自译《地海传奇》序言 厄休拉·勒古恩
这篇书评可能有关键情节透露
写在前面：我在大概四年前第一次读完了《地海传奇》六部曲。在一年前的夏天，从不会重读书的我又把地海读了一遍。在临近高考的一段时间，我把我最受感触的地海的文字再次拿出来反复阅读，其中包括整本《地海巫师》《地海古墓》《地海彼岸》和《地海奇风》的尾声。Ged以及其他人物的故事和话语给了我无上的鼓舞，让我在人生的至暗时刻找到了光源。四年前，勒古恩用她的文字为十四岁的我献上了一份成长礼，《地海传奇》让我知道真正伟大的文学作品究竟是什么样的。
今年夏天，我买入了最新出版的地海总集篇的原版书。勒古恩于2016年为该书作了序，然而中译本早在之前就已翻译出版，因此这篇序言几乎不为中国读者所知。此外，该书还包括中译本未曾翻译的五篇文章。我想在以后的时间都将它们翻译出来。勒古恩本人和其作品，包括《地海传奇》，在国内知名度极低，然而这位奇幻大师在西方各国都享有盛誉。勒古恩于2018年离世，我仅能为地海在国内的读者献出微薄之力。文中关于地海专用名词的译文我都尽可能参照了中译本。将原文转化为文本，然后翻译，前后大概花了我十天的时间，这里把原文一并放上。译文粗浅，与大家共飨。
Earthsea Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin
《地海传奇》序言 厄休拉·勒古恩
Earthsea had its beginning in 1964 in two stories that I wrote and published. They are slight; more like a sailor's chance sighting of a couple of islands than the discovery of a new world. Earthsea exists in them, though, as the Americas existed in 1492 in Watlings Island①, now known as San Salvador Island.
《地海传奇》源于1964年我创作并发表的两篇故事。这两篇故事很短小，相比于发现新世界的宏大传奇，它们更像是一个水手在不经意间望见了一片岛屿。然而地海世界就存在于它们之中，就像1492年美洲存在于华特林岛①，即现在的圣萨尔瓦多岛之中。
注① 华特林岛（Watlings Island），又称圣萨尔瓦多岛（San Salvador Island），大部分学者认为该岛是哥伦布1492年10月12日登上美洲的第一块陆地。
These stories speak of the Islands, of the Outer Reach, of the great rich islands of the Archipelago, the Inner Lanes, the roadsteads white with ships, and the golden roofs of Havnor. Earthsea is there, though unexplored. Some things mentioned—trolls, black magic—will never appear again. But one element in each story will turn out to be part of the deep fabric of Earthsea. “The Rule of Names” shows a magic that works through name and knowledge, and “The Word of Unbinding” gives a first glimpse of the shadow world of the dead.
这些故事提到了地海诸屿、外海、群岛中那些富有的名岛、内海运河、满是白色船只的港口和黑弗诺城内富丽堂皇的屋顶。虽然《地海传奇》尚未被探索，但地海就在那儿。一些在故事里被提到的东西——巨怪、黑魔法——将不会再在地海中出现。但是两则故事的各一个元素最终将成为地海核心的一部分。《真名法则》展现了一种可以穿越名字和智识的魔法，《解脱之辞》①也一揭地海死域的面纱。
注① 《真名法则》（The Rule of Names）和《解脱之辞》（The Word of Unbinding）即作者之前提到的关于地海起源的两篇故事。
The rest of Earthsea waited, then, till 1968, when the editor of Parnassus Press in Berkeley asked me if I'd write a fantasy novel for younger readers. After I'd gotten over the panic, and a big story about a young wizard began to sketch itself in my head, the first thing I did was sit down and draw a map. I saw and named Earthsea and all its islands. I knew almost nothing about them, but I knew their names. In the name is the magic.
