苏西·克莱门斯(Susy Clemens, 1872~1896)在马克·吐温的三个女儿中排行老大，是马克·吐温最喜爱的女儿。她聪明、漂亮、活泼、善解人意，被马克·吐温称为“神童”。马克·吐温认为，将全世界所有的赞美献给苏西都不为过。但不幸的是，在24岁时，苏西因患脑膜炎离开了人世。她的离去给马克·吐温带来了十分沉重的打击，成为马克·吐温心中永远的痛。下面的文字选自未删节版《马克·吐温自传》(Autobiography of Mark Twain)的第一卷(该自传共三卷，将分三次出版)。在文中，马克·吐温一改往日辛辣、讽刺、诙谐的文风，用细腻的笔触回忆了苏西儿时认识周遭事物的情景。从中我们可以看到苏西那颗悲天悯人的小小心灵，也可以体会到马克·吐温那细腻而深沉的父爱之情……
The summer seasons of Susy's childhood were spent at Quarry Farm on the hills east of Elmira, New York, the other seasons of the year at the home in Hartford. Like other children, she was blithe1) and happy, fond of play; unlike the average of children, she was at times much given to2) retiring within herself and trying to search out the hidden meanings of the deep things that make the puzzle and pathos3) of human existence, and in all the ages have baffled4) the inquirer and mocked him. As a little child aged seven, she was oppressed and perplexed by the maddening repetition of the stock5) incidents of our race's fleeting sojourn6) here, just as the same thing has oppressed and perplexed maturer minds from the beginning of time. A myriad7) of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble8) and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities9) follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year; at length ambition is dead; pride is dead; vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they have existed—a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place, and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, and vanishes as they vanished—to make room for another and another and a million other myriads to follow the same arid10) path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads that came after it accomplished—nothing!
小时候，苏西都是在纽约埃尔迈拉以东山上的夸里农场里度过夏天，其他的季节则是在位于哈特福德的家里度过。和其他孩子一样，她快乐，贪玩，无忧无虑；和一般孩子不同的是，她有时喜欢一个人待着想事情，会去思考一些关乎人类存在的深奥问题，试图找出其背后隐含的意义，这些令人类困扰、哀伤的问题在各个时代都曾挫败过那些试图一探究竟的人，令他们颜面扫地。作为一个七岁的小孩子，她看到人生苦短，庸常平淡，周而复始，无穷无尽，为此深感压抑和困惑，正如天地伊始以来那些更为成熟的头脑也曾为此感到压抑和困惑一样。芸芸众生来到世上；为了糊口，他们劳作，流汗，挣扎；他们相互争吵，责骂，争斗；为了一点蝇头小利，你争我夺；然后，衰老悄然来临；他们开始变得体弱多病；耻辱和羞愧击垮了他们的傲慢和虚荣；他们的心爱之人一个个被夺去，人生的欢愉变成了心痛的悲伤。痛苦、忧虑、苦难的重负压在他们身上，一年比一年深重；到头来野心死去，傲慢死去，虚荣死去，他们只求最后的解脱。这解脱也终于如期而至——这是这个世界所给予他们的唯一一件不会带来伤害的礼物——于是他们便从世上消失了。在这个世界上，他们无足轻重，一事无成，有的只是错误、失败和愚蠢，也没有留下任何证明他们存在过的痕迹——这个世界会哀悼他们一天，然后会永远将他们忘记。接着，又一批芸芸众生取代了他们的位置，重复他们曾经做过的一切，走着一条同样徒劳无益的道路，然后又像他们一样消失了——为后来的一批又一批、千千万万批芸芸众生让路，让他们走上同样荒芜的道路，穿过同样的不毛之地，成就第一批以及其后所有芸芸众生所成就的事——虚无！
“Mamma, what is it all for?” asked Susy, preliminarily stating the above details in her own halting11) language, after long brooding over12) them alone in the privacy of the nursery.
“妈妈，这一切到底是为什么啊？”苏西问道，她独自一人在育儿室的僻静之处长久地思考着这一问题，然后用她并不连贯的语言粗略地说出了上文所述的困惑。
A year later, she was groping13) her way alone through another sunless bog14), but this time she reached a rest for her feet. For a week, her mother had not been able to go to the nursery, evenings, at the child's prayer hour. She spoke of it—was sorry for it, and said she would come tonight, and hoped she could continue to come every night and hear Susy pray, as before. Noticing that the child wished to respond, but was evidently troubled as to how to word her answer, she asked what the difficulty was. Susy explained that Miss Foote (the governess) had been teaching her about the Indians and their religious beliefs, whereby it appeared that they had not only a God, but several. This had set Susy to thinking. As a result of this thinking, she had stopped praying. She qualified this statement—that is, she modified it—saying she did not now pray “in the same way” as she had formerly done. Her mother said, “Tell me about it, dear.”
