引用文章紐約圖書館 – 凱爾派（The Kelpies）和童書展覽

上次逛到圖書館對面的四十一街，發現每隔一段距離地面就鑲嵌了一塊刻了名家金句的銅牌。走到公園大道（Park Avenue）的轉角，才知道這段路有個別稱叫「圖書館之道」（Library Way）。

在改裝以前，41街是一條不受注意的窄街，有點像面對42街的那些大樓的後巷，主要拿來送貨和停車。安裝銅牌之後，配合商店的改裝和對面的圖書館正門，使這裡成為有文藝氣息的散步好地方；附近的旅館和餐廳也為41街增添熱鬧氣息。

1996年，圖書館、大中央車站（Grand Central）、和紐約客雜誌（The New Yorker）成立一個委員會，由文學專家和圖書館員從重要的文學作品中選出重要或有影響力的字句。然後他們請雕刻家格瑞哥‧樂非（Gregg LeFevre）依據每句話的內容和作家的風格，設計、雕刻獨特的銅牌，安裝在第五大道和公園大道之間的41街地面。1998年完工並獲獎。2003年，紐約市長彭博和市議會把這段路正式命名為「圖書館之道」。

The knowledge of different literatures frees one from the tyranny of a few. (認識不同的文學讓人免於受少數的宰制 - 荷西‧瑪弟（關於王爾德）。

José Martí (1853-1895) “On Oscar Wilde”

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

（偉大的書讓你經歷很多事，看到最後精疲力盡。在閱讀中你像過了幾輩子）。

William Styron (1925-2006) "Writers at Work"

All things are words of some strange tongue, in thrall
To Someone, Something, who both day and night
Proceeds in endless gibberish to write
The history of the world. In that dark scrawl

Rome is set down, and Carthage, I, you, all,
And this my being which escapes me quite,
My anguished life that's cryptic, recondite,
And garbled in the tongues of Babel's fall.

對某一個人，所有事物都成了
某種奇特的像奴隸的語言。他不分晝夜
單調的、不停地寫著
潦草的寫下這世界的歷史

羅馬倒了，還有迦太基，我，你，所有人（也將如此）
這就是我，完全逃避自己
我受折磨，難解的，微不足道的生命
用古老神秘的語言曲解  

Jose Luis Borges (1899-1986) “Compass” (translated by Richard Wilbur)

豪爾赫·路易斯·波赫士（阿根廷作家、詩人、翻譯家），引用作品：“羅盤”

Truth exists. Only falsehood has to be invented. （真理（永遠）存在，只有虛偽需要創造）。

George Braque (1882-1963) Le Jour et La Nuit

喬治·布拉克（Georges Braque）為法國立體主義畫家與雕塑家。他與巴伯羅·畢卡索在20世紀初所創立的立體主義運動（ Cubism），深深影響了後來美術史的發展，「立體主義」一名也由其作品而來。

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered. （每件事都只為了一天，不論是記得的還是被記得的）。

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (A.D. 121-180) Meditations

Those of you, lost and yearning to be free,
who hear these words, take heart from me.
I was once in as many drafts as you.
But briefly, essentially, here I am...
Who touches this poem touches a woman.

你們中間迷失而盼望獲得自由的
聽到這些話，接受我的心意
我也曾經像你們一樣迷失
但重要的是，我現在在這裡
是一首詩感動了一個女人

Julia Alvarez (1950- ) “33” 

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

一個名字讓你寫下一句話，接著寫出段落，成了一本書。 然後你就像我一樣有這麼多麻煩！

Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee (1918-1994)
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

有出版自由，人人可以閱讀的地方，所有人都是安全的。  – 湯瑪士‧傑佛遜(美國第三任總統，獨立宣言起草人)

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) “Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey”

The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. 

在平庸的傳統和偏見上空遨遊的鳥必須有堅強的翅膀。

Kate Chopin (1851-1904) The Awakening

For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction—it is not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. There are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time.

書可以分為兩類：盛行一時的和流芳百世的書。其中的分別不僅是質量。不好的的書無法持久，好書也不行。差別在於種類。有些書只是一時的好，有些永遠都好。有些只是當時不好，有些永遠都不好。

John Ruskin (1819-1900) Sesame and Lilies

...the reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries— （讀一本好書像和過去幾世紀最聰明的人進行一次對話  – 狄卡爾）

René Descartes (1596-1650) Discourse on the Method

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) From “When You are Old” 

葉慈: "當妳年老時"

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

“我不知道那一樣更讓人煩惱，文學還是雞？”

E.B. White (1899-1985) “Letter to James Thurber”

