楊憲益英譯魯迅的散文

1、楊憲益英譯魯迅的散文從百草園到三味書屋From Hun dred-Plant Garde n to Three-flavour StudyBehind our house was a greatgarden known in our family as Hundred-PlantGarde n. It has long since bee n sold, together with the house,to the desce ndentsof Zhu Xi; and the last time I saw it, already seven or eight years ago. I amp

2、rettysure there were only weeds grow ing there. But in my childhood it was my p aradise.I need not speak of the green vegetable plots, the slippery stone coping roundthe well, the tall hon ey-locust tree, or the purple mud berries. Nor n eed I sp eakof the long shrill ing of the cicadas among the le

3、aves, the fat was ps couches inthe floweri ng rape, or the ni mbie skylarks who sudde niy soared straight upfromthe grass to the sky. Just the foot of the low mud wall around the garde n was asource of unfailinginterest.Here field crickets droned away while house cricketschir ped merrily. Turning ov

4、er a broke n brick, you might find a cen ti pede. Therewere sti nk-beetles as well, and if you p ressed a fin ger on their rear orifices.Milkwort in terwove with climb ing fig which had fruit sha ped like the calyx of alotus, while the milk mort had swolle n tubers. Fork said that some of these hadh

5、uma n sha pes and if you ate them you would become immortal, so I kept on p ull ingthem up. By uprootingone I pulled out those next to it, and in this way destroyedpart of the mud wall, but I n ever found a tuber sha ped like a man. If you were notafraid of thorns you could pick raspberries too, lik

6、e clusters of little coral beads,sweet yet tart, with a much finer color and flavor tha n mulberries.I did not ven ture into the long grass, because a huge brow n sn ake was saidto in habit the garde n.Mama Chang had told me a story:Once upon a time a scholar was stayingin an old temple to study. On

7、e eveningwhile enjoying the cool of the courtyard he heard some one call his n ame. Respondinghe looked round and saw, over the wall, the head of a sire n. She smiled, the ndisa pp eared. He was very pl eased, till the old monk who came to chat with him eachevening discovered what had happen ed. Det

8、ect ing an evil in flue nee on his face, hedeclared that the scholar must have see n a beautiful-woma n sn akea mon sterwith a human head and snakes body who was able to call a mans name. If he answered , the sn ake would come that ni ght to devour him.The scholar was n earlyfrighte ned to death, of

9、 course; but the old monk told him not to worry and gave him a little box, assuri ng him that if he put this by his p illow he could go to slee p without fear.But though the scholar did as he was told, he could not sleepand that is hardly sur prising. At mid ni ght, to be sure , the mon ster came! T

10、here soun deda hiss ing and rustl ing, as if of wind and rain, outside the door. Just as ht wasshaking with fright,howeverwhizzagolden ray streaked up from beside hispillow.Then outside the door utter sileneefell, and the golden ray flew back oncemore to its box.And after that? After that the old mo

11、nk told him that this was a flyingcen ti pede which could suck out the brain of a snakethe beautiful-woma nsn ake had bee n killed by it.The moral of this was: If a stra nge voice calls your n ame , on no acco untan swer.This story brought home to me he p erils with which huma n life is fraught.When

12、 I sat outside on a summer ni ght I often felt too app rehe nsive to look at thewall, and Ion ged for a box with a flying centip ede in it like the old mon ks. Thiswas often in my thoughts when I walked to the edge of the long grass in Hundred-PlantGarden. To this day I have never got hold of such a

13、 box, but neither have I encounteredthe brow n sn ake or beautiful-Woma n Sn ake, Of course, stra nge voice ofte n call myn ame; but they have n ever proved to bel ong to beautiful-woma n sn akes.In win ter the garde n was relatively dull; as soon as it sno wed, though, thatwas a differe nt story .I

14、mprinting a sno wma n ( by p ress ing your body on the snow)or buildi ng snow Buddhas repuired app reciative audie nces; and since this was adeserted garden where visitors seldom came, such games were out of placehere. Iwastherefore reduced to catchingbirds. A light fall of snow would not do:the gro

15、undhad to be covered for one or two days, so that the birds had gone hungry for somerice husks beneath it,then tied a long stringto the stick and retired toa dista neeto hold it, waiting for birds to come. when they hopped under the sieve,you suggedthe stri ng and trapped them . Most of those caught

16、 were sp arrows, but there werewhite-throated wagtails too, so wild that they died less tha n a day of cap tivity.It was Run tus father who taught me this method, but I was not ade pt at it.Birds hopped un der my sieve all right, yet whe n I p ulled the stri ng and ran over to look there was usually

