2024年3月8日发(作者：韦绢)
第九届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
来自: FLAA(《外国文艺》)
Means of Delivery
Joshua Cohen
Smuggling Afghan heroin or women from Odessa would have been more
reprehensible, but more logical. Youknowyou’reafoolwhenwhatyou’redoing
makes even the post office seem efficient. Everything I was packing into this
unwieldy, 1980s-vintage suitcase was available online. Idon’tmeanthatwhenIarrived in Berlin I could have orderedmoreLevi’s510s for next-day delivery. I mean,
I was packing books.
Not just any books — these were all the same book, multiple copies. “Invalid Format:
An Anthology of Triple Canopy, Volume 1”ispublished, yes, by Triple Canopy, an
online magazine featuring essays, fiction, poetry and all variety of audio/visual
culture, dedicated — click “About”— “toslowing down the Internet.”Withtheir
book, the first in a planned series, the editors certainly succeeded. They were slowing
me down too, just fine.
“Invalid Format”collects in print the magazine’sfirst four issues and retails, ideally,
for $25. But the 60 copies I was couriering, in exchange for a couch and coffee-press
access in Kreuzberg, would be given away. For free.
Until lately the printed book changed more frequently, but less creatively, than any
other medium. If you thought“TheQuotable Ronald Reagan”wastooexpensive in
hardcover, you could wait a year or less for the same content to go soft. E-books,
which made their debut in the 1990s, cut costs even more for both consumer and
producer, though as the Internet expanded those roles became confused.
Self-published book properties began outnumbering, if not outselling, their trade
equivalents by the mid-2000s, a situation further convoluted when the conglomerates
started“publishing”“self-published books.”Lastyear, Penguin became the first
major trade press to go vanity: its Book Country e-imprint will legitimize your
“original genre fiction”forjustunder $100. These shifts make small, D.I.Y.
collectives like Triple Canopy appear more traditional than ever, if not just quixotic
— a word derived from one of the first novels licensed to a publisher.
Kennedy Airport was no problem, my connection at Charles de Gaulle went fine. My
luggage connected too, arriving intact at Tegel. But immediately after immigration, I
was flagged. A smaller wheelie bag held the clothing. As a customs official
rummaged through my Hanes, I prepared for what came next: the larger case, casters
broken, handle rusted — I’mpretty sure it had already been Used when it was given
to me for my bar mitzvah.
Before the official could open the clasps and start poking inside, I presented him with
the document the Triple Canopy editor, Alexander Provan, had e-mailed me — the
night before? two nights before already? I’dbeenuponeofthose nights scouring
New York City for a printer. No one printed anymore. The document stated, in
English and German, that these books were books. They were promotional, to be
given away at universities, galleries, the Miss Read art-book fair at Kunst-Werke.
“Allaresame?”theofficial asked.
“Allegleich,”Isaid.
An older guard came over, prodded a spine, said somethingIdidn’tget. The younger
official laughed, translated, “Hewants to know if you read every one.”
At lunch the next day with a musician friend. In New York he played twice a month,
ate food stamps. In collapsing Europehe’spaid2,000 euros a night to play a
quattrocento church.
“Where are you handing the books out?”heasked.
“Atanartfair.”
“Whyanartfair?Whynotabookfair?”
“It’sanart-bookfair.”
“Asopposed to a book-bookfair?”
I told him that at book-book fairs, like the famous one in Frankfurt, they mostly gave
out catalogs.
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed: people reading. Books, I mean, not
pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like
a spreadsheet. Americans buy more than half of all e-books sold internationally —
unless Europeans fly regularly to the United States for the sole purpose of
downloading reading material from an American I.P. address. As of the evening I
stopped searching the Internet and actually went out to enjoy Berlin, e-books
accounted for nearly 20 percent of the sales of American publishers. In Germany,
however, e-books accounted for only 1 percent last year. I began asking the
multilingual, multi¬ethnic artists around me why that was. It was , at Soho
House, a privateclubI’dcrashed in the former Hitler¬jugend headquarters. One
installationist said, “Americans like e-books becausethey’reeasier to buy.”Aperformance artist said, “They’realsoeasier not to read.”Trueenough: their presence
doesn’tremindyouofwhatyou’remissing;theydon’ttake up space on shelves. The
next morning, Alexander Provan and I lugged the books for distribution, gratis.
Question: If books become mere art objects, do e-books become conceptual art?
Juxtaposing psychiatric case notes by the physician-novelist Rivka Galchen with a
dramatically illustrated investigation into the devastation of New Orleans, “Invalid
Format”isamong the most artful new attempts to reinvent the Web by the codex, and
the codex by the Web. Its texts “scroll”: horizontally, vertically; title pages evoke
“screens,”reframing content that follows not uniformly and continuously but rather as
a welter of column shifts and fonts. Its closest predecessors might be mixed-media
Dada (Duchamp’sloose-leafed, shuffleable“Green Box”); or perhaps“ICanHasCheezburger?,”thebest-selling book version of the pet-pictures-with-funny-captions
Web site ICanHasCheezbur; or similar volumes from
StuffWhitePeopleLike.com and AwkwardFamilyPh. These latter books are
merely the kitschiest products of publishing’srecent enthusiasm for
“back-engineering.”They’repseudoliterature, commodities subject to the same
reversing process that for over a century has paused“movies”into“stills”— into P.R.
photos and dorm posters — and notated pop recordings for sheet music.
Admittedly Ididn’thavemuchtimetoconsider the implications of adaptive culture in
Berlin. I was too busy dancingto“IchLiebe Wie Du Lügst,”aka“LovetheWayYou Lie,”byEminem, and falling asleep during“Bis(s) zum Ende der Nacht,”aka“TheTwilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,”justafter the dubbed Bella cries over her
unlikely pregnancy, “Dasistunmöglich!”— indeed!
Translating mediums can seem just as unmöglich as translating between unrelated
languages: there will be confusions, distortions, technical limitations. The Web and
e-book can influence the print book only in matters of style and subject — no links, of
course, just their metaphor. “Theghost in the machine”can’tbeexorcised, only
turned around: the machine inside the ghost.
As for me, I was haunted by my suitcase. The extra one, the empty. My last day in
Kreuzberg was spent considering its fate. My wheelie bag was packed. My laptop was
stowed in my carry-on. I wanted to leave the pleather immensity on the corner of
Kottbusser Damm, down by the canal,butI’ve never been a waster. I brought it back.
It sits in the middle of my apartment, unrevertible, only improvable, hollow, its lid
flopped open like the cover of a book.
