自译：一场左倾的毕业演说——女性的语言和国度

A Left-handed Commencement Speech By Ursula K. Le Guin

I want to thank the Mills College Class of ’83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women. 我想在此感谢密尔斯学院（译注：美国加州的一所女子文理学院，但研究生项目也招收男生）83届的毕业生们，你们给了我这个难得的机会：在公共场合用女性的语言发声。

I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours. 我知道在座的毕业生中也有男性；我无意将他们排除在外——恰恰相反。在一部希腊悲剧中，一个希腊人这样对外乡人说道：“如果你不懂希腊语，请点头示意。”无论如何，毕业仪式往往默认毕业生们就算不是男性，也应当是男性。因此，我们才穿着这些从十二世纪流传下来的袍服，它们在男性身上显得十分体面，却让女性看起来像个蘑菇，或是怀孕的鹮鸟。智识传统是男性的。公共演说使用的是公共的语言——一个民族或部落的语言；而我们部落的语言是男性的语言。当然，女性也掌握了这种语言。我们并不傻。如果有谁能通过说话内容把玛格丽特·撒切尔和罗纳德·里根、英迪拉·甘地和索摩查将军区分开来，告诉我你是怎么做到的。这个世界属于男性，用男性的语言发声；话语皆是权力的话语。姑娘们，你们已经走出了很远，但再远都是不够的。你们就算出卖灵魂也到达不了目的地：因为那是属于他们的，而不是你们的。

Maybe we’ve had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything - instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won’t sound right. It’s going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if — only if — you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they’re beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success? 或许我们已经听够了权力的话语，说够了人生的征途。或许我们需要的是流露软弱的语言。试想，假如我不祝愿你们从大学的象牙塔走向真实世界，成就辉煌的事业，或者至少协助丈夫成就事业，让美国保持强大，事事成功——假如我对权力闭口不提，而在这个公共场合像个女人一样说话呢？这听起来可不大对劲。这样说话糟糕透顶。假如我首先祝愿你们——仅仅在你们想要孩子的情况下——能有自己的孩子呢？别生一大堆。两三个就足够了。我希望你们的孩子漂漂亮亮。我希望你们和你们的孩子都能清洁饱暖，拥有友情，做喜欢的工作。这就是你们上大学的目标吗？这就是你们想要的全部吗？还有成功呢又怎么说呢？

Success is somebody else’s failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don’t even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failur成功是他人的失败。成功是我们不必从中清醒过来的美国梦，因为大多数国家中的大多数人，包括我们的三千万同胞，都双眼大睁地生活在可怖的贫困现实中。不，我不想祝愿你们取得成功。我甚至不想谈论它。我想谈论的是失败。

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong. You’ll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid. 因为你们都是凡人，所以你们都将遭遇失败。你们将会遭遇失望、不公、背叛和无法挽回的失去。在你们自以为强大的地方，你们会发现自己的脆弱之处。你们将会为拥有财物工作，却发现自己反被财物所拥有。你们将会发现自己身处黑暗之中，被孤独和恐惧包围；我知道你们都已经和这种黑暗打过交道了。

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign. 我希望你们，我的姐妹和女儿们，兄弟和儿子们，都能在这片幽暗之地，这个被我们崇尚成功的文化否定，蔑称为流放地、荒原、异乡的地方怡然自处。

Well, we’re already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that’s their country; let’s explore our own. I’m not talking about sex; that’s a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I’m talking about society, the so-called man’s world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms? 我们早已是异乡人了。作为女性的女性往往被以男性为准的社会规范排除和疏远：指代人类的词语是男性，值得尊敬的神祗都是男性，唯一的方向是向上。那样的社会是他们的国度；让我们去探索我们自己的国度吧。我不是在说性；性完全是另一个世界，在那里，每个男人和每个女人都是孤独的。我所说的是社会，那个将竞争、攻击、暴力、威权和权力制度化的所谓的男人的世界。如果我们想要作为女性而生活的话，我们就必须与男人的世界有所隔离：密尔斯学院就是这种分离主义的一个极为明智的例证。那个战争游戏般的世界不是由我们建立的，也不是为我们建立的。要呼吸那里的空气， 我们必须戴上面罩；这面罩一旦戴上，就很难脱下了。所以，我们为什么不按自己的方式生活呢？在密尔斯学院，你们已经在一定程度上实践过这种生活了：不为男性和男性的权力等级而活——那是他们的游戏，也不与男性对抗——对抗仍然是在按他们的规则行事，而是与愿意加入我们的男性同行：这才是我们的游戏，我们的规则。一个受过大学教育的自由女性为什么必须在与阳刚男性对抗或为他们服务间二选一呢？她为什么不能以自己的方式过她自己的生活?

Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can’t play doctor, only nurse, can’t be warriors, only civilians, can’t be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country. 阳刚男性害怕我们的生活方式，因为我们的方式不理性、不积极、不鼓励竞争，如此等等。因此，他教会了我们厌弃和否定这种方式。在我们的社会中，生活属于无助、脆弱、病痛、非理性、无可挽回、晦涩、消极、不加控制、动物性和不洁的那一面——那片阴影遮蔽的幽谷、人生的深渊深处——一直以来都是女性的居所和责任；女性也因此备受厌弃。战士们否定和拒绝的东西被留给了我们，以及与我们分享这些东西的男性，他们也因此像我们一样不能成为医生，而只能成为护士，不能成为战士，而只能成为平民，不能成为酋长，而只能成为印第安人。这就是我们的国度——我们的国度的夜面。如果女性的国度也有白昼，也有高耸的山脉和明亮的草原的话，那么我们还只听说过先驱者讲述的关于白昼国度的故事，却还没有共同来到那片光明之地。要到达那里，模仿阳刚男性是行不通的，唯一的方法是以我们自己的方式在女性的国度生活下去，度过这片国度的漫漫长夜。

So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you’re good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it’s second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they’re going to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls. 因此，我希望你们不要作为囚徒而活，不要为自己的女性身份羞愧，不要自愿被病态的社会体系所俘虏。我希望你们能生活在自己的国度，在被你们视为家园的地方打理自己的房子，做自己的女主人，拥有自己的房间。我希望你们能在那里做自己的工作，无论你擅长的是什么，是人文还是科学技术，是管理公司还是打扫床下的灰尘。如果有人说你们的工作低人一等，因为工作者是女人的话，我希望你们能告诉他们滚一边去，并且为同样的工作获得同等的报酬。我希望你们没有支配他人的需要，也不需要被他人支配。我希望你们永远不要成为受害者，但也不要对他人施加权力。当你们身处失意、挫败和痛苦的幽暗之地时，我希望你们能记得黑暗是你们的国度，是你们生活的地方。这片国度中没有战争，也没有胜利，但未来属于这里。我们的根源在黑暗之中；大地是我们的国度。为什么我们在寻求祝福时必须仰视向上，而不是向身边、向下看去呢？我们的希望就在那里，不在满天的间谍卫星和武器之间，而在被人轻视的大地之下；不在空中，而在脚下；不在刺目的光芒中，而在滋养人类灵魂生长的黑暗之中。