Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

置身悲惨时代已是不可改变的事实，因此我们更需保持乐观的态度。大难已然降临，身处残垣断壁之中，我们着手修建自己的小小家园，心怀微弱的新的希冀。这的确并非易事：通往未来的道路绝无坦途，但我们仍需曲折前行，攀过重重阻碍。即使天崩地裂，生活仍要继续。

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn.

康斯坦斯·查泰莱夫人的境遇大致就是如此。战争给她带来塌天横祸。也让她意识到人必须活在世间，生而学之。

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine.

1917年，克利福德·查泰莱告了一个月的假，返回家乡，同康斯坦斯结了婚。两人得以共度一个月的新婚时光。之后，他再赴佛兰德，不想仅仅六个月过去，就被运回英格兰，几乎是遍体鳞伤。当时他29岁，妻子康斯坦斯23岁。

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.

克利福德的求生欲望令人惊异。他居然活了下来，支离破碎的身体似乎也重新愈合了。医生花费整整两年的时光医治他，总算起到回春之效，克利福德好歹保住性命，只是腰部以下的下半身永远瘫痪了。

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family "seat". His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could.

时间已经是1920年。克利福德携康斯坦斯返回家乡，入住祖传的拉格比府。父亲已经辞世，克利福德承袭爵位，成为克利福德男爵，而康斯坦斯也成为查泰莱男爵夫人。置身于查泰莱家这座有点凄清的祖宅，夫妻俩操持家务，依靠稍显微薄的收入，过起日子来。克利福德有个姐姐，但已经离开。此外她们再无近亲。其兄死于战火。克利福德清楚自己注定终生残废，无望有后，重回烟雾缭绕的米德兰（注：英格兰中部地区的旧称），为的只是在自己的有生之年，让查泰莱家不至于断绝香火。

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.

他并未因此而十分郁郁寡欢。他可以摇着轮椅，四处游逛，而驾着那个装有小型马达的巴斯轮椅（注：旧时一种供残疾人使用的轮椅，多带有蓬盖），更能够悠哉游哉地在花园中徜徉，进入那片树木成行、凄清阴郁的庭院中去。拥有如此气派的园林，他其实颇为得意，只是装出一副满不在乎的模样而已。

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, arid his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.

经历诸多苦难，克利福德对痛苦的承受能力有点离他而去。他依然古怪，总是满面春风，笑逐颜开，脸色健康红润，淡蓝色的双眸神采奕奕，说他是乐天派也不为过。其双肩宽厚强壮，两手结实有力。其人衣着华贵，颈部总系着邦德街（注：位于伦敦西部上流住宅区的一条商业街，从18世纪繁盛至今）买回的漂亮的领带。但从他的脸上，还是能看到那种残疾人特有的警惕表情，以及略显空洞的眼神。

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.

他曾去鬼门关走过一遭，因此对余生倍加珍视。一双明眸分明闪烁着焦虑，流露出对自己大难不死的得意神色。但所受的创伤确实太过深重，他内心的某些东西已然泯灭，某些情感也都消失不见了。只有失去知觉后的空白。

Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R.A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.

其妻康斯坦斯，面若桃花，一副乡下姑娘的模样，满头柔软的棕发，体格结实强壮，行动慢条斯理，精力异常充沛。她那一对杏眼，充满好奇，嗓音温软，像是刚从故乡的村子里走出。但事实并非如此。其父老马尔科姆·里德爵士，曾是尽人皆知的皇家艺术学会（注：位于英国伦敦的著名艺术机构）会员。在那段前拉斐尔派（注：1848年在英国兴起的美术改革运动，对后世的英国绘画有着深远的影响）还如日中天的繁荣时期，其母也是位学识渊博的费边社（注：英国社会改良主义团体，1884年成立于伦敦，主张采取缓慢渐进的策略来达到社会改良的目的）社员。受到艺术家及有教养的社会主义者的熏陶，康斯坦斯与妹妹希尔达可以算是受到了新颖的美学上的教养。她们曾随父母到过巴黎、佛罗伦萨以及罗马，呼吸那里的艺术气息，也去过海牙与柏林，参与社会主义者的盛会，在那里形形色色的演说者操着各国语言，谈吐文雅，举止大方。

The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

对于艺术或者理想主义政治，姐妹俩从小就没有半点胆怯之心。她们反倒对此习以为常。她们大气广博，又不失乡土本色，她们那交融着世界性及地方色彩的艺术品味，与纯粹的社会理想相辅相成。

They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good time there. They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twang! They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid-throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and—above all—to say what they liked. It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned interchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment.

