米沃什“绕过笛卡尔街”

绕过笛卡尔街①
绕过笛卡尔街
我下行走向塞纳河，羞怯，一个游客，
只是一个年轻野蛮人来到世界之都。
我们为数众多，来自雅西与科洛沙瓦、维尔诺与布加勒斯特、
西贡与马拉喀什，②
羞于记起我们家乡的风俗，
这里的人从未听说过的风俗：
拍手叫仆人、光脚的姑娘匆匆而入、
用咒语分发食物、
户主与家人一起唱祷。
我抛下阴沉的外省，
进入 大同之所在③，眩晕而满怀渴望。
不需多久，来自雅西与科洛沙瓦、西贡与马拉喀什的众多人
将被杀戮，因为他们企图废弃家乡的风俗。
不需多久，他们的同代人就会攫取权力
好以普遍、美好的理念的名义实施杀戮。④
而同时，这城市顺其自然地运转，⑤
嘶哑的笑声骚动在黑暗中，
烘烤长长的面包，倒酒入陶罐，
在街市买鱼、柠檬和大蒜，
漠然于荣耀、耻辱、伟大与光辉，
因为那些早已完结，转换成
不知代表谁的纪念碑、
近乎无声的独唱曲和陈词滥调。
又一次我倚靠这防波堤的粗糙大理石，
我恍惚在漫游地下世界后归来，
突然看到光芒中四季的转轮，
那里帝国倾颓，那一度活着的如今死了⑥。
没有什么世界之都，这里没有别处也没有，
被废弃的风俗已得恢复微小的名声。
如今我明白了，人类世代的时间不似尘世的时间。
至于我深重的罪，有一宗我记得最清楚：
曾经，沿溪流走在林间小路时，我是如何
朝蜷曲在草丛中的水蛇⑦推下一块石头。
而我一生所遭遇的种种，是公正的惩罚，
这惩罚，迟早，要落到违犯禁忌者头上。
伯克利，1980.
注：
①笛卡尔街，Rue Descartes，位于巴黎拉丁区，大学遍布，是知识分子和艺术家聚居区。
②雅西，Jassy，今属摩尔多瓦；科洛沙瓦，Koloshvar ，属匈牙利；维尔诺，Wilno,属立陶宛；布加勒斯特，Bucharest，罗马尼亚首都；西贡，Saigon，属越南；马拉喀什，Marrakesh,属摩洛哥。它们被认为是欧洲文化或西方文化的边缘地带。
③大同之所在，“the universal”,指世界之都巴黎。巴黎之外的皆被称为外省。
④指发生在东欧与亚洲的战争与革命。
⑤相反，西欧却汲汲于财富，对于活跃在外省的伟大而毁灭性的思想置若罔闻。
⑥“那一度活着的如今死了”(查良铮译文)，出自T.S. Eliot的《荒原》之"雷霆的说话"。
⑦“水蛇”，在米沃什的故乡立陶宛，还保持着异教信仰，认为水蛇与太阳相通，故有不得伤害水蛇的禁忌。
英译文：
Bypassing rue Descartes
Bypassing rue Descartes
I descended toward the Seine, shy, a traveler,
A young barbarian just come to the capital of the world.
We were many, from Jassy and Koloshvar, Wilno and Bucharest,
Saigon and Marrakesh,
Ashamed to remember the customs of our homes,
About which nobody here should ever be told:
The clapping for servants, barefooted girls hurry in,
Dividing food with incantations,
Choral prayers recited by master and household together.
I had left the cloudy provinces behind,
I entered the universal, dazzled and desiring.
Soon enough, many from Jassy and Koloshvar, or Saigon or Marrakesh
Would be killed because they wanted to abolish the customs of their homes.
Soon enough, their peers were seizing power
In order to kill in the name of the universal, beautiful ideas.
Meanwhile the city behaved in accordance with its nature,
Rustling with throaty laughter in the dark,
Baking long breads and pouring wine into clay pitchers,
Buying fish, lemons, and garlic at street markets,
Indifferent as it was to honor and shame and greatness and glory,
Because that had been done already and had transformed itself
Into monuments representing nobody knows whom,
Into arias hardly audible and into turns of speech.
Again I lean on the rough granite of the embankment,
As if I had returned from travels through the underworlds
And suddenly saw in the light the reeling wheel of the seasons
Where empires have fallen and those once living are now dead.
There is no capital of the world, neither here nor anywhere else,
And the abolished customs are restored to their small fame,
And now I know that the time of human generations is not like
the time of the earth.
As to my heavy sins, I remember one most vividly:
How, one day, walking on a forest path along a stream,
I pushed a rock down onto a water snake coiled in the grass.
And what I have met with in life was the just punishment
Which reaches, sooner or later, the breaker of a taboo.
Berkeley, 1980
translated by Renata Gorczyński and Robert Hass