The Marriage Paradox1

By Clancy Martin

“Marriage is like a cage,” Montaigne2. Montaigne: 蒙田（1533－1592），文藝復(fù)興時(shí)期法國作家，以《隨筆集》（Essais）三卷留名后世。wrote. “One sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.” The metaphor is hardly value-neutral; there is something noble if frightening about living outside the cage, secure but slavish within.3. metaphor: 隱喻，比喻；value-neutral: 價(jià)值中立，即在研究中保持中立觀念，不拿自己的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)來衡量別的人或事；slavish:奴性的，卑屈的。(My father, himself twice married, used to quote Groucho Marx4. Groucho Marx: 格魯喬·馬克思（1890－1977），美國的喜劇演員與電影明星；institution: 社會(huì)機(jī)構(gòu)，組織。: “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?”) For better or worse, Montaigne was right to point out that so many people who are married confess, after half a bottle of wine, that they would rather not be; catch a single person in a weak moment and he will often admit his longing for a lover who is more than temporary.5. 無論如何，蒙田有一點(diǎn)說對了，許多結(jié)了婚的人，在酒過三巡之后，都供認(rèn)不諱他們寧愿不結(jié)婚；而問一個(gè)處在脆弱時(shí)刻的單身漢，他通常會(huì)承認(rèn)他渴望有愛人常伴身旁，而不是逢場作戲。

Best friendship in childhood is something like marriage. Kierkegaard had the idea that, in every life,there was both a first and a second “immediacy.”6. Kierkegaard: 克爾愷郭爾（1813—1855），丹麥哲學(xué)家、神學(xué)家及作家，被視為存在主義的先驅(qū)；immediacy:【哲學(xué)】直接性，直覺性。The first is the kind you enjoy when you are encountering7. encounter: 遇到，遭遇。the world for the first time: the smell of snow in your first few winters (even as a teenager, I could smell the snow in a way I no longer can), the first times you swim, what food tasted like. Then life proceeds:Familiarity and habit creep in8. creep in: 漸漸影響，漸漸出現(xiàn)。, and the world loses its newness,its ease, its golden quality. For many of us, perhaps, we never recapture9. recapture: 重獲，奪回。that immediacy of youth. But there can be a second immediacy, experienced perhaps through love, perhaps only through faith.

當(dāng)我們在談?wù)摶橐鰰r(shí)，通常會(huì)說些什么？是至死不渝的激情，還是朝夕相處后的倦?。柯犅牎按蠹摇庇眯睦韺W(xué)和哲學(xué)來討論婚姻和愛吧。在愛中，我們是藝術(shù)家而不是科學(xué)家。一些表象，一點(diǎn)空間，是愛情長青的良方。

This second immediacy sometimes sounds like a mystical state in Kierkegaard’s writing, but sometimes like the very ordinary,though uncommon, experience of rediscovering the newness of something you’ve experienced before—as when you reread a favorite book or swim in the ocean after you haven’t done so for a few years.10. 第二種直覺性在克爾愷郭爾的著作中聽起來是種很神秘的論調(diào)，但有時(shí)又十分平常，雖然不常見，但從你曾經(jīng)歷過的事物中發(fā)現(xiàn)新鮮感——就像重讀一本鐘愛的書或者在好幾年都沒下水后又跳進(jìn)海里游泳。Most simply, I think, it’s re-experiencing what it’s like to feel fully alive. In this state, we do not forget what the world was like before, when we were satiated11. satiate: 使充分滿足，使厭膩。with it; rather, we rediscover its wonder, and appreciate it more because of all that we’ve been through. The world is, as Max Weber (writing under Kierkegaard’s in fluence) put it, “re-enchanted.”12. Max Weber: 馬克斯·韋伯（1864－1920），德國政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和社會(huì)學(xué)家，他被公認(rèn)是現(xiàn)代社會(huì)學(xué)和公共行政學(xué)最重要的創(chuàng)始人之一；enchanted: 著迷的，被施魔法的。

Having a best friend as a kid, or falling in love: These are good examples of first immediacy. The world is an enchanted place.Then the disappointments of love disenchant us. But marriage might offer the possibility of re-enchantment. The idea is that in first immediacy, you don’t know how lucky you are. In the second immediacy, you bring both the knowledge that you have chosen this situation and your understanding of the past to your new way of looking at the world, your new appreciation of love.13. 至于第二種直覺性，你既自動(dòng)選擇了這一情景，又了解過去，兩者融合形成了你看待世界的新方法，你對愛的新領(lǐng)悟。

The contemporary American philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel has identi fied what he calls a paradox in the marriage vow: To promise to love for a lifetime, while recognizing that both life and love are unpredictable,14. vow: 誓言，誓約； unpredictable: 不可預(yù)測的，無法預(yù)言的；下文的unpredictability為名詞，不可預(yù)測性，不可預(yù)見性。seems like a risky move. But as Schwitzgebel correctly argues, to promise to love a partner for a lifetime is both to acknowledge the future’s unpredictability (“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,in sickness and in health”) and to insist that one part of life won’t change: one’s commitment to one’s partner. Which is not to say that the feelings of both partners won’t change along the way.

