青草在歌唱(诺贝尔获奖作品).doc

青草在歌唱
The Grass is Singing 《青草在歌唱》
十月一期间和老公一起去南京路上的淘书店淘书，竟然在毫无头绪的书架中发现了这本书，欣喜之情可想而知。只花了大概8元就买了下来这本全新的译林出版社2000年出版的《青草在歌唱》，一蕾译。虽然，版本不是太好。我又于网上找到了原版英文版，只可惜是doc版的，所以不一定很准确，不过还是先在这儿一并做一读书笔记。
小说开篇引用艾略特《荒原》中的诗句
‘In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganger was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder’
From The Waste Land by T.S Eliot with grateful acknowledgments to the author and to Messrs Faber & Faber
`It is by the failures and misfits of a civilization that one can best judge its weaknesses.' AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Chapter One

Mary Turner（玛丽·特纳）, wife of Richard Turner（理查德·特纳）, a farmer at Ngesi（恩泽西农场）, was found murdered on the front verandah of their homestead yesterday morning. The houseboy, who has been arrested, has confessed to the crime. No motive has been discovered.
开篇叙述这里的白人一反常态地对这次黑仆谋杀白主人的事件保持缄默。

特纳夫妇落落寡欢，不经常露面，没有子女，这儿的其它南非白人，都讨厌这对夫妇。

Marston（马斯顿）, the assistant.

Denham（德纳姆）, the policeman。
Charlie Slatter（查理·斯莱特）, who knew more about the Turners than anyone else。
Moses（摩西），the murderer had given himself up.a great powerful man, black as polished linoleum.
Who was Charlie Slatter?
It was he who, from the beginning of the tragedy to its end, personified Society for the Turners。He came with one idea: to make money. He was a crude, brutal, ruthless, yet kindhearted man, in his own way, and according to his own impulses.

sjambok. （犀牛牛皮鞭）
其它男人全部憎恶玛丽，因为她不光彩的行为似乎触犯到了他们自身的尊严。他们关注的不会是女人的本身，而是她个人之外的东西。唯一一次提到玛丽本身的一次，是查理对警官说，应该把尸体抬到屋外，天气太热，以免坏掉。

Charlie said, turning towards the sergeant, `Better get her out of here. It is too hot to wait.'And that brutally matter-of-fact remark, Tony realized afterwards, was the only time poor Mary Turner was referred to directly.

玛丽居住在条件简陋甚至恶劣的房屋里，没有天花板，铁皮顶，夏热冬冷。屋内都是兽皮的味道，她的生活充满贫苦，无聊，和艰辛。那么玛丽在来此之前又是怎么样的一个女人呢？

What sort of woman had Mary Turner been, before she came to this farm and had been driven slowly off balance by heat and loneliness and poverty?

社会权利网中的玛丽只是强者文化的组成部分，没有人关心她本人的生存状态，他们关注的是她是否对他们同在的文化网构成“亵渎”。一旦，玛丽做了不光彩的事情，他们便憎恶、厌恨起这个女人来。

Chapter Two
玛丽出生的家庭也对她产生了深远的影响，吵闹不断的父母，夭折的哥哥和姐姐，这些都对她的人生观和价值观产生了深远影响。不喜欢生孩子，不喜欢男人，不向往婚姻。一直到30岁，朋友背地里对她的评论让她产生了危机感，才开始物色起可以结婚的人物。偶然间，她遇见了迪克，之所以选择了迪克，是因为他把玛丽当做天下唯一的宝贝，而玛丽借此恢复自己的优越感。爱情可以出于各种原因，玛丽的婚姻就是其中一种。

Then she met Dick Turner. It might have been anybody. Or rather, it would have been the first man she met who treated her as if she were wonderful and unique. She needed that badly. She needed it to restore her feeling of superiority to men, which was really, at bottom, what she had been living from all these years.
Chapter Three
玛丽嫁给了贫穷的迪克，来到乡野中迪克那贫穷如洗的家中，她感觉自己重复着当年母亲的道路。她一直所期望的生命的新的开始，生活的改变，一场新的旅途，在这一刻，应该就破灭了。
she heard the history of each thing, and saw that what seemed so pathetic and frail to her represented to him victories over discomfort; and she began to feel, slowly, that it was not in this house she was sitting, with her husband, but back with her mother, watching her endlessly contrive and patch and mend - till suddenly she got to her feet with an awkward scrambling movement, unable to bear it; possessed with the thought that her father, from his grave, had sent out his will and forced her back into the kind of life he had made her mother lead.
而书中对性的描写，更多的体现出多丽丝莱辛的看法。书中写道，女人有一种特殊的能力，那就是对性关系采取一种冷冰冰的态度，不让自己的感情受到性的影响。想必这里是作者观点的直接体现。而且，这儿莱辛把玛丽对待丈夫的心态描述成母亲对待孩子一样，这一点是女人的共性还是特殊环境下的特殊情况，需要进一步研究。

Women have an extraordinary ability to withdraw from the sexual relationship, to immunize themselves against it, in such a way that their men can be left feeling let down and insulted without having anything tangible to complain of.

