古斯塔夫·福楼拜 致 露易丝·科莱， 1846
经年之恋

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge yu [sic] with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports… When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

再见之时，我要以爱恋，拥吻，狂喜将你淹没。
我要以灵肉的欢愉使你餍足，直至昏昏欲死。
我要你为我颠倒神迷，心悦诚服，说你做梦也不曾想过会如此心醉……
即使你芳华已逝，我也要你忆起那短暂的欢爱时刻，
我要你的身躯即使枯萎，也会因这回味这快感而颤抖。

查尔斯·布克夫斯基 致 琳达·金， 1972
这封情书更像是写给金的冰箱——显然理由充分。

I liked your hand-walking act; that got me hotter than hell…. everything you do gets me hotter than hell…. throwing clay against the ceiling… you bitch, you red hot shrew, you lovely lovely woman…. you have put new poems and new hope and new joy and new tricks into an old dog, I love you, your pussy hairs I felt with my fingers, the inside of your pussy, wet, hot, I felt with my fingers; you, up against the refrigerator, you have such a wonderful refrigerator, your hair dangling down, wild, you there, the wild bird of you the wild thing of you, hot, lewd, miraculous…. twisting after your head, trying to grab your tongue with my mouth, with my tongue…. we were in Burbank and I was in love, ultramarine love, my good god damned godess, my goad, my bitch, my my my my beating breathing hair-lined cunt of Paradise, I love you… and your refrigerator, and as we grabbed and wrestled, that sculpted head watching us with his little lyrical cynical love-smile, burning…
I want you,
I want you,
I want YOU
YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU!

我喜欢你倒立行走的动作，那简直让我欲火焚身……
你的一颦一笑，举手投足，无一不令我欲火焚身……
那感觉，有如揉制湿滑的陶土，朝上无限绵延……
你这荡妇，你这火红的小辣椒，你这可爱至极的女人……
你在我这老东西身上注入了新的诗句，新的热望，新的快乐，新的逗哄，
我爱你，我的手指徜徉过你的体发，旋即进入你的身体，潮湿，溽热；
我将你紧紧抵在冰箱门上——那可真是个好冰箱。你的长发垂荡，
你体内此刻乱飞的野性，滚烫，淫靡，不可思议……
紧压你的后脑，夺去你的唇齿……
我们身在伯班克，而我在此深陷迷情，群青色的迷情，
我伟大的神，该死的女神，令我颤抖的人儿，我的荡妇，令我令我令我令我窒息的、植从茂密的天堂入口，我爱你……
还有你的冰箱。当我们热烈地缠斗，上头的小雕像正注视着我们，
笑意里几丝柔情，几丝讥诮，燃烧着……
我要你，
我要你，
我要你！
你，你，你，你，你，你！

詹姆斯·乔伊斯 致 诺拉·巴娜科， 1909
重口味情书之王，这还只是乔伊斯写给妻子“生动信件”中的小小一封。我们还能说什么呢？这位先生得了胃胀气吧。（Gwen注：指信中描写做爱过程中的fart，由于细节描写过多，直白露骨，口味过重，不宜做含蓄诗化处理，有损原味，故决定暂择开头结尾薄码译之。乔伊斯的豪放令人咋舌，这信无疑已经不仅仅是情书了。有兴趣的译友可看原文感受一下。）

My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.
You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.

我甜美的小婊子诺拉，你这放荡的小姑娘，读着你的来信，我就高潮了两次，是你叫我这么做的。我很高兴你能喜欢后背式。没错，现在我还能记得那天晚上，我们缠绵了很长时间。那是我使的最放荡的姿势了，宝贝儿。
（中略）
宝贝儿，你划了横线的一个词令我更加难以自持。跟我写写更多你的情况，尽量甜美地，淫靡更淫靡地。

弗兰茨·卡夫卡 致 麦伦·杰森斯克， 1921
尽管如此，卡夫卡就连放荡起来也是暗喻风格的。

No, Milen, I beg you once again to invent another possibility for my writing to you. You mustn’t go to the post office in vain, even your little postman — who is he? — mustn’t do it, nor should even the postmistress be asked unnecessarily.
If you can find no other possibility, then one must put up with it, but at least make a little effort to find one.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

Remembering that one extinguished fire with clothing, I took an old coat and beat you with it.

