英語聽書《白鯨記》第408期

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And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:

因此,讓我在這里懇切地勸告你們這些南塔開特的船主吧!在你們這種始終需要留神的捕魚業(yè)中,可千萬不要招收那些淺眉凹眼,愛做不合時宜的遐思的小伙子;這些家伙,他們是帶一個飛東的,而不是鮑狄契(納撒尼爾。鮑狄契的腦袋到船上來的。我說,應該提防這樣一種人;你的鯨一定要看得真切才能動手捕殺;可是,這種窩孔眼的柏拉圖派的小伙子,卻會教你繞了世界十圈,而使你永遠撈不到二十英兩較好的鯨油。這種忠告并不是完全多余的。因為,在目前,捕鯨業(yè)就好象是為許多羅曼蒂克,有憂郁癥的和心不在焉的年輕人而設的避難所一般,他們不屑做塵世瑣事,卻到柏油和鯨脂中來尋找情趣。恰爾德。哈羅爾德(拜倫《恰爾德。哈羅爾德游記》中的主人公。就經常棲息在一種倒運絕望的捕鯨船的桅頂上,用郁郁不樂的詞句不由自主地叫喊:

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain."

滾滾向前吧,你深不可測的靛青色的海洋!千萬艘捕鯨船徒勞地在你身上馳驅。

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

但是,這些船只的船長卻往往一邊雇用這些心不在焉的年青哲學家,一邊又在責備他們對航程沒有充分的"興趣";隱隱約約地說他們是如此不堪救藥,喪盡光榮大志,因為在他們那隱秘的靈魂中實在是很不愿意看到大鯨的。不過,這一切都是徒勞的;這些年輕的柏拉圖派,總自認為自己的視覺有缺點;自己是近視眼;那么,過份使用這視神經又有什么用呢?他們已經把他們那只看戲用的望遠鏡給忘在家里了。