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Post by 溪山 on May 26, 2024 23:30:20 GMT -5
Il colombre is a 1966 short story collection by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati. The titular story introduces a sea monster called the colomber, which became the most famous of Buzzati's monster characters. (zt) The Colomber Dino Buzzati, translated by Lawrence Venuti When Stefano Roi was twelve years old, he asked his father, a sea captain and the owner of a fine sailing ship to take him on board as his birthday gift. “When I grow up,” the boy said, “I want to go to sea with you. And I shall command ships even more beautiful and bigger than yours.” “God bless you, my son,” the father answered. And since his vessel had to leave that very day, he took the boy with him. It was a splendid sunny day, and the sea was calm. Stefano, who had never been on a ship, happily wandered around on deck, admiring the complicated maneuvers of the sails. He asked the sailors about this and that, and they gladly explained everything to him. When the boy had gone astern, he stopped, his curiosity aroused, to observe something that intermittently rose to the surface at a distance of two to three hundred meters, in line with the ship’s wake. Although the ship was indeed moving fast, carried by a great quarter wind, that thing always maintained the same distance. And though the boy did not make out what it was, there was some indefinable air about it, which attracted him intensely. No longer seeing Stefano on deck, the father came down from the bridge, after having shouted his name in vain, and went to look for him. “Stefano, what are you doing there, standing so still?” the captain asked his son, finally perceiving him on the stern as he stared at the waves. “Papa, come here and see.” The father came, and he too looked in the direction indicated by the boy, but he could not see anything. “There’s a dark thing that rises in the wake every so often,” Stefano said, “and it follows behind us.” “Despite my forty years,” said the father, “I believe I still have good eyesight. But I see absolutely nothing.” And the boy insisted, the father went to get a telescope, and he scrutinized the surface of the sea, in line with the wake. Stefano saw him turn pale. “What is it? Why do you make that face?” “Oh, I wish I had never listened to you,” the captain exclaimed. “Now I’m worried about you. What you see rising from the water and following us is not some object. That is a colomber. It’s the fish that sailors fear above all others, in every sea in the world. It is a tremendous mysterious shark, more clever than man. For reasons that perhaps no one will ever know, it chooses its victim, and when it has chosen, it pursues him for years and years, for his entire life, until it has succeeded in devouring him. And the strange this is this: No one can see the colomber except the victim himself and his blood relations.” “It’s not a story?” |
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Post by 溪山 on May 26, 2024 23:30:42 GMT -5
“No. I have never seen it. But from descriptions I have heard many times, I immediately recognized it.
That bison like muzzle, that mouth continually opening an closing, those terrible teeth. Stefano, there’s no
doubt, the colomber has ominously chosen you, and as long as you go to sea, it will give you no peace. Listen
to me: We are going back to land now, immediately; you will go ashore and never leave it again, not for any
reason whatsoever. You must promise me you won’t. Seafaring is not for you, my son. You must resign
yourself. After all, you will be able to make your fortune on land too.”
Having said this, he immediate reversed his course, reentered the port, and on the pretext of a sudden illness, he
put his son ashore. Then he left again without him.
Deeply troubled, the boy remained on the shore until the last tip of the masts sank behind the horizon. Beyond
the pier that bounded the port, the seas was completely deserted. But looking carefully, Stefano could perceive
a small black point which intermittently surfaced on the water: It was “his” colomber, slowly moving back and
forth, obstinately waiting for him.
From then on, with every expedient the boy was dissuaded from his desire to go to sea. His father sent him to
study at an inland city, hundreds of kilometers away. And for some time, distracted by his new surroundings,
Stefano no longer thought about the sea monster. Still, he returned home for summer vacations, and the first
thing he did, as soon as he had some free time, was hurry to the end of the pier for a kind of verification,
although he fundamentally considered it unnecessary. After so many years, even supposing that all the stories
his father told him were true, the colomber had certainly given up its siege.
But Stefano stood there, astonished, his heart pounding. At a distance of two to three hundred meters from the
pier, in the open sea, the sinister fish was moving back and forth, slowly, raising its muzzle from the water
every now and then and turning toward land, as it anxiously watched for whether Stefano was coming at last.
So the idea of that hostile creature waiting for him day and night became a secret obsession for Stefano. And
even in the distant city it cropped up to wake him with worry in the middle of the night. He was safe, of course;
hundreds of kilometers separated him from the colomber. And yet he knew that beyond the mountains, beyond
the forests and the plains, the shark was waiting for him. He might have moved even to the most remote
continent, and still the colomber would have appeared in the mirror of the nearest sea, with the inexorable
obstinacy of a fatal instrument.
