7 James Joyce: Eveline乔伊斯：《伊芙琳》

《伊芙琳》（Eveline）选自乔伊斯的短篇小说集《都柏林人》（Dubliners）。这部集子共收入15个短篇，其中12篇写于1905年，全书于1914年结集出版。15个故事经过精心排列后，都柏林变成一个人，从幼稚的童年到生命的结束，即人生的四个阶段都在其中得到了反映。最初写成的12篇之中，每三篇构成一组，分别写的是童年的故事、青少年时代的遭遇、成年人的处境以及都柏林的政治、宗教、社交生活的方方面面。贯穿于其中的鲜明主题是：整个都柏林生活的麻木状态。后来加进来的三篇使这一主题表现得更为突出。这里的儿童是失望的儿童，青少年饱受挫折而陷于困境，成年人消极忍受而毫无生气，政治、宗教、社交生活中见到的也都是一些一成不变、抱守残缺、自满自得的人物：整个一个处于麻木状态下的社会！于是，同一个主题把15篇不同的故事组合成为一个有机的整体。阅读这些故事，我们便可以深刻地感受到都柏林（或者这个时代）那无可奈何、无能为力、全无生气的死寂生活。

选文中的女主人公伊芙琳（Eveline）就过着这种无可奈何、无能为力的麻木生活。她在商店任人差遣、遭人欺侮，在家中则守着暴躁凶狠的父亲艰难度日，努力维持着家庭，意欲与意中人远走天涯去开始一种新的生活，最终却还是没能摆脱这个环境。小说没有什么曲折的故事情节，也没有传统意义上的高潮，呈现在读者面前的只是粗线条的轮廓加上一些看似平淡无奇的细节。作者对笔下的人物并不做什么渲染与刻画，也不做任何评论。那么，作者是通过什么样的方式来将主题呈现出来呢？请注意从阅读之中细致地感受意识流手法（free association &interior monologue）的运用。

Excerpt Eveline

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne.She was tired.

Few people passed.The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children.Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown houses, but bright brick houses with shining roofs.The children of the avenue used to play together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up.Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming.Still they seemed to have been rather happy then.Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive.That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead.Tizzie Donn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England.Everything changed.Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided.And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: “He is in Melbourne now.”

She had consented to go away, to leave her home.Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her.Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement.Miss Gaven would be glad.She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

“Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting? ”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.Then she would be married—she, Eveline.People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been.Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence.She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake.And now she had nobody to protect her, Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country.Besides, the inevitable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She had always had her entire wagesseven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could, but the trouble was to get any money from her father.He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night.In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday's dinner.Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions.She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly.It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank.Frank was very kind, manly, openhearted.She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres, where he had a home waiting for her.How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago.He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze.Then they had come to know each other.He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home.He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him.He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.People knew that they were courting, and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun.First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him.He had tales of distant countries.He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada.He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services.He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday.Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.

“I know these sailor chaps, ” he said.

One day he had quarreled with Frank, and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue.The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct.One was to Harry; the other was to her father.Ernest had been her favourite, but she liked Harry too.Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her.Sometimes he could be very nice.Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire.Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth.She remembered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the children laugh.

Her time was running out, but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing.She knew the air.Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of her promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could.She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close, dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy.The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence.She remembered her father strutting back into the sick-room saying：

“Damned Italians! Coming over here! ”

As she mused, the pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being—that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness.She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence：

“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun! ”

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her.He would give her life, perhaps love, too.But she wanted to live.Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms.He would save her.

* * * * * * *

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall.He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again.The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages.Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes.She answered nothing.She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed God to direct her, to show her what was her duty.The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist.If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres.Their passage had been booked.Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.

A bell clanged upon her heart.She felt him seize her hand: “Come! ”

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart.He was drawing her into them: he would drown her.She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.

“Come! ”

No! No! No! It was impossible.Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy.Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

“Eveline! Evvy! ”

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow.He was shouted at to go on, but he still called to her.She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal.Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Topics for discussion

1．Why was Eveline in two minds about leaving home though she felt life at home was quite unbearable？

2．What made her suddenly decide to go to the boat station and later refrain her from going away with Frank？

3．How do you feel after reading through the story? Can you find any connection with the techniques of stream of consciousness？

4．Can you get some idea of the stream-of-consciousness from the last chapter of Ulysses？

附：《尤利西斯》最后一章

18 Penelope

YES BECAUSE HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE BEFORE AS ASK TO get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel wagon he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting to that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much of chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathing-suits and low necks of course nobody wanted her to wear I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope I'll never be like her a wonder she didn't want us to cover our faces but she was a well-educated woman certainly and….I was thinking of so many things he didn't know for Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all cards fly and I say stop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas（inn）glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and the jasmine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalisian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then L asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.