第十屆杯翻譯競賽獲獎作品（英語組）
路 [英] 羅伯特·麥克法倫 作 侯凌瑋 譯
Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss. The language of hunting has a luminous word for such mark-making: ‘foil’. A creature’s ‘foil’ is its track. We easily forget that we are track-makers, though, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete – and these are substances not easily impressed.
人是一種動物，因而和所有其他動物一樣，我們行走時總會留下蹤跡：雪地、沙灘、淤泥、草地、露水、土壤和苔蘚上都有我們經過的痕跡。狩獵術語中有個詞語清晰準確地描述了這種留痕行為：嗅跡。一種生物的“嗅跡”即它的蹤跡。然而，我們往往會忘記自己也會留下蹤跡，因為我們的大多數旅行都發生在瀝青和水泥路上，而這些路面是不會輕易留下印跡的。
‘Always, everywhere, people have walked, veining the earth with paths visible and invisible, symmetrical or meandering,’ writes Thomas Clark in his enduring prose-poem ‘In Praise of Walking’. It’s true that, once you begin to notice them, you see that the landscape is still webbed with paths and footways – shadowing the modern-day road network, or meeting it at a slant or perpendicular. Pilgrim paths, green roads, drove roads, corpse roads, trods, leys, dykes, drongs, sarns, snickets – say the names of paths out loud and at speed and they become a poem or rite – holloways, bostles, shutes, driftways, lichways, ridings, halterpaths, cartways, carneys, causeways, herepaths.
托馬斯·克拉克在他那首經久不衰的散文詩《徒步贊》中寫道：“時時處處，人們行走著，在大地上留下縱橫交錯、可見和不可見、或整齊或蜿蜒的路徑。”的確，一旦你開始留意，你就會發現大地上仍舊覆蓋著蛛網般交錯的小路和小徑，它們有的與現代道路網絡相重疊，有的則傾斜或垂直與之相連接。朝圣之路、綠茵小徑、牧羊小道、運棺之路、仙徑雷線、弄堂小巷、石堤溝渠、墻間過道、低塹小道、斜道車道、單車小道、畜力車道、堤道砌道、古行軍道；倘若我們快速地大聲說出這些小路小徑的諸多名稱，它們竟成了一首詩甚至一種儀式禱詞。
Many regions still have their old ways, connecting place to place, leading over passes or round mountains, to church or chapel, river or sea. Not all of their histories are happy. In Ireland there are hundreds of miles of famine roads, built by the starving during the 1840s to connect nothing with nothing in return for little, unregistered on Ordnance Survey base maps. In the Netherlands there are doodwegen and spookwegen– death roads and ghost roads – which converge on medieval cemeteries. Spain has not only a vast and operational network of cañada, or drove roads, but also thousands of miles of the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim routes that lead to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela. For pilgrims walking the Camino, every footfall is doubled, landing at once on the actual road and also on the path of faith. In Scotland there are clachan and rathad – cairned paths and shieling paths – and in Japan the slender farm tracks that the poet Bashō followed in 1689 when writing his Narrow Road to the Far North . The American prairies were traversed in the nineteenth century by broad ‘bison roads’, made by herds of buffalo moving several beasts abreast, and then used by early settlers as they pushed westwards across the Great Plains.
許多地區至今仍保留著古老的道路，這些古道連接各處、穿越關口、環繞高山，一直延伸到教堂門前和河畔海邊。然而，這些古道承載的并不全是美好的歷史。在愛爾蘭有上百英里的饑荒道，它們在國家地形測量局頒布的基準地圖上并未標出。這些道路原是十九世紀四十年代的饑民為尋找食物而建，但在當時連接的卻是一個又一個貧瘠之地，使饑民們無功而返。在荷蘭有所謂的死亡之路和亡靈之路，它們匯集到一塊塊中世紀的墓地。在西班牙不僅有規模龐大、運轉良好的牧畜道路網絡，還有數千英里通向圣地亞哥 -德孔波斯特拉圣地的朝圣古道。對于行走在朝圣古道上的朝圣者來說，他們邁出的每一步都具有雙重意義，既落在實實在在的道路上，同時也落在信仰之路上。在蘇格蘭有石冢路和草棚路，而在日本則有狹窄的農耕小道，俳句詩人松尾芭蕉在1689年創作《奧州之路》時便是沿著這些農道一路向北的。十九世紀時北美大草原上橫亙著條條寬廣的“野牛之路”，它們是成群的北美野牛數頭一排并肩遷徙時留下的，后來北美早期移民就沿著這些道路穿過大平原去開拓西域。
Paths of long usage exist on water as well as on land. The oceans are seamed with seaways – routes whose course is determined by prevailing winds and currents – and rivers are among the oldest ways of all. During the winter months, the only route in and out of the remote valley of Zanskar in the Indian Himalayas is along the ice-path formed by a frozen river. The river passes down through steep-sided valleys of shaley rock, on whose slopes snow leopards hunt. In its deeper pools, the ice is blue and lucid. The journey down the river is called the chadar , and parties undertaking the chadar are led by experienced walkers known as ‘ice-pilots’, who can tell where the dangers lie.