Stefano, who was a serious and eager boy, profitably continued his studies, and as soon as he was a man, he
found a dignified and well-paying position at a store in the inland sity. Meanwhile, his father died through
illness, his magnificent ship was sold by his widow, and his son found himself the heir to a modest fortune.
Work, friends, diversions, first love affairs- Stefano’s life was not well under way, but the thought of the
colomber nonetheless tormented him like a mirage that was fatal and fascinating at the same time; and as the
days passed, rather than disappear, it seemed to become more insistent.
Great are the satisfactions of an industrious, well-to-do, and quiet life, but greater still is the attraction of the
abyss. Stefano was hardly twenty-two years old when, having said goodbye to his inland friends and resigned
from his job, he returned to his native city and told his mother of his firm intention to follow his father’s trade.
The woman, to whom Stefano had never mentioned the mysterious shark, joyfully welcomed his decision. To
have her son abandon the sea for the city had always seemed to her, in her heart, a betrayal of the family’s
tradition.
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Post by 溪山 on May 26, 2024 23:30:59 GMT -5
Stefano began to sail, giving proof of his sea-worthiness, his resistance to fatigue, and his intrepid spirit. He
sailed and sailed, and in the wake of his ship, day and night, in good weather and in storms, the colomber
trudged along. He knew that this was his curse and his penalty, and precisely for this reason, perhaps, he did
not find the strength to sever himself from it. And no one on board, except him, perceived the monster.
“Don’t you see anything over there?” he asked his companions from time to time, pointing at the wake.
“No, we don’t see anything at all. Why?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to me…”
“You didn’t see a colomber, by any chance, did you?” the sailors asked, laughing and touching wood.
“Why are you laughing? Why are you touching wood?”
“Because the colomber is an animal that spares no one. And if it has begun to follow this ship, it means
that one of us is doomed.”
But Stefano did not slacken. The uninterrupted threat that followed on his heels seemed in fact to strengthen his
will, his passion for the sea, his courage in times of strife and danger.
When he felt that he was master of his trade, he used his modest inheritance to acquire a small steam freighter
with a partner; then he became the sole proprietor of it, and thanks to a series of successful shipments, he could
subsequently buy a true merchantman, setting out with always more-ambitious aims. But the successes, and the
millions, were unable to remove that continual torment from his soul; nor did he ever try, on the other hand, to
sell the ship and retire to undertake different enterprises on land.
To sail and sail was his only thought. Just as soon as he set foot on land in some port after a long journey, the
impatience to depart again immediately pricked him. He knew that outside the colomber was waiting for him
and that the colomber was synonymous with ruin. With nothingness. An indomitable impulse dragged him
without rest, from one ocean to another.
Until one day, Stefano suddenly realized that he had grown old, very old; and no one around him could explain
why, rich as he was, he did not finally leave the cursed life of the sea. He was old, and bitterly unhappy,
because his entire existence had been spent in that mad flight across the seas, to escape his enemy. But the
temptation of the abyss had always been greater for him than the joys of a prosperous and quiet life.
One evening, while his magnificent ship was anchored offshore at the port where he was born, he felt close to
death. He then called his second officer, in whom he had great trust, and ordered him not to oppose what he
was about to do. The other man promised, on his honor.
Having gotten this assurance, Stefano revealed to the second officer the story of the colomber that had
continued to pursue him uselessly for nearly fifty years. The officer listened to him, frightened.
“It has escorted me from one end of the world to the other,” Stefano said, “with a faithfulness that not
even the noblest friend could have shown. Now I am about to die. The colomber too will be terribly old and
weary by now. I cannot betray it.”
Having said this, he took his leave of the crew, ordered a small boat to be lowered into the sea, and boarded it,
after he made them give him a harpoon.
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Post by 溪山 on May 26, 2024 23:31:44 GMT -5
“Now I am going to meet it,” he announced. “It isn’t right to disappoint it. But I shall struggle, with all
my might.”
With a few weary strokes of the oars, he drew away from the side of the ship. Officers and sailors saw him
disappear down below, on the placid sea, shrouded in the nocturnal shadows. In the sky was a crescent moon.
He did not have to work very hard. Suddenly the colomber’s horrible snout emerged at the side of the boat.
“Here I am with you, finally,” Stefano said. “Now it’s just the two of us.” And gathering his remaining
strength, he raised the harpoon to strike.
