英语翻译
I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.If I call it a novel it is only because I don’t know what else to call it.I have little story to tell and I end neither with a death nor a marriage.Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story,but marriage finishes it very properly too and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending.It is a sound instinct of the common people which persuades them that with this all that needs to be said is said.When male and female,after whatever vicissitudes you like,are at last brought together they have fulfilled their biological function and interest passes to the generation that is to come.But I leave my reader in the air.This book consists of my recollection of a man with whom I was thrown into close contact only at long intervals,and I have little knowledge of what happened to him in between.I supposed that by the exercise of invention I could fill the gaps plausibly enough and so make my narrative more coherent; but I have no wish to do that.I only want to set down what I know of my own knowledge.(W.Somerset Maugham )