【英譯漢】

On Meeting the Celebrated

　　I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated. The　prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves　only that you are yourself of small account. The celebrated develop a technique to deal　with the persons they come across. They show the world a mask, often an impressive on,　but take care to conceal their real selves. They play the part that is expected from them,　　and with practice learn to play it very well, but you are stupid if you think that this public　performance of theirs corresponds with the man within.

　　I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men　in general not for their own sakes, but for the sake of my work. I have not, as Kant　enjoined, regarded each man as an end in himself, but as material that might be useful to　me as a writer. I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous. They　are more often themselves.

　　They have had no need to create a figure to protect　themselves from the world or to impress it. Their idiosyncrasies have had more chance to　develop in the limited circle of their activity, and since they have never been in the public　eye it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal. They display their　oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd. And after all it is with the　common run of men that we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates　are from our point of view very unsatisfactory. To write about them is a venture that has　often tempted writers, but the failure that has attended their efforts shows that such beings　are too exceptional to form a proper ground for a work of art. They cannot be made real.　The ordinary is the writer ‘s　richer　field. Its unexpectedness,　its singularity, its infinite　variety afford unending material. The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little　man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the　end of the surprises he has in store for you. For my part I would much sooner spend a　month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.