《四季随笔》节选 - 秋 17

《四季随笔》是吉辛的散文代表作。其中对隐士赖克罗夫特醉心于书籍、自然景色与回忆过去生活的描述，其实是吉辛的自述，作者以此来抒发自己的情感，因而本书是一部富有自传色彩的小品文集。

吉辛穷困的一生，对文学名著的爱好与追求，以及对大自然恬静生活的向往，在书中均有充分的反映。本书分为春、夏、秋、冬四个部分，文笔优美，行文流畅，是英国文学中小品文的珍品之一。

以下是由网友分享的《四季随笔》节选 - 秋 17的内容，让我们一起来感受吉辛的四季吧!

That a labourer in the fields should stand very much on the level of the beast that toils with him, can be neither desirable nor necessary. He does so, as a matter of fact, and one hears that only the dullest-witted peasant will nowadays consent to the peasant life; his children, taught to read the newspaper, make what haste they can to the land of promise—where newspapers are printed. That here is something altogether wrong it needs no evangelist to tell us; the remedy no prophet has as yet even indicated. Husbandry has in our time been glorified in eloquence which for the most part is vain, endeavouring, as it does, to prove a falsity—that the agricultural life is, in itself, favourable to gentle emotions, to sweet thoughtfulness, and to all the human virtues. Agriculture is one of the most exhausting forms of toil, and, in itself, by no means conducive to spiritual development; that it played a civilizing part in the history of the world is merely due to the fact that, by creating wealth, it freed a portion of mankind from the labour of the plough. Enthusiasts have tried the experiment of turning husbandman; one of them writes of his experience in notable phrase.

在田间辛苦劳作的农夫和他的牲畜基本站在同一水平线上，这一看法既不可取也不必要。但事实确实如此，我们听说，今天只有最愚钝的农夫才会安于农民生活；他的受过教育能读报纸的孩子们，都急匆匆地来到希望之乡——报纸印刷的地方。这其中有些不对劲，不需要福音传道士的指点我们也清楚；关于补救的方法，预言家还未给出一点线索。在我们的时代，有很多赞美农耕的词句，这在很大程度上是虚饰的，因为它试图证实一个伪命题，即农耕生活本身对温柔的情感、殷勤的体贴以及人类所有的美德都有帮助。农业是最令人疲惫不堪的劳作形式之一，就其本身来讲，对精神发展绝无益处；它在世界历史上起了开化的作用，只是因为它创造了财富，使一部分人从农耕劳作中解放出来。农耕的推崇者曾尝试过农夫的生活，其中一人在下面这段著名的话中描述了自己的经验：

Oh, labour is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified. Is it a praiseworthy matter that I have spent five golden months in providing food for cows and horses? It is not so.

“噢，劳动是世界的诅咒，任何从事农业的人都不可避免沾染相应的兽性。我曾在黄金般的五个月里饲牛喂马，这值得嘉许吗？不，不是的。”

Thus Nathaniel Hawthorne30, at Brook Farm. In the bitterness of his disillusion he went too far. Labour may be, and very often is, an accursed and a brutalizing thing, but assuredly, it is not the curse of the world; nay, it is the world's supreme blessing. Hawthorne had committed a folly, and he paid for it in loss of mental balance. For him, plainly, it was no suitable task to feed cows and horses; yet many a man would perceive the nobler side of such occupation, for it signifies, of course, providing food for mankind. The interest of this quotation lies in the fact that, all unconsciously, so intelligent a man as Hawthorne had been reduced to the mental state of our agricultural labourers in revolt against the country life. Not only is his intellect in abeyance, but his emotions have ceased to be a true guide. The worst feature of the rustic mind in our day, is not its ignorance or grossness, but its rebellious discontent. Like all other evils, this is seen to be an inevitable outcome of the condition of things; one understands it only too well. The bucolic wants to "better" himself. He is sick of feeding cows and horses; he imagines that, on the pavement of London, he would walk with a manlier tread.

