杨宪益英译鲁迅的散文

杨宪益英译鲁迅的散文《从百草园到三味书屋》

From Hundred-Plant Garden to Three-flavour Study

Behind our house was a great garden known in our family

as Hundred-Plant Garden. It has long since been sold, together with the house, to the descendents of Zhu Xi; and the last time I saw it, already seven or eight years ago. I am pretty sure there were only weeds growing there. But in my childhood it was my paradise.

I need not speak of the green vegetable plots, the slippery stone coping round the well, the tall honey-locust tree, or the purple mud berries. Nor need I speak of the long shrilling of the cicadas among the leaves, the fat wasps couches in the flowering rape, or the nimble skylarks who suddenly soared straight up from the grass to the sky. Just the foot of the low mud wall around the garden was a source of unfailing interest. Here field crickets droned away while house crickets chirped merrily. Turning over a broken brick, you might find a centipede. There were stink-beetles as well, and if you pressed a finger on their rear orifices. Milkwort interwove with climbing fig which had fruit shaped like the calyx of a lotus, while the milk mort had swollen tubers. Fork said that some of these had human shapes and if you ate them you would become immortal, so I kept on pulling them up. By uprooting one I pulled out those next to it, and in this way destroyed part of the mud wall, but I never found a tuber shaped like a man. If you were not afraid of thorns you could pick raspberries too, like clusters of little coral beads, sweet yet tart, with a

much finer color and flavor than mulberries.

I did not venture into the long grass, because a huge brown snake was said to inhabit the garden.

Mama Chang had told me a story:

Once upon a time a scholar was staying in an old temple to study. One evening while enjoying the cool of the courtyard he heard someone call his name. Responding he looked round and saw, over the wall, the head of a siren. She smiled, then disappeared. He was very pleased, till the old monk who came to chat with him each evening discovered what had happened. Detecting an evil influence on his face, he declared that the scholar must have seen a beautiful-woman snake ---- a monster with a human head and snake's body who was able to call a man's name. If he answered , the snake would come that night to devour him.

The scholar was nearly frightened to death, of course; but the old monk told him not to worry and gave him a little box, assuring him that if he put this by his pillow he could go to sleep without fear.

But though the scholar did as he was told, he could not sleep----and that is hardly surprising. At midnight, to be sure , the monster came! There sounded a hissing and rustling, as if of wind and rain, outside the door. Just as ht was shaking with fright, however----whizz----a golden ray streaked up from beside

his pillow. Then outside the door utter silence fell, and the golden ray flew back once more to its box.

And after that? After that the old monk told him that this was a flying centipede which could suck out the brain of a snake----- the beautiful-woman snake had been killed by it.

The moral of this was: If a strange voice calls your name , on no account answer.

This story brought home to me he perils with which human life is fraught. When I sat outside on a summer night I often felt too apprehensive to look at the wall, and longed for a box with a flying centipede in it like the old monk's. This was often in my thoughts when I walked to the edge of the long grass in Hundred-Plant Garden. To this day I have never got hold of such a box, but neither have I encountered the brown snake or beautiful-Woman Snake, Of course, strange voice often call my name; but they have never proved to belong to beautiful-woman snakes.

In winter the garden was relatively dull; as soon as it snowed, though, that was a different story. Imprinting a snowman ( by pressing your body on the snow) or building snow Buddhas repuired appreciative audiences; and since this was a deserted garden where visitors seldom came, such games were out of place here. Iwas therefore reduced to catching birds. A light fall of snow would not do: the ground had to be covered for one or two days, so that the

birds had gone hungry for some rice husks beneath it, then tied a long string to the stick and retired to a distance to hold it, waiting for birds to come. when they hopped under the sieve, you sugged the string and trapped them . Most of those caught were sparrows, but there were white-throated wagtails too, so wild that they died less than a day of captivity.

It was Runtu's father who taught me this method, but I was not adept at it. Birds hopped under my sieve all right, yet when I pulled the string and ran over to look there was usually nothing there, and after long efforts I caught merely three or four.

