My parents owned six books between them. Two of those were Bibles and the third was a concordance to the Old and New Testaments. The fourth was The House at Pooh Corner. The fifth, The Chatterbox Annual 1923 and the sixth, Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
I found it necessary to smuggle books in and out of the house and I cannot claim too much for the provision of an outside toilet when there is no room of one's own. It was on the toilet that I first read Freud and D. H. Lawrence, and perhaps that was the best place, after all. We kept a rubber torch hung on the cistern, and I had to divide my money from a Saturday job, between buying books and buying batteries. My mother knew exactly how long her Ever Readys would last if used only to illuminate the hap that separated the toilet paper from its function.
Once I had tucked the book back down my knickers to get it indoors again, I find somewhere to hide it, and anyone with a single bed, standard size, and paperbacks, standard size, will discover that seventy seven can be accommodated per layer under the mattress. But as my collection grew, I began to worry that my mother might notice that her daughter's bed was rising visibly. One day she did. She burned everything.
I had been brought up to memorize very long Bible passages, and when I left home and was supporting myself so that I could continue my education, I fought off loneliness and fear by reciting. In the funeral parlor I whispered Donne to the embalming fluids and Marvell to the corpses. Later, I found that Tennyson's Lady of Sherlock had a soothing, because rhythmic, effect on the mentally disturbed. Among the disturbed I numbered myself at that time.
The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves.
The psyche and the spirit do not share the instinct of damaged body. Healing is automatically triggered nor is danger usually avoided. Since we put ourselves in the way of hurt it seems logical to put ourselves in the way of healing. Art has more work to do than ever before but it can do that work. In a self-destructive society like our own, it is unsurprising that art as a healing force is despised.
For myself, when I returned to my borrowed room night after night, and there were my books, I felt relief and exuberance, not hardship and exhaustion. I intended to avoid the fate of Jude the Obscure, although a reading of that book was a useful warning. What I wanted did not belong to me by right and whilst it could not be refused to me in quite the same way, we still have subtle punishments for anyone who insists on what they are and what they want. Walled inside the little space marked out for by family and class, it was the limitless world of imagination that is possible for me to scale the sheer face of other people's assumptions. Inside books there is perfect space and it is that space which allows the reader to escape from the problems of gravity.
