讀點好英文:Lady Chatterley's Lover 查泰萊夫人的情人

Lady Chatterley's Lover 查泰萊夫人的情人

[英]戴維·赫伯特·勞倫斯（D.H.Lawrence）

康妮的丈夫克利福德·查泰萊在1917年的大戰(zhàn)中身負重傷，被送回英國后腰部以下永遠癱瘓了，戰(zhàn)后他們回到克利福德的老家拉格比，克利福德繼承了爵位，康斯坦絲成了查泰萊男爵夫人。在康斯坦絲的眼里，27歲的自己已經(jīng)老了！她突然開始憎恨克利福德，憎恨他的寫作和談話以及騙人的精神生活。后來梅樂士出現(xiàn)在她的生活中，他們兩人越來越融洽，越來越和諧。康斯坦絲終于離開拉格比去了蘇格蘭。梅樂士去了鄉(xiāng)間，期待再次相聚。

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.It is rather hard work:there is now no smooth road into the future:but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles.We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head.And she had realized that one must live and learn.

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917，when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon.Then he went back to Flanders:to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits.Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine.

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again.For two years he remained in the doctor's hands.Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family“seat”.His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley.They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income.Clifford had a sister, but she had departed.Otherwise there were no near relatives.The elder brother was dead in the war.Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could.

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, arid his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes.His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong.He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street.Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive.But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone.There was a blank of insentience.

Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village.It was not so at all.Her father was the once well-known R.A.，old Sir Malcolm Reid.Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days.Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing.They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least haunted by either art or ideal politics.It was their natural atmosphere.They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good time mere.They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as men themselves:only better, since they were women.And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twan g!They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free.Fre e!That was the great word.Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid-throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and—above all—to say what they liked.It was the talk that mattered supremely:the impassioned interchange of talk.Love was only a minor accompaniment.

這是一個真正的悲劇時代，而我們正置身其中。但我們不能因此絕望而消極地對待這個時代。近乎毀滅性的打擊已成事實，廢墟環(huán)繞在四周。我們開始重建小小的棲身之地，祈禱新的、小小的愿望。道路上滿是荊棘，沒有一條可能前進的光明之途，我們在路上蹣跚而行。即便是沒有希望，我們?nèi)砸獔猿只钕氯ァ?/p>

現(xiàn)實對于康斯坦絲·查泰萊來說，似乎就是這個樣子的。戰(zhàn)爭對于她來說是一個晴天霹靂。她明白，除了堅強地活下去，別無他法。

1917年，她成為克利福德·查泰萊的妻子，共度了一個月的蜜月之后，他又返回佛蘭德前線，在六個月后他那已近乎散了架的身體被運回了英國。那時，23歲的康斯坦絲要面對這樣的一個丈夫，而她的丈夫也才29歲。

克利福德堅持著每一絲生存的希望。經(jīng)過醫(yī)生足足兩年的治療，他的身體奇跡般地復(fù)合了，隨后，被宣布重生的他又可以正常地生活了。但是，胯以下永久地失去了知覺。

1920年，克利福德和康斯坦絲返回了拉格比莊園，回到家族的生息之地?？死５吕^承了已經(jīng)過世的父親的爵位，成為克利福德男爵，康斯坦絲成了查泰萊夫人。在日漸敗落的查泰萊家族，夫妻二人只能憑著并不豐厚的收入維持他們的生活。查泰萊兄妹三人，姐姐搬出了家，而哥哥已經(jīng)被戰(zhàn)爭奪去了性命，家中只剩下克利福德了。殘疾的克利福德永久性地失去了生育的能力，他回到這座煙霧籠罩的米德蘭莊園，只是為了盡可能地撐起查泰萊家族，讓這個姓氏繼續(xù)延續(xù)一段時日。

事實上，他并沒有徹底絕望。他可以坐在輪椅上，來去自由。他還有一個有小馬達的輪椅，他可以駕駛著開進花園，還有那個他引以為傲的蔥翠蓊郁而又悲涼的獵苑。雖然，從表面上看他滿不在乎，其實是非常在意的。

