1、The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance ofImaginationHarvard University Commencement AddressJ.K. RowlingTercentenary Theatre, June 5, 2008失败的好处和想象力的重要性哈佛大学毕业典礼J.K. 罗琳2008 年 6 月 5 日President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud
2、 parents, and, above all, graduates,福斯特主席，哈佛公司和监察委员会的各位成员，各位老师、家长、全体毕业生们：The first thing I would like to say is “thank you.“ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinaryhonour, but the weeks of fear and nausea Ive endured at the thought of giving thiscommencement address have made me lose weight.
3、A win-win situation! Now all I have to do istake deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the worlds largestGryffindors reunion.首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉，连日来为这个演讲经受的恐惧和紧张，更令我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面。现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下，眯着眼睛看看前面的大红横幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的魔法学院聚会上。Delivering a commencement addre
4、ss is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mindback to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished Britishphilosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously inwriting this one, because it turns out that I cant rememb
5、er a single word she said. This liberatingdiscovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you toabandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gaywizard.发表毕业演说是一个巨大的责任，至少在我回忆自己当年的毕业典礼前是这么认为的。那天做演讲的是英国著名的哲学家 Baroness M
6、ary Warnock，对她演讲的回忆，对我写今天的演讲稿，产生了极大的帮助，因为我不记得她说过的任何一句话了。这个发现让我释然，让我不再担心我可能会无意中影响你放弃在商业，法律或政治上的大好前途，转而醉心于成为一个快乐的魔法师。You see? If all you remember in years to come is the gay wizard joke, Ive still come outahead ofBaroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals - the first step to self-improvement.你们看，如果在若干年后你
7、们还记得“快乐的魔法师” 这个笑话，那就证明我已经超越了BaronessMary Warnock。建立可实现的目标 这是提高自我的第一步。Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I haveaskedmyself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learnedin the 21 years that has expired between that
8、 day and this.实际上，我为今天应该和大家谈些什么绞尽了脑汁。我问自己什么是我希望早在毕业典礼上就该了解的，而从那时起到现在的 21 年间，我又得到了什么重要的启示。I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together tocelebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And asyou stand on the thresho
9、ld of what is sometimes called real life, I want to extol the crucialimportance of imagination.我想到了两个答案。在这美好的一天，当我们一起庆祝你们取得学业成就的时刻，我希望告诉你们失败有什么样的益处；在你们即将迈向“现实生活” 的道路之际，我还要褒扬想象力的重要性。These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but bear with me.这些似乎是不切实际或自相矛盾的选择，但请先容我讲完。Looking back at the 21-year-
10、old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience forthe 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balancebetween the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.回顾 21 岁刚刚毕业时的自己，对于今天 42 岁的我来说，是一个稍微不太舒服的经历。可以说，我人生的前一部
11、分，一直挣扎在自己的雄心和身边的人对我的期望之间。I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, myparents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been tocollege, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personalquirk that couldneve
12、r pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.我一直深信，自己唯一想做的事情，就是写小说。不过，我的父母，他们都来自贫穷的背景，没有任何一人上过大学，坚持认为我过度的想象力是一个令人惊讶的个人怪癖，根本不足以让我支付按揭，或者取得足够的养老金。I know the irony strikes like with the force of a cartoon anvil now, but我现在明白反讽就像用卡通铁砧去打击你，但.They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to stud
13、y English Literature. Acompromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study ModernLanguages. Hardly had my parents car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditchedGerman and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.他们希望我去拿个职业学位，而我想去攻读英国文学。最后，达成了一个双方都不甚满意的妥协：我
14、改学现代语言。可是等到父母一走开，我立刻放弃了德语而报名学习古典文学。I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found outfor the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have beenhard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came
15、 to securing the keys to anexecutive bathroom.我不记得将这事告诉了父母，他们可能是在我毕业典礼那一天才发现的。我想，在全世界的所有专业中，他们也许认为，不会有比研究希腊神话更没用的专业了，根本无法换来一间独立宽敞的卫生间。I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view.There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you
16、 in the wrong direction; themoment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannotcriticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poorthemselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an
17、ennoblingexperience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand pettyhumiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed somethingon which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.我想澄清一下：我不会因为父母的观点，而责
18、怪他们。埋怨父母给你指错方向是有一个时间段的。当你成长到可以控制自我方向的时候，你就要自己承担责任了。尤其是，我不会因为父母希望我不要过穷日子，而责怪他们。他们一直很贫穷，我后来也一度很穷，所以我很理解他们。贫穷并不是一种高贵的经历，它带来恐惧、压力、有时还有绝望，它意味着许许多多的羞辱和艰辛。靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷，确实可以引以自豪，但贫穷本身只有对傻瓜而言才是浪漫的。What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.我在你们这个年龄，最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。At your age, in spit
