評論
打印
I start walking south again. I pass the Palazzo Borghese, a building that has known many famous tenants, including Pauline, Napoleon's scandalous sister, who kept untold numbers of lovers there. She also liked to use her maids as footstools. (One always hopes that one has read this sentence wrong in one's Companion Guide to Rome, but, no—it is accurate. Pauline also liked to be carried to her bath, we are told, by "a giant Negro.") Then I stroll along the banks of the great, swampy, rural-looking Tiber, all the way down to the Tiber Island, which is one of my favorite quiet places in Rome. This island has always been associated with healing. A Temple of Aesculapius was built there after a plague in 291 BC; in the Middle Ages a hospital was constructed there by a group of monks called the Fatebene-fratelli (which can groovily be translated as "The Do-Good Brothers"); and there is a hospital on the island even to this day.
我開始往南持續(xù)走去。我經(jīng)過博蓋塞宮，許多名人曾住過此地，包括拿破侖惡名遠播的妹妹寶琳（Pauline），她不知讓多少情人住過這里。她還喜歡把她的侍女當腳凳用。（你始終希望自己誤讀《羅馬隨身指南》當中這句話，然而這卻是千真萬確的事。我們還得知，寶琳喜歡讓“一名高壯的黑人”抱去洗浴。）而后我沿著寬大、泥濘、鄉(xiāng)村風情的臺伯河沿岸漫步，一路走到臺伯島（Tiber Island），這兒是我在羅馬最喜愛的僻靜地區(qū)之一。這座島向來與“治愈”的意象相連在一起。公元前291年，在一場瘟疫過后，這兒蓋了一座醫(yī)神殿；中世紀有一群名叫“行善弟兄”的修士在此處蓋醫(yī)院；即使到今天，這座島上仍有一家醫(yī)院。
I cross over the river to Trastevere—the neighborhood that claims to be inhabited by the truest Romans, the workers, the guys who have, over the centuries, built all the monuments on the other side of the Tiber. I eat my lunch in a quiet trattoria here, and I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in Trastevere is ever going to stop you from lingering over your meal if that's what you would like to do. I order an assortment of bruschette, some spaghetti cacio e pepe (that simple Roman specialty of pasta served with cheese and pepper) and then a small roast chicken, which I end up sharing with the stray dog who has been watching me eat my lunch the way only a stray dog can.
我過河到達特拉斯特維雷區(qū)（Trastevere）——此區(qū)聲稱是原汁原味的羅馬人所居住，而且是在臺伯河對岸建造所有歷史建筑的工人聚居的地方。我在一家安靜的小餐館吃午飯，拖拖拉拉地吃飯喝酒，持續(xù)數(shù)個小時，因為在特拉斯特維雷，沒有人會阻止你慢吞吞吃飯，只要你自己喜歡。我點了各式“bruschette（面包）“spaghetti cacio e pepe”（簡單的羅馬特色菜，添加起司與胡椒），以及一小只烤雞。烤雞最后我和一條盯著我吃午飯的野狗分享了。
Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto, a sorely tearful place that survived for centuries until it was emptied by the Nazis. I head back north, past the Piazza Navona with its mammoth fountain honoring the four great rivers of Planet Earth (proudly, if not totally accurately, including the sluggish Tiber in that list). Then I go have a look at the Pantheon. I try to look at the Pantheon every chance I get, since I am here in Rome after all, and an old proverb says that anyone who goes to Rome without seeing the Pantheon "goes and comes back an ass."
而后我過橋往回走，經(jīng)過猶太區(qū)，這歷盡滄桑的地方存留了數(shù)個世紀，直到被納粹掃除盡凈。我朝北走回去，經(jīng)過納佛那廣場（Piazza Navona）；廣場上的巨大噴泉是為了紀念地球上的四條大河（他們引以為傲地——盡管不完全正確——將臺伯河列入名單之中）。接著我去觀看萬神殿。我一有機會就去看萬神殿，畢竟我就在羅馬；有句古老諺語說，去羅馬不看萬神殿，“回去的時候就是蠢驢”。
On my way back home I take a little detour and stop at the address in Rome I find most strangely affecting—the Augusteum. This big, round, ruined pile of brick started life as a glorious mausoleum, built by Octavian Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his family for all of eternity. It must have been impossible for the emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus-worshipping empire. How could he possibly have foreseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aqueducts destroyed by barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would empty of citizens, and it would take almost twenty centuries before Rome ever recovered the population she had boasted during her height of glory?
回家途中，我繞道而行，造訪我認為羅馬最令人出奇感動的地點——奧古斯都廟。這座磚頭堆建的巨大圓形遺跡，最早是壯觀的陵墓，由屋大維•奧古斯都所建，用以永生永世存放他的遺骨以及他的家族的遺骸。這位皇帝肯定不曾想象過羅馬除了崇拜奧古斯都的強大帝國外，會有其他面目的存在。他怎可能預(yù)見帝國的瓦解？或預(yù)知蠻族摧毀羅馬所有的水道橋，條條大道皆成廢墟，市民凈空，幾乎在經(jīng)過20個世紀后，這座城市才得以恢復(fù)其盛世時期的人口？