传送之道 约书亚·科恩
走私阿富汗的海洛因和贩卖来自敖德萨的妇女本应受到更多的谴责，但是也更合乎情理。当你的所作所为甚至让邮局看起来都有效率时，你应该知道自己是个傻瓜。所有我塞到这个笨重的，产自上个世纪80年代的老式行李箱里面的东西，都可以在网上买得到。我不是说，当我到达柏林时本该为了下一天的运送而订购更多的李维斯修身牛仔裤。我是说，我在打包书籍。 不是各式各样的书，这些都是同一本书，只是不同的版本。《无效的格式：三重华盖选集，第一卷》已经出版了。是的，就是“三重华盖”发行的。这个“三重华盖”是一个网络电子杂志，凭借散文、小说、诗歌、五花八门的声音和视觉文化独树一帜。尤其是当点击“关于”时，网页上会出现“让因特网慢下来”的字样。随着他们计划好的一系列书籍当中，这第一本的出版，编辑们无疑获取了成功。他们或多或少地也让我慢了下来。 《无效的格式》收录并付印了杂志的前4期并建议零售价——25美元。但是我即将邮递的这60本不同的版本，却是在克罗伊茨贝格用一个沙发和一台咖啡机换来的赠品。完全是免费的。 近来与其他传播媒介相比，纸质书籍变化地越发频繁，却越来越缺少创造性。如果你认为精装的《罗纳德·里根名言》太贵，那你大可以等一年或者更短的时间，相同的内容就会在网上出现。电子书在上个世纪90年代首次亮相，大幅度的削减了消费者和生产者的成本。然而随着网络的发展，电子书的角色却变得匪夷所思。“自行出版”书籍的收入在21世纪前五年，开始超过商业交易收入。而大型联合企业开始发行“自行出版”书籍的情形更加令人费解。去年，“企鹅”成为第一大出版社，极大地满足了其虚荣心。在它的图书王国只需不到100美元就能让你的“原始小说”拥有合法的出版社落款。这样的转变使那些像“三重华盖”一样喜欢D.I.Y.的小企业们比以往任何时候都显得落后，如果这说法不仅仅是堂吉诃德式的——一个来自获得首批出版商许可的小说中的词语。 我托运的书籍在肯尼迪机场没有遇到问题，在戴高乐机场一切顺利。我的行李也一并托运，完好无损地到达了泰格
尔。但是就在入境后，因为一个相对较小，带有小轮子装着衣服的包裹，我被注意了。当海关官员仔细在我的“恒适”中翻找时，我已经对接下来要发生的事情做好了准备。就要轮到那个小脚轮坏掉，把手生了锈的相对较大的箱子了。因为我在酒吧的善行，这个箱子到我手里时，它已经被用过了，这一点我确信无疑。 就在官员将要打开扣环，开始向里面捅时，我向他出示了证明文件。这份证明是“三重华盖”的编辑，亚历山大·普罗文昨晚用邮箱发给我的。难道是前天晚上？这些天有一天晚上我通宵在纽约淘一部打印机。现在不再有人打印了。这份文件用英语和德语说明了这些书是名副其实的书。他们是用来推广宣传的，会赠送给各高校，画廊和位于艺术工厂的“读书小姐”艺术书展。 “所有的都一样吗？”官员问道。 “全都一样。”我用德语答道。 一个年龄较大的守卫走过来，用手指戳了戳了书脊，说了什么，不过我没听懂。那个年轻点的官员笑起来，为我翻译说：“他想知道你是否每一本都读了。”第二天我和一位音乐家一起吃午饭。在纽约他一个月演奏两次，靠代金券填 2 饱肚子。在经济下滑的欧洲，他演奏15世纪的教堂礼拜仪式，一个晚上竟能赚2000欧元。 “你要把这些书送到哪里？”他问。 “一个艺术展览会。”“为什么是艺术展会？为什么不是书展呢？”“它是一个艺术书展。”“和专门的书展不同吗？”我告诉他，在专门的书展上，像在法兰克福那个著名的书展那样，大多数情况下他们只给出展出书籍的目录。 在柏林乘坐火车和有轨电车的时候，我注意到：人们在阅读。我说的是书籍，而不是口袋大小，发出哗哗声的电子设备，如果非要吹毛求疵的话，在那上面莎士比亚可以像计算机程序一样一览无遗。全世界售出的电子书，美国人购买了一半以上，除非欧洲人定期坐飞机去美国，目的只有一个，就是用美国的IP地址下载阅读材料。从那晚开始，我不再上网而是出去真正的享受柏林。电子书在美国出版商的总销量中约占20%，然而去年在德国，电子书仅仅占据了1%。我开始询问身边掌握多种语言，了解多个民族的艺术家为什么会这样。那是凌晨两点在一个私人会所，叫苏荷馆。在之前的青年希特勒总部中，我的电脑死机了。一个程序安装人员说：“美国人热爱电子书因为更方便买到。”一个表演艺术家说：“电子书也更方便随时不读。”的确，电子书的存在不会提醒你错过了什么，它不会占据书架上的空间。第二天上午，亚历山大·普罗文和我拖着那些书给大家免费的派发。问题是，如果书籍仅仅变成艺术品，那么电子书是不是要成为观念艺术呢？ 将内科医生兼小说家丽芙卡·戈臣的精神病学案例笔记和对于新奥尔良毁灭的惊人调查联系在一起，《无效的格式》是其中最狡猾的新尝试，它创造了原创书籍的网络，和网络中的原创书籍。它的文字能水平或垂直的滚动；标题能唤起与之联系的页面，重组的内容不是遵循一致性和流畅性，而是杂乱无章的纵列和字体。它最近的前辈可能是混合媒体达达（杜桑那拥有宽松页面，可移动的“绿色盒子”）；或者可能是“我能吃芝士汉堡”——一本畅销书，内容取自带搞笑标题的宠物图片的网站ICanHasCeezbu；又或者是相似的书册来自 StuffWhitePeopleLike.com 和AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com 网站。这之后的书不过是些庸俗的作品，是出版业在“后建筑时代”的一时冲动。这些是伪文学。一个多世纪以来，“电影”被暂停成“定格画面”，变成公关照片和宿舍的海报；刻录的唱片也变成五线谱。这些商品书籍势必将经历相同的转变过程。 诚然我没有时间去考虑柏林“适应性文化”背后的意义。我忙着在“IchLiebe Wie Du Lugst”中翩翩起舞，曲子又名“爱你说谎的样子”，是艾米纳姆创作的。忙着在“BiszumEndederNacht”又叫“暮光之城：破晓”中进入梦乡，就在配音后的贝拉为她意料之外的怀孕而恸哭之后。的确，
那是不可能的。 翻译媒体对于不相关的语言之间的翻译也可能是无计可施，将会遇到模糊不清，语意歪曲和技术的限制。网络和电子书只能在形式和主题上影响纸质书籍——没有相互联系，当然，仅仅是他们的比喻。“机器中的鬼魂”不能被驱散，只能倒过来说是：鬼魂体内的机器。 于我而言，我被自己的行李箱困扰着。那个多余的空箱子。我在克罗伊茨贝格的最后一天是忧虑着它的命运度过的。我那个带小轮子的包裹已经打包好了。我的笔记本电脑也已经整齐的收起。我想把这个人造革的产物扔在科特布斯的角 3 落，顺运河而下，但是我从不是一个浪费者。我又把箱子带了回来。它蹲坐在我公寓的正中间，即使修理也不能完好如初了。它失落地展开了盖子，中间空着，就像一本书的封面。
第八届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
来自: FLAA(《外国文艺》)
How Writers Build the Brand
By Tony Perrottet
As every author knows, writing a book is the easy part these days. It’swhenthepublication date looms that we have to roll up our sleeves and tackle the real literary
labor: rabid self-promotion. For weeks beforehand, we are compelled to bombard
every friend, relative and vague acquaintance with creative e-mails and Facebook
alerts, polish up our Web sites with suspiciously youthful author photos, and, in an
orgy of blogs, tweets and YouTube trailers, attempt to inform an already inundated
world of our every reading, signing, review, interview and (well, one can dream!) TV
¬appearance.
In this era when most writers are expected to do everything but run the printing
presses, self-promotion is so accepted that we hardly give it a second thought. And
yet, whenever I have a new book about to come out, I have to shake the unpleasant
sensation that there is something unseemly about my own clamor for attention.
Peddling my work like a Viagra salesman still feels at odds with the high calling of
literature.
In such moments of doubt, I look to history for reassurance. It’salways comforting to
be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-marketing — has been practiced by
the greats.
The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. “Forartists, the
great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,”Balzac observedin“LostIllusions,”hisclassic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another
master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography“Memoirs of an Egotist,”“Great
success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of
out-and-out charlatanism.”Those words should be on the Authors Guild coat of
arms.
Hemingway set the modern gold standard for inventive self-branding, burnishing his
image with photo ops from safaris, fishing trips and war zones. But he also posed for
beer ads. In 1951, Hem endorsed Ballantine Ale in a double-page spread in Life
magazine, complete with a shot of him looking manly in his Havana abode. As
recountedin“Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame,”edited by Matthew J.
Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, he proudly appeared in ads for Pan Am and Parker
pens, selling his name with the abandon permitted to Jennifer Lopez or LeBron James
today. Other American writers were evidently inspired. In 1953, John Steinbeck also
began shilling for Ballantine, recommending a chilled brew after ahardday’slabor in
the fields. Even Vladimir Nabokov had an eye for self-marketing, subtly suggesting to
photo editors that they feature him as a lepidopterist prancing about the forests in cap,
shorts and long socks. (“Somefascinating photos might be also taken of me, a burly
but agile man, stalking a rarity or sweeping it into my net from a flowerhead,”heenthused.) Across the pond, the Bloomsbury set regularly posed for fashion shoots in
British Vogue in the 1920s. The frumpy Virginia Woolf evenwentona“Pretty
Woman”-style shopping expedition at French couture houses in London with the
magazine’sfashion editor in 1925.
But the tradition of self-promotion predates the camera by millenniums. In 440 B.C.
or so, a first-time Greek author named Herodotus paid for his own book tour around
the Aegean. His big break came during the Olympic Games, when he stood up in the
temple of Zeus and declaimedhis“Histories”tothewealthy, influential crowd. In the
12th century, the clergyman Gerald of Wales organized his own book party in Oxford,
hoping to appeal to college audiences. Accordingto“TheOxford Book of Oxford,”edited by Jan Morris, he invited scholars to his lodgings, where he plied them with
good food and ale for three days, along with long recitations of his golden prose. But
they got off easy compared with those invitedtothe“Funeral Supper”ofthe18th-century French bon vivant Grimod de la Reynière, held to promote his opus
“Reflections on Pleasure.”Theguests’curiosity turned to horror when they found
themselves locked in a candlelit hall with a catafalque for a dining table, and were
served an endless meal by black-robed waiters while Grimod insulted them as an
audience watched from the balcony. When the diners were finally released at ,
they spread word that Grimod was mad — and his book quickly went through three
¬printings.
Such pioneering gestures pale, however, before the promotional stunts of the 19th
century. In“Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris
During the Age of Revolution,”thehistorian Paul Metzner notes that new technology
led to an explosion in the number of newspapers in Paris, creating an array of
publicity options. In“LostIllusions,”Balzac observes that it was standard practice in
Paris to bribe editors and critics with cash and lavish dinners to secure review space,
while the city was plastered with loud posters advertising new releases. In 1887, Guy
de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story, “LeHorla,”painted on its side. In 1884, Maurice Barrès hired men to
wear sandwich boards promoting his literary review, Les Tachesd’Encre. In 1932,
Colette created her own line of cosmetics sold through a Paris store. (This first
venture into literary name-licensing was, tragically, a flop).
American authors did try to keep up. Walt Whitman notoriously wrote his own
anonymous reviews, which would not be out of place today on Amazon. “An
American bard at last!”heraved in 1855. “Large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking
and breeding, his costume manly and free, his face sunburnt and bearded.”Butnobody could quite match the creativity of the Europeans. Perhaps the most
astonishing P.R. stunt — one that must inspire awe among authors today — was
plotted in Paris in 1927 by Georges Simenon, the Belgian-born author of the Inspector
Maigret novels. For 100,000 francs, the wildly prolific Simenon agreed to write an
entire novel while suspended in a glass cage outside the Moulin Rouge nightclub for
72 hours. Members of the public would be invited to choose the novel’scharacters,
subject matter and title, while Simenon hammered out the pages on a typewriter. A
newspaper advertisement promised the result would be“arecord novel: record speed,
record endurance and, dare we add, record talent!”Itwasamarketing coup. As Pierre
Assouline notes in“Simenon: A Biography,”journalists in Paris “talked of nothing
else.”
As it happens, Simenon never went through with the glass-cage stunt, because the
newspaper financing it went bankrupt. Still, he achieved huge publicity (and got to
pocket 25,000 francs of the advance), and the idea took on a life of its own. It was
simply too good a story for Parisians to drop. For decades, French journalists would
describe the Moulin Rouge event in elaborate detail, as if they had actually attended
it. (The British essayist Alain de Botton matched Simenon’schutzpah, if not quite his
glamour, a few years ago when he set up shop in Heathrow for a week and became the
airport’sfirst “writer in residence.”Butthenheactually got a book out of it, along
with prime placement in Heathrow’sbookshops.)
What lessons can we draw from all this? Probably none, except that even the most
egregious act of self-¬promotion will be forgiven in time. So writers today should
take heart. We could dress like Lady Gaga and hang from a cage at a Yankees game — if any of us looked as good near-naked, that is.
On second thought, maybe there’sareason we have agents to rein in our P.R. ideas.
参考译文：
作家如何创品牌
托尼﹒佩罗蒂提
每位作者都知道，时下写书容易。只有在出版日期迫近时我们才卷起袖子来做真正的写作工作：疯狂地进行自我推销。提前好几个星期，我们就要搞一些有创意的电子邮件和脸谱网通知，然后狂轰滥炸似地发给每一个朋友、亲戚以及一般相识；用让人怀疑的充满朝气的个人照片美化自己的网站；铺天盖地地利用博客、微博和YouTube宣传片，企图让业已被各种信息淹没的世人知道我们的每一部读物、每一次签约、每一个书评、每一回访谈、（当然，你可以梦想！）每一次电视亮相。
在这个时代，大多数作家除了不亲自操作印刷机外，什么事情都做，搞自我推销是天经地义的事儿。然而，每当我有一本新书要问世时，我总要设法去摆脱那种难受的感觉——为自己鼓噪做宣传不够体面。我像一个贩卖伟哥的推销员，觉得这与文学的崇高使命格格不入。
在迷茫的时候，我从历史中寻找先例，从而使自己感到心安理得。得知大人物们早就做自我营销让我有一种宽慰的感觉。
法国最受人敬仰的小说家们早就认识到公关的必要性。《幻灭》是巴尔扎克关于十九世纪早期巴黎文学生活的经典小说。他在里面说过，“艺术家们需要解决的最大问题是如何让他人注意到自己。”另一位大师司汤达在他的自传《自我中心回忆录》中说，“没有一定程度的无耻、甚至是不折不扣的江湖游医的骗术，要想取得巨大的成功是不可能的。”这些话应该上美国作协徽章。
海明威用狩猎、钓鱼和战地镜头来装饰自己的形象，为创新式自主品牌设定了当代黄金标准。但他还摆弄姿势做啤酒广告。1951年，海明威在《生活》杂志上替百龄坛啤酒做代言，占了整整两个页面，照片显示的是其本人在哈瓦那个人住所里的一幅完完全全的男子汉气派。据马休•勃鲁柯里和朱蒂•丝鲍夫曼编的《海明威和声誉机制》一书中记述，他为泛美航空公司和派克笔做广告而引以自豪。他纵情恣意地推销自己，力度一点儿不亚于当今的珍妮弗•洛佩兹和勒布朗•詹姆斯。其他美国作家深受启发。1953年，约翰•斯坦贝克也开始为百龄坛做广告，向在田间辛苦劳作了一天的人们推荐一种冷冻啤酒。就连弗拉基米尔•纳博科夫也有自我营销的眼光。他让照片编辑将他巧妙地包装成一个头戴帽子、身穿短裤长袜、昂首阔步在森林当中的鳞翅类昆虫学家。（他曾满怀热情地说，“可能还给我拍过一些吸引眼球的照片，上面是一位身材魁梧而动作敏捷的男子，在跟踪一种罕见的昆虫或用网把它从花朵上罩住。”）二十世纪二十年代，《英国时尚》杂志常常用池塘映衬下的布卢姆斯伯里做背景拍时装照。土里吧唧的弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫甚至在1952年和该杂志的时装编辑在伦敦的法国时装屋搞了一次“麻雀变凤凰”式的购物探险活动。
