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1、【国外英文文学】The Island Of The Day BeforeThe Island of the Day BeforeIs the Pacifique Sea my home?-john donne, Hymne to God my GodStolto! a cui parlo? Misero! Che tento?Racconto il dolor mioa 1insensata rivaa la mutola selce, al sordo vento.Ahi, chaltro non rispondeche il mormorar delonde!- giovan battis
2、ta marino, Eco, La Lira, xixTable of ContentsCHAPTER IDaphneCHAPTER 2An Account of Events in the MonferratoCHAPTER 3The Serraglio of WondersCHAPTER 4Fortification DisplaydCHAPTER 5The Labyrinth of the WorldCHAPTER 6The Great Art of Light and ShadowCHAPTER 7Pavane LachrymeCHAPTER 8The Curious Learnin
3、g of the Wits of the DayCHAPTER 9The Aristotelian TelescopeCHAPTER 10Geography and Hydrography ReformedCHAPTER 11The Art of PrudenceCHAPTER 12The Passions of the SoulCHAPTER 13The Map of TendernessCHAPTER 14A Treatise on the Science of ArmsCHAPTER 15Horologium OscillatoriumCHAPTER 16Discourse on the
4、 Powder of SympathyCHAPTER 17Longitudinum Optata ScientiaCHAPTER 18Unheard-of CuriositiesCHAPTER 19A New Voyage Round the WorldCHAPTER 20Wit and the Art of IngenuityCHAPTER 21Telluris Theoria SacraCHAPTER 22The Orange DoveCHAPTER 23Divers and Artificious MachinesCHAPTER 24Dialogues of the Maximum Sy
5、stemsCHAPTER 25Technica CuriosaCHAPTER 26Delights for the Ingenious: A Collection of EmblemsCHAPTER 27The Secrets of the Flux and Reflux of the SeaCHAPTER 28Of the Origin of NovelsCHAPTER 29The Soul of FerranteCHAPTER 30Anatomy of Erotic MelancholyCHAPTER 31A Breviary for PoliticalsCHAPTER 32A Garde
6、n of DelightsCHAPTER 33Mundus SubterraneusCHAPTER 34Monologue on the Plurality of WorldsCHAPTER 35Joyfull Newes out of the Newfound WorldeCHAPTER 36The Rule and Exercises of Holy DyingCHAPTER 37Paradoxical Exercises Regarding theThinking of StonesCHAPTER 38An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hel
7、lCHAPTER 39Itinerarium Extaticum CoelesteColophonCHAPTER IDaphneI take pride withal in my humiliation, and as I am to this privilege condemned, almost I find joy in an abhorrent salvation; I am, I believe, alone of all our race, the only man in human memory to have been shipwrecked and cast up upon
8、a deserted ship.thus, with unabashed conceits, wrote Roberto della Griva presumably in July or August of 1643.How many days had he been tossed by the waves, feverish surely, bound to a plank, prone during the hours of light to avoid the blinding sun, his neck stiff, strained unnaturally so as not to
9、 imbibe the water, his lips burnt by the brine? His letters offer no answer to this question: though they suggest an eternity, the time cannot have been more than two days, for otherwise he would never have survived the lash of Phoebus (of which he so poetically complains), he, a sickly youth, as he
10、 describes himself, a creature condemned by a natural defect to live only at night.He was unable to keep track of time, but I believe the sea grew calm immediately after the tempest swept him from the deck of the Amaryllis, on that makeshift raft a sailor had fashioned for him. Driven by the Trades
11、over a serene sea, in a season when, south of the Equator, a temperate winter reigns, he was carried for not many miles, until the currents at last brought him into the bay.It was night, he had dozed off, unaware that he was approaching a ship until, with a jolt, his plank struck against the prow of
12、 the Daphne.And when-in the glow of the full moon-he realized he was floating beneath a bowsprit with a rope-ladder hanging from it not far from the anchor chain (a Jacobs ladder, Father Caspar would have called it), in an instant all his spirit returned. His desperation must have inspired him: he t
13、ried to reckon whether he had enough breath to cry out (but his throat was all an arid fire) or enough strength to free himself from the bonds that had cut livid furrows into his skin, and then to essay the climb. I believe that at such moments a dying man can become a very Hercules, and strangle se
14、rpents in his cradle. In recording the event, Roberto seems confused, but we must accept the idea that if, finally, he reached the forecastle, he must somehow have grasped that ladder. Perhaps he climbed up a bit at a time, exhausted at every gain, until he flung himself over the bulwarks, crawled a
15、long the cordage, found the forecastle door open . And instinct no doubt led him, in the darkness, to touch that barrel, pull himself up its side, until he found a cup attached to a little chain. And he drank as much as he could, then collapsed, sated, perhaps in the fullest meaning of the word, for
16、 that water probably contained enough drowned insects to supply him with food as well as drink.He must have slept twenty-four hours. This is only an approximate calculation: it was night when he woke, but he was as if reborn. So it was night again, not night still.He thought it was night still; for
