雙語對照 ● 愛是艱難的　Love Is Difficult

■ 愛是艱難的　Love Is Difficult

◎ Rainer Maria Rilke

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted[81] to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging[82] , surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent). It is a high inducement[83] for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

這對愛來說是件好事：因為愛也是艱難的。因為讓一個人去愛另一個人，這也許是上帝指派給我們的最重大、最艱巨的首要任務，是最后的考驗和證明，別的工作只不過是為此而做的準備罷了。這就是為什么一切才剛剛開始的年輕人無法去愛。他們必須先學習什么是愛，用他們的整個生命，用他們的所有力量，用積聚了他們的孤獨、焦慮和充滿榮譽感的心去學習愛。然而，在這個長久且專注的學習過程中，愛會永遠鐫刻在你的生命里——在深深的寂寞里孤獨地等待，只是為了那個所愛的人。愛的涵義不是傾心、獻身以及與他人結合（對于一個懵懂的、涉世不深的、辦事無條理的人來說，那會是怎樣的一種結合呢）。愛是一種誘惑力，它吸引著人們?nèi)プ兊贸墒?，去完善自己，去成就世界，為了另一個人去充實自己；愛是一種偉大且艱巨的要求，是它選擇了一個人，并呼喚著他走向遠方。如此看來，年輕人必須把愛看作他們的工作（“日夜不分的敲打、錘煉”），希望他們能夠善用那些賜予他們的愛。傾心、獻身以及每一種結合都不是為他們而準備的（他們還需要很長很長時間的克制和積累）；因為那是愛的最高境界，是人類目前幾乎無法達到的境界。

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