《瓦尔登湖·第二章·我居住的地方，我为何而活·Where I Lived, and What I Lived For》第2节
My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms,—the refusal was all I wanted,—but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,— “I am monarch of all I survey, / My right there is none to dispute.” I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里讲了一个他自己很得意的故事，核心是“想象性的占有”与“实际的占有”之间的区别。他说自己的想象力走得太远，甚至拿到了好几个农场的“优先购买权”，但他话锋一转——“拒绝权才是我想要的”——也就是说，他要的从来不是最终签下地契，而是那种可以选择“不买”的自由。他紧接着用一个具体的轶事来解释这个逻辑：他几乎买下了霍洛韦尔农场，连种子都分好了，手推车的…