GERTRUDE AND CLAUDIUS(ISBN=9780449006979)pdf/txt下载_在线阅读全文

内容简介

　　NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A LIVING, POWERFULLY PHYSICAL WORK . . . UPDIKE IS A SUPERBLY SKILLFUL WRITER.""-The Wall Street Journal""WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS UPDIKE Our own king of erudition has gone back to the Hamlet story to imagine its inception: its offstage pre-story, when Claudius fell in love with his brother's queen and that first dastardly deed in the garden was set in motion. Wickedly replete with allusions, weaving the history of ideas with the lustier possibilities of adulterous coupling. . . . There is something delightful about following Updike down this path, seeing his sentiments and sympathies unfold.""-The Boston Globe""WITTY . . . FRESH AND MOVING . . . Engrossing enough on its own terms to stand independently of Shakespeare's play."-"Time" " UPDIKE] HAS MANAGED TO CREATE IN GERTRUDE A GENUINELY COMPELLING CHARACTER, a woman who is, by turns, vulnerable and outspoken, daring and naive. . . . One of his most sympathetic and persuasive female characters.""-The New York Times""BRILLIANT.""-New Republic"

作者简介

　　John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. He is the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.

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　　The King was irate. His daughter, Gerutha, though but a plumpsixteen, had voiced reluctance to marry the nobleman of his choice,Horwen-dil the Jute, a beefy warrior in every way suitable, ifJutes could ever suit in marriage a Zealand maiden born and rearedin the royal castle of Elsinore. "To disobey the King is treason,"Rorik admonished his child, the roses in whose thin-skinned cheeksflared with defiance and distress. "When the culprit is the realm'sonly princess," he went on, "the crime becomes incestuous andself-injuring."
　　"In every way suitable to you," Gerutha said, pursuing her owninstincts, shadows chased into the far corners of her mind by theregal glare her father cast. "But I found him unsubtle."
　　"Unsubtle! He has all the warrior wit a loyal Dane needs!Horwendil slew the tormentor of our coasts, King Koll of Norway, bytaking his long sword in two hands, thus baring his own chest; but,before he could be stabbed there, he shattered Koll's shield andcut off the Norseman's foot so the blood poured clean out of him!As he lay turning the sands beneath him into mud, Koll bargainedthe terms of his funeral, which his young slayer grantedgraciously."
　　"I suppose that could pass for nicety," said Gerutha, "in thedark old days, when the deeds of the sagas were being wrought, andmen and gods and natural forces were all as one."
　　Rorik protested, "Horwendil is a thoroughly modern man -- mybattle-mate Gerwindil's worthy son. He has proven a most aptco-governor of Jutland, with his rather less prepossessing brother,Feng. An apt governor solus, I might say, since Feng is forever offin the south, fighting on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor orwhoever else trusts his arm and his agile tongue. Fighting andwhoring, it is said. The people love him. Horwendil. They do notlove Feng."
　　"The very qualities that make for public love," Gerutharesponded, her rosy blush slowly subsiding as the moment of mostheated opposition between father and daughter passed, "may impedelove in private. In our fleeting contacts, Horwendil has treated mewith an unfeeling, standard courtesy -- as a court ornament whosereal worth derives from my kinship with you. Or else he has lookedthrough me entirely, with eyes that see only the rivalrous doingsof other men. This is the gallant who, having laid Koll andsufficient gold on the buried black ship to the next life, pursuedand butchered the slain man's sister, Sela, with no mercifulallowance for the frailty of her sex."

