MTI之神:鬼谷一喵  翻译天堂  2016-07-30

Here Is New York（excerpt）

这儿是纽约

E. B. White

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

对于任何企求这类离奇奖赏的人，纽约会送上两件礼物：孤寂和私密。正是这种大度解释了城市人口中相当一部分人的存在，因为曼哈顿居民中多的是异乡客，他们背井离乡，到这儿来寻求庇护，或实现抱负，要不就是追求别的什么大大小小的目标。得以向人送上如此不成其为礼物的礼物，乃是纽约一种谜一般的特质，它可毁掉一个人，也可成全他，很大程度上全看此人运气如何。不愿交好运的人可别来纽约居住。

New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader, and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past, so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings. I am sitting at the moment in a stifling hotel room in 90-degree heat, halfway down an air shaft, in midtown. No air moves in or out of the room, yet I am curiously affected by emanations from the immediate surroundings. I am twenty-two blocks from where Rudolph Valentino lay in state, eight blocks from where Nathan Hale was executed, five blocks from the publisher's office where Ernest Hemingway hit Max Eastman on the nose, four miles from where Walt Whitman sat sweating out editorials for the Brooklyn Eagle, thirty-four blocks from the street Willa Cather lived in when she came to New York to write books about Nebraska, one block from where Marceline used to clown on the boards of the Hippodrome, thirty-six blocks from the spot where the historian Joe Gould kicked a radio to pieces in full view of the public, thirteen blocks from where Harry Thaw shot Stanford White, five blocks from where I used to usher at the Metropolitan Opera and only 112 blocks from the spot where Clarence Day the elder was washed of his sins in the Church of the Epiphany (I could continue this list indefinitely); and for that matter I am probably occupying the very room that any number of exalted and somewise memorable characters sat in, some of them on hot, breathless afternoons, lonely and private and full of their own sense of emanations from without.

纽约把艺术、商业、体育、宗教、娱乐、金融融于一炉，将角斗士、福音布道牧师、赞助人、演员、股市黄牛和商贾各色人等推上同一个紧凑的舞台。城市彰显的特点是带有一种无法抹煞的陈年久远的气味，所以不管你坐在纽约的什么地方，你都会感受到伟大时代和荒诞行状的回声，还有那些奇人怪事和业绩。此刻，气温高达华氏90度，我正坐在中城区一家酒店叫人透不过气的客房里，置身于通风井不上不下的位置。房间内外没有空气流动，可稀奇的是我却能感受到周围散发出的气息：此去22条马路就是鲁道夫·瓦伦蒂诺大殓前供人瞻仰的地方；8条马路之外是内森·黑尔的刑场；5条马路之隔有家出版社，就在那办公室里欧内斯特·海明威曾猛击迈克斯·伊斯特曼的鼻梁；过去4英里，那曾是沃尔特·惠特曼坐着挥汗为布鲁克林《鹰报》撰写社论的地方；34条马路之外是薇拉·凯瑟来纽约时住过的那条街，在那儿她写下了关于内布拉斯加的几部作品；离此一条马路之隔乃是马塞林经常表演丑角的大马戏场；36条马路之外，历史学家佐·古尔德曾在众目睽睽之下把一台收音机踹成碎片；13条马路之外是哈利·索奥射杀斯坦福·怀特的现场；距此5条马路，是我当年当领座员的大都会歌剧院；克莱伦斯·戴的老子清洗罪孽的显圣堂离这儿再远也只须走过112条马路。（就这类轶事拉一张单子可以长得没完没了。）依同理，我此刻置身其中的客房可能不知被多少显贵和在某一方面值得缅怀的人物占用过，其中某些人在炎热又闷塞的下午，同样感到落寞而离群，又满怀各人对于从户外传来的人事影响的敏感。

When I went down to lunch a few minutes ago I noticed that the man sitting next to me (about eighteen inches away along the wall) was Fred Stone. The eighteen inches are both the connection and the separation that New York provides for its inhabitants. My only connection with Fred Stone was that I saw him in the The Wizard of Oz around the beginning of the century. But our waiter felt the same stimulus from being close to a man from Oz, and after Mr. Stone left the room the waiter told me that when he (the waiter) was a young man just arrived in this country and before he could understand a word of English, he had taken his girl for their first theater date to The Wizard of Oz. It was a wonderful show, the waiter recalled—a man of straw, a man of tin. Wonderful! (And still only eighteen inches away.) “Mr. Stone is a very hearty eater, ” said the waiter thoughtfully, content with this fragile participation in destiny, this link with Oz.

