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博尔赫斯和老虎（建设中）
(2006-07-28 00:23:33) | 分类： 美文当细品 |
所有其它眩目的色彩，连同岁月，都在离我远去
而今惟留下
朦胧的光亮、久驻的阴影
和那最初的金黄
哦，落日；哦，老虎；
哦，神话和史诗的辉煌
哦，愈加可爱的金黄，你的毛发的金黄
这双手多么渴望将你抚摩
而今惟留下
朦胧的光亮、久驻的阴影
和那最初的金黄
哦，落日；哦，老虎；
哦，神话和史诗的辉煌
哦，愈加可爱的金黄，你的毛发的金黄
这双手多么渴望将你抚摩
博尔赫斯《老虎的金黄》（朱涛译）
A
woodcut by Antonio Frasconi used to grace the cover of
Dreamtigers.
Dreamtigers
In my childhood I was a
fervent worshiper of the tiger-not the jaguar, that spotted "tiger"
that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the
Parana and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true
tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of
war, in a castle atop an elephant. I would stand for hours on end
before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias
and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers. (I still
remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a
woman's brow or smile.) My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my
passion for them faded, but they are still in my dreams. In that
underground sea or chaos, they still endure. As I sleep I am drawn
into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it's a dream.
At those moments, I often think: This is a dream, a pure diversion
of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring
forth a tiger.
Oh, incompetence! My
dreams never seen to engender the creature I so hunger for. The
tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it's flimsy-looking,
or it has impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it's
altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than
like a tiger.
"Oh destiny of Borges"
- An excellent photograph of the quintessential Borges,
sitting in a heavy chair with his cane.
The Gold of the
Tigers
Up to the moment of the
yellow sunset,
how many times will I have cast my eyes on
the sinewy-bodied tiger of Bengal
to-ing and fro-ing on its paced out path
behind the labyrinthine iron bars,
never suspecting them to be a prison.
Afterwards other tigers will appear:
the blazing tiger of Blake, burning bright;
and after that will come the other golds—
the amorous gold shower disguising Zeus,
the gold ring which, on every ninth night, gives light to nine rings more,
how many times will I have cast my eyes on
the sinewy-bodied tiger of Bengal
to-ing and fro-ing on its paced out path
behind the labyrinthine iron bars,
never suspecting them to be a prison.
Afterwards other tigers will appear:
the blazing tiger of Blake, burning bright;
and after that will come the other golds—
the amorous gold shower disguising Zeus,
the gold ring which, on every ninth night, gives light to nine rings more,
and these, nine more,
and there is never an end.
All the other overwhelming colors, in company with the years, kept leaving me,
And now alone remains,
The amorphous light, the inextricable shadow
And the gold of the beginning.
Oh sunsets, O tigers, O wonders
Of myth and epic,
O gold more dear to me, gold of your hair
which these hands long to touch.
All the other overwhelming colors, in company with the years, kept leaving me,
And now alone remains,
The amorphous light, the inextricable shadow
And the gold of the beginning.
Oh sunsets, O tigers, O wonders
Of myth and epic,
O gold more dear to me, gold of your hair
which these hands long to touch.
"In shadow, with a tentative stick, I try the
hollow twilight"
- Taken by Grete Stern in 1976, a very
English-looking
Borges peers forlornly through the bars of a
gate.
The
Other Tiger
A tiger comes to mind.
The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.
It strikes me now as
evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.
We'll hunt for a third
tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours
Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.
Borges in New York
- A shot taken in New York City by Sylvia Plachy
in 1982.
"The visages of divinities are undecipherable
kanji."
- Borges contemplating an Japanese obelisk in
Izumo, Japan, 1983.
"I too am a whim of time, that shifty element"
- Borges
in the Cretan Labyrinth, 1983.
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赠金笔
前一篇：本雅明论“历史与进步”
后一篇：博尔赫斯论“通过行为获得拯救”