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Down the footpath from his writing shed, along the curve of the water and up the hill, you see what the poet Dylan Thomas once saw: tall birds on the “heron priested shore,” a “sea wet church the size of a snail” atop the ridge, the castle ruin to your left still “brown as owls.”
从诗人迪伦·托马斯(Dylan Thomas)写作的小屋沿小径直下，走过河流的拐弯，爬上山坡，你便能看到他当年曾目睹的景致：那高大的鸟儿，“神父般栖于岸边的鹭鸶”，山脊之上“被大海打湿的教堂如蜗牛壳大小”，左边毁弃的城堡仍然是“夜枭般的棕色”。
“Poem in October,” in which Thomas reflects on his 30th birthday, unfolds verse after verse as you walk through the landscape that made him, and that he remade in turn, culminating with a final cliff-top exclamation:
在《十月的诗》(Poem in October)中，托马斯思索自己的30岁生日，当你沿着那段造就了他，并为他重新造就的风景行走之时，这首诗便会一段段在你面前浮现，以终章对悬崖的惊叹而结束。
“O may my heart’s truth
“啊，但愿我心中的真理
still be sung
犹自被歌唱
on this high hill in a year’s turning.”
在一年的转折之期，在这高耸的山峦。”
Thomas died young, at 39, after boasting that he had downed 18 straight whiskeys (“I believe that’s the record”) in New York in 1953. On Monday, he would have turned 100. His small country, long ill at ease with its hard-living, hard-loving son who wrote in English, not in Welsh, and caricatured his roots as much as he claimed them, is celebrating perhaps its greatest poet.
托马斯1953年于纽约英年早逝，时年39岁，死前吹嘘自己连喝了18杯威士忌（“我相信这是纪录”）。星期一（10月27日——编注）是他的100周年诞辰。他的小小祖国一直为自己这位活得艰辛、爱得艰辛的儿子被视为它最伟大的诗人感到不安——他以英语写作，而非威尔士语，一边强调自己的威尔士根源，一边又对它进行讽刺夸张的描述。
Thomas has been called the James Joyce of Wales and compared to his own hero, John Keats. He wrote some of the most recognizable verse of the 20th century: “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
托马斯被称为威尔士的詹姆斯·乔伊斯(James Joyce)，亦常常与他的偶像约翰·济慈(John Keats)相提并论。他写过若干20世纪最有特色的诗句：“不要温柔地进入这美好的夜晚/怒吼，怒吼，即使光芒即将熄灭。”
Gillian Clarke, the national poet of Wales, who grew up in this part of western Wales, traces her own poetic awakening to the day she first heard Thomas read on the BBC, his voice summoning her 15-year-old self to “the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack fishboat-bobbing sea” that she too knew so well. “He takes from and gives back to the landscape and the language, until the place speaks the poetry as much as the poetry voices the landscape,” Ms. Clarke said.
威尔士国民诗人吉莉安·克拉克(Gillian Clark)也在西威尔士的这一片长大，她回忆自己对诗歌的觉醒是第一次在BBC中听到托马斯朗诵，他的声音令15岁的她想起“野李子的黑色，缓慢、黑暗，有着乌鸦般的黑色，渔船往来的大海”，她对这片海域亦是非常熟悉。“他从这片风景与这种语言中拿走了一些东西，又回馈了一些东西，直到这个地方诉说着诗歌，诗歌的声音也在风景中回响，”克拉克说。
Many here say Thomas’s poetry has been denied the recognition it deserves on teaching plans and in academic circles. The colorful stories of his drinking and womanizing — some true, some invented (often by himself) — might have contributed to a James Dean-like notoriety in the United States, where he counts two former presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, among his fans. (Mr. Carter was instrumental in winning Thomas a memorial stone, belatedly, in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, in 1982.)
很多本地人说托马斯的诗歌在学术圈和教案中没有受到应得的认可。关于他的酗酒好色有许多丰富多彩的故事，有些是真的，有些是编造的（通常是他自己编的），它们或许为他在美国赢得了詹姆斯·迪恩(James Dean)式的恶名，比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)和吉米·卡特(Jimmy Carter)两位前总统都是他的粉丝（1982年，吉米·卡特帮托马斯在威斯敏斯特教堂诗人角树立了一块迟来的纪念碑）。
But that reputation appalled many in Wales, as did Thomas’s flawless English accent. Denied the Welsh language and sent to elocution lessons by his father as a boy, Thomas was long considered too English for the Welsh and too Welsh for the English. (“He belongs to the English,” the Welsh nationalist Saunders Lewis scoffed.)