但是，自我推销的传统要比照相机的发明早几千年。公元前440年前后，第一次出书的希腊作家希罗多德自费周游爱琴海地区推销自己的书。他的好运在奥运会期间降临。在宙斯神庙里他站起来慷慨激昂地向有钱、有影响力的人群朗诵他的《历史》。十二世纪，威尔士牧师杰拉尔德在牛津大学举办自己的图书晚会，希望能引起大学读者群的注意。据简•莫里斯主编的《牛津版之牛津史》记载，他把学者们邀请到自己的住处，在那里连续三天供给他们好吃的、让他们喝啤酒，向他们朗诵自己的美文。不过，他们都能轻松脱身。十八世纪的法国美食家格里莫•德•拉雷尼埃尔为了推销其著作《关于快乐之反思》，专门举办了一场“丧宴”。那些被邀请赴宴的人们就没有那么幸运了。客人们发现他们被反锁在一个用蜡烛照明、用停尸台作餐桌的大厅里，身穿黑色长袍的侍者无休止地给他们上餐，而格里莫却羞辱他们，让人从露台上观看他们。于是，他们的好奇心一下子变成了恐惧感。吃饭的人最终在早上七点获释。他们散布消息说格里莫疯了——他的书很快就连印三次。
不过，与十九世纪的宣传噱头相比，这种激进方式显得相形见绌。历史学家保罗•梅茨纳在《渐强之炫技：巴黎大革命时期自我推销之场面和技巧》一书中写到，新技术使得巴黎报纸的数量爆炸式地多了起来，从而给人们创造了大量可供选择的宣传途径。巴尔扎克在《幻灭》中说，尽管巴黎到处都张贴着宣传新书的海报，但要搞到版面发表书评，标准的做法就是用现金和豪宴贿赂编辑和评论家。1877年，莫泊桑在塞纳河上放了一个热气球，气球一侧印有其最新短篇小说的名子《奥尔拉》。1884年，莫里斯•巴雷斯雇人身挂广告牌，宣传他的文学评论《墨迹》。1932年，科莱特创造了以她自己的名字命名的化妆品系列，在巴黎的一家商店销售。（不幸的是，第一次以文学为品牌的投资以失败告终）。
美国作家也不甘落后。用匿名方式给自己的书写评论，这在今天的亚马逊网并没有什么不妥，而沃尔特•惠特曼却曾因此声誉扫地。 “美国终于有了自己的诗
人！”他在1855年狂言。 “他高大、自豪、充满激情；他会吃、会喝、会生育；他不修边幅、有男人味；他脸色黝黑、胡子拉碴。”但是，在创意上没有人能望欧洲人之项背。1927年乔治•西默农在巴黎策划的公关噱头也许是最吓唬人的——肯定会令当今的作家们感到敬畏。他生于比利时，是神探梅格雷系列小说的作者。西默农的创造力非常惊人。他接受十万法郎的酬金，同意被装进玻璃笼，在红磨坊夜总会外面悬挂七十二小时，此间写出一部完整的长篇小说。普通民众将被邀请选择小说的人物、主题及书名，而西默农将用打字机敲出文字。报纸广告断言结果将是“一部创纪录的小说：创纪录的速度、创纪录的忍耐力和（恕我们斗胆妄言）创纪录的才能！”这是一次成功的营销。正如皮埃尔•阿苏里在《西默农传》里所写，巴黎的记者们“不谈他事”。
事实上，西默农从未表演过玻璃笼绝技，因为赞助该活动的报社破产了。不过，他获得了巨大的知名度（还拿到了两万五千法郎的预付款），而且该创意本身被赋予了生命。这个故事太精彩了，巴黎人是不会轻易忘掉的。几十年来，法国记者们常常煞费苦心地详细描述红磨坊事件，仿佛他们亲自参与了似的。（如果说英国散文家阿兰•德•波顿的魅力不及西默农的话，那么其狂妄程度绝不亚于后者。几年前，他在希思罗机场设立工作室，在那儿呆了一个星期，成为该机场的第一位“特聘作家。”不过后来他真的根据这次经历写出了一本书。他的书摆放在希思罗机场书店里最醒目的位置。）
从这一切当中我们能得到什么启发呢？那就是：最臭名昭著的自我推销行为最终也会被谅解。除此之外，或许什么也没有。所以，当代的作家应当鼓起勇气来。在洋基队的赛场上，我们可以打扮成嘎嘎女郎的样子，再让人用笼子挂起来——只要半裸着能像她一样有性感就行。
仔细想一想，让官员约束我们的公关理念也许是有道理的。
第七届CASIO 杯翻译竞赛原文
The Use of Poetry Ian McEwan
It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class. In those harsh postwar years, ideals of
infant beauty resided chiefly in fat, in Churchillian multiple chins, in dreams of an end to rationing and of the reign of plenty to come. Babies were exhibited and judged like prize marrows, and, in 1947, the five-month-old Michael, bloated and jolly, swept all
before him. However, it was unusual at a village fête for a middle-class woman, a stockbroker’s wife, to abandon the cake-and-chutney stall and enter her child for such a gaudy event. She must have known that he was bound to win, just as she later claimed
always to have known that he would get a scholarship to Oxford. Once he was on solids, and for the rest of her life, she cooked for him with the same commitment with which she had held the bottle, sending herself in the mid-sixties, despite her illness, on a
Cordon Bleu cookery course so that she could try new meals during his occasional visits home. Her husband, Henry, was a meat-and-two-veg man, who despised garlic and the smell of olive oil. Early in the marriage, for reasons that remained private, Angela
withdrew her love from him. She lived for her son, and her legacy was clear: a fat man who restlessly craved the attentions of beautiful women who could cook.
Henry Beard was a lean sort with a drooping mustache and slicked-back brown hair,
whose dark suits and brown tweeds seemed a cut too large, especially around the neck. He provided for his miniature family well and, in the fashion of the time, loved his son sternly and with little physical contact. Though he never embraced Michael, and rarely laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder, he supplied all the right kinds of present—Meccano and chemistry sets, a build-it-yourself wireless, encyclopedias, model airplanes, and books about military history, geology, and the lives of great men. He had had a long war, serving as a junior officer in the infantry in Dunkirk, North Africa, and
Sicily, and then, as a lieutenant colonel, in the D Day landings, where he won a medal. He had arrived at the concentration camp of Belsen a week after it was liberated, and was stationed in Berlin for eight months after the war ended. Like many men of his generation, he did not speak about his experiences and he relished the ordinariness of postwar life, its tranquil routines, its tidiness and rising material well-being, and, above all, its lack of danger—everything that would later appear stifling to those born in the first years of the peace.
In 1952, when Michael was five, the forty-year-old Henry Beard gave up his job at a
merchant bank in the City and returned to his first love, which was the law. He became a partner in an old firm in nearby Chelmsford and stayed there for the rest of his working life. To celebrate the momentous change and his liberation from the daily commute to Liverpool Street, he bought himself a secondhand Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. This pale-blue machine lasted him thirty-three years, until his death. From the vantage of adulthood, and with some retrospective guilt, his son loved him for this grand gesture. But the life of a small-town solicitor, absorbed by matters of
conveyancing and probate, settled on Henry Beard an even greater tranquillity. At weekends, he mostly cared for his roses, or his car, or golf with fellow-Rotarians. He stolidly accepted his loveless marriage as the price he must pay for his gains.
It was about this time that Angela Beard began a series of affairs that stretched over eleven years. Young Michael registered no outward hostilities or silent tensions in the home, but, then, he was neither observant nor sensitive, and was often in his room after school, building, reading, gluing, and later took up pornography and masturbation full time, and then girls. Nor, at the age of seventeen, did he notice that his mother had retreated, exhausted, to the sanctuary of her marriage. He heard of her adventures only
when she was dying of breast cancer, in her early fifties. She seemed to want his forgiveness for ruining his childhood. By then he was nearing the end of his second year at Oxford and his head was full of maths and girlfriends, physics and drinking, and at first he could not take in what she was telling him. She lay propped up on pillows in her
private room on the nineteenth floor of a tower-block hospital, with views toward the
industrialized salt marshes by Canvey Island and the south shore of the Thames. He was grownup enough to know that it would have insulted her to say that he had noticed
nothing. Or that she was apologizing to the wrong person. Or that he could not imagine anyone over thirty having sex. He held her hand and squeezed it to signal his warm feelings, and said that there was nothing to forgive.
