<the song of lunch>原诗未编入剧中的部分
买了这本书. 一来为了仔细研读,力图翻译准确; 二来为了留做纪念, 毕竟是第一次看诗歌改编的剧, 更是第一次接触诗歌翻译.
片子本身我不想再评论, 这种片子需要自己逐字逐句去体会. 看的次数越多, 便越是感叹语言的魅力. 就是这样在字斟句酌之间, 不经意的,好些台词几乎都记在心里了. (然而我要再啰嗦一句: 这种文学性太强的诗歌并不适合当作教材'学英文', 本诗一些用词和表达方式, 英国人表示他们自己也看不太懂, 更别提使用了.)
剧中的台词, 全是直接用的原诗句, 但不可避免有删掉的部分, 所以打算把原诗当中没有编进本剧的章节敲出来, 有兴趣的可以看看.
------
注1: 括号中的是剧中出现过的, 方便大家定位.
注2: 大小写, 换行, 标点, 均依照faber&faber出版社2010年版 (http://www.faber.co.uk/work/song-of-lunch/9780571273522/).
<1>
(Keep your imagination peeled and see
Virginia Woolf
loping off to the library
with a trug full of books.)
At every twentieth step,
she takes a sharp drag at a cigarette
and pulls a tormented face
as if she had never tasted anything
so disgusting.
(And there goes T.S. Eliot,
bound for his first martini of the day.
With his gig-lamps and his immaculate sheen,)
he eases pastyou like a limousine:
a powerful American model.
<2>
(Gaggles of tourists straggle
more provocatively than ever;)
the approach to Bedford Square is blocked:
orange plastic barriers--
our century's major contribution
to the junk art of street furniture!
(Never mind, he's making good time--
note the active verb--
and he expects she'll be late.)
So he allows himself to feel
pleasure in his own fleetness,
in not being carried but riding
the currents and eddies
of the human torrent.
And occasionally stopping
to let another pass,
unthanked politeness being
the ultimate gesture
of the metropolitan dandy.
<3>
(The restaurant
is an old haunt,
though he hasn't been there for years;)
not since the publishing trade,
once the province
of swashbucklers and buccaneers,
was waylaid by suits and calculators,
and a strict afternoon
curfew imposed.
Farewell to long lunches
and other boozy pursuits!
Hail to the new age
of the desk potato,
strict hours of imprisonment
and eyesight tortured
by an impassive electronic screen!
Sometimes, though, a man needs
to go out on the rampage,
throw conscientious time-keeping
to the winds,
help kill a few bottles--
and bugger the consequences.
If not a right, exactly,
it's a rite,
and therefore approved in the sight
of some notional higher authority.
<4>
Lunch being a game with few rules,
and those unwritten,
it's important to him that the field of play
remain the same
as he fondly remembers it.
(Zanzotti's: unreformed Soho Italian.
...
cultureless, fly-by-night.)
He stops for a scrawny lad
wheeling a big, unsteady,
rust-patched, festering bin
to park at the roadside,
and wonders what he will find.
<5>
And that's where Dylan Thomas
scrounged ten bob off him,
then set about seducing his girl.
Not.
Seriously, though,
what will they say when they look back
at our demythologised age?
Postmodern Times:
garrulous, garish classic
starring
some idiot off the box.
Charlie Cretin!
Needs work.
Craplin? Forget it.
He cuts down Meard Street,
now much too smart for its name
but where he remembers
a knocking-shop henever went into--
feral whores at the window--
turns the corner, crosses,
and (hey presto:
Zanzotti's edges into view.)
<6>
Same tricolore paintwork,
thick from repeated coats
and somehow suggesting edibility.
Same signwriter's cursive
festooning the fascia-board
and flanked by the same brass lamps.
It's so much the same, it almost
looks like a replica.
The Wardour Street wideboys and creatives
must love it,
must think it's the campest retro--
when it's the real thing.
Through a gap in the blind,
he can see quite a few of them in there already.
Well, never mind.
He wishes no one ill.
Democracy of the feeding-trough;
swill and let swill.
He and his hand on the door-handle,
and foot on the grooved step,
(when he suddently recollects--
what, precisely?
