評論
打印
It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems-aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling-a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.
我在啟程赴南塔開特的前夕,在那一個昏暗而陰森的日子里,靠著朦朧的光線念著那些先我而去的捕鯨者的命運,看著那些石碑時究竟懷著什么心情,那是不必多說了。不錯,以實瑪利呀,這可能也正是你的命運。但是,不知怎地,我竟又快活起來了.快活的起因也許是要出發了,要有高升的好機會了,它似乎是是一只將使我飛黃騰達而永垂不朽的破艇。不錯,在捕鯨這種行業中是會死人的...這是個一下子便會把人帶往來世的深淵似的行業。但是,這又怎樣呢?我 認為我們真是對生死這樁大事產生了大大的誤會。我認為人們在現世稱做我的影子的,卻正是我的真正的本體。我認為我們在觀察一些神靈的事物時,實在太象從水里看太陽的牡蠣,總認為混水就是最稀薄的空氣。我認為我的身軀不過是我的本體的殘渣。事實上,誰要我的軀體,我就說:請拿去吧,它并不是我的。因此,應該為南塔開特三呼萬歲;隨它破船也好,殘軀也好,因為我善于拚命,是丘必特本人也辦不到的。
