丰子恺《渐》英文版Gradualness
遛弯儿-毕业生个人小结
Gradualness
by
Feng
Zikai
The subtle factor that makes life
endurable is “gradualness”. It is by this
“gradualness” that the Creator deceives all
humans. Through the process of
imperceptible
gradual change, innocent kids become ambitious
youths, chivalrous
youths become unfeeling
grownups, aggressive grownups become mulish old
fogeys.
Since the change takes place by slow
degrees – year by year, month by month, day by
day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by
second, you feel as if you were
permanently
your same old self always seeing much fun and
meaning in life, like one,
walking a long,
long way down an extremely gentle mountain slope,
hardly perceives
its degree of incline or
notices the altered scenes as he moves along. You
thus take a
positive view of life and find it
endurable. Suppose a kid suddenly became a young
man overnight, or a young man suddenly became
an old man in a matter of hour from
dawn till
dusk, you would definitely feel astonished,
emotionally stirred and sad, or
lose any
interest in life due to its transience. Hence it
is evident that life is sustained
by
“gradualness”. This “gradualness” is particularly
crucial to women. Beautiful
young ladies
starring in an opera or stage show will someday
end up becoming
grannies moping their
remaining years away around a fire. This may at
first sound
incredible and young ladies may
refuse to accept it as true. Fact is, however, all
aged
women you meet today have without
exception “gradually” evolved from beautiful
young ladies of yesterday.
It is also due
to this “gradualness” that one is able to
reconcile himself to his
reduced
circumstances. Fiction and reality abound with
instances of a
good-for-nothing young man from
a wealthy family “gradually” ruining his family by
repeated business failures and becoming in
turn a poor wretch, a hired laborer, a slave,
a rogue, a pauper and a thief … Since it is a
process of “gradual” change covering,
say, ten
to twenty years, he doesn’t experience any
terrible emotional shock at all.
Therefore, in
spite of all the intense sufferings – hunger,
cold, illness, imprisonment,
torture, he
continues to cling to the present life. On the
other hand, however, if the
wealthy young man
were all of a sudden reduced to begging and
thieving, he would
definitely feel too
aggrieved to go on living.
“Gradualness” is
really the mysterious law of Mother Nature, the
subtle artifice
of the Creator! The unnoticed
mutual replacement of opposites, the change of the
four
seasons and the survival or extinction of
species – all is imperceptibly governed by
this law. Budding spring “gradually”
changes into verdant summer; withered autumn
“gradually” changes into bleak winter. Though
we have gone through several dozen
years, yet
on a winter night, when we sit around a fire or
lie in bed, we can hardly
imagine how we would
feel on a summer day consuming cold drinks and
fanning
ourselves busily, and vice versa. The
gradual change from winter to summer, or from
summer to winter takes place day by day, hour
by hour, minute by minute, second by
second,
without leaving any marked traces in between. The
same with daylight
gradually fading into
night. When you sit by your window reading a book
towards the
evening, you’ll find the words on
each page “gradually” becoming blurred. But if you
keep on reading, with the words still legible
(due to the gradual strengthening of your
eyesight in the deepening twilight), you’ll be
unconscious of daylight already
transformed
into night. Likewise, when at dawn you stand
intently gazing out of a
window into the
eastern horizon, you never feel the transition
from night to day.
While parents living
together with their children all the time never
perceive their
gradual growth, they may fail
to recognize, however, a distant relative whom
they
have not seen for quite some time. I
remember how, on each New Year’s Eve, we
used
to sit by a red candle to eagerly wait for our
narcissus to come into full bloom.
How silly
we were! If the narcissus had really come into
bloom in our presence at our
desire, it would
have meant the violation of the law of Nature, the
weakening of the
foundation of the universe,
and the last day of humanity!
Through bit-by-
bit change, “gradualness” conceals from notice the
lapse of time
and the change of things, so
that people are misled into believing that
everything
remains the same eternally. What a
trick the Creator is playing on humans! Here is a
story by way of illustration. There was farmer
who would jump over a ditch holding a
calf in
his arms on his way to work in the fields every
morning and also on his way
back home every
evening. A year later, the calf had grown bigger
and heavier, almost
lie a cow, but the farmer,
insensible to its increasing weight, continued the
same old
daily routine. One day, however, the
didn’t go to work for some reason. And staring
from the next day, he was no longer able to
carry his calf in his arms in jumping over
the
ditch. The Creator uses the same trick to make you
so obsessed with life that you
become
oblivious to its changeableness and hardships. You
are kept jumping over the
ditch nonstop day
after day with the growing calf in your arms.
While you suppose
wrongly that life is
immutable, you are in fact putting heavier burdens
on yourself
from day to day.
I think the
clock is most symbolic of life. It normally seems
to be “still” at first
sight, but, of all
things artificially made, it is the most busy with
its hands moving all
the time. The same is
true of life. We are apt to think that we are
forever our own
selves and unchangeable, while
in fact we are ever-changing like the hands of a
clock.
Alas, as long as we are alive, we are
completely fooled by “gradualness” into
believing that we will always remain the same
and unchangeable, and therefore
becoming only
too ready to hold on to this life!
“Time” is
the essence of “gradualness”. Ordinary people have
only a superficial
understanding of time. They
seem to know it only as regards such small matters
as
boarding a train or boat, but not in
things concerning a lifetime. They see the trees,
but not the wood. Take the passengers of a
train for example. Often some passengers
are
sensible and considerate enough to offer their own
seats to the elderly or
handicapped so that
they themselves can enjoy peace of mind or
momentary public
praise. Some, when they see
other passengers falling over one another in
getting off
the train, purposely make room by
staying behind, or call out, “Don’t squeeze! We’ll
all make it! Nobody will be left behind !” But
few will be as sensible and considerate
when
making the long journey of life on board a big
“social” or “global” train.
Therefore, I wish
man would live a much shorter life. If their
lifespan could become
as brief as the time
they spent on a train or a boat, human society
would probably
witness far less bitter strife,
and people would be as polite and modest as on the
train.
However, we do have among us a few who
know how to correctly view life.
They are
great, indeed! They refuse to be fooled by
“gradualness” or the Creator.