[英国]戴维·赫伯特·劳伦斯/David Herbert Lawrence

　　戴维·赫伯特·劳伦斯（1885-1930），英国诗人、小说家、散文家。出生于矿工家庭，当过屠户会计、厂商雇员和小学教师，曾在国内外漂泊十多年，对现实持批判否定态度。他写过诗，但主要写长篇小说，共有10部，最著名的为《虹》（1915）《恋爱中的女人》（1921）和《查泰莱夫人的情人》（1928）。《虹》通过自耕农布兰文的三代家史，描写了19世纪中叶以来大工业吞食小农经济的过程，猛烈抨击了金钱罪恶和帝国主义战争。

　　North of the Alps, the everlasting winter is interrupted by summers that struggle and soon yield;south of the Alps, the everlasting summer is interrupted by spasmodic and spiteful winters that never get a real hold, but that are mean and dogged. The in between, in either case, is just as it may be. But the lands of the sun are south of the Alps, forever.

　　In the morning, the sun shines strong on the horizontal green cloud-puffs of the pines, the sky is clear and full of life, the water runs hastily, still browned by the last juice of crushed olives. And there the earth's bowl of crocuses is amazing. You cannot believe that the flowers are really still. They are open with such delight, and their pistil thrust is so red-orange, and they are so many, all reaching out wide and marvellous, that it suggests a perfect ecstasy of radiant, thronging movement, lit-up violet and orange, and surging in some invisible rhythm of concerted, delightful movement. You cannot believe they do not move, and make some sort of crystalline sound of delight. If you sit still and watch, you begin to move with them, like moving with the stars, and you feel the sound of their radiance. All the little cells of the flowers must be leaping with flowery life and utterance.

　　And now that it is March, there is a rush of flowers. Down by the other stream, which turns sideways to the sun, and tangles the brier and bramble, down where the hellebore has stood so wan and dignified all winter, there are now white tufts of primroses, suddenly come. Among the tangle and near the water-lip, tufts and bunches of primroses, in abundance. Yet they look more wan, more pallid, more flimsy than English primroses. They lack some of the full wonder of the northern flowers. One tends to overlook them, to turn to the great, solemn-faced purple violets that rear up from the bank, and above all, to the wonderful little towers of the grape hyacinth.

　　This is the time, in March, when the sloe is white and misty in the hedge-tangle by the stream, and on the slope of land the peach tree stands pink and alone. The almond blossom, silvery pink, is passing, but the peach, deep-toned, bluey, not at all ethereal, this reveals itself like flesh, and the trees are like isolated individuals, the peach and the apricot. It is so conspicuous and so individual, that pink among the coming green of spring, because the first flowers that emerge from winter seem always white or yellow or purple. Now the celandines are out, and along the edges of the podere, the big, sturdy, black-purple anemones, with black hearts.

　　The daisies are out too, in sheets, and they too red-mouthed. The first ones are big and handsome. But as March goes on, the dwindle to bright little things, like tiny buttons, clouds of them together. That means summer is nearly here.

　　In some places there are odd yellow tulips, slender, spiky and Chinese-looking. They are very lovely, pricking out their dulled yellow in slim spikes. But they too soon lean, expand beyond themselves, and are gone like an illusion.

　　And when the tulips are gone, there is a moment's pause, before summer. Summer is the next move.

　　In the pause towards the end of April, when the flowers seem to hesitate, the leaves make up their minds to come out. For sometime, at the very ends of the bare boughs of fig trees, spurts of pure green have been burning like little cloven tongues of green fire vivid on the tips of the candelabrum. Now these spurts of green spread out, and begin to take the shape of hands, feeling for the air of summer. And tiny green figs are below them, like glands on the throat of a goat.

　　Now the aspens on the hill are all remarkable with the translucent membranes of blood-veined leaves. They are gold-brown, but not like autumn, rather like thin wings bats when like birds-call them birds-they wheel in clouds against the setting sun, and the sun glows through the stretched membrane of their wings, as through thin, brown-red stained glass. This is the red sap of summer, not the red dust of autumn.

