E72 瞿塘迤逦尽，巫峡峥嵘起

E72 瞿塘迤逦尽，巫峡峥嵘起

课程导读

在上节课中，我们跟随苏东坡的行船，见识到了三峡中的奇谈异闻。一路顺江而下，既有感于孤蓬茅屋，亦惊叹于山川险峻。苏东坡诗兴大发，作诗描写道：“入峡初无路，连山忽似龛。萦纡收浩渺，蹙缩作渊潭。”今天这节课，他们一行就将进入第二段惊险之地——巫峡，在这里，苏东坡将领略怎样壮美的景色？为什么他认为传说中的“巫山云雨”，只是一段无稽之谈呢？

英文原文

Now and then they sailed past lone cottages, and saw, silhouetted high up against the sky, some country lads cutting wood.

The bare huts of the cottagers bore witness to their extreme poverty; their roofs were made of wooden boards, without tiles.

As Su was reflecting on the toil of human life, his attention was arrested by a gray falcon circling at ease and in freedom in the sky without a thought for the morrow, and he wondered whether the honors and emoluments of office were worth the fetters of a civilized life.

The falcon became a symbol of the emancipated human spirit.

Now they entered the famous Wu Gorges, a stretch of fifty miles.

Here the mountains rose in height, the cliffs closed in, and the river narrowed.

The daylight changed into the dusk of an eternal dawn.

Gazing up from the boat, the travelers could see only a tiny ribbon of blue which was the sky.

Only at high noon could they see the sun for a moment, or at night only get a glimpse of the moon when it was at its zenith.

Strange monoliths rose straight from the banks, while the peaks were usually hidden in clouds.

As the clouds, driven by the high winds, constantly shifted and changed, the peaks at the awe-inspiring heights changed their shapes also, making a moving picture beyond the power of portrayal by artists.

One of these peaks, the Fairy Girl, had the shape of a nude female form and had become the most famous one of the twelve since a poet of the third century B.C. celebrated it in a passionate, imaginative poem.

It was clear that here up on the mountaintops where the heaven and the earth met in an eternal interplay of winds and clouds, the yang and the yin, or the male and the female, principles had achieved a union, and today the "rains and clouds of the Wu Mountains" remain a literary euphemism for sexual union.

The air itself seemed filled with fairies and sprites frolicking in the clouds.

For a moment, Su Tungpo's young rationalism asserted itself.

The legends carried a logical contradiction.

"People are only little children. They like to talk about spirits and ghosts," he said.

"The ancient tale of Ch'u is pure fiction. The fairies do not have a sex life."