情书，是用来表达内心的真挚情意，让对方看了能满心欢喜和感动不已，所以必须写的深情款款，才能打动心弦、赢得芳心。然而，情书也是一种极为强烈的印象装饰，它通过优美的文词和修饰过的语句，来抒发情感并打动对方的心。
Love letters
情书
The mighty pen, instrument of mojo
强大的笔，求爱的工具
Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance. Edited by Andrea Clarke. The British Library; 128 pages; 7
《情书：2000年的罗曼史》 ，安德里·克拉克编辑，不列颠图书馆出版，128页，7英镑
“HOW do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet to her future husband Robert may be the most famous love letter in English. Never mind that she did not send it—or even show it to him—until after they were safely wed in 1846. Writing words of fervent passion was the way that even the most tongue-tied wooed for centuries. Alas, the form has fallen out of fashion. Rare are those who pick up a pen to declare, “I am in love. Deeply. Un-endingly, for ever and ever,” as Mervyn Peake did to his wife Maeve Gilmore in the 1940s. Today we Skype, send texts or outsource the job to Hallmark and heart-shaped emoticons.
“问我多么爱你？听我细说端详”伊丽莎白·巴雷特·勃朗宁写给她未来的丈夫罗伯特的十四行诗可能是最著名的一封英语情书了。虽然她结果并没有把这封信寄出去，而且直到他们在1846年结婚之后她才把这首诗给丈夫过目，这并没有关系。几个世纪以来，即使最不善言语的人也可以通过写下帜热的爱意来追求心上人。可惜的是，这种倾诉衷情的方式已经过时了。现在很少有人会像40年代的马文·匹克那样提起笔，向他妻子梅弗·吉尔摩宣誓：“我堕入爱河了。深深地，无尽地，天长地久。”今天我们用Skype，短信传达爱意，有时甚至让贺曼公司为我们代劳，或是借助心型的表情符号来表达。
A new collection of great British love letters may inspire a renaissance, or at least a bit of swooning. The slim and tender volume, culled from letters in the British Library and edited by Andrea Clarke, has been out in Britain since October but will enjoy a strategic release in America on Valentine’s Day.
一本新的英国情书精选集可能会让你重新想要拾笔写情书，或至少会让你回忆起一点恋爱时的醉心感觉。这本选集篇幅短小，文字柔和，是安德里·克拉克从不列颠图书馆中的信件里甄选编辑而成的。该书从去年10月开始就已在英国出版，在美国则策略性地挑选了情人节出版。
What strikes the contemporary eye is the depth of emotion and sincerity that the medium seems to allow. Whether penned by royalty or naval officers, wives or actors, when separated by convention or distance or the prospect of death, the sentiments conveyed are heartfelt, intimate and profound. “As long as I have known you, you have been to me ‘half angel and half bird and all a wonder and a wild desire’,” writes Gordon Bottomley, a Yorkshire poet, citing his own poem in a letter to Emily Burton in 1899. Then there is the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, to Queen Elizabeth I in 1591: “Were the sweetness of your nature turned into the greatest bitterness that could be, it is not in your power (as great a Queen as you are) to make me love you any less.”
