《寓言》简介（福克纳）

Synopsis of A Fable（Faulkner）

《寓言》，福克纳的小说，1954年出版，并获得普利策奖。
1918年，在一名下士及其12名追随者的和平主义影响下，一个法国军团拒绝攻击德国人，德国人出于同样的原因也不反击。联军统帅担心自己的军事记录，要求处决整个团，但法国最高将领知道这位下士是他的亲生儿子，并开始相信人类的贪婪与理想主义是密不可分的。他牵头特别法庭审理此案。他很聪明，并非没有同情心，但却完全愤世嫉俗地认为战争不仅是政治和经济上的必要，而且“长久以来，战争已成为他行为的一个崇高信条，成为他热爱流血和光荣牺牲的国家祭坛”。在12名下士中的一名叛徒向他泄露和平主义计划后，他与德国指挥部合谋恢复战争，战争的理由还是基于民族仇恨和狭隘的理想主义，就是那些军队、人民以及幻想破灭而又杀戮成性的高级军官贵族的仇恨和理想。一个年轻的英国飞行员发现了这个骗局后自杀了。下士使一名英国信使相信，士兵只要放下武器，在防线之间会合，就可以结束战争。
少数人被他说服并跟随他，但在双方炮击和平缔造者时，他受了重伤。在这场枪战中，一名沉默寡言的英国哨兵和一名黑人牧师也被杀，其间穿插着他们在美国偷窃一匹骞马的非凡而漫长的冒险故事。随着当地民众转而反对下士，担心整个军团都会因为他而被枪毙，基督受难的场景得以再现，并不断分化。已遭背叛的这位下士与一个名叫玛格达的女人结婚，当他在监狱里吃“最后的晚餐”时，被背叛者所出卖，然后被老将军带到山顶要塞。老将军敦促他放弃“那个"人类必胜"的反常而徒劳的梦想”，并诱骗他相信，活命的代价就是牺牲男人拒绝战争的崇高希望。这位下士英勇地与两名罪犯一起被枪杀，并被隐密而体面地埋葬。但战争的重新爆发，以在坟墓附近的爆炸形式，使他得以“复活”。既有偶然性，也有被指派去寻找一名未知士兵尸体的人的贪婪性因素，这名下士被埋葬在巴黎永恒的火焰下。
A Fable, novel by Faulkner , published in1954 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
Under the pacifst influence of a corporal and his twelve followers in 1918, a French regiment refuses to attack the Germans, who for the same reason do not counterattack.The commander,concerned with his military record, requests that the entire regiment be executed, but the supreme French general,who knows the corporal to be his natural son and who has come to believe in the inextricable mingling of human rapacity and idealism, heads the tribunal considering the case. Wise and not without compassion, yet utterly cynical, he sees war not only as a political and economic necessity but as "so long ingrained in man as to have become an honorable tenet of his behavior and the national altar for his love of bloodshed and glorious sacrifice." Having been warned of the pacifist plan by a betrayer among the corporal"s twelve, he collaborates with the German command to resume the war on the continued bases of national hatred and narrow idealism for the armies and people, and a disillusioned yet god-like way of life for the aristocracy of senior officers. Discovering this deception,a young British fⅠyer commits suicide. A British runner is convinced by the corporal"s example that soldiers can end war if they simply throw down their weapons and meet between the lines, and having persuaded a handful of men to follow him, he is horribly injured when artillery on both sides shell the peacemakers. Also killed in this barrage are a taciturn British sentry and a Negro lay preacher, whose remarkable adventure in America with a superb, stolen racehorse is a long interpolated tale. As the local populace turns against the corporal, fearing that the whole regiment will be shot because of him, a re-enactment of the Passion of Christ develops and becomes ramified.Wed to a woman named Magda, and already betrayed, the corporal is denied by the betrayer as he conducts a "last supper" in prison, and then is taken by the old general to a hilltop fortress to be tempted with life at the expense of his exaltcd hope for man"s repudiation of war and urged to abandon "that aberrant and futile dream" that "man
will prevail." Unrelenting, the corporal is shot along with two criminals and given surreptitious but decent burial.But the resumption of war, in the form of an explosion near the grave, "resurrects" him, and through a combination of chance and the greed of men assigned to get the body of an unknown soldier,he is entombed beneath the everlasting flame in Paris.