一年以后，她又独自一人摸索着穿过另一处不见阳光的沼泽，但这一次她找到了一处歇脚的地方。有一个星期，她妈妈未能在晚上孩子祷告的时间去育儿室。她妈妈说起这件事时，觉得很遗憾，说她今晚会过来，并且希望能像以前那样每个晚上都能过来听苏西祈祷。她注意到苏西似乎有话要说，但又显然很困惑，不知道如何表达自己，便问她有什么困难。苏西解释说富特老师(女家庭教师)在教她关于印第安人以及他们的宗教信仰的事情，根据老师的说法，印第安人好像不只有一个上帝，而是有好几个。苏西因此陷入了沉思。而她思索的结果，便是停止了祷告。她将这句话补充为——或者说修改为——她不再“像以前那样”祷告了。她妈妈说：“那就给我说说吧，宝贝。”
“Well, mamma, the Indians believed they knew, but now we know they were wrong. By and by it can turn out that we are wrong. So now I only pray that there may be a God and a heaven—or something better.”
“嗯，妈妈，印第安人相信他们是对的，但现在我们知道他们是错的。过一段时间也许会证明我们是错的。所以现在，我只能祈祷，也许只有一个上帝和一个天堂——或者还存在别的更好的什么。”
I wrote down this pathetic prayer in its precise wording, at the time, in a record which we kept of the children's sayings, and my reverence for it has grown with the years that have passed over my head since then. Its untaught grace and simplicity are a child's, but the wisdom and the pathos of it are of all the ages that have come and gone since the race of man has lived, and longed, and hoped, and feared, and doubted.
当时，我一字不差地将这段悲凉的祷告记在了一个记录本里，这个记录本是我们专门用来记载孩子们说过的话的。随着岁月的流逝，我对这句话的敬仰也日渐增强。这句话从一个孩子口中说出，有着质朴的优美和单纯，但其中蕴含的智慧和悲怆却为世世代代来去匆匆的人类所共有，属于开天辟地以来生活过、渴望过、希望过、恐惧过、困惑过的所有人们。
To go back a year—Susy aged seven. Several times her mother said to her, “There, there, Susy, you mustn't cry over little things.”
再回到一年前——苏西七岁的时候。有好几次她妈妈对她说：“好啦，好啦，苏西，你不能动不动就为这些小事情哭鼻子。”
This furnished15) Susy a text for thought. She had been breaking her heart over what had seemed vast disasters—a broken toy; a picnic cancelled by thunder and lightning and rain; the mouse that was growing tame and friendly in the nursery caught and killed by the cat—and now came this strange revelation. For some unaccountable reason, these were not vast calamities. Why? How is the size of calamities measured? What is the rule? There must be some way to tell the great ones from the small ones; what is the law of these proportions? She examined the problem earnestly and long. She gave it her best thought from time to time, for two or three days—but it baffled her—defeated her. And at last she gave up and went to her mother for help.
这句话又勾起了苏西的沉思。她当时正在为了某些她眼中的大灾难而伤心欲绝呢——一个玩具被摔坏了，一次野餐因电闪雷鸣的大雨被取消了，一只育儿室里驯养的温顺、友好的老鼠被猫儿捉住咬死了——现在妈妈又说出了这句奇怪的启示。也不知由于什么原因，原来这些并不是大灾难啊。为什么呢？灾难的大小应该怎么衡量呢？有什么规则呢？一定会有办法来将大灾难和小灾难区别开来，而区分这些大小的法则又是什么呢？她非常投入地、久久地思考着这个问题。一连两三天，她不时专心致志地思考着这一问题，但是毫无头绪，以失败而告终。最后她不得不放弃了，去她妈妈那里寻求帮助。
“Mamma, what is ‘little things'?”
“妈妈，什么是‘小事情'啊？”
It seemed a simple question—at first. And yet before the answer could be put into words, unsuspected and unforeseen difficulties began to appear. They increased; they multiplied; they brought about another defeat. The effort to explain came to a standstill. Then Susy tried to help her mother out—with an instance, an example, an illustration. The mother was getting ready to go downtown, and one of her errands16) was to buy a long-promised toy watch for Susy.
