The Lantern-Bearers 7-112 携灯人 133

**** I

These boys congregated every autumn about a certain easterly fisher-village,
where they tasted in a high degree the glory of existence.
The place was created seemingly on purpose for the diversion of young gentlemen.
A street or two of houses, mostly red and many of, them tiled;
a number of fine trees clustered about the manse and the kirkyard, and turning the chief street into a shady alley;
many little gardens more than usually bright with flowers;
nets a-drying, and fisher-wives scolding in the backward parts; a smell of fish, a genial smell of seaweed;
whiffs of blowing sand at the street-corners;
shops with golf-balls and bottled lollipops;
another shop with penny pickwicks (that remarkable cigar) and the LONDON JOURNAL,
dear to me for its startling pictures, and a few novels, dear for their suggestive names: such, as well as memory serves me, were the ingredients of the town.
These, you are to conceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays,
and sparsely flanked with villas enough for the boys to lodge in with their subsidiary parents,
not enough (not yet enough) to cocknify the scene: a haven in the rocks in front:
in front of that, a file of gray islets: to the left, endless links and sand wreaths,
a wilderness of hiding-holes, alive with popping rabbits and soaring gulls:
to the right, a range of seaward crags, one rugged brow beyond another;
the ruins of a mighty and ancient fortress on the brink of one;
coves between – now charmed into sunshine quiet, now whistling with wind and clamorous with bursting surges;
the dens and sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and southernwood,
the air at the cliff’s edge brisk and clean and pungent of the sea – in front of all, the Bass Rock,
tilted seaward like a doubtful bather, the surf ringing it with white, the solan- geese hanging round its summit like a great and glittering smoke.
This choice piece of seaboard was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; and the Bass, in the eye of fancy,
still flew the colours of King James; and in the ear of fancy the arches of Tantallon still rang with horse-shoe iron,
and echoed to the commands of Bell-the-Cat.

这些男孩子每年秋天都要到东面的某个渔村聚会，
在那里充分享受辉煌灿烂的美好时光。
从表面上看，这个地方似乎是为青年绅士们消遣而建的：
一两条街道，两边的房子大部分呈红色，不少是用砖盖起来；
在牧师住宅和教堂周围种了不少美丽的树木，
使那条主要街道成了一条林荫路；
许许多多小花园里经常是鲜花盛开；
花园深处晾着渔网，不时传出渔民妻子们的叫骂声；
空气中弥漫着鱼腥味和海藻的咸味；
街道转弯处时而刮起裹着沙子的旋风；
有几家店铺在卖高尔夫球和瓶装糖果；
而另一家店铺则在出售一个便士一支的廉价雪茄烟（非同寻常的雪茄），《伦敦日报》–
上面登载的惊人的照片使我很喜欢它–和少量标题引人注目的小说。
根据我的记忆，这就是村落的组成情况。
你还得设想这村落正处在两个海湾之间，
狭长的沙地深入海中，两侧点缀着稀稀落落的别墅，
足以供这些男孩和他们的父母居住，
然而还不足以（现在还不足以）使这个地方变得像伦敦一样的气派。
岸边的岩石当中有一个船舶抛锚处，前面是一列灰色小岛，
左边是一望无际的生草的沙地和沙丘，以及无数隐蔽的洞穴，
活蹦乱跳的野兔和展翅飞翔的海鸥使这里充满生气；
右边是一排伸向大海的巉chán岩，
高低不平的岩石层见叠出，
一座巨大的古堡废墟屹立在悬崖边缘；
悬崖之间形成的一些小海湾，有时在阳光下显得宁静迷人，有时在暴风雨和汹涌的巨浪中发出震耳的啸声；
从兽穴和隐蔽的洞穴里散发出百里香和青叶蒿的芬芳气息，
山崖的上空吹来的是清新，凉爽的海风。
在这一排岩石的最前面耸立着巨大的巴斯岩，像个犹豫不决的游泳者向水面倾斜，
拍岸的浪花使它蒙上了一层白沙。
天上飞翔的成群塘鹅犹如一道道烟雾发出闪闪的光芒。
营救遇难船只的人们把这块绝无仅有的海岸线视为不可侵犯的圣地。
在人们的想像中，巴斯岩的顶部似乎仍飘扬着詹姆斯国王的战旗，
坦特伦的拱形建筑中似乎仍回响着阵阵马蹄声，
伴随着冲锋陷阵的号令声。
—————————————————–

