Plowing the Dark——想译而不知深浅的书
本书是以计算机虚拟现实技术为背景所演绎的一个奇幻而又发人深省的故事。
PLOWING THE DARK
RICHARD POWERS
冲破黑暗
理查德·鲍尔斯 著
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south . . .
—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of William Butler Yeats"
The first year of the war, Picasso and Eve, with whom he was living then, Gertrude Stein and myself, were walking down the boulevard Raspail a cold winter evening. There is nothing in the world colder than the Raspail on a cold winter evening, we used to call it the retreat from Moscow. All of a sudden down the street came some big cannon, the first any of us had seen painted, that is camouflaged. Pablo stopped, he was spell-bound. C'est nous qui avons fait ca, he said, it is we that have created that, he said. And he was right, he had. From Cezanne through him they had come to that. His foresight was justified.
—
Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
因为诗无济于事：它永生于
它辞句的谷中，而官吏绝不到
那里去干预；它向南流去···
——W·H·奥登，“怀念叶芝”①
战争的头一年，一个寒冬的傍晚，毕加索和伊芙（那时他正跟她生活在一起），格特鲁德·斯泰因和我，正沿着拉斯佩尔大街一块散步。没有哪个地方的寒冬的傍晚会有拉斯佩尔大街上那么冷，我们习惯把它叫做撤离莫斯科。突然，从大街的那一边冒出来几门大炮，我们中走在最前头的人看到了大炮上涂了色的伪装。帕布鲁停下步子，完全被迷住了。C'est nous qui avons fait ca, 他说，是我们造的，他说。他是对的，他早有预见。塞尚（Cezanne）如此，他也一样。他确有远见。——格特鲁德·斯泰因，《爱丽斯·B·托克拉斯的自传》②
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① W·H·奥登（Wystan Hugh Auden ，1907～1973），英国著名诗人。叶芝（William Butler Yeats1865～1939），爱尔兰伟大的抒情诗人和剧作家。此处的译文取自查良铮先生的翻译，但略有改动。② 格特鲁德·斯泰因 (Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946)，美国女作家，一生大部分时间旅居在法国。她被视为对20世纪西方文学产生了重要影响的人物。This room is never anything o'clock.Minutes slip through it like a thief in gloves. Hours fail even to raise the dust. Outside, deadlines expire. Buzzers erupt. Deals build to their frenzied conclusions. But in this chamber, now and forever combine.This room lingers on the perpetual pitch of here. Its low local twilight outlasts the day's politics. It hangs fixed, between discovery and inven tion. It floats in pure potential, a strongbox in the inviolate vault.Time does not keep to these parts, nor do these parts keep time. Time is too straight a line, too limiting. The comic tumbling act of causality never reaches this far. This room spreads under the stilled clock. Only when you step back into the corridor does now revive. Only escaped, beneath the failing sky.Out in the template world, flowers still spill from the bud. Fruit runs from ripe to rot Faces still recognize each other in surprise over a fire sale. Marriages go on reconciling and cracking up. Addicts swear never again. Children succumb in their beds after a long fever. But on this island, in this room: the faint rumble, the standing hum of a place that passes all understanding.（引 子）
这屋子跟时间是毫不沾边的。
几分钟对它来说就象一个倏尔穿过的戴着手套的小偷。几小时甚至也扬不起一丁点灰尘。外面，最终期限已到，蜂鸣器嗡嗡响起。进程发展到了狂乱的状态。可在这间屋子里，现在与永恒却融为一体。
这房间苟延着这儿永恒的基调。它虚弱的一隅微光比之当红的政策还要命运久长。它停顿下来，介于发现与创造之间。它浮游于纯粹的潜态，就象置身于纤尘不染的地窖中的一个保险箱。
时间不与这屋子里的一切同调，它们也不与时间相循。时间是一条太笔直的线，束缚太甚。有因果的滑稽跟斗表演从不会走得那么远。这房间展示在静止的时钟之下。仅当你退回到走廊里，现在方才会复活。只有逃出去，脱离这有缺陷的空间。
在这个模板的世界之外，花儿依然在蓓蕾中绽放。果实依然从成熟到腐烂。脸孔在看到火灾受损物品大甩卖时依然会惊奇地相互赞赏。婚姻照常和谐和崩溃。隐君子仍旧赌咒决不再犯。发了很久烧的孩子们绻卧在他们的床上。但是在这个孤岛上，在这个房间里：微弱的嘀嘀咕咕，某处持续的嗡嗡声，全都超越了人们的理解。
（请多提意见，谢谢！）