Deja vu? Some artistic analogy?)
A true liminal moment,
or simply a trick
of the dictionary-picker's skittering brain?
Eye-corner glimpse
of fugitive epiphany
that, for several beats,
he pursues in vain.
(Too bad. Let it go.)
He has his hand still on the dimpled
brass bul of the door-handle.
Which he turns, noticing
the familiar loose-jointedness:
that's a promissing sign.
With the meekest bump of resistance
from the spring contraption overhead,
the door yields and he steps inside
to stand on the prickled mat,
peering into the gloom.
Midday twilight,
requiring adjustment
of all the senses
before it delivers its secrets.
He scans the room,
which is deeper than you might guess from the street,
registers its busyness,
and wonders which of the few
untaken covers will be his.
Not that one by the door
to the toilets, he hopes;
nor the one with too much window light.
Snug privacy is what he wants:
to be tucked away from the bustle:
ideally, over there.
(On the threshold, on the edge
of a shadow-world)
<7>
(Without a smile, without a word,
he is eybrowed and nodded to follow.)
Which he does, past tables,
past people at tables,
he is careful not to brush
with either himself or his shoulder-bag.
Aloof carriage, side=steps,
calculated indirection:
it's as much a dance as a walk.
And it gets him nicely
to the spot he had spotted
from the door.
Laid for two. A little island. An eyot.
Perfect.
<8>
(We said we wouldn't look back.)
Innocent jaunty wistful
ditty from the wings
and would run uninterrupted
if he didn't shoo it away.
Just one of those things.
Ditto.
A song for every cliche!
Though it was more, he's perfectly sure,
than a bell that now and then
(Why did she e-mail him
suggesting)
No, he
Woofs of laughter
in imprecise unison
from a table, all men,
jolly good company,
off to his right.
He draws a breadstick,
wrong brand, from its ripped sheath
and beheads it with a bite.
<9>
In twilight himself
(he commands, nice word,
a clear view of the entrance,
...
What will she look like?)
On his third tasteless
but moreish breadstick,
he's startled: she's changed.
But he's wrong. She hasn't. She isn't.
Back to his chewing:
the fragmentation
and mashing of rusk
soothingly loud
in the isolated chamber of his skull.
<10>
(Hello?)
He jolts. Ice cubes
slurrily clatter
to the bottom of the tumbler
as he bumps it back on the table.
Wiping his wet lip
also expresses surprise.
(She's here. How did that happen!)
<11>
(Have some wine,) he adds,
any stage business
being better than a dry.
(I'm afraid it hasn't really had time,
but
He pours into the two glasses,
measuring by ear
identical notes,)
then doesn't put the bottle down.
He has a speech to deliver.
(...
And they drink.
Becoming palatable.)
Her expression expresses no judgement
and she puts the glass down.
(You haven't changed.
...
It's almost all pizzas,)
he apologises
before she has read a word.
(I'm afraid the place has gone to the dogs.)
She looks around, cursorily.
(Don't be absurd, it's fine.)
<12>
Across the table
across clean cloth and clutter
she leans and wooingly twice
with middle finger
nudges him on the knuckle.
(Come on, no sulks. Be nice. Sois sage.
...
Pax,) he agrees, aggrieved.
And they shake hands,
a squeeze of fingers rather:
hers light then tight
then light again in his,
then efficiently retrieved.
<13>
He is startled from this reckless
plunge into memory
by his own awareness of it:
like snpping out of a doze.
How long can it have lasted?
Gone some time.
(But she seems not to have noticed,
...
you were practically seducing him
a minute ago.)
She swivels her gaze back:
smiling, surprisingly.
(It's nice to know
you're still madly jealous.)
<14>
(And we'll need another bottle of this.)
The waiter goes:
one of those fellows
you'd describe as nondescript
if the word wasn't forbidden.
How many times
in some author's manuscript
has he crossed it out and written
There is nothing that cannot be described.
But in this particular case,
searching in ain
for any distinctive feature,
he may allow and exception.