There was nothing to mar your days, if you were a boy summering in that part, but the embarrassment of pleasure.
You might golf if you wanted; but I seem to have been better employed.
You might secrete yourself in the Lady’s Walk, a certain sunless dingle of elders, all mossed over by the damp as green as grass,
and dotted here and there by the stream-side with roofless walls, the cold homes of anchorites.
To fit themselves for life, and with a special eye to acquire the art of smoking,
it was even common for the boys to harbour there; and you might have seen a single penny pickwick,
honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew the glen with these apprentices.
Again, you might join our fishing parties, where we sat perched as thick as solan-geese,
a covey of little anglers, boy and girl, angling over each other’s heads,
to the to the much entanglement of lines and loss of podleys and consequent shrill recrimination – shrill as the geese themselves.
Indeed, had that been all, you might have done this often;
but though fishing be a fine pastime, the podley is scarce to be regarded as a dainty for the table;
and it was a point of honour that a boy should eat all that he had taken.
Or again, you might climb the Law, where the whale’s jawbone stood landmark in the buzzing wind,
and behold the face of many counties, and the smoke and spires of many towns, and the sails of distant ships.
You might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, that we pathetically call our summer,
now in a gale of wind, with the sand scourging your bare hide,
your clothes thrashing abroad from underneath their guardian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you headlong ere it had drowned your knees.
Or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs,
when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce discovered;
following my leader from one group to another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships,
wading in pools after the abominable creatures of the sea,
and ever with an eye cast backward on the march off the tide and the menaced line of your retreat.
And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eating in the open air:
digging perhaps a house under the margin of the links,
kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and cooking apples there –
if they were truly apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant must have played us off with some inferior and quite local fruit capable of resolving,
in the neighbourhood of fire, into mere sand and smoke and iodine;
or perhaps pushing to Tantallon, you might lunch on sandwiches and visions in the grassy court,
while the wind hummed in the crumbling turrets; or clambering along the coast, eat geans
(the worst, I must suppose, in Christendom) from an adventurous gean tree that had taken root under a cliff,
where it was shaken with an ague of east wind, and silvered after gales with salt,
and grew so foreign among its bleak surroundings that to eat of its produce was an adventure in itself.

如果你是个到此地度假的男孩，
你只会因可供观赏的地方太多而不知所措，
绝不会有无所事事的烦恼。
愿意的话，你可以打高尔夫球，
但是我认为除此之外还有许多更好的事情可做。
你可以悄悄地到“贵妇逍遥地”去散步，
这个昔日曾有人居住的幽暗山谷，
因潮湿而长满了青苔，给人以碧绿草地的印象，
在溪流两岸到处可见隐士们居住过的旧房舍，如今只剩下残墙断壁。
男孩子们为了使自己适应生活的需要，特别是为了获得抽烟的技巧，
经常到这里来聚会。
你会看到他们用钝刀子把一个便士一支的雪茄切成几段，平均分配，
然后分散到幽谷中去吞云吐雾。
或者你可以参加钓鱼活动，同一群男孩子，女孩子一起攀上岩石，
像塘鹅一样头挨头肩擦肩地挤在一起，
甩出去的钓线不时地缠绕到一起，
自然吓跑了鳗鱼，接着引起孩子们的一片相互指责的尖叫声–与塘鹅的叫声无异。
如果情况只限于此，你或许还会经常愿意来这里钓鱼。
然而钓鱼活动尽管是消磨时光的好办法，
鳗鱼却一直是餐桌上少见的珍惜菜肴；
孩子们钓上来的东西五花八门，什么都有，
而每个人必须负责把自己的战利品全部吃光，
否则会被看作有失体面。
你或者可以去爬劳山，山坡上有古代鲸鱼颚骨作的路标，
你迎着呼啸的山风往上走；
在山顶，可以看到周围各郡，
看到城镇上空的缕缕青烟和塔尖，
还可以看到远方航行的船只。
你也可以去洗海水浴，
或者在我们可悲地称之为我们的夏季的短暂的情郎日子里，
或者在狂风大作时；
沙子会打在你的光滑的皮肤上，使你感到疼痛，
你压在石头下面的衣服也会被海浪冲走。
海水还未漫过你的膝盖，
一个巨浪会卷着泡沫突然涌起，把你头朝下地推进水中。
你也可以到落潮后露出水面的大片礁石滩上去探险，
最好选择春季的落潮时节，此时山崖脚下尚无人迹；
你跟着我从一片礁石爬向另一片礁石，
在滑腻腻的乱石中去寻找沉船的残骸，
或者在海水中摸索各种奇形怪状的海生动物，
此时，你还须不断地观测身后海潮的动静，
以防上涨的潮水切断你的退路。
而后你可以去作鲁滨逊式的旅行，包括举行各式野餐；
为此，你或许有兴趣在荒岛的岸边掘土垒墙，
用晒干的海生植物点燃篝火，烘烤苹果–
必须是真正的苹果，因为我怀疑商人有时会用当地的某种劣等水果打发我们，
而这种土产品经过火烤，除了冒烟，所剩之物只是沙子和碘。
你也可以径直去坦特伦堡，
在那长满野草的古堡院内，
一边大嚼夹肉面包，一边欣赏美景，
耳边响起从塔楼废墟传来的萧萧风声。
你也可以顺着海岸线攀登海边的岩石，
偶尔碰上一棵从峭壁夹缝中钻出来的野樱桃树，便可摘食它的果实。
这棵树长在峭壁上，不断受到东风的袭击和巨浪的冲洗，
水中的盐份使他披上银装，在四周荒凉景色的衬托下显得格外奇特不凡，
以致吃它的果子也成为一种冒险。
（我想，对基督徒来说，这种果子肯定是极不合口味的。）
———————————————————–