一連串的重創(chuàng)，他好似已麻木了痛苦的感受，可他卻依然這樣奇特、活潑、愉快，那滿面紅光的臉和炯炯有神的淡藍色的眼睛，好似一切都沒有發(fā)生過一樣。他的肩膀?qū)捄?，雙手厚實，穿著講究，他只系邦德街買來的名貴領(lǐng)帶。但是，他的臉上仍然有一個殘廢者的呆視狀態(tài)和有點空虛的樣子。

經(jīng)歷了九死一生的磨難，他完全理解了生命的珍貴之處。劫后余生，在他警惕的明亮眸子里滿是欣喜，承受這樣沉重的打擊，使他內(nèi)心中最私密的情感也已逝去，剩下的只是失措的迷茫。

他的夫人康斯坦絲如一個農(nóng)村姑娘般富有青春活力，一頭黑褐色的柔發(fā)、飽滿的身體、優(yōu)雅的舉止，永遠保持著旺盛的生命力。她的聲音輕柔而有質(zhì)感，一雙迷人的美目，猶如剛從鄉(xiāng)下殷實人家出來的閨秀。但那是錯覺，她父親是著名的皇家藝術(shù)學(xué)會的馬爾科姆·理德爵士；她母親在前拉斐爾派風(fēng)行時代是費邊社的一位才女?？邓固菇z和姐姐希爾達在一些藝術(shù)家和社會主義學(xué)者們組成的圈子中耳濡目染，形成了與傳統(tǒng)教育大不一樣的美學(xué)思維。她們倆曾在巴黎、佛羅倫薩、羅馬自由地呼吸著藝術(shù)氣息，也曾參加過在海牙、柏林舉辦的社會主義者的大會，在這些大會上，演講者用各種優(yōu)雅的方式表達自己的理念，沒有一絲刻意造作。因此兩個年輕的姑娘，很早就對藝術(shù)以及理想主義政治處之坦然。藝術(shù)和政治的氣息在她倆的思維中并不矛盾。

在康斯坦絲15歲那年，她和姐姐為了學(xué)習(xí)音樂一同去了德國的德累斯頓。那是一段快樂無比的時光。她們愉快地在校園中穿梭，十足地顯示著作為女性的優(yōu)秀，她們與男子們的辯論涉及哲學(xué)、社會學(xué)和藝術(shù)等許多方面的問題，見解獨到，更勝于男子。當(dāng)她們漫步于森林，勇敢的男孩背著吉他，尾隨其后。他們暢快地歡唱著，自由自在。自由自在——絕好的形容。清晨的森林是自由的世界，在歌聲中做著大家都喜歡的事，無拘無束、無所顧忌地暢談是最自由的表達。這時，愛情不過是件小小的陪襯品。

Treat other people as you hope they will treat you.

——Aesop

你希望別人如何對待你，你就如何對待別人。

——古希臘寓言家 伊索

實戰(zhàn)提升

作者介紹

戴維·赫伯特·勞倫斯（1885—1930），英國著名小說家、詩人，作為20世紀英國最獨特和最有爭議的作家，被稱為“英國文學(xué)史上最偉大的人物之一”。他生于諾丁漢一個礦工家庭，21歲時入諾丁漢大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)，一生中創(chuàng)作了40余部小說、詩歌、游記等作品，《兒子與情人》被認為是其最好的小說。勞倫斯在國內(nèi)外漂泊10多年。他寫過詩，但主要寫長篇小說，共有10部，最著名的為《虹》《愛戀中的女人》和《查泰萊夫人的情人》。

單詞注解

tragically[5trAdVikEli]adv.悲劇地；悲慘地

paralysed[5pArElaizd]adj.癱瘓的

flippant[5flipEnt]adj.輕率的；不認真的；無禮的

anxious[5ANkFEs]adj.焦慮的，掛念的

aesthetically[i:s5WetikEli]adv.審美地

abashed[E5bAFt]adj.窘的，尷尬的，羞慚的

interchange[7intE5tFeindV]v.交換，互換

名句大搜索

這是一個真正的悲劇時代，而我們正置身其中。但我們不能因此絕望而消極地對待這個時代。

一連串的重創(chuàng)，他好似已麻木了痛苦的感受。

經(jīng)歷了九死一生的磨難，他完全理解了生命的珍貴之處。