-
Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the
father of Huck Finn's idyllic cruise
through eternal boyhood and Tom
Sawyer's endless summer of freedom and
adventure. In-deed, this nation's best-
loved author was every bit as ad-venturous,
patriotic, romantic, and humorous as
anyone has ever imagined. I found another
Twain as well
–
one who grew cynical, bitter, saddened by the
profound personal
tragedies life dealt
him, a man who became obsessed with the frailties
of the human
race, who saw clearly
ahead a black wall of night.
在大多数美国人的心
目中，马克?<
/p>
吐温是位伟大作家，他描写了哈克?费恩永恒的童年时代中充满诗情画意的旅程和汤姆
?索亚在
漫长的夏日里自由自在历险探奇
的故事。的确，这位美国最受人喜爱的作家的
探索精神、爱国热情、浪漫
气质及幽默笔调都达到了登峰造极的程度。
但我发现还有
另一个不同的马克?吐温——一个由于深受人生悲
剧的打击而变得愤世嫉俗、尖酸刻
薄的马克
?吐温，一个为人类品质上的弱点而忧心忡忡、明显地看到前途
是一片黑暗的
人。
Tramp printer, river pilot ,
Confederate guerrilla, prospector, starry-eyed
optimist,
acid-tongued cynic: The man
who became Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne
Clemens and he ranged across the nation
for more than a third of his life, digesting
the new American experience before
sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer.
He adopted his pen name from the cry
heard in his steamboat days, signaling two
fathoms (12 feet) of water -- a
navigable depth. His popularity is attested by the
fact
that more than a score of his
books remain in print, and translations are still
read
around the world.
印刷工、领航员、邦联游击队员、淘金者、耽于幻想的乐天派、
语
言尖刻的讽刺家：马克?吐温原名塞缪尔?朗赫恩?克莱门斯
，他一生之中有超过三分之
一的时间浪迹美国
各地，体验着美国的新生活，尔后便以作家和演说家的身分将他所感受到的这一切介
绍给全世界。他的笔
名取自他在蒸汽船上做工时听到的报告水深为两口寻
(12 <
/p>
英尺
)
—
—意即
可以通航的信号语。他的作品中有
二十几部至今仍在印行，其
外文译本仍在世
界各地拥有读者，由此可见他的享誉程度。
The geographic core, in Twain's early
years, was the great valley of the Mississippi
River, main artery of transportation in
the young nation's heart. Keelboats
，
flatboats , and
large rafts carried the first major commerce.
Lumber, corn, tobacco,
wheat, and furs
moved downstream to the delta country; sugar,
molasses , cotton,
and whiskey traveled
north. In the 1850's, before the climax of
westward expansion,
the vast basin
drained three-quarters of the settled United
States.
在马克?吐温青年
时代，美国的地理中心是密
西西比河流域，而密
西西比河是这个年轻国家中部的交通
大动脉。龙骨船、平底船和大木筏载运着最重要的商品。木材、玉米、
烟草、小麦和
皮货通过这些运载工具顺流而下，运送到河口
三角洲地区，而砂糖、糖浆、棉花和威
士忌酒
等货物则被运送到北方。在
19
世纪
50
年代，西部领土开发高潮
到来之前，辽
阔的密西西比河流域占美国
已开发领土的四分之三。
Young
Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub
pilot on a steamboat. The
cast of
characters set before him in his new profession
was rich and varied a
cosmos . He
participated abundantly in this life, listening to
pilothouse talk of feuds ,
piracies,
lynchings ,medicine shows, and savage waterside
slums. All would resurface
in his
books, together with the colorful language that he
soaked up with a memory
that seemed
phonographic. 1857
年，少年马克?吐温作为蒸汽船上的一名小领
航员踏
人了这片天地。在这个新的工作岗位上，他接触到的是
各式各样的人物，看到的是一
个多姿多彩的大干世界。他完全地
投身到这种生活之中，经常在操舵室里听
着人们谈
论民间争斗、海盗抢劫、私刑案件、游医卖药以及河边的一些化外民居的故事。所有
这一切，连
同他那像留声机般准确可靠的记忆所吸收
的丰富多彩的语言，后来都有机
会在他的作品中得以再现。
Steamboat decks teemed not only with
the main current of pioneering humanity, but
its flotsam of hustlers, gamblers, and
thugs as well. From them all Mark Twain
gained a keen perception of the human
race, of the difference between what people
claim to be and what they really are.
His four and a half year s in the steamboat
trade marked the real beginning of his
education, and the most lasting part of it. In
later life Twain acknowledged that the
river had acquainted him with every possible
type of human nature. Those
acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing,
but he
never wrote better than when he
wrote of the people a-long the great stream.