“Uh,” the colomber groaned, imploringly, “what a long journey it’s taken to find you. I too am wasted
with fatigue. How much you made me swim. And you kept on fleeing. You never understood at all.”
“What?” asked Stefano, with the point of his harpoon over the colomber’s heart.
“I have not pursued you around the world to devour you, as you thought. I was charged by the King of
the Sea only to deliver this to you.”
And the shark stuck out its tongue, offering the old captain a small phosphorescent sphere. Stefano picked it up
and examined it. It was a pearl of unusual size. And he recognized it as the famous Perla del Mare, which
brought luck, power, love, and peace of mind to whoever possessed it. But now it was too late.
“Alas!” said the captain, shaking his head sadly. “How wrong it all is. I managed to condemn myself,
and I have ruined your life.”
“Goodbye, poor man,” answered the colomber.
And it sank into the black waters forever.
Two month later, pushed by an undertow, a small boat came alongside an abrupt reef. It was sighted by several
fisherman, who drew near, curious. In the boat, still seated, was a sun-bleached skeleton: between the little
bones of its fingers it grasped a small round stone.
The colomber is a huge fish, frightening to behold and extremely rare. Depending on the sea and the people
who live by its shores, the fish is also called the kolombrey, kahloubrha, kalonga, kalu-balu, chalunggra.
Naturalists strangely ignore it. Some even maintain that is does not exist.
The Writer: Dino Buzzati (1906-1972)
For many year, Dino Buzzati was an editor of a daily newspaper in Milan, Italy. A sort of jack-of-all-trades
when it came to his writing career, Buzzati was a successful journalist, novelist, short-story writer, nonfiction
writer, and science fiction writer. In addition, he was a talented painter and illustrator, creating drawings for
some of his own work.
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Post by 边 草 on May 27, 2024 21:31:35 GMT -5
“I have not pursued you around the world to devour you, as you thought. I was charged by the King of the Sea only to deliver this to you.” Really?  这短篇小说开头让我有点担心，中间部分那个小男孩决定自己回去当水手让我觉得有点振奋，（因为如果换成是我，大概率上我也会。）最后那个结局出乎我的意料！ 我仔细想，我过去有没有相似的经历，比如“怕鬼”？答案是：没有。 那么什么是这篇小说想要告诉读者的意义呢？1，不要被某些无厘头的传言所左右，2，探询真相需要准备付出代价，3，无缘无故的恐惧比什么都可怕。 Thanks for sharing and where did you find this story?  |
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Post by 溪山 on May 29, 2024 0:24:06 GMT -5
这篇小说出人意料的O. Henry 风格式的结尾确实精彩。 我觉得小说中的怪物（il colombre)是一个符号，指代命运, the fate. 命运之神如colombre， 在我们一生中一直如影随形。我们对之心怀恐惧，但我们最终必须面对。 想起这篇小说，是因为最近的旅途。 一天夜晚，在Dallas 市中心一带的高速公路上急速行驶的车流中穿梭，每个路牌都那么陌生，令我不只紧张，且心生恐惧，很怕不小心走错路。或许因为是夜晚，也或许是人老了，从前开车不曾有过这种感觉。 到旅馆后我想，对人生终点的惧怕，大概也是因为其不可知性。 haha, 学语言当然要喵两眼小说。 这篇小说意大利语是Il colombre。 |
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Post by 边 草 on May 29, 2024 14:31:29 GMT -5
哇，已经能够用意大利语读小说了？赞！
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Post by 边 草 on May 29, 2024 14:35:36 GMT -5
这篇小说出人意料的O. Henry 风格式的结尾确实精彩。 我觉得小说中的怪物（il colombre)是一个符号，指代命运, the fate. 命运之神如colombre， 在我们一生中一直如影随形。我们对之心怀恐惧，但我们最终必须面对。 想起这篇小说，是因为最近的旅途。 一天夜晚，在Dallas 市中心一带的高速公路上急速行驶的车流中穿梭，每个路牌都那么陌生，令我不只紧张，且心生恐惧，很怕不小心走错路。或许因为是夜晚，也或许是人老了，从前开车不曾有过这种感觉。 到旅馆后我想，对人生终点的惧怕，大概也是因为其不可知性。 haha, 学语言当然要喵两眼小说。 这篇小说意大利语是Il colombre。 这是一篇很有意思的短篇小说，让人回味。多谢。 “到旅馆后我想，对人生终点的惧怕，大概也是因为其不可知性。” 嗯，这大概可以是做一块豆腐干的材料呢？ |
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