The King was irate. His daughter, Gerutha, though but a plump
sixteen, had voiced reluctance to marry the nobleman of his choice,
Horwen-dil the Jute, a beefy warrior in every way suitable, if
Jutes could ever suit in marriage a Zealand maiden born and reared
in the royal castle of Elsinore. "To disobey the King is treason,"
Rorik admonished his child, the roses in whose thin-skinned cheeks
flared with defiance and distress. "When the culprit is the realm's
only princess," he went on, "the crime becomes incestuous and
self-injuring." 
　　"In every way suitable to you," Gerutha said, pursuing her own
instincts, shadows chased into the far corners of her mind by the
regal glare her father cast. "But I found him unsubtle." 
　　"Unsubtle! He has all the warrior wit a loyal Dane needs!
Horwendil slew the tormentor of our coasts, King Koll of Norway, by
taking his long sword in two hands, thus baring his own chest; but,
before he could be stabbed there, he shattered Koll's shield and
cut off the Norseman's foot so the blood poured clean out of him!
As he lay turning the sands beneath him into mud, Koll bargained
the terms of his funeral, which his young slayer granted
graciously." 
　　"I suppose that could pass for nicety," said Gerutha, "in the
dark old days, when the deeds of the sagas were being wrought, and
men and gods and natural forces were all as one." 
　　Rorik protested, "Horwendil is a thoroughly modern man -- my
battle-mate Gerwindil's worthy son. He has proven a most apt
co-governor of Jutland, with his rather less prepossessing brother,
Feng. An apt governor solus, I might say, since Feng is forever off
in the south, fighting on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor or
whoever else trusts his arm and his agile tongue. Fighting and
whoring, it is said. The people love him. Horwendil. They do not
love Feng." 
　　"The very qualities that make for public love," Gerutha
responded, her rosy blush slowly subsiding as the moment of most
heated opposition between father and daughter passed, "may impede
love in private. In our fleeting contacts, Horwendil has treated me
with an unfeeling, standard courtesy -- as a court ornament whose
real worth derives from my kinship with you. Or else he has looked
through me entirely, with eyes that see only the rivalrous doings
of other men. This is the gallant who, having laid Koll and
sufficient gold on the buried black ship to the next life, pursued
and butchered the slain man's sister, Sela, with no merciful
allowance for the frailty of her sex." 
　　"Sela was a warrior, a rover, to equal a man. She deserved a
man's death." 
　　The phrase piqued Gerutha. "Is a woman's death less than a man's,
I wonder? I think death for both is exactly as big as it must be,
like the moon when it blackens the sun, to eclipse life completely,
even to the last breath, which perhaps will be a sigh over
opportunities wasted and happiness missed. Sela was a rover, but no
woman wants to be a mere piece of furniture, to be bartered for and
then sat upon." 
　　So defiant a formula, emerging from his fair daughter's flushed
face, lifted Rorik's tangled half-gray eyebrows in synchrony with
his upper lip, from which a long limp mustache drooped. His lip
stopped lifting as his instinctive indulgent laugh was checked and
hardened, by the pressure of royal policy, into a snarl. He was
reminding himself to be stern. His mouth looked meaty and twisty
and red between his mustache and his uncombed, grizzled beard. He
would have been ugly, had he not been her father. "Since your
mother's untimely death, my dear child, your happiness has been my
supreme concern. But I have pledged you to Horwendil, and if a
king's word is broken, the kingdom cracks. All the three years when
Horwendil roved, seizing trophies from Koll's hoard and Sela's
palace and a dozen or more fat ports of Sweathland and Rus, he
allowed me as his liege-lord the pick of the plunder." 
　　"And I am to be the plunder in exchange," Gerutha observed. She
was an ample, serene, dewy, and sensible girl. Had her beauty a
flaw, it was a small gap between her front teeth, as if too broad a
smile had once pulled the space forever open. Her hair, unbound as
became a virgin, was the red of copper diluted by the tin of
sunlight. A warmth surrounded her, an aura noticeable since
infancy; her nurses in the icy straw-floored chambers of Elsinore
had loved to clasp the resilient little body to their breasts.
Bracelets of twisted bronze, brooches worked into a maze of
interlaced ribbons, and a heavy necklace of thin-beaten silver
scales bespoke a father's lavishing love. Her mother, Ona, had died
on the farthest verge of memory, when the child was three and
feverish with the same ague that carried off the frail mother while
sparing the sturdy child. Ona had been dark, a Wendish captive. An
unsmiling face with lowered lids and thick brows, a melody sung
with an accent even a toddler could recognize as strange, and a
touch of tender but chilly fingers formed the bulk of maternal
treasure Gerutha held in her memory. She was pleased now to hear,
in her father's mention of Sela, that women can be warriors. She
felt warrior blood within her -- warrior pride, warrior daring.
There was a time, three or four years after her mother's death,
when she thought that she and the children whom, in the absence of
brothers and sisters, she played with -- the children of courtiers
and retainers, of ladies-in-waiting, even of the kitchen thralls,
in the informal rustic arrangements of Elsinore -- were of the same
status. Then she became aware, long before puberty had awoken any
