百年孤独翻译

One Hundred Years of Solitude MANY YEARS LATER as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades' magical irons. "Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: "It won't work for that." But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. "Very soon well have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house," her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit fifteenth-century armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio
Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck.
In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm’s length away.“Science has eliminated distance,?Melquíades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.?A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun’s rays. Jos?Arcadio Buendía, who had still not been consoled for the failure of big magnets, conceived the idea of using that invention as a weapon of war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him, but he finally accepted the two magnetized ingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifying glass. ?rsula wept in consternation. That money was from a chest of gold coins that her father had put together ova an entire life of privation and that she had buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. Jos?Arcadio Buendía made no at. tempt to console her, completely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attempt to show the effects of the glass on enemy troops, he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun’s rays and suffered burns which turned into sores that took a long time to heal. Over the protests of his wife, who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention, at one point he was ready to set the house on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction. He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory sketches; by a messenger who crossed the mountains, got lost in measureless swamps, forded stormy rivers, and was on the point of perishing under the lash of despair, plague, and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by the mules that carried the mail. In spite of the fact that
a trip to the capital was little less than impossible at that time, Jos?Arcadio Buendía promised to undertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put on some practical demonstrations of his invention for the military authorities and could train them himself in the complicated art of solar war. For several years he waited for an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned to Melquíades the failure of his project and the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof of his honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifying glass, and he left him in addition some Portuguese maps and several instruments of navigation. In his own handwriting he set down a concise synthesis of the studies by Monk Hermann. which he left Jos?Arcadio so that he would be able to make use of the astrolabe, the compass, and the sextant. Jos?Arcadio Buendía spent the long months of the rainy season shut up in a small room that he had built in the rear of the house so that no one would distur
b his experiments.
译文：
多年以后，面对行刑队，奥雷里亚诺·布恩迪亚上校将会回想起父亲带他见识冰块的那个遥远的下午。

那时的马孔多是一个二十几户人家的村落，泥巴和芦苇盖成的屋子沿河岸排开，湍急的河水清澈见底，河床里卵石洁白光滑如史前巨蛋。

世界新生伊始，许多事物还没有名字，提到的时候尚需用手指指点点。

每年三月前后，一家衣衫褴褛的吉普赛人都会来到村边扎下帐篷，击鼓鸣笛，在喧腾欢闹中介绍新进的发明。

最初他们带来了磁石。

一个身形肥大的吉普赛人，胡须蓬乱，手如雀爪，自称梅尔基亚德斯，当众进行了一场可惊可怖的展示，号称是出自马其顿诸位炼金大师之手的第八大奇迹。

他拖着两块金属锭走家串户，引发的景象是所有人目瞪口呆：铁锅、铁盆、铁钳、小铁炉纷纷跌落，木板因钉子绝望挣扎、螺丝奋力挣脱而嘎吱作响，甚至
连那些丢失多日的物件也在久寻不见的地方出现，一窝蜂的追随在梅尔基亚德斯的魔铁后面。

“万物皆有灵，”吉普赛人用嘶哑的嗓音宣告，”只需唤起他们的灵性。

”何塞·阿尔卡蒂奥·布恩迪亚天马行空的想象一向超出大自然的创造，甚至超越了奇迹和魔法，他想到可以利用这个无用的发明来挖掘地下黄金。

梅尔基亚德斯是个诚实的人，当时就提醒他：“干不了这个。

”然而那时的何塞·阿尔卡蒂奥·布恩迪亚对吉吉普赛人的诚实尚缺乏信任，仍然那一头骡子和一对山羊换了那两块磁铁。

他的妻子乌尔苏拉·伊瓜兰本指望着靠这些牲口扩展微薄的家业，却没能拦住他。

“很快我们的金子就会多到能铺地了。

”她丈夫回答。

此后的几个月他费尽心力想要证实自己的猜想。

他拖着两块铁锭，口中念着梅尔基亚德斯的咒语，勘测那片地区的每一寸土地，连河床底也不曾放过。

唯一的挖掘成果是一副十五世纪锈迹斑斑的盔甲，敲击之下发出空洞的回声，好像塞满石块的大葫芦。

何塞·阿尔卡蒂奥·布恩迪亚和一起探险的四个男人将盔甲成功拆卸之后，发现里面有益具已经钙化的骷髅，骷髅的颈子上挂着铜质的圣物盒，盒里有一缕女人的头发。

三月里，吉普赛人又来了。

这次带来一架望远镜和一台足有鼓面大小的放大镜，展现时声称是阿姆斯特丹犹太人的最新发明。

他们让一个吉普赛女人坐在村子一头，将望远镜安在帐篷入口。

花上五个里亚尔，人们就可以凑到望远镜后，看到那个吉普赛女人在眼前出现，仿佛触手可及。

“科学消除了距离。

”梅尔基亚德斯说，“用不了多久，人们不出家门就能看到世界上任何地方发生的事情。

”一个烈日言言
的中午，他们用那台巨型发大镜做了一次惊人的演示：把一堆干草铺在街道中央，然后通过聚焦阳光点燃。

尚未从磁铁实验的失利中平复的何塞·阿尔卡蒂奥·布恩迪亚，有萌生了将这一发明应用于战争的想法。

梅尔基亚德斯再次试图让他打消念头，但最后还是接受了两块磁铁家三块殖民地金币，将放大镜换给了他。

乌尔苏拉难过的哭了。

那些钱是从她父亲一辈子省吃俭用攒下的一匣金币中拿出来的，她本来一直埋在床下，以科学家的忘我精神全心投入战术实验，甚至不惜以身犯险。

为了验证放大镜对敌军产生的效果，他亲自待到阳光的焦点下，结果身体被灼烧后溃烂，挨了很长时间才痊愈。

妻子对如此危险的发明心生恐惧而提出抗议，但他全然不顾，险些把家里的房子点燃。

他久久呆在房间里，计算新武器的战略威力，写出了一本解说无比清晰、说服力无可抗拒的手册。

他把该手册连同多种试验记录和多幅示意图一起寄给当局，承担这一使命的信使翻越山脉，迷失于无边的沼泽，穿过湍急的河水，遭受猛兽的袭击、绝望情绪和瘟疫的打击险些丧命，最后终于找到了邮政骡队途径的驿道。

虽然当时远赴首都不太可能，何塞·阿尔卡蒂奥·布恩迪亚任然表示，只要政府一声令下他立刻出发，为军方实地演示他的发明，并亲自传授阳光战的精密战术。

他等待回复多年，最终厌倦了等待，到梅尔基亚德斯面前哀叹自己的挫折。

于是那个吉普赛人做出了足以显明其诚实的举动：收回放大镜，把那三枚多普龙还给他，还留下一些葡萄牙人的地图和多种航海仪器。

梅尔吉亚德斯亲笔写了一份赫尔曼修士的研究成果提要给他，教他如何使用星盘、罗盘和六分仪。

为了确保不受打扰地进行实
验，何塞·阿尔克蒂奥·布恩迪亚在宅院深处盖了意见小屋，整个漫长的雨季都把自己关在屋中。