英译现代散文●太阳 ◎ 吴冠中

太阳

The Sun

◎　吴冠中

◎　Wu Guanzhong

昨天，小公园里撒满了阳光，孩子们、老人们，喜洋洋一大群。今天，太阳不见了，阴冷阴冷的冬天，像要下雪了。公园里消失了人群，只有一个人裹着大衣低头独自行走，太阳的消失没有影响他独自行走，似乎他心中本来就没有太阳。

Yesterday, the small park was bathed in sunshine and lots of kids and elderly folks there enjoyed themselves very much. Today, the sun has disappeared. It is a cold and gloomy winter day and looks like snow. The park is deserted except for a solitary walker wrapped in an overcoat with his head bent low. The disappearance of the sun does not affect his solitary walk at all. It seems that there is no sun in his heart.

太阳与大家有关，人们跟着太阳起床，随着太阳的沉没而沉睡，等待明天的太阳。大家喜欢太阳，等着看日出，《日出的印象》是举世绘画名作，“夕阳无限好”是千古名句。太阳赋大自然色彩，太阳在人间创造了阴影。没有了阴影，也就看不清光明，有了阴影才认识世界原来是立体的。总是生活在阴影里不健康，生活中没有阴影也不健康，太阳控制着人们的健康，生死存亡。

We are all closely related to the sun. We get up at sunrise and fall into a heavy slumber after sunset until the sun reappears the next day. We all love the sun and long for sunrise. The Impressive Sunrise is a world-famous painting.“The setting sun shines with unrivalled splendor”is a celebrated line from an ancient Chinese poem. The sun endows Mother Nature with color and creates shadows for men. Without shadows, we would be unable to see light. It is by means of shadows that we find the world to be three-dimensional. It is unhealthy to confine ourselves to shadows, nor is it healthy to have no shadows in life. The sun has much to do with our health and determines our life or death, survival or extinction.

人们看太阳，观赏其红、光、亮。参照太阳，人创造了灯笼。有了电灯，还爱灯笼，因为太阳永远令人膜拜，儿童画中出现最多的也就是太阳。地球上只能看到一个太阳，太阳是惟一，惟一往往被尊为最伟大，路易十四自称是太阳王，但路易十四还是死了，让别人去争太阳王的宝座。

People look at the sun and admire its glow, light and brilliance. Men invented the lantern in imitation of the sun and continue to love the lantern when they have the electric lamp because the sun will always have the worship of all. It also appears most often in drawings done by children. We see one and only one sun from the earth. The sun is the sole ball of fire in the sky. Anything that is the only one of its kind is often held up as great. Louis XIV styled himself Solar King. But he nevertheless died, leaving his potential successors to contend for the Solar-King throne.

太阳是热之源，是温暖的象征，悽怆之人常说失去了心中的太阳。赤日炎炎的酷暑，人们怕太阳，太阳并不总赐予幸福，它可能是伪君子，它令禾苗枯萎，荼毒生灵。当它被人畏惧时，夏夜的月色倒赢得了人们的青睐，其实月亮那点迷人的光，只是太阳的反照。太阳我行我素，永远这样放光芒，它一样对待野草、鲜花、蛆虫、蝙蝠、高楼大厦与沙漠洪荒……

The sun is the source of heat and the symbol of warmth. Sorrowful people often complain that they have no sun in their hearts. People dread the sun in sweltering summer days. The sun does not always give us blessings. It may be a hypocrite, causing seedlings to wither and plunging people into the depth of misery. While people dread the sun, they admire the moon on summer evenings though, in fact, its enchanting pale light is a reflection from the sun. The sun goes on doing whatever it pleases, always shining on all alike, be they wild grass, fresh flowers, worms, bats, skyscrapers, deserts, wild country …

人们终于还是离不开无比强烈的太阳。

All in all, people can't go without the all-powerful sun.

吴冠中(1919—2010)，中国当代著名画家兼散文家，1919年生于江苏宜兴，1942年毕业于杭州国立艺专，1947—1950年在法国巴黎国立高等艺术学院进修，曾任中央工艺美术学院教授。他自幼喜爱文学，作画之余，写了大量情真意切的散文，得到文艺界高度赞誉，并受广大读者喜爱。《太阳》是他写的一篇随笔。