《午宴之歌》是一部改編自克里斯托弗·里德的同名敘事詩(shī)的電影。故事講述了一位倫敦圖書(shū)編輯在經(jīng)歷了一系列失敗后，與他的前女友在一家餐廳共進(jìn)午餐，重新探討他們之間的關(guān)系和人生的意義。影片以詩(shī)歌的形式表達主人公的內心世界，探討了時(shí)間流逝對人們關(guān)系的影響。通過(guò)藝術(shù)的表達方式，觀(guān)眾可以感受到人生的無(wú)常和歲月的無(wú)情，思考自己的人生軌跡和價(jià)值觀(guān)。影片由艾倫·瑞克曼和艾瑪·湯普森主演。

買(mǎi)了這本書(shū). 一來(lái)為了仔細研讀,力圖翻譯準確; 二來(lái)為了留做紀念, 畢竟是第一次看詩(shī)歌改編的劇, 更是第一次接觸詩(shī)歌翻譯.
片子本身我不想再評論, 這種片子需要自己逐字逐句去體會(huì ). 看的次數越多, 便越是感嘆語(yǔ)言的魅力. 就是這樣在字斟句酌之間, 不經(jīng)意的,好些臺詞幾乎都記在心里了. (然而我要再啰嗦一句: 這種文學(xué)性太強的詩(shī)歌并不適合當作教材'學(xué)英文', 本詩(shī)一些用詞和表達方式, 英國人表示他們自己也看不太懂, 更別提使用了.)

劇中的臺詞, 全是直接用的原詩(shī)句, 但不可避免有刪掉的部分, 所以打算把原詩(shī)當中沒(méi)有編進(jìn)本劇的章節敲出來(lái), 有興趣的可以看看.

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注1: 括號中的是劇中出現過(guò)的, 方便大家定位.
注2: 大小寫(xiě), 換行, 標點(diǎn), 均依照f(shuō)aber&faber出版社2010年版 (http://www.faber.co.uk/work/song-of-lunch/9780571273522/).
<1>
(Keep your imagination peeled and see
Virginia Woolf
loping off to the library
with a trug full of books.)
At every twentieth step,
she takes a sharp drag at a cigarette
and pulls a tormented face
as if she had never tasted anything
so disgusting.

(And there goes T.S. Eliot,
bound for his first martini of the day.
With his gig-lamps and his immaculate sheen,)
he eases pastyou like a limousine:
a powerful American model.

<2>
(Gaggles of tourists straggle
more provocatively than ever;)
the approach to Bedford Square is blocked:
orange plastic barriers--
our century's major contribution
to the junk art of street furniture!

(Never mind, he's making good time--
note the active verb--
and he expects she'll be late.)
So he allows himself to feel
pleasure in his own fleetness,
in not being carried but riding
the currents and eddies
of the human torrent.

And occasionally stopping
to let another pass,
unthanked politeness being
the ultimate gesture
of the metropolitan dandy.

<3>
(The restaurant
is an old haunt,
though he hasn't been there for years;)
not since the publishing trade,
once the province
of swashbucklers and buccaneers,
was waylaid by suits and calculators,
and a strict afternoon
curfew imposed.

Farewell to long lunches
and other boozy pursuits!
Hail to the new age
of the desk potato,
strict hours of imprisonment
and eyesight tortured
by an impassive electronic screen!

Sometimes, though, a man needs
to go out on the rampage,
throw conscientious time-keeping
to the winds,
help kill a few bottles--
and bugger the consequences.
If not a right, exactly,
it's a rite,
and therefore approved in the sight
of some notional higher authority.

<4>
Lunch being a game with few rules,
and those unwritten,
it's important to him that the field of play
remain the same
as he fondly remembers it.

(Zanzotti's: unreformed Soho Italian.
...
cultureless, fly-by-night.)

He stops for a scrawny lad
wheeling a big, unsteady,
rust-patched, festering bin
to park at the roadside,
and wonders what he will find.

<5>
And that's where Dylan Thomas
scrounged ten bob off him,
then set about seducing his girl.

Not.

Seriously, though,
what will they say when they look back
at our demythologised age?

Postmodern Times:
garrulous, garish classic
starring

some idiot off the box.

Charlie Cretin!
Needs work.

Craplin? Forget it.

He cuts down Meard Street,
now much too smart for its name
but where he remembers
a knocking-shop henever went into--
feral whores at the window--
turns the corner, crosses,
and (hey presto:
Zanzotti's edges into view.)

<6>
Same tricolore paintwork,
thick from repeated coats
and somehow suggesting edibility.

Same signwriter's cursive
festooning the fascia-board
and flanked by the same brass lamps.