By Jeanette Winterson
［参考译文］
艺术与生命
珍妮特·温特森
我父母两人共有六本书。其中两本是圣经、第三本是《新旧约用语索引》、第四本是《维尼熊街角的屋子》、第五本是《1923年话匣子年鉴》，而第六本是马洛礼的《阿瑟王之死》。
我发现有必要把书偷偷拿回或拿出家里，而且没有属于自己的房间时，对于户外厕所所能提供的物品，我不能要求太多。我第一次读到弗洛伊德和D. H. 劳伦斯是坐在马桶上的，而或许那终究是最佳之处。我们在马桶水箱上悬吊了一把橡胶手电筒，而我必须将周六那份工作赚来的钱，平分花在买书和买电池上。我母亲清楚地知道，要是她那些永备牌电池只用来照明区分卫生纸可以维持多久。
有一回我把书塞在内裤里，好再次带进屋里。我必须找个地方把书藏起来，而任何人，若拥有一张标准尺寸的单人床，以及标准尺寸的平装书籍，就会发现，床垫底下每层可容纳77本书。可是当我的收集品增加时，便开始担心母亲会注意到她女儿的床正逐渐升高，这是显而易见的。有一天她真的发现了，于是烧光了所有的书。
我从小到大都得背诵很长的圣经段落。到我离开家庭、自食其力继续求学时，我就靠诵读来抵挡寂寞和恐惧。在殡仪馆里，我对着防腐香料液轻诵约翰·多恩的灵诗、对着尸体轻诵安德鲁·马韦尔的诗篇。后来，我发现丁尼生的《夏洛蒂小姐》，因为有节奏感，对于心智失衡者具有安抚作用。在那个时候我把自己也算在失衡者之列。
艺术的治疗功效并非夸大其词的幻想。我奋力留住语言，语言因而让我心智正常，具有力量。到现在仍是如此，而且我所知道的痛苦，无一不透过艺术而得到舒缓。对某些人来说，是音乐，另一些人，是绘画，对我来说，最主要的是，不论出现在诗歌或散文中，诗能够穿越嘈杂和伤痛，将伤口打开以清理之，然后逐渐教导它自我疗愈。伤口需要指点才能自己愈合。
心灵和精神不像受损了的身体具有一种本能。疗愈不会自动引发，而危险也通常无以避免。既然我们会让自己受伤，那么让自己得到疗愈也是合乎逻辑的。比起以往任何时候，艺术要做更多的工作，但是这份工作它是做得来的。像我们这样一个自我毁灭的社会里，艺术作为一种良剂会受到鄙视，这并不令人感到讶异。
对我自己而言，每晚回到借来的房里时，我感到放心且充实，而非困苦和疲惫，我意欲避免无名的裘德那样的命运，虽然阅读那本书是很有用的警示。我所想要的并不理当属于我，而虽然它也不能以完全同样的方式拒我于千里之外，但是任何人若坚持要做某种人或是想要某些东西，我们仍然会给他很微妙的惩罚。当我被关在家庭和阶层为我所划定的小小空间里时，是想象力那片无限的天地让我得以刮除他人那些假设的表层。书中自有完美的空间，就是这个空间，让读者能够逃避地心引力的诸般问题。
［注释］
-smuggle [ˈsmʌɡl] v. 偷带 to bring in or take out illicitly or by stealth
-torch [tɔːtʃ] n. 手电筒 a flashlight
-cistern [ˈsɪstən] n. 蓄水池 a tank for storing rainwater
-tuck [tʌk] v. 塞，使隐藏 to put in an out-of-the-way
-knickers [ˈnɪkəz] n. 短裤，灯笼裤 full breeches gathered and banded just below knees
-accommodate [əˈkɒmədeɪt] v. 容纳 to hold comfortably without crowding
-mattress [ˈmætrɪs] n. 床垫 a cushion used on a bed
brought up : 教育，培养
funeral parlor : 殡仪馆
-embalm [ɪmˈbɑːm] v. 涂香油于（尸体），施以防腐剂 to treat with preservatives
-rhythmic [ˈriðmɪk] adj. 节奏的 having rhythm
-healing [ˈhiːlɪŋ] adj. 有治疗功用的 restoring to health
rhetorical fantasy: 夸大其词的幻想
-psyche [ˈsaɪkɪ] n. 心智，灵魂，心灵 the spirit or soul
-trigger [ˈtrɪɡə(r)] v. 引发，引起，触发 to set off; initiate
-exuberance [ɪɡˈzjuːbərəns] n. 丰富，健康 the condition of being exuberant
-exhaustion [ɪɡˈzɔːstʃən] n. 疲惫，筋疲力尽 the state of being exhausted; extreme fatigue
whilst [waɪlst] conj. 时时，同时 while
-subtle [ˈsʌtl] adj. 敏感的，微妙的，精细的 able to make fine distinctions
［作者简介］
珍妮特·温特森（Jeanette Winterson, 1959-）是当代英国小说家，作品包括《橘子不是唯一的水果》、《激情》和《区分樱桃的性别》。以上三本书皆曾获奖。《艺术物体》是温特森的第一本散文集，收录十篇散文，《艺术与生命》乃其中一篇。温特森把爱、随机性、选择、命运等写得非常透彻，文字非常优美。
珍妮特·温特森（Jeanette Winterson）是一位英国作家，生于1959年。她以其独特的写作风格和对性别和性取向的探索而闻名。温特森在1985年出版了她的处女作《橙子不是唯一的水果》，这本小说取得了巨大的成功，并获得了惠特布雷德奖。这部小说是一部半自传体小说，讲述了一个与她自己相似的年轻女孩的成长故事，探索了她在一个严格宗教的家庭中发现自己性取向的过程。
温特森的作品经常涉及到性别、身份、性取向和爱的主题。她的写作风格富有诗意和幻想，常常探索人类存在和情感的深层次。她的作品包括小说、剧本、散文和儿童文学，如《创造性写作》、《与橙子有关的事情》和《嫁给她的书》。
温特森的作品深受文学界和读者的赞赏，她多次获得了文学奖项，包括英国书籍奖和国际IMPAC都柏林文学奖的提名。她的作品被翻译成多种语言，并在全球范围内广泛阅读和研究。
温特森的作品不仅仅在文学领域产生了影响，她也是一个公开的LGBTQ+权益倡导者。她在自己的作品中经常探索和揭示性别和性取向的问题，并为性少数群体的权益发声。她的开放和坦率的态度使她成为一个重要的文化评论家和社会活动家。