19、e of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long inthe coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passingexaminations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of mypeers.我在您们这么大时，明显缺乏在大学学习的动力，我花了
20、太久时间在咖啡吧写故事，而在课堂的时间却很少。我有一个通过考试的诀窍，并且数年间一直让我在大学生活和同龄人中不落人后。I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you havenever known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone againstthe caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment
21、suppose that everyone here has enjoyed anexistence of unruffled privilege and contentment.我不想愚蠢地假设，因为你们年轻、有天份，并且受过良好的教育，就从来没有遇到困难或心碎的时刻。拥有才华和智慧，从来不会使人对命运的反复无常有所准备；我也不会假设大家坐在这里冷静地满足于自身的优越感。However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failu
22、re. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire forsuccess. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average persons idea ofsuccess, so high have you already flown academically.相反，你们是哈佛毕业生的这个事实，意味着你们并不很了解失败。你们也许极其渴望成功，所以非常害怕失败。说实话，你们眼中的失败，很可能就是普通人眼中的成功，
23、毕竟你们在学业上已经达到很高的高度了。Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eagerto give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, amere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.
24、An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be inmodern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me,and that I had hadfor myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest
25、failure I knew.最终，我们所有人都必须自己决定什么算作失败，但如果你愿意，世界是相当渴望给你一套标准的。所以我承认命运的公平，从任何传统的标准看，在我毕业仅仅七年后的日子里，我的失败达到了史诗般空前的规模：短命的婚姻闪电般地破裂，我又失业成了一个艰难的单身母亲。除了流浪汉，我是当代英国最穷的人之一，真的一无所有。当年父母和我自己对未来的担忧，现在都变成了现实。按照惯常的标准来看，我也是我所知道的最失败的人。Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my li
26、fe was a darkone, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kindof fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light atthe end of it was a hope rather than a reality.现在，我不打算站在这里告诉你们，失败是有趣的。那段日子是我生命中的黑暗岁月，我不知道
27、它是否代表童话故事里需要历经的磨难，更不知道自己还要在黑暗中走多久。很长一段时间里，前面留给我的只是希望，而不是现实。So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of theinessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and beganto direct all my energy into finishing the on
28、ly work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded atanything else, I might never have found the determination tosucceed in the one arena I believed Itruly belonged. I was set free, because my greatestfear had already been realised, and I was stillalive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, an
29、d I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And sorock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.那么为什么我要谈论失败的好处呢？因为失败意味着剥离掉那些不必要的东西。我因此不再伪装自己、远离自我，而重新开始把所有精力放在对我最重要的事情上。如果不是没有在其他领域成功过，我可能就不会找到，在一个我确信真正属于的舞台上取得成功的决心。我获得了自由，因为最害怕的虽然已经发生了，但我还活着，我仍然有一个我深爱的女儿，我还有一个旧打字机和一个很大的想法。所以困境的谷底，成
30、为我重建生活的坚实基础。You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to livewithout failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as wellnot have lived atall in which case, you fail by default.你们可能永远没有达到我经历的那种失败程度，但有些失败，在生活中是不可避免的。生活不可能没有
31、一点失败，除非你生活的万般小心，而那也意味着你没有真正在生活了。无论怎样，有些失败还是注定地要发生。Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taughtme things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strongwill, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also f
32、ound out that I had friends whose value wastruly above rubies.失败使我的内心产生一种安全感，这是我从考试中没有得到过的。失败让我看清自己，这也是我通过其他方式无法体会的。我发现，我比自己认为的，要有更强的意志和决心。我还发现，我拥有比宝石更加珍贵的朋友。The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that youare,ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will
33、 never truly know yourself, or thestrength ofyour relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for allthat it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.从挫折中获得智慧、变得坚强，意味着你比以往任何时候都更有能力生存。只有在逆境来临的时候，你才会真正认识你自己，了解身边
34、的人。这种了解是真正的财富，虽然是用痛苦换来的，但比我以前得到的任何资格证书都有用。Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness liesin knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV,are not your life, though you will meet many people of my
35、 age and older who confuse the two. Lifeis difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyones total control, and the humility to know that willenable you to survive its vicissitudes.如果给我一部时间机器，我会告诉 21 岁的自己，人的幸福在于知道生活不是一份漂亮的成绩单，你的资历、简历，都不是你的生活，虽然你会碰到很多与我同龄或更老一点的人今天依然还在混淆两者。生活是艰辛的，复杂的，超出任何人的控制能力，而谦恭地了解这一点
36、，将使你历经沧桑后能够更好的生存。You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, becauseofthe part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defendthe value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in amuch broader sense. Im
37、agination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envisionthat which isnot, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In itsarguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us toempathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.对于第二个主题的选
38、择 想象力的重要性 你们可能会认为是因为它对我重建生活起到了帮助，但事实并非完全如此。虽然我愿誓死捍卫睡前要给孩子讲故事的价值观，我对想象力的理解已经有了更广泛的含义。想象力不仅仅是人类设想还不存在的事物这种独特的能力，为所有发明和创新提供源泉，它还是人类改造和揭露现实的能力，使我们同情自己不曾经受的他人苦难。One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informedmuch of what I subsequently wrote in those books.
