2016年8月1日 星期一

Herman Melville: "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Omoo", Complete Shorter Fiction 大洋洲的逍遙列島(attraction to the South Seas)

Herman Melville’s Omoo was first published on this day in 1847. This was the second of Melville’s novels — a sequel to Typee and so a second “Peep at Polynesian Life.” Both books were popular, though both provoked criticism from those who thought them salacious, or too complimentary of the islanders and too critical of the white man.
"War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character."
--from "Omoo"


D.H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence visited Tahiti on his travels in search of somewhere non-British to live. In his "Critical Studies in Classic American Literature" (1923), Lawrence discusses Typee, Omoo (published on this day in 1847), and Herman Melville’s attraction to the South Seas:
"Never man instinctively hated human life, our human life, as we have it, more than Melville did. And never was a man so passionately filled with the sense of vastness and mystery of life which is non-human. He was mad to look over our horizons. Anywhere, anywhere out of our world. To get away. To get away, out!
To get away, out of our life. To cross a horizon into another life. No matter what life, so long as it is another life.
Away, away from humanity. To the sea. The naked salt, elemental sea. To go to sea, to escape humanity."
At the end of the chapter, Lawrence chastises Melville for coming back to prim New England, to be boxed in by family, career and a false civilization. The essay concludes with Lawrence admitting that he is talking as much about himself as Melville:
"Melville was, at the core, a mystic and an idealist.
Perhaps, so am I.
And he stuck to his ideal guns.
I abandon mine.
He was a mystic who raved because the old ideal guns shot havoc. The guns of the 'noble spirit'. Of 'ideal love'. I say, let the old guns rot.
Get new ones, and shoot straight."

Today is the 197th anniversary of the birth of Herman Melville!
"And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!"
--from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853)
Everyman's Library
13小時
Herman Melvill (sic) was born in New York City, New York on this day in 1819.
"'At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,' was his mildly cadaverous reply."
--from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) by Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819-91) brought as much genius to the smaller-scale literary forms as he did to the full-blown novel: his poems and the short stories and novellas collected in this volume reveal a deftness and a delicacy of touch that is in some ways even more impressive than the massive, tectonic passions of Moby-Dick. In a story like "Bartleby, the Scrivener" -- one of the very few perfect representatives of the form in the English language -- he displayed an unflinching precision and insight and empathy in his depiction of the drastically alienated inner life of the title character. In "Benito Cereno," he addressed the great racial dilemmas of the nineteenth century with a profound, almost surreal imaginative clarity. And in Billy, Budd, Sailor, the masterpiece of his last years, he fused the knowledge and craft gained from a lifetime's magnificent work into a pure, stark, flawlessly composed tale of innocence betrayed and destroyed. Melville is justly honored for the epic sweep of his mind, but his lyricism, his skill in rendering the minute, the particular, the local, was equally sublime. MORE here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/…/113148/complete-shorter-fiction/

Everyman's Library
"Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance."
--from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) by Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819-91) brought as much genius to the smaller-scale literary forms as he did to the full-blown novel: his poems and the short stories and novellas collected in this volume reveal a deftness and a delicacy of touch that is in some ways even more impressive than the massive, tectonic passions of Moby-Dick. In a story like "Bartleby, the Scrivener" -- one of the very few perfect representatives of the form in the English language -- he displayed an unflinching precision and insight and empathy in his depiction of the drastically alienated inner life of the title character. In "Benito Cereno," he addressed the great racial dilemmas of the nineteenth century with a profound, almost surreal imaginative clarity. And in Billy, Budd, Sailor, the masterpiece of his last years, he fused the knowledge and craft gained from a lifetime's magnificent work into a pure, stark, flawlessly composed tale of innocence betrayed and destroyed. Melville is justly honored for the epic sweep of his mind, but his lyricism, his skill in rendering the minute, the particular, the local, was equally sublime.



Herman Melville stamp (Hand-painted Paslay)



這本書有點複雜.  無索引譬如說 引Herman Melville的小說至少兩部.
引人類學家馬林思基?的更多次......
而我採取隨便翻翻的方式
不過 土人們當時很少過胖者.也討論像我這種有肚圍的人.
作者好幾次有生命危險......

Obesity Is No Longer Rising, but It's More Dangerous Than Ever
Obesity is more deadly than previously thought, but a nationwide survey shows that after rising for decades, rates have not increased for the first time in 30 years





大洋洲的逍遙列島(上/下) The happy isles of Oceania : paddling the Pacific

太平洋不單單是一片海洋,太平洋像一個宇宙,彷若一片無垠的太空,其中點綴的島嶼如同群星閃爍,這些星團般的列島,如同銀河,流傳不一樣的神奇故事。

上 冊:踩著泥水走過紐西蘭、在白人的澳洲胡扯、在烏普烏普漫遊、在絕地之北、擱淺於不安的特洛布里安、沙弗島的孵蛋場、萬那杜的食人族和傳教士……。

下冊: 王室之島東加、髒亂的礁湖、愛之島的迎風岸大溪地、庫克群島、復活島、在那帕里海岸追隨海豚前進、在天恩眷顧中划船……。

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我先翻末章.
可以談點譯注的微改善:
注1:   吉夫斯式的廢話

P. G. Wodehouse (- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) 小說中的人物指理想僕人

 此君英文名字值得一記: Jeeves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975), being the valet of Bertie Wooster (Bertram Wilberforce ...
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注5  內文談達賴團隊所用Om:應也說明此為佛教/印度教共用:根據吠陀經的傳統,「唵」這個音節在印度教裡非常神聖,它認為「唵」是宇宙中所出現的第一個音,也是嬰兒出生後所發出的第一個音。佛教受印度教影響,也認為這是一個聖潔音節,不少密宗咒語都以「唵」字作開首,如著名的六字真言「唵嘛呢叭咪吽」。

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頁585 Herman Melville 1819-91 作品Omoo 最好附原文.
原作者引用的是下句黑體字 (紅字未翻譯)
CHAPTER LVII.

THE SECOND HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS

FAIR dawned, over the hills of Martair, the jocund morning of our
hunt.


 

 頁7  漢譯完全

 But does not Alfred Wallace relate in his famous book on the Malay Archipelago
how, amongst the Aru Islanders, he discovered in an old and naked savage
with a sooty skin a peculiar resemblance to a dear friend at home?

不過發現本書的地名有的和地圖不一致. 所附地圖也不夠精確.





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