微光：悖论言说

礼物之诗

摘自 Dreamtigers, 作者Jorge Luis Borges, 英译 Harold Morland，中译 Dianlin

请不要以为因为眼泪或者责备
我就轻慢了上帝所彰显的全能，
他用超凡的讽刺
同时给了我书本和黑夜。

在这座书之城，他使得这些眼睛
成为失明的统治者，
只能在梦幻的图书馆中，阅读
每个崭新的黎明所赐的无意义的章节。

赐给清醒的忧虑。徒劳的一日
双目沉浸在无尽的卷本，
难以阅读，有如那些
腐烂在亚历山大城的天书。

古老的希腊故事讲过某个国王
死于饥渴，尽管人们已供奉他甘泉和鲜果；
我陷于迷茫，我从这高耸、漫长却又瞎了的
图书馆的这一头跋涉到那一头。

书架上徒劳地摆满了
百科全书、地图册，东方
和西方，一切世纪，王朝，
象征，宇宙和宇宙学。

在黑暗中，慢慢地，我用
迟疑的拐杖探寻这空洞的昏暗，
我曾用它来描绘一个
被装扮成图书馆模样的天堂。

一定有某种无法被称作
仅仅是偶然的东西掌控着这一切；
某个其他人也曾遇见这昏暗
在有书和黑暗的其他的日子里。

当我慢慢穿过这些长廊
我逐渐感到一种神圣的畏惧
我就是那个其他人，我就是死去的人
而我所走过的步伐也是他曾走过的。

我们中是谁正在书写这些
关于不止一个的我和唯一的昏暗的诗行？
如果诅咒就是我的名字
那么它是哪一个字又有何妨？

格鲁萨克或者博尔赫斯，我凝视这个我所爱的
世界，看着它日渐消融，它的光芒
沉寂下去，直到成为一团苍白而飘移的灰尘
就像沉睡，就像暗夜的遗忘。

Poem about Gifts

From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harold Morland

Let none think that I by tear or reproach make light
Of this manifesting the mastery
Of God, who with excelling irony
Gives me at once both books and night.

In this city of books he made these eyes
The sightless rulers who can only read,
In libraries of dreams, the pointless
Paragraphs each new dawn offers

To awakened care. In vain the day
Squanders on them its infinite books,
As difficult as the difficult scripts
That perished in Alexandria.

An old Greek story tells how some king died
Of hunger and thirst, though proffered springs and fruits;
My bearing lost, I trudge from side to side
Of this lofty, long blind library.

The walls present, but uselessly,
Encyclopedia, atlas, Orient
And the West, all centuries, dynasties,
Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies.

Slow in my darkness, I explore
The hollow gloom with my hesitant stick,
I, that used to figure Paradise
In such a libraries guise.

Something that surely cannot be called
Mere chance must rule these things;
Some other man has met this doom
On other days of many books and the dark.

As I walk through the slow galleries
I grow to feel with a kind of holy dread
That I am that other, I am the dead,
And the steps I make are also his.

Which of us two is writing now these lines
About a plural I and a single gloom?
What does it matter what word is my name
If the curse is indivisibly the same?

Groussac or Borges, I gaze at this beloved
World that grows more shapeless, and its light
Dies down into a pale, uncertain ash
Resembling sleep and the oblivion of night.