韋爾蒂短篇小說集

⑴ One writer's beginning 全文翻譯

1 I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to. My mother read to me. She』d read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings, when we were in her rocker together, which ticked in rhythm as we rocked, as though we had a cricket accompanying the story.

She』d read to me in the dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire, with our cuckoo clock ending the story with 「Cuckoo,」and at night when I』d got in my own bed. I must have given her no peace. Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning, and the churning sobbed along with any story.

It was my ambition to have her read to me while I churned; once she granted my wish, but she read off my story before I brought her butter. She was an expressive reader. When she was reading 「Puss in Boots,」 for instance, it was impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats.

我從兩三歲起就知道，家中隨便在哪個房間里，白天無論在什麼時間，都可以念書或聽人念書。母親念書給我聽。上午她都在那間大卧室里給我念，兩人一起坐在她那把搖椅里，我們搖晃時，椅子發出有節奏的滴答聲，好像有隻唧唧鳴叫的蟋蟀在伴著讀故事。

冬日午後，她常在餐廳里燒著煤炭的爐火前給我念，布穀鳥自鳴鍾發出「咕咕」聲時，故事便結束了；晚上我在自己床上睡下後她也給我念。想必我是不讓她有一刻清靜。有時她在廚房裡一邊坐著攪制黃油一邊給我念，故事情節就隨著攪制黃油發出的抽抽搭搭的聲響不斷展開。

我的奢望是她念我來攪拌；有一次她滿足了我的願望，可是我要聽的故事她念完了，她要的黃油我卻還沒弄好。她念起故事來富有表情。比如，她念《穿靴子的貓》時，你就沒法不相信她對貓一概懷疑。

2、It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.

Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them — with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them.

當我得知故事書原來是人寫出來的，書本原來不是什麼大自然的奇跡，不像草那樣自生自長時，真是又震驚又失望。

不過，姑且不論書本從何而來，我不記得自己有什麼時候不愛書—— 書本本身、封面、裝訂、印著文字的書頁，還有油墨味、那種沉甸甸的感覺，以及把書抱在懷里時那種將我征服、令我陶醉的感覺。還沒識字，我就想讀書了，一心想讀所有的書。

4、Neither of my parents had come from homes that could afford to buy many books, but though it must have been something of a strain on his salary, as the youngest officer in a young insurance company, my father was all the while carefully selecting and ordering away for what he and Mother thought we children should grow up with.

They bought first for the future.

我的父母都不是來自那種買得起許多書的家庭。然而，雖然買書准得花去他不少薪金，作為一家成立不久的保險公司最年輕的職員，父親一直在精心挑選、不斷訂購他和母親認為兒童成長應讀的書。他們購書首先是為了我們的前程。

5、Besides the bookcase in the living room, which was always called 「the library,」 there were the encyclopedia tables and dictionary stand under windows in our dining room.

Here to help us grow up arguing around the dining room table were the Unabridged Webster, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Compton』s Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln Library of Information, and later the Book of Knowledge.

In 「the library,」 inside the bookcase were books I could soon begin on — and I did, reading them all alike and as they came, straight down their rows, top shelf to bottom. My mother read secondarily for information; she sank as a hedonist into novels. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him.

The novels of her girlhood that had stayed on in her imagination, besides those of Dickens and Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, were Jane Eyre, Trilby, the Woman in White, Green Mansions, King Solomon』s Mines.

除了客廳里有一向被稱作「圖書室」的書櫥，餐廳的窗子下還有幾張擺放網路全書的桌子和一個字典架。這里有伴隨我們在餐桌旁爭論著長大的《韋氏大詞典》、《哥倫比亞網路全書》、《康普頓插圖網路全書》、《林肯資料文庫》，以及後來的《知識庫》。

「圖書館」書櫥里的書沒過多久我就能讀了—— 我的確讀了，全都讀了，按著順序，一排接著一排讀，從最上面的書架一直讀到最下面的書架。母親讀書最重要的不在獲取信息。她是為了享受快樂而埋頭讀小說。她讀狄更斯時的神情簡直就像要跟他私奔似的。

她少女時代讀的小說印在了她心頭的，除了狄更斯、司各特和羅伯特?路易斯?斯蒂文森等人的作品之外，還有《簡?愛》、《切爾比》、《白衣女士》、《綠廈》和《所羅門王的礦藏》。

6、 To both my parents I owe my early acquaintance with a beloved Mark Twain. There was a full set of Mark Twain and a short set of Ring Lardner in our bookcase, and those were the volumes that in time united us all, parents and children.

