〈上教堂〉 菲利普·拉金（試譯：淺白）
一旦當我肯定四下已無動靜
我踏入去，任身後的門砰地關上。
又一間教堂：地氈、座椅、石頭
和小書冊；蓬鬆半散的花朵，剛因禮拜
而新割，現已發黃；一些銅器和物品
高放在那神聖的末處；端淨的小風琴
和着一種緊張、霉舊、難以忽視的寂靜
醞釀了天曉得多久。沒帽在身，我除下了
我的單車褲夾，以示一種窘然突兀的敬意
走上前，將手輕輕繞帶過洗禮盆
從我站立之處，堂頂看來幾乎新似的一樣──
是洗刷還是重修過了？有些人會知道：那不是我。
步上講台，我細讀了些
唬人且大字印刷的詩節，並將那句
「於此結束」，唸得遠比預期響亮。
餘音短暫竊笑。回到門邊
我在冊上簽了名，捐了一枚愛爾蘭六便士銀幣
並想到這地方實在不值得人停駐。
但我終還是停了下來：事實上我每常如此
且最後總是落得像此際般茫然無向──
不知該着眼甚麼；亦同樣不曉得，
當教堂完全因過時而廢棄，
我們還可將它遷作何用。若我們選擇保留
幾所主教座堂長年展示，並把它們的
羊皮紙、捐款盤，和聖餅盒統統鎖進櫃裏；
再將剩下的，俱免租讓予羊群和雨水寄住。
我們應避開它們，像避開不祥的地方嗎？
又或在入夜後，會否有動機不明的女人前來
好讓其孩子觸撫一塊特殊的遺石；摘掇
據云能治癌的藥草；或是在某些
風聞的夜晚，特意探看一個死人的行走？
總有某些如此或如彼的力量會傳續下去
在遊戲裏、於謎語裏，且似乎愈見隨機；
但迷信，一如信念，必須死去，
而當這種「不信」的精神亦復消逝後，我們到底
還剩下甚麼？雜草，草間的路，荊榛，扶壁，天空
一個逐星期難辨的形象，
一個愈發模糊的目的。我着實思疑，誰
會是最後，那真正意義上的最後一個，去探尋
這地方，為了其最初建造的原意；是某個
敲敲記記，且諳曉「聖壇屏」究為何物的維修人員？
一些有廢墟癖的、凡見古物即為之心癢的傢伙？
或是某類過聖誕過上癮的怪人，旨意着能一嗅
那些教袍禮帶、風琴管子和沒藥的氣味？
抑或他原是我的代表，
鬱悶，無知，曉得這幽靈般的淤泥
已然發散，但仍下意識地趨近，這片隔着
近郊灌叢的十字土地；為了它是曾
如此長久、貞定，且滿而不溢的裝載着
那些自是以來只能在分隔後，才會尋見的
事質內容──婚姻、分娩、死亡，和種種
類近的思考──就是為了這些，其空殻便如此建成了？
畢竟（儘管我全沒概念，這座古異、晦溽的穀倉
究竟有何價值）在沉默的佇立中，它令我不無舒暢──
一座嚴肅的屋子，蓋在嚴肅的大地上
在其融合的空氣中，一切我們的欲動
俱相遇，受覺識，並粧裹成命運；
而這些是永不會過時的，
事關總永遠會有人在其自身裏
驚察出一種「想變得更嚴肅」的渴望，
並隨之帶引來到了這處地方：在此，
他曾聽過，是很適合在內增長智慧的，
設若說四下已是有那麼多死者躺在周圍的話。
25/7/2022初稿
譯後記：拉金的成名作，亦恐怕是我暫時譯過最長的一首詩了。其實陳黎和張芬齡的譯本也不是差，只是略嫌語言太放鬆了點。在詩風上拉金雖說是已拋卻了「狄倫·湯瑪斯（Dylan Thomas）的華麗辭藻以及艾略特（T. S. Eliot）的玄學高姿，追求一種口語的、明快的、忠於日常生活經驗的詩語言」，但這種所謂「口語」，毋寧仍是很有法度、很頓挫分明的。故若從翻譯效果來看，私以為譯文雅一點，或更能見出其詩的骨力所在；且研煉辭意之餘，也順帶修正了一些先前陳、張譯本裏明顯錯譯，或語焉不詳的地方。（30/9/2022）
陳黎和張芬齡的譯本：（http://faculty.ndhu.edu.tw/~chenli/Larkin.htm）
Church Going
By Philip Larkin (from his 1955 collection The Less Deceived)
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new－
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
1955
Note:
Larkin said in Nov. 1964: ‘It is of course an entirely secular poem. I was a bit irritated by an American who insisted to me it was a religious poem. It isn’t religious at all. Religion surely means that the affairs of this world are under divine superveillance, and so on, and I go to some pains to point out that I don’t bother about that kind of thing, that I’m deliberately ignorant of it – “Up at the holy end”, for instance. Ah no, it’s a great religious poem; he knows better than me – trust the tale and not the teller, and all that stuff. Of course the poem is about going to church, not religion – I tried to suggest this by the title – and the union of the important stages of human life – birth, marriage and death – that going to church represents; and my own feeling that when they are dispersed into the registry office and the crematorium chapel life will become thinner in consequence. I certainly haven’t revolted against the poem. It hasn’t become a kind of “Innisfree”, or anything like that […] The poem starts by saying, you don’t really know about all this, you don’t believe in it, you don’t know what a rood-loft is – Why do you come here, why do you bother to stop and look round? The poem is seeking an answer […] I still don’t know what rood-lofts are’: FR, 22–3. (‘Trust the tale and not the teller’ is an allusion to D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, 1924, ch. 1: ‘Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.’)
From The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett, p.785
Larkin's interview in 1981: 'It came from the first time I saw a ruined church in Northern Ireland, and I’d never seen a ruined church before – discarded. It shocked me... I’m not someone who’s lost faith: I never had it... (Church Going) it’s a humanist poem, a celebration of the dignity of… well, you know what it says.' Ibid, p.785-786
Arthur Marwick, British Society since 1945 (1986), 16, estimates that in 1950 less than ten per cent of the population were (regular) churchgoers. John Osborne, Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence: A Case of Wrongful Conviction (2008), 96, catches the punning suggestion that the church is going. Ibid, p.786
