And to understand it you must try to imagine a novelist's state of mind. I hope I am not giving away professional secrets if I say that a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living—so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings round, darts, dashes and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination. I suspect that this state is the same both for men and women.
要想理解这一点，大家必须努力想象出小说家的心理状态。如果我说小说家的重大愿望是尽量处于无意识状态，我希望我没有泄露行业秘密。他需要使自己进入持续傭懒的状态；他要过一种最最安静、最最规律的生活。他希望在他写作时，他每天见的人、读的书、做的事都是相同的，这样任何事物都不会打破他生活的幻想，也不会搅乱他的四处探求、摸索以及对那令人难以捉摸的容易被吓跑的东西——想象力的突然发现。我认为男人和女人都同样具有这种状态。
Be that as it may, I want you to imagine me writing a novel in a state of trance. I want you to figure to yourselves a girl sitting with a pen in her hand, which for minutes, and indeed for hours, she never dips into the inkpot. The image that comes to my mind when I think of this girl is the image of a fisherman lying sunk in dreams on the verge of a deep lake with a rod held out over the water. She was letting her imagination sweep unchecked round every rock and cranny of the world that lies submerged in the depths of our unconscious being. Now came the experience, the experience that I believe to be far commoner with women writers than with men. The line raced through the girl's fingers. Her imagination had rushed away. It had sought the pools, the depths, the dark places where the largest fish slumber.
尽管如此，我还是想说我是在似睡非睡的状态中创作小说。请大家想象出一个女孩坐在桌旁，手里握着笔，几分钟，甚至几个小时都没有把笔蘸到墨瓶里。想到这女孩时，我的脑海里浮现出一个湖边垂钓者的形象。在深深的湖水边，他手持鱼竿，深浸梦境。她的想象自由驰骋在无意识深处世界的每个角落和缝隙。这就是体验。我认为女作家的体验要比男作家的更加常见。鱼线在女孩的指间飞速滑走，她的想象也随之而去，搜寻着池塘、深水和最大的鱼沉睡的暗处。