2019年经济学人 木雕艺术家大卫·埃斯特利(3)

 

And it had begun in a moment: that moment in 1974 when his girlfriend Marietta, later his wife, took him to see the Gibbons carvings¹ behind the altar in St James's Church, Piccadilly. He was thun-derstruck, and his reaction was physical: hairs rising on his neck, his skin tingling², and his tongue seeming to move over ivory's coolness and smoothness. ("The thinking of the body", Yeats would have called it.) His first, academic, thought was to write abook about Gibbons; his second was just to pick up tools and teach himself to carve.

它是在一个时刻开始的：那是在1974年，他的女朋友玛丽埃塔，后来成为他妻子，带他去了皮卡迪利大街圣詹姆斯教堂圣坛后面的长臂猿雕像。他被雷击了，他的反应是身体上的：他脖子上的汗毛都竖起来了，他的皮肤刺痛，他的舌头似乎在象牙的凉爽和光滑之上移动。（济慈称此为身体的思考。）他首先的学术上的想法是想描写长臂猿，他的第二个想法是拿起工具教自己雕刻。

The minute his chisel³ struck the wood, he was inthrall. Ensconced in a cottage in Sussex for eight years, then at Barneveld, he became a ghost's apprentice⁴. But no, that put it too lightly: by the end of a decade, he was a slave. Enslaved not only to his carvings, which about halfway⁵ through would start to impose their own ideas on him, but also to the long-dead master he so revered⁶, beside whose work he could only despair about his own. There was a way out.

他的凿子刚触到木头，他就被奴役了。他在苏塞克斯郡的一间小屋里住了八年，然后在巴内维尔德当了一名幽灵学徒。但不，这话说得太轻了：十年后，他成了一名奴隶。不仅被他的雕刻奴役，雕刻在刻到一半时就开始把它们的观点强加给他，但是也被他崇敬的去世已久的大师奴役，与他的工作相比，他只能对自己的工作感到绝望。有一条出路。

That, too, was completely unexpected. In 1986 he was asked to replace a seven-foot Gibbons drop at Hampton Court Palace, south-west of London, which had been destroyed by fire. He hesitated over it. Exact reproduction, which he had never done, was surely the most slavish tutelage of all. Yet the closer he got to Gibbons—first touching⁷ a single stem, then whole pieces, scrutinising his technique, following the movements of his gouges⁸ and his thought—the more his own workbench seemed transported to 1698, and the more he saw the larval forms of the half-modelled wood with Gibbons's eyes. When after a year the drop was made, with its exhausting ropes of crocuses and trefoil, he was no longer a slave, but a colleague. The spell was broken.

那也是完全出乎意料的。1986年，他被邀请替换掉伦敦西南部的汉普顿皇宫的七尺长臂猿，该长臂猿被火烧毁。他在这件事上犹豫了。他从没做过一模一样的复制品，这肯定是最奴性的监护。但是他离长臂猿更近-先接触一颗茎，然后是整根，仔细检查他的技术，跟着他的凿子的动作和他的想法-他就越感到自己的工作台穿到了1698年，他越是用长臂猿的眼睛来观察这些半模塑的木材的幼虫形态。一年后，长臂猿雕像做成时，带着让人筋疲力尽的番红花和三叶草，他不再是一个奴隶，而是一个同僚。咒语被解除了。

1 carvings   

n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物

参考例句：

• The desk was ornamented with many carvings. 这桌子装饰有很多雕刻物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Shell carvings are a specialty of the town. 贝雕是该城的特产。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 tingling   

v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• My ears are tingling [humming; ringing; singing]. 我耳鸣。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• My tongue is tingling. 舌头发麻。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

3 chisel   

n.凿子；v.用凿子刻，雕，凿

参考例句：

• This chisel is useful for getting into awkward spaces.这凿子在要伸入到犄角儿里时十分有用。
• Camille used a hammer and chisel to carve out a figure from the marble.卡米尔用锤子和凿子将大理石雕刻出一个人像。

4 apprentice   

n.学徒，徒弟

参考例句：

• My son is an apprentice in a furniture maker's workshop.我的儿子在一家家具厂做学徒。
• The apprentice is not yet out of his time.这徒工还没有出徒。

5 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

6 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

7 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

8 gouges   

n.凿( gouge的名词复数 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出…v.凿( gouge的第三人称单数 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出…

参考例句：

• Clegg and Rollins indicate that nonwrinkleresistant cotton fibers often exhibIt'surface gouges and fibrillation. 克莱格和罗林斯指出，未经防皱处理的棉纤维表面，通常有凿槽和微纤化现象发生。 来自辞典例句
• She didn't mind that we banged into the walls and put gouges in the door jambs. 她一点也不介意我们撞坏墙或是把门框碰出小坑来。 来自互联网