英語聽書《白鯨記》第474期

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Often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

他往往被非常逼真而消耗精力的夜夢弄得不得不從吊鋪上爬起來，這些日有所思。夜有所夢的緊張夢景，又把思潮繼續(xù)帶到如癲如狂的戰(zhàn)陣里，在他那熊熊烈火的腦殼里不停地打旋，旋得他那唯一的生命之火激成難抑的苦楚；而且有時候，往往是這般情況，即在他這種精神的苦楚把他弄得魂靈出竅時，他體內(nèi)就似乎豁成一個大坑，交叉的火光都打坑里直射出來，那些該死的惡魔都在招呼他跳下去跟它們在一起；等到他體內(nèi)這個地獄大張其口的時候，通船便會聽到一陣狂叫聲；接著，亞哈就瞪著雙眼，打他的艙室里沖了出來，仿佛是從一只著了火的床鋪里逃出來。然而這一切，也許不能說是他暴露了他的壓制不住的弱點，也不能說是他對自己的決心有所動搖，而只能說是它那劇烈的程度的最明白的表現(xiàn)。因為，在這種時候，瘋瘋癲癲的亞哈，這個深謀遠慮、決不妥協(xié)、信心堅決的白鯨獵手；這個已經(jīng)上了他那只吊鋪的亞哈，使他那么一嚇又打吊鋪沖了出來的，并不是什么動力，動力本來就是他的永恒長存的本原，或者是他的靈魂；睡覺的時候，因為是暫時跟那具有特性的精神失去了聯(lián)系(這種精神，平時是用來做它的外界的傳達手段和動力的)，精神就自然而然地想擺脫那種狂亂的事物的熱烈的接觸，精神也就暫時不是一個整體了。但是，因為精神如不與靈魂相結(jié)合，精神就不可能存在，因此，就亞哈的情況說來，精神一定已經(jīng)是把他種種思想和想象都化成他那唯一的最高的目的了；這種目的，全然由于它本身的宿愿所驅(qū)使，不得不由反抗鬼神而成為目的本身的一種獨斷獨行。獨來獨往的東西。而且，當它一跟通常的活力相結(jié)合時，就會兇猛地表現(xiàn)出來，燃燒起來，逃避得了一切無緣無由的恐嚇。因此，當亞哈從他房間里奔出來的時候，他肉眼所閃出來的那種苦惱的神色，好象暫時就是一種空泛泛的東西，是一個不具形體的夢游病者，是一線天然的光，而且確實沒有什么色彩，因此，就其本身說來，只是一片空白而已。愿上帝扶助你啊，老人，你的思潮已在你身上創(chuàng)造出了一個生物。他的緊張的思潮已經(jīng)使他成為一個普羅米修斯了。鷹隼永遠在啄食著那個心胸，那只鷹隼就正是他所創(chuàng)造的生物。