第2018期：大文豪也有烂作品，契科夫的一篇鸡汤口水文

契科夫是短篇小说的顶峰，在他之后，各国短篇小说家都深受他的影响。精炼尖刻深邃是契科夫小说的特色，但他年轻时也写过鸡汤文，而且写得很烂。下面这篇是他25岁时写的，如果不注明作者，谁能猜到出自契科夫呢？

Life is Wonderful

by Anton Chekhov (1885)

Life is quite an unpleasant business, but it is not so very hard to make it wonderful. For which purpose it is not enough that you should win 200,000 roubles in a lottery, or receive the order of the White Eagle, or marry a beautiful woman — all these blessings are transitory and are liable to become a habit. But to feel continuously happy, even in moments of distress and sorrow, the following is needed:

(a) To be satisfied with your present state; and

(b) To rejoice in the knowledge that things might have been much worse.

*佛老 注：作者提醒人们“感到幸福的两个要点是满足于你的现状并为之庆幸，因为眼下的困境并未变得更差。”

*流传较广的是下面几段话，很多鸡汤文喜欢引用。

When your matches suddenly go off in your pocket, rejoice and offer thanks to heaven that your pocket is not a gunpowder magazine.

如果你的火柴在口袋中忽然起火，你该庆幸你的口袋不是火药桶。

When your relations come to pay you a visit during your holiday in the country, don’t turn pale, but exclaim triumphantly: “How very lucky it is not the police!”

如果你的亲戚在你度假时来访，别生气，你该庆幸来访的不是警察。

If you get a splinter in your finger, rejoice that it is not in your eye.

如果你刺伤了手指，你该庆幸刺伤的不是眼睛。

If your wife and sister-in-law practises scales on the piano, don’t lose your temper, but be grateful for the joy that you are listening to music, and not to the howling of jackals, or to a cat’s concert.

如果你的妻子或小姨子在学弹钢琴，别生气，你该庆幸你好歹也是在听音乐，而不是在听鬼哭狼嚎的音乐会。

Rejoice that you are not a tram-horse, nor a Koch bacillus, nor a trichina, nor a pig, nor an ass, nor a bear lead by a gipsy, nor a bug.

你该庆幸你不是一匹拉有轨电车的马、不是一颗科赫杆菌、不是一只旋毛虫、不是一口猪、不是一头驴、不是吉卜赛人牵着的熊、也不是臭虫（言下之意：你是一个人）。

Be happy that you’re not limped, not blind, not deaf, not mute, not affected with cholera…

你该庆幸你不瘸、不瞎、不聋、不哑，也没染上霍乱……

…

（*佛老 注：后面几段不想翻译了，大家随便看看即可。这篇文章写得实在不怎么样，契科夫也写过这么烂的东西，没想到。）

If you can live in a place not so remote as Siberia, can’t you feel pleased at the idea, that by mere chance you might have been deported there?

If you have pain in one tooth, rejoice that it is not all your teeth that are aching.

Rejoice that you can afford not to read the ‘Daily Citizen’; that you have not to drive a sewage cart, nor to be married to three women simultaneously.

If you are removed to a police cell, jump for joy that it is not the fiery gehenna that you have been taken to.

If you are flogged with a birch rod, kick your legs in rapture, and exclaim: “How very happy I am that it is not nettles I am being flogged with!”

If your wife has been unfaithful to you, rejoice that she has betrayed merely yourself, and not your country.

And so forth… Follow my advice, good soul, and your life shall be jubilation.

*From “Plays and Stories by Anton Tchekhov”, translated by S.S. Koteliansky，本文未被契科夫文集收录。

但也有些书和作者认为这篇文章写得好，还拿来做范本的。欣赏角度和阅读品味不同，不可强求，反正我觉得这篇很烂。