说到当下,当然我这濒临死亡而得时时劳心为生存挣扎的失败人士没什么资格多说话,
不过也还是寻章摘句找几个好玩的例子。
法国老电影《恨》La Haine
Un homme tombe d’un immeuble de cinquante étages.
Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute il se répète sans cesse pour
se rassurer :
jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien.
Mais l'important ce n’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage.
有一个人从五十层高的顶楼坠下。
这家伙,随着他不断坠下,他一再不停地安慰他自己:
“到目前为止都还好,到目前为止都还好,到目前为止都还好。”
可是重点不是坠落,而是着地。
这段形容一步步堕落下去的过程还真是甚深!
另外摘一个小说家的满腹牢骚,但乍看起来他比他的同事们都更“活在当下”!
《北回归线》牢骚摘
虽说某种意义上我不喜欢亨利米勒这家伙,可是他的文字实在是有趣。
尤其是他那一堆牢骚。这里摘用李三冲的译本作对照。
(页134起)
I must say, at the start, that I haven't a thing to complain about. It's
like being in a lunatic asylum, with permission to masturbate for the rest
of your life. The world is brought right under my nose and all that is
requested of me is to punctuate the calamities. There is nothing in which
these slick guys upstairs do not put their fingers: no joy, no misery passes
unnoticed. They live among the hard facts of life, reality, as it is called.
It is the reality of a swamp and they are like frogs who have nothing
better to do than to croak. The more they croak the more real life becomes.
Lawyer, priest, doctor, politician, newspaperman─these are the quacks who
have their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of
calamity. It's marvellous. It's as if the barometer never changed, as if the
flag were always at half-mast. One can see now how the idea of heaven takes
hold of men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props
have been knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this
swamp in which everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it
can be like, this heaven that men dream about. A frog's heaven, no doubt.
Miasma, scum, pond lilies, stagnant water. Sit on a lily-pad unmolested and
croak all day. Something like that, I imagine.
(页163起)
在这里我必须要说,打一开始,我对这份工作就没有任何期待。这就像关在一个神经病
院里面,你爱怎么打手枪都没有关系。全世界的事情每天都会出现在我的眼前,我唯一
需要做的,是看这些天灾人祸的标点符号有没有弄错。世界上的任何事情,楼上那些圆
滑的家伙都要插一手,不管好的还坏的全不放过。他们活在生活的一些悲惨事实上,换
一种说法,就是活在现实中。那是泥淖一般的现实,而他们是泥淖里的青蛙,整天除嘓
嘓叫就没别的事干。他们叫得越起劲,生活就变得越真实。律师、牧师、医生、政客、
记者──替这个世界把脉的,就是这些庸医。这个世界总是多灾多难,真好,气压计数
字一直没有改变,旗杆总是下半旗。进了报社你才知道,为什么人对天堂的想法那么根
深柢固,你才会了解,为什么支柱已经被砍断,它还是屹立不摇。在这个泥淖旁边,一
定要有一个可以让人随便倾倒垃圾的世界才行。人类期待的这个天堂,你很难想像它是
什么样子。不过毫无疑问的,那一定是一个青蛙的天堂,里面充满瘴气、苔尼、莲花、
臭水,青蛙整天悠闲地坐在莲叶上嘓嘓叫。大概是那种样子,我想。
They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which
I proof-read. Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a
life of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli. Nothing touches
me, neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions
nor wars nor revolutions. I am inoculated against every disease, every
calamity, every sorrow and misery. It's the culmination of a life of
fortitude. Seated at my little niche all the poisons which the world gives
off each day pass through my hands. Not even a finger-nail gets stained.
I am absolutely immune. I am even better off than a laboratory attendant,
because there are no bad odors here, just the smell of lead burning. The
world can blow up─I'll be here just the same to put in a comma or a
semi-colon. I may even touch a little overtime, for with an event like that
there's bound to be a final extra. When the world blows up and the final
edition has gone to press the proof-readers will quietly gather up all
commas, semi-colons, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, parentheses, periods,
exclamation marks, etc., and put them in a little box over the editorial
chair. Comme ça tout est réglé....
我校对这些天灾人祸,对我来说有一种很奇妙的医疗效果。你好像处在一种绝对的免疫
状态,你好像有神明庇佑,你在各种病毒中过一种绝对安全的生活。管他什么地震、爆
炸、暴动、饥饿、车祸、战争、革命,我全部无动于衷。什么疾病,什么灾难,什么忧
愁和痛苦的事情,我全打过预防针。这是刚毅生活的极致表现。坐在我那个小位子上,
这个世界每天放出来的毒素一一从我手中经过,连一个指尖都没有被污染到,简直比在
一个无菌室做实验还要舒服,因为这里没有难闻的药水味,有的话,也只是一点油墨的
味道。如果天塌下来,我照样会坐在这里改我的读点和分号。说不定我还得加班,因为
天如果塌下来,截稿后一定还有很多新闻会进来。天塌下来,版全部拼好送进去印之后,
校对还得静静地把所有的读点、分号、连字号、星字号、引号、括号、句点、惊叹号等
等全部收拾好,然后放到总编辑后面的一个小箱子里。一切按照规定……
None of my companions seem to understand why I appear so contented. They
grumble all the time, they have ambitions, they want to show their pride
and spleen. A good proof-reader has no ambitions, no pride, no spleen. A
good proof-reader is a little like God Almighty, he's in the world but not
of it. He's for Sundays only. Sunday is his night off. On Sundays he steps
down from his pedestal and shows his ass to the faithful. Once a week he
listens in on all the private grief and misery of the world; it's enough to
last him for the rest of the week. The rest of the week he remains in the
frozen winter marshes, an absolute, an impeccable absolute, with only a
vaccination mark to distinguish him from the immense void.
我的同事似乎都不了解为什么我看起来那么满足。他们整天发牢骚,他们满怀抱负,他
们想表现他们的自尊和委屈。一个好的校对没有抱负,没有自尊,也没有委屈。一个好
的校对有时候就像创造万物的主宰,他在这个世界上,可是他不是这个世界的一部分。
他只为礼拜天而活,礼拜天是他的休假日。在礼拜天,他会走下他的神座,让他的信徒
看看他的屁股。他一个礼拜出来听一次这个世界的悲哀和痛苦,一次就够他维持一个礼
拜。其他几天,他留在冬天冰封的沼泽中,处在一种绝对的状态,一种无懈可击的绝对
状态,身上只留下区别他与这个庞大空洞的接种疤痕。
The greatest calamity for a proof-reader is the threat of losing his job.
When we get together in the break the question that sends a shiver down our
spines is: what'll you do if you lose your job? For the man in the paddock,
whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility
of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one's
life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love
shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.
校对者最大的灾难是,工作随时可能被辞掉。休息的时间我们在一起的时候,最让我们
两腿发软的问题是:如果失去这份工作,你要怎么办?在牧场负责扫粪便的人,最害怕
就是这个世界没有马。只有最笨的人才会对他说,一辈子在那里铲马粪有什么意思?如
果一个人必须靠马粪过活,如果马粪关系到他的幸福,那他爱上马粪有何不可?