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    【狄更斯:拥有恶魔能量的作家】 英国作家狄更斯

    时间:2019-04-24 03:20:39 来源:柠檬阅读网 本文已影响 柠檬阅读网手机站

      “热切地追逐每一个攫住自己全部身心的想法,正是让我与众不同的特质之一。这些想法有时是好的,但有时,我敢说,又是邪恶的。”  ——查尔斯·狄更斯  I didn’t read Claire Tomalin2)’s Charles Dickens: A Life because I’m a Dickens guy. I’m not a Dickens guy. In grad school I had to take at least one course on the Victorians3), so I took The Later Dickens, because that was what there was. That’s the only reason I’ve read as much Dickens as I have, to wit4): Bleak House, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, a significant percentage of Our Mutual Friend, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
      So I didn’t read Tomalin’s biography because I’m a Dickens guy, although I like his novels well enough. I read it because Dickens was an alien, or at least an extreme human outlier5), and thus inherently interesting. His brain just didn’t work like other people’s. It’s ironic, or at least strange, that his work has come to stand as a kind of baseline, middle-C6) of mainstream Victorian melodrama7), because he himself was not a mainstream individual. Not at all.
      The fuel that fed the furnace of Dickens’ mind was his memories of his crap8) childhood. His father, John Dickens, worked in the Navy Pay Office9) and earned a decent salary, but he was pathologically10) irresponsible with money, and the family was constantly in debt. When Dickens was 12, his father was sent to debtor’s prison, and Charles spent a year working in a blacking11) factory covering and labeling the jars of blacking. Dickens—a show pony12) even at that tender age—was put in the window so people could watch how insanely fast he covered and labeled. When the family’s finances recovered, his childhood picked up where it left off13), but he seems never to have felt quite safe again.
      Dickens grew up to be a man of demonic energy: it’s like he was bitten by a radioactive scrivener that gave him superpowers. As a working writer who, like Dickens, writes novels and journalism, I can only read about his output with awe. He wrote his books as serials, published in monthly installments14), and he sometimes went two at a time—he wrote The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist simultaneously. When he finished Pickwick he started Nicholas Nickleby, while never dropping a stitch of Oliver. Sometimes, after an especially intense writing jag15), he would dunk his head and hands into a bucket of cold water, then keep right on going.
      Writing novels didn’t seem to burn off enough energy, so Dickens wrote essays on the side16), and put on amateur theatricals of high enough caliber17) that were performed for the Queen. He founded and ran newspapers and magazines without seeming to notice it—Master Humphrey’s Clock, The Daily News, Household Words, All the Year Round. He set up and then micro-managed a genuinely useful home for fallen women. He fathered ten children. He thought nothing of18) dropping everything and going to America or Italy or Paris for 6 months or a year. His social life was frenetic19)—as Tomalin points out, “He entirely lacked the romantic writer’s need to be alone.” As much as he decried20) the evils of the industrial revolution (in Hard Times—which I read!), he appears to have had his own version of a dark satanic mill running inside him at all times.   When all this wasn’t enough he was known to go on 10 or 12-mile walks to soothe21) his fevered soul. “If I couldn’t walk fast and far,” he wrote late in life, “I should just explode and perish.” The weird energy that possessed him comes through22) in contemporary descriptions of Dickens, of which there are some eloquent23) ones—Dickens was fortunate in his describers. John Stuart Mill24) said he had “a face of dingy blackguardism25) irradiated with genius.”
      Dickens’ character was a cocktail of empathy and cruelty that would test any biographer’s mettle26). He had no end of sympathy for London’s poor and unfortunate—of whom there were boundless numbers—on whose behalf he agitated and politicked endlessly. He felt for27) his characters as well, deeply. The death of Little Nell28) shook him to his foundations: “I am slowly murdering that poor child, and grow wretched over it,” he wrote to a friend. “It wrings my heart. Yet it must be.” (Tolstoy felt the same way. He once said of Dickens, “All his characters are my personal friends.”)
