Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked.
周圍的一切沉浸在黑暗和寂靜中。在他們的四周,都是獵苑里長的密密麻麻的古老的水杉和橡樹,樹上棲息的溫柔小鳥還在睡最后的一覺;在樹林中間,大大小小的野兔在悄悄地蹦來跳去。但是恐怕有人要問,苔絲的保護天使在哪兒呢?她一心信仰的上帝在哪兒呢?也許,就像愛諷刺的提什比①說到另一個上帝一樣,他也許正在聊天,或者正在狩獵,或者正在旅行的路上,要不就是睡著了還沒有被人叫醒。

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter.
這片美麗的女性織品,就像游絲一樣的敏感,又實在像白雪一樣的潔白,為什么就像她命中注定要接受的那樣,一定要在上面畫上粗鄙的圖案;為什么粗鄙的常常就這樣占有了精美的,不該占有這個女人的男人占有了這個女人,不該占有這個男人的女人占有了這個男人,好幾千年來,善于分析的哲學家們都沒有能夠按照我們對于秩序的觀念解釋清楚。的確,一個人也許認為,在現(xiàn)在這場悲劇里,可能暗藏有報應的因素。毫無疑問,苔絲·德北菲爾德有些身披鎧甲的祖先,在他們戰(zhàn)斗以后嬉鬧著回家的時候,對他們那個時代的農(nóng)民的女兒們也有過同樣的行徑,甚至更加粗暴野蠻。不過祖先的罪孽報應在子孫的身上,雖然對諸神來說是一種再好不過的道德準則,但是普通的人類天性對此卻不屑一顧;因而對這件事也就毫無用處。

As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: 'It was to be.' There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.
在那些窮鄉(xiāng)僻壤的地方,苔絲自己家里的人總是用宿命論的口氣互相不厭其煩地說:“這是命中注定的?!边@正是叫人遺憾的地方。因此,從今以后我們這個女主角的品格,同當初她從母親家門口走出來到特蘭里奇的養(yǎng)雞場碰運氣的原來的她自己的聯(lián)系,就被一條深不可測的社會鴻溝完全割斷了。

①提什比(Tishbite),指預言家以利亞,“舊約”“列王紀”第十七章把他描寫為“提什比人以利亞”。他向貝阿爾的先知們挑戰(zhàn),把一頭小公牛作為祭祀他們的神的獎品。當貝阿爾對他的信徒的祈禱不能作答時,以利亞就諷刺說:“無論他在聊天,還是在狩獵,還是在睡覺,你們應該叫醒他?!保ā傲型跫o”第十八章第二十七節(jié))