Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

『譯作 · A VIEW OF MOUNTAINS』



唯见青山(选段)


[美] 乔纳森·谢尔

译 / 顾忆青

(译文)

从山端庸介所拍摄的照片中,我们能够窥见世界末日的图景。但现如今,我们所面临的挑战,不仅仅是认识到核武器造成的巨大危害,而且还要把握天赐良机彻底消除它。值此之际,我们似乎还需要另一张照片,一张能够平复长崎的毁灭所带来的伤痛的照片,彰显我们成功所得的希望而非战败所失的家园。然而,那张照片该是什么样子的? 我们如何呈现世界末日的反面?难道是受创之前完好无损又生机勃勃的长崎?或许是幸免于难的九洲岛? 难道是一个孩子,一对母子?或者就是我们赖以生存的地球本身?看起来很难找到一幅合适的画面,因为对于现在和未来所有人的生命,我们如何给这般无穷变幻的事物,赋予一个具体有形的呈现? 对世界末日的想象抑或是对现世延续的憧憬,必定是不甚全面的。唯有付诸行动才能令人满意。

终有一天,来临的新一代有能力照顾自己。而现在,我们应该鼓起勇气、坚守信念,秉承集体意志,去确保他们生存的权利,惟有这样他们方才得以存活。付此行动是现在活着的这几代人最为重大的责任。时间的赠与的永远是生命的礼物,如果我们明白该如何接受这个礼物的话。

(原文)

A View of Mountains
(Excerpt)


by Jonathan Schell


Yamahata's pictures afford a glimpse of the end of the world. Yet in our day, when the challenge is not just to apprehend the nuclear peril but to seize a God-given opportunity to dispel it once and for all, we seem to need, in addition, some other picture to counterpoise against ruined Nagasaki - one showing not what we would lose through our failure but what we would gain by our success. What should that picture be, though? How do you show the opposite of the end of the world? Should it be Nagasaki, intact and alive, before the bomb was dropped -- or perhaps the spared city of Kokura? Should it be a child, or mother and child or the earth itself? None seems adequate, for how can we give definite form to that which can assume infinite forms, namely the lives of all human beings, now and in the future? Imagination, faced with either the end of the world or its continuation, must remain incomplete. Only action can satisfy.

Once, the arrival in the world of new generations took care of itself. Now, they can come into existence only if, through an act of faith and collective will, we ensure their right to exist. Performing that act is the greatest of the responsiblity of the generations now alive. The gift of time is the gift of life, forever, if we know how to receive it.


关于作者:Jonathan Schell

乔纳森·谢尔(1943- ),是美国著名的改革派作家、耶鲁大学全球化研究中心访问学者,先后执教于耶鲁、普林斯顿以及哈佛等名校。他定期为《哈拨斯》(Harpen’s)、《外交事务》(Foreign Affairs)和《国家》(The Nation)等知名杂志撰稿。年轻时还一度作为《纽约客》(The New Yorker)杂志记者赴前线报道越南战争。这些经历使得他善于把握时代主题,并懂得如何以最清晰、最吸引人的方式向公众作阐述。主要著作有《边水村庄》(The Village of Ben Suc)、《地球的命运》(The Fate of the Earth)(1982年获普利策奖)、《不可征服的世界:力量、非暴力和人民的意志》(The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People)等。 本文选自他的作品《时间的礼物:现在终止核武器》(The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now)。


作品主题:


《唯见青山》这篇议论文从山端庸介的照片展开,作为核爆后第一个到达长崎的摄影师,他拍下长崎遭到原子弹轰炸后的情景。但是这些照片直到50年后才在纽约展出。此时,重要的已经不是照片本身,而是它们所蕴含的深意,为我们敲响了警钟,只要原子弹继续存在一天,人类就时刻生存在毁灭的阴影之下。作者呼吁我们这一代人勇敢地肩负起自己的责任,坚决销毁原子弹,给我们的子孙后代留下一个安全的成长环境。