      But the closer people were to him, real people, the less he seemed to care about them. Dickens spoke out against cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine29) from year to year, but he packed his sons off to a mediocre30) boarding school in Boulogne where they remained for 10 months a year, starting at the age of 7. As a husband he was a world-class bastard. His wife was a mild individual born Catherine Hogarth, whom he was fond enough of at the beginning, but the woman he was absolutely obsessed with was Catherine’s sister Mary, who died suddenly at 17. He wore Mary’s ring his whole life, praised her in the most exalted terms, and insisted he wanted to be buried with her.
      Catherine was a woman of great, but not inexhaustible, patience. Dickens was an amateur mesmerist31)—another hobby—and he exercised his powers on the wife of a friend, a Mrs. De La Rue, in an attempt to treat her psychiatric problems. Dickens and patient became obsessed with each other, and he practiced his arts on her constantly and at all hours for a full year, with her confiding her secret fantasies to him. There’s no hard evidence that they had a physical affair, but Catherine was livid32) with jealousy.
      The whole business is typical of Dickens’ utter inability to moderate his whims33). “The intense pursuit of any idea that takes complete possession of me,” he wrote, “is one of the qualities that makes me different—sometimes for good; sometimes I dare say for evil—from other men.” (He was many things, but Dickens wasn’t stupid—he had his own number34).) The marriage lasted 22 years, declining into antipathy and finally ending in a bitter divorce, followed by Dickens’ rather spectacular late-life affair with a pretty actress 27 years his junior named Nelly Ternan.   The question that haunts every Dickens biography is this one: was Dickens an asshole? In 1923 Dickens’ daughter Katey had a friend take down her recollections of her famous father, which were later published as a book, and they make wonderful if incoherent reading, riven as they are by her passionate ambivalence35). Her father was not, she insisted, “a joyous, jocose36) gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and bowl of punch.”
