【經(jīng)典名著閱讀】《紅字》第二十章(下)
作者:Nathaniel Hawthorne
2011-09-12 10:00
Chapter 20 THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
第二十章 迷憫中的牧師
"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the minister. "Well, well, we must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"
“哈,哈,哈!”那老妖婆咯咯地笑著,還向牧師一勁兒點(diǎn)著戴高帽的頭?!昂美?,好啦,我們?cè)谶@光天化日之下是得這么講話!你倒象個(gè)深通此道的老手!不過,等到夜半時(shí)分,在樹林里,我們?cè)僭谝黄鹫勑﹦e的吧!”
She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a secret intimacy of connection.
她擺出一副德高年邁的姿態(tài)走開了,但仍不時(shí)回頭朝他微笑,象是要一心看出他們之間不可告人的親密關(guān)系似的。
"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master!"
“這樣看來,我是不是已經(jīng)把自己出賣給那個(gè)惡魔啦?”牧師思忖著,“如果人們所說屬實(shí),這個(gè)漿著黃領(lǐng)、穿著絨袍的老妖婆,早就選了那惡魔作她的王子和主人啦!”
The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.
這個(gè)不幸的牧師!他所作的那筆交易與此極其相似!他受著幸福的夢(mèng)境的誘惑,經(jīng)過周密的選擇,居然前所未有地屈從于明知是罪大惡極的行徑。面那樁罪孽的傳染性毒素已經(jīng)就此迅速擴(kuò)散到他的整個(gè)道德體系,愚弄了一切神圣的沖動(dòng),而將全部惡念喚醒,變成活躍的生命。輕蔑、狠毒、無緣無故的惡言穢行和歹意;對(duì)善良和神圣的事物妄加嘲弄,這一切全都繪喚醒起來,雖說把他嚇得要命,卻仍在誘惑著他。而他和西賓斯老太太的不期而遇,如果當(dāng)真只是巧合的話,也確實(shí)表明他已同惡毒的人們及墮落的靈魂的世界同流合污了。
He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!
此時(shí),他已走到墳場(chǎng)邊上的住所,正在匆忙地踏上樓梯,躲進(jìn)他的書齋中去一避。牧師能夠進(jìn)到這個(gè)庇蔭之地,暗自高興,因?yàn)檫@樣一來,他就無須向世人暴露他在街上一路走來時(shí)那不斷慫恿他的種種離奇古怪的邪念了。他走進(jìn)熟悉的房間,環(huán)顧四周,看著室內(nèi)的書籍、窗子、壁爐、接著壁毯的賞心悅目的墻壁,但從林中谷地進(jìn)城來一路糾纏著他的同樣的奇異感覺依然存在。他曾在這里研讀和寫作;他曾在這里齋戒和夜禱,以致弄得半死不活;他曾在這里盡心盡意地祈禱;他曾在這里忍受過成千上萬種折磨!這里有那本裝璜精美的《圣經(jīng)》,上面用古老的希伯來文印著摩西和諸先知們對(duì)他的訓(xùn)戒,從頭到尾全是上帝的聲音!在桌上飽蘸墨水的鵝毛筆旁,擺著一篇未完成的布道詞,一個(gè)句子寫到中間就中斷了,因?yàn)閮商烨八乃悸吩僖灿坎坏郊埳?。他明知道那是他本人,兩頰蒼白、身材消瘦的牧師做的這些事、受的這些苦,寫了這么些慶祝選舉的布道文的!但他卻象是站在一邊,帶著輕蔑和憐憫,而又懷著一些羨慕的好奇心,審視著先前的自己。那個(gè)自我已經(jīng)一去不復(fù)返了,是另一個(gè)人從林中歸來了,是具有神秘知識(shí)的男一個(gè)益發(fā)聰明的人了——那種知識(shí)是原先那人的簡(jiǎn)單頭腦從來不可能企及的。那種知識(shí)真讓人哭笑不得!