17、if not, a whole day had to have passed, and someone should have found him by now. The moonlight, coming from the deck, illuminated that place, apparently a kind of cook-room, where a pot was hanging above the fireplace.The room had two doors, one towards the bowsprit, the other opening onto the deck
18、. And he looked out at the latter, seeing, as if by daylight, the rigging in good order, the capstan, the masts with the sails furled, a few cannon at the gun-ports, and the outline of the quarterdeck. He made some sounds, but not a living soul replied. He gazed over the bulwarks, and to his right h
19、e could discern, about a mile away, the form of the Island, the palm trees along its shore stirred by a breeze.The land made a kind of bend, edged with sand that gleamed white in the pale darkness; but, like any shipwrecked man, Roberto could not tell if it was an island or a continent.He staggered
20、to the other side of the ship and glimpsed- but distant this time, almost on the line of the horizon-the peaks of another mass, defined also by two promontories. Everything else was sea, giving the impression that the ship was berthed in an anchorage it had entered through a channel separating the t
21、wo stretches of land. Roberto decided that if these were not two islands, one was surely an island facing a vaster body of land. I do not believe he entertained other hypotheses, since he had never known bays so broad that a person in their midst could feel he was confronting twin lands. Thus, in hi
22、s ignorance of boundless continents, Roberto had chanced upon the correct answer.A nice situation for a castaway: his feet solidly planted and dry land within reach. But Roberto was unable to swim. Soon he would discover there was no longboat on board, and the current meanwhile had carried away the
23、plank on which he had arrived. Hence his relief at having escaped death was now accompanied by dismay at this treble solitude: of the sea, the neighboring Island, and the ship. Ahoy! he must have tried to shout on the ship, in every language he knew, discovering how weak he truly was. Silence. As if
24、 on board everyone was dead. And never had he-so generous with similes-expressed himself more literally. Or almost-and this is what I would fain tell you about, if only I knew where to begin.For that matter, I have already begun. A man drifts, exhausted, over the ocean, and the complaisant waters br
25、ing him to a ship, apparently deserted. Deserted as if the crew has just abandoned it, for Roberto struggles back to the cook-room and finds a lamp there and a flint and steel, as if the cook set them in their place before going to bed. But the two berths beside the furnace, one above the other, are
26、 both empty. Roberto lights the lamp, looks around, and finds a great quantity of food: dried fish, hardtack, with only a few patches of mold easily scraped away with a knife. The fish is very salty, but there is water in abundance.He must have regained his strength quickly, or else he was strong wh
27、en he was writing this, for he goes into-highly literary-detail about his banquet, never did Olympus see such a feast as his, Joves nectar, to me sweet ambrosia from farthest Pontus. But these are the things Roberto writes to the Lady of his heart:Sun of my shadows, light of my darkness.Why did Heav
28、en not unmake me in that tempest it had so savagely provoked/1 Why save from the all-devouring sea this body of mine, only to wreck my soul so horribly in such mean and even more ill-starred solitude!1Perhaps, if merciful Heaven does not send me succor, you will never read this letter I now indite,
29、and, consumed like a torch by the light of these seas, I will become dark to your eyes, as to some Selene, who, rejoicing too much in the light of her Sun, gradually consumes her journey beyond the far curve of our planet, bereft of the beneficent rays of her sovereign star, first growingthin to rec
30、all the sickle that severs the thread of life, then ever-paler, she is completely dissolved in that vast cerulean shield where ingenious nature forms heroic heraldry, mysterious emblems of her secrets. Bereft of your gaze, I am blind for you see me not, dumb for you address me not, oblivious for you
31、 forget me.And, alone, I live, burning dullness and tenebrous flame, vague specter that in this adverse conflict of opposites my mind imagines ever the same, and so would convey to yours. Saving my life in this wood fortress, in this rocking bastion that defends me, prisoner of the sea, from the sea
32、, punished by the clemency of Heaven, hidden in this deep sarcophagus open to every sun, in this airy dungeon, in this impregnable prison that offers me everywhere escape, I despair of seeing you more.My Lady, I write you as if to offer, unworthy tribute, the withered rose of my disheartenment. And
