The point is, this was an influence that affected everyone who went to church. That is to say, the majority of the population. A literary education, and in storytelling, for in the Bible there is everything from the bloodthirsty and the brutal to the tendernotness, for instance, of Ruth. This immersion in fine language lasted for generations, from when the Bible was translated from Latin, so the common people could understand it and it was no longer the preserve of priests. That voice has fallen silent. When we talk of 'dumbing down' - and this goes on now everywhere, and has become a major complaint of our time -it is astonishing to me that no one mentions that not so long ago we heard or read the Bible, and do not now. My poor father was dragged to church as a child twice on Sundays and to Sunday school as well, and said Sunday was for him and his friends a black hole in every week, but he said too, often, that he owed his love of good writing, and of literature, to that education, the Bible.
关键在于，这件事情关乎每一个去教堂的人。换言之，大多数人都会受此影响。甚至影响到文学教育，故事讲述，因为在《圣经》里，从嗜血残忍到悲悯仁慈应有尽有，比如，《圣经》中的《路得记》。自《圣经》从拉丁文被译成英文，而使之成为大众读物，而非少数教士之专有读物起，这种以优美语言作为洗礼的方式已沿用好几代人了。可是，那种呼声已经沉寂。当我们谈及 “去繁化简”这个呼声时 —这个现象正在各地上演着，俨然已成为我们这个时代一个主要的抱怨 — 令我倍感震惊的是，没有一个人提起，不久前我们还聆听诵读《圣经》，而现在却抛诸脑后。我可怜的父亲在他还是个孩子的时候，有两个礼拜日都被硬生生的拖到教堂，被逼去上主日学校，他说，周日对于他和他的伙伴们来说就是黑色星期日，但是他也经常提起，他很感激那种教育，是《圣经》让他对美文和写作产生了浓厚兴趣。

It was an education, too, in many-sidedness, subtlety. I wonder if the simplemindedness of much new writing, the narrowness of judgement, stereotypical goodies and baddies, is due to the loss of that broader experience. 'Dumbing down', the complaint goes, means that people cannot understand long words, or read long books; they complain about 'difficult' books, which their grandparents read with ease, but surely this must be at least partly because their experience has not included that other influence? When a child went to church, and had to sit through hours of being bored, he or she had to take in the long words and try to understand them, and difficult ideas and often powerful and often bloody stories and the ambiguities of the parables. No one lowered the level of the discourse, chose simpler words, or made easy difficult ideas, for the children's sake. No concessions were made. The church-going experience said that life was deadly serious, they were expected to undernotstand the words and ideas above their heads, to make efforts. The unspoken message was that life was important, they were important, and everything was expected of them.
从细微的角度来审度，在很多方面，这也是一种教育。我怀疑许多新的文字作品表现出来的肤浅幼稚，判断力的鼠目寸光，陈腔滥调的是非好坏，是否是由于作者缺失了那种丰富的经历。“化繁为简”，这个抱怨意味着那些人无法明白长篇大论，或是诵读长篇大作；他们抱怨书本文字晦涩，而这些书在他们祖父读来却是轻而易举，不过，当然可以找到一个台阶，当然从某种程度上来说，他们落得今天这般田地是由于他们的经历中缺少了另外一种影响，从而导致了今天的恶果？当一个孩子前往教堂，不得不百无聊赖的干坐着几个小时，而他（她）又必须得仔细聆听那些“冗长”的词句并努力领会它们，感悟那些深奥的道理，倾听那些常常极具震撼而且还血腥残忍的故事，还有那些模棱两可的寓言。没有人为了孩子而去降低著作难度，去选择更简单的词语，或是去浅显化观点。在这个问题上毫无妥协余地。去教堂的经历告诉我们，生活是个极其严肃的话题，他们必须得努力去理解那些难以理解的词句和道理。在这背后传达着一个无声的信息，那就是生活何其重要，他们何其重要，因为世间万物都仰仗着他们。

