You know the very rowing out from the shore had in it something sweet and incredible. It was as if we were but dreaming together and might at any moment awaken5 again, countless6 miles and a thousand things apart. I rowed slowly with those clumsy Swiss oars7 that one must thrust forward, breaking the smooth crystal of the lake, and she sat sideways looking forward, saying very little and with much the same sense I think of enchantment8 and unreality. And I saw now for the first time as I watched her over my oars that her face was changed; she was graver and, I thought, stronger than the Mary I had known.
Even now I can still doubt if that boat and lake were real. And yet I remember even minute and irrelevant9 details of the day's impressions with an extraordinary and exquisite vividness. Perhaps it is that very luminous10 distinctness which distinguishes these events from the common experiences of life and puts them so above the quality of things that are ordinarily real.
We rowed slowly past a great headland and into the bay at the upper end of the water. We had not realized at first that we could row beyond the range of the hotel windows. The rock that comes out of the lake is a clear dead white when it is dry, and very faintly tinted11, but when it is wetted it lights warmly with flashes and blotches12 of color, and is seen to be full of the most exquisite and delicate veins13. It splinters vertically14 and goes up in cliffs, very high and sculptured, with a quality almost of porcelain15, that at a certain level suddenly become more rude and massive and begin to overhang. Under the cliffs the water is very deep and blue-green, and runs here and there into narrow clefts16. This place where we landed was a kind of beach left by the recession of the ice, all the rocks immediately about us were ice-worn, and the place was paved with ice-worn boulders18. Two huge bluffs19 put their foreheads together above us and hid the glacier20 from us, but one could feel the near presence of ice in the air. Out between them boiled a little torrent21, and spread into a hundred intercommunicating channels amidst the great pebbles22. And those pebbles were covered by a network of marvellously gnarled and twisted stems bearing little leaves and blossoms, a network at once very ancient and very fresh, giving a peculiar23 gentleness and richness to the Alpine24 severity that had dwarfed25 and tangled26 them. It was astounding27 that any plant could find nourishment28 among those stones. The great headland, with patches of yellowish old snow still lingering here and there upon its upper masses, had crept insensibly between us and the remote hotel and now hid it altogether. There was nothing to remind us of the world that had separated us, except that old and leaky boat we had drawn29 up upon the stones at the limpid30 water's edge.
"It is as if we had come out of life together," she whispered, giving a voice to my thought.
She sat down upon a boulder17 and I sat on a lower slab31 a yard or so away, and we looked at one another. "It's still unreal," she said.
I felt awkward and at a loss as I sat there before her, as a man unused to drawing-rooms might feel in the presence of a strange hostess.
"You are so you," I said; "so altogether my nearest thing—and so strange too, so far off, that I feel—shy....
"I'm shy," I repeated. "I feel that if I speak loudly all this will vanish...."
I looked about me. "But surely this is the most beautiful place in the whole world! Is it indeed in the world?"
"Stephen, my dear," she began presently, "what a strange thing life is! Strange! The disproportions! The things that will not fit together. The little things that eat us up, and the beautiful things that might save us and don't save us, don't seem indeed to have any meaning in regard to ordinary sensible affairs.... This beauty....
"Do you remember, Stephen, how long ago in the old park you and I talked about immortality32 and you said then you did not want to know anything of what comes after life. Even now do you want to know? You are too busy and I am not busy enough. I want to be sure, not only to know, but to know that it is so, that this life—no, not this life, but that life, is only the bleak33 twilight34 of the morning. I think death—just dead death—after the life I have had is the most impossible of ends.... You don't want—particularly? I want to passionately35. I want to live again—out of this body, Stephen, and all that it carves with it, to be free—as beautiful things are free. To be free as this is free—an exquisite clean freedom....
"I can't believe that the life of this earth is all that there is for us—or why should we ever think it strange? Why should we still find the ordinary matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do—because they aren't—us.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we suffocate36 in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't us, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive—if it is anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that will go on—go on at last to quite beautiful real things. Like this perhaps. To-day the world is beautiful indeed with the sun shining and love shining and you, my dear, so near to me.... It's so incredible that you and I must part to-day. It's as if—someone told me the sun was a little mad. It's so perfectly37 natural to be with you again...."
Her voice sank. She leant a little forward towards me. "Stephen, suppose that you and I were dead to-day. Suppose that when you imagined you were climbing yesterday, you died. Suppose that yesterday you died and that you just thought you were still climbing as you made your way to me. Perhaps you are dead up there on the mountain and I am lying dead in my room in this hotel, and this is the Great Beginning....
"Stephen, I am talking nonsense because I am so happy to be with you here...."
点击收听单词发音
1 moored | |
adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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2 vessel | |
n.船舶;容器,器皿;管,导管,血管 | |
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3 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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4 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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5 awaken | |
vi.醒,觉醒;vt.唤醒,使觉醒,唤起,激起 | |
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6 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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7 oars | |
n.桨,橹( oar的名词复数 );划手v.划(行)( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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8 enchantment | |
n.迷惑,妖术,魅力 | |
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9 irrelevant | |
adj.不恰当的,无关系的,不相干的 | |
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10 luminous | |
adj.发光的,发亮的;光明的;明白易懂的;有启发的 | |
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11 tinted | |
adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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12 blotches | |
n.(皮肤上的)红斑,疹块( blotch的名词复数 );大滴 [大片](墨水或颜色的)污渍 | |
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13 veins | |
n.纹理;矿脉( vein的名词复数 );静脉;叶脉;纹理 | |
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14 vertically | |
adv.垂直地 | |
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15 porcelain | |
n.瓷;adj.瓷的,瓷制的 | |
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16 clefts | |
n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 );裂口;cleave的过去式和过去分词;进退维谷 | |
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17 boulder | |
n.巨砾;卵石,圆石 | |
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18 boulders | |
n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 );巨砾;(受水或天气侵蚀而成的)巨石;漂砾 | |
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19 bluffs | |
恐吓( bluff的名词复数 ); 悬崖; 峭壁 | |
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20 glacier | |
n.冰川,冰河 | |
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21 torrent | |
n.激流,洪流;爆发,(话语等的)连发 | |
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22 pebbles | |
[复数]鹅卵石; 沙砾; 卵石,小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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23 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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24 alpine | |
adj.高山的;n.高山植物 | |
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25 dwarfed | |
vt.(使)显得矮小(dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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26 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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27 astounding | |
adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊,使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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28 nourishment | |
n.食物,营养品;营养情况 | |
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29 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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30 limpid | |
adj.清澈的,透明的 | |
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31 slab | |
n.平板,厚的切片;v.切成厚板,以平板盖上 | |
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32 immortality | |
n.不死,不朽 | |
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33 bleak | |
adj.(天气)阴冷的;凄凉的;暗淡的 | |
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34 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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35 passionately | |
ad.热烈地,激烈地 | |
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36 suffocate | |
vt.使窒息,使缺氧,阻碍;vi.窒息,窒息而亡,阻碍发展 | |
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37 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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