| James Joyce,
"Dubliners" 喬伊思，《都柏林人》，杜若洲譯，志文出版，1993 |
●宗教：墮落 ☉老祭司晚年摔破聖杯後，精神變得異常，死去時沒半點神聖的意味。（姊妹） ☉酒鬼柯南先生，令太太失望、也常出狀況。一群朋友想幫助他重回教堂，建立信仰。然而這時期的教會陷入「教宗無謬論」的辯論，以及商業化的講詞。（聖寵） ☉He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience. Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say: “Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.” But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man: “Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God’s grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.”(Grace) ●童年 ☉放學後外出冒險，卻遇見一位自稱喜歡「一頓又舒服又暖活的鞭打」、思考「要怎樣鞭打一個男孩」的陌生人。（一次邂逅） ☉由仰慕鄰居大姊姊而將「阿拉伯商展」神聖化，然而到了該地卻感受了被欺騙的空虛。理想與幻滅也。（阿拉伯商展） →These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires. →What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play. →I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. ●愛情 ☉女兒生活在父親的暴力陰影下，適逢母親過世，她亟欲與男友私奔到阿根廷展開自由生活，然而終究念在母親生前希望她繼續把家撐下去的遺願，終究選擇了承受原先痛苦的生活。（愛薇琳） →“Come!” All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing. “Come!” No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish. “Eveline! Evvy!” He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition. ☉與房東女兒有一腿的單身漢，在房東太太以及生米煮成熟飯的壓力下，被迫要犧牲自由，與她女兒成婚。然而，實情似乎是她有另一個男友，而他們留下的「孽種」，完全由他來承擔。（出租公寓） ☉Mr. James Duffy是個律己嚴、崇尚尼采「超人」哲學的精神貴族，他與女性只作精神交流，因而拒絕了某位貴婦的愛意。四年後，他從報紙上得知該貴婦酗酒而亡，因而陷入一種孤寂的自責當中。（一件恨事） →He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory—if anyone remembered him. →At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces. →He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life’s feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name. →He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone. ☉在家庭宴會中，Gabriel發表著「我絕不流連於過去」的演說；稍後，在一首名叫The Lass of Aughrim（少女）的旋律中，他見到妻子的背影，燃起情慾。妻拒絕了他，隨後悲傷地提到少女時代，一位在雨中為她唱那首情歌，一個禮拜後死去的少年。他經歷了由憤怒、羞辱、受騙、嫉妒、憐憫、到沮喪的種種情緒。（死者） →They followed him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly carpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on the stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted, too, on the steps below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs. →Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.（發覺自己像小丑一般的恥辱） →Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.（憐憫同為造化愚弄者） →The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. →It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.（無常與死亡才是在這一切嫉妒與思念中，共同的歸宿） ●婚姻 ☉與一位到倫敦創業成為報界鉅子的老友重逢，激起心中對富有生活與豔遇的浪漫幻想。但等到回到家，翻翻拜倫詩集，也被小孩吵得不可開交。（一小片雲） →It was useless. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t do anything. The wailing of the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was useless, useless! He was a prisoner for life. His arms trembled with anger and suddenly bending to the child’s face he shouted: “Stop!” The child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the room with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, losing its breath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed more convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of the child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it died!... ☉一個職場失意的男人，將所有不如意發洩到小孩身上。（一對一） →His wife was a little sharp-faced woman who bullied her husband when he was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk →The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped his hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright. “O, pa!” he cried. “Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll... I’ll say a Hail Mary for you.... I’ll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you don’t beat me.... I’ll say a Hail Mary....” ●社會 ☉兩個失業鬼混、伺機偷竊的年輕人。（君子好逑） ☉四個大獲全勝的賽車手，他們得意忘形地慶祝著，然而在一夜的賭局間變成了窮光蛋。（車賽以後） →He knew that he would regret in the morning but at present he was glad of the rest, glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly. He leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head between his hands, counting the beats of his temples. The cabin door opened and he saw the Hungarian standing in a shaft of grey light: “Daybreak, gentlemen!” ☉非拿到錢，就不讓女兒上台表演的勢利母親。（一位母親） ●英雄 ☉紀念民族英雄Parnell，他畢生追求民族自治，卻因為姦淫罪的醜聞、「被出賣」而成為民族罪人，被自己的子民們所背叛遺棄。(p.203)（長春藤日） →THE DEATH OF PARNELL 6th October, 1891 He cleared his throat once or twice and then began to recite: He is dead. Our Uncrowned King is dead. O, Erin, mourn with grief and woe For he lies dead whom the fell gang Of modern hypocrites laid low. He lies slain by the coward hounds He raised to glory from the mire; And Erin’s hopes and Erin’s dreams Perish upon her monarch’s pyre. 2001.8.18 立人祕密書齋 |