Now contrast their weekly experience, the strongest cultural one in their lives, with the children's programmes on television, which are jokey, giggly, familiar, everything is a laugh, and the unspoken message is that nothing much will be expected from these children, nothing difficult demanded, nothing is important.
现在，与他们曾经每周的经历相比照 —过去生活中那种无比强大的文化熏陶，今天孩子们的电视节目生活，充斥着滑稽，可笑与似曾相识的事物，一切皆一笑而过，我们对这些孩子失去了期望，对他们也没有任何高要求，一切都不再重要 — 这就是这个事情背后的话语。

The clock cannot be turned back, and church-going has gone as a general experience, but storytelling and reading has not, and used well could supply what once the Bible did.
时光无法倒转，去教堂 — 作为一种大众经历的时代已经逝去，但是讲故事和读书并没过时，如果利用恰当还可以充当曾经《圣经》的作用。

There have been other books as powerful as the Bible. Let us take one, Kalila and Dimna, translated by Ramsay Wood. The origins of this book go back into the mists of myth. Here is one version. When Alexander the Great left India, he had put into place rulers chosen by him. One of them was a bad man and an unsatisfactory king. Then a sage, Bidpai, said to his wife that he was going to the palace to reprimand and warn the king. While she wept and wailed, he did go to the palace, demanded an audience, and for his temerity was flung into the bottle dungeon, in other words the sewers. That night the king was watching stars on the roof of the palace and it occurred to him that he was after all a very small item in the cosmic ledgers. At that moment there appeared to him that Stranger Dressed in Green who figures in so many Sufi tales. He said, 'Because you have for once in your life had a thought not concerned with your magnificence and importance, I am going to give you some advice. If you go hunting tomorrow in such and such a direction, you will find treasure.' Next day off went the king with his court, and when he saw a ragged figure by the roadside, he reined in and said, 'Ho, fellow, I am looking for treasure that has been promised.' 'If you are King Dabschelin,' was the reply, 'the treasure is waiting for you in that cave over there.' In the cave the king found mounds of precious stones and gold, but after some minutes of jubilation he said, 'Wait! I already have treasure houses full of such things, why do I need more?' Then he saw a book, which he opened, but could not make sense of it, so he took it back to the palace to puzzle over until he remembered the sage he had had thrown into the dungeons. He had the man taken out and washed and brought before him. 