欲将格兰法龙看透？玩具气球去皮后

本文主要内容摘自冯内古特的《猫的摇篮》，译文摘自袁伟的版本。

荣耀归博克侬。

你也是

@ Ch. 79

“You?” I as amazed. “A Bokononist, too?”

He gazed at me levelly. “You, too. You’ll find out.”

卡拉斯

咱博克侬教徒认为，人类是分组编队的，一组组，一队队，行着上帝的旨意，却不明白自己在忙活些啥。博克侬管这队伍叫「卡拉斯」。而把我弄进自个儿那队伍里的敲门砖，所谓「看看」，便是我未曾写完的那本书，叫《世界末了那一日》。

@ Ch. 1

We Bokononists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the book to be called The Day the World Ended.

@ Ch. 2

“If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reasons,” writes Bokonon, “that person may be a member of your karass.”

At another point in The Books of Bokonon he tells us, “Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass.” By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.

@ Ch. 9

“Likes and dislikes have nothing to do with it,” says Bokonon–an easy warning to forget.

万彼特

万彼特乃卡拉斯之核心。

@ Ch. 24

A wampeter is the pivot of a karass. No karass is without a wampeter, Bokonon tells us, just as no wheel is without a hub.

Anything can be a wampeter: a tree, a rock, an animal, an idea, a book, a melody, the Holy Grail. Whatever it is, the members of its karass revolve about it in the majestic chaos of a spiral nebula. The orbits of the members of a karass about their common wampeter are spiritual orbits, naturally. It is souls and not bodies that revolve. As Bokonon invites us to sing:

   Around and around and around we spin,
   With feet of lead and wings of tin.

And wampeters come and wampeters go, Bokonon tells us.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters–one waxing in importance, one waning.

巧合天注定

说来这么巧——博克侬要说，「巧合天注定」。

@ Ch. 10

As it happened–“as it was meant to happen,” Bokonon would say–the whore next to me at the bar and the bartender serving me had both gone to high school with Franklin Hoenikker, the bug tormentor, the middle child, the missing son.

上帝开的舞蹈课

别出心裁的旅行动议，上帝开的舞蹈课也。

@ Ch. 31

I wasn’t a Bokononist then, so I agreed with some peevishness. As a Bokononist, of course, I would have agreed gaily to go anywhere anyone suggested. As Bokonon says: “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

忙、忙、忙

人生真是盘根错节、难以捉摸。咱们博克侬教徒每念及此，便要喃喃出这三个字来——忙、忙、忙。

可当时的我还是基督徒，能说的就是：「人生有时的确好滑稽。」

@ Ch. 32

Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering the miraculously intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money to that particular tombstone company, I might have whispered, “Busy, busy, busy.”

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes.”

“And sometimes it isn’t,” said Marvin Breed.

错—错

错—错者，按博克侬的说法，劝诫者也；错—错以一己生活为例，现身说法，将一路揣摩推至荒谬之境，从而诫人勿蹈覆辙。

本来，对于那参不透的石雕天使，我可能都有了一丝厌倦，欲将其当作无所谓的东西抛诸脑后，进而认定一切皆无所谓也。然而，待我见了克莱伯的所作所为，尤其见他弄死了我的宝贝猫后，虚无主义便不是我的菜了。

@ Ch. 36

I have not seen Krebbs since. Nonetheless, I sense that he was my karass. If he was, he served it as a wrang-wrang. A wrang-wrang, according to Bokonon, is a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang’s own life, to an absurdity.

I might have been vaguely inclined to dismiss the stone angel as meaningless, and to go from there to the meaninglessness of all. But after I saw what Krebbs had done, in particular what he had done to my sweet cat, nihilism was not for me.

Somebody or something did not wish me to be a nihilist. It was Krebbs’s mission, whether he knew it or not, to disenchant me with that philosophy. Well, done, Mr. Krebbs, well done.

西奴卡斯

「西奴卡斯」，即我的生命卷须。

@ Ch. 4

It surely includes the three children of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the so-called “Fathers” of the first atomic bomb. Dr. Hoenikker himself was no doubt a member of my karass, though he was dead before my sinookas, the tendrils of my life, began to tangle with those of his children.

双拉斯

博克侬把仅有两人组成的卡拉斯称为双拉斯。

@ Ch. 41

They were, I think, a flawless example of what Bokonon calls a duprass, which is a karass composed of only two persons.

“A true duprass,” Bokonon tells us, “can’t be invaded, not even by children born of such a union.”

I exclude the Mintons, therefore, from my own karass, from Frank’s karass, from Newt’s karass, from Asa Breed’s karass, from Angela’s karass, from Lyman Enders Knowles’s karass, from Sherman Krebbs’s karass. The Mintons’ karass was a tidy one, composed of only two.