There are mingled some dismal memories with so many that were joyous.
Of the fisher-wife, for instance, who had cut her throat at Canty Bay;
and of how I ran with the other children to the top of the Quadrant,
and beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart,
and on the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged,
and the bandage all bloody –
horror!
– the fisher-wife herself,
who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts,
and even to-day (as I recall the scene) darkens daylight.
She was lodged in the little old jail in the chief street;
but whether or no she died there, with a wise terror of the worst, I never inquired.
She had been tippling; it was but a dingy tragedy;
and it seems strange and hard that,
after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should be still pilloried on her cart in the scrap-book of my memory.
Nor shall I readily forget a certain house in the Quadrant where a visitor died,
and a dark old woman continued to dwell alone with the dead body;
nor how this old woman conceived a hatred to myself and one of my cousins,
and in the dread hour of the dusk, as we were clambering on the garden-walls,
opened a window in that house of mortality and cursed us in a shrill voice and with a marrowy choice of language.
It was a pair of very colourless urchins that fled down the lane from this remarkable experience!
But I recall with a more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of fear and exultation, the coil of equinoctial tempests;
trumpeting squalls, scouring flaws of rain;
the boats with their reefed lugsails scudding for the harbour mouth, where danger lay,
for it was hard to make when the wind had any east in it;
the wives clustered with blowing shawls at the pier-head, where (if fate was against them) they might see boat and husband and sons –
their whole wealth and their whole family – engulfed under their eyes;
and (what I saw but once) a troop of neighbours forcing such an unfortunate homeward,
and she squalling and battling in their midst, a figure scarcely human, a tragic Maenad.

对往事的回忆，有许多是美好的，
但也会夹杂一些令人沮丧的事请。
譬如，关于那位在坎特湾用刀子抹脖子的渔民妻子–
当时我与别的孩子一起，恰好跑到夸德兰山顶，
看到一群沉默无言的人正随着一辆平板马车走着，
车上有一把椅子，上面绑着这个渔民妻子，
她的颈部用纱布包扎着，纱布已被鲜血染成了红色。
真令人不寒而栗！
当时的情景一直萦绕在我的脑际，
至今一想起来仍给我以暗无天日之感。
她被关押在主要街道旁的一间又小又破旧的牢房里，
后来是否死在那里，我从未去打听过，
因为我害怕了解到最不幸的消息。
这个渔民妻子一直酗酒；整个事情不过是件极不光彩的悲剧。
但令人奇怪和费解的是，
经过这么多年，在我的记忆中这个可怜的疯狂的罪人仍被绑在马车上。
我同样没有忘记夸德兰那里的一幢zhuang房子，
一位游客在房子里死去，
有一个黑肤色的年迈女人继续与死尸共居一室；
我也没有忘记这个年迈女人如何仇视我和我的一位表兄；
一个黄昏，正当我们攀登花园的围墙时，
她从死者的房间里突然打开窗子，
用尖锐刺耳的嗓音和刻薄的语言对我们破口大骂。
面对这一险境，我们这一对淘气包吓得面无人色，转身就往山下逃命。
可是，在对往事的回忆中，最使我激动，恐惧和心潮起伏的是春分时节的海上狂飚：
狂风呼啸，大雨倾盆而下；
收起四角帆的渔船向港口疾驶，
但那里潜伏着危险，因为东风使得他们很难靠岸；
妻子们聚集在码头上，她们的披肩随风飘动，
（如果恶运降临）她们可能要亲眼看到渔船连带她们的丈夫和儿子一起覆没，
这意味着她们的全部财富和全家人覆没。
我曾见过一次这样的场面：
许多邻居把一位这样的不幸者强拖回家去，
她在她们中间嚎啕大哭，拼命挣扎，悲痛欲绝，失去了常态。
——————————————————

These are things that I recall with interest;
but what my memory dwells upon the most, I have been all this while withholding.
It was a sport peculiar to the place, and indeed to a week or so of our two months’ holiday there.
Maybe it still flourishes in its native spot;
for boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces inscrutable to man;
so that tops and marbles reappear in their due season, regular like the sun and moon;
and the harmless art of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of the United States.
It may still flourish in its native spot, but nowhere else, I am persuaded;
for I tried myself to introduce it on Tweedside, and was defeated lamentably;
its charm being quite local, like a country wine that cannot be exported.

The idle manner of it was this:-

这些都是我喜欢回忆的情景。
但是到现在我还没有说我最难以忘怀的事。
那是当地独有的一种活动，
我们在那里的两个月的假期中，实际上只在一到两周内从事这项活动。
也许至今那里仍盛行这项活动，
因为男孩子们和他们的娱乐活动，
总会受到某种令人捉摸不定的周而复始的力量驱使，
正如植物在适宜的季节里就会生长，太阳和月亮有规律地出现一样，
也正如无害的蹠. zhí骨游戏经历了罗马帝国覆灭和美国的兴起一样。
这项活动在其发源地也许仍然时兴，
但我相信它不会扩展到其他地方去，
因为我本人曾试图将它介绍到特威德赛地区，却遭到令人痛惜的失败。
这项活动的妙处是由其地区色彩决定的，
就像乡间酿制的酒一样，在外地是销售不出去的。

它的活动方式是这样的：
——————————————-

Toward the end of September,
when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black,
we would begin to sally from our- respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull’s-eye lantern.
The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain;
and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary.
We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat.
They smelled noisomely of blistered tin;
they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers;
their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful;
and yet a boy with a bull’s-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more.
The fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose,
that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull’s-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen.
The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that;
yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of;
and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common,
and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely.
But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive;
and to be a boy with a bull’s-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.

