That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Preface and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words … Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.
那天夜里，在我租的房间里，我一边让热水冲着水池里的猪肉烧豆罐头，一边打开《序言集》读了起来。书的文体，那干净、利落、有力的句子令我大为震惊。他为什么要那样写？他又是如何写成那个样子的？在我的想像里，这个人是个凶猛的恶魔，用他的笔四处挞伐，心中充满了仇恨，对美国的一切大加谴责，对欧洲的或德国的一切大加颂扬，嘲笑人的缺点，嘲弄上帝，嘲弄权威。这是怎么回事？我站起身来，想弄清楚隐藏在这些词义背后的现实……是的，这个人在战斗，用文字战斗。他把文字当作武器，使用起它们来，就像人们使用棍棒一样。文字可以成为武器吗？可以，因为在这里它们就是武器。那么，说不定我也可以把文字当作武器使用了？不，这使我害怕。我接着往下读。令我惊愕的不是他说了些什么，而是天底下竟有人敢这么说。
I ran across many words whose meanings I did not know, and I either looked them up in a dictionary or, before I had a chance to do that, encountered the word in a context that made its meaning clear. But what strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
我碰到许多我不认识的词，有时我查字典，有时，还没来得及查，就在另一边上下文中又见到了，这个上下文将该词的意思表明得清清楚楚。可这是一个多么奇怪的世界？当我读完这本书的时候，我深深感到，不知怎的，我把生活中某些非常重要的东西忽略了。我曾经想学写作，曾经非常喜欢去感受事物，曾经听任我的原始想像力遨游，但是生活中的种种遭遇渐渐地将我这种爱幻想的冲动磨灭掉了。而如今，这种冲动又重新抬头了。我渴望书，渴望新的观察和了解世界的方法。这不是一个相信不相信我所读的书的问题，而是感受一种新的东西，并受其影响，这东西使得世界的面貌变了样。
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