内河航程 英文版 An Inland Voyage
罗伯特.路易斯.史蒂文森 Robert Louis Stevenson
CHANGED TIMES
There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off ourjourney; and from that time forth they lie very densely in my note-book. As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it took us nearby people's doors, and we could hold a conversation with natives inthe riparian fields. But now that it had grown so wide, the lifealong shore passed us by at a distance. It was the same differenceas between a great public highway and a country by-path thatwanders in and out of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, wherenobody troubled us with questions; we had floated into civilisedlife, where people pass without salutation. In sparsely inhabitedplaces, we make all we can of each encounter; but when it comes toa city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak unless we havetrodden on a man's toes. In these waters we were no longer strangebirds, and nobody supposed we had travelled farther than from thelast town. I remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, forinstance, how we met dozens of pleasure-boats outing it for theafternoon, and there was nothing to distinguish the true voyagerfrom the amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail.The company in one boat actually thought they recognised me for aneighbour. Was there ever anything more wounding? All the romancehad come down to that. Now, on the upper Oise, where nothingsailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoeists could notbe thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and picturesqueintruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of light andpassing intimacy all along our route. There is nothing but tit-for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult totrace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there hasnever yet been a settling-day since things were. You getentertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. As long as wewere a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed like aquack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of amusement in return;but as soon as we sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom we metwere similarly disenchanted. And here is one reason of a dozen,why the world is dull to dull persons.
In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, andthat quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivifyingeffect, and shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when theriver no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with aneven, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiledupon us day after day without variety, we began to slip into thatgolden doze of the mind which follows upon much exercise in theopen air. I have stupefied myself in this way more than once;indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never had it to the samedegree as when paddling down the Oise. It was the apotheosis ofstupidity.
We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes when I found a new paper, Itook a particular pleasure in reading a single number of thecurrent novel; but I never could bear more than three instalments;and even the second was a disappointment. As soon as the talebecame in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only asingle scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half ascene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream,had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw of the novel,the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. But for the mostpart, as I said, we neither of us read anything in the world, andemployed the very little while we were awake between bed and dinnerin poring upon maps. I have always been fond of maps, and canvoyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The names ofplaces are singularly inviting; the contour of coasts and rivers isenthralling to the eye; and to hit, in a map, upon some place youhave heard of before, makes history a new possession. But wethumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the blankest unconcern.We cared not a fraction for this place or that. We stared at thesheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the names oftowns or villages to forget them again at once. We had no romancein the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. If you had takenthe maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is afair bet whether we might not have continued to study the tablewith the same delight.
About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. Ithink I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in imaginationupon this or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before wegot in for the night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance.Sometimes we paddled alongside for a while and whetted each otherwith gastronomical fancies as we went. Cake and sherry, a homelyrejection, but not within reach upon the Oise, trotted through myhead for many a mile; and once, as we were approaching Verberie,the Cigarette brought my heart into my mouth by the suggestion ofoyster-patties and Sauterne.
I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played inlife by eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that wecan stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there are menwho must read something, if it were only Bradshaw's Guide. Butthere is a romance about the matter after all. Probably the tablehas more devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much moregenerally entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, as WaltWhitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that?The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To detectthe flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection thanto find beauty in the colours of the sunset.
There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which accompaniedwhat I may call the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, ofmy abstraction. What philosophers call ME and NOT-ME, EGO and NONEGO, preoccupied me whether I would or no. There was less ME andmore NOT-ME than I was accustomed to expect. I looked on uponsomebody else, who managed the paddling; I was aware of somebodyelse's feet against the stretcher; my own body seemed to have nomore intimate relation to me than the canoe, or the river, or theriver banks. Nor this alone: something inside my mind, a part ofmy brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegianceand set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did thepaddling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner ofmyself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts presentedthemselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainlysome one else's; and I considered them like a part of thelandscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvanaas would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, I makethe Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an agreeable state, notvery consistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly profitable in amoney point of view, but very calm, golden, and incurious, and onethat sets a man superior to alarms. It may be best figured bysupposing yourself to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoyit. I have a notion that open-air labourers must spend a largeportion of their days in this ecstatic stupor, which explains theirhigh composure and endurance. A pity to go to the expense oflaudanum, when here is a better paradise for nothing!
This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take it allin all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. Indeed,it lies so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair ofgetting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacentidiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in asunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up,from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through arolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle inthe water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when apiece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, andsometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleasedconsideration;--and all the time, with the river running and theshores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my strokes andforgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.