But again the transmutations began and it went so far that you were no longer even there, instead it was I who was on fire and it was also I who beat the fire with the coat.

But the beating didn’t help and it only confirmed my old fear that such things can’t extinguish a fire.

In the meantime, however, the fire brigade arrived and somehow you were saved.

But you were different from before, spectral, as though drawn with chalk against the dark, and you fell, lifeless or perhaps having fainted from joy at having been saved, into my arms.

But here too the uncertainty of trans mutability entered, perhaps it was I who fell into someone’s arms.

不，麦伦，我再次乞求你，请允许给你写信。你不能白跑一趟邮局，就算是你的小邮差——他是谁来着？——也不能白跑，甚至邮局的女管理员也不能白白让你询问一趟。
如果别无其他可能，那么也请将就一回，至少稍费些神给我一次机会。
昨晚我梦见了你。记不清细节，所知的只是你我融入彼此的身体。我是你，而你就是我。不知怎么，最终你燃烧了起来。
我记得有人用衣物扑火，我亦拿起一件旧大衣，用力扑打着你。
但梦境再次幻转，前景远去，而你也不知所踪。相反，着火的人成了我，扑火的人依旧是我。
然一切徒然，只让我越发恐惧，这些如何能扑灭烈火？
此刻，救火员抵达，你总算得救了。
可你似乎变了，飘虚有如幽魂，好似黑暗之上一抹粉笔的涂画，没有生气，好似一点都不为得救而感到欣喜，就这样跌入我的怀抱。
莫测的梦景如是再度闪入，仿佛跌入他人怀抱的是我。

奥斯卡·王尔德 致 阿尔弗雷德·道格拉斯大人， 1893
按现代标准来说是有点儿平淡了（尽管抒情优美），这封信是曾被用来检控王尔德猥亵罪名的信件证物之一。

My Own Boy,
Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there to cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury first.
Always, with undying love,
Yours, Oscar

独属于我的男孩儿，
你这首十四行诗真是棒极了，它是个奇迹。
你那鲜红如玫瑰花瓣的双唇生来就是为了热吻，更是为了吟唱热切的音乐。你纤细而闪耀的灵魂游走在热情与诗歌之间。
雅辛托斯——阿波罗热恋的情人，就是你在希腊彼时的前世。因何在伦敦，你又孤身一人？何时前往赛尔斯伯里？
要去就去吧，哪怕哥特建筑那灰茫的暮色会使你双手冰凉。
想回来时尽管回来。
这儿到底仍是个可爱的地方，唯一的缺憾就是没有你在；
但是，请先去赛尔斯伯里。

爱你永远不止的，
奥斯卡

伊迪丝·华顿 致 W·莫顿·富尔顿， 1908
能如此精妙地描绘出令人陶醉的情景，她是一位比自己想象中好许多的调情高手。

There would have been the making of an accomplished flirt in me, because my lucidity shows me each move of the game – but that, in the same instant, a reaction of contempt makes me sweep all the counters off the board and cry out: – “Take them all – I don’t want to win – I want to lose everything to you!”

我本该熟谙如何娴熟地调情，因为理智已告诉我怎样在游戏中运筹帷幄——
但是，同一瞬间，下意识的耻辱使我将棋子全部扫落在地，竭力地呼喊——
“全部拿走吧——我不要赢——我要把一切都输给你！”

弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙 致 维塔·萨克威尔-韦斯特， 1927
这封情书并非太放荡——除非你更进一步，想象一下她脑海中得那不能被岁月搅浑的“千万百万，无穷无尽”是什么，更不用说一两个别有含义的双关语了——但这一封一直试我们最喜欢的情书之一，所以干脆别想了。

Look Here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.