【註】：寫《夏綠蒂的網》（Charlotte's Web）的作家懷特在緬因州有一處農舍，他在那裡養了一些雞。養雞事業起先很成功，後來不知甚麼緣故，雞蛋產量越來越少，雞也開始生病。他寫信給朋友時，忍不住發牢騷：“我不知道那一樣更讓人煩惱，文學還是雞？” 沒想到成了名言。 （Literature and Chickens）

If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. （如果你不能辨別真實的自己，就不能分辨別人的真假  – 維吉尼亞‧吳爾芙）。

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) “The Leaning Tower”

I love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser's golden days,
Arcadian Sidney's silver phrase,
Sprinkling on our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

我愛古詩的旋律
它輕輕融開久遠的年代
史賓賽的黃金歲月
席德尼的銀亮詩句
在我們這炙熱的時代灑上新鮮的朝露

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) “Proem”

【註】Spenser：Edmund Spenser (愛德蒙·史賓賽1553-1598)，英國桂冠詩人。Arcadian Sidney：Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586） 伊麗莎白一世時的作家；主要作品是The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia，影響了許多後代知名作家，包括莎士比亞。

Lucille Clifton (1936- ) “why some people be mad at me sometimes”

Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

自然和藝術是不同的兩回事，他們不可能一樣。透過藝術，我們表達出自然無法顯現的想法。 (畢卡索論藝術)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views

A word is dead  一句話
When it is said,  一說出來就死了，
Some say.  有人這樣說

I say it just  我的說法是
Begins to live  從那天起
That day. 那句話活起來了

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) “1212”

When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good persons is but knowledge in the making.

當(一個社會中)有學習的欲望時，必定會有許多爭議，許多著作，許多意見。眾人的意見不過是知識形成的過程。

John Milton (1608-1674) Areopagitica

約翰米爾頓: "論出版自由"

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) “Song of Winnie”

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I want everybody to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world full of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in.

(我要每個人都聰明，而且聰明到頂。住在一個充滿無知人的世界太危險了)。

Garson Kanin (1912-1999) Born Yesterday

【註】加爾森‧卡寧是一位作家，編劇，和導演。Born Yesterday 是他編寫、導演的舞台劇，演出很成功。他又寫成電影劇本，1950年拍攝完成，由茱蒂·霍利德和威廉·荷頓主演。獲得奧斯卡獎最佳女主演獎。中文片名是《絳帳海堂春》。

People work much in order to secure the future; I gave my mind much work and trouble, trying to secure the past.

Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) Shadows on the Grass

In the reading room in the New York Public Library
All sorts of souls were bent over silence reading the past,
Or the present, or maybe it was the future, patrons
Devoted to silence and the flowering of the imagination...

Richard Eberhart (1904-2005) “Reading Room: The New York Public Library”

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
“Old Newsman Writes” Esquire, December 1934

There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings
All day everyday.

There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew
You would know why.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) “Words Like Freedom”

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.  （淺嚐、吞嚥、咀嚼、消化。培根給閱讀作了分類。 – 謝謝Ellen Chou 雨僧 的解釋）

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) “Of Studies”

The rose fades
and is renewed again
by its seed, naturally
but where

save in the poem
shall it go
to suffer no diminution
of its splendor.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) “Poem”

Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) The Plague

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I chose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that's all.”

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Through the Looking Glass: And What Alice Found There

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) “In My Craft or Sullen Art”

(Silence.)

Vladimer: What do they say?
Estragon: They talk about their lives.
Vladimer: To have lived is not enough for them.
Estragon: They have to talk about it.
Vladimer: To be dead is not enough for them.
Estragon: It is not sufficient.

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Waiting for Godot

...At the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture.

"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing.

"Camelot," said he.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) “The Speed of Darkness”

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Walden

Now, on my heart's page
there is no grid to guide my hand,
no character to trace,
only the moisture,
the ink blue dew
that has dripped from
the leaves.
To spread it I
can't use a pen,
I can't use a writing brush,
can only use my life's
gentlest breath
to make a single line of
marks worth puzzling over.

Gu Cheng (1956-1993) “Forever Parted: Graveyard”

作家和詩人觀察敏銳，感受性強，有些最後走上悲劇人生。上面這些作家和詩人中，至少有三位自殺：吳爾芙（Virginia Woolf），海明葳（Ernest Hemingway），和中國詩人顧城（Gu Cheng）。這樣看來，不太聰明、庸庸碌碌，有時也未嘗不好。

【後記】 除詩人顧城外，這篇文章介紹的都是美國和歐洲作家，連顧城可能也沒有多少人聽過，瀏覽率低是可以了解的。加上新的一篇《爸媽的1949》是比較讓人感興趣的題目，又有電小二推薦，風頭自然蓋過了。既然回應不多，我決定自己完成其中每句話的翻譯，算是對自己的挑戰。速度可能很慢，反正沒有誰在意，就當它是長期作業吧。   （4.18.2014）