Friday, 16 January 2009

『譯作 · SUNDAY BEFORE THE WAR』


大战前的星期天 (节选)


[英] 亚瑟·克拉顿·布洛克

译 / 顾忆青


(译文)

      可是,当战争疯狂肆虐别处山谷,此处的平静又有何幸福可言?人们的内心又能否安定依旧呢?此地的美景一如既往,由人类的意志深扎大地。然而,与那些奔赴前线的人相比,在这里生活的人们本性并无二致,同样承受着近乎疯狂的本能支配。在我们人类身上,创造与毁灭的力量并存,时而有如神明般高瞻远瞩,时而又如野兽般愚昧无知。今天的我们或许并无过错,而为战之人也生就如此,他们的所做所为令我们憎恶,但他们何尝又不这么认为?这就是所谓宿命,自过去的兽性而来,我们至今难以掌控。如今,这命运彷佛源自寰宇间固有的恶,即便身处僻静优美的山谷,我们也依然无法摆脱它的嘲弄。但其实并非如此,我们并不像野兽那般孤立与冷漠。倘若我们的民族暂且忘却了我们共有的人性,以及对未来的希冀,那么另一个民族必将肩负起这一神圣的使命,抛却憎恨,毫不畏惧地坚守着它,直至疯狂平息。但愿这就是我们现在的职责,为了维护世界未来的和平而战,怀着恒久的勇气一往无前,而此般勇锐无需仇恨激起。

(原文)

Sunday Before The War
(Excerpt)

Arthur Clutton-Brock (1868-1924)

      But what happiness can there be in that peace, or what security in the mind of man, when the madness of war is let loose in so many other valleys? Here there is a beauty inherited from the past, and added to the earth by man’s will; but the men here are of the same nature and subject to the same madness as those who are gathering to fight on the frontier. We are all men with the same power of making and destroying, with the same divine foresight mocked by the same animal blindness. We ourselves may not be in fault today, but it is human beings in no way different from us who are doing what we abhor and they abhor even while they do it. There is a fate, coming from the beast in our own past, that the present man in us has not yet mastered, and for the moment that fate seems a malignity in the nature of the universe that mocks us even in the beauty of these lonely hills. But it is not so, for we are not separate and indifferent like the beasts; and if one nation for the moment forgets our common humanity and its future, then another must take over that sacred charge and guard it without hatred or fear until the madness is passed. May that be our task now, so that we may wage war only for the future peace of the world and with the lasting courage that needs no stimulant of hate.




© National Portrait Gallery, London


关于作者Arthur Clutton-Brock

      亚瑟·克拉顿·布洛克 (1868-1924),是英国散文家、文艺评论家和记者。他曾为英国《泰晤士报·文学增刊》(TLS: Times Literary Supplement)写过众多关于文学和艺术的批评散文。英国诗人欧那斯特·莱斯(Ernest Rhys)曾对他有过这样的评价:“他向我们展示了如何为期刊散文注入永恒的阅读价值”("...shown again how to give the periodical essay the savour of permanent things." )。布洛克的思想深受英国“工艺美术运动”的领导人、小说家、诗人威廉·莫里斯(William Morris)的社会主义、唯美主义思潮的影响,承袭了意大利哲学家、历史学家、美学家克罗齐(Benedetto Croce)对艺术精神及其真理质朴而又纯粹的追求。(顾忆青)

作品主题

      《大战前的星期天》又译《战前星期天》(Sunday Before the War) ,是英国散文中的名篇。生活在边远山谷中的居民,本来过着世外桃源般的日子,却因战争的爆发而失去往日的宁静祥和,匆忙备战。作者将写景与议论抒情巧妙结合,文笔优美细腻,运用了对比衬托的手法,突出了文章的主题:为了“世界未来的和平”,大家必须鼓起勇气去作战。此文陆谷孙先生曾经翻译过。

延伸阅读

《大战前的星期天》全文: Sunday Before the War