生活中我们就会常常发现那些聪明人往往不太合群，过多的朋友和过广泛的社交活动让他们感觉很痛苦。但是这到底是为什么呢？

It sounds like a very mean and undemocratic thought, trading off the peculiar¹ glamour² that isolation³ has in a Romantic culture – in order to gain an oblique⁴ sense of superiority and perhaps pass off an absence of social skills as a virtue⁵.

这听起来像是一种极度刻薄的非民主思想，充分利用了孤独在浪漫主义文化中拥有的独特魅力——以获得一种间接优越感，或许还可以把缺乏社交技能看做一种美德。

It is important, therefore, to be clear what is meant here by intelligence.

因此必须搞明白什么是“聪明”？

It has nothing to do with degrees or any of the criteria⁶ by which we ordinarily measure cleverness.

聪明与日常衡量它的任何标准(如学位)无关。

What is meant is emotional intelligence, which exists or not in every strata⁷ and nook of society.

这里所说的是指情商，它在社会上到处都是而又觅而不得。

Emotional intelligence means a capacity for self-honesty and self-observation; it means, a knack⁸ for opening oneself up to the stranger, more exciting, less easily admissible aspects of oneself and at the same time for noticing the many beautiful, peculiar and profound experiences and sensations passing through consciousness.

情商意味着一种自我坦诚和自我观察的能力；它意味着能够向陌生人展示自我，更加坦然面对更兴奋和无法容忍的自己，同时还意味着能够留意许多存在于意识中的美丽、奇特和深远的经历和感触。

We’re not really used to doing this.

我们往往不是这样做。

We cleave⁹ tightly to reassuring¹⁰ notions of what normal people are like, which means we exclude a lot – often the richest bit – of what we truly feel, want and think.

我们恪守常理，如什么样的人才是常人，这也就意味着我们排除了——通常是我们内心最丰富的那部分——我们真实感受，以及所思所想。

We edit out our more generous, wilder, more impatient, more terrifying sides; leaving only the socially admissible husk that we artfully pretend is who we are.

我们去掉自身更慷慨、更狂野、更不耐烦、更可怕的一面；留下的只是我们巧妙伪装的能够得到社会认可的躯壳。

And simultaneously¹¹, we ensure that we are never far from something that can take us powerfully away from ourselves, and so miss out on the troubling wonders that streak¹² across the mental horizon at every instant.

与此同时，我们还要确保从不会远离那些隔离真实自我与虚伪自我的强大力量，因此，我们往往会错过了时不时在脑海中闪现的烦人的奇妙想法。

Most of what is in our minds remains¹³ unfelt and unseen, troubling us only in the small hours.

在我们脑海中，大部分东西仍是不可视和不可感的，往往只在凌晨夜不能寐时带来困扰。

Insomnia¹⁴ is the revenge for all that we tried so hard not to notice in the daylight.

晚上失眠是对我们白天所规避的万事万物的报复。

In this context, emotional intelligence emerges as a species of courage, directed at vanquishing¹⁵ not an external enemy but a fear of being weird¹⁶ or of going mad.

在这种情况下，派情商上场是一种勇气，此举不为征服敌人，而为征服那些使人成为异类或疯子的恐惧。

A certain sort of intelligent person is, above all else, a superior and more committed reporter of their inner states.

与上述不同，真正聪明的人，应该善于并坚定地表达自己的内心。

Or, as Emerson once put it, ’In the minds of geniuses, we find – once more – our own neglected thoughts.’

或者，正如爱默生曾说的那样，“在天才的脑海里，我们能重拾自己曾遗失的思想。”

It is almost certain that people who have devoted¹⁷ themselves to self-honesty and self-observation have an above average chance of meeting with incomprehension, irritation¹⁸, censorship or boredom¹⁹ when they attempt to share the data from their own minds frankly²⁰ in company.

几乎可以肯定的一点是，那些致力于自我坦诚与自我观察的人，当试图在周遭环境中坦率分享自身想法时，他们更容易遭遇他人的不理解、恼怒、审视或厌倦。

Their thoughts (it might be on politics or architecture, family life or sexuality) will sound more threatening, more intense, oblique or tender than is allowed.

他们的想法(可能关乎政治或建筑、家庭生活或性)，听起来一般比普通人的更具威胁性、更强烈、更偏激或更温柔。

That feels lonely, if one is in the mood to frame things like this.

如果一个人在心里这样思考事物，那注定会感到孤独。

There are simply fewer people at large committed to self-honesty and self-observation – and therefore up for exchanging notes on what it’s truly like to be alive.

一般而言，鲜有人能致力于自我坦诚和自我观察，因此乐意交流生活中的真实感受的人自然也就少之又少。

Yet there is one resource that is exceptionally well suited to addressing the feelings of disconnection liable to be felt by the emotionally intelligent: art.

然而，有一种资源非常适合解决感情上的脱节感，这是情商所能感受到的：艺术。

Works of art are humanity’s secret diary: records of all that could not be said in regular social contexts, but which have found a home in the more intimate, honest communication that can take place between an art-work and its audience.

艺术品是人类的秘密日记：所有不能表现于常规社会背景的内容的记载，却在作品和欣赏者更加亲密而坦诚的对话中找到归属。

The libraries, cinemas and galleries of the world are repositories for all the sensations that didn’t easily make it into standard interactions and that contain what we need to state, and crave²¹ to hear as audiences, in our lonely states.

全世界的图书馆、电影院和画廊是一切感情的百宝库，这些情感不易融入日常交谈中，但却富含作为观众的我们在孤独时所需阐述和倾听的事物。

Therefore, while emotionally intelligent people may have an uncommonly²² hard time not being lonely with a person, they have an unusually easy time finding company with people who are not in the room, the fancy term for what we call art.

因此，也许情感智能高的人与他人（直接）相处时很难感觉不孤独，但却能与那些不同处一室的人（艺术家）相交甚欢，我们将此称之为艺术。

We have perhaps over-privileged certain standard notions of friendship.

人们对友谊也许有超高水准的要求

We may just have to accept that our best friends could have died 250 years ago – and be chatting to us via dabs²³ of paint or within rhyming pentameters.

我们只能接受这么个事实: 我们的蜜友可能在250年前就已离开人世——我们将通过画作或押韵的五音步格诗互诉衷肠。

That said, the goal shouldn’t be a society where art is ever more prevalent and more available when loneliness strikes.

即是说，因为这孤独的潮流而使艺术变得更常见也更可触的社会，不该是我们的目标。

It is perhaps a society where art is ever less necessary – because we have grown better at knowing how to share more of who we are in the ordinary moments of our lives; where we have found a more direct and reliable path out from our loneliness.

也许，在这个社会里，艺术变得越来越不必要了——因为我们已经变得更懂得如何在生活中的平凡时刻更好地表现自我；在这个社会里，我们找到了一条更直接、可靠的脱孤之路。