几分钟前我下楼进午餐，曾注意到邻座（沿墙约18英寸之外）竟是弗雷德·斯通。这儿说的18英寸乃是纽约为其居民提供的人与人之间既联系又分隔的距离。我与弗雷德·斯通的唯一联系是，大概在世纪初吧，我看过他在《绿野仙踪》中的表演。可我们的侍应生因为在近距离接触了一位“绿野人”，同样大受激励，一俟斯通先生离去，便告诉我说，那还是他（指侍者）一个小伙子初来美国而且一个英文大字都不识的时候，和女友初次剧院约会看的戏。演出可精彩啦，侍者回忆道，稻草人，铁皮人。妙不可言！（仍在18英寸之外）“斯通先生吃东西真是好胃口，”侍者若有所思地说，因为跟“绿野”扯上了关系而心满意足，虽说那纽带一碰就断，也算是有缘的参与吧。

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute. Since I have been sitting in this miasmic air shaft, a good many rather splashy events have occurred in town. A man shot and killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. It caused no stir outside his block and got only small mention in the papers. I did not attend. Since my arrival, the greatest air show ever staged in all the world took place in town. I didn’t attend and neither did most of the eight million other inhabitants, although they say there was quite a crowd. I didn’t even hear any planes except a couple of westbound commercial airliners that habitually use this air shaft to fly over. The biggest oceangoing ships on the North Atlantic arrived and departed. I didn’t notice them and neither did most other New Yorkers. I am told this is the greatest seaport in the world, with 650 miles of waterfront, and ships calling here from many exotic lands, but the only boat I’ve happened to notice since my arrival was a small sloop tacking out of the East River night before last on the ebb tide when I was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I heard the Queen Mary blow one midnight, though, and the sound carried the whole history of departure and longing and loss. The Lions have been in convention. I've seen not one Lion. A friend of mine saw one and told me about him. (He was lame, and was wearing a bolero.) At the ballgrounds and horse parks the greatest sporting spectacles have been enacted. I saw no ballplayer, no race horse. The governor came to town. I heard the siren scream, but that was all there was to that—an eighteen-inch margin again. A man was killed by a falling cornice. I was not a party to the tragedy, and again the inches counted heavily.

纽约把离群索居的礼物和亲历参与的激动混合在一起。比之大多数人口密集的社区，纽约更能使个人（只要你愿意，而几乎每个人都愿意并需要这样）与外界每一分钟发生的所有群众场面、残忍暴行、精彩表演完全绝缘。我坐在这臭气熏天的通风井处已有一会儿，城里可已发生了许多光怪陆离的事件。一名男子妒火中烧，开枪射杀妻子。这样的恶事竟不传社区之外，仅在报上简要提了一笔。我没去赶热闹，我是说打我来此，世界上最为壮观的飞行表演在纽约举行，我没去观摩，800万居民中的多数人也没去，尽管据说观众人数不少。我甚至没听见飞机的轰鸣，除去按常例从这儿通风井上空飞过的一两次西去的商业航班。几艘北大西洋最大的海轮抵港复离港。我根本未予注意，大多数其他纽约人也是这样。别人告诉我这儿可是全世界最大的海港，滨水码头区长达650英里，从许多域外异国驶来的航船在此停泊。不过来此以后我也碰巧注意过一艘小小的单桅帆船，忽左忽右抢风驶出东河去。那是前天夜里的退潮时分，我正步行跨越布鲁克林大桥。不过，某日午夜，我也曾听到“玛丽王后”拉响汽笛，那声音带着浓浓的离绪，又有期盼和失落的全部苍凉。国际狮子会在此开大会，我可一头狮子都未见到。我的一个朋友倒是见过一位，还把这人的模样告诉了我。（是个瘸子，穿了件西班牙式的短上衣。）在球场和赛马场有最盛大的体育比赛。我没见过一名球员或一匹赛马。州长大驾光临。我听得警笛长鸣，所知也就仅限于此了——18英寸画地为牢的又一明证。一名男子被坠落的屋檐砸死。我与这齣悲剧全无干系，以英寸度量的距离又一次彰显无遗。