不僅僅在陸上，水上也有許多長久使用的道路。條條海上航線縫合著海洋這塊巨帛，這些航道是由當地盛行風和盛行流所決定的，其中最古老的就是河流。舉例來說，贊斯卡河谷位于印度喜馬拉雅山脈深處，冬季進出這個偏僻之地的唯一途徑就是沿著一條河流冰凍后所形成的冰道。這條河流自上而下穿過陡峭的頁巖河谷，雪豹在其兩岸石坡上捕獵。在它較深的水潭中，冰湛藍而清透。這種順河而下的旅程叫做冰河徒步，進行冰河徒步的人們由經驗豐富的“冰上領航員”帶領，因為領航員們能夠識別危險所在。
Different paths have different characteristics, depending on geology and purpose. Certain coffin paths in Cumbria have flat ‘resting stones’ on the uphill side, on which the bearers could place their load, shake out tired arms and roll stiff shoulders; certain coffin paths in the west of Ireland have recessed resting stones, in the alcoves of which each mourner would place a pebble. The prehistoric trackways of the English Downs can still be traced because on their close chalky soil, hard-packed by centuries of trampling, daisies flourish. Thousands of work paths crease the moorland of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, so that when seen from the air the moor has the appearance of chamois leather. I think also of the zigzag flexure of mountain paths in the Scottish Highlands, the flagged and bridged packhorse routes of Yorkshire and Mid Wales, and the sunken green-sand paths of Hampshire on whose shady banks ferns emerge in spring, curled like crosiers.
基于地質差異和目的不同，不同的道路具有不同的特征。坎布里亞的一些運棺道在上山的路段設有扁平的“休憩石”，抬棺者可以將靈柩置于其上，甩甩疲憊的胳膊、轉轉僵硬的肩膀；而愛爾蘭西部的一些運棺道則設有嵌入式的休憩石，悼唁者可以在其凹槽中放上一塊卵石以寄哀思。英國唐斯丘陵的史前古道依舊有跡可尋，因為經過幾個世紀的踩踏它們原本質密的白堊質土壤變得愈發緊實，開滿了雛菊。數千條工作小道使外赫布里底群島中的劉易斯島的荒野布滿褶皺，使得那片荒野從空中俯瞰時仿佛一塊羚羊皮。當然，我還想到蘇格蘭高地上之字般曲折的山路，約克郡和威爾士中部鋪著石板、架著石橋的馱馬路，以及漢普郡低洼的海綠石砂小道，每到春天它們陰涼的路邊便長出許多蕨類植物，枝葉卷曲著好似主教的權杖。
The way-marking of old paths is an esoteric lore of its own, involving cairns, grey wethers, sarsens, hoarstones, longstones, milestones, cromlechs and other guide-signs. On boggy areas of Dartmoor, fragments of white china clay were placed to show safe paths at twilight, like Hansel and Gretel’s pebble trail. In mountain country, boulders often indicate fording points over rivers: Utsi’s Stone in the Cairngorms, for instance, which marks where the Allt Mor burn can be crossed to reach traditional grazing grounds, and onto which has been deftly incised the petroglyph of a reindeer that, when evening sunlight plays over the rock, seems to leap to life.
