2020年经济学人 家庭娱乐专栏--"高原"病(1)（在线收听）

Books & arts

文艺版块

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家庭娱乐栏目

Illness in literature

文学中的疾病

Climb every mountain

攀爬每一座山

A classic German saga of high-altitude sickness is oddly uplifting

一篇关于“高原”病的德国经典传奇故事，奇怪地令人振奋

When Hans Castorp makes a midsummer visit to Davos, where his tubercular cousin, Joachim, is being treated, he expects to be there for three weeks. A job at a shipbuilding firm awaits Hans, the unassuming son of a merchant family from Hamburg. But he develops a fever, and ends up staying in the Swiss Alps for seven years. In the mountains, time moves elastically— days lengthen and years hurry past—as it can in a lockdown.

汉斯·卡斯托普在仲夏时访问达沃斯，当时他患有结核病的堂兄阿希姆正在那里接受治疗，他预计会在那里呆三个星期。汉斯出身卢森堡的一个商人家庭，作为家中不爱出风头的儿子，他正在一家造船公司找工作。但他发烧了，最后在瑞士阿尔卑斯山住了七年。在山里，时间有弹性地推移——日复一日，岁月匆匆流逝——就像是在封锁期。

The action of “The Magic Mountain”, wrote Thomas Mann in a foreword, takes place “a very long time ago”— and even though his novel, published in 1924, is set in the preceding decade, it evoked a vanished world. It refers to a Germany not yet crushed by the first world war and the subsequent reparations, a country that still has an empire, as well as strict hierarchies and conventions. These are scrupulously observed by the pan-European characters in the story, a Bildungsroman and dark comedy of manners in which even the dining tables are classified by social status.

托马斯·曼恩在前言中写道，“魔山”的故事发生在“很久之前”——尽管这篇小说出版于1924年，以前十年为背景，但它唤起了一个消失的世界。它指的是一个尚未被第一次世界大战及其后的赔款所摧毁的德国，一个仍然拥有帝国、严格的等级制度和传统风格的国家。故事中的泛欧人严格遵守着这些，这是一部成长小说和黑暗的礼仪喜剧，甚至餐桌也是按照社会地位分类的。

Mann’s fictional sanatorium, the Berghof, is probably modelled on the Schatzalp, a mansion reachable only by foot or funicular, which today is a hotel. Practically the whole cast of his novel have tuberculosis, which at the turn of the 20th century killed one in seven people in Europe and America. He presents the symptoms unflinchingly, including “a coughing that had no conviction and gave no relief, that did not even come out in paroxysms, but was just a feeble, dreadful welling-up of the juices of organic dissolution”.

曼恩小说中的疗养院，伯格霍夫疗养院，很可能是仿照沙茨阿尔卑建造的，这是一座只有步行或缆车才能到达的豪宅，现在成为了酒店。实际上，他这部小说的所有角色都患有肺结核，在20世纪之交，在欧洲和美国有七分之一的人死于肺结核。他毫不犹豫地提出了这些症状，包括“这是一种奄奄无生气的咳嗽，它不是阵发性的，而像是某种有机溶液的粘稠物质一阵阵无力而令人嫌恶地泛上来”