I should begin by saying right off that I am not a great admirer of Spender's poetry. He is, for me, one of those people whose writing about their writing is more interesting than their writing itself. But I had read with great interest Spender's autobiography— World Within World—especially for what it revealed about the poet who did mean the most to me—namely, W. H. Auden. Auden's Dirac-like lucidity, the sheer wonder of the language, and the sense of fun about serious things—"At least my modem pieces shall be cheery / Like English bishops on the Quantum Theory"—were to me irresistible. I became fascinated by Spender's obsession with Auden. Auden must have been to Spender what Dirac was for Oppenheimer, a constant reminder of the difference between being "great" and being "merely" very good. I was also struck by the fact that, like Oppenheimer, Spender seemed "unfocused." Partly Jewish, partly homosexual, partly a British establishment figure, one wondered when he got time to write poetry. By being profoundly eccentric, both Auden and Dirac, probably not by accident, insulated themselves. They focused like laser beams. What I did not know in 1981—I learned it only after Spender's journals were published in 1986—was that Spender had paid a brief visit to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in November of 1956, the year before I got there and two years before Dirac came on one of his perennial visits.
我得首先说明我并不是斯彭德诗歌的狂热崇拜者。对我来说，他是那种关于自己作品的评论比作品本身更有趣的那类人之一。不过我曾饶有兴趣地读过斯彭德的自传《世界中的世界》，尤其是书中谈到的一位对我很重要的诗人，即W. H.奥登。奥登的狄拉克式的冷静清晰，对语言的十足妙用，对严肃的事情的幽默感——例如“至少我现代风格的作品会给人带来欢乐，就如英国的主教在论述量子力学。”这样的诗句——对我来说具有不可抗拒的魅力。我为斯彭德对奥登的痴迷所吸引。奥登对于斯彭德所产生的意义一定跟狄拉克对于奥本海默一样，不断地提醒着“伟大”与“仅仅不错”之间的差别。另外，与奥本海默一样，斯彭德看起来似乎有些“不够集中”，这也让我印象深刻。一部分信仰犹太教，一部分有点同性恋倾向，一部分又是英国当权派中的人物，人们很奇怪他用什么时间来写诗。不像奥登和狄拉克，也许他们极其怪异的举止很自然就把他们自己与世隔绝。他们像激光光束一样集中。1981年我还有所不知的是斯彭徳曾于1956年11月简短地拜访过普林斯顿的高级研究院，是在我到那里的前一年，比狄拉克常年访问中的一次还早两年。直到1986年斯彭德的日记发表以后我才知道这些。
Spender's journal entry on his visit is fascinating both for what it says and for what it does not say. He begins by noting that "Oppenheimer lives in a beautiful house, the interior of which is painted almost entirely white."
斯彭德在日记中对他那次访问的描述十分吸引人，包括所提到的和没有提到的事情。在日记的开头他写逍：“奥本海默住在一所漂亮的房子里，内部几乎彻底粉刷成白色。”