余下的地海世界等待着，然后，直到1968年，伯克利的帕纳塞思出版社（Parnassus Press）的编辑问我是否能为年轻读者写一篇奇幻小说。在我感到惶恐之后，一个关于一名年轻巫师的宏大故事开始在我脑中形成，我做的第一件事就是坐下来，着手画一幅地图。我看到了地海世界和其中的岛屿并为其命名。我对它们近乎一无所知，我唯一确信的就是它们的名字。而名字之中蕴含着魔法。
The original map was on a very large sheet—probably butcher paper, which I had rolls of for my kids to draw on. That big map vanished years ago, but I'd made a careful copy on a smaller, handier scale, the original of the map in this book. And that provided the model for the many professional illustrators of various editions of the books in many countries to draw as carefully and more skillfully than I.
地图的初稿绘制在一张很大的纸上——质地和包肉的纸差不多，我有好几卷这样的纸，用来给我的小孩涂涂画画。那张巨大的地图初稿在几年前丢失了，但我在一张更小更称手的纸上作了很细致的复制，它就是出现在这本书中的地图的原稿。而且，它为各国各版本的许多专业插画师提供了可供参考的模板，以供他们作更细致入微的刻画。
Its use to me was practical. A navigator needs a chart. As my characters sailed about, I needed to know how far apart the islands lay and in which direction one from another. The first book followed a kind of spiral from Gont to Roke and on round again to Astowell, all within the Archipelago. For the second book, the map gave me the Kargish land of Atuan. And after that, there was always an island or place I hadn't visited yet, and a story in it. What island lay farthest to the west? Selidor . . . Look at Havnor: big enough that there might be people living inland who'd never seen the sea. What sort of magic did they really do on Paln? What about the big Kargish land of Hur-at-Hur, way out there as far east as Astowell and quite unknown to the Archipelagans—were there ever dragons there?
地图之于我正如海图之于领航员一样，有很实际的作用。在我笔下的人物出海远行时，我需要知道各岛屿彼此之间的方位和距离。地海系列的第一部就包括从弓忒岛到柔克岛的一个螺旋航道，之后又转到埃斯托威岛，这些故事都在地海群屿发生。在创作第二部时，这张地图给了我书写峨团的卡瑞构领地的灵感。在那之后，地图上总会出现一个我尚未涉足的岛屿，在其上正发生着一个不为人知的故事。最西的岛屿是哪一座？应该是偕勒多……来看看黑弗诺吧：黑弗诺是如此之大，以至于住在内陆的人们甚至一生都未曾一睹海洋的真容。在帕恩岛上究竟流传着怎样的法术？胡珥胡那辽阔的卡瑞构大地究竟有着怎样的奥秘？一直远到至东处的埃斯托威岛，那不为群屿之人所知的领域——是否曾有龙迹遍及于此？
The last story of Earthsea I wrote, “The Daughter of Odren,” came from idly looking at the map and wondering what life was like on O back in the old days. It turned out to have some curious resemblances to life on Mycenae.
我为地海写的最后一个故事《奥登之女》就来自我对那张地图的无意一瞥，这激发了我对偶岛的往昔的好奇。这和我对迈锡尼的好奇有奇特的相似之处。
Beyond the elegant chapter headings by Ruth Robbins for the Parnassus’s edition of A Wizard of Earthsea, and Gail Garraty’s fine woodcut-like art in the same style for the early Atheneum editions, until very recently, the books of Earthsea had no illustrations. This was partly by my own decision. After Ruth’s unique wraparound jacket for the first edition of A Wizard of Earthsea—with its splendidly stylized, copper-brown portrait face—cover art for the books mostly went out of my control. The results could be ghastly—the droopy, lily-white wizard of the first Puffin UK paperback; the silly man with sparks shooting out of his fingers that replaced him. Some covers were quite pretty in themselves, but delicate medieval persons on twee islands with castles with pointy towers had nothing to do with my earthy, salty Earthsea. And as for copper or brown or black skin, forget it! Earthsea was bathed in bleach.
