Meditation on the Moon By Aldous Huxley 月之冥想 阿道司·赫胥黎
Outside my window the night is struggling to wake; in the moonlight, the blinded garden dreams so vividly of its lost colors. The white-washed wall is brilliant against the dark-blue sky. The white walls of the house coldly reverberate the lunar radiance. The moon is full. 窗外的夜正努力地醒来。月光下朦胧的花园栩栩如生地梦想着自己白日的光彩。粉白的墙在深蓝色天空的衬托下泛着亮光,冷冷地反射着月亮的清辉。满月高照。 The moon is a stone; but it is a highly numinous stone. Or, to be more precise, it is a stone about which and because of which men and women have numinous feelings. Thus, there is a soft moonlight that can give us the peace that passes understanding. There is a moonlight that inspires a kind of awe. There is a cold and austere moonlight that tells the soul of its loneliness and desperate isolation, its insignificance or its uncleanness. There is an amorous moonlight prompting to love - to love not only for an individual but sometimes even for the whole universe. But the moon shines on the body as well as, through the windows of the eyes, within the mind. It affects the soul directly; but it can affect it also by obscure and circuitous ways - through the blood. 月亮仅是块石头,一块神秘的石头。或更确切地说, 正是因为它,人间的男男女女才有了种种神秘的感情。因此,时有柔和的月光给我们带来不可思议的平静。时有神秘的月光使我们产生不可名状的敬畏。时有冷峻的月光诉说着灵魂的孤苦伶仃,微不足道,或是肮脏龌龊。时有多情的月光唤发爱慕之情——不仅是对个体的偏爱,有时甚至是对宇宙苍生的博爱。月光不仅照射到人们身上,有时透过眼睛的窗户照彻心灵。它不仅直接影响人们,还可以迂回曲折地通过血液影响着人们的灵魂。 Half the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the physiological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughers and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity. 有一半人类明显地受月亮运动的影响。有据为证,不仅女人,而且男人的生理和心理活动都受到月亮变化的影响。我们的精神世界也由此神秘地随之时起时落。时常有无缘无故的兴奋,痛苦,欢笑和悔恨。这些情绪突然而又奇特,交替变换,就像多变的天气。这是由血液和体液造成的。血液和体液除了遵从其它主人之外,还听命与变化无常的月亮。直接通过眼睛或借助黑色的血液之渠触及灵魂,月亮就是一个神。 Even if we think of the moon as only a stone, we shall find its very stoniness potentially a numen. A stone gone cold. An airless, waterless stone and the prophetic image of our own earth when, some few million years from now, the senescent sun shall have lost its present fostering power.... And so on. This passage could easily be prolonged-a Study in Purple. But I forbear. Let every reader lay on as much of the royal rhetorical color as he finds to his taste. Anyhow, purple or no purple, there the stone is-stony. You cannot think about it for long without finding, yourself invaded by one or other of several essentially numinous sentiments. These sentiments belong to one or other of two contrasted and complementary groups Sentiments of Human Insignificance Sentiments of Human Greatness.