般的言语，他简直不知道该如何说出口来。他象是一个神秘主义者费力地宣讲一个无法言传的道理。但是有一件事我还是清楚的：人们动不动就谈美，实际上对这个词并不理解；这个词已经使用得太滥，失去了原有的力量；因为成千上万的琐屑事物都分享了“美”的称号，这个词已经被剥夺掉它的崇高的含义了。一件衣服，一只狗，一篇布道词，什么东西人们都用“美”来形容，当他们面对面地遇到真正的美时，反而认不出它来了。他们用以遮饰自己毫无价值的思想的虚假夸大使他们的感受力变得迟钝不堪。正如一个假内行有时也会感觉到自己是在无中生有地伪造某件器物的精神价值一样，人们已经失掉了他们用之过滥的赏识能力。但是施特略夫，这位本性无法改变的小丑，对于美却有着真挚的爱和理解，正象他的灵魂也是诚实、真挚的一样。对他说来，美就象虔诚教徒心目中的上帝一样；一旦他见到真正美的事物，他变得恐惧万分。
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