除了鲁斯·罗宾斯（Ruth Robbins）为帕纳塞思出版社的那版《地海巫师》每个章节标题创造的美术设计外，还有盖尔·盖瑞特（Gail Garraty）为早期阿森纽出版社（Atheneum）那版准备的同一风格的类似于木刻的极佳工艺，但直到最近，《地海传奇》仍旧没有相配的插图。这部分是出于我自己的决定。在鲁斯为第一版《地海巫师》准备了独特的外衬之后（上面有他精心设计的铜褐色的肖像），为《地海传奇》准备的封面设计就逐步失控了。这样的结果确实是可怕的——在第一版帕费出版社（Puffin）的英版平装本上的丧气、惨白的巫师形象；插图上一个愚蠢的男人用指尖乱射飞火——那四溅的火花近于喧宾夺主。一些封面插画就其本身而言确实不错，但是那些封面上坐拥城堡尖塔的俗华中世纪岛主实在和我笔下质朴原始的地海世界真没什么关系。至于封面人物的肤色是铜是褐色还是黑……这些真的不重要！地海世界从不被肤色所限。
I was ashamed of the covers that gave the reader every wrong idea about the people and the place. I resented publishers’art departments that met any suggestion that the cover might resemble something or someone in the book by rejecting it, informing me loftily that they Knew what would Sell (a mystery no honest cover designer would ever claim to know). Paperback houses wanted commercial, all-purpose fantasy covers; YA departments wanted no suggestion of adult concerns. So I discouraged all suggestions of illustration.
我对那些给读者以地海错误印象的封面感到羞愧。我通过拒绝那些所谓能体现故事内容封面的提议来表达我对出版社设计部门的愤怒，这些冷冰冰的事实不断提醒着我他们只是赚钱的商人（没有坦诚的封面设计者会宣称他们知道这个人尽皆知的秘密）。平装本出版商想要的是商业化的、迎合大众口味的奇幻封面；儿童文学部门向来要的就不是成年人的意见。因此我婉拒了所有插图的提议。
As the reputation of the books grew, I began to be granted, however grudgingly, more input on the cover art. From that period, 1991, Margaret Chodos-Irvine’s four beautiful jacket paintings for the first four books (Atheneum), and the gorgeous metallic covers of the last two (Harcourt). These last were thanks to my editor Michael Kandel, who fought long and fiercely for me. Years later, Michael let me see the first draft the cover department sent him: a fat green dragon, clearly modelled from one of those cute wind-up dinosaurs that spit sparks, sitting up like a dog begging, in a cloud of pink steam. St. Michael fought that dragon and defeated it, but it took him months.
与此同时，《地海传奇》的知名度不断提高，尽管很勉强，我还是开始接受更多封面设计的投稿。从那时候开始，1991年玛格利特·肖多斯欧文（Margaret Chodos-Irvine）为阿森纽出版社出版的《地海传奇》的前四部设计了四个精美的护封插画和哈考特出版社（Harcourt）出版的最后两部的金属材质的封面。这一切到最后还是要感谢我的编辑迈克尔·坎德尔（Michael Kandel），是他一直以来支持着我。几年过后，迈克尔给我看了封面设计部门寄给他的第一版初稿：一头肥大的绿皮龙，明显是从那些幼稚的发条玩具恐龙一个模子里刻出来的，只会在粉红色的云朵里像狗一样坐着喷火。迈克尔驳回了那条绿皮龙，但这花费了他好几个月的时间。
Some real artists have painted covers for foreign editions of the books. My favorite of them all is Inger Edelfeldt’s grave, subtle portrait of Tenar and Therru on the Swedish Tehanu.
