Musee des Beaux Arts             藝術博物館

By Wystan Hugh Auden                                           威斯頓·休·奧登 【美】

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

事關痛苦，他們絕不含糊，

古典大師；多妙，他們洞悉

世人態度；無論災難如何呈現

他們或在用餐；或開窗戶；或剛巧在麻木地踱步；

老人，皆虔誠，多麼熱切期許

奇跡的發生，那是必須的

總有頑童不怎麼特別在乎，

滑冰於林邊的水池：

《伯利恆人口普查》老勃魯蓋爾 畫

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

他們豈會不記住

即便殉難可怕，一切還得井然有序，

讓它發生在角落，某個凌亂的旯旮*                      

狗照常營營苟苟；施虐者之馬

將無辜的屁股照樣在樹上亂蹭。

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

猶如勃魯蓋爾的伊卡魯斯：人世間的一切

對災難降臨處之泰然；惟耕地農夫

或許早已聽聞墮海聲，獨自呼號

但對他也沒啥大不了；太陽朗照

因那雪白的大腿必將墜入碧海

精美絕倫的渡輪想必也已親睹

神奇的東西，從天而降的男孩，

有其既定航線，從容消逝沉歿。

（奧登寫於1938年）

          hkdcsh 2017.06.10 譯於香港

      【譯註】

       奧登時代正處在戰爭風雲來臨的前夕，歐洲大陸瀰漫一股事不關己，高高掛起的冷漠

       風氣，“總有頑童還在林邊滑冰”，任憑那施虐者橫徵暴斂，無辜人民慘遭屠殺，一

       切皆“人性的冷漠”惹得禍？詩人猶如繪畫大師在欣賞藝術同時，洞悉歷史的既有的

       鐵定規律（must run its course），綏靖姑息的後果便是戰爭的來臨。

       在此意義上，此詩還真有偉大的現實意義？大師就是大師，回顧二戰歷史，不得不嘆服

       奧登“先知般”的洞察力。

《伊卡魯斯墮海罹難圖》老勃魯蓋爾 畫於1558年  （*見下圖右下角，墜入碧海之白腿）