对现代人来说最为惊讶的是情书这种媒介可以传递的情感之深，心意之诚。不管是皇族还是军官，妻子还是演员，无论是被世俗、距离还是即将降临的死亡所分隔，情书传递的感情都是如此真挚，如此温馨，如此深远。约克郡的一位诗人高登·巴腾理在1899年写给艾米莉·巴顿的信内引用了自己的诗：“自打我认识你以来，你对我来说就‘半是天使半是飞鸟，合起来便是奇迹和狂野的欲望’”。还有艾塞克斯伯爵罗伯特·德弗罗在1591年写给伊丽莎白一世的信：“即使你天性的甜美转变成了最可怕的暴戾，就算你是伟大的女王，你也无法让我对你的爱意减少半分。”
Admiral Horatio Nelson left his last letter to his secret lover, Lady Emma Hamilton, unfinished on his shipboard desk just before the Battle of Trafalgar in which he died. “My dearest beloved Emma the dear friend of my bosom, the signal has been made that the enemys combined fleet are coming out of port…I will take care that my name shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as much as my own life. And as my last writing before the battle will be to you, so I hope in God that I shall live to finish…”
海军上将霍雷肖·纳尔逊的最后一封信是写给他的秘密情人艾玛·汉密尔顿夫人的。特拉法加海战爆发时，这封未写完的信就留在他船内的写字台上，而他在那场战役中丧生了。“我最亲爱的艾玛，亲爱的挚友，敌人联军舰队出港的警报已经响起……我会努力让自己永远都是你和霍雷提娅（注：他们的女儿）最亲爱的人，我爱你们如同自己的生命。这是我在开战前为你写的最后一封信，愿上帝保佑我能够活下来写完……”
Nor does passion necessarily die with marriage. Many of the 25 letters are from adoring husbands to their wives—too few go the other way around. “Though I am separated in body far from thee by great distance,” wrote Sir Thomas Baskerville to his wife Mary in 1595, “yet I leave the better part of me, which is my spirit, to attend thee.”
热情也并不总是在婚姻中消逝。书中收录了25封丈夫写给他们钟爱的妻子的情书，妻子写给丈夫的倒不多见。托玛斯·巴斯克维尔爵士1595年在给他妻子的信中写到：“虽然我的身体和你相隔万里，我依然把我最好的一部份——我的灵魂留在了你身边照顾你。”
Heartbreak, too, must be recorded. Among the most remarkable excerpts in the book is an unpublished poem by Ted Hughes to Sylvia Plath titled “Cambridge was our courtship”. Charles Dickens, wounded, pens a sweet reproach to Catherine Hogarth, his future wife and mother of their ten children (from whom he was ultimately separated). And Oscar Wilde, in a Reading prison in 1897, reflects on “our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship” in an excerpt from an astonishing 50,000-word missive to the young Lord whose betrayal led to his trial and imprisonment for sodomy.
同样的，心碎的感觉也在这些情书里记载了下来。这本选集中最引人注目的几篇信函中有一首泰德·休斯写给西尔维亚·柏拉斯的一首未发表过的诗，诗名是《康桥曾见证我们的爱》。凯瑟琳·荷加斯一次伤了查尔斯·狄更斯的心，于是这位文豪写了一封甜蜜的情书批评她。后来凯瑟琳成为了他的妻子，他们一共有十个孩子（不过他们最后分居了）。还有奥斯卡·王尔德1897年在雷丁的监狱里写给一位年轻伯爵的那封洋洋5万词的长信中的节选。正是这位伯爵的背叛让他因为鸡奸罪而被审判监禁。他在信中反思着“我们那不幸且可悲的友情”。
Along with photos of the lovers, each manuscript is reproduced, revealing the passion encoded in the script. These letters can appear dashed off or crammed in; Charlotte Bront’s notes of unrequited love were evidently torn apart and then re-sewn (pictured top). This physicality is the key virtue of the hand-written letter. Each is an act of intimacy and self-exposure. Tangible and personal between two people—unmediated by screens or servers, uncopied and unique.
和写信的爱人们的照片一起，每份手稿的原样都被收录了，透露出字里行间的真挚情感。这些信件有的匆匆而就，有的则片纸万言。夏洛蒂·勃朗特倾诉单恋的笔记很明显曾经被撕碎过，后来又重新拼缝了起来（文首照片）。手写信件最大的优点在于其真实感。每封信都是一种亲密行为，一种自我展露的体现。两个人之间的有形亲密联系，那是电脑屏幕或服务器所不能传递的，无法复制，独一无二。
One American writer has challenged readers to write a real letter every day this month, an initiative called “A Month of Letters”. In February, surely, one could turn instead to one’s own sweetheart, and compose a billet-doux.
一位美国作家曾向读者提出一个挑战，让他们当月每天都手写一封信，这个活动被叫作“书信一月”。当然，现在正好是2月，你可以用这个机会给你的爱人写一封情书。 |
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