　　The cherry tree is something the same, but more sturdy. Now, in the last week of April, the cherry blossom is still white, but waning and passing away:it is late this year, and the leaves are clustering thick and softly copper in their dark blood-filled glow. It is queer about fruit trees in this district. The pear and the peach were out together. But now the pear tree is a lovely thick softness of new and glossy green, vivid with a tender fullness of apple-green leaves, gleaming among all the other green of the landscape, the half-high wheat, emerald, and the grey olive, half-invisible, the browning green of the dark cypress, the black of the evergreen oak, the rolling of the heavy green puffs of the stone-pines, the flimsy green of small peach and almond trees, the sturdy young green of horse-chestnut. So many greens, all in flakes and shelves and tilted tables and round shoulders and plumes and shaggles and uprisen bushes, of greens and greens, sometimes blindingly brilliant at evening, when the landscape looks as if it were on fire from inside, with greenness and with gold.

　　In the wood, the scrub-oak is only just coming uncrumpled, and the pines keep their hold on winter. They are wintry things, stone-pines. At Christmas, their heavy green clouds are richly beautiful. When the cypresses rise their tall and naked bodies of dark green, and the osiers are vivid red-orange, on the still blue air, and the land is lavender;then, in mid-winter, the landscape is most beautiful in colour, surging with colour.

　　Not that this week is flowerless. But the flowers are a little lonely things, here and there:the early purple orchid, ruddy and very much alive, you come across occasionally, then the little groups of bee-orchids, with their ragged concerted indifference to their appearance. Also there are the huge bud-spikes of the stout, thick flowering pink orchid, huge buds like fat ears of wheat, hard-purple and splendid. But already odd grains of the wheat-ear are open, and out of the purple hangs the delicate pink rag of floweret. Also there are very lovely and choice cream-clouted orchids with brown spots on the long and delicate lip. These grow in the more moist places, and have exotic tender spikes, very rare-seeming. Another orchid is a little, pretty yellow one.

　　By May, the nightingale will sing an unbroken song, and the discreet, barely audible Tuscan cuckoo will be a little more audible. Then the lovely pale-lilac irises will come out in all their showering abundance of tender, proud, spiky bloom, till the air will gleam with mauve, and a new crystalline lightness will be everywhere.

　　There will be tufts of iris everywhere, arising up proud and tender. When the rose-coloured wild gladiolus is mingled in the corn, and the love-in-the-mist opens blue:in May and June, before the corn is cut.

　　But as yet is neither May nor June, but the end of April, the pause between spring and summer, the nightingale singing uninterrupted, the bean-flowers dying in the bean-fields, the bean-perfume passing with spring, the little birds hatching in the nests, the olives pruned, and the vines, the last bit of late ploughing finished, and not much work to hand, now, not until the peas are ready to pick, in another two weeks or so.

　　So the change, the endless and rapid change. In the sunny countries, the change seems more vivid, and more complete than in the grey countries. In the grey countries, there is a grey or dark permanency, over whose surface passes change ephemeral, leaving no real mark.

　　But in the sunny countries, change is the reality and permanence is artificial and a condition of imprisonment. Hence, to the northerner, the phenomenal world is essentially tragical, because it is temporal and must cease to exist. Its very existence implies ceasing to exist, and this is the root of the feeling of tragedy.

　　But to the southerner, the sun is so dominant that shadow, or dark, is only merely relative:merely the result of something getting between one and the sun.

　　In the human race, the one thing that is always there is the shining sun, and dark shadow is an accident of intervention.

　　For my part, if the sun always shine, and always will shine, in spite of millions of clouds of words. In the sunshine, even death is sunny. And there is no end to the sunshine.

　　That is why the rapid change of the Tuscan spring is utterly free, for me, of any senses of tragedy. The sun always shines. It is our fault if we don't think so.

　　在阿尔卑斯山的北面，持续的冬天受到了夏季的顽强抵抗，很快屈服了。而其南面，夏季被间歇性的、充满敌意的寒冬阻挡，永远也不能真正占上风。在两者的斗争中，任何一种情况都只是可能。但是，阳光普照的地方，永远都是阿尔卑斯山的南面。

　　清晨，阳光强烈地照射在地平线上松树团团的绿雾上，天空清新，充满了生机。河水急匆匆地流着，直到被最后一些压碎的橄榄汁染成棕色。遍地的番红花更是令人诧异不已。你不会相信这些花是静止的。它们如此欢快地绽放，雌蕊是那样的橘红。不计其数的花朵竞相开放，争奇斗艳，让人如痴如醉。花朵们翩翩起舞，那明亮起来的紫和橙色调，和着无形的美妙节奏欢快地摆动。你不得不相信它们在动，而且发出了水晶般的欢快声。如果你静静地欣赏花朵，你就会不由自主地随着它们舞动，就好像跟着星星走一样。当然，你还会听到花朵们欢快的笑声。花的每一个小细胞都跳跃着绚丽的生命和思想。