urge to mate, of her father's blood regal within her. In the
absence of a brother, she stood nearest the throne, this nearness
to be assumed by the man whom she would marry. So some of the power
of state was hers, in this mismatched struggle of wills. 
　　Her father asked her, "What distinct fault have you found in
Horwendil?" 
　　"None -- which is perhaps a fault in itself. I am told that a
wife completes a man. Horwendil feels himself complete
already." 
　　"No unwived man feels so, though he may not proclaim it," said
Rorik, himself unwived, in a grave voice. 
　　Was this meant to soften her, so she could be bent more easily to
his command? That she would eventually yield, both knew. He was a
king, all substance, in essence immortal, and she of an evanescent
loveliness, negligible amid the historical imperatives of dynasty
and alliance. "Truly," Rorik pleaded, "is there no chance of
Horwendil pleasing you? Have you already such strict notions of
what a husband should be? Believe me, Gerutha, in the rough world
of men, he is a more than fine specimen. He sees his duties and
keeps his vows. Since your veins carry kingship in them, I have
chosen for you a man fit to be king." He dropped his voice, with
its cunning political range of threat and entreaty, into a register
of irresistible gentleness. "My dear daughter: love is so natural a
condition for men and women that, given normal health and an
approximate parity of endowment, it will all but inevitably follow
upon cohabitation and the many shared incidents of married life.
You and Horwendil are fine specimens of our northern vigor -- blond
beasts, one could say, as solid as runestones in an upland pasture.
Your sons will be giants, and conquerors of giants! 
　　"You did not live long enough to know your mother," Rorik went on
without a pause, as if all this were a single story in aid of his
pleading, "but you in your glowing ripeness bear testimony to our
love. You fought your way into being through your mother's
reluctant, narrow channels. In truth, she and I were content enough
with each other; we did not beg Heaven for a child. She was a
Wendish princess, as you have more than once been told, brought
back from the south by my father, the great Hother, in the wake of
a murderous raid. What you have not been told, until this
interview, is that she hated me, the son of her father's slayer,
right up to the sacred ceremony and beyond. She was dark-haired and
white-skinned and for six months with fingernails and teeth and all
the strength of her slender limbs defeated my efforts to possess
her. When I did at last possess her, taking advantage of her
weakness after one of her illnesses, she attempted to end her life
with a dagger, she so loathed herself for submitting to this
pollution -- the pollution at the root of life. Yet, within another
six months, my persistent gentleness, and countless of the small
courtesies and favors whereby a husband pays homage to a cherished
wife, did work love within her. Her old enmity lived on as a
special blaze in her passion, a rage that again and again fell
short of being satisfied. Again and again we were driven together
as if to find in our coupling -- dark and fair, Wend and Dane --
the resolution of the world's mystery. 
　　"Now, if from a beginning so unpromising such an attachment could
grow, how can your relation with the honorable, the admirable, the
heroic Horwendil fail? He is virtually your cousin, by the bonds of
alliance between his father and your own." Rorik's hand, an old
man's hand, knobby and mottled and as light as if hollow, was
lifted on the wave of his insistent murmurous eloquence and rested,
like driftwood nudged forward by the froth, on his daughter's.
"Repose in my decision, little Gerutha," urged the King. "Lend
yourself without stint to this match. Some lives bear an
enchantment, I do believe. Since your bloody birth, which weakened
your poor mother ever after, you have displayed an extra quantity
of that which gives others happiness. Call it sunlight, or sense,
or a sweet simplicity. You cannot help but enamor your husband, as
you since your infancy have enamored me." 
　　It is hard, Gerutha thought, to consider one man when another is
present. Horwendil -- who was deemed quite handsome, with his
candle-pale skin, his curly flaxen hair, his short straight nose,
his icy blue eyes long as minnows in his wide face, his thin-lipped
mouth with its strict look -- stood in her mind rendered small by
even the near future's distance from her. Whereas Rorik was here,
his hand touching hers, his profoundly known visage a foot from her
own, a translucent wart in the crease above one nostril of his
large, porous hooked nose. A regal weariness emanated from all his
creases, along with a leathery smell, his thick skin browned in the
salt and sun of his youth's sea-raids across the rimy Baltic and up
the great unpeopled rivers of Rus. His robes, not the velvet
ermine-trimmed robes of a state occasion but the undyed wadmal he
wore within the family apartments, had the secret little greasy
stink of sheep in the rain. Her bones vibrated to the familiar
rumble of his voice's rote endearments, and her skull felt the
paternal pressure of his other hand cupped on her head in blessing.
Gerutha found herself, as if cuffed from behind, kneeling before
him in a spasm of filial feeling. 
　　On his side, Rorik, leaning over to kiss the neat gash of the
bone-white scalp where her hair was centrally parted, was conscious
of a tingle on his face as of tiny snowflakes; stray individual
