《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 36 (78):再見,意大利!

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business—not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into . . . rhetoric and plot. Not too long ago, authorities arrested a brotherhood of Catholic monks in Sicily who were in tight conspiracy with the Mafia, so who can you trust? What can you believe? The world is unkind and unfair. Speak up against this unfairness and in Sicily, at least, you'll end up as the foundation of an ugly new building. What can you do in such an environment to hold a sense of your individual human dignity? Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing except, perhaps, to pride yourself on the fact that you always fillet your fish with perfection, or that you make the lightest ricotta in the whole town? 因此，致力於美的創造與享受，可說是嚴肅的事——並不見得是逃避現實的手段，有時反倒是抓住現實的手段，在一切都分解爲……修辭與情節之時。沒多久之前，政府當局在西西里逮捕了一個與黑手黨緊密串通的修士會，因此誰能讓你信賴？你能相信什麼？世界殘酷不公。你若在西西里挺身抗議不公，最後可能成爲某棟醜陋新廈的地基。在此種環境下，該怎麼做才能保有自己的個人尊嚴？或許什麼也不能做。或許除了切魚的完美本領以及做出全鎮最鬆軟的瑞科達乳酪，才能讓人引以爲傲？

I don't want to insult anyone by drawing too much of a comparison between myself and the long-suffering Sicilian people. The tragedies in my life have been of a personal and largely self-created nature, not epically oppressive. I went through a divorce and a depression, not a few centuries of murderous tyranny. I had a crisis of identity, but I also had the resources (financial, artistic and emotional) with which to try to work it out. Still, I will say that the same thing which has helped generations of Sicilians hold their dignity has helped me begin to recover mine—namely, the idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity. I believe this is what Goethe meant by saying that you have to come here, to Sicily, in order to understand Italy. And I suppose this is what I instinctively felt when I decided that I needed to come here, to Italy, in order to understand myself. 我不想把自己和長期受苦的西西里人民拿來比較而侮辱任何人。我的人生悲劇屬於一種個人性質、大致掌握在自己手中的問題，並非起因於長期受壓迫。我經歷的是離婚和憂鬱症，並非好幾世紀的恐怖暴政。我有身份認同的危機，卻也擁有各種資源（財務、藝術、感情），想出解決之法。儘管如此，我要說，歷代幫助西西里人保有尊嚴的觀念，也幫助我開始找回自己的尊嚴——亦即，對快樂的鑑賞力，是能成爲人性之依靠。我相信歌德說你若想了解意大利就得來西西里，正是這個意思。我想，在我決定必須來意大利時，正是直覺到我必須瞭解自己。

It was in a bathtub back in New York, reading Italian words aloud from a dictionary, that I first started mending my soul. My life had gone to bits and I was so unrecognizable to myself that I probably couldn't have picked me out of a police lineup. But I felt a glimmer of happiness when I started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt—this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. 在紐約的浴缸裏大聲念出字典裏的意大利詞句，使我開始修補自己的靈魂。我的生活裂成碎片，讓我認不出自己，在警察局任人指認的話，恐怕連我也指認不出自己。可是當我開始讀意大利文時，我感覺到一絲快樂；而當你在經歷黑暗時期後，感受到絲毫可能的快樂，就得死命抓住這一點快樂，直到它將你拉出土中——這並非自私，而是義務。你被賦予生命；你有責任（也是你身爲人類的權利）去尋找生命當中的美，無論多麼微不足道。

I came to Italy pinched and thin. I did not know yet what I deserved. I still maybe don't fully know what I deserve. But I do know that I have collected myself of late—through the enjoyment of harmless pleasures—into somebody much more intact. The easiest, most fundamentally human way to say it is that I have put on weight. I exist more now than I did four months ago. I will leave Italy noticeably bigger than when I arrived here. And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person—the magnification of one life—is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody's but my , Pray, Love 我到意大利時瘦骨如柴，那時的我還不清楚自己應得的東西。或許我仍未完全清楚自己應得的東西。但我明白近來我已振作起來——藉着享受無害的快樂——成爲一個更完整的人。最簡單、最符合人類的說法是，“我的體重增加了”。現在我的存在比四個月前更有分量。離開意大利的時候，我將比剛來時胖得多。離開的時候，我希望一個人的膨脹——一個人生的擴張——在這世界上是一種有價值的行動。儘管這一回，這個人生恰好不屬於別人， 而是屬於我自己。