英語聽書《白鯨記》第867期

所屬教程:英語聽書《白鯨記》

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2019年05月04日

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Chapter 104 The Fossil Whale

第一百零四章化石鯨

From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.

大鯨那非凡的身軀，就是一個最適宜于詳盡發(fā)揮的題材。你就是想把它加以壓縮也是壓縮不了的。當然只有把它當成一種極上等的對開本才行。用不著再提它那從頭到尾的長度，也不必量它那腰圍的尺寸，只消想一想盤卷在它腹內(nèi)的那些巨大的腸子就夠了，它腹內(nèi)的那些腸子就跟盤在軍艦最底層甲板里那些粗大纜索錨鏈一模一樣。

Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behoves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea— such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered.

我既然已經(jīng)答應(yīng)來處理這種大鯨，我就該在這件工作上竭盡智能地顯一顯我的身手；既不忽略它血液里的最細小的病原菌，還要竭盡全力把它肚腹內(nèi)所盤結(jié)著的東西都給拉出來。關(guān)于它的體質(zhì)上和組織上的特點，我已經(jīng)談了許多，現(xiàn)在剩下來的就是要以一種考古學的、化石的和上古的觀點來把它加以放大、象這樣堂而皇之的名詞，如果用之于大鯨以外的任何一種生物——螞蟻或者跳蚤——也許應(yīng)該認為是夸張得太不切實際了。可是，一碰上大鯨這個題目，那可又當別論。