15城市与欲望四

Cities and Desire 4.

城市与欲望4

In the center of Fedora, that gray stone metropolis, stands a metal building with a crystal globe水晶球in every room. Looking into each globe, you see a blue city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today. In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal理想的city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as it was before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe.

在灰色的石头都市费多拉的中心，矗立着一座金属建筑，建筑的每个房间都有一个水晶球。在每个水晶球里，你都会看到一个蓝色的城市，那是各种不同的费多拉的城市模型。如果不是因为这样或那样的原因，这座城市本可以是水晶球里的任何一种样子，而不是我们今天看到的模样。在每一个时代，都有人根据当时的费多拉，想象着一种让它成为理想城市的方式，但当他造微缩模型时，费多拉已经不再是以前的样子了，昨天认为可能的未来，到今天也变成了玻璃球里的玩具。

The building with the globes is now Fedora's museum: every inhabitant visits it, chooses the city that corresponds对应to his desires, contemplates沉思it, imagining his reflection倒影in the medusa水母pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up)；the view from the high canopied遮篷box along the avenue reserved保留for elephants (now banished赶走from the city)；the fun of sliding滑down the spiral螺旋形的, twisting扭曲minaret宣礼塔(which never found a pedestal from which to rise).

这栋收藏水晶球的建筑物，现在是费多拉的博物馆：每个居民都会参观它，选择符合自己愿望的城市，凝视着它，想象他在水母池塘中的倒影，假如运河没干，河水本该流这水池的；想象从沿着大象专用通道设置的高篷箱中欣赏到的美景，虽然大象现在已经被驱赶出城市了；想象沿着螺旋形的宣礼塔滑下的乐趣，虽然宣礼塔从未找到一个可以修建地方。

On the map of your empire, O Great Khan, there must be room both for the big, stone Fedora and the little Fedoras in glass globes. Not because they are all equally real, but because all are only assumptions假设. The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later, is possible no longer.

伟大的可汗啊，在你的版图上，一定有地方可以容纳大的石头城费多拉和玻璃球里的小费多拉。不是因为它们同样真实，而是因为它们都只是假设。一个包含尚未被接受，但必要时可以被接受的东西；而其他的，只是在想象中存在了一瞬间而已。