　　现在正是三月，也是花儿竞相开放的时节。在其他一些朝太阳方向流动的溪流边，荆棘灌木交错，菟葵无助而不屈地对抗冬天，一丛丛白色的樱草花出乎意料地生长着。丛丛的樱草花占满了杂乱的灌木丛和溪水的拐角处。可它们比菟葵无助，更加苍白，比英格兰的樱草花单薄许多。樱草花不像北面的花朵那样让人惊奇。人们往往注意不到它，而是会被长在河岸边庄严而美丽的紫罗兰所吸引，当然会更愿意欣赏那些深紫色的风信子小花塔。

　　三月，刚好是溪边灌木乱丛中白色的野李花朦朦胧胧，粉红的桃树独自站立在山坡的时节。银粉色的杏花已渐渐褪去，桃树裹着深深的蓝，一点儿也不飘逸，却是本来面目，而桃树与杏树看起来就像毫不相干的个体。绿意盎然的春天里，桃树的粉色是如此别致。因为最先从冬天开出来的花，通常看起来都是白色、黄色或紫色的。白屈菜也冒出头来了。在湖边高大强壮的银莲花中，你可以发现深紫色、黑色的花蕊。

　　雏菊穿着红色的衣服成群地跑出来，开始的时候，它们长得又大又漂亮。可是渐渐地，进入三月中下旬，花就变成了光鲜的小东西，像小小的纽扣聚在一起。这预示着夏天的来临。

　　你还可以在一些地方，看到一些修长、带穗的黄色郁金香。在细长的穗上嵌着光亮的黄色，十分惹人喜爱。不过，它们也很快变得倾斜，然后虚弱起来，仿佛幻觉一样消失得无影无踪。

　　郁金香离开以后，在夏天前，花儿们都短暂地歇息了一下。夏天即将到来。

　　寂静的四月底，在花儿们踌躇不定的时候，叶子们一股脑地跑了出来。一时间，纯净的绿色在无花果的树枝尖冒出，好像烛台顶那生动的绿色小火舌头一样在燃烧。现在，这团绿焰伸展开来，变成小手的样子，触摸着夏天的气息。小小的绿色无花果像一只山羊喉咙的腺体附在下面。

　　现在，山坡上白杨的叶子上有一层半透明薄膜的叶脉，显得格外引人注目。与秋天不同，这些叶子是金棕色的，像是薄翼的蝙蝠，它们如同鸟儿一样——我们暂且就叫它们鸟吧——在落日的余晖中，叶子在云层里涌动，太阳照射在这薄翼拉紧似的薄膜上，仿佛透过棕红色的彩绘玻璃。这是夏天里树叶旺盛时所特有的红色树液，并不意味着秋天的红尘。

　　樱桃树和白杨差不多，只是更加顽强。现在已是四月的最后一个星期，白色的樱桃花依然绽放，可已经渐渐虚弱，即将逝去。今年的时节晚了，树叶团团紧簇，鲜红的光亮中挥洒着轻柔的铜色。这个地方的果树十分不同寻常，梨花和桃花会在同一时节开放。不过，现在这里有还未伸长的麦子，翠绿色的橄榄，柏树所没有的棕绿，长青橡树的黑色，石松浓重的绿团团，小桃树和杏树脆弱的绿色，七叶树强壮的新绿。而在这所有的绿色中，梨树清新光亮的绿色是可爱的、浓密的、轻柔的，像苹果绿色叶子柔和的饱满一样鲜明。在这绿色的海洋中，绿色一片一片的，一层一层的，像斜斜的一块板，像圆圆的肩膀，又像羽毛，像矮树丛，像挺直的灌木。有时在夜晚，从外面向绿色里望去，仿佛绿色带着绿色，带着金色在里面燃烧，显得光彩夺目。

　　在森林里，矮灌木即将倒下，而松树在冬天里则稳稳地保持自己的站姿。冬天是最适宜石松生长的季节。一到圣诞节的时候，石松团团的深绿色更显得婀娜多姿。当柏树**地显示出自己高高的、墨绿色的身躯时，柳树仍然在蓝色的空气中展现着自己活泼的鲜橙色。大地染上淡紫色的时候，隆冬时节就到了。这儿将成为颜色的世界，颜色才是最美的风景。

