109 年 國立暨南國際大學外國語文學系碩士班語言學組《英文作文與翻譯》

Translate into Chinese the following passage from Goethe's early novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, about a sensitive young man who falls in love with a woman married to another man.

She feels how I am suffering. Today her glance went straight to my heart. I found her alone; I did not speak and she looked at me. And I no longer saw her lovable beauty, no longer the gentle light of her exquisite spirit; all that disappeared. I saw a far more wonderful look in her eyes: an expression of warmest sympathy, of the sweetest compassion. Why was I not allowed to throw myself at her feet? Why could I not take her in my arms and answer her with a thousand kisses?
She took refuge at the clavichord, and her soft voice breathed out a melody to the accompaniment of her playing. Never have I seen her lips so charming; it was as if they opened thirstily, to drink in the sweet tones which welled up from the instrument; as if only a mysterious echo reverberated from her innocent mouth. If I could only describe it to you! I was resigned; I bowed my head and vowed: "Never shall I dare to kiss those lips, on which heavenly spirits hover."

Sometime I say to myself: "Your destiny is unique; call the others fortunate—no one has been so tormented as you." Then I read an ancient poet, and it seems to me as though I look into my own heart. I have so much to endure! Oh, were there other men before me as miserable as I?

Today I sat near her as she played the clavichord, all sorts of tunes and with so much expression. So much! What could I do? Her little sister sat on my knee and dressed her doll. Tears came into my eyes. I bowed my head and caught sight of her wedding ring. The tears ran down my cheeks—and suddenly Lotte began to play the heavenly old melody. All at once my soul was touched by a feeling of consolation, by a memory of the past, of the other occasions when I had heard the song.

The poet W. H. Auden wrote a well-known preface to The Sorrows of Young Werther. Following is an extract:

The biographers tell us that Werther was the product of Goethe's unhappy love for Charlotte Buff, but this is certainly an oversimplification. When writing a novel, an author naturally often makes use of his personal experiences, but a novel is not an autobiography. Goethe, for instance, did not, like his hero, commit suicide. Again, Goethe makes Werther an idle dilettante, who sketches a bit, reads a bit, but is incapable of seriously concentrating on anything. There is an element of self-portraiture in this: all his life, partly out of a temperamental indifference and partly because he was interested in so many things, Goethe found it difficult to finish a work, but idleness was never one of his vices. When he wrote Werther, he was probably in a disturbed state, for, a year after its publication, he wrote: "I am falling from one confusion into another." The novel seems to me to be one of those works of art in which the conscious and unconscious motives of the creator are at odds. Consciously, that is, Goethe approved of his hero, but his unconscious motive was therapeutic: by cultivating to the extreme, but only in words, the indulgence in subjective emotions typical of [18th-19th century German literature], to get it out of his system and find his true poetic self, just as Byron, after Childe Harold, was able to put humorous gloom behind him and realize his true talent as a comic poet.

Write an essay of at least three paragraphs based on this passage. Your essay should respond to Auden's comments on the relation between an author's personal life and his literary creations. You should also discuss "conscious" and "unconscious" motives in literature.