15岁时，她们被送往德累斯顿（注：德国中东部城市），学习音乐和其他知识。她们在那里度过了愉快的时光。学校的生活是那样的无拘无束，她们常与男同学争论哲学、社会学以及艺术方面的问题。姐妹俩的学识丝毫不逊男子，甚至更胜一筹——因为她们是女子。当她们相伴在林间漫步时，同行的英挺少年总会不时拨响随身携带的六弦琴，砰砰作响！高唱起候鸟协会（注：德语，意为候鸟，此处指１19世纪末20世纪初的德国青年运动，倡导摆脱社会的限制，返璞归真，追求自由）的歌谣，如此地自由自在。自由！多么美妙的字眼。在空旷的野外，在清晨的森林，与歌喉动人的欢快少年们自由地做喜欢的事情，尤其是畅所欲言。谈话无疑极为重要，那热情洋溢的交谈。爱情不过是微不足道的陪衬。

Both Hilda and Constance had had their tentative love-affairs by the time they were eighteen. The young men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily and camped under the trees in such freedom wanted, of course, the love connexion. The girls were doubtful, but then the thing was so much talked about, it was supposed to be so important. And the men were so humble and craving. Why couldn't a girl be queenly, and give the gift of herself? So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connexion were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax. One was less in love with the boy afterwards, and a little inclined to hate him, as if he had trespassed on one's privacy and inner freedom. For, of course, being a girl, one's whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl's life mean? To shake off the old and sordid connexions and subjections.

希尔达和康斯坦斯均在18岁时初尝爱情的滋味。和她们热烈交谈，纵情欢唱，在树下自由露营的小伙子们自然会对肌肤之亲充满渴望。女孩们起初犹豫未决，但关于此事，双方已经探讨过多次，均认为它如此重要。况且小伙子们又是如此低声下气地渴求。为什么女孩不能如女王施恩一般，将自己赐予对方呢？于是两人都委身于谈论问题时与自己最为交心，关系最为亲密的少年。高谈阔论，据理力争，才是举足轻重之事，而男女之欢不过是种回归原始的行为，甚至有点扫兴。云雨过后，女孩对男孩的爱意反倒减少了，甚至生出些许怨恨，仿佛是他侵犯了自己的私隐，以及内在的自由。因为身为女子，全部的尊严，以及生存的真谛，都自然在于自由的实现，这种自由无可挑剔，尽善尽美，难觅瑕疵，高贵无比。女子的一生除此之外还有什么意义？是摆脱陈腐的、可鄙的交媾和从属关系。

And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connexions and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.

无论被赋予多少浪漫情怀，性事仍是一种古老的、污秽的交合行为和从属关系。歌颂性爱的诗人多是男子。女子却往往深知，世间还存在着更加美好、更加崇高的事物。而如今，这种信念比以往还要明确许多。对于女人而言，完美纯粹的自由如此令人向往，而这是任何性爱都无法企及的。不过糟糕的是，男人对此事的观念依旧停滞落后。他们对性的强烈需求，与兽类无异。

And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connexion. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connexion and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.

