插图和解说辞(五)
象孩儿
【英】鲁迪亚德·吉卜林著
原作者 插图
熊威廉 译
(图一)
这是一幅象鼻拉长图。象孩儿的鼻子正在被鳄鱼拉拽着。他感到很吃惊,很害怕,很疼。用鼻子说:“快松开!你把我整得好疼!”他绷得很紧,鳄鱼也一样。而花斑大蟒急忙有谁过来帮象孩子拽。所有那些黑东西是浅绿的、脏兮兮的林波波河大堤坝,但是我不能给这些画面着色。而堤坝上长着弯曲的根和8片叶子的瓶状树,是一种 那里到处生长的蓝桉树。
在主图的下方 是一些非洲的动物正在走进一只非洲式的方舟。有两头狮子,两只鸵鸟,两头牛,两匹骆驼,两只羊,还有两个别的动物,象是老鼠,可我觉得象野兔。它们没有特别的意义。我把它们放到这里,只是觉得好看。假设能让我给它们图上颜色,肯定很漂亮。
(图二)
这是一幅象吃香蕉图。象孩儿长出了焕然一新的漂亮的长鼻子以后,从一棵高大的香蕉树上摘下了一串香蕉。我觉得这幅画没有画好。可是,我又不能画得更好了,因为象和香蕉都不好画。象孩儿背后的条状斑纹是非洲某处的泥潭沼泽地。象孩儿用他从那里挖来的泥土做成了许多泥饼。我认为,如果把香蕉树涂成绿色,把象孩儿涂成红色,这幅画会更好看些。
原文(V)
The Elephant’s Child
Written by Rudyard Kipling
Illustrated by the Author
Translated by William Xiong
(1)
This is the Elephant’s Child having his nose pulled by the Crocodile. He is much surprised and astonished and hurt, and he talking through his nose and saying, ’Let go! You are hurting me!’ He is pulling very hard, and so is the Crocodile; but the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake is hurrying through the water to help the Elephant’s Child. All that black stuff is the banks of the great grey-green, gressy Limpopo River (but I am not allowed to paint these pictures), and the bottly-tree with the twisty roots and the eight leaves is one of the fever trees that grow there.
Underneath the truly picture are shadows of African animals walking into an African ark. There are two lions, two ostriches, two oxen, two camels, two sheep, and two other things that look like rats, but I think they are rock-rabbits. They don’t mean anything. I put them in because I thought they look pretty. They would look very fine if I were allowed to paint them.
(2)
This is just a picture of the Elephant’s Child going to pull bananas off a banana-tree after he had got his fine new long trunk. I don’t think it is a nice picture; but I couldn’t make it any better, because elephants and bananas are hard to draw. The streaky things behind the Elephant’s Child mean squoggy marshy country somewhere in Africa. The Elephant’s Child made most of his mud-cake out of the mud that he found there. I think it would look better if you painted the banana-tree green and the Elephant’s Child red.
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