Runtu's father in only half the time coued catch dozens which, stowed in his bag, would cheep and jostle each other. I asked him once the reason for my failure. With a quiet smile he said:

\"You're too impatient. You don't wait for them to get to the middle.\"

I don't know why my family decided to send me to school, or why they chose the school reputed to bethe strictest in the town. Perhaps it was because I had spoiled the mud wall by uprooting mikwort, perhaps because I had thrown bricks into the Liangs' courtyard next door,perhaps because I had climbed the well coping to jump off it.....There is no means of knowing. At all events ,this meant an end to my frequent visits to Hundred-Plant Garden. Adieu, my crickets ! Adieu, my raspberries and climbing figs!

A few hundred yards east of our house, across a stone bridge, was where my teacher lived. You went in through a black-lacquered bamboo gate, and the third room was the classroom. On the central wall hung the

inscriotion Three-Flavour Study, and under this was a painting of a portly fallow deer lying beneath an old tree. In the absence of a tablet to Confucius, we bowed before the inscription and the deer. The first time for Confucius, the second time for our teacher.

When we bowed the second time, our teacher bowed graciously back from the side of the room. A thin, tall old man with a grizzled beard, he wore large spectacles. And I had the he was the most upright, honourable and erudite man in our town.

I forget where it was that I heard that Dongfang Shuo was another erudite scholar who knew of an insect called guai-zai, the incarnation of some unjustly slain man's ghost, which would vanish if you doused it with wine. I longed to learn the details of this story, but Mama Chang could not enlighten me, for she after all was not an erudite scholar. Now my chance had come. I could ask my teacher.

\"What is this insect guai--zai, sir?\" I asked hastily at the end of a end of a new lesson, just before I was dismissed.

\"I don't know.\"He seemed not at all pleased. Indeed, he looked rather angry.

then I realized that students should not ask questions like this, but concentrate on studying. Being such a learned scholar, of course he must know the answer. When he said he did not know, it mwant he would not tell me. Grownups often behaved like this. as I knew from many past experiences.

So I cancentrated on studying. At miday I practised calligraphy, in the evening I made couplets. For the first few days the teacher was very stern, later he treated me better; but by degrees he increased my reading

assignment and the number of characters in each line of the couplets I was set to write , from three to five, and finally to seven.

There was a garden behind Three-Flavour Study too. Although it was small, you could climb the terrace there to pick winter plum, or search the ground and the fragrant osmanthus tree forthe moulted skins of cicadas. Best of all was catching flies to feed ants, for that did not make any noise. But it was no use too many of us slipping out too long, for then the teacher then the teacher would shout from the class-room:

\"where has everybody gone?\"

Then everyone would slip back one after the other: it was no use all going back together. He had a ferule which he seldom used, and a method of punishing students by making them kneel which again he seldom used. In general, he simply glared round for a while and shouted:

\"Get on with your reading!\"

Then all of us would read at the top of our voices , with a roar like a seething cauldron.

We all read from different texts:

\"Is humanity far? When I seek it, it is here.\"

\"To mock a toothless man, say: The dog'e kennel gapes wide.\"

\"On the upper ninth the dragon hides itself and bides its time.\"

\"Poor soil, with good produce of the inferior sort interspersed with superior produce; its tribute, matting, orangers, pomelos.\"

............

The tutor read aloud too. Later ,our voices grew lower and faded away. He alone went on declaiming as loudly as ever:

\"At a sweep of his iron sceptre, all stand amazed .... The golden goblet brims over, but a thousand cups will not intoxicate him ...\"

I suspected this to be the finest literature, for whenever he reached this passage he always smiled, threw back his head a little and shook it, bending

his head further and further back.

When our tutor was completely absorbed in his reading, that was most conenient for us. Some boys would then stage puppet shows with paper helmets on their fingers. I used to draw, using what we called\" Jingchuan paper\" to trace the illustrations to various novels, just as we traced calligraphy. The more books I read, the more illustations I traced. I never became a good student but I made not a little progress as an artist, the best sets I copied being two big volumes of illustration, one from Suppressing the Bandits, the other from Pilgrimage to the West. Later, needing ready money, I sold these to a rich classmate whose father ran a shop selling the tinsel coins used at funerals. I hear he is now the shop manager himself and will soon have risen to the rank of one of the local gentry. Those tracings of mine must have vanished long ago.

