柯灵（1909年—2000年），生于广州，中国电影理论家、剧作家、评论家。柯灵在艺术上涉及多个领域，文备众体，散文，童话，话剧，电影等多有佳作。其中，散文创作源于抗战时期，“孤岛”上海的特殊时空环境与畸形繁荣给了他创作灵感。
Ke Ling (1909-2000) is a famous Guangzhou-born film theorist, critic and playwright in China. His multi-dimensional artistic creations are featured with many styles, with a plethora of masterpieces often seen in the fields of proses, fairytales, dramas and films. He started his prose composition during the Second Sino-Japanese War when he was greatly inspired by the critically temporal situation and the illusionary prosperity of the 'Isolated Island' (referring to the time when Shanghai’s former foreign concessions were besieged but not invaded).
失群的红叶
Stray Maple Leaves
该有两个多月了，那时霜华初降，梧桐还未落净。一个孩子到我房里，手里握着一束红叶，临走时送了我两片，还告诉我这是从龙山上五中师范的后园里采来的。
It has been for two months since that day when the frost first descended here and parasol trees were not entirely defoliated. A little girl went to my house with a bunch of red leaves in her hand. She offered me two pieces, and after saying that she had picked them up in the backyard of the Fifth Normal Middle School on the Dragon Hill, she left.
我欣然，把红叶托在手心，细细地鉴赏。这是一种枫类植物，叶子像玲珑的手掌，分成七瓣。纤细的叶茎，匀称的脉络，叶缘有整齐的叶龄，精致得像最细致的工笔画。颜色似殷似赭，红得惹人怜爱。我把玩许久，珍重地放在书桌上的白瓷小盘里，聊当案头清供。
I held these leaves joyfully in my hand and started to appreciate them: the leaf, being a kind of maple plant, took a shape of a cute palm with seven petals. With fine stems symmetrically veined, and regularly lined foliar ages around its margins, it resembled the most exquisite Chinese drawing. Ardent and crimson, the reddened leaves looked so adorable that I couldn't help but caressing them for quite a long time before putting them in a tiny whiteware dish on my desk, in a very cautious way, for accompanying me in reading.
过不了几天，红叶褪了色，不经意地萎谢了。我怅然，这么美的东西，不想生命这样短促，真的是“世间好物不坚牢，琉璃易破彩云散”？我若有所失，心里虚飘飘地没能着落。于是我爬上龙山，跑到五中师范后园。园在半山，视野宽旷，园里百卉零落，秋意沁人。在山坡高处，找到了那棵红树，只见它独立擎天，满树离离，喷朱喧赤，似要烧起漫山的野火，在满眼萧索中，特别引人注目。但树根四周，也落了不少叶子。我徘徊树下，流连忘返，最后拾了许多落叶回来，仔细地夹在书本里。
However, the red leaf faded and withered insouciantly in just a few days time. I was suffering from a sense of loss, such a divine thing with such a short life. Did it mean any good secular thing was just mortal, like broken glazes and dissipated clouds? I was deprived of it and my soul was wafting toward nowhere. So I climbed up the Dragon Hill, to the backyard of the Fifth Normal Middle School. The yard, halfway to the hill, enjoyed a panoramic view and delectable autumn air with withered grasses here and there. Up there on the hillside stood a maple tree, lone, towering and densely foliated, gushing wildfires as if to burn the whole hill into red – the only eye-catching view among the world of desolation. Around the tree roots, however, there were quite a few fallen leaves. I lingered under the tree on and on until I finally picked up many leaves before going back home. This time I did it carefully by using them as bookmarks.