It was only after he had driven home, and drunk three nightcap Scotches with his father, then gone to his old room and lain on the bed fully dressed and considered what she had told him, that he
grasped the extent of her achievement. Seventeen lovers in eleven years. Lieutenant Colonel Beard had had all the excitement and danger he could stand by the age of thirty-three. Angela had to have hers. Her lovers were her desert campaign against Rommel, her D Day, and her Berlin. Without them, she had told Michael from her hospital pillows, she would have hated herself and gone mad. But she hated herself anyway, for what she thought she had done to her only child. He went back to the hospital the next day and, while she sweatily clung to his hand, told her that his childhood had been the
happiest and most secure imaginable, that he had never felt neglected or doubted her love or eaten so well, and that he was proud of what he called her appetite for life and
hoped to emulate it. It was the first time that he had ever given a speech. These half and quarter truths were the best words he had ever spoken. Six weeks later, she was dead. Naturally, her love life was a closed subject between father and son, but for years afterward Michael could not drive through Chelmsford or the surrounding villages without wondering whether this or that old fellow tottering along the pavement or slumped near a bus stop was one of the seventeen
诗的妙用
〔英〕伊恩·麦克尤恩 作 张春柏 译
迈克尔·比尔德是个独子。他自己就会首先承认，他根本不懂手足之情为何物，对于这一点，谁也不会感到诧异。他的母亲安琪拉，是位骨感美人，对他千般宠，万般爱，她表达爱的渠道便是食物，她拼命给他喂食，远远超出了他的需要。早在他荣获诺贝尔物理学奖四十年前，就曾在科尔德诺顿 地区0至6个月组超级宝宝大赛中拔得头筹。在那战后的艰难岁月里，人们理想中漂亮宝宝的主要特征，就是脂肪多多、有着邱吉尔式的多重下巴。人们梦想结束配给制，梦想物质丰富的时代早日到来。在那些竞赛中，宝宝们如同一根根参赛的西葫芦，公开陈列，供人评判。1947年，五个月大的迈克尔，圆滚滚，胖嘟嘟，惹人疼，惹人爱, 横扫群婴，轻松夺魁。不过，要她这样的中产妇女、证券经纪人的太太，在村里难得的盛会上，不去光顾糕饼甜酱摊子，而带孩子去参加这种俗气的比赛，绝非寻常。她一准知道他注定会赢。正如她后来常说的，她早就料定他将得到牛津大学的奖学金。一待他断奶，她便以同样的激情，为他烧饭做菜，乐此不疲，终此一生。六十年代中期，她甚至不顾病痛，到蓝带烹饪学校学习, 为的是他偶尔回家时能一显身手，端上三五盘新菜。她丈夫亨利，每餐一荤两素，但忌食洋葱，不喜橄榄油。两人新婚不久，由于迄今没有公开的原因，安琪拉便收回了对他的爱。她活着只是为了儿子，她留下的遗产也同样一目了然：一个大腹便便的男人，一个不停地追逐会烧菜的美女的男人。
亨利·比尔德，瘦瘦的身材，一对八字胡，垂向下方，光亮的棕发，整齐地梳向脑后。他那深色的花呢外套略嫌肥大，领子更是过于宽松。对这个小家庭，他供妻养儿，尽心尽责。对于儿子，他则一如当时典型的严父，很少有身体上的接触。他从不拥抱迈克尔，很少亲昵地拍他的肩膀，但却给了他所有合适的礼物——从麦卡诺牌的拆装玩具，到自己动手装的无线电收音机、百科全书和飞机模型，以及军事史、地质学著作和名人传记，无所不包，应有尽有。二战期间他长期服役，当过步兵的低级军官，在敦刻尔克、北非和西西里打过仗，到
了盟军进攻日 时，他已经是个中校，还获得了一枚勋章。贝尔森 集中营解放一周后，他到达那里，战后还在柏林驻扎了八个月。和许多同辈的男人一样，他对自己的经历绝口不提，只是尽情地享受着战后恬淡的生活，享受着那种宁静和整洁，以及日渐改善的物质条件。更重要的是，他享受着那种安全感 ——
一句话，后来令和平初期出生的人们感到窒息痛苦的一切东西，他都趋之若渴，甘之如饴。
1952年，迈尔尔五岁时，四十岁的亨利比尔德放弃·了他在伦敦老城商业银行的工作，重拾旧爱，干起了法律。他在不远的切姆斯福市 的一家老字号律师事务所当了合伙人，直到退休。为了庆祝这个重要的转变，庆祝自己从每天来往利物浦大街 的交通中解放出来，他买了辆二手的罗斯莱斯银云。 这台浅蓝色座驾，他一用就是三十三年，直到去世。他儿子成年后，回首当年，略有歉疚，他爱父亲的，就是这种手笔和气派。作为小镇上的初级律师，亨利·比尔德的生活很快便被财产转让、遗嘱检验之类的琐事所吞噬，此后的生活更加平淡，波澜不惊。每逢周末，他基本上就是种种花，养养车，或者和扶轮国际 的朋友打打高尔夫。他平静地接受了无爱的婚姻，那是为他的所得付出的代价。
也就是在这时候，安琪拉·比尔德开始了一系列长达十一年的婚外恋情。在家里，年轻的迈克尔，既粗心又麻木，对父母间的明争暗吵都毫无觉察。放学回家后，他常常关在家里，搭搭积木，做做功课，粘粘纸片。后来他开始沉迷色情，纵欲手淫，追逐女孩。十七岁时，他甚至没有注意到，他母亲在外面玩腻了，玩累了，撤回到了婚姻的庇护所。直到她五十多岁、乳腺癌晚期生命垂危之时，他才听到了她的婚外恋情。她似乎在恳求他原谅她毁了他的童年。那是他在牛津二年级即将结束的时候，脑子里装的除了数学物理，便是美酒靓女。一开始他云里雾里的，不明白她在说些什么。她躺在医院十九层的私人病房里，靠在枕头上。窗外，可以看到堪威岛边盐碱化的湿地上林立的工厂和泰晤士河的南岸。他已经成人，当然明白要是告诉她，说他什么也没注意到，说她的道歉搞错了对象，或者说他无法想象一个人三十多岁还能性交，那将是对她的莫大污辱。他只是抓住她的手，用力地握着，以此表达他的赤子温情，然后对她说，其实她没有什么需要他原谅的。
回家后，他和父亲喝了三杯威士忌，回到自己的房间，和衣倒在床上，回味良久，这才恍然大悟, 明白了她的非凡“成就”。天哪，短短十一年她竟有十七个情人！想当年，比尔德中校三十三岁时，经历过何等惊心动魄的战斗，何等险象环生的厮杀！可安琪拉也得有她的“惊”与“险”。她的情人便是她对隆美尔发起的沙漠之战 、她的情人便是她的进攻日、她的柏林之战。她靠在医院的枕头上, 对迈克尔说，没有他们，她准会自怨自责的，她准会神经崩溃的。可结果她还是自责不已，只不过这种自责是因为她觉得亏欠了自己唯一的儿子。
第二天他回到医院，任由她虚汗润湿的手紧紧攥住自己的手，告诉她说，他的童年最幸福了，他的童年最安全了，他从没觉得受过冷落，更没有怀疑过她的母爱，况且他吃的又是那么好，他甚至为她“对生活的胃口”感到骄傲，希望能出于蓝，胜于蓝。这是他有生以来第一次、也是最好的一次“演讲”，其中四分之三绝对是真情流露。
六星期后，她去世了。对于她的情史，父子俩自然讳莫如深。可是此后许多年，迈克尔每每驶过切姆斯福市或附近的村子，看到某个在人行道上蹒跚前行、或者在公交站边颓然瘫倒的老头，就禁不住想，他会不会是那十七分之
一？
第五届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
Optics
Manini Nayar
When I was seven, my friend Sol was hit by lightning and died. He was on a rooftop
quietly playing marbles when this happened. Burnt to cinders, we were told by the
neighbourhood gossips. He'd caught fire, we were assured, but never felt a thing. I
only remember a frenzy of ambulances and long clean sirens cleaving the silence of
that damp October night. Later, my father came to sit with me. This happens to one in
several millions, he said, as if a knowledge of the bare statistics mitigated the horror.