女子只得委曲求全。男人好似贪嘴的孩童。当女人不肯屈就于他们的欲望时，他们就可能会摆出臭脸，盛怒而去，活脱脱像个孩子，将原本融洽的关系搞得一团糟。但女人就算屈从于男子，仍可以保有心底自由的真我。那些乐谈性事的诗人和谈论者，好像没有对这给予充分说明。即使委身于人，女子仍能不流露自己内心的真实情感，自然也能做到不受对方的掌控。相反，她们甚至可以巧妙地利用性事，将男人玩弄于股掌之中。她们只须在交媾时抑制住自己的情绪，避免高潮的到来，等到对方弹药耗尽、丢盔卸甲后，就可以将欢好时间延长，享受极度的快感，而此时男人扮演的角色只不过是她的纵欲工具。

Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months… this they had never realized till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to!—had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was.

战火燃起，姐妹俩匆匆赶回家，而在此之前，两人都已有过恋爱的经验。陷入爱河，皆因双方能够倾心交谈，彼此深有好感，愿意互诉衷肠。数月间，能与颖悟绝伦的少男时以继时，日以继日地忘情交谈，那种兴奋的感受真是美妙至极、深奥莫测、难以置信……而这些只有在亲身经历过后，才能真正认识得到。神的许诺：尔将交到可以交心的男子！——从未透露，这个许诺却在恋人们尚未知晓之前，就已兑现。

And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soul-enlightened discussions the sex thing became more or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating thrill inside the body, a final spasm of self-assertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme.

生动的、启迪灵魂的交谈，使恋人间的关系变得亲昵，若此时云情雨意已无法抑制，那就不妨顺其自然。这标志着一个篇章的终结。其本身也伴随着强烈的快感：肉体深处莫可名状的震颤，最终释放欲望时的痉挛，像是文章末尾激奋人心的字眼，更像是段落结尾处一连串的星号，预示着主题思想戛然而止。

When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.

适逢1913年暑期，姐妹俩返回故乡，那时希尔达20岁，康妮18岁，其父一眼便看出她们已经有了爱情经验。

L'amour avait possé par là, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its course. As for the mother, a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be "free", and to "fulfil themselves". She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, high-spirited wife to rule her own roost, while he went his own way.

正如某人所说：爱情已经来临过。然而他自己已是过来人，索性听之任之。至于她们的母亲，疯疯癫癫的她已经时日无多，只剩几个月的活头，期望女儿们能够“自由自在”，“充实自我”。她从未做过真正的自己，这个权利被剥夺了。天晓得原因为何，毕竟她是个经济独立、行事果敢的女子。她归咎于自己的丈夫。但事实上，只是陈腐的伦常对其思想或灵魂的影响太过深重，以至于她始终都无法摆脱出来。这跟马尔科姆爵士绝无半点干系。他对妻子神经质的敌视和执着熟视无睹，心安理得地我行我素。

So the girls were 'free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men. They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else they were a little rebuffed, though they did not know it.

姐妹俩自然不会受到什么约束，她们再赴德累斯顿，回归高校继续研修音乐，也得以重返年轻的情郎的怀抱。两对恋人都全身心地深爱着彼此。少男们所想、所说、所写的一切美妙事物，全都是为了自己心爱的女孩。康妮的爱郎学习音乐，而希尔达的则主修理工。但他们生活的重心完全放在自己的恋人身上。更确切地说，从思想及情感方面来讲尤是如此。而在其他方面，他们却并未被完全接受，虽说二人始终没有察觉到这一点。

It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less assertive, more hesitant.

显而易见，爱情，干柴烈火的肉体之爱，已经在她俩身上留下痕迹。奇妙的是，肉体之爱会让情侣们的身体发生细微但却显而易见的变化：女孩变得更加丰腴圆润，好似盛放的花朵，少女时期的棱角渐渐被磨平，取而代之的是抑或忧心忡忡，抑或洋洋得意的丰富表情；男孩则变得更加沉静内敛，肩膀和臀部的线条少了几分斩钉截铁，多了几分犹豫不决。

In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the woman for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie's man could be a bit sulky, and Hilda's a bit jeering. But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason.