一些真正的艺术家已经为《地海传奇》的国外版本设计了封面。其中我最喜欢的是英格·伊德费尔托（Inger Edelfeldt）在瑞典版的《地海孤儿》上为恬娜和瑟鲁画的肃穆而精细的肖像。
The first fully illustrated A Wizard of Earthsea is the Folio Society edition of 2015, with paintings by David Lupton. I was given free voice in choosing the artist, and David most generously sent me his sketches, let me respond and advise, and heeded what he could use of what I said. The combination of our temperaments produced a very grim Earthsea. I like its dark and troubled young protagonist, and in some of its paintings, I feel a great strangeness, as of magic actually happening.
第一本完全意义上的插图版《地海巫师》是在2015年由弗里欧书社（Folio Society）出版的，出自大卫·勒普特（David Lupton）的手笔。我当时可以自主地选择插画师，其中大卫最为慷慨地把他的草稿寄给了我，让我提点儿意见，并且他为如何好好利用我的建议花了很多心思。我们的合作打造了一个非常严肃的地海世界。我喜欢那些插图上忧郁而不安的年轻的人物，不仅如此，我在其中一些插画中感受到了一股强大的陌生感，仿佛魔法确确实实在我眼前发生着。
And now, with this first fully illustrated, complete Earthsea, I can let Charles Vess’s art speak for itself.
到了现在，整部《地海传奇》都已经有了完整的插图版，而查尔斯·韦斯（Charles Vess）的作品之出色是不言而喻的。
I have written so often of how and why it took me so long to write the six books of Earthsea that the story has become like the book you have to read to your four-year-old every night for weeks—You really want to hear it again? Oh well, okay, here goes!
我已经说了许多关于我是如何花了这么久的时间来完成《地海传奇》六部曲的事情，以至于这些来龙去脉已经成了你不得不花上几周时间给你的孩子每晚讲述的睡前故事——你真的想要再听吗？那好吧，就让我继续讲下去！
I wrote the first three books in five years: ’68, ’70, ’72. I was on a roll. None of them was closely plotted or planned before writing; in each of them much of the story came to me as I followed what I wrote where it inevitably led. I started confidently on the fourth book. The central character was Tenar again, of course, to balance it out. I knew she hadn't stayed and studied wizardry with Ogion, but had married a farmer and had children, and that the story was going to bring her and Ged back together. But by the middle of the first chapter, I realized that I didn't know who she was—now. I didn't know why she’d done what she’d done or what she had to do. I didn't know her story, or Ged’s. I couldn’t plot or plan it. I couldn’t write it. It took me eighteen years to learn how.
我在五年之间完成了前三部，分别是在1968年、1970年和1972年。我写得十分顺利。没有一部是在动笔前很好地构思过的；每一则故事都是在我的写作过程中不可避免地发生着。我很自信地开启了第四部的写作。为了平衡这本书的内容，恬娜理所当然地再度成为了核心人物。我在写作之前就很清楚她并没有跟随欧吉安学习巫术，她和一个农民结了婚，并且有了孩子，但第四部的故事会让她和格得重聚。我并不知道为什么她会这样做。我甚至不知道她和格得究竟发生了些什么。我不能人为地去设计这些情节。地海世界并不允许我将这些我未曾了解的故事书写下来。于是我花了十八年的时间去了解他们的故事。
I was forty-two in 1972; in 1990, I was sixty. During those years, the way of understanding society that we’re obliged to call feminism (despite the glaring absence of its opposite term masculism) had grown and flourished. At the same time an increasing sense of something missing in my own writing, which I could not identify, had begun to paralyze my storytelling ability. Without the feminist writers and thinkers of the 1970s and ’80s, I don’t know if I ever could have identified this absence as the absence of women at the center.
1972年我才42年；到了1990年，我已是个花甲老人。在这十八年间，所谓的女权主义运动（然而“男权主义”这样的词语从未出现）搞得风生水起。与此同时，我越来越感觉到我的写作中正缺失着一种难以言说的东西，这逐步摧残着我讲故事的能力。在失去了二十世纪七八十年代的女权主义作家和思想家的今天，我不知道我是否还能把这种缺失归咎于女性在世界中心的长期缺席。
Why was I, a woman, writing almost entirely about what men did?