看这儿，维塔——
抛却欲望好么，然后我们就去汉普顿宫苑，在河边共进晚餐，月光下，我们在花园里散心，晚些回家，再来一瓶酒，喝到醉醺醺。
我会告诉你我脑海里的一切，千万百万，无穷无尽——
岁月不能搅浑它们，唯有长河的幽黯才能。
想想那些吧。
我说了，抛却欲望，然后跟我来。

本杰明·富兰克林 致 布瑞林夫人， 1779
本杰明·富兰克林是个严谨的小人。这封信基本说了，除了不喜欢被他欺骗这一点，他喜爱这位女性挚友的一切——哦，他还讨厌她的誓不罢休。这封信在我们看来特别放荡，但并不是性方面的放荡。

Madame Brillon,
What a difference, my dear friend, between you and me! You find innumerable faults with me, whereas I see only one fault in you (but perhaps that is the fault of my glasses). I mean this kind of avarice which leads you to seek monopoly on all my affection, and not allow me any for the agreeable ladies of your country.

Do you imagine that it is impossible for my affection (or my tenderness) to be divided without being diminished? You deceive yourself, and you forget the playful manner with which you stopped me. You renounce and totally exclude all that might be of the flesh in our affection, allowing me only some kisses, civil and honest, such as you might grant your little cousins. What am I receiving that is so special as to prevent me from giving the same to others, without taking from what belongs to you?

The sweet sounds brought forth from the pianoforte by your clever hand can be enjoyed by twenty people simultaneously without diminishing at all the pleasure you so obligingly mean for me, and I could, with as little reason, demand from your affection that no other ears but mine be allowed to be charmed by those sweet sounds.

Yours,

Benjamin

布瑞林夫人，
我亲爱的朋友，我们两人是多么得不同！你总看我千错万错，而我看你却只有一错（兴许是我眼镜的问题）。我所指是你的贪心，不断寻求对我感情的彻底占有，却不允许我多看一眼您这里其他宜人的女士。
你能想象吗，我的爱情（或者说我的柔情）只那一片，怎么可能分给数人后，还像当初一样的多？你在欺骗自己，你也忘了曾经婉拒我时的顽皮姿态。你弃牌了，彻底排斥我们这段感情中可能发生的爱欲，只许了我几个吻，礼貌而忠诚的吻，就像你许给自己的小表弟一样。我从你那里得到的有哪里特别了，特别到让你不予我分毫，却阻止我对别人示好？
你灵巧的双手弹奏出甜美琴音，即便二十人同时分享，也丝毫不损你带给我的温暖和愉悦。无理取闹也好，我也要索求你的爱情——请只许我一人，接受你曼妙琴音的抚慰。

你的，
本杰明

欧内斯特·海明威 致 玛丽·威尔士 （他的第四任妻子）， 1945.4.16.
谁还能向一个没救的浪漫主义者解释法语“Papa”的韵味呢？在这儿听起来，他显然陷入了疯狂的爱恋中——用宠物的昵称“小乖”来称呼她，让我们觉得这种放荡还挺不错的。

Dearest Pickle,
So now I’m going out on the boat with Paxthe and Don Andres and Gregorio and stay out all day and then come in and will be sure there will be letters or a letter. And maybe there will be. If there aren’t I’ll be a sad s.o.a.b. But you know how you handle that of course? You last through until the next morning. I suppose I’d better figure on there being nothing until tomorrow night and then it won’t be so bad tonight.

Please write me Pickle. If it were a job you had to do you’d do it. It’s tough as hell without you and I’m doing it straight but I miss you so [I] could die. If anything happened to you I’d die the way an animal will die in the Zoo if something happens to his mate.

Much love my dearest Mary and know I’m not impatient. I’m just desperate.

Ernest

亲爱的小乖，
现在我要乘船出行了，与派克西和唐·安德鲁斯、格力高里一起，在户外待一整天再回去，你一定要给我写信，至少一封信。你会写的吧，要是不写我可会伤心死的。但是你当然知道怎么做，对吗？你总是能持续到第二天早上，我觉得，我还是做好折腾到明晚为止的心理准备为好，这样今天晚上的表现才会好些。
请一定给我写信，小乖。你要真有工作的话就去做吧。没有你在，我难受得如同身处地狱。我在抚慰自己，可我想你想得要死了。你要是发生什么不测，我也会活不下去，如园子里的动物因伴侣的死而死一样。
我爱你，最亲爱的玛丽，你明白我并非没有耐心。我只是急切渴望着你而已。
欧内斯特

文章来自：译言网
原文来自：theatlantic.com
原文作者：Emily Temple
中文译者：Y.Gwendoline
图片来自：网络