双语畅销书《艾伦图灵传》第8章:面朝大海(267)

For Alan Turing these elements were aggravated by the fact that he never quite fitted into the roles of mathematician, scientist, philosopher or engineer—nor into the tail-end of the Bloomsbury set, nor indeed into any kind of set, even the Wrong Set.

更糟糕的是，图灵从来没有真正地融入到数学家、科学家、哲学家或者工程师当中。

It was often a case of Laughter in the Next Room for Alan Turing, for people never knew whether to include him or not.

他从来孑然一身，不属于任何群体。

Robin Gandy wrote very soon after his death of how 'Because his main interests were in things and ideas rather than in people, he was often alone. But he craved for affection and companionship—too strongly, perhaps, to make the first stages of friendship easy for him...'

在他死后不久，罗宾写下这样一段话："他总是感到很孤独，因为他的兴趣不在人，而在事物和思想。但同时他却渴望人的认同和陪伴，这种渴望非常强烈。"

And he was more alone than anyone could ever see.

他这种异样的、自相矛盾的孤独感，是任何人都没有体会过的。

A self-taught existentialist, one who had probably never heard of Sartre, he had tried to find his own road to freedom.

图灵是个无师自通的存在主义者，他也许从没听说过萨特，但他一直在寻找属于自己的，通往自由的路。

As life became more complicated it became less clear where this should lead him.

然而随着生活越来越复杂，他也变得越来越困惑，这条路到底通向哪里，他越发看不清楚了。

But why should it have been clear? This was the twentieth century, in which the pure artist felt called upon to become involved, and which was enough to make any sensitive person acutely nervous.

可是，难道他以前看清楚过吗？二十世纪让人们感受到时代的召唤，也让敏感的人感觉到深深的紧张。

He had done everything he could to restrict his involvement to the simplest sphere, as he had also tried to keep true to himself, but simplicity and honesty had not protected him from the consequences of that involvement: far from it.

图灵尽了最大努力，避免自己卷入其中，他要直面自己的内心，但他的直率和坦诚，并不能阻止他被卷入，远远不能。