为什么我，一个女人，写的几乎全是男人的事迹？
Why because I was a reader who read, loved, and learned from the books my culture provided me; and they were almost entirely about what men did. The women in them were seen in relation to men, essentially having no existence unrelated to male existence. I knew what men did, in books, and how one wrote about them. But when it came to what women did, or how to write about it, all I had to call on was my own experiences—uncertified, unapproved by the great Consensus of Criticism, lacking the imprimatur of the Canon of Literature, piping up solo against the universally dominant and almost unison chorus of the voices of men talking about men.
为什么？就因为我是一名阅读、热爱并且师从我身处的文化所缔造的书籍的读者；那些书籍讲的几乎全是男人们的事情。故事中的女人被男人们捆缚着，这使得她们几乎不可能成为完全独立于男性之外的存在。在书中，我知道男人们会做些什么，我也知道如何书写他们。但是一旦到了书写女人的时候，我唯一能依靠的就是我自己的经历——不会被那些“伟大”的批评文学的常识所认可的经历，那些经历不会被所谓的经典文学认可，它们只能孤独地高唱，孤独地对抗着那些占据主导地位、近乎一致的合唱，对抗着那些男人谈论他们自己的声音。
Oh, well, now, was that true? Hadn't I read Jane Austen? Emily Brontë? Charlotte Brontë? Elizabeth Gaskell? George Eliott? Virginia Woolf? Other, long-silenced voices of women writing about both women and men were being brought back into print, into life. And my contemporary women writers were showing me the way. It was high time I learned to write of and from my own body, my own gender, in my own voice.
好吧，那现在，这样的处境是真实存在的吗？我不是读过简·奥斯汀（Jane Austen）吗？我不是读过艾米莉·勃朗特（Emily Brontë）吗？还有夏洛特·勃朗特（Charlotte Brontë）？伊丽莎白·盖斯凯尔（Elizabeth Gaskell）？乔治·埃利奥特（George Eliott）？弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf）？其他的，沉寂已久的，书写男女两性的女性的声音正在报刊和生活中重生。我同时代的女性作家们也给我指明了前进的方向。是时候试着以我自己的身躯、我自己的性别、我自己的声音来写作了。
The central character of The Tombs of Atuan is female, the point of view is hers. But Tenar is just coming out of adolescence, not yet fully a woman. I had had no problem in 1970 writing out of my own experience of what it is to be a girl-child, an adolescent girl.
《地海古墓》的主人公就是一名女性，该书的核心观点也是属于女性的。但恬娜刚刚脱离青少年时期，还算不上一个真正的女人。在1970年，我毫不费力地以我自己的经历创造出了一个青少年女孩的形象。
What I couldn't do then, and hadn’t yet done in 1990, was write a fully mature woman at the center of a novel.
我当时没能做成的，在1990年也还未能完成的，就是写一部以真正的成年女性为主人公的小说。
Strangely enough, it took a child to show me the way into the fourth book of Earthsea. A girl-child, born in poverty, abused, maimed, abandoned, Therru led me back to Tenar, so that I could see the woman she had become. And through Tenar I could see Earthsea, unchanged, the same Earthsea as eighteen years earlier—but seeming almost a different world, for the viewpoint was no longer from a position of power or among men of power. Tenar was seeing it all from below, through the eyes of the marginal, the voiceless, the powerless.