He was trying to help, I think. Or perhaps he believed I thought it would happen to
me. Until now, Sol and I had shared everything; secrets, chocolates, friends, even a
birthdate. We would marry at eighteen, we promised each other, and have six
children, two cows and a heart-shaped tattoo with 'Eternally Yours' sketched on our
behinds. But now Sol was somewhere else, and I was seven years old and under the
covers in my bed counting spots before my eyes in the darkness.
After that I cleared out my play-cupboard. Out went my collection of teddy bears and
picture books. In its place was an emptiness, the oak panels reflecting their own
woodshine. The space I made seemed almost holy, though mother thought my efforts
a waste. An empty cupboard is no better than an empty cup, she said in an apocryphal
aside. Mother always filled things up - cups, water jugs, vases, boxes, arms - as if
colour and weight equalled a superior quality of life.
Mother never understood that this was my dreamtime place. Here I could hide, slide
the doors shut behind me, scrunch my eyes tight and breathe in another world. When I
opened my eyes, the glow from the lone cupboard-bulb seemed to set the polished
walls shimmering, and I could feel what Sol must have felt, dazzle and darkness. I
was sharing this with him, as always. He would know, wherever he was, that I knew
what he knew, saw what he had seen. But to mother I only said that I was tired of
teddy bears and picture books. What she thought I couldn't tell, but she stirred the
soup-pot vigorously.
One in several millions, I said to myself many times, as if the key, the answer to it all,
lay there. The phrase was heavy on my lips, stubbornly resistant to knowledge.
Sometimes I said the words out of context to see if by deflection, some quirk of
physics, the meaning would suddenly come to me. Thanks for the beans, mother, I
said to her at lunch, you're one in millions. Mother looked at me oddly, pursed her lips
and offered me more rice. At this club, when father served a clean ace to win the
Retired-Wallahs Rotating Cup, I pointed out that he was one in a million. Oh, the
serve was one in a million, father protested modestly. But he seemed pleased. Still,
this wasn't what I was looking for, and in time the phrase slipped away from me, lost
its magic urgency, became as bland as 'Pass the salt' or 'Is the bath water hot?' If Sol
was one in a million, I was one among far less; a dozen, say. He was chosen. I was
ordinary. He had been touched and transformed by forces I didn't understand. I was
left cleaning out the cupboard. There was one way to bridge the chasm, to bring Sol
back to life, but I would wait to try it until the most magical of moments. I would wait
until the moment was so right and shimmering that Sol would have to come back.
This was my weapon that nobody knew of, not even mother, even though she had
pursed her lips up at the beans. This was between Sol and me.
The winter had almost guttered into spring when father was ill. One February
morning, he sat in his chair, ashen as the cinders in the grate. Then, his fingers
splayed out in front of him, his mouth working, he heaved and fell. It all happened
suddenly, so cleanly, as if rehearsed and perfected for weeks. Again the sirens, the
screech of wheels, the white coats in perpetual motion. Heart seizures weren't one in a
million. But they deprived you just the same, darkness but no dazzle, and a long
waiting.
Now I knew there was no turning back. This was the moment. I had to do it without
delay; there was no time to waste. While they carried father out, I rushed into the
cupboard, scrunched my eyes tight, opened them in the shimmer and called out 'Sol!
Sol! Sol!' I wanted to keep my mind blank, like death must be, but father and Sol
gusted in and out in confusing pictures. Leaves in a storm and I the calm axis.
Here was father playing marbles on a roof. Here was Sol serving ace after ace. Here
was father with two cows. Here was Sol hunched over the breakfast table. The
pictures eddied and rushed. The more frantic they grew, the clearer my voice became,
tolling like a bell: 'Sol! Sol! Sol!' The cupboard rang with voices, some mine, some
echoes, some from what seemed another place - where Sol was, maybe. The cupboard
seemed to groan and reverberate, as if shaken by lightning and thunder. Any minute
now it would burst open and I would find myself in a green valley fed by limpid
brooks and red with hibiscus. I would run through tall grass and wading into the
waters, see Sol picking flowers. I would open my eyes and he'd be there,
hibiscus-laden, laughing. Where have you been, he'd say, as if it were I who had
burned, falling in ashes. I was filled to bursting with a certainty so strong it seemed a
celebration almost. Sobbing, I opened my eyes. The bulb winked at the walls.
I fell asleep, I think, because I awoke to a deeper darkness. It was late, much past my
bedtime. Slowly I crawled out of the cupboard, my tongue furred, my feet heavy. My
mind felt like lead. Then I heard my name. Mother was in her chair by the window,
her body defined by a thin ray of moonlight. Your father Will be well, she said
quietly, and he will be home soon. The shaft of light in which she sat so motionless
was like the light that would have touched Sol if he'd been lucky; if he had been like
one of us, one in a dozen, or less. This light fell in a benediction, caressing mother,
slipping gently over my father in his hospital bed six streets away. I reached out and
stroked my mother's arm. It was warm like bath water, her skin the texture of hibiscus.
We stayed together for some time, my mother and I, invaded by small night sounds
and the raspy whirr of crickets. Then I stood up and turned to return to my room.
Mother looked at me quizzically.
Are you all right, she asked. I told her I was fine, that I had some cleaning up to do.
Then I went to my cupboard and stacked it up again with teddy bears and picture
books.
Some years later we moved to Rourkela, a small mining town in the north east, near
Jamshedpur. The summer I turned sixteen, I got lost in the thick woods there. They
weren't that deep - about three miles at the most. All I had to do was cycle for all I
was worth, and in
minutes I'd be on the dirt road leading into town. But a stir in the leaves gave me
pause.
I dismounted and stood listening. Branches arched like claws overhead. The sky
crawled on a white belly of clouds. Shadows fell in tessellated patterns of grey and
black. There was a faint thrumming all around, as if the air were being strung and
practised for an overture.
And yet there was nothing, just a silence of moving shadows, a bulb winking at the
walls. I remembered Sol, of whom I hadn't thought in years. And foolishly again I
waited, not for answers but simply for an end to the terror the woods were building in
me, chord by chord, like dissonant music. When the cacophony grew too much to
bear, I remounted and pedalled furiously, banshees screaming past my ears, my feet
assuming a clockwork of their own. The pathless ground threw up leaves and stones,
swirls of dust rose and settled. The air was cool and steady as I hurled myself into the
falling light.