蒸汽
船的甲板
上不仅挤满了富有开拓精神的人们，而且也载着一些娼妓、赌棍和歹徒等社
会渣滓。从
所有这些形形色色
的人身上，马克?吐温敏锐地认识了人类，
认识了人们的
言与行之间的差距。他在蒸汽船上工作的四年半时
间是他真正接受教育的开端，而且
也是最具有深远意义的教育。
到了晚年，马克?吐温还声言是密西西比河
使他了解了各
种各样的人的本性。这种生活体验对他的全部创作都起了促进作用，然而他描写得最
为成功
的还是那些密西西比河上的人物。
When railroads began drying up the
demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War
halted commerce, Mark Twain left the
river country. He tried soldiering for two
weeks with a motley band of Confederate
guerrillas who diligently avoided contact
with the enemy. Twain quit after
deciding,
man that invented retreating.
随着铁路运输的发展，社会上对汽船领航员的需求日渐
减少，而
内战的爆发又
阻碍了商业贸易的发展。这时，马克?吐温便离
开了密西西比河
流域。他在南方邦联游击队的一支杂牌队伍
<
/p>
里当了两个星期的兵。那支队伍想方设法避免与敌军交战。在确信―我比发明撤退的人
更精通撤退‖之后，
马克?吐温离开了那支队伍。
He
went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the
epidemic of gold and silver fever
in
Nevada's Washoe region. For eight months he
flirted with the colossal wealth
available to the lucky and the
persistent, and was rebuffed . Broke and
discouraged,
he accepted a job as
reporter with the Virginia City Territorial
Enterprise, to
literature's enduring
gratitude.
他乘驿站马车来到西部，
在内华达州的华苏地区受到
当时正流行的淘金热的诱
惑。同那只有既幸运而又锲而不舍的追求者才能取得的巨大
财富三心二意地打了八个月交道之后，他遭到
了失败。在破产
和灰心之余，他接受了
为弗吉尼亚市《领土开发报》当记者的工作，这一行动将获得文学
界永久的感激。
From the discouragement of his mining
failures, Mark Twain began digging his way
to regional fame as a newspaper
reporter and humorist. The instant riches of a
mining strike would not be his in the
reporting trade, but for making money, his pen
would prove mightier than his pickax.
In the spring of 1864, less than two years after
joining the Territorial Enterprise, he
boarded the stagecoach for San Francisco, then
and now a hotbed of hopeful young
writers.
自从他因淘金失败而感到心灰意冷之后，
马克?吐温便开始努力博取作为一名报社记者和幽默
作家的地区性声望。从事新闻报道
工作当然不能使他像淘金成功者一样立
成巨富，但在挣钱方面他的笔杆
却比他的锄镐
要有效得多。
1864
年春季，在他加盟《领土开发报》还不足两年之时，他又乘驿站马
车前往
旧金山，那儿在当时和现在都是有前途的年轻作家成长的摇篮。
Mark Twain honed and experimented with
his new writing muscles, but he had to
leave the city for a while because of
some scathing columns he wrote. Attacks on the
city government, concerning such issues
as mistreatment of Chinese, so angered
officials that he fled to the
goldfields in the Sacramento Valley. His
descriptions of
the rough-country
settlers there ring familiarly in modern world
accustomed to trend
setting on the West
Coast.
–
for all the slow,
sleepy,
sluggish-brained sloths stayed
at home... It was that population that gave to
California a name for getting up
astounding enterprises and rushing them through
with a magnificent dash and daring and
a recklessness of cost or consequences,
which she bears unto this day
–
and when she projects a
new surprise, the grave
world smiles as
usual, and says 'Well, that is California all
over.
马克?吐温磨炼并试验
了他的新笔力，但他却因写
了一些尖锐的评论文章而被迫暂时离开这座城市。他围绕
着虐
待华人等一类问题对市政府提出的尖锐批评惹得一些官员大为恼火，因之他只好
逃到萨克
拉门托山谷
的金矿区暂避风头。他对那儿的拓荒者们的描写使
西海岸地区富
有创新精神的现代人倍感亲切。―这儿的人
们真是了不起——因为那些笨手笨脚、无
精打彩、呆头呆脑的懒汉都
呆在家里……正是那些人们为加利福
尼亚赢得了这样的声
誉：当他们着手进行一项宏伟的事业时，他们会不计代价或风险而以一种豪迈的气概
和闯劲勇往直前，一千到底。加利福尼亚人至今仍保持着这样的声誉，
因而，每当他
们发起一项新的惊天
动
地的壮举时，那些素来稳重的人便会像往常一样微笑着说：
?
看
吧，这完全是加利福尼亚的风格‘。‖
'
among notations about the
weather and the tedious mining-camp meals lies an
entry
noting a story he had heard that
day
–
an entry that would
determine his course
forever:
–
bet stranger $$50
–
stranger had no frog,
and C. got him one
–
in the meantime stranger
filled C. 's frog full of shot and he
couldn't jump. The stranger's frog
won.
1864
年与
1865
年之交的那个冬天，马克?吐温是在安吉尔斯矿区度过的。在这段沉闷
< br>的日子里，他记了一
本笔记。在杂乱无章的有关天气情
况和乏味无趣的有关矿区饭食
情况的记录条目中夹着一条叙述当天听到
< br>
的一则故事的记录——这条记录决定了他一
生事业的发
展方向：―科尔曼用他的跳蛙——与陌生人赌
50
美
元——陌生人没有跳