每到9月底学校即将开学之际，
当夜色已经降临之时，我们便各自离开自己住的别墅，
带上马口铁制的牛眼灯外出漫游。
这种习惯做法后来扬名在外，甚至对英国的商业也产生了影响：
每到这个季节，杂货铺的老板们便在橱窗里摆出我们出游时所需要的特殊照明用具。
我们把灯挎在腰带上，外面套上系好纽扣的轻便大衣–这是出游的规矩。
牛眼灯散发出烧烫的马口铁的臭味。
它们从来都燃烧不好，
但却总会烫着我们的手指。
它们实际上并没有发挥任何照明作用，
给我们这些孩子带来的乐趣，
也只是个人想像的结果。
然而，一个在轻便大衣下面挎着牛眼灯的男孩别无他求。
渔民们在船上是使用提灯的–
我想我们可能是从他们那里得到启发的；
然而他们用的不是牛眼灯，
而且我们也从不扮演渔民的角色。
警察在腰带上是挎灯的–
我们的做法显然也不是从他们那儿模仿来的，
但是我们从来不装作警察。
其实，在我们的思想中可能闪现过夜盗的形象，
也肯定想到过历史上提灯盛行的时代和一些大量描写提灯的故事书。
但无论怎样，
这种做法给我们带来的乐趣是实实在在的–
作为一个男孩，能在轻便大衣下面挎上一盏牛眼灯，
这就足够了。
——————————————————

When two of these asses met, there would be an anxious “Have you got your lantern?”
and a gratified “Yes!”
That was the shibboleth, and very needful too;
for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognise a lantern-bearer,
unless (like the polecat) by the smell.
Four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them –
for the cabin was usually locked,
or choose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead.
There the coats would be unbuttoned and the bull’s-eyes discovered;
and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge windy hall of the night,
and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware,
these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat,
and delight themselves with inappropriate talk.
Woe is me that I may not give some specimens – some of their foresights of life, or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature,
these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly silly, so romantically young.
But the talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer.
The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night;
the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping,
whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark;
and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart,
to know you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.

当两个这样的男孩相遇时，一个会急切地问：“你带灯了吗？”
对方则满意地回答：“带了！”
这是他们之间的暗语，而且是必要的暗语。
因为我们立了规矩，绝不对外宣扬自己的非凡经历。
实际上，除非能闻到像臭猫发出的那古怪气味，
否则没有人能认出谁是挎牛眼灯的孩子。
有时，四五个孩子钻进十人帆船的底部（因为船舱一般都锁着），
在座板底下静悄悄地呆着；
或是找一个海边的沙窝跳进去，听着呼啸的海风吹过头顶。
它们解开轻便大衣的扣子露出牛眼灯。
在巨大，空旷的夜幕下，微弱的灯光摇曳不定，
灯火烧烤马口铁发出的沉重气味令人兴奋，
这些幸运的青年绅士在冰冷的海边沙地上或肮脏的渔船底舱里蹲在一起，
陶醉于不合时宜的谈话中。
遗憾的是，我无法复述这些谈话–
无非是他们对生活的一些看法以及围绕人和自然的来源提出的种种深刻的问题。
这些谈话如此激烈，又如此天真无邪，
使人感到他们既傻得出奇，又富有年轻人的浪漫色彩。
但是，这些谈话终究只是一剂调味品，
这些聚会本身也只是这些携灯人生涯中的小小插曲。
这种快乐的本质在于你独自行走于黑夜之中；
关死滑门，系好大衣的扣子，不让一丝光亮透出来–
不管是为了照路，还是为了让人发现你引以自豪的东西。
你只是黑暗中的一根黑柱子；
与此同时，在你那愚蠢的心灵深处，
你知道自己腰上挎着一盏牛眼灯，
并为知道这一点而狂喜欢歌。
—————————————————————–

**** II

It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid.
It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives,
and is the spice of life to his possessor.
Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man’s imagination.
His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud;
there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it,
in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer,
he will have some kind of a bull’s-eye at his belt.

据说在感情最迟钝的那些人心中诗人已经夭折了。
但是，我们不妨说，这个（不太出名的）诗人在几乎所有人的心中活着，
并且给人们带来了生活的乐趣。
人类想象力的多样性和未经查明的幼稚性尚未得到公正的评价。
他的生活从表面看也许仅仅像个粗陋的烂泥堆，
但是在他的内心生活中一定会有一座金色的小屋，
他快乐地住在里面；
由于在旁观者看来，他的生活像他脚下的路一样黑暗，
他必须在腰带上挎上某种牛眼灯。
—————————————————–

It would be hard to pick out a career more cheerless than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the “Old Bailey Reports,”
a prey to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood,
betrayed by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish schoolboy,
and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks.
You marvel at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity;
and then you call to memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a miser,
he could have been freed at once from these trials,
and might have built himself a castle and gone escorted by a squadron.
For the love of more recondite joys, which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we should envy,
the man had willingly forgone both comfort and consideration.
“His mind to him a kingdom was”; and sure enough, digging into that mind,
which seems at first a dust-heap,
we unearth some priceless jewels.
For Dancer must have had the love of power and the disdain of using it, a noble character in itself;
disdain of many pleasures, a chief part of what is commonly called wisdom;
disdain of the inevitable end, that finest trait of mankind;
scorn of men’s opinions, another element of virtue;
and at the back of all, a conscience just like yours and mine, whining like a cur, swindling like a thimble- rigger,
but still pointing (there or there-about) to some conventional standard.
Here were a cabinet portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice;
and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser’s pulse,
his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what:
insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake.
Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life,
with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics;
and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth,
and to and fro in his discomfortable house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of delight.
And so with others, who do not live by bread alone,
but by some cherished and perhaps fantastic pleasure;
who are meat salesmen to the external eye, and possibly to themselves are Shakespeares, Napoleons, or Beethovens;
who have not one virtue to rub against another in the field of active life, and yet perhaps, in the life of contemplation, sit with the saints.
We see them on the street, and we can count their buttons;
but heaven knows in what they pride themselves! heaven knows where they have set their treasure!