十分奇怪的是，竟然是一个孩子将我引入了《地海传奇》第四部的创作。一个出身贫穷、被人抛弃、饱受虐待以至残废的女孩——瑟鲁，她将我带回到恬娜身边，这样我就能看到恬娜长成了一个怎样的女人。接着通过恬娜，我再次见到了地海世界，它未曾改变，仍旧是十八年前的那个地海——但又似乎变成了一个全新的世界，因为地海的立场已不再是有权者或力之子操纵的立场。恬娜正在幕后用边缘人的眼睛、无声者的眼睛、无权者的眼睛见证着一切。
The essay “Earthsea Revisioned,” reprinted in this edition, discusses that change in viewpoint. When Tehanu came out, a good many critics and readers saw it as mere gender politics and resented it as a betrayal of the romantic tradition of heroism. As I tried to say in the essay, not to change viewpoint would, for me, have been the betrayal. By including women fully in my story, I gained a larger understanding of what heroism is and found a true and longed-for way back into my Earthsea—now a very much greater, stranger, more mysterious place than it had ever appeared before.
在这一版中重印的文章《再谈地海》讨论了我在对待地海观点上的变化。当《地海孤儿》出版的时候，一大批的批评家和读者仅将其视作性别政治作品，并且表达了对这部“背叛了英雄主义的浪漫传统”的作品的厌恶。正如我试图在文章中表达的那样，对我来讲，不去改变已有的观点本就是一种背叛。通过让女性完全地融入我的故事，我对何为英雄主义有了更深的理解，并且我找到了一条真正的、我渴盼已久的能回到我的地海世界的路——如今地海相比于以前任何一个时期，都已是个更伟大、更奇特、更神秘的世界。
Though Tehanu is named for the child character①, neither it nor the two books after it are books “for children” or definable as “young adult.” I had abandoned any attempt to suit my vision of Earthsea to a publisher’s category or a critic’s prejudice. The notion that fantasy is only for the immature rises from an obstinate misunderstanding of both maturity and the imagination. So, as my protagonists grew older, I trusted my younger readers to follow them or not, as and when they chose. In the PR-driven world of publishing, that constituted a real risk, and I am very grateful to the editors who took that risk with me.
尽管《地海孤儿》是以一个儿童形象的名字命名的①，但它和之后两部都不是所谓的“儿童文学”。我已经不再去迎合出版社的分类或是批评家们的偏见。奇幻小说只能为未成年人服务的观点源于对成熟和幻想顽固的双重误解。因此，当我笔下的人物不断成长时，只要年轻的读者们愿意，我相信他们会跟随那些人物一起成长。在以公关为驱动的出版界，这样的误解确实成为了一个真正的威胁，因此我十分感谢那些和我一路奋战的编辑们。
注① 《地海孤儿》为中译本书名，原版名为《恬哈弩》（Tehanu），是以书中女孩人物恬哈弩的名字来命名的。
But there was one thing about Tehanu that I myself completely misunderstood when I wrote and published it. I thought my long-sought fourth volume (my private title for it was Better Late than Never) was the end of Ged and Tenar's story. And I said so right on the title page: The Last Book of Earthsea.
但是唯有一件事是我在书写并出版《地海孤儿》时完全误解的。我本以为我酝酿已久的这第四部（我私下里为它定的题目叫“迟做总比不做好”）就是格得和恬娜故事的结尾。而且我在标题页上也写得很明确：《地海传奇》的最后一部。
Never say never; never say last!
地海的故事永不终结！
For nearly ten years I believed I could leave the two of them there in peace and contentment in Ogion’s house on Gont. But then I was asked to write a short story set in Earthsea. I wondered if I could, and took a look at Earhsea. As soon as I did, I realized I had to go back.
近乎十年之间我认为我可以就让他们俩在弓忒岛欧吉安的小屋里平静而幸福地生活着。但当时我被请求再写一篇以地海为背景的短篇小说。我想知道我是否还能接近我笔下的那个地海世界。当我真的再次回到那个地海时，我意识到我不得不继续书写他们的故事。
Between the third and fourth books there’s no time jump at all; after Tehanu catches us up on the years of Tenar’s life on Gont, the dragon carries Ged straight into the book from the end of The Farthest Shore. But now, time had passed there as well as here. Things had changed. I had to go find out what had happened since Lebannen was crowned. Who had been named Archmage? What had become of the child Tehanu? These questions opened up larger ones—about who could and couldn’t work magic, about the afterlife, about the dragons—things the four books didn't explain, things I wanted to know, unfinished business.
