评论
打印
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with— that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
到这里为止，你一定可以明白地看到我开头所说的话是否真实了——那就是，抹香鲸和露脊鲸可说有着全然不同的头颅。那么，归纳起来说：在露脊鲸的头里，并没有大量的油源，根本没有牙骨一般的齿，也没有象抹香鲸一样的、修长的下巴颏。而在抹香鲸的嘴里，也没有那种细长帘子一般的须骨，没有大大的下唇，也没有一条舌头似的东西。再说，露脊鲸的外边有两个喷水孔，抹香鲸却只有一个。
Look your last now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following.
那么，趁它们现在还摆在一起的时候，请你最后再望一望这两只包扎得紧紧密密的森严的头颅吧，因为一只就要给毫无标记地抛进海里，另一只，不多久也要跟着下去了。
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
你可看到那条抹香鲸的表情吗？它活着也是这副模样，只不过前额上的几条比较长的皱纹，现在似乎已经消失了。我认为它那昂阔的天庭，就完全具有一种似大草原的恬静情调，天生就是一副视死如归的气概。可是，再看一看另一只头的表情吧。看它那片不幸给船舷撞扁了因而紧闭着嘴的惊人的下唇吧，这整副嘴脸可不象是表示出一种临死不屈的巨大决心吗？我认定这条露脊鲸原来一定是个禁欲家；那条抹香鲸一定是个柏拉图主义者，它在晚年也许已把斯宾诺莎收做徒弟了。
