【导读】
《飘》（Gone with the Wind）是美国作家玛格丽特·米切尔（Margaret Mitchell）创作的长篇小说。作品以亚特兰大及附近的一个种植园为故事场景，描绘了内战前后美国南方人的生活；通过刻画男女主人公的爱情纠葛，成功再现了南北战争时期美国南方的社会生活。该作于1937年获得普利策文学奖。今天的选文来自戴侃、李野光和庄绎传的合译本。
（图源：eBay）
SCARLETT O’HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
思嘉·奥哈拉长得并不漂亮，但是男人们一旦像塔尔顿家那对孪生兄弟为她的魅力所迷住时，便看不到这一点了。
In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends.
她脸上混杂着两种特征，一种是她母亲的娇柔，一种是她父亲的粗犷，前者属于法兰西血统的海滨贵族，后者来自浮华俗气的爱尔兰人，这两种特征显得太不调和了。不过这张脸，连同那尖尖的下巴和四四方方的牙床骨，是很引人注意的。她那双淡绿色的眼睛纯净得不带一丝褐色，配上刚硬乌黑的睫毛和稍稍翘起的眼角，显得别具风韵。
Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
上头是两撇墨黑的浓眉斜竖在那里，给她木兰花一般白皙的皮肤划了一条十分惹眼的斜线。这样白皙的皮肤对南方妇女是极其珍贵的，她们常常用帽子、面纱和手套把皮肤保护起来，不让受到佐治亚炎热太阳的曝晒。
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years.
一八六一年四月一个晴朗的下午，思嘉同塔尔顿家的孪生兄弟斯图尔特和布伦特坐在她父亲的塔拉农场阴凉的走廊里，她标致的模样儿使四周的一派春光显得更明媚如画了。她穿一件新做的绿花布衣裳，长长的裙子在裙箍上波翻浪涌般地飘展着，配上她父亲新近从亚特兰大给她带来的绿色山羊皮便鞋，显得分外相称。她的腰围不过十七英寸，是附近三个县里最细小的了，而这身衣裳更把腰肢衬托得恰到好处，再加上里面那件绷得紧紧的小马甲，她的虽然只有十六岁但已成熟了的乳房便跃然显露了。
But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
不过，无论她散开的长裙显得多么朴实，发髻梳在后面的发型显得多么端庄，那双交叠在膝头上的白生生的小手显得多么文静，她的本来面目终归是掩藏不住的。那双绿色的眼睛尽管生在一张故作娇媚的脸上，却仍然是骚动的，任性的，生意盎然的，与她的装束仪表很不相同。她的举止是由她母亲的谆谆训诫和嬷嬷的严厉管教强加给她的，但她的眼睛属于她自己。
On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
在她两旁，孪生兄弟一边一个懒懒地斜靠在椅子上，斜睨着从新装的窗玻璃透过来的阳光谈笑着，四条穿着高统靴和因经常骑马而鼓胀的长腿随便交叠在那里。他们现年十九岁，身高七英尺二英寸，骨骼长大，肌肉坚实，晒得黑黑的脸膛，深赤褐色的头发，眼睛里闪着快乐而自负的神色。他们穿着同样的蓝上衣和深黄色裤子，长相也像两个棉桃似的一模一样。
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green. The twins’ horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their masters’ hair; and around the horses’ legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.
外面，向晚的阳光斜投到场地上，映照着山茱萸一簇簇的白色花朵在新绿的背景中显得分外鲜艳。孪生兄弟骑来的马就拴在车道上，那是两匹高头大马，毛色红得像主人的头发；马腿旁边有一群一直跟随着主人的瘠瘦而神经质的猎犬在吵吵嚷嚷。稍稍远一点的地方躺着一条黑花斑的白色随车大狗，那是贵族人家所特有的，它把鼻子贴在前爪上，耐心地等待着两个小伙子回家去吃晚饭。
Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how to handle them.
在这些猎犬、马匹和两个孪生兄弟之间，有着一种比通常伴随更深密的关系。他们都是年轻、健康而茫无思虑的动物，也同样圆滑、优雅、兴致勃勃；两个小伙子和他们所骑的马一样精神，带有危险性，可同时对于那些懂得怎样驾驭他们的人又是温驯可爱的。
Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books.
坐在走廊里的三个年轻人，尽管都出生在优裕的庄园主家庭，从小由仆人细心服侍着，可他们的脸显得既不懒散也不娇柔。他们像一辈子生活在野外、很少在书本上费脑筋的乡巴佬一样，显得强壮而又活泼。
Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new and, according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying one’s liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.
在北佐治亚的克莱顿县，生活还处在新开辟阶段，与奥古斯塔、萨凡纳和查尔斯顿比较起来还有一点点粗犷风味。南部那些开化得较早的文静居民瞧不起内地佐治亚人，可是在北佐治亚这儿，人们并不以缺乏高雅的文化教育为耻，只要在那些重要的事情上学得精明就行了。而种出好棉花，骑马骑得好，打枪打得准，跳舞跳得轻快，善于体面地追逐女人，喝酒时像个温文尔雅的绅士，就是他们心目中的重要事情。