人们很难找到比“伦敦中央刑事法庭报告”中提及的守财奴丹瑟的遭遇更为悲惨的经历：
他受到了最卑鄙的迫害，成为邻居们攻击的对象；
他雇用的人出卖了他；
他的家受到顽皮学生的骚扰；
他受尽煎熬，忍无可忍，最后无可奈何地求助于法律来对付这些恼人的事情。
最初你可能会感到奇怪，
竟然会有人愿意过这种毫无乐趣，丧失尊严的生活；
然后你会想到，如果这个人不去当守财奴，他会免受这些折磨，
还可以为自己修建一座城堡，并有一支卫队保护自己。
然而他却为了追求某种隐秘的快乐–
我们很难想象是什么么样的快乐，
也许我们会羡慕这种快乐–
而自愿地放弃了舒适和受人尊重的生活。
“他的头脑就是他的王国”。
他的头脑初看起来是一堆尘土，
但是如果深入探讨，我们肯定会从中发掘出一些无价之宝。
丹瑟肯定曾爱慕过权势尔后又加以鄙弃，
这本身反映了他的高尚情操；
他鄙视许多种享乐，这是人类最优秀的品质；
他蔑视舆论，这又是一种美德；
而在这一切背后，同你我一样，
良心尽管也会像饿狗一样哀鸣，像骗子一样行骗，
却仍在追寻某种传统的行为标准。
如有由霍桑来描绘这样一个人物，可能会比较公正。
然而霍桑本人所具有的宽厚仁爱，
又使他不可能为我们勾出守财奴的内心颤动：
精力充沛，烦躁不安，野心勃勃地妄图攫取他无法得到的东西；
他贪得无厌，丧失了理智，好似一个手持粪耙的神祗zhǐ。
因此，只要观察丹瑟这样一个守财奴的内心世界，
我们至少可以发现他具有诗人的充沛生命力，
他心中的激情甚至超过了诗人写史诗时迸beng发的热情。
当你来到毫无温暖可言的住房里，
尾随着这位在冰冷的壁炉旁来回走动的自私人物时，
你回窥见到他的欣喜若狂的内心世界。
这种情况在其他人的身上也会有所表现：
维系他们生命的不仅是面包，还有某种心爱之物，
甚至往往是臆想出来的某种乐趣。
有些人看外表是肉铺的店员，却有可能在心中把自己比作莎士比亚，拿破仑或贝多芬式的人物；
还有一些人，与别人相比，在社会生活中没有什么突出优点，
然而却可能在精神世界中把自己视为圣人。
我们在街上经常会遇上这种人，而且还会与他们打交道。
天晓得他们为什么会那样自鸣得意，天晓得他们隐匿的宝藏在何处！
———————————————————–

There is one fable that touches very near the quick of life:
the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two,
and found himself on his return a stranger at his convent gates;
for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognise him.
It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there.
He sings in the most doleful places.
The miser hears him and chuckles, and the days are moments.
With no more apparatus than an ill-smelling lantern I have evoked him on the naked links.
All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands:
seeking for that bird and hearing him.
And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable.
And just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us,
that fills us with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist.
There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron,
cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget;
but of the note of that time- devouring nightingale we hear no news.

有一个寓言触及了生活的本质：
一个修道士穿过一片林地时，听到一只鸟儿突然唱起歌来，
他站在那儿倾听了片刻，然后回到修道院的门前，
却发现自己已变成了陌生人。
原来他已出走了50年之久，
在那些依然健在的同事中只有一个人认出了他。
其实，这种有魔力的鸟儿不仅在森林中歌唱，
虽然它可能生长在森林中；
它也在其他令人悲哀的地方歌唱。
那个守财奴听到鸟鸣，会为之露出愉快的笑容，
时间也就好打发了。
我呆在光秃秃的海滩上，
手中除了一盏冒臭气的牛眼灯之外，没有别的东西，
可是我却把这鸟召来了。
生活，不是呆板无生气的，
它由两条线延伸而成：
寻找那只鸟儿并倾听它的鸣唱。
正是这一点，使得人们很难去评价生活的价值，
也很难体会别人的生活的乐趣。
正是对这一点的认识，以及对那只鸟儿为我们歌唱的幸运时刻的回忆，
使我们在翻看那些现实主义作家的作品时深感惊愕。
在那里，我们肯定会发现一幅由烂泥和废铁，廉价的欲望和廉价的恐惧构成的生活图景，
对此，我们羞于回忆，更不在乎把它们忘掉；
然而，在那里却一点也听不到那只使时光飞逝的鸟儿的鸣唱。
———————————————————-

