【经典名著阅读】《红字》第十一章（上）

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        Chapter 11 THE INTERIOR OF A HEART第十一章　内心
        AFTER the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to read. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance.在上面描述的那件事之后，牧师和医生间的交往，虽然表面上同原先没什么两样，但却具有了不同的性质。罗杰·齐灵渥斯的思路如今变得十分平坦了。的确，那倒不一定就是他要追寻的途径。他虽然表面上平静、温和、不动感情，然而我们却担心，在这个不幸的老人心中至今仍深深埋藏着的恶毒，此时却要活跃起来，从而会引导他想象出超乎常人的更直接的向敌人复仇的手段。他把自己装扮成那人的可信赖的朋友，让对方向他吐露一切恐惧、自责、烦恼、徒劳的懊悔、回潮的负罪感，而且丝毫不能苟且！那些向世界隐瞒着的一切内疚，本可以获得世界的博大心胸的怜悯和原谅的，如今却要揭示给他这个毫无怜悯心的人，给他这个不肯原谅人的人！那珍藏着的一切隐私，竟然滥施给这样一个人，最最恰如其分地让他得偿复仇之夙债。
        The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence- using the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning, where it seemed most to punish- had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. It mattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost soul, of the latter seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine- and the physician knew it well! Would be startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom- uprose a thousand phantoms- in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about tie clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast!由于牧师生性羞赧和敏感，他的沉默寡言与自我克制阻遏了这一阴谋的得逞。然而，罗杰·齐灵渥斯对事态如此进展，几乎没有表现出什么不满，因为上天既然要改变他的阴险手段，天意对复仇者和他的牺牲者自有一定安排，或许就是要原谅本来罪责当罚的人。他几乎可以说，他已获得一个启示，至于这一启示是来自上苍，抑或其它什么地方，对他的目标来说，并不足道；由于有这启示之助，在他同丁梅斯代尔先生随后的关系中，不仅牧师外表的言行举止，而且连牧师最深藏的灵魂，似乎都一一展现在他的眼前，致使他能看清和理解牧师每时每刻的变化。这样，他在那可怜的牧师的内心世界中，就不仅是个旁观者，而且成了一名主要演员了。他可以随心所欲地利用牧师。他要引起牧师一阵痛苦的悸动吗？那牺牲者反正永远处于遭受煎熬的状态；只消知道控制引擎的弹簧就成了，而医生对此恰恰了如指掌！他要让牧师因突来的恐惧而大惊失色吗？他只消象一个魔法师一般把魔杖一挥，就会升起一个面目可怖的幽灵——升起数以千计的幽灵——以千奇百怪的死亡或更加可怖的外形，全都聚在牧师周围，手指直戳他的胸膛！

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        All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully- even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred- at the deformed figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to Roger Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which- poor, forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victim- the avenger had devoted himself.这一切都完成得十分巧妙诡秘，牧师虽时常模糊地感到有某个邪恶的势力在死死盯住自己不放，却从未能明了其实质。的确，他望着那老医生的畸形身躯时是满怀疑虑和恐惧的——有时甚至带有仇恨的刻毒和厌恶。在牧师的眼中，那医生的姿态和步法，他的灰白胡须，他的最轻微和最无关紧要的动作，乃至他袍服的那种样式，都是可憎的；在牧师的心中，本有一种对他更深的反感，这原是不言而喻的，但牧师却不肯承认。因为，既然不可能为这种怀疑和厌恶找到理由，而且明知一处病灶的毒素正在侵染他的整个心脏，于是丁梅斯代尔先生也就不把他的一切不祥预感归咎于其它了。他自责不该对罗杰·齐灵渥斯抱有反感，并忽略了本应从这种反感中吸取的教训，却竭力来根除这种反感。尽管他无法做到这一点，却遵循一般原则，继续保持他和那老人的亲密交往，从而不断为对方提供实现他目的的机会——那可怜而孤凄的老人，着实比他的牺牲品更加不幸——为达此目的，那复仇者已经倾尽全力了。
        While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. There were scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought- had they ever dreamed of seeking- to express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.就在丁梅斯代尔牧师先生饱尝肉体上疾病的痛苦，备受精神上某种阴险的烦恼的折磨，还要听凭他的死敌的诡计的摆布的期间，他在他的圣职上却大放异彩，广受欢迎。事实上，他在很大程度上是靠他的悲伤才获得这一切的。他的智慧的天赋，他在道德上的感知，他经受和表达感情的能力，都是由于他在日常生活中所受的刺痛，才得以保持一种异乎寻常的状态的。他的名声虽然仍处于上升阶段，却已超过了他的同行，其中有好几位还颇有声望。他们中间有些学者在神学领域中追求深奥的学识所花费的岁月，比丁梅斯代尔先生的年纪还要长；因此完全可能比他们的小兄弟取得更加扎实和更有价值的成就。也有些人比他具备更坚强的心地，富于更多的机敏和如钢铁或岩石般坚定的理解力；如果再加之适量的教义的交融，就会形成一种极受尊敬、颇有效验又高高在上的牧师的典型。还有一些人是地道的神父，他们的官能由于刻苦钻研书籍和冷静耐心的思考面变得精细复杂，尤其由于同美好世界的精神交流而变得虚无飘渺，他们虽仍寄生于必死的皮囊之中，但他们神圣的自身几乎已经由于纯净的生活而被引入那美好世界中去了。他们所唯一缺乏的，只是在圣灵降临节①时天赐绘特选圣徒们的天才，即火焰的舌头②；这象征着的似乎不是运用外国的和人所不晓的语言演讲的能力，而是以心灵中的方言对全体人类兄弟讲话的能力。这些本来可以成为圣徒的神父们，缺乏的就是上天赐给他们行使职务的最后也是最难得的一个资格，即伞焰的舌头。他们即使确曾梦想过运用日常语言和譬喻这种最普通的媒介来表达最崇高的真理的能力，然而他们的这种追求也是徒劳的。他们的声音发自他们惯处的高位，听来遥远而模糊不清。