　　当然，这一个星期还会有花的足迹，但这时候的花儿成了孤独的小东西，四处分散。你会在不经意间发现它们的足迹：提前出来的紫兰花，红润而有生命力；成群结队的蜜蜂兰，它们对自身的外表，都显露出刻意的、不屑的神情。当然，也少不了顶着巨大的花苞穗，长满茂密花儿的强壮粉红兰花，兰花那巨大的花苞穗如同饱满的麦穗一样，配上耀眼的紫色，让人觉得完美无缺。但零星的麦穗已经开花了，在紫色中旋着一幅由娇嫩小花编织成的精致花布。还有那些非常可爱的、米色的兰花，在它们的细长花蕊上有些棕色斑点。兰花喜欢在较潮湿的地方生长，因此它奇异柔和的穗是不常见的。其他的兰花都是小小的花形，漂亮的黄色。

　　五月一到，夜莺便不间断地唱着歌。这时候，小心翼翼的托斯卡纳杜鹃也会唱出平日里听不到的歌。接着，浅淡紫色的丁香花大量地出现，展示着它们柔嫩、穗状的花，直到空气中露出紫红，清澈透明地四处飘**。

　　世界将变成一丛丛蝴蝶花的天下，它们得意而柔嫩地昂起头。五六月，谷物还没收割的时候，在野外，玫瑰色的唐菖蒲就混合在谷物中。而黑种草开着蓝色的花朵。但现在还没到五月或六月——只是四月末，春夏之间的间歇，在这个时节里：夜莺不停地歌唱；豆地里的豆花正在凋谢；豆的芳香正随着春天一起逝去；小鸟在巢里成长；橄榄已被修剪；葡萄已经过了最后的耕种时节；两个星期后豌豆成熟之前，没有多少活要做。这样才是变化，永不停息的快速变化。在阳光照耀的地方，变化似乎更显著，比在昏暗地带更彻底。而在没有阳光的地方，是一成不变的灰暗和阴暗。变化只是短暂的事，不会留下任何记号。

　　然而，对于生活在阳光地带的人，却是不同的概念。变化对他们来说就是现实，永久是人创造的，是一种囚禁。因此，生活在北面的人认为，变化中的世界实际上是悲惨的，因为世界只是短暂的，注定消逝的。世界的存在意味着自己的结束，这就是伤感本身。

　　而生活在南面的人，对他们来说，阳光具有决定性的作用，阴影或黑暗不过是相关联的事物——只是在人和太阳之间才会出现的东西。

　　对于人类来说，有一件事是千真万确的，那就是在这个世界上，仅有一个发光的太阳，黑色的影子不过是一个干扰的意外罢了。

　　而在我看来，尽管争议纷纷，但太阳一直光芒四射，也将永远光芒四射。在阳光下，即便死亡也是充满阳光的。阳光没有终点。

　　托斯卡纳的春天飞快地流逝，而我没有感到一丝的悲惨，这就是原因所在。太阳永远在照耀。如果不这样想，那就是我们的责任了。

　　心灵小语

　　向着阳光的山坡总是先走向春天，心中充满阳光的人心花永远绽放。只要心花绽放，到处都是美丽的春天。

　　词汇笔记

　　spasmodic[sp?z'm?dik]adj.间歇的，突发性的，**的，**性的

　　Her approach always galvanized him into new and spasmodic life.

　　她每次走进来，都使他感到一阵阵振奋激动。

　　utterance['?t?r?ns]n.说话，发表，说话的方式

　　He gave utterance to his thoughts.

　　他表达了自己的观点。

　　conspicuous[k?n'spikju?s]adj.显著的，显而易见的

　　She is a conspicuous figure.

　　她是个引人注目的人物。

　　sturdy['st?：di]adj.强健的，健全的

　　Look at part of the tree, strong, sturdy, and good size.

　　看看这树的部分，强壮，结实，而且大小刚好。

　　小试身手

　　寂静的四月底，在花儿们踌躇不定的时候，叶子们一股脑地跑了出来。

　　译______________________________

　　当然，这一个星期还会有花的足迹，但这时候的花儿成了孤独的小东西，四处分散。

　　译______________________________

　　变化对他们来说就是现实，永久是人创造的，是一种囚禁。

　　译______________________________

　　短语家族

　　The everlasting winter is interrupted by summers that struggle and soon yield.

　　be interrupted by：被……打断；阻断

　　造______________________________

　　……and they are so many, all reaching out wide and marvellous……

　　reach out：伸出；伸展，招揽

　　造______________________________