39、This revelation came in the form of one of myearliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent inmy early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty Internationals headquarters inLondon.其中一个影响最大的经历发生在我写哈利波特之前，为我随后写书提供了很多想法。这些想法成形于我早期的工作经历，在
40、 20 多岁时，尽管我可以在午餐时间里悄悄写故事，可为了付房租，我做的主要工作是在伦敦总部的大赦国际研究部门。There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by menand women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of whatwas happening tothem. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared
41、 without trace,sent to Amnesty by theirdesperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of theirinjuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, ofkidnappings and rapes.在我的小办公室，我看到了人们匆匆写的信件，它们是从极权主义政权被偷送出来的。那些人冒着被监禁的危险，告知外
42、面的世界他们那里正在发生的事情。我看到了那些无迹可寻的人的照片，它们是被那些绝望的家人和朋友送来的。我看过拷问受害者的证词和被害的照片。我打开过手写的目击证词，描述绑架和强奸犯的审判和处决。Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from theirhomes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of theirgovernment. Visitors to ou
43、r office included those who had come to give information, or to try andfind out what had happened to those who they had left behind.我有很多的同事是前政治犯，他们已离开家园流离失所，或逃亡流放，因为他们敢于怀疑政府、独立思考。来我们办公室的访客，包括那些前来提供信息，或想设法知道那些被迫留下的同志发生了什么事的人。I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I
44、 was at the time, whohad become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as hespoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was,and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Under
45、ground Stationafterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisitecourtesy, and wished me future happiness.我将永远不会忘记一个非洲酷刑的受害者，一名当时还没有我大的年轻男子，他因在故乡的经历而精神错乱。在摄像机前讲述被残暴地摧残的时候，他颤抖失控。他比我高一英尺，却看上去像一个脆弱的儿童。我被安排随后护送他到地铁站，这名生活已被残酷地打乱的男子，小心翼翼地握着我的手，祝我未来生活幸福。And as long
46、 as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, frombehind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The dooropened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for theyoung man sitting with her. S
47、he had just given him the news that in retaliation for his ownoutspokenness against his countrys regime, his mother had been seized and executed.只要我活着，我还会记得，在一个空荡荡的的走廊，突然从背后的门里，传来我从未听过的痛苦和恐惧的尖叫。门打开了，调查员探出头请求我，为坐在她旁边的青年男子，调一杯热饮料。她刚刚给他的消息是，为了报复他对国家政权的批评，他的母亲已经被捕并执行了枪决。Every day of my working week in m
48、y early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate Iwas, tolive in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a publictrial were the rights of everyone.在我 20 多岁的那段日子，每一天的工作，都在提醒我自己是多么幸运。生活在一个民选政府的国家，依法申述与公开审理，是所有人的权利。Every day, I saw more evidence about the e
49、vils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, togain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things Isaw, heard and read.每一天，我都能看到更多有关恶人的证据，他们为了获得或维持权力，对自己的同胞犯下暴行。我开始做噩梦，真正意义上的噩梦，全都和我所见所闻有关。And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had everknown before.同时在这里我也了解到更多关于人类的善良，比我以前想象的要多很多。Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for theirbeliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading tocollectiveaction, saves live