'Can you explain this book to me?' he demanded, and Bidpai said he could and at once began instruction. And that is how the history sometimes begins of this book which is a vast collection of animal tales and fables, some of which can be found in the canon of Buddha tales, when Buddha was a deer, a monkey, a lion; while some are to be seen on rock carvings in North India. How old they are we don't know. So here again, when we probe into origins, history unfolds earlier '.. . earlier . . . One of the book's sources was a treatise by a certain Kautilya, on the art of government, dated at 300 B.C., but he wrote as the last of many authors on government and administration, and there is no way now of seeing why this -to us - so ancient a book was seen by him as a mere latecomer in a series. Here we may be reminded of Ecclesiastes's 'Of the making of books there is no end', - but after all, of those innumerable and - to him - wearying books we have very few left.
历史上确有著作，其影响之大可与《圣经》媲美。比如，雷姆赛o伍德翻译的《卡里莱和笛木乃》。这本书的起源追溯到神话的谜团。下面是其中一个版本。当亚历山大大帝离开印度时，他已将这块土地交给他选定的统治者。其中有一个行为不端，令人反感的国王。于是有一个名叫比德帕伊的智者对他妻子说，他要前往王宫以训诫警告这个国王。当妻子掩面而泣，伤心难过时，他已经来到了王宫，要求其国王听他训示，由于他的胆大妄为，他被扔进了瓶子地牢，也就是下水道。那个晚上国王仰望宫殿屋顶的繁星，他突然感到他只是茫茫宇宙万物中一个渺小的东西。在那一刻他想到了那个穿着绿色衣服的陌生人似乎知道很多苏菲的故事。那人说道：“因为你在你的生命中曾有一次摒弃了你的光辉和伟大，我就来指引你一条道路吧。如果明日你按照我指引的方向去打猎，你会发现财宝。”第二天天一亮，国王便带着他的廷臣出发了，当他在路旁遇见一名衣衫褴褛的人时，他勒马驻步，询问道：“哦，朋友，我正在寻找一份允诺过的财宝。”“如果你是Dabschelin国王，”那人回答道，“财宝正在那边的洞穴里恭候您呢。”在洞穴里，国王发现了成堆的宝石和黄金，但是几分喜悦之后，他说，“慢着！我已经拥有满屋都是这类东西的金库，我为何还要更多？”继而他发现了一本书，不过他打开来却无法领会个中奥妙，于是他把书带回王宫苦思冥想，直到他想起了那个被他扔进地牢的智者。于是他命令一位侍从把那位智者放出牢笼，梳洗干净，带至他面前。“你能向我解释一下这本书的含义吗？”他询问道，比德帕伊说他可以，并随即开始教导。那就是历史上部分此书版本的启章故事，用大量的动物故事和寓言，其中一些可以在佛教经典故事中看到，当释迦摩尼是一只鹿，一只猴子，一只狮子；而另一些会在印度北部石洞中看到。我们无从得知这些故事出现在何时。所以这就再一次印证，当我们探究其起源时，历史会在一个更早的时间显露”更早......这本书的一个来源是公元300年，考提利亚所撰写的一篇著作，内容是有关于政府管理艺术的，但他所写的排在了众多政府管理方面作家当之尾，如今，对我们而言，已经没有办法去考证为何如此了，在一系列的著作当中，如此古老的的一本书在他看来只是一部垫底的作品。说到这儿，我们也许会记起“传道书”中的一句话：“著书立说，无穷无尽“， — 总之，在那些无法计量且是 — 对他而言 — 令人厌烦的书籍里，我们几乎没有留下什么。