在古代，標記道路本身是一項深奧的學問，它涉及到石冢、砂巖原礫、古界標石、長石、古里程碑、環狀列石和其他導向標志。在沼澤眾多的達特姆爾高原上，人們在地上放置白色陶土碎片以便在黎明和黃昏時分為行人指示安全的道路，漢塞爾和格雷特爾的卵石小徑即是如此。在山區，大卵石往往表示河流的涉水點，例如位于凱恩戈姆的尤西石就標明了從何處可以穿過阿爾莫河到達慣用的牧場；它上面還刻著一頭馴鹿的精美巖畫，每當夕陽灑在這巖石上時，馴鹿也仿佛活了一般跳躍起來。
Paths and their markers have long worked on me like lures: drawing my sight up and on and over. The eye is enticed by a path, and the mind’s eye also. The imagination cannot help but pursue a line in the land – onwards in space, but also backwards in time to the histories of a route and its previous followers. As I walk paths I often wonder about their origins, the impulses that have led to their creation, the records they yield of customary journeys, and the secrets they keep of adventures, meetings and departures. I would guess I have walked perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 miles on footpaths so far in my life: more than most, perhaps, but not nearly so many as others. Thomas De Quincey estimated Wordsworth to have walked a total of 175,000–180,000 miles: Wordsworth’s notoriously knobbly legs, ‘pointedly condemned’ – in De Quincey’s catty phrase – ‘by all … female connoisseurs’, were magnificent shanks when it came to passage and bearing. I’ve covered thousands of foot-miles in my memory, because when – as most nights – I find myself insomniac, I send my mind out to re-walk paths I’ve followed, and in this way can sometimes pace myself into sleep.
很久以前我就對道路和它們的標記者著了迷：他們把我的目光引向上方、前方和遠方。不僅是我的目光就連我的想象也被道路牽引著，它禁不住去追尋陸上的線條，隨之進入更廣闊的空間，同時它也回到過往，去追溯道路的歷史和曾經的行路人。當我在道路上行走時，我常常好奇它們的起源，想知道人們當初創造它們的沖動，想了解在這些道路上常常進行怎樣的旅行，而它們又秘密地見證了什么樣的冒險、邂逅與啟程。我估計自己迄今為止已經徒步行走了七八千英里，這樣的距離或許比大多數人長，但還不及另外一些人。托馬斯·德·昆西就曾估計華滋華斯一生總共徒步了十七萬五千到十八萬英里。華滋華斯那眾所周知的膝蓋突出的長腿雖然（用德·昆西狡猾的話說是）“遭到了所有女性鑒賞家們的尖銳譴責”，但對于長途旅行卻是再合適不過了。我在回憶中也“走”過了數千英里，因為我常會在失眠的夜晚讓自己的思緒重走一遍曾經走過的道路；有時這樣走著走著我就慢慢入睡了。
‘They give me joy as I proceed,’ wrote John Clare of field paths, simply. Me too. ‘My left hand hooks you round the waist,’ declared Walt Whitman – companionably, erotically, coercively – in Leaves of Grass (1855), ‘my right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.’ Footpaths are mundane in the best sense of that word: ‘worldly’, open to all. As rights of way determined and sustained by use, they constitute a labyrinth of liberty, a slender network of common land that still threads through our aggressively privatized world of barbed wire and gates, CCTV cameras and ‘No Trespassing’ signs. It is one of the significant differences between land use in Britain and in America that this labyrinth should exist. Americans have long envied the British system of footpaths and the freedoms it offers, as I in turn envy the Scandinavian customary right of Allemansrätten (‘Everyman’s right’). This convention – born of a region that did not pass through centuries of feudalism, and therefore has no inherited deference to a landowning class – allows a citizen to walk anywhere on uncultivated land provided that he or she cause no harm; to light fires; to sleep anywhere beyond the curtilage of a dwelling; to gather flowers, nuts and berries; and to swim in any watercourse (rights to which the newly enlightened access laws of Scotland increasingly approximate).