      Katey’s amanuensis37) declined to publish another of her gems, which Tomalin dug up from the woman’s notes. “My father was not a gentleman,” she apparently said. “He was too mixed to be a gentleman.” But not too mixed, as it turned out, to be a genius.
      我读了克莱尔·托玛琳写的《查尔斯·狄更斯的一生》一书,但读它并不是因为我喜欢狄更斯。狄更斯并不令我着迷。在研究生院学习时,按要求我必须得修至少一门关于维多利亚时代作家的课程,于是我选了“狄更斯晚期作品”,因为当时只有这一门可选。正是出于这唯一的原因,我才读了那么几本狄更斯的书,包括《荒凉山庄》、《艰难时世》、《双城记》、《远大前程》、大半本《我们共同的朋友》以及《艾德温·德鲁德之谜》。
      所以说,我读托玛琳写的这一传记并非出于对狄更斯的迷恋,尽管我挺喜欢他的小说。我读这本传记是因为狄更斯是个“外星人”,或者至少是个人类当中的极端异类,因此他天生就是个有趣的人。他思维的运转方式都与旁人相异。不过,他的作品却被人们奉为主流文学的基准——如果把维多利亚时期的主流文学作品看做是一部音乐剧,那么狄更斯的作品就是中央C音符。这颇具讽刺意味,至少有点怪异,因为狄更斯本人并不主流,一点儿都不。
      狄更斯的童年生活很糟糕,对这段生活的记忆犹如燃料一般,点燃了他思想的火炉。他的父亲约翰·狄更斯在海军出纳室工作,薪水还算可观,却一贯挥霍无度,常常使全家举债度日。狄更斯12岁的时候,父亲被关进债务人监狱,狄更斯去一家鞋油厂工作了一年,给鞋油瓶封口、贴标签。虽然非常年幼,但狄更斯那时就会当众炫耀自己了——他被安排在工厂的玻璃窗旁工作,这样人们就能看到他是如何飞快地给鞋油瓶封口和贴标签了。待家庭经济状况有所好转后,他重新过起了孩子该有的无忧生活,但他似乎再也找不到安全感了。
      狄更斯长大后,成为一个拥有恶魔般旺盛精力的人:他好像被一个拥有放射性能量的抄写员咬了一下,从此被赋予了超能力。虽然我和狄更斯一样,也是一个写小说和新闻报道的职业作家,可面对他的高产,我只有肃然起敬的份。他以连载的形式写书,按月发表,有时还同时写两本书——《匹克威克外传》和《雾都孤儿》就是同时写就的。完成《匹克威克外传》后,他又开始写《尼古拉斯·尼克尔贝》,而与此同时,《雾都孤儿》的撰写工作也丝毫没有耽搁。有时,在经历一阵高度投入的写作后,他会把头和手伸到一桶冷水中浸一浸,然后继续写作。
      光写小说似乎还不能耗尽狄更斯的全部精力,于是他同时兼写散文,闲暇时还排演一些质量上乘的戏剧,并为女王演出过。狄更斯还无心插柳地创办并经营过一些报刊,比如《汉普雷老爷的钟》、《每日新闻》、《家常话》和《一年四季》。他创建并且后来悉心管理着一家收容所,为失足女性提供实实在在的帮助。他还是十个孩子的父亲。但对于狄更斯来说,放下所有这些事情,去美国、意大利、巴黎等地待上个一年半载,也没什么大不了的。狄更斯狂热地迷恋社交生活,正如托玛琳所说,“他着实没有浪漫主义作家常有的想要独处的需求。”虽然他一直强烈谴责工业革命的种种罪恶(在《艰难时世》中有所体现——这本书我读过!),但在他的心里,似乎有一个独属于他的阴暗、邪恶的工厂,一直运转不休。
      如果所有这些还不足以平息他内心燃烧的熊熊火焰,狄更斯就会去散步,走上十或十二英里路,这一点早已为人所知。他晚年时曾写道:“若是不能快步远足,我就会爆炸,然后死去。”与狄更斯同时代的人在描述他时,常常提及这股控制他的神秘能量,其中不乏一些生动有力的表述——在描述者看来,拥有超能的狄更斯是幸运的。约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒曾说狄更斯“长了一张无赖的臭脸,却散发出天才的光芒”。
      狄更斯的性格是一个复杂的混合体:既有悲天悯人的一面,又有残酷无情的一面。这样的性格,对任何一个为他写传记的作者来说都是一种考验。他总是对伦敦那些穷苦不幸的人充满怜悯——这样的人有很多——为了他们,狄更斯不断在社会上呼吁,在政治方面为他们争取权利。对自己笔下人物的苦难,狄更斯也深感同情。在他的长篇小说《老古玩店》中,小耐儿的离世让他深受触动,“我一点一点地将这个可怜的孩子送上绝路,并越来越为此感到难过,”他在给一位朋友的信中写道,“这样做如同利刃绞心般难受,但我又非这样做不可。”(托尔斯泰对此也感同身受。他在一次提到狄更斯时说:“他笔下的人物都是我的挚友。”)
      不过,对于现实生活中活生生的人,与他越亲近,他似乎越不关心。狄更斯一面谴责那些偏远的廉价学校,孩子们在那里年复一年地苦苦煎熬,无人问津;一面却又为自己的孩子们打点行装,把他们送到布洛涅条件恶劣的寄宿学校。从七岁开始,他的孩子们每年都要在寄宿学校待十个月之久。他还是世界上最糟糕的丈夫。他的妻子凯瑟琳·贺佳斯生性温和,起初颇受狄更斯的喜爱。但真正令狄更斯念念不忘的女子却是凯瑟琳的妹妹玛丽。玛丽17岁就猝死了,狄更斯终生都戴着她的戒指,用最美好的语言赞美她,还坚持身后也要与她长眠在一起。   即便凯瑟琳非常有耐心,但她也不是没有底限。狄更斯业余做催眠师的工作——那是他的另一个爱好。他给一位朋友的妻子德拉露太太催眠,以治疗她心理方面的问题。狄更斯和这位病人彼此倾心,一整年从头到尾无时无刻不在向她施展自己的催眠技巧。这位病人也向他倾吐自己隐秘的幻想。虽然没有确实的证据表明他们之间有身体上的接触,但凯瑟琳却为此醋意大发,很是生气。