It's so much the same, it almost
looks like a replica.

The Wardour Street wideboys and creatives
must love it,
must think it's the campest retro--
when it's the real thing.

Through a gap in the blind,
he can see quite a few of them in there already.
Well, never mind.

He wishes no one ill.

Democracy of the feeding-trough;
swill and let swill.

He and his hand on the door-handle,
and foot on the grooved step,
(when he suddently recollects--
what, precisely?

Deja vu? Some artistic analogy?)

A true liminal moment,
or simply a trick
of the dictionary-picker's skittering brain?

Eye-corner glimpse
of fugitive epiphany
that, for several beats,
he pursues in vain.

(Too bad. Let it go.)

He has his hand still on the dimpled
brass bul of the door-handle.

Which he turns, noticing
the familiar loose-jointedness:
that's a promissing sign.

With the meekest bump of resistance
from the spring contraption overhead,
the door yields and he steps inside
to stand on the prickled mat,
peering into the gloom.

Midday twilight,
requiring adjustment
of all the senses
before it delivers its secrets.

He scans the room,
which is deeper than you might guess from the street,
registers its busyness,
and wonders which of the few
untaken covers will be his.
Not that one by the door
to the toilets, he hopes;
nor the one with too much window light.
Snug privacy is what he wants:
to be tucked away from the bustle:
ideally, over there.

(On the threshold, on the edge
of a shadow-world)

<7>
(Without a smile, without a word,
he is eybrowed and nodded to follow.)

Which he does, past tables,
past people at tables,
he is careful not to brush
with either himself or his shoulder-bag.

Aloof carriage, side=steps,
calculated indirection:
it's as much a dance as a walk.

And it gets him nicely
to the spot he had spotted
from the door.
Laid for two. A little island. An eyot.
Perfect.

<8>
(We said we wouldn't look back.)

Innocent jaunty wistful
ditty from the wings
and would run uninterrupted
if he didn't shoo it away.

Just one of those things.
Ditto.

A song for every cliche!

Though it was more, he's perfectly sure,
than a bell that now and then

(Why did she e-mail him
suggesting)
No, he

Woofs of laughter
in imprecise unison
from a table, all men,
jolly good company,
off to his right.

He draws a breadstick,
wrong brand, from its ripped sheath
and beheads it with a bite.

<9>
In twilight himself
(he commands, nice word,
a clear view of the entrance,
...
What will she look like?)

On his third tasteless
but moreish breadstick,
he's startled: she's changed.
But he's wrong. She hasn't. She isn't.

Back to his chewing:
the fragmentation
and mashing of rusk
soothingly loud
in the isolated chamber of his skull.

<10>
(Hello?)

He jolts. Ice cubes
slurrily clatter
to the bottom of the tumbler
as he bumps it back on the table.
Wiping his wet lip
also expresses surprise.

(She's here. How did that happen!)

<11>
(Have some wine,) he adds,
any stage business
being better than a dry.
(I'm afraid it hasn't really had time,
but

He pours into the two glasses,
measuring by ear
identical notes,)
then doesn't put the bottle down.
He has a speech to deliver.

(...
And they drink.
Becoming palatable.)

Her expression expresses no judgement
and she puts the glass down.

(You haven't changed.
...
It's almost all pizzas,)
he apologises
before she has read a word.
(I'm afraid the place has gone to the dogs.)

She looks around, cursorily.

(Don't be absurd, it's fine.)

<12>
Across the table
across clean cloth and clutter
she leans and wooingly twice
with middle finger
nudges him on the knuckle.

(Come on, no sulks. Be nice. Sois sage.
...
Pax,) he agrees, aggrieved.

And they shake hands,
a squeeze of fingers rather:
hers light then tight
then light again in his,
then efficiently retrieved.

<13>
He is startled from this reckless
plunge into memory
by his own awareness of it:
like snpping out of a doze.
How long can it have lasted?
Gone some time.

(But she seems not to have noticed,
...
you were practically seducing him
a minute ago.)

She swivels her gaze back:
smiling, surprisingly.

(It's nice to know
you're still madly jealous.)

<14>
(And we'll need another bottle of this.)

The waiter goes:
one of those fellows
you'd describe as nondescript
if the word wasn't forbidden.
How many times
in some author's manuscript
has he crossed it out and written
There is nothing that cannot be described.
But in this particular case,
searching in ain
for any distinctive feature,
he may allow and exception.

From that thought idly
on a ride of the eye
around the room--
the bustle, the hubbub--
he travels to the next:
a small dark waitress carrying
three filled plates
from the kitchen hatch
reverses pauses turns proceeds
with such practised fluency
that he'd like to catch
her eye to show her
his appreciation
and be rewar

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