The case of these writers of romance is most obscure.
They have been boys and youths;
they have lingered outside the window of the beloved,
who was then most probably writing to some one else;
they have sat before a sheet of paper, and felt themselves mere continents of congested poetry, not one line of which would flow;
they have walked alone in the woods, they have walked in cities under the countless lamps;
they have been to sea, they have hated, they have feared, they have longed to knife a man, and maybe done it;
the wild taste of life has stung their palate.
Or, if you deny them all the rest, one pleasure at least they have tasted to the full – their books are there to prove it –
the keen pleasure of successful literary composition.
And yet they fill the globe with volumes, whose cleverness inspires me with despairing admiration,
and whose consistent falsity to all I care to call existence, with despairing wrath.
If I had no better hope than to continue to revolve among the dreary and petty businesses,
and to be moved by the paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and animate their heroes,
I declare I would die now.
But there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet;
if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering thoughts,
I could count some grains of memory,
compared to which the whole of one of these romances seems but dross.

那些传奇文学作者的情况，是最不为外界所了解的。
他们曾有过少年和青年时代；
他们曾在心上人的窗外徘徊过，而当时她却很可能在给别人写情书；
他们曾诗兴大发地面对稿纸，却又一个字也写不出来；
他们曾独自在林中漫游，也曾在城市数不清的灯光下散步；
他们去过海滨；
他们恨过，也怕过；
他们曾很想用刀去捅人，而且也可能这样做过；
他们尝尽了人生的酸甜苦辣。
退一步讲，即使你可以否认他们曾有过其他任何一种生活乐趣，
但是至少有一种乐趣是他们所饱尝了的，
那就是成功的写作所带来的巨大欢乐–
关于这一点，他们的著作本身就是证明。
这些书传到世界各地，其中的才智使我们羡慕不已，深感望尘莫及，
但其中对我十分谨慎地称之为生活方式的一切所采取的百分之百的虚构态度，
又使我极为愤怒。
如果我不断接触的是他们在书中描述的繁琐的细枝末节，
如果我的感情总是被书中主人公所面临的那些不值一提的希望与恐惧所左右，
如果除此之外我没有更好的选择，
那我宁可立即死去。
幸好我的时间一个小时也没有消磨在以上那些没有意义的事情上。
如果我在转车时不得不在火车站等候一小时的话，
我也许会随心所欲地做各种联想，或回忆一些零星的往事，
与这些相比，读那样的一本传奇小说，只能是徒费时间。
—————————————————————-

These writers would retort (if I take them properly) that this was very true;
that it was the same with themselves and other persons of (what they call) the artistic temperament;
that in this we were exceptional, and should apparently be ashamed of ourselves;
but that our works must deal exclusively with (what they call) the average man,
who was a prodigious dull fellow, and quite dead to all but the paltriest considerations.
I accept the issue.
We can only know others by ourselves.
The artistic temperament (a plague on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen, or it would make us incapable of writing novels;
and the average man (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me,
or he would not be average.
It was Whitman who stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase;
but Whitman knew very well, and showed very nobly, that the average man was full of joys and full of a poetry of his own.
And this harping on life’s dulness and man’s meanness is a loud profession of incompetence;
it is one of two things: the cry of the blind eye,
I CANNOT SEE, or the complaint of the dumb tongue, I CANNOT UTTER.
To draw a life without delights is to prove I have not realised it.
To picture a man without some sort of poetry – well, it goes near to prove my case, for it shows an author may have little enough.
To see Dancer only as a dirty, old, small-minded, impotently fuming man, in a dirty house, besieged by Harrow boys, and probably beset by small attorneys,
is to show myself as keen an observer as . . . the Harrow boys.
But these young gentlemen (with a more becoming modesty) were content to pluck Dancer by the coat-tails;
they did not suppose they had surprised his secret or could put him living in a book:
and it is there my error would have lain.
Or say that in the same romance – I continue to call these books romances, in the hope of giving pain – say that in the same romance,
which now begins really to take shape, I should leave to speak of Dancer, and follow instead the Harrow boys;
and say that I came on some such business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links;
and described the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they were;
and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was.
I might upon these lines, and had I Zola’s genius, turn out, in a page or so, a gem of literary art, render the lantern-light with the touches of a master,
and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love;
and when all was done, what a triumph would my picture be of shallowness and dulness!
how it would have missed the point! how it would have belied the boys!
To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly and indecent;
but ask the boys themselves, and they are discussing (as it is highly proper they should) the possibilities of existence.
To the eye of the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded;
but ask themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure,
the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern.