17、 nothing there, and after long efforts I caught merely three or four.Run tus father in only half the time coued catch doze ns which, stowed in his bag, would cheep and jostle each other. I asked him once the reason for my failure. With a quiet smile he said: Youre too imp atie nt. You dont wait for

18、them to get to the middle.I dont know why my family decided to send me to school, or why they chose the school repu ted to bethe strictest in the tow n. Perha ps it was because I hadspoiled the mud wall by uprootingmikwort,perhaps because I had thrown bricks into the Lia ngs courtyard next door, per

19、ha ps because I had climbed the well coping to jump off it.There is no means of knowing. At all eve nts ,this meant an end to my freque nt visits to Hun dred-Plant Garde n. Adieu, my crickets ! Adieu, my rasp berries and climb ing figs!A few hun dred yards east of our house, across a stone bridge, w

20、as where myThree-Flavourteacher lived. You went in through a black-lacquered bamboo gate, and the third room was the classroom. On the cen tral wall hung the in scrioti onStudy, and un der this was a pain ti ng of a portly fallow deer lying ben eath an oldtree. In the absenee of a tablet to Confuciu

21、s,we bowed before the inscriptionand the deer. The first time for Con fucius, the sec ond time for our teacher.When we bowed the sec ond time, our teacher bowed graciously back from the side of the room. A thi n, tall old man with a grizzled beard, he wore large sp ectacles.And I had the he was the

22、most up right, hono urable and erudite man in our tow n.I forget where it was that I heard that Dongfang Shuo was ano ther erudite scholar who knew of an in sect called guai-zai, the incarn atio n of some unjustly slain mans ghost, which would vanish if you doused it with wine. I Ionged to learn the

23、 details of this story, but Mama Chang could not en lighte n me, for she after all was not an erudite scholar. Now my cha nee had come. I could ask my teacher.What is this in sect guai-zai, sir? I asked hastily at the end of a end of a new less on, just before I was dismissed.I dont kno w.He seemed

24、not at all p leased. In deed, he looked rather angry.then I realized that stude nts should not ask questi ons like this, but concen trate on study ing. Being such a lear ned scholar, of course he must know the answer. Whenhe said he did not know, it mwant he would not tell me. Grownups often behaved

25、 like this. as I knew from many p ast exp erie nces.So I cancen trated on study ing. At miday I p ractised calligra phy, in the evening I made coupi ets. For the first few days the teacher was very ster n, later he treated me better; but by degrees he in creased my read ing assig nment and the nu mb

26、er of characters in each line of the coupi ets I was set to write , from three to five, and fin ally to seve n.There was a garde n beh ind Three-Flavour Study too. Although it was small, you could climb the terrace there to p ick win ter plum, or search the ground andthe fragrantosmanthus tree forth

27、e moulted skins of cicadas. Best of all was catching flies to feed an ts, for that did not make any no ise. But it was no use too many of us slipping out too long, for then the teacher then the teacher would shout from the class-room:where has everybody gone?Then every one would sli p back one after

28、 the other: it was no use all going back together. He had a ferule which he seldom used, and a method of punishing stude nts by mak ing them kn eel which aga in he seldom used. In gen eral, he simply glared round for a while and shouted:Get on with your readi ng!Then all of us would read at the top

29、of our voices , with a roar like a seething cauldr on.We all read from differe nt texts:Is huma nity far? When I seek it, it is here.To mock a toothless man, say: The doge kennel gapes wide.On the upper ninth the drago n hides itself and bides its time.Poor soil, with good produce of the inferiorsor

30、t interspersedwith superior p roduce; its tribute, matt ing, oran gers, po melos.The tutor read aloud too. Later ,our voices grew lower and faded away.He alone went on declai ming as loudly as ever:At a sweep of his iron sceptre, all stand amazed .The golden goblet brims over, but a thousa nd cups w

31、ill not in toxicate him .I suspected this to be the finestliterature, for whenever he reached thisp assage he always smiled, threw back his head a little and shook it, bending hishead further and further back.When our tutor was compietely absorbed in his reading, that was most conenientfor us. Someb

32、oys would the n stage puppet shows with paper helmets on their fin gers.I used to draw, using what we called Jin gchua n pap er to trace the illustrati onsto various no vels, just as we traced calligra phy. The more books I read, the moreillustati ons I traced.I n ever became a good stude nt but I m

33、ade not a littleProgress as an artist, the best sets I copied being two big volumes of illustration,one fromSupp ress ing the Ban dits , the other fromPilgrimage to the West . Later,needing ready money, I sold these to a rich classmate whose father ran a shop sellingthe tin sel coins used at fun era

