DAVID HAWKES译红楼梦之“红楼梦十二曲”

作者：重阳 标签：红楼梦

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David Hawkes 译红楼梦之“红楼梦十二曲”(1979 INDIANA UNIV PRESS)

录入：悼红轩--重阳 2001.2

　　 Prelude: A DREAM OF GOLDEN DAYS

When first the world from chaos rose,
Tell me, how did love begin?
The wind and moonlight first did love compose.
Now woebegone
And quite cast down
In low estate
I would my foolish heart expose,
And so perform
This DREAM OF GOLDEN DAYS,
And all my grief for my lost loves disclose.


First Song: THE MISTAKEN MARRIAGE

Let others all
Commend the marriage rites of gold and jade;
I still recall
The bond of old by stone and flower made;
And while my vacant eyes behold
Crystalline snows of beauty pure and cold,
From my mind can not be banished
That fairy wood forlorn that from the world has vanished.
How true I find
That every good some imperfection holds!
Even a wife so courteous and so kind
No comfort brings to my afflicted mind.


Second Song: HOPE BETRAYED

One was a flower from paradise,
One a pure jade without spot or stain.
If each for the other one was not intended,
Then why in this life did they meet again?
And yet if fate had meant them for each other,
Why was their earthly meeting all in vain?
In vain were all her sighs and tears,
In vain were all his anxious fears:
All, insubstantial, doomed to pass,
As moonlight mirrored in the water
Or flowers reflected in a glass.
How many tears from those poor eyes could flow,
Which every season rained upon her woe?


Third Song: MUTABILITY

In the full flower of her prosperity
Once more came mortal mutability,
Bidding her, with both eyes wide,
All earthly things to cast aside,
And her sweet soul upon the airs to glide.
So far the road back home did seem
That to her parents in a dream
Thus she her final duty paid:
'I that now am but a shade,
Parents dear,
For your happiness I fear:
Do not tempt the band of fate!
Draw back, draw back, before it is too late!'


Fourth Song: FROM DEAR ONES PARTED

Sail, boat, a thousand miles through rain and wind,
Leaving my home and dear ones far behind.
I fear that my remaining years
Will waste away in homesick tears
Father dear and mother mild,
Be not troubled for your child!
From of old our rising, falling
Was ordained; so now this parting.
Each in another land must be;
Each for himself must fend as best he may;
Now I am gone, oh do not weep for me!


Fifth Song: GRIEF AMIDST GLADNESS

While you still in cradle lay,
Both your parents passed away.
Though born to silken luxury,
No warmth or kind indulgence came your way.
Yet yours was a generous, open-hearted nature,
And never could be snared or soured
By childish piques and envious passions -
You were a crystal house by wind and moonlight scoured.
Matched to a perfect, gentle husband,
Security of bliss at last it seemed,
And all your childish miseries redeemed.
But soon alas! the clouds of Gao-tang faded,
The waters of the Xiang ran dry.
In our grey world so are things always ordered:
What then avails it to lament and sigh?


Sixth Song: ALL AT ODDS

Heaven made you like a flower,
With grace and wit to match the gods,
Adding a strange, contrary nature
That set you with the rest at odds.
Nauseous to you the world's rank diet,
Vulgar its fashion's gaudy dress:
But the world envies the superior
And hates a too precious daintiness.
Sad it seemed that your life should in dim-lit shrines be wasted,
All the sweets of spring untasted:
Yet, at the last,
Down into mud and shame your hopes were cast,
Like a white, flawless jade dropped in the muck,
Where only wealthy rakes might bless their luck.


Seventh Song: HUSBAND AND ENEMY

Zhong-shan wolf,
Inhuman sot,
Who for past kindness cared not a jot!
Bully and spendthrift, reckless in debauch,
For riot or for whoring always hot!
A delicate young wife of gentle stock
To you was no more than a lifeless block,
And bore, when you would rant and rave,
Treatment far worse than any slave;
So that her delicate, sweet soul
In just a twelvemonth from its body stole.


Eighth Song: THE VANITY OF SPRING

When triple spring as vanity was seen,
What use the blushing flowers, the willows green?
From youth's extravagance you sought release
To win chaste quietness and heavenly peace.
The hymeneal peach-blooms in the sky,
The flowering almond's blossoms seen on high
Dismiss, since none, for sure,
Can autumn's blighting frost endure.
Amidst sad aspens mourners sob and sigh,
In maple woods the poor ghosts thinly cry,
And under the dead grasslands lost graves lie.
Now poor, now rich, men's lives in toil are passed
To be, like summer's pride, cut down at last.
The doors of life and death all must go through.
Yet this I know is true:
In paradise there grows a precious tree
Which bears the fruit of immortality.


Ninth Song: CAUGHT BY HER OWN CUNNING

Too shrewd by half, with such finesse you wrought
That your own life in your own toils was caught;
But long before you died your heart was slain,
And when you died your spirit walked in vain.
Fall'n the great house once so secure in wealth,
Each scattered member shifting for himself;
And half a life-time's anxious schemes
Proved no more than the stuff of dreams.
Like a great building's tottering crash,
Like flickering lampwick burned to ash,
Your scene of happiness concludes in grief:
For worldly bliss is always insecure and brief.


Tenth Song: THE SUVIVOR

Some good remained,
Some good remained:
The daughter found a friend in need
Through her mother's one good deed.
So let all men the poor and meek sustain,
And from the example of her cruel kin refrain,
Who kindship scorned and only thought of gain.
For far above the constellations
One watches all and makes just calculations.


Eleventh Song: SPLENDOUR COME LATE

Favour, a shadow in the glass;
Fame, a dream that soon would pass:
The blissful flowering-time of youth soon fled,
Soon, too, the pleasures of the bridal bed.
A pearl-encrusted crown and robes of state
Could not for death untimely compensate;
And though each man desires
Old age from want made free,
True blessedness required
A clutch of young heirs at the knee.
Proudly upright
The head with cap and bands of office on,
And gleaming bright
Upon his breast the gold insignia shone.
An awesome sight
To see him so exalted stand!-
Yet the black night
Of death's dark frontier lay close at hand.
All those whom history calls great
Left only empty names for us to venerate.


Twelfth Song: THE GOOD THINGS HAVE AN END

Perfumed was the dust that fell
From painted beams where springtime ended.
Her sportive heart
And amorous looks
The ruin of a mighty house portended.
The weakness in the line began with Jing;
The blame for the decline lay first in Ning;
But retribution all was of Love's fashioning.


Epilogue: THE BIRDS INTO THE WOOD HAVE FLOWN

The office jack's career blighted,
The rich man's fortune now all vanished,
The kind with life have been requited,
The cruel exemplarily punished;
The one who owed a life is dead.
The tears one owed have all been shed.
Wrongs suffered have the wrongs done expiated;
The couplings and the sunderings were fated.
Untimely death sin in some past life shows,
But only luck a blest old age bestows.
The disillusions to their convents fly,
The still deluded miserably die.
Like birds who, having fed, to the woods repair,
They leave the landscape desolate and bare.



重阳(galaxyzhang)于 02/03/2001 10:22:05 编辑过本帖