…

Bokonon tells us, incidentally, that members of a duprass always die within a week of each other. When it came time for the Mintons to die, they did it within the same second.

@ Ch. 55

A duprass, Bokonon tells us, is a valuable instrument for gaining and developing, in the privacy of an interminable love affair, insights that are queer but true. The Mintons’ cunning exploration of indexes was surely a case in point. A duprass, Bokonon tells us, is also a sweetly conceited establishment. The Mintons’ establishment was no exception.

格兰法龙

黑兹尔对天底下胡西佬的热衷，堪称虚妄卡拉斯一典范：貌似结伙成帮的一队人，以上帝行事做派来看，甚无谓也。是为博克侬所谓格兰法龙一范例。

@ Ch. 42

Hazel’s obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false karass, of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon. Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows–and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

As Bokonon invites us to sing along with him:

   If you wish to study a granfalloon,
   Just remove the skin of a toy balloon.

@ Ch. 59

“Jesus!” he said, “we’ve all been to college!” His gaze lit on Newt again. “You go to college?”

“Cornell,” said Newt.

“Cornell!” cried Crosby gladly. “My God, I went to Cornell.”

“So did he.” Newt nodded at me.

“Three Cornellians–all in the same plane!” said Crosby, and we had another granfalloon festival on our hands.

@ Ch. 103

He did not tell the company that, following his speech, there would be a speech by me.

So I was treated as nothing more than a visiting journalist, and I engaged in harmless granfalloonery here and there.

@ Ch. 117

Only H. Lowe Crosby and his Hazel cried out. “American! American!” they cried, as though tornadoes were interested in the granfalloons to which their victims belonged.

@ Ch. 122

They had found a can of white paint, and on the front doors of the cab Frank had painted white stars, and on the roof he had painted the letters of a granfalloon: U.S.A.

出生入死

@ Ch. 61

But what interested me were some of the words Bokonon had chosen to put into the blanks in 1929. Wherever possible, he had taken the cosmic view, had taken into consideration, for instance, such things as the shortness of life and the longness of eternity.

He reported his avocation as: “Being alive.”

He reported his principal occupation as: “Being dead.”

耶和华的殿中

@ Ch. 70

“I’m not a drug salesman. I’m a writer.”

“What makes you think a writer isn’t a drug salesman?”

“I’ll accept that. Guilty as charged.”

“Father needs some kind of book to read to people who are dying or in terrible pain. I don’t suppose you’ve written anything like that.”

“Not yet.”

“I think there’d be money in it. There’s another valuable tip for you.”

“I suppose I could overhaul the ‘Twenty-third Psalm,’ switch it around a little so nobody would realize it wasn’t original with me.”

“Bokonon tried to overhaul it,” he told me. “Bokonon found out he couldn’t change a word.”

真理

「我只是难以理解，单只有真理，就只有真理，一个人怎么就觉得够了呢？」

浮士德小姐可以入博克侬教了。

@ Ch. 25

“Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth.”

“You don’t seem to agree.”

“I don’t know whether I agree or not. I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.”

Miss Faust was ripe for Bokononism.

我不是针对你

@ Ch. 13

“Ah, God,” says Bokonon, “what an ugly city every city is!”

芬迪

芬迪——博克侬教的一个词，意指特定某人，突然间心生皈依博克侬教的冲动，相信全能的上帝终究于我无所不知，全能的上帝已为我周详谋划，安排细密。

@ Ch. 34

It was in the tombstone salesroom that I had my first vin-dit, a Bokononist word meaning a sudden, very personal shove in the direction of Bokononism, in the direction of believing that God Almighty knew all about me, after all, that God Almighty had some pretty elaborate plans for me.

…

The room seemed to tip, and its walls and ceiling and floor were transformed momentarily into the mouths of many tunnels–tunnels leading in all directions through time. I had a Bokononist vision of the unity in every second of all time and all wandering mankind, all wandering womankind, all wandering children.

@ Ch. 90

All things conspired to form one cosmic vin-dit, one mighty shove into Bokononism, into the belief that God was running my life and that He had work for me to do.

…

“There has to be a catch!”

“There’s kind of one,” Frank admitted.

“I knew it!” I began to shrink from my vin-dit. “What is it? What’s the catch?”

萨融

我在内心，已然萨融，即是说，我已顺从了我的芬迪貌似对我的要求。

@ Ch. 90

And, inwardly, I sarooned, which is to say that I acquiesced to the seeming demands of my vin-dit.

博克—玛鲁

@ Ch. 72

What I had seen, of course, was the Bokononist ritual of boko-maru, or the mingling of awarenesses. We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.

@ Ch. 77

“It works, you know,” he said. “People who do that really do feel better about each other and the world.”

“Um.”

“Boko-maru.”

“Sir?”

“That’s what the foot business is called,” said Castle. “It works. I’m grateful for things that work. Not many things do work, you know.”

