2007-6-3 11:43
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是收在Le Guin << The Wind's Twelve Quarters >> “风的十二个方向”短篇故事集中的文章，获得过1974 年雨果奖呢，感谢翻译~~x8{9b!QM*~ Z)f0^ F
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With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by$t9m.^;bxiM
the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted
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walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions
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moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry|M ?[ y%|%w
women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong
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and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls+_$WS'v7Q$j B
rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing.
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All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green FieldsVN mEj2c
boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restivebl0c{P'Q
horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamersx0D\l:~ tyQ
of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited,-kMh@)K F
the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the
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mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the
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Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just dk8DT4Fd%jM7_
enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad
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green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a
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cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great
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joyous clanging of the bells.H(G9Fw;J)k_i
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Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
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They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All1t2xiT @:R$s+`*f.Vl
smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a J)HH t&W
description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble5BF"A
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knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or
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keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were
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singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the
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advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, nobleT }q(f\:X+d
savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by] `@jN[
pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil%F_h&w4l~
interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If youTI#e^ s
can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose
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hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of|T b*F%}4[%a
joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were,fut/N4c Qk
in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I
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could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and
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far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to
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the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or
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helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is
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based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In \ j'_;eo/[(U w
the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they~ RkF i:Y7T
could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet2N"r's&Tz8q#YN
invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it
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doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to
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Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train
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station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But4j EY#z;G
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even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If0F-w
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so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue
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beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or
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stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would beD|
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better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful3UDG
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nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the z1~ p&qC ~;y
flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be
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proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and~U!qQ"m^S
looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first\6KSc*Gn4K2S!t:|
there were not drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the
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ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours4Fp9u-DQ#]
a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as excitingv I(v8uBj
the pleasure of sex beyond belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What
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else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without
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clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is
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fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outerc"Y qs&qZ5o
enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's
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summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really don't \7}ljg1|VY
think many of them need to take drooz.UFUa
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Most of the procession have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red andOo ~fLM ]
blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple DGb)wB$u$f]
of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group
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around the starting line of the course. An old women, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and G+D { S2m*L B wS
tall young men where her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing(J
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on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and
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never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune.2[[ C9[%X$Dk
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He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.7CL;wa%\mh@
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As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line:+^#M3] jc7S:c#nD
imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced,
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the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope...." They
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begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the*\(pQWo0K
wind. The Festival of Summer has begun. h3R"X9Z3T&{
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Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.PX#O g.{4L3I
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In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious
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private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the
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boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of
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mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, asVdB*T'n'K2B
cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the7}i9U/|4zCs#B$P
room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps
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it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and
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occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and thesyWF9V&f-O6B
two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there;
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and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that
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sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a+J EHm3gr_a6]
person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never
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come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is
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locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool
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room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out./[7OV7T!U
I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only
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makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; u w s
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its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass off
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festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.R7n C q2E*?*U
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They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know
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it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand)~&V8ZU^
that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of
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their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, k3P.\E0W
depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.{%u%d,y)CF R2~
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This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of6?6k(u7F b0GO
understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or9JHw+S.R'K1mx
comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are%\K+b*h:F-}_X
always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel
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anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is7^p I'FO.])l
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nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and9k{ W0A;{
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comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and2z3Q#F? i ]#[-q"gsh
delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of1_,{Y1ST9AV
every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of theOJ}`"]pQ#r:?
happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.)Ih7m:eFt!M
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The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.
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Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terriblex"`+V
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paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could
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be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little
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more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits
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are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls
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about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when
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they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of theirm
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generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.
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Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It isw+Z}/v-t.Nj9j
the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the3w | ]'l2yf
poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children.5Z2V U4F:FYbo7@ I
They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make noN2G9HP@ ^&}1[
joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
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Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.
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At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, {[ Fu,Y I
go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These"N%EpHP*G![
people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of k cC6B7z {
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Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or sy
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girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows,)gb;| I Oz
and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They L*uPFWo
leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a placexRM p7n
even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not
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exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.