This book is at times called Bidpai, after the sage, sometimes Kalila and Dimna, and has had hundreds of years of energetic life. It has been described as 'having been more widely translated than the Bible'. In this country the first translation was in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas North, who translated Plutarch into a work which was the source of Shakespeare's knowledge of the Roman world. North's Plutarch was popular reading, and so was his version of Bidpai. There followed dozens of versions of the book, twenty of them in the hundred years before 1888, after which there were none. So, once anyone with a claim to literary education had read Bidpai, but now few people have even heard of it.
这本书有时也以智者名字命名为《比德帕伊》，有时叫《卡里莱和笛木乃》，几百年来久盛不衰。据说这本书“广泛传译，其量更胜于《圣经》”。在这个国度，首个译本出现在十六世纪，为汤姆斯o诺斯爵士所译，他把普鲁塔克的作品（《比较列传》）翻译成英文作品，这成为了莎士比亚对于罗马世界了解的来源。诺斯本的《列传》被广泛阅读，他的《比德帕伊》也是如此，后来出现了许多《比德帕伊》译本，截至1888年，在一百年间出现了20个版本，后来便不再有新本问世了。所以，曾经任何接受过文学教育的人都读过《比德帕伊》，而现在恐怕听说过此书的人都寥寥无几。

The Persians heard of this wonderful book, used in India to educate rulers, and sent ambassadors who had to steal it, so closely guarded was it. It became a precious book to them, too. It was translated into many languages and tales from it spread everywhere, becoming absorbed and assimilated. When I was in Mexico, at the university, a professor said that tales from the book, and the idea of the book itself, were part of Spanish popular culture to the point that peasants telling and retelling the stories believe them to be Spanish.
波斯人听说这本奇书在印度被用来教育统治者，就派了使者前去窃取，因而这本书被严加看守。它同样也成为了他们的一本宝贵书籍。它被翻译成数种语言，其中的故事广泛传播，被各地吸收消化。当我在墨西哥一所大学的时候，一位教授说了一个来自那本书的故事，那本书的观点已是西班牙大众文化的一部分，以至于通过口述和复述这些故事的农民相信它们就是属于西班牙的。
The frame story concerns a ruler who is bored with his life who, told that a white bull has been discovered lost and wandering, orders that it should be brought to him. The bull becomes a friend and adviser, but two jackals, Kalila and Dimna, were jealous of the noble beast's influence on the king, and had it murdered. One may easily imagine how peasants and common people everywhere identified with this, as easily as the princes who were given the book as a manual of advice. Machiavelli's The Prince is supposed to be a descendant. One great Persian book, The Lights of Canopus, of Sufi provenance, was derived from it, centuries after its origins. What an influence that book has had, and not only on folk culture and on literanotture: from it were inspired illustrations in Moghul art - they can be seen in the British Museum.
故事梗概是关于一个对其生活心生厌恶的统治者，说有一只白色公牛被发现失踪了还在四处游荡，他下令要将它捉回。这头公牛是他的一个朋友和顾问，但是有两只名叫卡里莱和笛木乃的豺狼，嫉妒那只高贵的牲畜对国王的影响力，就把它给杀了。我们很容易联想到各地的农民和平民百姓会如何看待这件事，就像那个获得指引手册的亲王一样简单。马基雅弗利的《君主论》应该是一个延续。几个世纪后，一本有关苏菲派出处的伟大波斯著作 — 《五卷书》，亦来源于此书。这本书影响力如此之大，不仅仅在于市民文化而且在于文学艺术上：莫卧尔艺术的图画就是从那里获取灵感的 — 现今可在不列颠博物馆中看到。

It is not possible to imagine European culture without The Tales of Bidpai, nor English literature without the Bible.
根本无法想象，一个没有《比德帕伊》故事的欧洲文化会是怎样，就像英语文学若是失去了《圣经》会是怎样。

There are influences that echo down to us from before either. Once humanity used 'oracles', where voices emanating from sacred sources answered questions, but in our time we tend to see them as a variation of our agony aunts. People travelled long distances to consult oracles, and we still want to be told what to do and how to think by problem-solvers and gurus. 'Oracles' are by no means all in the past. In Zimbabwe, for instance, there are shrines and holy places where the shamans -wise women and men - still offer advice in the names of the ancestors, or other-worldly guides. These can be skilled polinotticians, and perhaps this may throw light back onto the oracle phenomenon, which even now may create awe and that type of curiosity which betrays a desire, or at least a readiness, to believe.
历史的回音依然徘徊于今人身边。在过去，人类有过“神谕殿”一说，在那里有来自神圣源头的声音解答我们的疑惑，但是在我们这个时代，我们更倾向于将之视为我们知心大姐的变形。人们不远万里前来请教神谕殿，仍然希望被告知该如何做，并通过指路人和精神导师获知该如何思考。“神谕殿”绝不仅仅属于过去。比如，在津巴布韦有那么一些神殿和圣地，在那里萨满 — 指智慧的男性或女性 — 仍然以先祖或其它超俗指引者之名，向人们提供劝告。这些人可能是技术娴熟的政客，也反之可能使神谕殿现象明朗起来，即使在现在还能制造出敬畏和好奇 — 一种背叛期望，或者说至少是为了相信而做的一种准备工作。