“I suppose not.”

“I couldn’t possibly run that hospital of mine if it weren’t for aspirin and boko-maru.”

达弗

在博克侬教里，达弗意指成千上万的人的命运握在一个司徒帕之手。所谓司徒帕，就是云笼雾罩起来的一个孩子。

@ Ch. 89

Frank was giving a classic illustration of what Bokonon calls duffle. Duffle, in the Bokononist sense, is the destiny of thousands upon thousands of persons when placed in the hands of a stuppa. A stuppa is a fogbound child.

辛我特

「就是个辛我特！」她喊起来，「一个要霸占人家全部爱的人。孬种。」

@ Ch. 93

“As your husband, I’ll want all your love for myself.”

She stared at me with widening eyes. “A sin-wat!”

“What was that?”

“A sin-wat!” she cried. “A man who wants all of somebody’s love. That’s very bad.”

…

“Bokonon tells us it is very wrong not to love everyone exactly the same. What does your religion say?”

“I–I don’t have one.”

苦愚

@ Ch. 124

I walked away from Frank, just as The Books of Bokonon advised me to do. “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. “He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”

动态张力

阿特拉斯的信条是，不用杠铃，不用弹簧健身器，也能练出一身肌肉，但将一块肌肉与另一块对立即可。

博克侬的信条是，唯将善恶对立，令两者间始终保持高度张力，天下方能大同。

@ Ch. 47

As I learned when I read on, briefly, Bokonon knew exactly who Charles Atlas was. Bokonon was, in fact, an alumnus of his muscle-building school.

It was the belief of Charles Atlas that muscles could be built without bar bells or spring exercisers, could be built by simply pitting one set of muscles against another.

It was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between the two high at all times.

别理凯撒

耶稣有言：「凯撒的归凯撒。」

博克侬换言之，曰：

「别理凯撒，真情实况，凯撒一无所知。」

@ Ch. 46

There was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there.

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.”

Bokonon’s paraphrase was this:

“Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”

上帝也没好到哪儿去

@ Ch. 107

Well, as Bokonon tells us: “God never wrote a good play in His Life.” The scene in “Papa’s” room did not lack for spectacular issues and props, and my opening speech was the right one.

But the first reply from a Hoenikker destroyed all magnificence.

Little Newt threw up.

@ Ch. 118

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.

持续更新

@ Ch. 81

“What’s that from?” I asked.

“What could it possibly be from but The Books of Bokonon?”

“I’d love to see a copy sometime.”

“Copies are hard to come by,” said Castle. “They aren’t printed. They’re made by hand. And, of course, there is no such thing as a completed copy, since Bokonon is adding things every day.”

道别

博克侬语：「相逢时道别，从来没错。」

@ Ch. 102

Dead–almost all dead now.

As Bokonon tells us, “It is never a mistake to say goodbye.”

历史

「历史啊！」博克侬写道，「且读且哭吧！」

@ Ch. 113

“History!” writes Bokonon. “Read it and weep!”

无期无盼

我想起了《博克侬经》的第十四卷，头天晚上才通读了一遍。卷名：「以史为鉴——看上下百万年，一个思想者对地球人有何期盼？」

这第十四卷读下来也不费啥工夫：通篇只有四个字加一个句号。

如是我见：

「无期无盼。」

@ Ch. 110

“What hope can there be for mankind,” I thought, “when there are such men as Felix Hoenikker to give such playthings as ice-nine to such short-sighted children as almost all men and women are?”

And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?”

It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.

This is it:

“Nothing.”

普洱—帕

@ Ch. 110

“Sometimes the pool-pah,” Bokonon tells us, “exceeds the power of humans to comment.” Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as “shit storm” and at another point as “wrath of God.”

且思且毙

「若我有朝一日遭钩刑处死」，博克侬提醒我们，「且看我的表现，尽显人之本能也。」

@ Ch. 118

The Sixth Book of The Books of Bokonon is devoted to pain, in particular to tortures inflicted by men on men. “If I am ever put to death on the hook,” Bokonon warns us, “expect a very human performance.”

…

In any case, there’s bound to be much crying.
But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying.

遗言

@ Ch. 106

“Pain, ice, Mona–everything. And then ‘Papa’ said, ‘Now I will destroy the whole world.’”

“What did he mean by that?”

“It’s what Bokononists always say when they are about to commit suicide.”

暂停

一如博克侬所言，「是人都可以叫暂停，可暂停一下要多久，无人知晓。」

@ Ch. 111

The old man meant to take only a brief time out in his chair, for he left quite a mess in the kitchen. Part of the disorder was a saucepan filled with solid ice-nine. He no doubt meant to melt it up, to reduce the world’s supply of the blue-white stuff to a splinter in a bottle again–after a brief time out.

But, as Bokonon tells us, “Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.”