Excerpt

2008-05-16 16:50:08   来自: 蔡鸟 (My soul lost)
简·萨默斯的日记的评论   5 star rating5 star rating5 star rating5 star rating5 star rating


  这本书里有太多我喜欢的段落,摘录一二如下:
  
  1,Cancer
  The word cancer was mentioned once. The doctors said to me,cancer,and now I see my reaction meant they would not go on talk about whether to tell him or not.I don't know if they told him or not. Whether he knew. I think he did, When they took him into hospital I went every day,but I sat there with a smile,how are you feeling?He looked dreadful.Yellow.Sharp bones uner yellow skin.Like boiling fowl.He was protecting me.Now,I can see it.Becouse I could not take it,Child-Wife.
  
  We were sitting opposite each other,the fire out,the room cold,her unfed cat restless and yowling.I was expecting her capitulation,the sharp turn of her head,the prideful lift of her chin--then the sigh,the hand up to shield her face,and,soon,the small reasonable voice in an explanation,But no,she sat sullenly there,her lower lip thrust out,eyes staring.I coaxed and cajoled,but no;and I am wondering if perhaps I shall not see my Maudie again.For there is no doubt of it,she is a little mad.I have been thinking about this,what er tolerate in people without ever calling them mad.What is madness,then?Surely,losing contact with reality?For Maudie to scream and rage at her only friend,to treat me as an enemy,is not rational.
  Nothing that is happening touches reality,it is all a horrible farce,becouse I cannot say to her,Maudie,you have cancer.I think of my mother,I think of Freddie.I lie awake ar night and wonder,what has made the difference,that those two people could say,I have cancer,but Maodie cannot?Edication?Nonsense!But at no point before my mother,my husband,died were they out of touch with what was going on.It was I who was out of touch!
  
  2,Women Liberty
  The reason why girls these days get themselves together in flocks and herds and schools and shout out men together,or as much as they can,is becouse they are afraid of--whatever the power men have that makes Joyce say, I have no choice.
  
  I was tired by then and suddenly longing for bed.I did some more work,rang Joyce in Wales,heard from her voice that she was better,but she was noncommital.I don't give a damn,she said,when I asked if she were going to the States.She is saying,too,I don't give a damn about you either.This made me think about the condition of mot giving a damn.On my desk,in the "too difficult" basket,and article about stress,how enough strss can cause indifference.It is seen in War,in hard times.Suffer,suffer,emote,emote,and then,suddenly,you don't care.I wanted this published.Joyce said,No,not enough people would recognize it.Ironly!
  
  3,All about Maudie
  And so Maudie drifts off to sleep,but wakes,and sleps and wakes for some hours,each time remembering to move her hands so that they don't stiffen up too much.AT last she wakes to the cat rubbing and purring around her legs.Which are stiff.She tested her hands.The right one gone again.With the left she caresses the cat,Pretty,Petty,Pretty pet,and with the right she tries to flex and unflex fingers until she is whole again.
  Moring...oh,the difficulties of morning,of facing the day...each task such a weight on it...she sits there,thinking,I have to feed the cat,I have to...I have to...At last she drags herself up,anxious,becouse her bowels are threatening again,and,holding on to door handles,chair backs,she gets herself into the kithen.There is a tin of cat food,half wmpty.She tries to turn it into a saucer,it won't come out.It means she has to get a spoon.A long way off,in the sink,are her spoons and forks.She hasn't washed up for days.She winkles out the cat food with her forefinger,her face winkled up--is it smelling perhaps?
  
  She wore a black coat with it,and a black staw hat with black satin ribbon and a little bunch of roses:she bought it forty years ago,for a wedding,.When I went in to pick her up,I thought she could be Liza's mother in My Fair Lady:a shabby poverty,but gallant.But there was,too,something sprightly,even rekish about her,and thus it was that Maudie,visiting her relatives who she had not seen for years presented herself to them as they think of her,as eccentric,gone-to-nothing poor relation whom they wish they could forgot.
  
