Chinese Practice
晴天霹靂
(qing2 tian1 pi1 li4)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
照片：維基共享資源
a thunderbolt from a clear sky
英國哲學家約翰‧史都華‧彌爾（西元一八○六～一八七三年）受託寫作法國大革命史，但彌爾忙於其他工作無暇為之，便請他的朋友，蘇格蘭歷史學家湯馬斯‧卡萊爾（西元一七九五～一八八一年）來寫。卡萊爾把第一冊唯一的一份手稿寄給彌爾過目，但手稿卻在彌爾保管期間意外焚毀了。後來卡萊爾全部重寫，並形容這本書是「火焰般直接發自內心」寫下的。
這或許解釋了一八三七年出版的三卷《法國大革命史》的特殊寫作風格，該書敘述了一七八九年至一七九五年的革命歷程。迥異於歷史學家所偏好的冷靜、客觀方式，卡萊爾以第一人稱現在式的散文詩風格寫作，使作者和讀者對所描述的事件都如同身歷其境。
例如對某位重要人物的意外被捕，他是這樣寫的：「這逮捕突如其來像藍天中的閃電，擊中莫名奇妙的受害者。」此為「like a bolt from/ out of the blue」這說法第一次形諸文字出現在書中，指不受歡迎的意外。畢竟有誰會想到晴朗蔚藍的天空會打雷？
中文裡有個成語叫「晴天霹靂」，字面意義是晴朗天空的雷電，在中文文學中出現過的字句有不同的變化，最早的也許是南宋詩人陸游（西元一一二五～一二一○）的〈四日夜雞未鳴起作〉這首詩：
放翁病過秋，忽起作醉墨。
正如久蟄龍，青天飛霹靂。
現今的成語已跟陸游的原句「青天飛霹靂」有些不同。陸游此句的原意全然是正面的，但現今成語「晴天霹靂」的意義已是負面的，如同英語「like a bolt from/ out of the blue」的意思，指的是出乎意料的衝擊、不受歡迎的意外。
(台北時報編譯林俐凱譯)
他終於要退伍了，卻接到女友要嫁給別人的消息，當下有如晴天霹靂。
(Finally, he was going to get to leave the army, but then he learned his girl was going to marry another man. Talk about a bolt from the blue.)
公司無預警宣布裁員，這晴天霹靂讓大家手足無措。
(The company announced, completely out of the blue, that it was going to make staff redundant. People didn’t quite know how to react.)
英文練習
a bolt from the blue
The English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) was asked to write a history of the French Revolution. Inundated with other projects, he asked a friend, the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881), to write it instead. Carlyle sent the sole copy of the draft first volume to Mill to read, but it went up in flames in an accident while in Mill’s possession. Carlyle rewrote the entire work, in what he himself described as a book that came “direct and flamingly from the heart.”
This might explain the writing style of the three-volume The French Revolution: A History, published in 1837 and recounting the course of the revolution from 1789 to 1795. Unlike the sober, objective approach favored by historians, Carlyle wrote using a style of prose poetry in the first-person present-tense, as if writer and reader were present at the time of the events described.
One example, in which he was commenting on the unexpected arrest of important individuals, is: “Arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims.” This is the first known written example of the expression “like a bolt from/out of the blue,” meaning an unwelcome surprise. Who, after all, would expect thunder and lightning to strike on a clear day with blue skies?
The Chinese idiom 晴天霹靂, literally “clear skies, a thunderbolt,” has appeared in various forms many times in Chinese literature, but perhaps the earliest is in the poem Rising Before the Cock Crows on September 4 by the Southern Song Dynasty poet Lu You (1125 — 1210). Lu wrote,
Sick throughout the fall,
Suddenly I rose and started writing furiously,
Like a dragon rising from hibernation,
And soaring across the blue skies, as lightning.
Lu’s original phrase, 青天飛霹靂, has found itself subtly changed in the modern version of the idiom. In the poem, the metaphor is entirely positive. Like the English phrase, however, 晴天霹靂 is nowadays generally used in a negative sense, to signal an unanticipated shock, an unwanted surprise.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
I’m still in shock, to be honest. It was a bit of a bolt from the blue. Totally unexpected.
(老實說我還是覺得很震驚，這真是晴天霹靂，太令人意外了。)
When Mill told Carlyle that his only manuscript had gone up in flames, it must have been a real bolt from the blue.
(彌爾告訴卡萊爾說唯一的手稿已被燒毀的時候，卡萊爾一定覺得晴天霹靂。)
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