Recently a large crowd collected in Matabeleland, at the memorial to one Alan Wilson, to whose name is always attached the words 'Last Stand'. Alan Wilson's Last Stand was an exempnotlary tale told to white children. He and his company stood their ground against attacking Matabele warriors, and were killed. The memorial has always been a totem for the whites, a way of defining themselves, and execrated by the blacks as a symbol of white conquest. But, behold, the shamans announced that their wisdom would be delivered at this memorial. People in the crowd, both black and white, protested at the choice of this place. And this is what the Wise Ones said - or at least, how it was reported to me:
最近有一大群人蜂拥而至马塔贝莱兰，聚集在艾伦o威尔逊纪念碑旁，这个人的名字经常与“最后一战”这句话捆绑在一起。艾伦o威尔逊的“最后一战”是一个典型的讲给白人孩子的故事。他和他的战友们坚守阵地，抵抗进攻的马塔贝列士兵，不幸身亡。这个纪念碑对于白种人来说一直是一个图腾，一种界定他们的方法，也作为一个白人入侵的标志，为黑人所憎恶。但是，值得注意的是，那些萨满声称他们的智慧会在这个纪念碑处得到弘扬。在这人群之中，交杂着白种人和黑种人，就这块地方的选择问题发出抗议。这就是智者所说的 — 或者至少，是这样被告知我的。

'And why should we not speak in this place? Oh, shortsighted ones, blinded by your immediate interests. You never see anynotthing in perspective and from a higher viewpoint. Alan Wilson was a brave warrior killed fighting for what he believed in and he was killed honourably by brave warriors. Alan is as much an ancestor of Zimbabwe as the brave men who killed him. We honour him. When will you learn to see things as we do, who see far into the future, and understand how to judge events, refusing easy revenge and retaliation?'
“为什么我们在这里没有发言权？哦，鼠目寸光的人啊，你们被眼前利益蒙蔽了双眼。你们从未高瞻远瞩，客观全面的看待过任何一件事情。艾伦o威尔逊是一名勇敢的战士，为了他的信仰而战斗至死，光荣的被勇士所杀。艾伦和那些杀害他的勇士一样都是津巴布韦的先驱者。我们敬仰他。你何时才能学会如我等一样从发展的眼光来
看待事物，并且学会如何去判断事件，不去做肤浅的复仇和报复？”

In that context, this was dynamite. All of Matabeleland was simmering with rage and the desire for revenge because of Mugabe's massacres of the Ndebele. Mugabe was - and is -fomenting hatred against the whites. Yet here was a mouthpiece of the Ancestors putting the weight of traditional wisdom against everything that was being popularly felt and said. This was no misty Oracle, clothing advice in riddles which time would unfold. And this event, and others like it, make us wonder if the ancient oracles intervened similarly in politics and policy.
在那个语境下，这真是一个炸药。所有的马塔贝莱兰人都按捺着愤怒与复仇的欲望，因为穆加贝对恩德贝勒人的大屠杀。穆加贝过去是 — 现在也是 — 一个挑起针对白种人的憎恨的人。而这里有一个先祖的喉舌，将传统智慧的影响力与所有被大众感知和念叨的事情敌对。这没有朦胧的神谕殿，或是包装起来的谜语神谕，时间最终会将它蛊惑的外衣脱去。而这件事，甚至其他类似事件，让我们怀疑是否那些古老的神谕殿都雷同的介入了政治和政策影响。

There is something else about this event, relevant to our theme. It is the tone of what was said, which surely has to remind us of the sagas, that seem so far from us today. They were told - or sung - for centuries, in the halls of the powerful, in hovels, in marketplaces, in forests beside fires that frightened bears and wolves. The sagas defined those people's idea of themselves, reinforced codes of behaviour, of honour. Long ago - but they still have a powerful effect. You may hear, in Iceland, modern people passionately arguing about characters in a saga. There is a wilful woman in the saga called Burned N/al, Hallgerdur, who has been brought back into relevance by the women's movement. Men tend to hate her, women to admire. But the point is, the tale is alive and potent.
还有一些有关这个事件的信息，并与我们的主题相关。它以这样的语气被谈起：有必要使我们记起智者了，那些与今天如此遥远的人类。他们被谈论 — 或咏唱 — 好几个世纪了，在气势磅礴的大厅里，在棚舍里，在集市上，在有着威吓豺狼野熊的火堆边的森林里。那些智者将人们的观点视为己有，强调行为操守和名誉观。虽已久远 — 但他们依然具有强大的影响力。你可能会听说，在冰岛，现代人类还激情澎湃的对一个英雄故事的角色争论不休。在英雄故事里，有一个名叫Burned Njal的倔强妇女，Hallgerdur，被卷入了一场妇女运动。男人普遍厌恶她，女人则爱慕她。但要点在于，这个故事生动而具有震撼力。

