先讀課文﹕
War and Peace 戰爭與和平
by Leo Tolstoy 托爾司泰
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Chapter I
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.
拿坡倫 But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you
still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist-
I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you
and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call
yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you- sit down and tell
me all the news."
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer,
maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words
she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who
was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough
for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being
then a new word in St. Peter*****urg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the prospect
of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall
be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10- Annette Scherer."
"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the least
disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered
court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and
a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in
which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing
intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and
at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her
his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on
the sofa.
"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind
at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and
affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned.
"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like
these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are staying the
whole evening, I hope?"
"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must put
in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is coming for me
to take me there."
"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities
and fireworks are becoming wearisome."
"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been
put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit
said things he did not even wish to be believed.
"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's dispatch?
You know everything."
"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, listless tone.
"What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has burnt his
boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours."
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part.
Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed
with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social
vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic
in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued
smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round
her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her
charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it
necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst
out:
"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things, but
Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us!
Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high
vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in!
Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth,
and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill
his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible
than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge
the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England
with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander'
s loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find,
and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev
get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation
of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good
of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have
promised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte
is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don't
believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian
neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny
of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!"
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been sent instead
of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia's
consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?"
"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am expecting
two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected
with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families.
He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And also the Abbe Morio.
Do you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor.
Had you heard?"
"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he
added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him,
though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit,
"is it true that the Dowager Empress 太后 wants Baron Funke to be appointed
first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor creature."
Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying
through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the baron.
Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone
else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with.
"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,"
was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an expression
of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this
occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added that
Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again
her face clouded over with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both
to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the
Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said:
"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out everyone
has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful."
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the
prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social
topics were ended and the time had come for intimate conversation- "I often
think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate
given you two such splendid children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest.
I don't like him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising
her eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them
less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I lack the
bump of paternity."
"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am dissatisfied
with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her face assumed its melancholy
expression), "he was mentioned at Her Majesty's and you were pitied...."
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting
a reply. He frowned.
"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a father
could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte
is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only
difference between them." He said this smiling in a way more natural and
animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed
something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.
"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father
there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna Pavlovna, looking
up pensively.
"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children
are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain
it to myself. It can't be helped!"
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture.
Anna Pavlovna meditated.
"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" she asked.
"They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don't feel
that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little person who is very unhappy
with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."
Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception
befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that
he was considering this information.
"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current
of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year?
And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five years, if he goes
on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what we fathers have to put up
with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"
"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the
well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the late
Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very clever but
eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother;
I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp
of Kutuzov's 知道庫圖佐夫嗎 and will be here tonight."
"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pavlovna's
hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange that affair for
me and I shall always be your most devoted slave- slafe with an f, as a
village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family
and that's all I want."
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the maid
of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay
back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise, young Bolkonski'
s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall
be on your family's behalf that I'll start my apprenticeship as old maid."
1) 生詞自查。
2) 作者介紹﹕Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (known in the Anglosphere as Leo Tolstoy)
(September 9, 1828 -- November 20, 1910) was a Russian writer who primarily
wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays.
His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina,
are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle
of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's
greatest novelists.
3) 小說介紹﹕War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy,
first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one
of the most important works of world literature. It is considered Tolstoy's
finest literary achievement, along with his other major prose work Anna
Karenina (1873 --1877).
War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events surrounding the French
invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society,
as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. Portions
of an earlier version of the novel, then known as The Year 1805,[4] were
serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867.
The novel was first published in its entirety in 1869.
4) 托爾斯泰當然是世界名作家。其“戰爭與和平”一書也屬世界名著。一般這種書
的英文翻譯是值得作為泛讀材料而一讀的。
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