这似乎是个简单的问题——乍一看是简单。但是，要找到合适的语言来回答这一问题，就会遇到难以预料、无法想象的困难。困难越来越多，呈几何级数增长，最终导致了又一次失败。于是她妈妈的解释就此终止了。接着，苏西试图帮她妈妈解决这个问题——她使用了一个例子，或者说一个实例，一个例证。她妈妈准备上街去，其中一个任务就是给苏西买一块玩具手表，这只表她很久以前就许诺为女儿买了。
“If you forgot the watch, mamma, would that be a little thing?”
“妈妈，如果你忘记买这块表，这算是小事情吗？”
She was not concerned about the watch, for she knew it would not be forgotten. What she was hoping for was that the answer would unriddle the riddle, and bring rest and peace to her perplexed little mind.
她所在意的并不是这块表，因为她知道妈妈不会忘记。她所希望的是妈妈的回答能够解决这个难解之谜，能够为她那困惑的小小心灵带来平静和安宁。
The hope was disappointed, of course—for the reason that the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider's measurement of it, but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. The king's lost crown is a vast matter to the king, but of no consequence to the child. The lost toy is a great matter to the child, but in the king's eyes it is not a thing to break the heart about. A verdict was reached, but it was based upon the above model, and Susy was granted leave to measure her disasters thereafter with her own tape-line.
当然，这一希望落空了——因为不幸的大小是无法用局外人的尺度来衡量的，而只能由那个深受其害的当事人来衡量。国王丢了王冠，对于国王来说是件大事，但对于一个孩子来说却无足轻重。孩子丢了玩具，对于这个孩子来说是件大事，但是在国王的眼里这并不是什么值得伤心的事。她们终于得出了一个结论，但这一结论是建立在上述实例的基础上，苏西也由此获得了许可，可以根据自己的尺度来衡量灾难的大小。
As a child, Susy had a passionate temper; and it cost her much remorse17) and many tears before she learned to govern it, but after that it was a wholesome18) salt19), and her character was the stronger and healthier for its presence. It enabled her to be good with dignity; it preserved her not only from being good for vanity's sake, but from even the appearance of it. In looking back over the long-vanished years it seems but natural and excusable that I should dwell with longing affection and preference upon incidents of her young life which made it beautiful to us, and that I should let its few small offences go unsummoned20) and unreproached.
苏西小时候就形成了热情而容易激动的性格，这一点，在她学会控制自己以前，没少让她后悔和流泪；但在她学会控制以后，这就成了一种健康的情绪，她的性格也因此变得更加坚强、更加健康。这使她能够做到乖巧而不失尊严，不仅不会为了虚荣而做个好孩子，甚至也不会装模作样。回顾早已逝去的昔日岁月，我不免要带着无限思念的感情和偏爱来谈论她年轻的生命，谈论种种在我们看来能为其人生增光添彩的好事，而对于那为数不多的小小的过错则略去不提，不加责备，想必这也是人之常情，可以谅解的吧。
1. blithe [blaɪð] adj. 欢乐的，愉快的；无忧无虑的
2. be given to：喜欢，癖好
3. pathos [ˈpeɪθɒs] n. 痛苦，不幸
4. baffle [ˈbæf(ə)l] vt. 使困惑，使难住；使受挫折
5. stock [stɒk] adj. 通常的，平凡的
6. sojourn [ˈsɒdʒə(r)n] n. 逗留
7. myriad [ˈmɪriəd] n. 无数的人或物
8. squabble [ˈskwɒb(ə)l] vi. (为琐事)争吵
9. infirmity [ɪnˈfɜː(r)məti] n. 体弱，虚弱
10. arid [ˈærɪd] adj. 不毛的，贫瘠的
11. halting [ˈhɔːltɪŋ] adj. 结结巴巴的，吞吞吐吐的；不流畅的
12. brood over：苦思
13. grope [ɡrəʊp] vt. 摸索(路等)
14. bog [bɒɡ] n. 沼泽；困境
15. furnish [ˈfɜː(r)nɪʃ] vt. 供应；提供
16. errand [ˈerənd] n. 差事，差使
17. remorse [rɪˈmɔː(r)s] n. 痛悔，悔恨；自责
18. wholesome [ˈhəʊls(ə)m] adj. 有益身心健康的
19. salt [sɔːlt] n. 风趣；兴味；机智
20. unsummoned [ˈʌn ˈsʌmənd] adj. 未被召集(或传唤、邀请)的