“沿著它們前行讓我感到快樂，”約翰·克萊爾在提及田間小徑時如此言簡意賅地寫道。我也有同感。沃爾特·惠特曼在《草葉集》(1855)中友善地、或者說色情地、脅迫地宣告：“我的左手勾住你的腰，我的右手指著各個大陸的景致和那條康莊大道”。人行小徑平凡無奇，體現了“世俗”這個詞的最佳含義，即它向所有人開放。路的所有權是由對它們的使用決定并維持的，因而它們構成了一個自由權利的迷宮，一個柔弱的公共土地網絡；盡管我們的世界私有化日趨嚴重，鐵絲蒺藜、院門墻門、監控探頭和“嚴禁擅入”的告示牌隨處可見，它仍堅定地穿行其中。英國與美國土地使用最顯著的不同即在于英國存在這樣的迷宮。長久以來，美國都羨慕英國的行人道路系統和這個系統給人們提供的自由，而我則羨慕斯堪的納維亞慣行的自由通行律（字面意義為“所有人的權利”）。斯堪的納維亞地區不曾經歷幾個世紀的封建制，因而也不必服從什么地主階級。自由通行慣例就誕生于該地區，根據這條律例，只要不造成傷害，每位公民都有權在自然荒地上行走、生火，在住所宅第之外任意一處宿營、摘花采果，或者在任意的河道中游泳（值得一提的是，蘇格蘭近期頒布的使用權法律受其啟發，日趨接近上述這些權利）。
Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It’s hard to create a footpath on your own. The artist Richard Long did it once, treading a dead-straight line into desert sand by turning and turning about dozens of times. But this was a footmark not a footpath: it led nowhere except to its own end, and by walking it Long became a tiger pacing its cage or a swimmer doing lengths. With no promise of extension, his line was to a path what a snapped twig is to a tree. Paths connect. This is their first duty and their chief reason for being. They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.
路是風景所養成的習慣，它也是人們意見一致的共同創造，單憑一個人是很難造出一條路的。藝術家理查德·朗曾經幾十次轉身，試圖在沙漠中踏出一條筆直的道路，然而留下的只是腳印而不是道路，因為它僅僅指向自己的盡頭，別無他所。行走其上的朗就成了踱步籠中的老虎，或是直池中泅水的泳者。由于不會繼續延伸，朗留下的足跡之于真正的道路，就如同突然折斷的細枝之于一棵大樹。路必須有所連接，這是它們首要的責任，也是它們存在的最重要的理由。從字面上說，路連接地點，引申開來，它們也連接著人們。
Paths are consensual, too, because without common care and common practice they disappear: overgrown by vegetation, ploughed up or built over (though they may persist in the memorious substance of land law). Like sea channels that require regular dredging to stay open, paths need walking. In nineteenth-century Suffolk small sickles called ‘hooks’ were hung on stiles and posts at the start of certain wellused paths: those running between villages, for instance, or byways to parish churches. A walker would pick up a hook and use it to lop off branches that were starting to impede passage. The hook would then be left at the other end of the path, for a walker coming in the opposite direction. In this manner the path was collectively maintained for general use.
此外，路也是人們共同的創造，因為倘若沒有人們共同的養護與實踐，它們就會消失：被蔓生的植被掩蓋、被翻掘耕種、或被其他建筑占用（盡管它們可能還固執地存留在更新滯后的土地法中）。正如海上航道需要經常疏浚以保持暢通，道路也需要人們經常行走。十九世紀時，在薩福克人們把叫作“鉤子”的小鐮刀掛在一些常用道路起始處的柵欄和標樁上，比如村莊之間的道路和通往教區教堂的小徑。行人便可以拿起鉤子，用它砍掉那些開始蔓生到路上影響行走的樹枝，用完后他會把鉤子留在路的另一頭給反向而來的行人使用。這樣，人們一起維護著道路，以供大家共同使用。
By no means all interesting paths are old paths. In every town and city today, cutting across parks and waste ground, you’ll see unofficial paths created by walkers who have abandoned the pavements and roads to take short cuts and make asides. Town planners call these improvised routes ‘desire lines’ or ‘desire paths’. In Detroit – where areas of the city are overgrown by vegetation, where tens of thousands of homes have been abandoned, and where few can now afford cars – walkers and cyclists have created thousands of such elective easements.
當然，有趣的道路并不都是古道。在現今的每一個小鎮、每一座城市中，你都能發現人們私自辟出的小路從公園和荒地中穿過，它們是那些舍棄了正式道路而選擇捷徑、另辟蹊徑的行人們留下的。城市規劃者們將這些即興而生的小路稱為“心愿線路”或者“心愿路徑”。在底特律，城市布滿了蔓生的植被，成千上萬的住宅被棄置，很少有人能買得起汽車，因而徒步和騎自行車的人們便創造出了數千條這樣的自我選擇的愉悅小徑。 |
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