但在威尔士，托马斯的名气和他完美无瑕的英格兰口音一样，令很多人感到震惊。托马斯拒绝使用威尔士语，小时候父亲还曾让他去上过演讲课程，长久以来，威尔士人认为托马斯过于英格兰化，而英格兰人又认为他太威尔士（“他属于英格兰，”威尔士民族主义者桑德斯·刘易斯[Saunders Lewis]嘲讽说）。
Refocusing public attention on his work has been one of the aims of the centenary, said Hannah Ellis, president of the Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain and a patron of this year’s events. (The other being, no doubt, to make him the tourist attraction that Joyce has long been in Ireland. Thomas’s melancholy portrait now appears on everything from whiskey bottles to aprons.)
英国迪伦·托马斯社团的主席，以及这一年若干活动的赞助者汉娜·埃利斯(Hannah Ellis)说，百年庆典的目标之一就是令公众重新关注他的作品（毫无疑问，另一个目标是让他吸引游客，就像乔伊斯长期以来为爱尔兰吸引游客一样。托马斯忧郁的肖像如今出现在从威士忌酒瓶到围裙在内的各种东西上）。
It is a personal quest for Ms. Ellis, 36, who shares the poet’s short build and unruly locks. The daughter of Thomas’s daughter Aeronwy, she discovered her grandfather’s work only five years ago when she lost a baby and her mother, and then had a son. She found comfort in Thomas’s “timeless wisdom” about life and death and birth and God, she said. Ms. Ellis, a schoolteacher, wants his work to be taught more widely and creatively.
这是埃利斯的个人诉求，36岁的她和这位诗人一样，身材矮小，有着一头凌乱的卷发。埃利斯的母亲是托马斯的女儿艾伊洛维(Aeronwy)，五年前，艾伊洛维去世，埃利斯也失去了一个婴儿，之后又生了一个儿子，就是在这个时候，她发现了外祖父的作品。她说，自己在托马斯关于生命、死亡、分娩与上帝的“超越时代的智慧”中找到了安慰。埃利斯是一位教师，她希望学校里能够更广泛、更有创意地教授他的作品。
A duplicate of his writing shed — complete with a half-smoked pack of Woodbine cigarettes and paper balls of discarded verse strewn across the desk — has been set up at schools, housing projects, literary festivals and even last month’s NATO summit meeting, held mostly in Newport, Wales.
托马斯写作小屋的复制品（桌上还有半包伍德拜恩香烟，以及揉皱的纸团，上面是废弃的诗句）已经出现在学校、住房计划和文学节之中，甚至出现在上个月的北约峰会上，这个峰会主要在威尔士的新港举行。
Thomas’s birthplace, Swansea, that “ugly, lovely town,” where he wrote two-thirds of his work in a teenage outpouring, is erecting another statue. Thomas quotations zip around the city center on public maintenance vehicles and the No. 5 bus: “Swansea is still the best place,” reads one, an extract from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1938.
托马斯出生在斯旺西，这是个“丑陋又可爱的小镇”，青少年时代的他才思迸发，在这里写下了自己一生2/3的作品，如今这里又为他建起了一座雕像。坐上公共交通工具或5号巴士在市中心兜风，托马斯的名言快速从眼前闪过，其中一句是“斯旺西仍然是最好的地方”，这句话选自1938年他写给朋友的信。
There are guided tours of nearly every aspect of Thomas’s life: His childhood home; Cwmdonkin Park, whose dense vegetation gave him nightmares of “terrifying half-people,” but also became the inspiration for a story about a love triangle; the near beaches of the Gower Peninsula, where he rehearsed for the Swansea Little Theater and debated politics with his friend Bert Trick, a socialist grocer; and a seemingly interminable list of the poet’s favorite haunts: the Uplands Hotel, the Bay View, the No Sign Bar, the Antelope, the Mermaid and more.
市内有提供导游服务的旅游路线，几乎涵盖了托马斯生活中的方方面面：他童年时的家；科姆多金公园，那里浓密的植被让他做了关于“可怕的半身人”的噩梦，但也给了他灵感，让他写下一个三角爱情故事；还有高尔半岛的近海海滩，他曾在那里为斯旺西小剧场的演出排练，还在那里和朋友、信仰社会主义的小贩伯特·特里克(Bert Trick)讨论政治；还有许多他最喜欢出没的地点，这份名单看上去长得可怕，包括阿普兰酒店、湾景酒店、无标记酒吧、安蒂洛普酒吧、美人鱼酒吧等等。
But nothing is as it was in Swansea, badly bombed during the war. A more timeless glimpse can be found 40 miles west in Laugharne (pronounced LARN), in Thomas’s words, “the strangest town in the world.”
