有感于 Prof. L.S.口述史

I started to feel the Christmas / new year pressure now...Well, although I don't have a specific year schedule, still I feel that I have not translated a satisfactory amount of the text, well only 25 of the 91 pages. I don't know if I can still manage about 5 pages before Christmas. Let's see...

I read an interview with Prof. L.S today. What touched me a lot was a photo of him and his wife when he was 23. When I first met him, he was already over 70, a little lovely old gentleman who is as if forever an old man. We met several times over the years, sometimes at certain events and sometimes at private meetings to talk about our work. Being a god for many scholars in our field, he is always serious and amazingly humble, and meanwhile witty, mild, and light-hearted. He is also extremely private, having only a secret email account under his wife's name. It's hard to imagine how he looked as a young man. The stunning photo of him and his wife looks like from a movie in the early seventies. He was such a good-looking young man, curious, intelligent, and a little bit naughty. She looked quiet and pretty. 真是一对璧人啊。When I saw the photo, I couldn't help thinking how nice it is to be young. I don't have the feeling very often, partly because not so many young people look very lovable, at least nowadays.

The thing I admire the most was that he had an excellent high school teacher, a learned scholar of Arabic studies, and used to work in the university who opened a door to the 12-year-old L.S. and even influenced him on the choice of his whole academic life. Perhaps such people exist only in Europe.

Another thing I feel deeply touched about was that he mentioned the deaths of many of his colleagues. And I know that some of the people that he mentioned already died although he did not talk about this in this interview. Then I said to myself "it's really important to live long as a scholar".

That's all for today. Now I will go back to my work.