      这整件事可谓发生在狄更斯身上的典型事件,可见他完全无法缓和自己突如其来的莫名冲动。他曾写道:“热切地追逐每一个攫住自己全部身心的想法,正是让我与众不同的特质之一。这些想法有时是好的,但有时,我敢说,又是邪恶的。”(狄更斯身上有多重特质,但绝不愚蠢——他清楚地了解自己。)狄更斯与凯瑟琳的这段婚姻维持了22年,后来双方彼此心生厌恶,最终不欢而散,以离婚收场。随后,狄更斯与小他27岁、年轻貌美的女演员内利·特南展开了一段颇为轰动的忘年恋。
      每一位给狄更斯写传记的作者都会为这样一个问题困扰:狄更斯是一个可恶的人吗?1923年,狄更斯的女儿凯蒂请一位朋友记录下自己对于声名显赫的父亲的回忆,后来成书出版。这些回忆尽管不甚有条理,倒很值得一读,显得支离破碎也是因为她强烈的矛盾心理。她坚持说父亲不是“一个快乐、诙谐、走到哪儿手里都捧着一盘梅子布丁和一杯潘趣酒的绅士”。
      后来,凯蒂的誊写员没有再帮助她出版其他珍贵的回忆录,但托玛琳还是从凯蒂的日记中挖掘到了如下内容:“我的父亲并不是一位绅士,”她明确地写到,“他是一个过于复杂的人,不可能成为一位绅士。”但事实证明,不管多复杂,他仍然是一个天才。
      1. demonic [d??m?n?k] adj. 恶魔般的
      2. Claire Tomalin:克莱尔·托玛琳(1933~),英国传记作家兼记者,于2011年推出狄更斯传记《查尔斯·狄更斯的一生》。她曾就读于剑桥大学,曾当过《太阳报》(The Sun)文学编辑,现任英国皇家文学学会(The Royal Society of Literature)和英国笔会(The English PEN)副会长。
      3. Victorian [v?k?t??ri?n] n. 维多利亚时代的人(尤指作家)
      4. to wit:也就是说,就是
      5. outlier [?a?tla??] n. 极端异类
      6. middle-C:中央C,西洋音乐术语,代表位于五线谱大谱表(Grand staff)正中间的音值。
      7. melodrama [?mel??drɑ?m?] n. 音乐剧,情节剧
      8. crap [kr?p] adj. 质量不好的
      9. Pay Office:出纳室
      10. pathologically [?p?θ??l?d??k(?)li] adv. 习以为常地
      11. blacking [bl?k??] n. 黑色鞋油
      12. show pony:爱炫耀的人,爱显摆的人
      13. leave off:停止
      14. installment [?n?st??lm?nt] n. 分期连载的文学作品的一章或一部
      15. jag [d??ɡ] n. (难以控制的)一阵
      16. on the side:作为兼职,正事以外
      17. caliber [?k?l?b?(r)] n. 品质,质量
      18. think nothing of:把……看得很平常
      19. frenetic [fr??net?k] adj. 发狂的,狂热的
      20. decry [d??kra?] vt. 谴责
      21. soothe [su??] vt. 使平静,使镇定
      22. come through:体现,表现
      23. eloquent [el?kw?nt] adj. (言词、文学等)表达动人的;有说服力的
      24. John Stuart Mill:约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒(1806~1873),英国著名哲学家、思想家和经济学家
      25. blackguardism [?bl?ɡ?(r)d??m] n. 无赖行为;恶棍行径
      26. mettle [?met(?)l] n. 勇气
      27. feel for:同情
      28. Little Nell:小耐儿,狄更斯长篇小说《老古玩店》(The Old Curiosity Shop)中的人物。小说描写了小耐儿和他外公相依为命的悲惨故事。
      29. pine [pa?n] vi. (因悲伤、病痛等而)消瘦;衰弱,憔悴
      30. mediocre [?mi?di???k?(r)] adj. 质量中等偏下的
      31. mesmerist [?mezm?r?st] n. 催眠术师
      32. livid [?l?v?d] adj. 狂怒的,暴怒的
      33. whim [(h)wim] n. 心血来潮(一个突然产生的或忽发奇想的念头)
      34. have sb.’s number:了解某人的底细,看透某人
      35. ambivalence [?m?b?v?l?ns] n. 矛盾情绪,双重人格(对人、事物或观点持相对立的态度或感情)
      36. jocose [d???k??s] adj. 诙谐的
      37. amanuensis [??m?nju?ens?s] n. 誊写员,听写员

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