第三部和第四部故事的时间线之间完全没有间隔；在《地海孤儿》凭恬娜在弓忒岛上的生活吸引着我们时，至寿龙正载着格得从《地海彼岸》的尾声来到《地海孤儿》的故事之中。而如今，书中的时间正和现实一般流逝着。很多事情都已改变。我不得不去探寻自从黎白南加冕以来到底发生了些什么。是谁被任命为大法师？恬哈弩这个孩子现在怎么样了？这些细小的问题又引出更宏大的问题——关于魔法的运行和消失，关于所谓死者，关于龙——这些都是前四部未曾探讨过的问题，同时也是我想要知道答案，但尚未解答的问题。
As I wrote in the introduction to Tales from Earthsea, “The way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened.” I did that in five stories, the most historical of which is “The Finder,” plus a description of Earthsea, a brief geography, history, and descriptive anthro-draconology. This fifth book has been treated as marginal, but it's integral. The long last story, “Dragonfly,” is a key part of the whole story of Ged and Tenar. It is the link between Tehanu and The Other Wind. It foreshadows the material of that book—what has gone wrong on Roke Island, at the very heart of wizardry and wisdom; why the afterlife bargained for by wizardry is meaningless; who and what the dragons are.
正如我在《地海故事集》的序言中所写的：“研究不存在历史的方法，便是说故事，然后明白究竟发生了什么。①” 我在其中的五篇短篇小说中都在说故事，最具历史性的一篇是《寻查师》，它附带了对地海世界的描述，附带了一小部分地海的地理和历史，同时还包括了讨论人与龙关系的描述性的文字。这第五部书常被认为是微不足道的，但它却十分必要。最后的一篇篇幅较长的故事《蜻蜓》是格得和恬娜所有故事的一个关键。它也连接了《地海孤儿》和《地海奇风》的故事。它预示着《地海奇风》的内容——柔克岛，这座称得上巫术和智慧中心的岛屿上的魔法出现了怎样的差错；为什么利用巫术换来的死后世界是毫无意义的；以及龙究竟是什么。
注① 该译文选自中译本《地海故事集》（段宗忱译）
Soon after I wrote that story, I began to write the sixth novel. The Other Wind presented itself to me without explaining itself, urgent, imperative, final. If a dragon comes to you and says, “Arw sobriost!①” you don’t ask questions. You do what it says. There is a great taloned foot, set like a step in front of you; and above it, the crook of the elbow joint; and above that, the jutting shoulder blade: a stairway. You clamber up that stairway, feeling the fiery inner heat of the dragon’s body. You settle yourself between the vast wings, take hold of the big spine-thorn before you. And the dragon lifts, takes off, takes you where you and it must go, flying on the other wind, flying free.
在我写完《蜻蜓》不久，我就着手写第六部小说。我向来不知道《地海奇风》的灵感因何产生，但它就是这样以“地海尾声”的身份来到我的身边，如此匆忙、紧急，如同龙的来访：如果一条龙突然来到你的身边，开口说道：“Arw sobriost!①”你不会向它追问原因。你只会照着他说的去做。在你眼前的是一只巨大的龙足，犹如设在你面前的一道台阶；在它之上，就是弯曲的龙肘；在龙肘之上，是龙那突出的肩胛骨：如同一段阶梯延伸开去。你爬上那道阶梯，感受到龙的体内燃烧着的灼人热量。你安坐在巨大的龙翼之间，紧握住你面前的龙骨刺。之后龙起身、翱翔，带着你朝着你们的归宿飞去，驾驭奇风，自由驰骋。
注① 该文为地海世界中的太古语，是龙使用的语言。
—Ursula K. Le Guin, February 2016
二〇一六年二月
