保罗·高更《死之帝国》

ポール・ゴーギャン　《死の帝国》

该文本为保罗·高更去世之前的最后一封书信。

编者注：I've borrowed this "title" from the image Gauguin describes in this fragment. (我从高更在这个片段描述的景象中借来了此“标题”。)

全文如下：

The Empire of Death

... No later than last night I dreamed I was dead and, oddly enough, it was the true instant when I was living happily.

... I have begun to think, to dream rather, about that instant when everything was absorbed, asleep, overwhelmed, in the original slumber, in potentiality. Invisible, indefinite, unobservable principles all, at that time, because of the primeval inertia of their virtuality, without one perceptible or perceiving act, without any reality, either active or passive, therefore incoherent, all of course sharing only one characteristic, that of nature in its entirety but lifeless, expressionless, dissolved, reduced to nothing, engulfed in the immensiry of space which, as it was utterly formless and void, and as night and silence penetrated to its remotest depths, must have been like a nameless abyss. It was the chaos, the primeval nothingness, not of Being but of Life, which afterward is called the Empire of Death, when the life which had Howed from it returns to it.

... And in my dream an angel with white wings came to me, smiling. Behind him, an old man holding an hourglass in his hand:

"It's no use questioning me." the angel said, "I know what you are thinking... Ask the old man to lead you later to infinity and you will see what God wants to do with you and you will feel that today you are remarkably incomplete. What would the Creator's work be if it were done in but one day? God never rests."

The old man disappeared and, awaking, I raised my eyes to the heavens and saw the angel with the white wings ascending toward the stars. His long blond hair seemed to leave a trail of light in the firmament.

试译如下：

死之帝国

… 不晚于昨夜我梦见自己已经死了但，甚是诡异，那却是我活得幸福的真实瞬间。

… 我已开始思考，莫如说幻想，在那个瞬间，一切都沉淀、沉睡、沉浸在原始的沉寂中，在可能性中。无形、未定义、不可观测的法则全部，在那个瞬间，因为其虚拟性的元始惯性，不可感知或被感知，没有任何现实性，不论主动抑或被动，因此毫无条理，全部理所当然地仅共有一个特征，从整体上看出于本质，却死寂、无情，溶解、归还于无，消失于广阔无垠的空间中，这片空间完全无形、彻底虚无，夜色和寂静渗入其骨髓，一定曾是一个无名的深渊。那就是混沌，最初的虚无，不是存在的虚无，而是生命的虚无，后来称为死之帝国，当从其中流出的生命回归之时。

… 在梦中，一位白翼天使来到我身旁，微笑着。在他身后，是一个手持沙漏的老人。

“询问我也无济于事。” 天使说，“我知道你在想什么......之后让老人带你穿越无尽，让你看到上帝的旨意，你会感到今天的你极为不完整。若造物主的工作只是在一天之内完成，那还有何意义？上帝永不休息。”

老人消失了，我醒来，抬头望向天空，看到白翼天使朝着星辰飞升，他长长的金发仿佛在天穹中留下了一条光的径迹。