杨宪益英译鲁迅的散文

1、杨宪益英译鲁迅的散文从百草园到三味书屋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.从百草园到三味书 屋1鲁迅我家的后面有一个很大的园，相传叫作百草园。现在是早已并屋子一起卖给朱文公2的子孙了 ，连那最末次的相见也已经隔了七八年，其中似乎确凿只有一些野草； 但那时却是我的乐园。不必说碧绿的菜畦， 光滑的石井栏，高大的皂荚树，紫红的桑椹；也不必说鸣蝉在树叶

35、里长吟，肥胖的黄蜂伏在菜花上，轻捷的叫天子（云雀）忽然从草间直窜向云霄里去了。单是周围的短短的泥墙根一带，就有无限趣味。油蛉3 在这里低唱，蟋蟀们在这里弹琴。翻开断砖来，有时会遇见蜈蚣；还有斑蝥4，倘若用手指按住它的脊梁，便会拍的一声,从后窍喷出一阵烟雾。何首乌5 藤和木莲6藤缠络着，木莲有莲房一般的果实，何首 乌有拥肿的根。有人说，何首乌根是有象人形的，吃了便可以成仙，我于是常常拔它起来, 牵连不断地拔起来，也曾因此弄坏了泥墙，却从来没有见过有一块根象人样。如果不怕刺,还可以摘到覆盆子7，象小珊瑚珠攒成的小球，又酸又甜，色味都比桑椹要好得远。长的草里是不去的，因为相传这园里有一条很大的赤练蛇

36、。长妈妈8曾经讲给我一个故事听：先前，有一个读书人住在古庙里用功，晚间，在 院子里纳凉的时候，突然听到有人在叫他。答应着，四面看时，却见一个美女的脸露在墙头机关9。说他脸上，向他一笑，隐去了。他很高兴；但竟给那走来夜谈的老和尚识破了上有些妖气，一定遇见“美女蛇”了；这是人首蛇身的怪物，能唤人名，倘一答应，夜间便要来吃这人的肉的。 他自然吓得要死，而那老和尚却道无妨，给他一个小盒子，说只要放在 枕边，便可高枕而卧。他虽然照样办，却总是睡不着，一一当然睡不着的。到半夜，果然来 了，沙沙沙！门外象是风雨声。他正抖作一团时，却听得豁的一声，一道金光从枕边飞出, 外面便什么声音也没有了，那金光也就飞回来

37、，敛在盒子里。后来呢？后来，老和尚说，这是飞蜈蚣，它能吸蛇的脑髓，美女蛇就被它治死了。结末的教训是：所以倘有陌生的声音叫你的名字，你万不可答应他。这故事很使我觉得做人之险，夏夜乘凉，往往有些担心，不敢去看墙上，而且极想得到但直到现在，总还没一盒老和尚那样的飞蜈蚣。走到百草园的草丛旁边时，也常常这样想。有得到，但也没有遇见过赤练蛇和美女蛇。叫我名字的陌生声音自然是常有的，然而都不是美女蛇。冬天的百草园比较的无味；雪一下，可就两样了。拍雪人（将自己的全形印在雪上）和 塑雪罗汉需要人们鉴赏，这是荒园，人迹罕至，所以不相宜，只好来捕鸟。薄薄的雪，是不行的；总须积雪盖了地面一两天，鸟雀们久已无处觅食的时候才好。扫开一块雪，露出地面,用一支短棒支起一面大的竹筛来，下面撒些秕谷10，棒上系一条长绳，人远远地牵着, 看鸟雀下来啄食，走到竹筛底下的时候，将绳子一拉，便罩住了。但所得的是麻雀居多，也有白颊的“张飞鸟” 11，性子很躁，养不过夜的。这是闰土 12的父亲所传授的方法，我却不大能用。明明见它们进去了，拉了绳，跑 去一看，却什么都没有， 费了半天力，捉住的不过三四只。闰土的父亲是小半天便能捕获几 十只，装在叉袋里叫着撞着的。我曾经问他得失的缘由，他只静静地笑道：你太性急，来不及等它走到中间去。我不知道为