But that was the oral tradition: when we in our time talk of stories, tales, we often forget that for most of human history -thousands of years - tales were told or sung. Reading came much later, is comparatively recent, and changed not only the ways of receiving tales, but the actual machinery of our minds. The print revolution lost us our memories - or partly. Before, people kept information in their heads. One may even now meet an old man or woman, illiterate, who reminds us what we once were - what everyone was like. They remember everything, what was said by whom, when and why: dates, places, adnotdresses, history. They don't need to refer to reference books. This faculty disappeared with print. It was an effect, I think, that was not foreseen, and surely this should make us at least wonder what unforeseen changes may result from the current technological revolution: television, radio, the Internet, comnotputers. How will our mentation be affected? Will the changes be to our advantage?
不过那是一个口头传统：当我们在现在这个时代谈故事或民间故事，我们经常会忘记，对于大多数人类历史而言 — 几千年来 — 民间故事被念叨或吟咏。阅读则在很久之后才出现，相对而言是最近了，并且改变的不仅仅是接收故事的方式，还有我们思维运作的模式。印刷革命使我们失去了记忆 — 或者说一定程度上。在此之前，人们用头脑记录信息。一个人甚至可能现在遇见一位长者，而且长者是一位文盲，但他（她）却可以让我们回忆起我们的过去 — 每一个人的样子。他们记得每一件事，何人做过某事，何时何地：日期，场地，地址，历史。他们不需要借助于参考书。这种天赋伴随着印刷而消失。我想这就是一个无法预知的影响，而这个事实也必然地让我们至少怀疑当下的科技革命到底带来些什么未知的变化：电视，收音机，因特网，电脑。我们的心理会遭受什么影响？这些变化会给我们带来进步吗？

The novel is what we think of first, these days, as the most representative kind of literature. Very recent is the novel, even if we take Cervantes as the starting place, even more so if we start with the English eighteenth century. It has been said that the novel is the art form peculiarly of our time, that we take it altogether too much for granted, that it is a storehouse of information about the world we live in, different cultures, peoples, ways of thinking.
如今，小说被我们看作是最具代表性的文学类型。即使我们把塞凡提斯作为开端，小说也是新近出现的一种文学艺术，如果我们在18世纪开始小说史，还会更新。小说被认为是我们特定时代背景下的艺术产物，我们理所当然的把它看得非常重要，认为它是一个信息宝库，包罗了有关我们所生活的世界、各种文化、人群，和人们的思维方式。

The novel has always been embattled. Ever since I came to England in 1949, I have been reading that the novel is dead. It is a favourite complaint of critics. Meanwhile the novel seems to be doing very well everywhere you look. The novel has been - is - seen by dictators as dangerous. And it is: Solzhenit-syn's The Gulag Archipelago, it is often said, was the major influence in bringing down the Soviet Empire. Moralisers and preachers saw the novel as frivolous and perverting. Jane Austen returned a classic defence to accusations of triviality in Northanger Abbey:
小说总是众矢之的。自从我1949年来到英国，我就经常读到小说灭亡了，这是评论家最喜欢的抱怨。与此同时，小说似乎在各个方面又都表现出色。小说过去 — 现在 — 一直被独裁者视作危险品。例如：索尔仁尼琴的《古格拉群岛》就常被认为是是影响苏维埃帝国垮台的主要原因。传教士们视小说为轻浮和教人堕落的东西。简奥斯汀在《诺桑觉寺》里，对这些指责小说轻浮的说法做了一次经典的回击

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此译作完成于2010年2月底