题图由vv提供
VV provides the cover photo.
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source: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/苏珊·桑塔格
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
陶理说:
经VV允许，我搬运她写的原创推送（认识苏珊·桑塔格），并且在GEO附上我做的英文翻译和评论，同时也开放留言区给所有人，形成一个我们俩与感兴趣的读者可以做的关于「苏珊·桑塔格」的对话。
Hermione says:
With VV's consent, I here put a link to her original piece of Chinese writing (认识苏珊·桑塔格) and translate her words into English, adding some of my comments at the end, allowing everyone to comment too, so we can all have a space to talk about Susan Sontag.
下文借助了DeepL翻译的内容。引文参照了《论摄影》英文原著；为了方便手机阅读，编者/译者将每句话独立成段：
Here is the translation with the help of DeepL Translate. Two quotes are directly extracted from the English version of On Photography and Styles of Radical Will; as most readers will read with their phone, the editor/translator breaks the article into one sentence one paragraph:
I first became acquainted with Sontag when my mentor recommended her work On Photography.
In this book, Sontag explores the aesthetic and ethical issues of the photographic image. The first chapter starts with this:
"Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still revelling, its old habit, in mere images of the truth."
Sontag discusses photography-related topics in a way that, little by little, broadens the boundaries of my understanding.
She was like a wise person who went back to the cave and tried to make me see the truth.
I fell in love with her.
For a while, I was obsessed with getting to know her, from her personal page, from documentaries, from interviews, from her work.
source: https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=苏珊·桑塔格
She had many labels: precocious, anti-war activist, Jewish, bisexual, the conscience of the American public.
She battled different forms of cancer throughout her life.
She once said,
"If you are interested in everything and curious about everything, death is much more difficult."
Her burgeoning curiosity gave her a resilient will to live. In this respect, she was my idol.
With her illness, she became more concerned about the world in front of her and began to recognise that there are many metaphors and obscured truths in the world.
I had a similar experience during last year's epidemic (COVID-19). Illness has become a label, a discourse that stigmatised the patients.
During that time, Albert Camus' The Plague and Susan Sontag's Illness As Metaphor allowed me (who could only stay at home) to reflect and think about what I was experiencing from my reading.
Among her works, I particularly enjoyed the book Styles of Radical Will, especially Trip to Hanoi in Part III.
Sontag was invited to North Vietnam for her public opposition to the Vietnam War. This essay is a record of her experiences and reflections during that time.
When Sontag first arrived in North Vietnam, she felt a strong sense of confusion and sadness that Vietnamese culture and the personality of the Vietnamese people were so different from the culture and personality traits of the West.
Whether the subject intended it or not, it is difficult to understand the thoughts of the Vietnamese people in word and deed from one's own culture - its apparent simplicity can even give rise to a condescending contempt for outsiders.
This cultural difference is extremely difficult to overcome.
Sontag is both annoyed by the ways how the Vietnamese people behave and uncontrollably irritated by her own immoral judgmental ideas.
Although Sontag tries to practise her morality, the conflict between a self-righteous understanding and a reality that subverts perceptions keeps her reflecting.
She faithfully expresses her feelings in writing, deciphering her inner conflicts and documenting the whole process of emerging from this dilemma.
One of her quotes may explain why I enjoyed this article.
"Unless I could effect in myself some change of awareness, of consciousness, it would scarcely matter that I’d actually been to Vietnam. But that was exactly what was so hard, since I had only my own culture-bound, disoriented sensibility for an instrument."
I was particularly afraid that I would be "self-righteous" and have trouble understanding and fitting into a different environment.
Sontag's honesty gives me some reassurance and is a constant reminder of my humble curiosity and heightened sensibility.
Facing the other is not about holding a camera and looking through a screen, but about letting go of one's defences and preconceptions and really stepping in.
本图由vv提供
VV provides this photo.
陶理碎碎念：
我和VV尽管在现实中没有见过几次面，但我们彼此总是觉得很亲近。我们都是很喜欢读书思考的人，也都对许多大部分人习以为常的事情充满着旺盛的好奇心，想知道为什么。
午饭时间看了VV推荐的纪录片，感受到了Sontag这一生可真是活得恣意。下午茶时间因为翻译去找了英文版的书来查证，尽管时间有限，我两本书都没读完。但好在是开始看了，一旦醒来，一个人就很难再去装睡。我感到如此开心，原来我们还可以用这些不同的视角去这样去思考、看待世界。
Hermione's comments：
VV and I always feel close to each other even though we hadn't met a few times in reality. We are both very bookish and immersed in our readings, and both have a great curiosity about many things most people feel it is normal. We want to know why.
At lunchtime, I watched a documentary recommended by VV and got the impression that Sontag really had lived a life of freedom. At tea time I went to look up the English version of the book to check it out because of my translator role. Although my causal reading time was limited and I didn't finish either book, the good thing is I started reading Sontag's work. And I know, once waken up, one cannot easily go back to pretend asleep. I feel so glad that we could still think and see the world from different perspectives.
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