从百草园到三味书屋[1]

·鲁迅·

我家的后面有一个很大的园，相传叫作百草园。现在是早已并屋子一起卖给朱文公[2]的子孙了 ，连那最末次的相见也已经隔了七八年，其中似乎确凿只有一些野草；但那时却

是我的乐园。

不必说碧绿的菜畦，光滑的石井栏，高大的皂荚树，紫红的桑椹；也不必说鸣蝉在树叶里长吟，肥胖的黄蜂伏在菜花上，轻捷的叫天子（云雀）忽然从草间直窜向云霄里去了。

单是周围的短短的泥墙根一带，就有无限趣味。油蛉[3] 在这里低唱，蟋蟀们在这里弹琴。翻开断砖来，有时会遇见蜈蚣；还有斑蝥[4] ，倘若用手指按住它的脊梁，便会拍的一声，从后窍喷出一阵烟雾。何首乌[5] 藤和木莲[6] 藤缠络着，木莲有莲房一般的果实，何首乌有拥肿的根。有人说，何首乌根是有象人形的，吃了便可以成仙，我于是常常拔它起来，牵连不断地拔起来，也曾因此弄坏了泥墙，却从来没有见过有一块根象人样。如果不怕刺，还可以摘到覆盆子[7] ，象小珊瑚珠攒成的小球，又酸又甜，色味都比桑椹要好得远。

长的草里是不去的，因为相传这园里有一条很大的赤练蛇。

长妈妈[8] 曾经讲给我一个故事听：先前，有一个读书人住在古庙里用功，晚间，在院子里纳凉的时候，突然听到有人在叫他。答应着，四面看时，却见一个美女的脸露在墙头上，向他一笑，隐去了。他很高兴；但竟给那走来夜谈的老和尚识破了机关[9] 。说他脸上有些妖气，一定遇见“美女蛇”了；这是人首蛇身的怪物，能唤人名，倘一答应，夜间便要来吃这人的肉的。他自然吓得要死，而那老和尚却道无妨，给他一个小盒子，说只要放在枕边，便可高枕而卧。他虽然照样办，却总是睡不着，——当然睡不着的。到半夜，果然来了，沙沙沙！门外象是风雨声。他正抖作一团时，却听得豁的一声，一道金光从枕边飞出，外面便什么声音也没有了，那金光也就飞回来，敛在盒子里。后来呢？后来，老和

尚说，这是飞蜈蚣，它能吸蛇的脑髓，美女蛇就被它治死了。

结末的教训是：所以倘有陌生的声音叫你的名字，你万不可答应他。

这故事很使我觉得做人之险，夏夜乘凉，往往有些担心，不敢去看墙上，而且极想得到一盒老和尚那样的飞蜈蚣。走到百草园的草丛旁边时，也常常这样想。但直到现在，总还没有得到，但也没有遇见过赤练蛇和美女蛇。叫我名字的陌生声音自然是常有的，然而

都不是美女蛇。

冬天的百草园比较的无味；雪一下，可就两样了。拍雪人（将自己的全形印在雪上）和塑雪罗汉需要人们鉴赏，这是荒园，人迹罕至，所以不相宜，只好来捕鸟。薄薄的雪，是不行的；总须积雪盖了地面一两天，鸟雀们久已无处觅食的时候才好。扫开一块雪，露出地面，用一支短棒支起一面大的竹筛来，下面撒些秕谷[10] ，棒上系一条长绳，人远远地牵着，看鸟雀下来啄食，走到竹筛底下的时候，将绳子一拉，便罩住了。但所得的是麻

雀居多，也有白颊的“张飞鸟”[11] ，性子很躁，养不过夜的。

这是闰土[12] 的父亲所传授的方法，我却不大能用。明明见它们进去了，拉了绳，跑去一看，却什么都没有，费了半天力，捉住的不过三四只。闰土的父亲是小半天便能捕获几十只，装在叉袋里叫着撞着的。我曾经问他得失的缘由，他只静静地笑道：你太性急，