光学
玛尼尼·纳雅尔
谈瀛洲译
在我七岁那年，我的朋友索尔被闪电击中死去了。当时他正在楼顶上安静地打弹子。邻居们传说，他被烧成了焦炭。他们又安慰我们说，尽管他是被烧死的，但毫无痛苦。我只记得救护车乱纷纷地驶来，警报器悠长而尖利的鸣声划破了那个潮湿的十月夜晚的宁静。后来，爸爸过来陪我坐了一会儿。他说，这种事是几百万里才有一个的，似乎知道了这干巴巴的统计数字，就能减轻这件事的可怖。我知道，他只是想安慰我。也许他以为，我担心同样的事也会发生在我的身上。迄今为止，索尔和我分享了一切：我们相互倾吐秘密，有共同的玩伴，分食巧克力，甚至我们的生日也是相同的。我们还相互约定，要在十八岁的时候跟对方结婚，生六个孩子，养两头母牛，并在我们的屁股上纹上一个心形图案，里面刺上“永远爱你”的字样。但现在索尔去了另外一个世界，而我只有七岁，蒙着被子在黑暗中数我眼前的光点。
在这之后我清空了我的玩具柜。我的那些玩具熊和图画书都被扔了出来。玩具柜内空空如也，只剩下橡木板泛着漆光。我腾出的空间近乎神圣，不过妈妈认为我是白费力气。空柜子比空杯子好不了多少，她在边上有深意似地说。妈妈喜欢把所有东西都装得满满的---杯子、水壶、花瓶、盒子，连臂弯里也要抱上点东西---好像色彩与重量就等同于生活的更高品质。
妈妈一直不懂这里是我做梦的地方。我可以躲到里面，拉上滑门，紧闭双眼，然后吸入另外一个世界。在我睁开眼睛的时候，唯一的一盏柜灯照得光滑的橱柜四壁似乎闪烁起来，于是我感觉到了索尔一定感觉过的，那就是眩目与黑暗。和以前一样，我跟他分享着这一切。不管他在哪里，他都会晓得，我知道了他所知道的，看见了他所看见的。但在妈妈面前，我只说自己腻味了玩具熊和图画书。我看不出她是怎么想的，她只是用力地搅拌着锅里的汤。
几百万里才有一个的，我一遍遍地自言自语，似乎一切的谜底、答案，就在这几个字里。它们在我的舌尖上沉甸甸的，顽固地拒绝让我理解。有时我会不分场合地用这句话，看看它的意义是否会通过折射，物理上的一个古怪现象，突然出现在我的脑海中。谢谢你做的豆子，妈妈，午餐时我对她说，你真是几百万中才有一个的。妈妈奇怪地看着我，噘起了嘴，然后给我添了米饭。在俱乐部，在爸爸用一个干净利落的发球赢了“退休人员循环赛杯”之后，我说他是几百万中才有一个的。哦，那记发球才是几百万中才有一个的，爸爸谦虚地纠正说，但他看上去很高兴。但这不是我在寻找的东西。慢慢地这句话从我身边溜走了，失去了它神秘的紧迫性，变得跟“把盐递给我”和“浴缸里的水烫么？”一样淡而无味了。如果索尔是几百万中才有一个的，那么我就常见得多，比如说十几个中就有一个。他是上天选中的。我是普通的。我所不理解的力量点化了他，剩下我孤零零地清空玩具柜。只有一个办法才能跨越这深渊，才能让索尔复活，但我要等到那最神秘的时刻降临，才能尝试。我要拿捏好那灵光闪烁的时机，那样索尔就不得不回来了。这是我的法宝，没人知道，甚至妈妈也不知道，即便她曾对着豆子噘起嘴唇。这是我和索尔之间的秘密。
残冬将尽，新春将至的时候，爸爸病了。一个二月的早晨，他坐在椅子上，脸色就像壁炉里的炭灰。这时，他突然五指箕张，嘴巴噏动，沉重地发出了一声叹息，然后倒下了。这一切都发生得如此突然，如此利索，就像经过了几个星期的排练和提高似的。于是又是警报器声，轮子在急刹车时发出的尖锐摩擦声，穿白大褂的人不停地进进出出。心脏病突发不是几百万中才有一个的。但它同样会夺去你的亲人，它并不眩目，但它同样带来了黑暗，还有漫长的等待。
我知道没有回头路了。这便是关键时刻。我必须毫不犹豫地马上行动；没有时间可浪费了。在他们把爸爸抬出去的时候，我冲到玩具柜里，紧闭双眼，然后在闪烁的灯光中睁开，开始高叫：“索尔！索尔！索尔！”我想让我的头脑保持空白，就跟死后一样，但爸爸和索尔交织在一起的画面不停地在我的头脑中闪现，就像风暴中的树叶，而我是宁静的中心。一会儿是爸爸在楼顶上打弹子。一会儿是索尔一个接一个地发球得分。一会儿是爸爸和两头母牛，一会儿是索尔弓着背倒在早餐桌上。这些画面旋转着，涌动着。他们变得越是纷乱，我的
声音就变得越是清楚，有如钟鸣一般：“索尔！索尔！索尔！”玩具柜中鸣响着几种声音：有的是我的呼唤，有的是回声，有的似乎来自另一个世界---也许是索尔所在的世界。玩具柜似乎也在呻吟和振荡着，被闪电和雷声摇撼着。在这关头它随时可能迸裂，而我就会发现自己身处一个绿树成荫的山谷，里面流淌着清澈的小溪，开满了鲜红的木槿花。我会穿过高草，趟过小溪，然后就会看见索尔在采花。我只要睁开眼他就会在那里，臂弯中抱满了木槿花，笑着。你去哪儿了，他会说，好像被烧焦，变成灰烬掉下来的是我。我的心中充满了强烈的信念，几乎要炸开了，似乎已在经历一场庆典。抽泣着，我睁开了眼睛。只有那盏孤灯对橱壁眨着眼。
我想，我是睡着了，因为我醒来的时候周围是更深沉的黑暗。已经晚了，过了我平时上床的时间很久了。我慢慢地爬出了玩具柜，舌头木木的，双脚沉沉的。我的心如铅般沉重。这时我听见有人叫我。妈妈坐在窗边的椅子里，细细的一道月光勾勒出了她身体的轮廓。你爸爸会好的，她轻轻地说，不久他就会回家的。她坐在那束光线中一动不动；如果索尔运气好的话，如果他跟我们一样，是十几个，甚至几个中就能找出一个的，他就会被同样的光线所触摸。这道光线就像一道祝福，拥抱着妈妈，又温柔地滑过躺在六条街外的医院病床上的爸爸。我伸出手去，轻抚妈妈的手臂。它就跟浴缸里的水一样温暖，她的皮肤质地就跟木槿花瓣一样。
我们在一起呆了一会，母亲和我。夜晚的各种轻微的噪音，还有蟋蟀刺耳的“瞿瞿”声，侵扰着我们。然后我站了起来，向我的房间走去。妈妈探询地看着我。你没事吧，她问。我告诉她我没事，我只是需要整理一下东西。然后我走到玩具柜跟前，重新把它堆满了玩具熊和图画书。
几年后我们搬到了洛尔克拉，东北部的一座矿区小城，靠近詹普谢尔（注：印度东北部城市）。我十六岁那年的夏天，我在那里的一片密林中迷路了。林子其实并不深---最多三英里了。我只要奋力骑车，几分钟就会到达通往市区的泥路。但树叶中的一种扰动让我停了下来。
我从自行车上下来，站着倾听。树的枝桠在头顶如脚爪般拱成弧形。天空匍匐在白云的肚皮上。灰色和黑色的斑驳阴影落在地面。四周有一种低沉的嗡嗡声，似乎有人在拨弄空气，练习一首前奏曲。
然而又什么都没有，只有无声移动着的阴影，和对橱壁眨着眼的一盏孤灯。我记起了索尔，我有好几年没想起过他了。于是我又一次开始傻乎乎地等待，不是等待着答案，而是等待着心中恐惧的结束。一个和弦，又一个和弦，树林把这张恐惧营造起来，就像是不和谐的音乐。当我再也不能忍受那刺耳的声音的时候，我重新上了车，拼命地踩着踏板。我仿佛听见女妖的尖叫，在我的耳边呼啸而过。我的脚上了发条似地自动踩踏着。无路的地面扬起了树叶和石子，尘土旋转着飞升起来，又慢慢落定。我向着越来越暗的暮色飞驰，空气清凉而沉静。
2024年3月8日发(作者：韦绢)
第九届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
来自: FLAA(《外国文艺》)
Means of Delivery
Joshua Cohen
Smuggling Afghan heroin or women from Odessa would have been more
reprehensible, but more logical. Youknowyou’reafoolwhenwhatyou’redoing
makes even the post office seem efficient. Everything I was packing into this
unwieldy, 1980s-vintage suitcase was available online. Idon’tmeanthatwhenIarrived in Berlin I could have orderedmoreLevi’s510s for next-day delivery. I mean,
I was packing books.