三天以后，我翻书检点，叶子还是枯了，失去了光泽，但不曾皱缩，比那白瓷盘里憔悴支离的一双好得多。我忽发遐想，试图以人力挽回自然，找来水彩颜料，在失色的红叶上涂抹了一层浓浓的胭脂。乍一看去，居然红艳如生，能够以假乱真了。我索性妄想巧夺天工，在玻璃窗上贴上淡青透明的绸纹纸，再把落叶参差错落地粘在纸上，构成一幅当窗迎风纷披的幻境。我怡然，坐在窗前，不觉一时莞尔自得。
Three days later, I thumbed through the books and found out that these leaves finally dried up, lost their luster, but they somehow took no shrink, far better than the pair in the whiteware dish that looked so languish and pining away. I tried, lost in a sudden fanciful thought, to redeem their nature in my own hands. So I got some watercolors and rouged the discolored into red again. At the first glance, they looked as if ruddily real, taken for a real thing. And I fancied that I could simply do something beyond the nature, a Nella Fantasia made up by a translucent embossed greenish paper on the window pane, on which pasted with fallen leaves trembling against the wind in a tangled mess. Momentarily satisfied, I was sitting in front of the window, an air of happiness.
从此窗上的红叶，成了我朝夕相亲的伴侣。每天清晨，醒来撩开帐子，只见晨光熹微，这些红叶的剪影，就会投入我惺松的双眼，向我道早安。有时深夜凄清，从外面奔波回来，满屋静悄无声，却有那昏黄的灯光，把红叶的素影投射窗外，似对我含笑相迎。我亲切地进了屋，如倦鸟归林，打叠起浮浪的心情，怡然上床寻梦。
Then the scarlet leaves became my partner day and night. Everyday morning when I woke up, I would draw up the curtain over my bed to usher in the first ray of sun, and a 'good morning' greeting from my red leaves, with their silhouettes flickering on my still sleepy eyes. There were times when I came back from this busy world and into a desolate late night. I found nothing but a dim light from my quiet house, projecting shadowy leaves out of window as if to give me a welcoming smile. I hurried into my room like a tired bird returning to his grove. Without further attempts of hovering, I readily went to my bed, seeking dreams.
而今风雪连天，早到了凛冽的严冬。有一天黄昏，我兀坐窗前，面对伴我岑寂的红叶，忽然想起那后园的红树，便信步走去，作即兴的拜访。谁知那如火如荼、盛极一时的树冠，已经凋零殆尽，只剩得空枝濯濯，横斜地对着沉闷的寒空。树根四周，都是萎黄的枯草，落叶已片影无存。只是近处有一堆雪白的寒灰，其中留着残红点点，是些未烬的碎叶。想是园丁把落叶扫到一处，点把火烧了，好待来年化作春泥，给那峥嵘的老红树添点肥料。
It was deep in winter then, snowy, windy and biting cold. One evening before sunset, I was sitting upright by the window, facing my tacit leaves. And all of a sudden I remembered that tree at the backyard of the Dragon Hill, so I took a walk there to give it a surprise visit. Who would know that the once luxuriant, fire-raging crown had been entirely defoliated, with bare branches pointing crosswise at the dreary bleak sky? Around the tree roots were wizened grasses and nowhere I could find those leaves but a heap of snow-white cold ashes, with points of red, probably some broken petals not totally burned off. Perhaps the gardener swept the leaves to this place and burnt them all so that they could be decomposed into mud the next spring, an added fertilizer to this aged and towering maple tree.
回到屋里，依然在窗前兀坐，对着窗上的红叶，我怅然，如果红叶有知，听到同伴的消息，想到自己的遭遇，它们对我是抱怨，还是感激？它们既从土里来，自应回到土里去，它们偶然的失群，装饰了我这陋室的小窗，该是它们的不幸，至少是委屈。——我终于感到歉然。
Back home, still sitting upright facing the window and these red leaves on it, I fell lost. If the leaves had sense and had ever been informed of the news of their fellows while thinking of their own fate, should they be complaining or grateful, since they came from the earth and would go back to the earth? They were accidentally strayed, but they accomplished decorating the tiny window of my humble room. So it should be their misfortune, at least they had been wronged… I finally felt sorry.
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[图像来源：百度]