来不及等它走到中间去。

我不知道为什么家里的人要将我送进书塾里去了，而且还是全城中称为最严厉的书塾。也许是因为拔何首乌毁了泥墙罢，也许是因为将砖头抛到间壁的梁家去了罢，也许是因为站在石井栏上跳下来罢，……都无从知道。总而言之：我将不能常到百草园了。Ａｄｅ[13] ，

我的蟋蟀们！Ａｄｅ，我的覆盆子们和木莲们！……

出门向东，不上半里，走过一道石桥，便是我的先生的家了。从一扇黑油的竹门进去，第三间是书房。中间挂着一块扁道：三味书屋[14] ；扁下面是一幅画，画着一只很肥大的梅花鹿伏在古树下。没有孔子牌位，我们便对着那扁和鹿行礼。第一次算是拜孔子，第二

次算是拜先生。

第二次行礼时，先生[15] 便和蔼地在一旁答礼。他是一个高而瘦的老人，须发都花白了，还戴着大眼镜。我对他很恭敬，因为我早听到，他是本城中极方正，质朴，博学的人。

不知从那里听来的，东方朔[16] 也很渊博，他认识一种虫，名曰“怪哉”，冤气所化，用酒一浇，就消释了。我很想详细地知道这故事，但阿长是不知道的，因为她毕竟不渊博。

现在得到机会了，可以问先生。

“先生，‘怪哉”[17] 这虫，是怎么一回事？……”我上了生书，将要退下来的时候，

赶忙问。

“不知道！”他似乎很不高兴，脸上还有怒色了。

我才知道做学生是不应该问这些事的，只要读书，因为他是渊博的宿儒[18] ，决不至于不知道，所谓不知道者，乃是不愿意说。年纪比我大的人，往往如此，我遇见过好几回

了。

我就只读书，正午习字，晚上对课[19] 。先生最初这几天对我很严厉，后来却好起来了，不过给我读的书渐渐加多，对课也渐渐地加上字去，从三言到五言，终于到七言。

三味书屋后面也有一个园，虽然小，但在那里也可以爬上花坛去折腊梅花，在地上或桂花树上寻蝉蜕[20] 。最好的工作是捉了苍蝇喂蚂蚁，静悄悄地没有声音。然而同窗们到

园里的太多，太久，可就不行了，先生在书房里便大叫起来：——

“人都到那里去了？”

人们便一个一个陆续走回去；一同回去，也不行的。他有一条戒尺，但是不常用，也

有罚跪的规矩，但也不常用，普通总不过瞪几眼，大声道：——

“读书！”

于是大家放开喉咙读一阵书，真是人声鼎沸。有念“仁远乎哉我欲仁斯仁至矣”[21] 的，有念“笑人齿缺曰狗窦大开”[22] 的，有念“上九潜龙勿用”[23] 的，有念“厥土下上上错厥贡苞茅橘柚”[24] 的……先生自己也念书。后来，我们的声音便低下去，静下去了，

只有他还大声朗读着：——

“铁如意，指挥倜傥，一座皆惊呢～～；金叵罗，颠倒淋漓噫，千杯未醉嗬～～……”

我疑心这是极好的文章，因为读到这里，他总是微笑起来，而且将头仰起，摇着，向

后面拗过去，拗过去。

先生读书入神的时候，于我们是很相宜的。有几个便用纸糊的盔甲套在指甲上做戏。

我是画画儿，用一种叫作“荆川纸”的，蒙在小说的绣像[25] 上一个个描下来，象习字时候的影写一样。读的书多起来，画的画也多起来；书没有读成，画的成绩却不少了，最成片断的是《荡寇志》[26] 和《西游记》的绣像，都有一大本。后来，因为要钱用，卖给一个有钱的同窗了。他的父亲是开锡箔[27] 店的；听说现在自己已经做了店主，而且快

要升到绅士的地位了。这东西早已没有了罢。

九月十八日。