《米德尔马契》开篇：英文原著带中文翻译

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

谁若十分关心人类的历史，关心这神秘的混合物在时间所做的种种实验下如何表现，谁就不会不至少短暂地思索一下圣特蕾莎的一生，不会不带着几分温柔的笑意想到那个小女孩，一天早晨牵着比她更小的弟弟的手走出去，要到摩尔人的国度去寻求殉道。他们摇摇晃晃地走出崎岖的阿维拉，睁大眼睛，看上去像两只无助的小鹿，却怀着人的心，已经在为一个民族的理想而跳动；直到家庭现实以舅舅们的形象与他们相遇，把他们从伟大的决心中唤了回来。那次童年的朝圣是一个恰当的开端。特蕾莎热烈而富于理想的天性要求一种史诗般的生活：那些卷帙浩繁的骑士传奇，以及一个才华出众的少女在社交上的征服，对她来说算得了什么？她的火焰很快烧尽了那点轻浮的燃料；而后，由于从内部得到滋养，它高飞而去，追寻某种无限的满足，某种永远不会使人厌倦的目标，某种能使自我绝望与超越自我的狂喜意识相调和的对象。她在改革一个修会中找到了自己的史诗。

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

那位生活在三百年前的西班牙女子，肯定不是她这类人中的最后一个。许多特蕾莎出生了，却没有为自己找到一种史诗般的生活，其中有一种影响深远的行动在不断展开；也许只有一种充满错误的生活，那是一种精神上的伟大与机会的卑劣不相称所生出的产物；也许是一种悲剧性的失败，没有找到神圣的诗人，便无人哭泣地沉入遗忘。她们借着昏暗的灯光和纷乱的环境，试图使自己的思想与行为在高尚中保持一致；但在常人眼里，她们的挣扎终究显得只是反复无常和杂乱无章；因为这些后来出生的特蕾莎没有得到任何连贯的社会信仰与秩序来帮助，而这种信仰与秩序本可以为热切向善的灵魂发挥知识的作用。她们的热情在模糊的理想与女性共同的渴望之间交替；于是前者被斥为过度，后者被责为堕落。

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

有些人觉得，这些屡屡出错的生活应归咎于至高力量在塑造女性天性时那种令人不便的模糊不定：如果女性的无能有一个像数到三就不能再数那样严格统一的水平，那么女性的社会境遇也许可以用科学的确定性来对待。与此同时，这种模糊不定依然存在，而变化的限度实在比人们从女性发型的一致以及散文和诗歌中受人喜爱的爱情故事所想象的要宽广得多。这里或那里，有一只小天鹅在棕色池塘的鸭群中不安地长大，却始终找不到那条活水，去与自己的蹼足同类为伴。这里或那里，诞生了一位圣特蕾莎，却什么也没有创立；她那充满爱的心跳和叹息，为一种未能达到的善而颤动，最终在种种阻碍中消散，而不是凝聚为某种长久可辨的业绩。