身体内部真切的性快感，让姐妹俩几乎要对男性的奇异力量俯首称臣。但二人旋即重拾自我，将性快感归于官能的刺激，坚守着心灵的自由。反观她们的情郎，却因为对佳人以身相许心存感念，将灵魂也尽数交托给对方。但过不多时，他们就发觉这似乎有些得不偿失。康妮的爱侣不时板起脸孔，而希尔达的则经常冷嘲热讽。男人就是这副臭德行！薄情寡幸，贪得无厌。对其敬而远之，他们便心生怨恨；与其如胶似漆，也会招致其他缘由的厌烦。

Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.

或是根本没有因由，他们只是牢骚满腹的孩子，无论得到什么，无论女子付出再多，也不会感到满足。

However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May, to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.

大战烽火燃起，希尔达和康妮被迫再度匆忙返乡避祸，那年五月，她们就曾回过家，为了料理母亲的后事。1914年圣诞节来临前，两人的德国情郎双双殒命，为此姐妹俩垂泪许久，毕竟彼此间有过轰轰烈烈的爱情，但在心底却已渐渐将他们遗忘。毕竟已是阴阳相隔。

Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington housemixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for 'freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.

姐妹俩住进肯辛顿（注：位于伦敦西部的行政区划）父亲家里，确切地讲，那里本来属于母亲，与剑桥大学学生团体的年轻成员们混居一处。这些家伙都标榜“自由”，穿法兰绒开领衫，配法兰绒长裤，满腹教养，笃信情感无政府主义，嗓音低沉含混，仪态反应异常灵敏。没料想，希尔达突然成婚，丈夫比她年长十岁，是该学生团体的资深成员，家财殷实，在政府中充当僚属，也常写点哲学文章。她跟随丈夫，住进威斯敏斯特一处不大的寓所，交往的都是政府阶层，虽说算不得头面人物，但也都是或者将会成为英国的真正智囊。他们知道自己在谈论些什么，或者装作自己无所不知。

Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigents, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her "friend" was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.

康妮得到份清闲的战时工作，常与那些穿法兰绒长裤的剑桥学生为伴，他们有着独立的政治见解，总会措辞文雅地揶揄时事。她的“男友”名叫克利福德·查泰莱，时年22岁，当时正在德国波恩学习煤矿开采技术，刚刚匆忙赶回英伦。此前，他在剑桥修习过两年。如今则是一个厉害的军团里的陆军中尉，身着军装，更可以随意睥睨一切了。

Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.

克利福德·查泰莱的出身高过康妮。康妮出自富裕的知识分子家庭，而他却属于贵族阶层。虽说不是名门显族，但仍然沾得上边。其父为准男爵，其母未出阁时，也是子爵家的千金。

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more "society", was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow "great world", that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle-and lower-class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.

虽说克利福德的教养及身份都优于康妮，但却更加狭隘羞怯。置身狭小的“上流社会”——地主贵族阶层，他尚且感觉自在，但一旦与其他阶层——包括人数众多的中产阶级、下层民众、甚至外国人相处，他便羞怯不前，紧张兮兮。说白了，他对中低阶层的人们有些心怀畏惧，对并非贵族的外国人也有些抵触。虽然享有的特权都得到极力捍卫，但他仍然会觉得自己有些麻木但又惶惑无助。这种现象的确怪异，但却真实存在于我们这个时代。

Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world of chaos than he was master of himself.

也难怪康斯坦斯·里德那份与众不同的温婉自得，让他深深着迷。身处纷乱复杂的外部世界中，康妮显得更加镇定自若，这点远非他所能比。

Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people.

然而，他同样是个离经叛道者，甚至公然对抗自己的阶级。或许离经叛道这个词过于强烈，太过激烈。他不过是跟普通青年大众一样愤世嫉俗，反对传统，挑战任何形式的权威。父辈们都是愚蠢可笑的，他那位冥顽不灵的父亲尤是如此。政府当局都是极端荒谬的，总是抱有投机心理的英国政府尤是如此。军队都是荒唐透顶的，那些垂垂老矣的将军们，面色酡红的基奇纳（注：1850-1916，英国陆军元帅，在一战前期起到过举足轻重的作用。）尤是如此。甚至战争本身都是毫无意义的，虽然成千上万的人们因它而丢掉性命。

In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree.

