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【经典名著阅读】《红字》第十七章(中)

Nathaniel Hawthorne 2011-09-03 10:00
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Chapter 17 THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
第十七章 教长和教民

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him- and his authorised interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities- that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganise and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.
海丝特·白兰如今才充分意识到,这个不幸的男人所受的伤害有多深,她对此是有责任的,她不该允许那个一心抱着恶毒动机的人在他身边摆布他这么些年,其实即使是一瞬间也不该的。那个心怀叵测的人不管蒙上什么面具来遮掩,仅仅接近一下象阿瑟,丁梅斯代尔那样敏感的人,就足以扰乱他的方寸了。有一段时间,海丝特没怎么动脑筋考虑这一点;也许是因为她自己痛不欲生,而把他的厄运看得比较容易忍受,也就没去过问他。但自从他那天晚上夜游以来,最近她对他的全部同情都变得又温柔又有力了。如今她对他的心看得更准了。她毫不怀疑,罗杰·齐灵渥斯没日没夜地守在他身边,他那不可告人的险恶用心毒化了他周围的气氛,他那医生的身分对牧师的身心痈疾具有权威性的影响——这一切都构成了达到残酷目的的可乘之机。凡此种种,使那个受苦人的良心始终处于一种烦躁状态,长此以往,不但不会以有益健康的痛苦治愈他,反而会紊乱和腐蚀他的精神生命。其结果,他在世间难以不弄得精神错乱,之后则与“真”和“善”永远绝缘,其现世的表现就是疯狂。

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once- nay, why should we not speak it?- still so passionately loved! Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have lain down on the forest-leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet.
这就是她带给那个男人的毁灭,而那个男人正是她一度——唉,我们何必不直说呢?——而且至今仍满怀激情地爱恋着的!海丝特觉得,正如她最近对罗杰·齐灵渥斯所说,牺牲掉牧师的好名声,甚至让他死掉,都比她原先所选择的途径要强得多。如今,与其把这极其严重的错误坦白出来,她宁可高高兴兴地躺在这林中落叶之上,死在阿瑟·丁梅斯代尔脚旁。

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