評論
打印
The Rite of Spring
春的洗禮
Arthur Miller
阿瑟·米勒
I have never understood why we keep a garden and why over 36 years ago when I bought my first house in the country, I started digging up a patch for vegetables before doing anything else. When you think how easy and cheap, relatively, it is to buy a bunch of carrots or beets, why raise them? And root crops especially are hard to tell apart, when store-bought, from our own. There is a human instinct at work here, a kind of back-breaking make-believe that has no reality. Besides, I don't particularly like eating vegetables. I'd much rather eat something juicy and fat. Like hot dogs.
我一直想不通為什么我們要經營一個菜園，為什么36年前我在鄉村買第一座房子時，在做其他事情之前，我就先挖出一塊地來種菜。當你想到買一捆胡蘿卜或甜菜，相對來講是多么容易和便宜時，你就會問自己為什么要動手種它們呢？而且從商店買來的塊根類作物和我們自己種的很難區分開。這是人類天生的本能在作怪，是一種費盡心力的自欺欺人的行為。而且我不是特別喜歡吃蔬菜，我更喜歡吃油膩多汁的東西，比如熱狗。
Now, if you could raise hot dogs outside your window, you'd really have something you could justify without a second's hesitation. As it is, though, I cannot deny that when April comes I find myself going out to lean on the fence and look at that miserable plot of land, resolving with all my rational powers not to plant it again. But inevitably a morning arrives when, just as I am awakening, a scent wafts through the window, something like earth-as-air, a scent that seems to come up from the very center of this planet. And the sun means business, suddenly, and has a different, deeper yellow in its beams on the carpet. The birds begin screaming hysterically, thinking what I am thinking—the worms are deliciously worming their way through the melting soil.
現在，如果能在窗外種植熱狗，你會毫不猶豫地去種。實際上，我不能否認的是，當4月份到來的時候，我會走出去斜靠在柵欄上，望著那塊糟糕的小菜地，十分理智地下定決心不再種它了。然而，總有那么一個早晨，當我醒來時，一股沁人心脾的清香從窗戶飄進來，有點像是泥土夾雜著空氣的芳香，好像從地球中心飄出來的一股香氣。太陽也來了勁，瞬間在地毯上投下比以往更加深黃的光束。鳥兒開始興奮地歡唱，它們和我想的一樣——那些美味可口的蟲子正從融化的泥土中爬出來。