事实上，世间万物都有些荒诞的色彩，或者说是非常荒诞，尤其是所有与权威相关的东西，无论是军队、政府或者高等院校，无一例外地荒诞至极。

And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending more money on his country than he'd got.

至于那些自命不凡的统治阶层，同样是值得奚落的对象。克利福德的父亲，杰弗里爵士，更是荒唐到极点。他伐尽园中的树木，将自家矿场里的工人一股脑地赶上前线，而自己则在后方高枕无忧，高喊救国口号，不过，他也确实为国家慷慨解囊，甚至到了入不敷出的地步。

When Miss Chatterley—Emma—came down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir, laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became ridiculous too...? At least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about something. They believed in something.

查泰莱家的大小姐艾玛，从中部地区南下伦敦，从事一些医护工作，动身前，就曾气定神闲地对父亲和他那坚定不移的爱国主义大加调侃。而身为继承人的长兄赫伯特，当场报以大笑，虽然那些被砍伐用以修筑战壕的树木是他的财产。而克利福德只是露出点局促不安的微笑。一切都是足可嘲笑的对象，这一点毫无疑问。但当自己身临其境，是否也会沦为笑柄呢……？至少非贵族阶层的人们，比如康妮，还能以诚挚的态度来对待某些事情。他们的心中还存有信仰。

They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous AB OVO, not because of toffee or Tommies.

他们极为关心前线的英国兵，对征兵的威胁感到忧心忡忡，而食糖和乳糖的短缺给孩童们造成的影响，同样让他们惴惴不安。当然，所有这些事的罪魁祸首，是荒唐的当局政府。但克利福德却始终并未因此感到困扰。对他而言，无能的政府才是罪恶的根源，而供应不足的糖果或是浴血奋战的士兵，都并非症结所在。

And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea-party for a while. Till things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over here. And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant young laughed no more.

连当权者自己也觉得有些荒唐，但其所作所为依然愚蠢透顶，一时间活像是场疯狂的茶话会。直到前方战事日趋紧张，此时劳埃德·乔治（注：英国政治家，1916-1922年任英国首相，对一战的胜利以及战后的欧洲重建，起到过至关重要的作用。）走马上任，才算挽回国内的危局。而这些已经超越可笑的范畴，连愤世嫉俗的青年们也乖乖闭上了嘴。

In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey, and child of Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not terrible? and also splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd? Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense, withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable, that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood for England and St. George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled timber and stood for Lloyd George and England, England and Lloyd George.

1916年，赫伯特·查泰莱阵亡，于是克利福德成为继承人。他甚至因此而感到害怕。他深知作为杰弗里爵士的子嗣、拉格比的少主，有着多么重要的意义，他无法回避自己所需肩负的责任。他也清楚这些在广大的处于水深火热中的人们看来，是多么地不着边际。现在他已经成为继承人，要对拉格比负责。这难道不会使人心生畏惧么？充分体验到满足感的同时，当事人同时也会觉得荒谬透顶。但杰弗里爵士却丝毫感觉不到任何荒谬的意味。他面色苍白，总是一副紧张兮兮的神情，一门心思决心拯救他的国家，保住自己的贵族地位。至于在位的究竟是劳埃德·乔治，或是别的什么人，对他而言毫无干系。身处与世隔绝的境地，他跟当今的现实英国社会完全脱节，因此根本就是心有余而力不足，这位爵爷甚至对霍雷肖·博顿利（注：1860-1933，英国金融家，政治骗子，内阁成员）评价颇高。杰弗里爵士支持英国及劳埃德·乔治，与他的先辈拥护祖国和圣乔治（注：260-303，罗马骑兵军官，死后被英格兰等欧洲国家奉为保护圣徒）别无二致，他从来搞不清其中有什么差异。因此，他伐倒自家的树木，为的只是支持劳埃德·乔治与英国，英国与劳埃德·乔治。

And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his father was a hopeless anachronism. But wherein was he himself any further ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of everything, and the paramount ridiculousness of his own position? For willy-nilly he took his baronetcy and Wragby with the last seriousness.