From that thought idly
on a ride of the eye
around the room--
the bustle, the hubbub--
he travels to the next:
a small dark waitress carrying
three filled plates
from the kitchen hatch
reverses pauses turns proceeds
with such practised fluency
that he'd like to catch
her eye to show her
his appreciation
and be rewar
片子本身我不想再评论, 这种片子需要自己逐字逐句去体会. 看的次数越多, 便越是感叹语言的魅力. 就是这样在字斟句酌之间, 不经意的,好些台词几乎都记在心里了. (然而我要再啰嗦一句: 这种文学性太强的诗歌并不适合当作教材'学英文', 本诗一些用词和表达方式, 英国人表示他们自己也看不太懂, 更别提使用了.)
剧中的台词, 全是直接用的原诗句, 但不可避免有删掉的部分, 所以打算把原诗当中没有编进本剧的章节敲出来, 有兴趣的可以看看.
------
注1: 括号中的是剧中出现过的, 方便大家定位.
注2: 大小写, 换行, 标点, 均依照faber&faber出版社2010年版 (http://www.faber.co.uk/work/song-of-lunch/9780571273522/).
<1>
(Keep your imagination peeled and see
Virginia Woolf
loping off to the library
with a trug full of books.)
At every twentieth step,
she takes a sharp drag at a cigarette
and pulls a tormented face
as if she had never tasted anything
so disgusting.
(And there goes T.S. Eliot,
bound for his first martini of the day.
With his gig-lamps and his immaculate sheen,)
he eases pastyou like a limousine:
a powerful American model.
<2>
(Gaggles of tourists straggle
more provocatively than ever;)
the approach to Bedford Square is blocked:
orange plastic barriers--
our century's major contribution
to the junk art of street furniture!
(Never mind, he's making good time--
note the active verb--
and he expects she'll be late.)
So he allows himself to feel
pleasure in his own fleetness,
in not being carried but riding
the currents and eddies
of the human torrent.
And occasionally stopping
to let another pass,
unthanked politeness being
the ultimate gesture
of the metropolitan dandy.
<3>
(The restaurant
is an old haunt,
though he hasn't been there for years;)
not since the publishing trade,
once the province
of swashbucklers and buccaneers,
was waylaid by suits and calculators,
and a strict afternoon
curfew imposed.
Farewell to long lunches
and other boozy pursuits!
Hail to the new age
of the desk potato,
strict hours of imprisonment
and eyesight tortured
by an impassive electronic screen!
Sometimes, though, a man needs
to go out on the rampage,
throw conscientious time-keeping
to the winds,
help kill a few bottles--
and bugger the consequences.
If not a right, exactly,
it's a rite,
and therefore approved in the sight
of some notional higher authority.
<4>
Lunch being a game with few rules,
and those unwritten,
it's important to him that the field of play
remain the same
as he fondly remembers it.
(Zanzotti's: unreformed Soho Italian.
...
cultureless, fly-by-night.)
He stops for a scrawny lad
wheeling a big, unsteady,
rust-patched, festering bin
to park at the roadside,
and wonders what he will find.
<5>
And that's where Dylan Thomas
scrounged ten bob off him,
then set about seducing his girl.
Not.
Seriously, though,
what will they say when they look back
at our demythologised age?
Postmodern Times:
garrulous, garish classic
starring
some idiot off the box.
Charlie Cretin!
Needs work.
Craplin? Forget it.
He cuts down Meard Street,
now much too smart for its name
but where he remembers
a knocking-shop henever went into--
feral whores at the window--
turns the corner, crosses,
and (hey presto:
Zanzotti's edges into view.)
<6>
Same tricolore paintwork,
thick from repeated coats
and somehow suggesting edibility.
Same signwriter's cursive
festooning the fascia-board
and flanked by the same brass lamps.
It's so much the same, it almost
looks like a replica.
The Wardour Street wideboys and creatives
must love it,
must think it's the campest retro--
when it's the real thing.
Through a gap in the blind,
he can see quite a few of them in there already.
Well, never mind.
He wishes no one ill.
Democracy of the feeding-trough;
swill and let swill.
He and his hand on the door-handle,
and foot on the grooved step,
(when he suddently recollects--
what, precisely?
Deja vu? Some artistic analogy?)
A true liminal moment,
or simply a trick
of the dictionary-picker's skittering brain?