但是斯旺西在战时曾遭严重轰炸，如今已经没有什么是当初的原貌了。还是40公里以西的拉尔恩受时间影响较小，用托马斯的话说，那里是“世界上最奇异的小镇”。
Thomas’s parents grew up across the estuary, and he spent his childhood summers in Fern Hill, his aunt’s farm and the title of one of his most famous poems. He lived in the area on and off for 15 years, including the last four, and is buried in the village cemetery with his wife, Caitlin.
托马斯的父母在这里的港口长大，童年时期的托马斯常常去弗恩山避暑，那是他阿姨的农场，他有一首著名的诗正是以此为名。他在这里断断续续住了15年，包括他人生的最后四年，他与妻子凯特琳(Caitlin)合葬在这座村庄的公墓。
“The soul of his poetry is here,” Ms. Clarke said.
“他诗歌的灵魂就在这里，”克拉克说。
The Boathouse, where Thomas lived (“a seashaken house on a breakneck of rocks”), is still there, as is Browns Hotel, his local haunt and now a boutique hotel that calls itself “a bar with rooms.” At the corner table facing the door, Thomas would “molder,” collecting stories and picking up colloquialisms. “Under Milk Wood,” his best-known play, which locals insist is based on their town, chronicles a day in an imaginary seaside village called Llareggub. (Read it backward for a sense of his mischievous humor.)
托马斯住过的船库（“危险的岩石之上，被海浪撼动的房子”）仍然保留着，还有他常去的布朗斯酒店，如今已成为一个精品酒店，自称为“带客房的酒吧”。托马斯常常在对着门的角落里“铸造”，收集故事和俗语。本地人说，他最著名的剧本《牛奶树下》(Under Milk Wood)就是以这座小镇为蓝本的，它按时间顺序描写了虚构的海滨村庄拉来加布一天内发生的事（Llareggub，这个词从后往前读是“bugger all”，即“全是蠢货”，显示了他恶作剧的幽默感）。
“If Dylan Thomas walked into Laugharne today, he could write ‘Under Milk Wood’ all over again,” Carl Thornton, a 48-year-old architect, said over a pint one recent evening. “In this town, if you say good morning to the wrong person, within 10 hours you are having an affair.”
“如果迪伦·托马斯走进今日的拉尔恩，他可以再写一部《牛奶树下》，”前不久的某天晚上，48岁的建筑师卡尔·桑顿(Carl Thornton)一品脱酒下肚后这样说，“在这座小镇，如果你对错误的人说了句早上好，十个小时之内就会有艳遇上身。”
Bob Stevens, the mayor of Laugharne, feels a special relationship with Thomas: His birthday is in October, too. When his children were young, he would take them up Sir John’s Hill and read them Thomas’s “Poem in October,” telling them of the poet who lived across the water from their family farm.
拉尔恩市长鲍勃·斯蒂文斯(Bob Stevens)觉得自己同托马斯有着特殊的联系——他的生日和托马斯一样也在10月。斯蒂文斯在自己的孩子们还小的时候，会带他们去爬约翰爵士山，为他们读托马斯的《十月之诗》，给他们讲这位诗人的故事，他居住的地方距离斯蒂文斯家的农场只有一水之隔。
For the centenary, Mr. Stevens, 67, created the Dylan Thomas Birthday Walk, which guides literary pilgrims through the poem and its landmarks on a series of placards. The walk is free, and those who come on their own birthday get a free drink at Browns.
67岁的斯蒂文斯为这次的百年庆典创立了一条迪伦·托马斯步行路线，用一连串的标语牌向文学朝圣者们提示托马斯的诗歌和诗歌中的地标。步行路线是免费的，当天过生日的人还可以在布朗斯酒店享受一杯免费饮料。
“I’m just a farmer, but in the end, I think Dylan was like all of us,” said Mr. Stevens, quoting the Rev. Eli Jenkins from “Under Milk Wood”: “Not wholly good or bad.”
“我只是个农夫，但最终我想迪伦和我们大家一样，”斯蒂文斯引用《牛奶树下》里面伊莱·詹金斯牧师(Rev. Eli Jenkins)的话：“不是完全好也不是完全坏”。
On Thomas’s hundredth birthday, Mr. Stevens said, he just wanted to make sure that the poet’s “heart’s truth” is still sung on this high hill and beyond.
在托马斯百年诞辰的那天，斯蒂文斯说，他希望这位诗人“心灵的真理”仍然能在高耸的山峦上被歌唱，而且传到更远的地方。