hairs, too fine to be seen, had rebelled against the brushed order
of his daughter's coiffure, held by a jewelled chaplet like a
dainty version of his own cumbersome, eight-sided crown, which he
donned on those same state occasions as warranted the confining,
all but immobilizing robes of velvet and ermine. He pulled his face
back from the sensation of her excessively vigorous hair and
experienced a start of guilt, her pose before him was so demurely
slavish -- that of a captured slave, drugged with hellebore, about
to be sacrificed. 
　　But marriage to Horwendil, with a queendom all but certain with
it, was no such slavery, surely. What did women want? There had
been that in Ona which he had never reached, save in the instant
when their bodies clasped and found release in a brainless rhythm
of thrust and counterthrust, her pelvis as active in the business
as his -- a passion as if to be sacrificed, to be consumed in this
act of, after all, capture. Then, in the next instant, their sweats
still wet on the bedclothes and their breathing fluttering back
into their chests like two homing doves, she would begin to recede.
Or was it he receding, the capture achieved and he the lighter for
it? They had been like a pair of conspiring cutthroats met in the
dark and, their furtive transaction accomplished, swiftly and
unceremoniously parted by a mutual hatred. No, not hatred, for a
kindly afterwash would hold them side by side a while, beneath the
embroidered canopy, behind the linen bed curtains doubled in
thickness so their struggling shadows would not show through,
within the tall stone room patrolled by cold drafts and churlish
servants, as their sweated bodies dried, and he and she would
engage in drowsy fumbling conversation, his eyelids still retaining
visions of her naked beauty above him, below him, upside down
beside him, her abundance of untamed raven hair between parted
white thighs having tickled his lips. They would talk, many a time,
of their growing daughter, the radiant fruit of one such clipping
-- the child's piecemeal assumption of mobility and speech, the
dropping away of treasured mispronunciations and lisped coinages as
she gathered to herself more correct language and adult
manners. 
　　Gerutha had remained the chief, tyrannically single topic of
their delight because no brother or sister followed, as if a door
had slammed shut in Ona's womb. Within three years Rorik's queen
was dead, taking with her into silence her midnight cries of
release from that captivity of concupiscence which Eve's curious
sin has laid upon mankind, and into silence also the soft Wendish
syllables whose unemphatic mispronunciation of guttural Danish
delighted him as much as any missaying of their daughter's. Ona's
fingertips had been chilly, he remembered, and yet even Gerutha's
scalp, chalk-white in its parting, tasted of warmth. Whatever harsh
or happy fate in this life befell her, she had been born of
love. 
　　Rorik was entertaining his daughter within a small timber-floored
and wainscoted oriel room recently built to adjoin the King's
bedroom, in this perpetually revised old castle of Elsinore.
Lozenges of red afternoon sun lay on the broad planks of oiled fir,
making good the designation of "solar" for these upper chambers
devoted to private residence within a castle. The room's shallow
fireplace sported a plastered hood, in the most modern and
efficient fashion. The luxury of a brocaded arras softened the
stone wall facing the three-arched, two-pillared window and its
view of the gray-green Sund that separated Zealand from Sk?ne.
Sk&3229ne, which the Sweathlanders coveted, was a Danish
domain, with Halland and Blekinge to the east, and to the west
Jutland and Fyn, and to the south the islands of Lolland, Falster,
and M?n. To keep intact such a realm, scattered and jagged like the
broken earthenware of a dish just fallen to the floor, took all a
king's strength and cunning; accordingly, each new monarch ascended
the throne through election by the provincial lords and, since the
advent of Christianity, the great prelates. The inheritance rights
of royal blood were diluted in Denmark by the ancient democracy of
the (singular and plural) thing, the assemblies of freedmen that
judged and governed the affairs of each locality and, above that,
of the province. A king needed election by the four provincial
thing, assembled at Viborg. These traditions enclosed the castle
inhabitants as adamantly as the multiple walls themselves, the
accreted keep, barbican, gatehouses, battlements, towers, barracks,
kitchens, stairways, garderobes, and chapel. 
　　The chapel had seemed to the child Gerutha a doomed lost place,
reached only after traversing in her freezing slippered feet the
length of the great hall and a gallery and several small sets of
stairs at an angle -- an unheated high-roofed room smelling of a
spicy incense that scratched her nose, and of the clamminess of
disuse, and of the unwashed bodies of the holy men who in their
robes shuffled through the service, lifting the circular pale wafer
toward the circular white-glazed window high above the altar (so
that she thought of the Eucharist as eating sky) while Latin was
being chanted unintelligibly. Being in the chapel frightened her,
as if her young body were a sin, to be avenged some day, pierced
from underneath even as she sipped the rasping wine, the caustic
blood of Christ, from the jewel-beknobbed chalice. The chill, the
Latin, the fusty smells made her feel accused; her natural warmth
felt chastened.

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