他希望克利福德早日成家，传宗接代。而在克利福德眼中，父亲是个不可救药的脱离时代的老顽固。但他自己除了对一切事物的荒谬，尤其是自己处境的极端荒谬怀有畏缩之意外，并没有什么地方强过父亲。被迫也好，自愿也罢，他最终还是郑重其事地接受了准男爵爵位以及拉格比的财产。

The gay excitement had gone out of the war...dead. Too much death and horror. A man needed support and comfort. A man needed to have an anchor in the safe world. A man needed a wife.

战争初期的狂热已经烟消云散，灰飞烟灭。死亡人数不断攀升，血色恐惧肆意弥漫。男人们需要支持和抚慰。需要在战火未曾波及的所在，找到可以依赖的支点。需要个知疼知热的妻子。

The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were so sensitive about.

查泰莱三兄妹虽认识的人不少，但在拉格比却过着奇怪的、与世隔绝的生活，把自己封锁起来。内心的孤独将亲情的纽带系得更紧，虽然他们拥有爵位和土地，但或许正因为此，才会忧心地位不保，感到莫名的无助。虽然生活在工业化的米德兰地区，但他们却与外部世界阻隔开来。他们甚至与同阶层的人们也不相往来，这都拜其父杰弗里爵士所赐，他那阴郁倔强、沉默寡言的性格让人敬而远之。虽然兄妹三人总是将父亲作为奚落的对象，但心里却又很在意他。

The three had said they would all live together always. But now Herbert was dead, and Sir Geoffrey wanted Clifford to marry. Sir Geoffrey barely mentioned it: he spoke very little. But his silent, brooding insistence that it should be so was hard for Clifford to bear up against.

他们甚至承诺过彼此永不分离。但如今，赫伯特已不在人世，杰弗里爵士希望克利福德成家立室。他极少提及此事，因为本来就鲜于言辞。但他总是默不作声，郁郁寡欢，却又固执己见，使得克利福德根本无力反抗。

But Emma said No! She was ten years older than Clifford, and she felt his marrying would be a desertion and a betrayal of what the young ones of the family had stood for.

但是艾玛却反对弟弟的婚事！她长克利福德十岁，认为弟弟娶妻就是将自己弃之不顾，违背了他们昔日的约誓。

Clifford married Connie, nevertheless, and had his month's honeymoon with her. It was the terrible year 1917, and they were intimate as two people who stand together on a sinking ship. He had been virgin when he married: and the sex part did not mean much to him. They were so close, he and she, apart from that. And Connie exulted a little in this intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond a man's "satisfaction". Clifford anyhow was not just keen on his 'satisfaction', as so many men seemed to be. No, the intimacy was deeper, more personal than that. And sex was merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curious obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary. Though Connie did want children: if only to fortify her against her sister-in-law Emma.

尽管如此，克利福德仍与康妮完婚，共渡蜜月。那时正值兵荒马乱的1917年，小两口好似矗立在行将沉没的船舶之上一样亲密无间、不肯分离。结婚时克利福德还是童子之身，而性爱对他而言形同鸡肋。除此之外两人爱得如胶似漆。这种与性事和男子欲望满足无关的亲密，让康妮欣喜若狂。克利福德并不像许多男人那般，沉迷于他的欲望满足之中。或者应该这样说，这种情感远比单纯的性爱更笃厚，更私密。而性事只能偶尔为之，或当成某种点缀，那只是一种奇妙的却又过气笨拙的器官交合的过程，并非不可或缺。康妮渴望生下一儿半女，以此来巩固自己的地位，对抗丈夫的姐姐艾玛。

But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no child. And Sir Geoffrey died of chagrin.

但天不遂人愿，1918年年初，遍体鳞伤的克利福德被送回国内，留下子嗣的希望随之泯灭。杰弗里爵士也郁郁而终。 LRV4eTkU07u0r4QK52KCJ6zv5UqJsYG8nLqMsvwp0hnlYRUdu67o1In0GQbClSA1