许多在场的人断言,他们在那个不幸的牧师的胸前看到了一个嵌在肉里的红字,与海丝特·白兰所佩戴的十分相似。至于其来源,则有着种种解释,当然都是些臆测。一些人一日咬定,丁梅斯代尔牧师先生自从海丝特·白兰戴上那耻辱的徽记的第一天开始,就进行他的苦修,随后一直用各色各样的劳而无功的方法,对自己施加骇人的折磨。另一些人则争诊说,那烙印是经过很长时间之后,由那个有法力的巫师老罗杰·齐灵渥斯,靠着魔法和毒剂的力量,才把它显示出来的。还有一些人是最能理解牧师的特殊的敏感和他的精神对肉体的奇妙作用的,他们悄悄提出看法,认为那可怕的象征是悔恨的牙齿从内心向外不停地咬啮的结果,最后才由这个有形的字母宣告了上天的可怕的裁决。读者可以从这几种说法中自行选择。关于这件怪事,我们所能掌握的情况已经全都披露了,既然这一任务已经完成,而长时间的思考已在我们的头脑中印下了并非我们所愿的清晰印象,我们倒很高兴把这深深的印记抹掉。
It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character; when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.
【英美文化:《红字》第二十四章】相关文章:
★ 精选英语美文阅读:人们在Facebook上做的十大最蠢的事
★ 英美文化差异一
★ 英美文化差异二
最新
2016-11-11
2016-11-02
2016-11-01
2016-11-01
2016-11-01
2016-10-28