《福尔摩斯探案集·波希米亚丑闻》第1节
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
注释摘要
这一节是整部《波希米亚丑闻》，甚至可以说是整部福尔摩斯探案集中极其珍贵的一把钥匙——它不推进情节，却预先锁定了叙述者的视线和情感基调。华生坐在这里，不是以一个随行记录员的身份，而是以一个已经知道结局的人的身份，回头看着这一切的开端。 字面上，华生做了一件非常奇特的事：他在案件尚未讲述之前，就宣布了它的结局，或者说，宣布了它在福尔摩斯心中的结局。艾琳·艾德勒…