34、ls. I hear he is now the shop man ager himself andwill soon have rise n to the rank of one of the local gen try. Those trac ingsof minemust have vani shed long ago.從百草園到三味書 屋1魯迅我家的后面有一個(gè)很大的園，相傳叫作百草園?，F(xiàn)在是早已并屋子一起賣給朱文公2的子孫了 ，連那最末次的相見也已經(jīng)隔了七八年，其中似乎確鑿只有一些野草； 但那時(shí)卻是我的樂園。不必說碧綠的菜畦， 光滑的石井欄，高大的皂莢樹，紫紅的桑椹；也不必說鳴蟬在樹葉

35、里長(zhǎng)吟，肥胖的黃蜂伏在菜花上，輕捷的叫天子（云雀）忽然從草間直竄向云霄里去了。單是周圍的短短的泥墻根一帶，就有無限趣味。油蛉3 在這里低唱，蟋蟀們?cè)谶@里彈琴。翻開斷磚來，有時(shí)會(huì)遇見蜈蚣；還有斑蝥4，倘若用手指按住它的脊梁，便會(huì)拍的一聲,從后竅噴出一陣煙霧。何首烏5 藤和木蓮6藤纏絡(luò)著，木蓮有蓮房一般的果實(shí)，何首 烏有擁腫的根。有人說，何首烏根是有象人形的，吃了便可以成仙，我于是常常拔它起來, 牽連不斷地拔起來，也曾因此弄壞了泥墻，卻從來沒有見過有一塊根象人樣。如果不怕刺,還可以摘到覆盆子7，象小珊瑚珠攢成的小球，又酸又甜，色味都比桑椹要好得遠(yuǎn)。長(zhǎng)的草里是不去的，因?yàn)橄鄠鬟@園里有一條很大的赤練蛇

36、。長(zhǎng)媽媽8曾經(jīng)講給我一個(gè)故事聽：先前，有一個(gè)讀書人住在古廟里用功，晚間，在 院子里納涼的時(shí)候，突然聽到有人在叫他。答應(yīng)著，四面看時(shí)，卻見一個(gè)美女的臉露在墻頭機(jī)關(guān)9。說他臉上，向他一笑，隱去了。他很高興；但竟給那走來夜談的老和尚識(shí)破了上有些妖氣，一定遇見“美女蛇”了；這是人首蛇身的怪物，能喚人名，倘一答應(yīng)，夜間便要來吃這人的肉的。 他自然嚇得要死，而那老和尚卻道無妨，給他一個(gè)小盒子，說只要放在 枕邊，便可高枕而臥。他雖然照樣辦，卻總是睡不著，一一當(dāng)然睡不著的。到半夜，果然來 了，沙沙沙！門外象是風(fēng)雨聲。他正抖作一團(tuán)時(shí)，卻聽得豁的一聲，一道金光從枕邊飛出, 外面便什么聲音也沒有了，那金光也就飛回來

37、，斂在盒子里。后來呢？后來，老和尚說，這是飛蜈蚣，它能吸蛇的腦髓，美女蛇就被它治死了。結(jié)末的教訓(xùn)是：所以倘有陌生的聲音叫你的名字，你萬不可答應(yīng)他。這故事很使我覺得做人之險(xiǎn)，夏夜乘涼，往往有些擔(dān)心，不敢去看墻上，而且極想得到但直到現(xiàn)在，總還沒一盒老和尚那樣的飛蜈蚣。走到百草園的草叢旁邊時(shí)，也常常這樣想。有得到，但也沒有遇見過赤練蛇和美女蛇。叫我名字的陌生聲音自然是常有的，然而都不是美女蛇。冬天的百草園比較的無味；雪一下，可就兩樣了。拍雪人（將自己的全形印在雪上）和 塑雪羅漢需要人們鑒賞，這是荒園，人跡罕至，所以不相宜，只好來捕鳥。薄薄的雪，是不行的；總須積雪蓋了地面一兩天，鳥雀?jìng)兙靡褵o處覓食的時(shí)候才好。掃開一塊雪，露出地面,用一支短棒支起一面大的竹篩來，下面撒些秕谷10，棒上系一條長(zhǎng)繩，人遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)地牽著, 看鳥雀下來啄食，走到竹篩底下的時(shí)候，將繩子一拉，便罩住了。但所得的是麻雀居多，也有白頰的“張飛鳥” 11，性子很躁，養(yǎng)不過夜的。這是閏土 12的父親所傳授的方法，我卻不大能用。明明見它們進(jìn)去了，拉了繩，跑 去一看，卻什么都沒有， 費(fèi)了半天力，捉住的不過三四只。閏土的父親是小半天便能捕獲幾 十只，裝在叉袋里叫著撞著的。我曾經(jīng)問他得失的緣由，他只靜靜地笑道：你太性急，來不及等它走到中間去。我不知道為