I mention these events merely to show that New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along (whether a thousand-foot liner out of the East or twenty-thousand-man convention out of the West) without inflicting the event on its inhabitants; so that every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul. In most metropolises, small and large, the choice is often not with the individual at all. He is thrown to the Lions. The Lions are overwhelming; the event is unavoidable. A cornice falls, that it hits every citizen on the head, every last man in town. I sometimes think that the only event that hits every New Yorker on the head is the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is fairly penetrating—the Irish are a hard race to tune out, there are 500,000 of them in residence, and they have the police force right in the family.

我提到这些事情只是为了说明，纽约的结构真是够特别的，可以吸纳几乎任何一件发生在此的事情（不论是从东方驶来的长达一千英尺的班轮，还是一次从西方来的两万人大会），而不使事情强行影响本市居民。结果，一应大事，在某种意义上，都成了市民本人的选择，每个人都过着舒心日子，可以自行选择参与哪一桩盛举，从而节约自己的精神支出。在大多数都市，不论大小，选择往往由不得个人，你身不由己地被拉去参加狮子大会，狮群集会可是件压倒一切的大事，躲也躲不开的。倘有屋檐坠落，那就相当于砸在每个公民的头上，没有谁可以幸免。我有时想，真能砸到每个纽约人头上的大事惟有一年一度的圣帕特里克节大游行了。这场活动渗透到每个角落——爱尔兰人容不得别人不把自己当回事，在全城居民中占了50万，而家中干警察这一行的还特别多。

The quality in New York that insulates its inhabitants from life may simply weaken them as individuals. Perhaps it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow; where, when the governor passes, you see at any rate his hat.

纽约城把居民与生活隔绝的特质可能只会弱化个体。也许，个人生活在一个这样的社区更为健康：当屋檐坠落，应当感觉就像砸在自己头上一样；当州长路过，至少能见到他的帽子。

I am not defending New York in this regard. Many of its settlers are probably here merely to escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers—for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

我不是在这方面替纽约辩解。在此定居的好些人之所以来这儿，可能仅仅是为了逃避而不是面对现实。但是，不管其含义究竟是什么，这份礼物相当难得。我还相信，这份礼物对于纽约人的创造能力大有裨益——因为所谓创造，部分的意思无非是摒弃大大小小让你分心的事情。

Although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness or forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location ten blocks or by reducing your fortune by five dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city’s tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of morale. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation—a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless. I think that although many persons are here from some excess of spirit (which caused them to break away from their small town), some, too, are here from a deficiency of spirit, who find in New York a protection, or an easy substitution.

纽约虽说时常给人一种沉重的失落感或被遗弃感，城市却难得显出死气沉沉或一筹莫展的样子，反倒是你总拥有一种希望：越过10条马路搬次家，或是花去5美元，就能重新焕发青春。许多缺乏独立精神的人依赖城市巨大的多样性和兴奋源，来求得精神上的耐久力并保持振奋。在乡下，青春得以突然重新焕发的偶然机会不是没有 —— 也许是天气的骤变，要不收到一封让你惊喜的邮件。可是在纽约，这样的机会无穷无尽。在我看来，尽管有不少人是由于精神追求过度到这儿来的（这使他们逼着自己离开小城），也有些人是因为精神贫乏到纽约来的，并在此找到了保护或是轻而易举得到了易地取代的报偿。