这些作者会进行反驳（如果我对他们的了解是正确的话），
说我讲的情况是千真万确的，
他们本人和一切（他们所谓的）有艺术气质的人也都有这种感受；
但是有这种感受的人只是少数，
显然我们应该为此而感到羞愧；
然而我们的作品必须专门针对（他们所谓的）普通人来写，
这这些人都是异常迟钝的，
他们除了一些渺不足道的考虑之外，对其他的一切都麻木不仁。
我愿就这个问题争辩一下。
事实上，我们只能通过自己来了解别人。
艺术气质（讨厌的词！）并不能使我们与其他人有任何不同，
否则我们就无法写小说。
普通人（该死的词！）同你和我没有什么区别，
否则他们就不成其为普通人了。
正是惠特曼为普通人这个词打上了伯明翰式的神圣印记；
但是惠特曼很清楚地认识到并且很正确地表达了这样的看法，
即普通人的心中充满了快乐，充满了一种他们所特有的诗意。
因而唠唠叨叨地说什么生活是枯燥的，人是卑鄙自私的，
就犹如盲人大喊自己什么也看不见或哑巴埋怨自己无法说话一样，
都表明自己作为作家是不称职的。
描述一种没有乐趣的生活，恰好证明我对生活缺乏了解。
塑造一个不具有某种诗意的人–
可以说我就接近属于没有诗意的人–
恰好表明作者本人就很少诗意。
我看到的丹瑟只是一个住在破旧房子里的肮脏，思想狭窄，软弱而又爱发怒，
总是受到哈罗公学学生骚扰和被不称职律师们包围的老人，
这说明我自己的观察能力与……哈罗学生的观察能力无异。
然而这些年轻的绅士（他们还是有节制和可爱的）还仅满足于去拽丹瑟的上衣后摆，
他们并没有打算去揭发丹瑟的隐私，
或者以他作为书中的活生生的主人公，
而这恰恰是我可能犯的一个错误。
假定在确实已初步形成流派的这类传奇小说中–
我继续把这类书称为传奇小说，为的是刺痛那些作者–
我不再描述丹瑟而是去跟踪那些哈罗学生；
假定我描写的是我的携灯人在海边沙地上所搞的那类活动；
而且，我把他们描写得十分令人扫兴：
顶着蒙蒙细雨，索然无味地围坐在一起（事实也确实如此）；
他们的谈话傻里傻气，粗俗不堪（肯定是这样的）。
只要我被赋予左拉的才华，我便可以在一页左右的篇幅内，使这段文字富有艺术特色，
以名家的格调描写灯光，以描写爱情的手法淋漓尽致地描写那些粗俗的谈话。
然而在这样的大作完成之后，呈现在眼前的会是一幅多么浮浅和无聊的图画啊！
这样的描绘是多么不得要领，是多么曲解孩子们的形象啊！
用速记员的耳朵去听孩子们的谈话，只会感到其内容愚蠢，粗俗，
可是如果你去询问孩子们自己，他们会告诉你，
他们在探讨生存的各种可能性（他们进行这种讨论是极其正常的）。
在旁观者看来，他们又湿又冷，枯燥无味地围坐在一起，
然而如果去问他们自己，他们会说，
他们正处于具有神秘色彩的极乐世界中，
而这种乐趣的来源只是一盏冒着臭气的牛眼灯。
————————————————————–

**** III

For, to repeat, the ground of a man’s joy is often hard to hit.
It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside,
like Dancer’s, in the mysterious inwards of psychology.
It may consist with perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase.
It has so little bond with externals (such as the observer scribbles in his note-book) that it may even touch them not;
and the man’s true life, for which he consents to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy.
The clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts:
all leading another life, plying another trade from that they chose;
like the poet’s housebuilder, who, after all, is cased in stone,

“By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts. Rebuilds it to his liking.”

再说一遍：一个人感到快乐的原因往往是很难捉摸的。
它有时可能取决于一件像牛眼灯那样的附属物，
有时也可能像丹瑟那样，存在于那种神秘的内心活动中。
他可能与连续的失败同在，
也可能在不断地追求中产生。
它与外在事物（例如观察家在笔记本上草草记录下来的东西）关系不大，甚至毫无联系。
人类的真正生活–为此他才乐于活下去–全在人的幻觉中。
在闲暇时，神职人员可能幻想自己在战场上打了胜仗，
农民可能幻想自己在掌舵行船，
银行家可能幻想自己在艺术上取得了成功。
所有的人在职业生活之外，都有自己的另一种生活，
就像那个为诗人修建房子的工人一样，盖好石头房子之后，

在火炉边以其微不足道的想象，
根据自己的喜好把那石头房子翻盖。

In such a case the poetry runs underground.
The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad.
For to look at the man is but to court deception.
We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment;
but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage,
hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales.
And the true realism were that of the poets,
to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives.

And, the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets:
to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.

在这种情况下，诗情画意活跃于内心深处。
观察者（怀揣记录材料的可怜虫！）对此一窍不通。
因为仅仅从表面去观察一个人只会使自己受骗。
我们可以看到他从中吸取营养的树干，
而他本人却在树干之上，之外的绿色树冠中，风儿吹得树叶沙沙作响，夜莺在那里筑巢。
真正的现实主义是诗人的现实主义，
即像松鼠那样跟着他爬上去，瞧几眼他为之而生活的天空。

不论何时何地，真正的现实主义总是诗人的现实主义：
发现快乐之所在，然后用远比歌唱有力的方式把它表达出来。
————————————————————

For to miss the joy is to miss all.
In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action.
That is the explanation, that the excuse.
To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless.
And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books.
Hence, when we read the English realists, the incredulous wonder with which we observe the hero’s constancy under the submerging tide of dulness,
and how he bears up with his jibbing sweetheart,
and endures the chatter of idiot girls,
and stands by his whole unfeatured wilderness of an existence,
instead of seeking relief in drink or foreign travel.
Hence in the French, in that meat-market of middle-aged sensuality,
the disgusted surprise with which we see the hero drift sidelong,
and practically quite untempted, into every description of misconduct and dishonour.
In each, we miss the personal poetry,
the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base;
in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colours of the sunset;
each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids,
but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain,
with the painted windows and the storied walls.