Chapter Four
Samson，（萨姆森）he is not a bad old swine.
刚开始的玛丽对待黑人还是一种平等，或者恐惧的心态。当她听到迪克骂萨姆森老畜生的时候，心里多少有些诧异。
迪克因为丢失了一个卡车备用轮胎而懊恼不已，加上，上一章中描述的他喃喃自语自己不配，可以看出来他是一个懦弱，脆弱的男人。
Chapter Five
刚开始的一段日子，玛丽寻找一切可以投入精力的事情来让自己变得忙碌。她收拾起住宅，花钱买布，买陶器，买花布，做窗帘，装饰家里。然后又缝制衣服，给衣服绣上图案，直到家里再也找不出可以绣的地方，她便自己动手粉刷墙壁。终究她感觉累了，便休息了一阵子，后来她又感觉到这种闲散的日子要不得，便读起小说来，可以以往觉得津津有味的小说，现在觉得没有一点意思。从这里可见，玛丽只有让身体的忙碌和疲惫来打发时间，再也不能够用思想上的丰富去度过时间。
另一方面，玛丽对佣人也变得盛气凌人，刻薄而严厉，接连辞退了很多雇工。而对待迪克的朋友，又自傲清高，因为贫穷而变得多疑和机警，将莱斯特太太友好的感情视为讥讽。而对待迪克呢，沿袭了她妈妈的那一套，大哭大闹，家里每一天都少不了口角。
而迪克不是一个合格的剥削者，他的很多想法过于理想化，又没有冒险精神和投资眼光，对待玛丽又无可奈何，这个家庭危机重重。

Chapter Six
迪克沉溺于心血来潮的干起一番新的“事业”，很明显的空中楼阁，他却干得起劲，从养蜂，到养猪，养绶鸡再到开店铺，这个家庭亏损了昂贵的财富。本来就不富裕的家庭更加艰难了，而玛丽彻底对迪克失望了。原来，她是很敬佩他的，她总以为，迪克有一天会发财，他们自此过上幸福的生活，但是她明白了，迪克注定是一事无成的男人。
从此，她更加消极度日，每天都在挨日子，把大把时间用在睡上，觉得一天比一天难捱。有一天浏览报纸，她看到她以前呆的那家公司在招聘文员，就是她以前干的工作。她第一次萌生了离家出走，回到城市的念头，顿时她对未来充满了向往。
At the Club she was met by a new matron who told her they did not take married women. 可是女子俱乐部却不接受已婚的女士，恍然醒悟的她才好像第一次意识到自己已婚了。她只好到旅馆下榻，然后去原来的公司应聘。但是，原来的上司看到她现在的窘相却回到已经没有空缺的职位了，她唯一的一个幻想破灭了。

She was being shown into her old employer's office, and immediately she saw on his face the look of the woman at the Club. She found herself glancing down at her hands, which were crinkled and brown; and hid them under her bag. The man opposite to her was staring at her, looking closely at her face. Then he glanced at her shoes, which were still red with dust, because she had forgotten to wipe them. Looking grieved, but at the same time shocked, even scandalized, he said that the job had been filled already, and that he was sorry.

最终玛丽跟着迪克回到了农场，当再次回归到刻板的生活当中，她感觉自己精疲力竭，起初感觉只是麻木，后来，她发现自己没有了知觉，再也没有什么可奋发有为了。她所做的就是等死，像她母亲那样因为一场疾病，很快的死去，因为她不想活了。或许有另一种出路，她再次离开农场，学会如何独立的丰衣足食的养活自己。但是，这两种情况都没有发生，因为迪克病了，结婚六年后，玛丽36岁的时候，迪克第一次生病了。

It began with this numbness, as if she could no longer feel or fight. And perhaps, if Dick had not got ill when he did, the end would have come quickly after all, one way or another. Perhaps she might have died quite soon, as her mother had done, after a brief illness, simply because she did not want particularly to live. Or she might have run away again, in another desperate impulse towards escape, and this time done it sensibly, and learned how to live again, as she was made to live, by nature and upbringing, alone and sufficient to herself, But there was a sudden and unexpected change in her life, which staved off the disintegration for a little while. A few months after she had run away, and six years after she had married him, Dick got ill, for the first time.