2023年经济学人 美国西部文学: 直面血腥的过去（在线收听）

    Culture

    文艺版块

    How the west was won

    美国西部如何被征服

    In his fiction Cormac McCarthy faced a bloody past and never looked away.

    在科马克·麦卡锡的小说中，他直面血腥的过去，从未移开视线。

    William faulkner is the bard of the American South.

    威廉·福克纳是美国南方的诗人。

    Saul Bellow is the supreme chronicler of Chicago.

    索尔·贝娄是芝加哥最伟大的编年史记录者。

    New York is contested territory.

    纽约比较有争议。

    For a long time, Wallace Stegner could have laid claim to the West.

    华莱士·斯泰格纳在很长一段时间里本可以宣称占有美国西部。

    But that was before Cormac McCarthy hit his stride.

    但直到科马克·麦卡锡阔步踏入文坛。

    To understand the American West, you need to know the land and its beautiful, terrifying expanse, as Stegner did.

    要了解美国西部，你需要像斯泰格纳那样了解这片土地，及其美丽而令人害怕的无垠旷野。

    But in his fiction Mr McCarthy, who died on June 13th at the age of 89, grasped and dramatised another essential truth: that the West was won with violence.

    但在麦卡锡（于今年6月13日去世，享年89岁）的小说中，他抓住并戏剧化地表现了另一个基本事实：西部是用暴力赢得的。

    The saga of the region’s piecemeal incorporation into America involved bravery, gumption and careful planning—but also decades of brutal, intimate bloodshed.

    关于西部如何逐步并入美国的传奇故事涉及勇气、胆量和周密的谋划，但也涉及长达数十年的残酷而隐秘的流血事件。

    It haunts every strip mall and stylish restaurant and housing development from Kansas City to Los Angeles and beyond.

    从堪萨斯城到洛杉矶等地，每一条商业街、每一个时髦餐厅和每一处住宅开发区，都萦绕着这些传奇。

    This was Mr McCarthy’s subject: the reality and implacability of cruelty and conflict.

    这就是麦卡锡的主题：残酷和冲突的现实性和不可调和性。

    The great theme of his career is all the more striking because this was not his native territory.

    美国西部并非麦卡锡的故土，这让他写作事业的宏伟主题变得更令人惊异。

    He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1933 with the first name Charles.

    麦卡锡于1933年出生在罗得岛州的普罗维登斯，名字叫查尔斯。

    At some point he changed it to Cormac, supposedly in honour of an Irish ruler, and he grew up mostly in Knoxville, Tennessee.

    后来他把自己的名字改为科马克，据说是为了纪念一位爱尔兰统治者，他基本上是在田纳西州的诺克斯维尔长大。

    His early novels—“The Orchard Keeper” (published in 1965), “Child of God” and “Suttree”—were deeply Faulknerian: arch, self-referential and largely plotless.

    麦卡锡早期的小说--《守望果园》(1965年出版)《上帝之子》和《苏特里》--都有很浓的福克纳式风格：拱形叙事结构、自我指涉，基本上没有故事情节。

    He gained fame with his “Border trilogy”: “All the Pretty Horses” (1992), “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain”.

    他凭借“边境三部曲”成名：《天下骏马》(1992)《穿越》和《平原上的城市》。

    Like all his fiction these were demanding stories, but they won him a wider readership, especially “All the Pretty Horses”.

    像他所有的小说一样，这些都是不容易读懂的故事，但三部曲为他赢得了更广泛的读者群体，特别是《天下骏马》。

    Elegant and well plotted, it was made into a film starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz at the start of their careers.

    这本小说文笔典雅，情节精彩，被拍成了一部电影，由刚开始其演艺生涯的马特·达蒙和佩内洛普·克鲁兹主演。

    The best book in the trilogy was the last.

    三部曲中的最佳是《平原上的城市》。

    It was austere, bloody and hopeless, as the West had been for those on the losing end of its conquest.

    这本书是严峻的、血腥的和绝望的，对那些在征服西部中失败的人而言，西部就是这样。

    The best film adaptation of Mr McCarthy’s work was the Coen brothers’ version of “No Country for Old Men”, a slim, propulsive, noirish novel published in 2005.