因为看不到快乐就看不到一切。
任何行动的意义都在于行动者的快乐。
这就是解释，这就是理由。
对于一个毫不体会牛眼灯奥秘的人来说，
海边沙地的那种情景是没有任何意义的。
因此我才说，现实主义的书都如同鬼魂一样不现实。
因此，当我们阅读英国现实主义作家的作品时，
我们会无比惊异地看到，
男主人公在极端沉闷乏味的环境中如何坚韧不拔，
如何耐心地对待变心的情人，
如何忍受那些极为愚蠢的女孩子喋喋不休的谈话，
如何依然故我地维持毫无特色的贫乏的生活，
而不是以饮酒或外出旅行的方式使自己得到解脱。
而在法国现实主义作家的作品中，
我们会惊奇而厌恶地看到，
在中年人寻花问柳的肉体市场上，男主人公如何随波逐流，
在实际上并未受到任何外部诱惑的情况下，
做出种种放荡不羁，丧失名誉的丑行。
不论在哪种现实主义作品中，
我们都看不到个人内心的诗情画意，
看不到令人陶醉的氛围和五彩缤纷的幻想，
而正是这种幻想才为赤裸的东西穿上外衣，
并且似乎使低劣的东西变得高贵。
在这两种现实主义作品中，
生活都像一块僵死的生面团，
而不像在晚霞中高飞入云的气球。
它们都是真实的，
但又都是不可思议的。
因为人们并不是生活在外在的真实中，
不是生活在盐和酸中，
而是生活在自己头脑中那温暖如春，变幻不定的小房间里，
那房间有彩绘的窗户和用历史故事装饰的四壁。
———————————————————-

Of this falsity we have had a recent example from a man who knows far better –
Tolstoi’s POWERS OF DARKNESS.
Here is a piece full of force and truth, yet quite untrue.
For before Mikita was led into so dire a situation he was tempted,
and temptations are beautiful at least in part;
and a work which dwells on the ugliness of crime and gives no hint of any loveliness in the temptation, sins against the modesty of life,
and even when a Tolstoi writes it, sinks to melodrama.
The peasants are not understood; they saw their life in fairer colours;
even the deaf girl was clothed in poetry for Mikita, or he had never fallen.
And so, once again, even an Old Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of poetry and lustre of existence,
falls into the inconceivable and ranks with fairy tales.

关于这种虚假性，我们有个最新的例子，
及托尔斯泰的《黑暗势力》–
提供此例的人比我们更了解这一点。
这是一部充满生动和真实情节的作品，
然而它却极不真实。
因为主人公米基塔是受到诱惑才陷入如此可怕的境地的，
而诱惑至少在某种程度上是美妙的。
一部作品只详细描述犯罪行为的丑恶，
却丝毫不提及诱惑本身的美妙动人之处，
这是违反生活常规的，
尽管它出自托尔斯泰之手，也仍然降到情节剧的水平。
作品中的农民没有得到理解；
他们以丰富多彩的眼光看待自己的生活；
甚至那位耳聋的女孩在米基塔的眼里也蒙上一层诗情画意，
否则他是绝不会堕落的。
同样，即使是一部有关伦敦中央刑事法庭案件的情节剧，
如果不带有某种诗意和生活的光彩，
也会变得令人不可思议，无异于神话故事。
———————————————–

**** IV

In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of life;
and this emotion is very variously provoked.
We are so moved when Levine labours in the field, when Andre sinks beyond emotion,
when Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river,
when Antony, “not cowardly, puts off his helmet,”
when Kent has infinite pity on the dying Lear,
when, in Dostoieffky’s DESPISED AND REJECTED, the uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue.
These are notes that please the great heart of man.
Not only love, and the fields, and the bright face of danger,
but sacrifice and death and unmerited suffering humbly supported, touch in us the vein of the poetic.
We love to think of them, we long to try them,
we are humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes also.

在品位较高的作品中，我们会被感动得产生某种类似于生活激情的情感，
而产生这种激情的原因是各种各样的。
列文在田间劳动，安德列情绪低落，理查德.弗维莱尔与露西.德斯巴勒在河边相会，
安东尼“并非出于懦弱而脱下头盔”，
肯特极其同情垂死的李尔王，
以及（在陀思妥耶夫斯基的小说《被欺凌与被侮辱的》之中）毫无怨言的主人公备尝苦难而坚贞不屈–
这些情节都使我们深受感动。
它们触动了人们崇高的情感。
除了爱情，田野和冒险的乐趣之外，
还有牺牲，死亡和忍辱负重，
都能激发我们内心深处的诗人的情感。
我们乐于回味着一切，我们渴望尝试这一切，
我们幻想自己也能成为主人公。

——————————————————–

We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser matters.
Here is the door, here is the open air. ITUR IN ANTIQUAM SILVAM.

对不甚重要的问题我们也许已经听得太多了。
这里就是房门，走出去便是旷野。
Itur in antiquam silvam[通往古老林地的小路就在脚下]。

“The Lantern-Bearers” is from a collection of Stevenson’s essays entitled
ACROSS THE PLAINS.

《携灯人》选自史蒂文森的散文集《穿越平原》
齐宗华 译