Marriage as a slightly crazy promise—even, perhaps, a special kind of self-deception15. self-deception: 自欺，自欺欺人的行為。: to believe a proposition and at the same time not to believe it. Psychologically, self-deception is even more paradoxical than the marriage vow; it ought to be impossible, and yet we do it with fluency from a young age.16. 從心理學(xué)角度上說，自欺欺人比婚姻誓言更為自相矛盾；本來應(yīng)該是不可能的，但我們卻從小就運(yùn)用自如。

One side of the self-deception allows us to get ourselves into the kinds of love-destroying situations that I created when I ended my first two marriages. Like lying to others, lying to yourself can lead to a whole lot of trouble. Self-deception may also keep people in certain marriages long after they should have left them. The difference between bad selfdeception and good, I think, is that in the latter kind you know that you’re doing it and you know why you’re doing it. The benevolent17. benevolent: 仁慈的，親切的。power of self-deception is, in fact, what makes long, happy marriages—and all successful relationships—possible.

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 138”18. Sonnet 138: 莎士比亞最著名的14行詩之一，運(yùn)用“雙關(guān)語”的修辭技巧，講述了愛情關(guān)系中的真實(shí)與奉承。shows how this works:

When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutor’d youth,Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.But wherefore says she not she is unjust?And wherefore say not I that I am old?O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love loves not to have years told:Therefore I lie with her and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

The first two lines are a terri fic double paradox: He believes her,though he knows she’s lying—but for him to believe her, he can’t know she’s lying. Given our facility with the pretzel19. pretzel:〈美俚〉德國人，祖籍德國的人。logic that enables us to believe the lies we tell ourselves, how do we believe a lie someone else is telling us, while knowing it’s a lie? The poet admits that he lets his lover believe that he believes her lies so that she will think he is young, which is also the lie she is telling him, and he uses his performance in the same way he believes her lie—to convince himself of the lie she is telling him (“thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young”). This is subtle, convoluted, hilarious, and yet entirely true to the phenomenology of love.20. subtle: 微妙的，細(xì)微的；convoluted: 錯(cuò)綜復(fù)雜的，過分復(fù)雜的；hilarious: 引人發(fā)笑的，滑稽的；phenomenology: 現(xiàn)象學(xué)，現(xiàn)象論。

My favorite line: “O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust.” Real trust in love comes in trusting even when we know there may be reason for distrust, when we recognize that complete trust is an illusion and should not even be a goal. To truly trust is to seem to trust, to trust with the acceptance of doubt, to be willing to extend the feigning of trust while hoping, even expecting, that the feint will be returned.21. feign: 假裝，佯作；feint: 佯攻，虛擊。

As Nietzsche observed, the wisdom of the ancient Greeks was in the fact that, at least before Socrates, they preferred seeming to being.22. Nietzsche: 弗里德里希·威廉·尼采，德國哲學(xué)家，他的著作對于宗教、道德、現(xiàn)代文化、哲學(xué)以及科學(xué)等領(lǐng)域提出了廣泛的批判和討論；Socrates: 蘇格拉底，古希臘著名哲學(xué)家。蘇格拉底的哲學(xué)崇尚理性，而尼采的哲學(xué)則批判理性。They understood that “the naked truth” was not what good lovers seek:“It is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin;to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!23. 他們那時(shí)就明白，“赤裸的真理”不是好戀人們所尋求的：“勇敢地停留在表面、腠理和肌膚是很有必要的，崇拜外表，相信體型、聲調(diào)和話語吧，在整個(gè)外表的奧林匹斯山上！”。Olympus: 奧林匹斯山，希臘最高峰，神話中諸神的住所。Those Greeks were super ficial—from profundity!24. superficial: 膚淺的，淺薄的；profundity: 深刻，深度。”

Do we really want to know the truth about our lovers? We don’t even know that about ourselves—it’s simply too elusive, too protean,25. elusive: 難懂的，難以實(shí)現(xiàn)的；protean: 千變?nèi)f化的，變化多端的。too complex—and we don’t want to know it, we don’t need to know it. Would I love my wife more, would our marriage be stronger, if we knew every detail of each other’s past lovers and love affairs? Even writing this essay about marriage is scary. I am wildly in love; my marriage, though it has its ups and downs, is splendid: Do I really want to put it under a microscope?26. ups and downs: 起伏，盛衰；splendid: 極好的，令人愉快的。Will my commitment be stronger because of a 3 a.m. dissection27. dissection: 詳細(xì)查究。?

In love we are artists, not scientists. Hans Vaihinger called that kind of instrumentally false belief a “necessary fiction”; Coleridge called it“the willing suspension of disbelief.”28. Hans Vaihinger: 費(fèi)英格（1852—1933），是19世紀(jì)的德國哲學(xué)家，主要哲學(xué)著作為《仿佛哲學(xué)》，提出“虛構(gòu)”理論作為其“仿佛”（as if）哲學(xué)的基礎(chǔ)，被認(rèn)為在實(shí)用主義方向發(fā)展了康德主義；instrumentally: 起作用地，有幫助地；Coleridge: 塞繆爾·泰勒·柯勒律治（1772—1834），英國詩人、文評家，英國浪漫主義文學(xué)的奠基人之一。Kids call it playing (although it crucially excludes the illusion-killing cynicism of the “player”). In Shakespeare’s sonnet, healthy illusions are being championed, not ironized away.29. champion: 支持，擁護(hù)，ironize: 冷嘲熱諷，挖苦。