    根据麦卡锡的作品改编而成的电影中，最好的是科恩兄弟版的《老无所依》，这本出版于2005年的小说篇幅不长，情节逐步推进，有些暗黑风格。

    A wonderful film that was true to the author’s vision, it featured commanding performances from Josh Brolin as the foolish hero; Javier Bardem as his psychopathic nemesis; and Tommy Lee Jones, who imbues the sheriff of the story with a world-redeeming, plain-spoken goodness.

    《老无所依》是一部忠于作者构想的精彩电影，演员的表演极具说服力，乔什·布罗林饰演愚蠢的英雄，哈维尔·巴登饰演他的变态对手，汤米·李·琼斯为故事中的警长注入了一种拯救世界、诚实坦率的善良气质。

    Published in 2006, and recounting the plight of a father and son in a post-apocalyptic world, “The Road” won a Pulitzer prize and also became a film.

    2006年出版的《长路》讲述了一对父子在后末日世界中的困境，这本小说获得了普利策奖，也被拍成了电影。

    But Mr McCarthy’s best novel—and arguably the best work of fiction written in English in the past 50 years—was “Blood Meridian”.

    但麦卡锡最好的小说，也可以说是过去50年来最好的英文小说，是《血色子午线》。

    Its narrator, “the kid”, joins a gang of Apache hunters who are hired to collect scalps at $100 apiece.

    故事的叙述者“孩子”加入了一群阿帕契猎人，这些人受雇收集头皮，每块头皮100美元。

    Despite his deeds the kid, like Mr Jones’s sheriff, has a stubborn decency, though it proves no match for his milieu.

    尽管孩子做了些坏事，但就像《老无所依》中的警长一样，他有一种执拗的正直，尽管事实证明这种正直还是难敌他所处的环境。

    Mr McCarthy based the book in part on the real-life Glanton Gang, scalp-hunters who haunted what is now Sonora, New Mexico, and bits of Arizona.

    麦卡锡的这本书部分取材于现实中的格兰顿帮派，这些头皮猎人经常出没于现在的新墨西哥州索诺拉和亚利桑那州的一些地方。

    It features one of literature’s most pitiless and vibrant depictions of vice, in the form of a quasi-mythical character, fat and hairless, who becomes the novel’s amoral centre.

    书中对邪恶的刻画堪称文学中最无情和最富生命力的对恶的描绘，邪恶以一个肥胖、没有毛发的半神话人物的形式出现，成为小说的非道德中心。

    Its plot is relentlessly violent, the language almost biblical.

    故事情节极其暴力，语言几乎是圣经式的。

    Finishing it takes determination; at times it seems perversely intent on persuading readers to give up.

    读完这本书需要坚定决心，有时它似乎乖张地一心想说服读者放弃阅读。

    The baroque descriptions of gore include a tree with dead babies hanging from the branches and a head split open “to the thrapple”.

    对血腥事件的巴洛克式描绘包括一棵树上挂着婴儿尸体，以及一颗被劈开后露出气管的头颅。

    Persist: “Blood Meridian” makes art out of man’s inhumanity to man.

    坚持一下：《血色子午线》从人类相残中成就了艺术。

    To read it is to know what not to do and how not to live, but also to confront an aspect of the past that all Americans inherit.

    阅读这本书就是去理解不要做什么、怎样不去活着，同时也要去直面过去的一部分，这是所有美国人都要继承的东西。

    It is not exactly redemptive; rather it bears witness.

    这本书并不完全是救赎性的，相反，它是一种见证。

    Mr McCarthy does not look away. He never did.

    麦卡锡并没有把目光移开。他从来没有这么做过。

    He lived a deeply unliterary life in the south-west, preferring the company of scientists to authors.

    他在西南部过着一种完全没有文学气息的生活，比起作家，他更喜欢和科学家在一起。

    He gave few interviews and appeared uninterested in fame (though the daring of his books suggests a fierce ambition).

    他很少接受采访，似乎对成名不感兴趣(尽管他大胆的作品暗示了他的强烈野心)。

    If his last two novels, published in 2022, were too abstract and psychological for some, they were also works of striking vibrancy and originality from an author who was nearly 90.

    即使他于2022年出版的最后两部小说对一些人来说过于抽象、过于关注心理活动，但对于一位年近90岁的作家来说，这两本小说依然具有惊人的活力和独特性。

    In his mature prose Mr McCarthy was wholly himself, original and distinctive.

    麦卡锡老练的文笔完全彰显了他本人的气质：独特且别具一格。

    For a novelist there is no higher praise.

    对于小说家来说，没有比这更高的赞誉了。