33、yet I take pride withal in my humiliation, and as I am to this privilege condemned, almost I find joy in an abhorrent salvation; I am, I believe, alone of all our race, the only man in human memory to have been shipwrecked and cast upon a deserted ship.But is this really possible? To judge by the da
34、te of his first letter, Roberto begins writing immediately after his arrival, as soon as he finds pen and paper in the captains quarters, before exploring the rest of the ship. And yet he must have required some time to recover his strength, reduced as he was to the condition of a wounded animal. Or
35、 perhaps, with a little amorous ruse, after first trying to ascertain his whereabouts, he then writes, pretending to write her before giving any thought to other things. But why, inasmuch as he knows, assumes, fears that these letters will never arrive and that he is writing them only for his own to
36、rment (tormenting solace, he would say, but we must not fall into his literary habits)? It is difficult to reconstruct the actions and feelings of a character surely afire with true love, for you never know whether he is expressing what he feels or what the rules of amorous discourse prescribe in hi
37、s case-but then, for that matter, what do we know of the difference between passion felt and passion expressed, and who can say which has precedence? So Roberto was writing for himself: this was not literature, he was there truly, writing like an adolescent pursuing an impossible mirage, streaking t
38、he page with his tears, not because of the absence of the lady, pure image even when she was present, but out of fondness of himself, enamored of love.The situation is the stuff of a novel, but, once more, where to begin?I say he wrote this first missive later, and before writing it, he had a look a
39、round; and in subsequent letters he will relate what he saw. But those, too, raise the question of how to treat the diary of a man with poor vision, who roams during the night, relying on his weak eyes.Roberto will tell us that his eyes had been affected since the days of the siege of Casale, when t
40、hat bullet grazed his temple. And this may be true, but elsewhere he hints that the weakness was caused by the plague. Roberto was certainly frail, and I infer he was also a hypochondriac-though in moderation: half of his photophobia must have been due to black bile, and half to some form of irritat
41、ion, perhaps exacerbated by Monsieur dlgbys salves.It seems certain that during the voyage of the Amaryllis he remained below deck, since the role of photophobe-if it was not his true nature-was the part he had to play to keep an eye on what happened in the hold. Several months in total darkness or
42、in dim lamplight-and then the time on the plank, dazzled by the equatorial or tropical sun, whichever it was. When he lands then on the Daphne, sick or not, he hates the sun, spends the first night in the cook-room, recovers his strength and attempts a first inspection the night following, and then
43、things proceed virtually of themselves. Day frightens him; not only will his eyes not tolerate it, but neither will the burns he must surely have on his back. So he goes to ground. The beautiful moon he describes on those nights reassures him, during the day the sky is the same as everywhere else, a
44、t night he discovers new constellations (heroic heraldry and mysterious emblems, in fact); it is like being in a theater. He is convinced that this will be his life for a long time, perhaps until his death; he refashions his Lady on paper so as not to lose her, and he knows he has not lost much more
45、 than the little he had before.At this point he takes refuge in his nightly vigils as in a maternal womb, and becomes thus more determined to elude the sun. Perhaps he has read of those Resurgents of Hungary, of Livonia or Walachia, who wander restless between sunset and dawn, hiding then in their g
46、raves at cock-crow: the role could lure him.Roberto must have begun his survey on the second night. By then he had shouted enough to be sure that there was no one else on board. But-and this he feared-he might find corpses, or some sign that explained their absence. He moved cautiously, and from his
47、 letters it is hard to tell in which direction: he names the ships parts, the objects inexactly. Some are familiar to him and he has heard them from the sailors; others are unknown, and he describes them as they appear to him. But even of the familiar objects-an indication that on the Amaryllis the
48、crew probably represented the dregs of the seven seas-he must have heard one in French, another in Dutch, and another in English. Thus he says staffe-as Dr. Byrd must have taught him-for the Jacobs staff; at times it is hard to understand how he could be one moment on the poop deck or the quarterdeck, and another on the galliard darnere, which is the Frenchified way of saying the same thing; for gun-port he uses sab