多虧了我的父母，我很早就接觸了受人喜愛的馬克?吐溫。書櫥里有一整套馬克?吐溫文集和一套不全的林?拉德納作品集，這些書最終將父母和孩子聯結在一起。

7、Reading everything that stood before me was how I came upon a worn old book that had belonged to my father as a child. It was called Sanford and Merton. Is there anyone left who recognizes it, I wonder?

It is the famous moral tale written by Thomas Day in the 1780s, but of him no mention is made on the title page of this book; here it is Sanford and Merton in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin.

Here are the rich boy and the poor boy and Mr. Barlow, their teacher and interlocutor, in long discourses alternating with dramatic scenes — anger and rescue allotted to the rich and the poor respectively.

It ends with not one but two morals, both engraved on rings: 「Do what you ought, come what may,」 and 「If we would be great, we must first learn to be good.」

我一本接一本閱讀擺在我面前的書，讀著讀著便發現一本又破又舊的書，是我父親小時候的。書名是《桑福徳與默頓》。我不相信如今還有誰會記得這本書。

那是托瑪斯?戴在18世紀80年代撰寫的一本著名的進行道德教育的故事書，可該書的扉頁上並沒有提及他；上面寫的是《桑福徳與默頓簡易本》，瑪麗?戈多爾芬著。書中講的是一個富孩子和一個窮孩子與他們老師巴洛先生之間的冗長的談話，其間穿插著戲劇性場面—— 分別寫了富孩子和窮孩子如何發火、如何獲救。

書末講的道德寓意不是一條，而是兩條，都印在環形圖案里：「不管發生什麼，該做的就去做」，還有「想做偉人，必須先學會做個好人」。

8、 This book was lacking its front cover, the back held on by strips of pasted paper, now turned golden, in several layers, and the pages stained, flecked, and tattered around the edges;

its garish illustrations had come unattached but were preserved, laid in. I had the feeling even in my heedless childhood that this was the only book my father as a little boy had had of his own. He had held onto it, and might have gone to sleep on its coverless face: he had lost his mother when he was seven.

My father had never made any mention to his own children of the book, but he had brought it along with him from Ohio to our house and shelved it in our bookcase.

這本書沒了封面，封底用幾條紙片粘牢，有好幾層，如今都泛黃了，書頁上污跡斑斑，邊角處都破碎了；書中花哨的插圖脫了頁，但都保存良好，夾在書里。即使在少不更事的童年，我就覺得那是我父親小時候擁有的惟一一本書。

他一直珍藏著這本書，或許還枕著這本沒了封面的書睡覺：他7歲時就沒了母親。我父親從來沒跟自己的孩子提起過這本書，但他從俄亥俄一路把它帶到我們的家，把它放進我們的書櫥。

10、My mother had brought from West Virginia that set of Dickens: those books looked sad, too — they had been through fire and water before I was born, she told me, and there they were, lined up — as I later realized, waiting for me.

母親則從西弗吉尼亞帶來了那套狄更斯：那套書看上去也慘不忍睹—— 她告訴我，我還沒出生，這些書就歷經水火之災，可現在它們還是整齊地排列在那兒—— 後來我意識到，是等著我去讀。

11、My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.

在寫小說時，我也能聽見文字落紙的聲音，與我讀書時聽到的聲音一樣。我寫著，那聲音傳入耳內，於是我聞聲而動，加以修改。我一直信賴這一聲音。

(1)韋爾蒂短篇小說集擴展閱讀：

在美國文學界，尤多拉·韋爾蒂被人們譽為短篇小說大師，人們常把她和俄羅斯作家契訶夫相提並論。這一比較顯示了韋爾蒂在美國當代文學界的地位。但是，韋爾蒂的作品在她文學生涯的早期卻沒有受到推崇。

但是，韋爾蒂的作品在她文學生涯的早期卻沒有受到推崇。

人們認為：她的作品地方性過於濃厚。在韋爾蒂進入晚年以後，美國文學界逐漸認識到了韋爾蒂作品的重要性，給予了她很大的榮譽。韋爾蒂對此則一如既往，處之泰然，謙遜依舊。

韋爾蒂女士的作品來源於她對美國南方生活細致入微的觀察以及她對人性的感受。美國文學巨匠福克納在1943年讀了韋爾蒂女士的小說後寫信給她。信中說：「你寫的不錯」。 直到韋爾蒂女士去世時，那封信還掛在她的卧室的床頭。

⑵ 誰能把我教成作家

豈是一朝一夕練出來的？想一步登天的人決不會成功。注意留心身邊的事物，應該會有收獲。當你真正理解生活時，你就成功了。