赵老师博客置顶的文章是“赵彦春英译林徽因《你是人间的四月天》”,对于“四月天”老师译作“April day”有人颇不以为然,认为该词在西方给人的第一印象就是愚人节。对此的争论也非常多。我想或者我们可以客观地看看April day到底在外国人的表达里通常意味什么,于是我在google输入April day,下面出来许多网站,我一共翻看了10页,其中大部分都是以April Fool’s Day 出现的,讲述人们感兴趣的愚人节。而且通常在April Fool’s Day之后会出现also All Fool’s Day。从这里可略略看见April day本身不是愚人节的意思。在这10页,有几个April与Day相连的连接,不过有些是人名。除此之外还有一些,正是我觉得值得参考、也使人能得到一些启示的。
第一个是DELMORE SCHWARTZ 的一首诗,其中是用April’s Day :
Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day
by Delmore Schwartz
Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)
(This is the school in which we learn...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)
Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
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第二个是著名诗人 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow的An April Day:
When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
‘T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.
I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.
From the earth’s loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter’s cold,
The drooping tree revives.
The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.
When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.
And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.
Inverted in the tide
Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.
Sweet April! many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life’s golden fruit is shed.
第三个是 Norman MacCaig的April Day in November, Edinburgh,这里也用了April Day:
The sun punches through the cloud gaps
with strong fists and the wind
buffets the buildings
with boisterous good will.
Bad memories are blown away
over the capering sea. Life
pulls up without straining
the jungle tangle between us
and the future.
Easy to forget
the last leaves thicken the ground
and the last roses are dying
in their sad, cramped hospitals.
For gaiety's funfair whirls
in the gray squares. Energy
sends volts from suburb to suburb.
And April, gay trespasser,
dances the dark streets of November,
Pied Piper leading a procession
of the coloured dreams of summer.
"April Day in November, Edinburgh" by Norman MacCaig from Collected Poems.
Chatto & Windus, 1991. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
这三处,都是诗歌的形式,尤其后两处明显使用了April day的表达,且都不是指消极的意义,讽刺的fool的意义,却是积极、阳光的意思。可见诗歌中用这种表达在西方也是有先例的,是可行的,并非指愚人节的意思吧。
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