Naming Love Too Early

別太早替愛命名

今年我開始翻譯波斯詩人魯米和一些我喜歡西方詩人的詩，在翻譯過程中我發現直譯的限制。語言只是文化的一部分，文字好翻，文化難翻，如果用很長的篇幅和很多的註觧，怕會分散想要討論的主題。我雖然在西方生活了半生，我並不是語文或文化專家，但我真的很喜歡英文這個語文，也很享受分享和共鳴的樂趣，所以我很願意就我現在知道和體會的，和大家分享。

看了英國詩人大衞懷德這篇散文很有感觸，自己在感情和追求理想的路上是不是也一直在扮演那個失望者角色？在未來，在情感(家人、朋友)和理想方面，心態是否可以更開放？對愛的定義是否可以更寬廣？

NAMING LOVE TOO EARLY

Most of our heartbreak comes from attempting to name who or what we love and the way we love, too early in the vulnerable journey of discovery. We can never know in the beginning, in giving ourselves to a person, to a work, to a marriage or to a cause, exactly what kind of love we are involved with. When we demand a certain specific kind of reciprocation before the revelation has flowered completely we find our selves disappointed and bereaved and in that grief may miss the particular form of love that is actually possible but that did not meet our initial and too specific expectations. Feeling bereft we take our identity as one who is disappointed in love, our almost proud disappointment preventing us from seeing the lack of reciprocation from the person or the situation as simply a difficult invitation into a deeper and as yet unrecognizable form of affection. The act of loving itself, always becomes a path of humble apprenticeship, not only in following its difficult way and discovering its different forms of humility and beautiful abasement but strangely, through its fierce introduction to its many astonishing and different forms, where we are asked continually and against our will, to give in so many different ways, without knowing exactly, or in what way, when or how, the mysterious gift will be returned. - David Whyte

別太早為愛命名

我們心碎，因為我們太早為愛命名。

在愛的路上，我們堅持用自己的方式去愛。

當我們遇到一個人，開始一份工作、婚姻、志業時，

我們無法預測愛會如何展現。

如果我們堅持依一定的方式和時間得到回饋，

我們可能會在愛尚未真正成熟前就失望放棄了。

這並不是我們對愛的期望太高，

而是它可能以其他的方式出現。

在悲憤中，我們把自己定位為「失戀者」、「失婚者」、「失志者」，

近乎驕傲的失望讓我們看不到愛的邀請；

它邀請我們進入一種深層和不易命名的愛。

我們都是學習謙卑和愛旅途上的學徒，

愛不斷地要求我們發掘它不同謙卑忍辱的面貌和形式。

在愛中，我們被要求放棄我們想要知道和掌控它何時

和以何種方式回報我們的意願。

- 問荷詮譯