英語聽書《白鯨記》第568期

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breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.

一餐早飯要吃三四只硬果餡餅，也就是要吃整只整只的滿載著水手的捕鯨小艇，它們那些畸形的軀體就在紅紅綠綠的油漆的海洋里翻騰著。

But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour between a young suckling whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch.

不過，描畫鯨的這種錯誤百出的情形，畢竟還不算是頂驚人的。請想一想吧！大多數(shù)科學(xué)家的繪畫都是以被打死了的魚為藍本的；其實，這種做法，雖想表現(xiàn)出這種未遭打擊。渾身光滑的高貴的動物的原來的雄姿，但其正確性，充其量不過是跟畫一只打爛了龍骨的失事船以代表船只一樣而已。雖然人們可以給大象拍個全身照，然而，這種活生生的大海獸可從來還沒有自己浮得端端正正、讓人家來給他寫生的。這種活生生的鯨，人們只能在海洋的無底的深淵里，才看得到它那氣象萬千的威儀。等到它那碩大的軀干一泛上來的時候，它已是在望不到的遠方，象一種開動的戰(zhàn)艦?zāi)菢拥挠稳チ?；為了保存它那萬千壯儀和波動起伏的雄姿，而想把它弄出水來，整個吊在空中，卻是人類永遠無能為力的事。至于一條小鯨跟一條身強力壯的柏拉圖式的大鯨之間，具有很可以推想得到的不同的輪廓，更是不必說了，而且，就算萬一有這樣一條小鯨被吊上船甲板，可是，象它那種奇異的、滑溜溜、軟綿綿、千變?nèi)f化的形態(tài)，怕連魔鬼本人也領(lǐng)悟不了它的真相。