4. When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i. e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost –
    "So hee with difficulty and labour hard
    Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee,"
    which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling "hee" for "he" was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.
    4)16岁那年，我突然发现词语本身就能给人以愉悦：词的音响和词的连缀。<失乐园》中有这样一段诗行：他负载着困难和辛劳挺进着：负着困难辛劳的他。
    (So hee with difficulty and labor hard
    Moved On，with difficulty and labor hee．)
    这现在看来并没有什么了不得，可当时却使我心灵震颤。而用hee的拼写代替he，更增加了愉悦。至于有必要写景状物，我那时已深有领悟，如果说当时我有志著书的话，我会写什么样的书，是显而易见的。我想写大部头的自然主义小说，以悲剧结局，充满细致的描摹和惊人的比喻，而且不乏文采斐然的段落，炼字以求其音响效果。事实上，我的第一部小说，《缅甸岁月》，那是我30岁时写成但早已构思的作品，就属这一类书。

    5. I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in -- at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own -- but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, or in some perverse mood: but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:
    5)我在这里谈了些早年的情况。因为我认为，要判定一个作家的写作动机，就得对其早期的经历略知一二。作家的题材总是由他所属的时代决定的，至少在我们这个骚动不宁的时代是如此。但他在提笔为文之前，总会养成一种在后来的创作中永远不能彻底磨灭的情感倾向。当然，作家有责任控制自己的禀性，使之不至于沉溺于那种幼稚的阶段，或陷于违反常理的心境中。但如果他完全摆脱了早年生活对他的影响，他就会虐杀自己的写作热情。除开写作为谋生计不谈，我认为写作有四种动机，至少小说和散文写作是如此，这四种动机或多或少地存在于每个作家身上，在某一个作家身上，它们所占的比重会因时代和生活环境的不同而变化。它们是：

    6. (1) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen -- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition -- in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all -- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
    6) 一、纯粹的自私。想显示自己的聪明；想成为人们的议论中心；想身后留名；想报复那些小时候压制、指责过自己的成年人，等等。否认这是一种动机，而且是一种强烈的动机，是睁眼说瞎话。这种性格特征，作家有，科学家、艺术家、政治家、律师、军人、成功的企业家也有，——一句话，人类的精英俊杰都具有这种特征。世界上大多数人没有强烈的自私。他们一过30就放弃了个人的雄心壮志。在许多情况下，他们甚至不再意识到他们是独立自主的个人。他们主要是为别人生活，或干脆被繁琐的事物窒息住。但却有这么一些资禀优厚、我行我素的人决心笃行自己独特的人生，至死不懈。作家便属于这一类人。应该说，严肃的作家总的来说比新闻记者更慕名誉，更唯我独尊，尽管他们不那么迷恋金钱。