  4,Relationship
  He had his arm in mine,and I could feel from the pressure of it how much he wanted me to understand.
  'Yes,I do see.'
  'Good.'
  'If she found out he was so ill and she didn't know,would she forgive you?'
  'Ah,Yes!'He stopped,turned,took my two upper arms in his hands and smiled straight into my face.'Yse,Yes.That was my position.But Sylvia...We discussed it,it seems to me we have been discussing nothing else since we came here,Sylvia said,we've got her away from him,she's made the break.'
  That we,we,we,we!Each time it said to me,You interloper,you nothing.And 'we have been discussing nothing else'--I could see myself ,way off on the periphery,someone met when there was time,a pleasant evertainment outside the real business of life.
  
  We embraced.We wept.We clung because the wind was trying to battleus off our feet.
  Then,a texi,and I crawled into it crying,fit to bust,and cried all way home,the taxi driver remarking as I stepped out that he hoped it was't too bad,what I was crying about.
  'No.'I said,'not,really.'
  'That's the spirit,'said he,driving off to somewhere,;You don't want to let things get you down.'
  I am up here in my bedroom.I'ver caught myself listening for Kate.
  It seems to me,tonight,that my life is nothing,nothing at all,and never has been,like my perfect rooms,my bedroom in which--so says Richard--he can find nothing of me,cannot see me.I am looking up into the theatrical London sky through which,an hour ago,Richard flew off towards his real life,accompanied by the woman he has lived with for over a third of century,And I look around ar this quirt,white,cool,orderly room where soon,I know,into the emptiness will steal oe bu one,at first lacklustre and inconsiderable,but then familiar and loved,all the little innumberable pleasures and consolarions of my solitude.
  I can see through the open door of my bedroon into my bid living room.There is the grey linen spfa,immaculate now,and the two yellow chairs.Beyond are the windows where in black panes blur and blend the lights from the street.
  A stage set!House lights down...the dudden hush...the curtaun goes up...
  
  “一夜长大”?太快了,也许没有。一个人总是会在某个方面在某个时期是个孩子,长大,不过是开始肩负起责任了,开始付出,开始认真思考了。
  这本书一直都插在书架上,只是在得知莱辛去年得了诺贝尔,才真正对它感兴趣。我总是有种“不参与”感,拿电影Before the Sunrise和Before the Sunset举例,相隔九年,我还是sunset的二十来岁,对Sunset的兴趣远高于九年后的sunrise,我甚至不能看懂《廊桥遗梦》,那些中老年人的生活状态和爱情观,我自认为不需要了解不用明白。
  当打开这本书,我就暗想,我现在类似退休的生活中养成的退休心态,也许刚好读这本中老年女人生活的书。后来发现,莱辛那种细腻的笔触,我自己定论的,她用她灰蓝色眼睛看到的每个人的面部表情,提供给了我许许多多不同的侧面去理解其他人。于是想到了爷爷,不禁神伤,后悔,为什么没有早一点读它?

2008-07-06 17:49:45 isaac.qu

  十分感谢你的评论,我的老师参与翻译Ms. Lessing的金色笔记。最近一定得抽出时间拜读一下

2008-07-06 17:57:08 isaac.qu

  顺便问一下,我读了外语教育与研究出版社的The age of innocence,里面Chapt 2错别字太多(目前已有不下18处)。这本书如何?

2008-07-06 19:23:39 蔡鸟

  这本书还好吧,或许我水平不高没有发现吧,哈


>简·萨默斯的日记

简·萨默斯的日记
作者: (英)多丽丝・莱辛
isbn: 7560018467
页数: 520
定价: 19.9
装帧: 平装
出版年: 2000-6-1
书名: 简·萨默斯的日记
出版社: 外语教学与研究出版社
译者: 赵东泓

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