ポール?ゴーギャン　《死の帝國(guó)》

該文本為保羅·高更去世之前的最后一封書信。

編者注：I've borrowed this "title" from the image Gauguin describes in this fragment. (我從高更在這個(gè)片段描述的景象中借來(lái)了此“標(biāo)題”。)

全文如下：

The Empire of Death

... No later than last night I dreamed I was dead and, oddly enough, it was the true instant when I was living happily.

... I have begun to think, to dream rather, about that instant when everything was absorbed, asleep, overwhelmed, in the original slumber, in potentiality. Invisible, indefinite, unobservable principles all, at that time, because of the primeval inertia of their virtuality, without one perceptible or perceiving act, without any reality, either active or passive, therefore incoherent, all of course sharing only one characteristic, that of nature in its entirety but lifeless, expressionless, dissolved, reduced to nothing, engulfed in the immensiry of space which, as it was utterly formless and void, and as night and silence penetrated to its remotest depths, must have been like a nameless abyss. It was the chaos, the primeval nothingness, not of Being but of Life, which afterward is called the Empire of Death, when the life which had Howed from it returns to it.

... And in my dream an angel with white wings came to me, smiling. Behind him, an old man holding an hourglass in his hand:

"It's no use questioning me." the angel said, "I know what you are thinking... Ask the old man to lead you later to infinity and you will see what God wants to do with you and you will feel that today you are remarkably incomplete. What would the Creator's work be if it were done in but one day? God never rests."

The old man disappeared and, awaking, I raised my eyes to the heavens and saw the angel with the white wings ascending toward the stars. His long blond hair seemed to leave a trail of light in the firmament.

試譯如下：

死之帝國(guó)

… 不晚于昨夜我夢(mèng)見自己已經(jīng)死了但，甚是詭異，那卻是我活得幸福的真實(shí)瞬間。

… 我已開始思考，莫如說(shuō)幻想，在那個(gè)瞬間，一切都沉淀、沉睡、沉浸在原始的沉寂中，在可能性中。無(wú)形、未定義、不可觀測(cè)的法則全部，在那個(gè)瞬間，因?yàn)槠涮摂M性的元始慣性，不可感知或被感知，沒有任何現(xiàn)實(shí)性，不論主動(dòng)抑或被動(dòng)，因此毫無(wú)條理，全部理所當(dāng)然地僅共有一個(gè)特征，從整體上看出于本質(zhì)，卻死寂、無(wú)情，溶解、歸還于無(wú)，消失于廣闊無(wú)垠的空間中，這片空間完全無(wú)形、徹底虛無(wú)，夜色和寂靜滲入其骨髓，一定曾是一個(gè)無(wú)名的深淵。那就是混沌，最初的虛無(wú)，不是存在的虛無(wú)，而是生命的虛無(wú)，后來(lái)稱為死之帝國(guó)，當(dāng)從其中流出的生命回歸之時(shí)。

… 在夢(mèng)中，一位白翼天使來(lái)到我身旁，微笑著。在他身后，是一個(gè)手持沙漏的老人。

“詢問(wèn)我也無(wú)濟(jì)于事?！?天使說(shuō)，“我知道你在想什么......之后讓老人帶你穿越無(wú)盡，讓你看到上帝的旨意，你會(huì)感到今天的你極為不完整。若造物主的工作只是在一天之內(nèi)完成，那還有何意義？上帝永不休息。”

老人消失了，我醒來(lái)，抬頭望向天空，看到白翼天使朝著星辰飛升，他長(zhǎng)長(zhǎng)的金發(fā)仿佛在天穹中留下了一條光的徑跡。