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2022.05.12
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张至晟✎
Jacob Zhicheng ZhangTightBelt的运营者之一，平时在柏林观影、阅读、看展、写稿、翻译、聊天
Co-founder of TightBelt. Can often be found in Berlin watching films, reading, visiting exhibitions, translating, or chatting.
掀开一本书的封面，首先映入眼帘的，是扉页，还是环衬？
中文世界里的扉页，往往夹带着许多可能。它和环衬间若即若离，又唇齿相依的关系，让我摸不着头脑——也许用纸不够厚实，没和封二粘连在一起的那页，只能叫作扉页。 扉页在英文中叫title page，翻成中文也许是“标题页”或者“书名页”，但是中文书里的扉页并不见得会印上标题、书名。留白倒是很有可能。这样就可以签名、写赠语、盖藏书章、贴图书借阅登记卡、用柠檬汁写下一些不想让人即刻看见的话。 尽管矫情了些，但我倒是很情愿扉页是张白纸——这么说，脑海中立马就能浮现出那些人生如书的八股论调，而作为白纸的扉页，大约是潇洒序言和激昂章节前，作者自导自演的一点不确定。很妙的是，令人浮想联翩和让人觉得矫情之间，甚至都没隔上一页白纸，因为作为白纸的扉页，纯洁到还分不清雅俗是非。
When you open the cover of a book, is the first thing you see the title page or the flyleaf?
In Chinese, the term _feiye _is ambiguous. Distinct from the flyleaf yet inseparable from it, the term puzzles me: perhaps a thin page not pasted to the inside cover can only be called a feiye.
In English, the title page is literally the page with the title. But in Chinese books, the feiye doesn’t necessarily contain such information. It’s just as likely to be left blank, to make room for a signature, a dedication, an ex-libris stamp, or a library card, or just to write something in lemon juice that you don’t want to be noticed right away.
As pretentious as it may sound, I prefer the title page to be a white sheet of paper. This calls to mind the cliché that life is like a book, in which case a blank page before the clever prologue and the captivating chapters might become a staged confession directed by the author, giving away a tiny dose of their uncertainty. Curiously, pretension is less than a page-turn away from imagination. After all, a blank title page is so pure that there’s no telling the elegant from the vulgar, the true from the false.