Prison Studies
1 Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison studies.
狱 中 学 习
      今天，许多在什么地方直接听我讲话的人，或在电视上听我讲话的人，或读过我写的东西的人，都会以为我上学远不止只读到8年级。这一印象完全归之于我在监狱里的学习。
2 It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversation he was in, and I had tried to emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn’t contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese[2 … the words that might as well have been in Chinese: … it would have made no difference if the English words had been in Chinese, because I didn’t have the slightest knowledge of either.]2. When I just skipped those words, of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.
      其实这事要从查尔斯顿监狱说起，一开始宾比就让我对他的知识渊博羡慕不已。宾比总是主宰谈话话题，我总想效仿他。可是，我随便打开一本书，几乎没有一个句子不是少则一两个字，多则差不多所有的字都不认识。我只好跳过这些字，结果自然是对书上说的几乎一无所知了。因此，我被解送到诺福克拘留所时，读书还只是为了摆摆样子而已。要不是我真的获得了学习动力，我恐怕没多久就会连读书的样子也懒得去摆了。
3 I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t even write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.
      我认识到，最要紧的是得到一本字典好认字学字。幸好我还认识到得好好练习写字。说来悲伤，我写字都不能写得齐整成行。这两个想法促使我向诺福克拘留所学校要了字典，还有本子和笔。
4 I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.
      整整两天，我把字典一页页翻了个遍，不知该怎么学。我压根儿没想过会有那么多字。我不知道自己需要学哪些字。最后，总得有所行动吧，我便开始抄写。
5 In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.
      我写字又慢又费劲，而且歪歪斜斜，但我在本子上抄写下了第一页上包括标点在内的所有印刷符号。
6 I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.
      记得我抄写了一天。然后,我把本子上抄写下的所有字大声朗读给自己听。一遍又一遍，我大声朗读自己抄写的字。
7 I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.
      我第二天早上醒来，仍想着那些字—— 想到自己不仅一次写了那么多字，而且还写了以前根本不认识的字，不由得深感自豪。更何况，略加回想，我还能记住其中许多字的意思。没记住的字我都复习了一遍。有趣的是，此时此刻，那本字典第一页上“aardvark”这个字跃入了我的脑海。字典上有一幅画它的插图，那是一种长尾巴长耳朵会掘洞的非洲哺乳动物，像食蚁兽捕食蚂蚁那样伸出舌头捕食白蚁。
8 I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied the dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniaturetablet5 encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on into the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.
      我完全着迷了，于是继续抄—— 我又抄写了字典的第二页。我学这一页上的字时体验到了同样的感受。每学一页字，我还学到了一点有关人物、地方和历史事件的知识。字典实际上就像是一部小型百科全书。最后，字典上A那部分字的条目抄满了整整一个本子—— 接着我抄写B字部。我就是这样开始抄写的，最后抄完了整本字典。大量的抄写帮助我提高了书写速度，以后抄写起来就快了许多。从在本子上抄写，到后来在那段余下的服刑时间里写信，我估计自己在监狱里写了一百万字。
9 I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad’s teachings, my correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

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