这就是纳撒尼尔·霍桑在布鲁克农场的感受。由于品尝了幻想破灭的苦果，他有些言过其实。劳动也许是，也常常是一件可憎的野蛮的事情，但可以肯定，它绝不是世界的诅咒；不对，它是世界至上的福泽。霍桑做下一桩蠢事，他付出了心理失衡的代价。对他来说，饲养牛马显然不是一件合宜的工作，但是许多人会看到这种工作更高贵的方面，因为它意味着为人类提供食物。引用的这段话，它的有趣之处在于，像霍桑这样一个智慧的人，在完全不知不觉中，他的心态也沦落到和那些对农村生活不满的农夫一样。其中不仅看不到他的智慧，他的情感也不复作为可靠的向导。在我们的时代，农民思想中最坏的方面，不是它的无知或迟钝，而是它怀有反叛的不满。和其他所有罪恶一样，这被视为现实条件的必然后果，我们对此再了解不过了。农夫想要“改善”自我，他厌烦了饲牛喂马，他幻想自己能够昂首挺胸地走在伦敦的人行道上。

There is no help in visions of Arcadia31; yet it is plain fact that in days gone by the peasantry found life more than endurable, and yet were more intelligent than our clod-hoppers who still hold by the plough. They had their folk-songs, now utterly forgotten. They had romances and fairy lore, which their descendants could no more appreciate than an idyll of Theocritus32. Ah, but let it be remembered that they had also a HOME, and this is the illumining word. If your peasant love the fields which give him bread, he will not think it hard to labour in them; his toil will no longer be as that of the beast, but upward-looking and touched with a light from other than the visible heavens. No use to blink the hard and dull features of rustic existence; let them rather be insisted upon, that those who own and derive profit from the land may be constant in human care for the lives which make it fruitful. Such care may perchance avail, in some degree, to counteract the restless tendency of the time; the dweller in a pleasant cottage is not so likely to wish to wander from it as he who shelters himself in a hovel. Wellmeaning folk talk about reawakening love of the country by means of deliberate instruction. Lies any hope that way? Does it seem to promise a return of the time when the old English names of all our flowers were common on rustic lips—by which, indeed, they were first uttered? The fact that flowers and birds are well-nigh forgotten, together with the songs and the elves, shows how advanced is the process of rural degeneration. Most likely it is foolishness to hope for the revival of any bygone social virtue. The husbandman of the future will be, I daresay, a well-paid mechanic, of the engine-driver species; as he goes about his work he will sing the last refrain of the music-hall, and his oft-recurring holidays will be spent in the nearest great town. For him, I fancy, there will be little attraction in ever such melodious talk about "common objects of the country." Flowers, perhaps, at all events those of tilth and pasture, will have been all but improved away. And, as likely as not, the word Home will have only a special significance, indicating the common abode of retired labourers who are drawing old-age pensions.

阿卡狄亚的美景不会有什么帮助，而事实上，在过去，农夫们觉得自己的生活没有那么难熬，他们也比现在仍在驾驭铁犁的乡巴佬更有智慧。他们有自己的歌谣，现在已被完全遗忘。他们有浪漫故事和民间传说，但他们的后代已无法欣赏，就像无法欣赏忒奥克里托斯的田园诗一样。啊，但是别忘了他们还有一个“家”，这是一个很有启发性的词。如果农夫热爱给他提供面包的土地，他就不会觉得在田里劳作是件苦差事；他的劳作也将有别于牲畜的苦役，是积极向上的，并受到遥不可见的天堂之光的眷顾。无视农村生活的艰难单调是没用的，还是让我们强调这一点吧，以便让那些拥有田地并从中获利的人们，可以经常关心为田地收成而劳作的人们的生活。这种关心可能会在一定程度上有助于抵制时代躁动不安的趋势。住在舒适农舍里的人，是不大会和住茅草屋的人一样，想要逃离的。善意的人建议，通过刻意的教导来重新唤醒对乡村的热爱。这样做有什么希望吗？曾几何时，农夫口中所有花卉的旧时英国名字不绝于耳——而且也确实是他们首先叫出的——那个时代还能回归吗？如今，花朵和鸟儿，还有歌声和小精灵都几乎被遗忘，这显示了乡村衰退已经到了多么严重的地步。奢望复兴任何旧时的社会美德，很可能是一种愚蠢行径。将来的农民，我敢说，将是一个工资高的技工，像火车司机一类的人。他干活时，嘴里哼唱的是音乐厅里最后一段副歌，他还会定期到最近的大城市里休假。我想，对他来说，兴致勃勃地谈论“乡村平常事物”没什么吸引力。耕地和牧场上的花朵，也许将随着时代进步而最终消失。另外，“家”这个词可能将只剩下一个特殊含义，即领取养老金的退休农夫们的公共居所。