《瓦尔登湖·第十五章·冬天的禽兽·Winter Animals》第7节
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actæon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no fox-hound could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake every thing else for this. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, “What do you do here?” He had lost a dog, but found a man.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把猎狐的场景处理成了两重视角的叠加——远方树林里围猎的喧嚣，和他自己站在小屋门口、等待狐狸冲出林间空地的旁观。阿克泰翁（Actæon）的典故用得克制而精准：在希腊神话里，阿克泰翁因窥见狩猎女神阿尔忒弥斯沐浴而被变成牡鹿，最终被自己的猎犬撕碎。梭罗把这个名字颠倒过来用——不是说猎人变成了猎物，而是说本该出现的狐狸始终没有冲出冰面，猎犬也就没有追…