Eye-corner glimpse
of fugitive epiphany
that, for several beats,
he pursues in vain.
(Too bad. Let it go.)
He has his hand still on the dimpled
brass bul of the door-handle.
Which he turns, noticing
the familiar loose-jointedness:
that's a promissing sign.
With the meekest bump of resistance
from the spring contraption overhead,
the door yields and he steps inside
to stand on the prickled mat,
peering into the gloom.
Midday twilight,
requiring adjustment
of all the senses
before it delivers its secrets.
He scans the room,
which is deeper than you might guess from the street,
registers its busyness,
and wonders which of the few
untaken covers will be his.
Not that one by the door
to the toilets, he hopes;
nor the one with too much window light.
Snug privacy is what he wants:
to be tucked away from the bustle:
ideally, over there.
(On the threshold, on the edge
of a shadow-world)
<7>
(Without a smile, without a word,
he is eybrowed and nodded to follow.)
Which he does, past tables,
past people at tables,
he is careful not to brush
with either himself or his shoulder-bag.
Aloof carriage, side=steps,
calculated indirection:
it's as much a dance as a walk.
And it gets him nicely
to the spot he had spotted
from the door.
Laid for two. A little island. An eyot.
Perfect.
<8>
(We said we wouldn't look back.)
Innocent jaunty wistful
ditty from the wings
and would run uninterrupted
if he didn't shoo it away.
Just one of those things.
Ditto.
A song for every cliche!
Though it was more, he's perfectly sure,
than a bell that now and then
(Why did she e-mail him
suggesting)
No, he
Woofs of laughter
in imprecise unison
from a table, all men,
jolly good company,
off to his right.
He draws a breadstick,
wrong brand, from its ripped sheath
and beheads it with a bite.
<9>
In twilight himself
(he commands, nice word,
a clear view of the entrance,
...
What will she look like?)
On his third tasteless
but moreish breadstick,
he's startled: she's changed.
But he's wrong. She hasn't. She isn't.
Back to his chewing:
the fragmentation
and mashing of rusk
soothingly loud
in the isolated chamber of his skull.
<10>
(Hello?)
He jolts. Ice cubes
slurrily clatter
to the bottom of the tumbler
as he bumps it back on the table.
Wiping his wet lip
also expresses surprise.
(She's here. How did that happen!)
<11>
(Have some wine,) he adds,
any stage business
being better than a dry.
(I'm afraid it hasn't really had time,
but
He pours into the two glasses,
measuring by ear
identical notes,)
then doesn't put the bottle down.
He has a speech to deliver.
(...
And they drink.
Becoming palatable.)
Her expression expresses no judgement
and she puts the glass down.
(You haven't changed.
...
It's almost all pizzas,)
he apologises
before she has read a word.
(I'm afraid the place has gone to the dogs.)
She looks around, cursorily.
(Don't be absurd, it's fine.)
<12>
Across the table
across clean cloth and clutter
she leans and wooingly twice
with middle finger
nudges him on the knuckle.
(Come on, no sulks. Be nice. Sois sage.
...
Pax,) he agrees, aggrieved.
And they shake hands,
a squeeze of fingers rather:
hers light then tight
then light again in his,
then efficiently retrieved.
<13>
He is startled from this reckless
plunge into memory
by his own awareness of it:
like snpping out of a doze.
How long can it have lasted?
Gone some time.
(But she seems not to have noticed,
...
you were practically seducing him
a minute ago.)
She swivels her gaze back:
smiling, surprisingly.
(It's nice to know
you're still madly jealous.)
<14>
(And we'll need another bottle of this.)
The waiter goes:
one of those fellows
you'd describe as nondescript
if the word wasn't forbidden.
How many times
in some author's manuscript
has he crossed it out and written
There is nothing that cannot be described.
But in this particular case,
searching in ain
for any distinctive feature,
he may allow and exception.
From that thought idly
on a ride of the eye
around the room--
the bustle, the hubbub--
he travels to the next:
a small dark waitress carrying
three filled plates
from the kitchen hatch
reverses pauses turns proceeds
with such practised fluency
that he'd like to catch
her eye to show her
his appreciation
and be rewar
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