【英訳】侏儒の言葉20: 椎の葉
Oak Leaves
To be blissful is a privilege given only to idiots. In whatever sort of optimist you might be, you will never be able to keep smiling all the time. Rather, if there were truly something that might be called ‘optimism’ at all, it would mean how to despair blissfully.
“At home we serve our meals on plates while on a journey we sleep on grass and serve our meal on oak leaves.” This short poem is not only about travelling: we always settle for ‘what we have’, instead of for ‘what we want’. Scholars might praise these oak leaves this way or another, but oak leaves would be just nothing more than oak leaves if they took them in their hands without reserve.
It is worth some more respect to lament that oak leaves are just oak leaves than to insist that oak leaves are plates. Nevertheless, it is more boring to do so than to shrug off the fact that oak leaves are simply oak leaves. At least, repeating the same lamentation, without getting sick of it, all through your life is not merely ridiculous but also immoral. Actually, the greatest pessimist is not always frowning. Even the Leopordi, who suffered from an incurable disease, occasionally smiled sadly with his pale-coloured rose flowers.
Postscriptum: Immorality is a synonym for excess.
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