Not just any books — these were all the same book, multiple copies. “Invalid Format:
An Anthology of Triple Canopy, Volume 1”ispublished, yes, by Triple Canopy, an
online magazine featuring essays, fiction, poetry and all variety of audio/visual
culture, dedicated — click “About”— “toslowing down the Internet.”Withtheir
book, the first in a planned series, the editors certainly succeeded. They were slowing
me down too, just fine.
“Invalid Format”collects in print the magazine’sfirst four issues and retails, ideally,
for $25. But the 60 copies I was couriering, in exchange for a couch and coffee-press
access in Kreuzberg, would be given away. For free.
Until lately the printed book changed more frequently, but less creatively, than any
other medium. If you thought“TheQuotable Ronald Reagan”wastooexpensive in
hardcover, you could wait a year or less for the same content to go soft. E-books,
which made their debut in the 1990s, cut costs even more for both consumer and
producer, though as the Internet expanded those roles became confused.
Self-published book properties began outnumbering, if not outselling, their trade
equivalents by the mid-2000s, a situation further convoluted when the conglomerates
started“publishing”“self-published books.”Lastyear, Penguin became the first
major trade press to go vanity: its Book Country e-imprint will legitimize your
“original genre fiction”forjustunder $100. These shifts make small, D.I.Y.
collectives like Triple Canopy appear more traditional than ever, if not just quixotic
— a word derived from one of the first novels licensed to a publisher.
Kennedy Airport was no problem, my connection at Charles de Gaulle went fine. My
luggage connected too, arriving intact at Tegel. But immediately after immigration, I
was flagged. A smaller wheelie bag held the clothing. As a customs official
rummaged through my Hanes, I prepared for what came next: the larger case, casters
broken, handle rusted — I’mpretty sure it had already been Used when it was given
to me for my bar mitzvah.
Before the official could open the clasps and start poking inside, I presented him with
the document the Triple Canopy editor, Alexander Provan, had e-mailed me — the
night before? two nights before already? I’dbeenuponeofthose nights scouring
New York City for a printer. No one printed anymore. The document stated, in
English and German, that these books were books. They were promotional, to be
given away at universities, galleries, the Miss Read art-book fair at Kunst-Werke.
“Allaresame?”theofficial asked.
“Allegleich,”Isaid.
An older guard came over, prodded a spine, said somethingIdidn’tget. The younger
official laughed, translated, “Hewants to know if you read every one.”
At lunch the next day with a musician friend. In New York he played twice a month,
ate food stamps. In collapsing Europehe’spaid2,000 euros a night to play a
quattrocento church.
“Where are you handing the books out?”heasked.
“Atanartfair.”
“Whyanartfair?Whynotabookfair?”
“It’sanart-bookfair.”
“Asopposed to a book-bookfair?”
I told him that at book-book fairs, like the famous one in Frankfurt, they mostly gave
out catalogs.
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed: people reading. Books, I mean, not
pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like
a spreadsheet. Americans buy more than half of all e-books sold internationally —
unless Europeans fly regularly to the United States for the sole purpose of
downloading reading material from an American I.P. address. As of the evening I
stopped searching the Internet and actually went out to enjoy Berlin, e-books
accounted for nearly 20 percent of the sales of American publishers. In Germany,
however, e-books accounted for only 1 percent last year. I began asking the
multilingual, multi¬ethnic artists around me why that was. It was , at Soho
House, a privateclubI’dcrashed in the former Hitler¬jugend headquarters. One
installationist said, “Americans like e-books becausethey’reeasier to buy.”Aperformance artist said, “They’realsoeasier not to read.”Trueenough: their presence
doesn’tremindyouofwhatyou’remissing;theydon’ttake up space on shelves. The
next morning, Alexander Provan and I lugged the books for distribution, gratis.
Question: If books become mere art objects, do e-books become conceptual art?
Juxtaposing psychiatric case notes by the physician-novelist Rivka Galchen with a
dramatically illustrated investigation into the devastation of New Orleans, “Invalid
Format”isamong the most artful new attempts to reinvent the Web by the codex, and
the codex by the Web. Its texts “scroll”: horizontally, vertically; title pages evoke
“screens,”reframing content that follows not uniformly and continuously but rather as
a welter of column shifts and fonts. Its closest predecessors might be mixed-media
Dada (Duchamp’sloose-leafed, shuffleable“Green Box”); or perhaps“ICanHasCheezburger?,”thebest-selling book version of the pet-pictures-with-funny-captions
Web site ICanHasCheezbur; or similar volumes from
StuffWhitePeopleLike.com and AwkwardFamilyPh. These latter books are
merely the kitschiest products of publishing’srecent enthusiasm for
“back-engineering.”They’repseudoliterature, commodities subject to the same
reversing process that for over a century has paused“movies”into“stills”— into P.R.
photos and dorm posters — and notated pop recordings for sheet music.
Admittedly Ididn’thavemuchtimetoconsider the implications of adaptive culture in
Berlin. I was too busy dancingto“IchLiebe Wie Du Lügst,”aka“LovetheWayYou Lie,”byEminem, and falling asleep during“Bis(s) zum Ende der Nacht,”aka“TheTwilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,”justafter the dubbed Bella cries over her
unlikely pregnancy, “Dasistunmöglich!”— indeed!
Translating mediums can seem just as unmöglich as translating between unrelated
languages: there will be confusions, distortions, technical limitations. The Web and
e-book can influence the print book only in matters of style and subject — no links, of
course, just their metaphor. “Theghost in the machine”can’tbeexorcised, only
turned around: the machine inside the ghost.
As for me, I was haunted by my suitcase. The extra one, the empty. My last day in
Kreuzberg was spent considering its fate. My wheelie bag was packed. My laptop was
stowed in my carry-on. I wanted to leave the pleather immensity on the corner of
Kottbusser Damm, down by the canal,butI’ve never been a waster. I brought it back.
It sits in the middle of my apartment, unrevertible, only improvable, hollow, its lid
flopped open like the cover of a book.
传送之道 约书亚·科恩
走私阿富汗的海洛因和贩卖来自敖德萨的妇女本应受到更多的谴责，但是也更合乎情理。当你的所作所为甚至让邮局看起来都有效率时，你应该知道自己是个傻瓜。所有我塞到这个笨重的，产自上个世纪80年代的老式行李箱里面的东西，都可以在网上买得到。我不是说，当我到达柏林时本该为了下一天的运送而订购更多的李维斯修身牛仔裤。我是说，我在打包书籍。 不是各式各样的书，这些都是同一本书，只是不同的版本。《无效的格式：三重华盖选集，第一卷》已经出版了。是的，就是“三重华盖”发行的。这个“三重华盖”是一个网络电子杂志，凭借散文、小说、诗歌、五花八门的声音和视觉文化独树一帜。尤其是当点击“关于”时，网页上会出现“让因特网慢下来”的字样。随着他们计划好的一系列书籍当中，这第一本的出版，编辑们无疑获取了成功。他们或多或少地也让我慢了下来。 《无效的格式》收录并付印了杂志的前4期并建议零售价——25美元。但是我即将邮递的这60本不同的版本，却是在克罗伊茨贝格用一个沙发和一台咖啡机换来的赠品。完全是免费的。 近来与其他传播媒介相比，纸质书籍变化地越发频繁，却越来越缺少创造性。如果你认为精装的《罗纳德·里根名言》太贵，那你大可以等一年或者更短的时间，相同的内容就会在网上出现。电子书在上个世纪90年代首次亮相，大幅度的削减了消费者和生产者的成本。然而随着网络的发展，电子书的角色却变得匪夷所思。“自行出版”书籍的收入在21世纪前五年，开始超过商业交易收入。而大型联合企业开始发行“自行出版”书籍的情形更加令人费解。去年，“企鹅”成为第一大出版社，极大地满足了其虚荣心。在它的图书王国只需不到100美元就能让你的“原始小说”拥有合法的出版社落款。这样的转变使那些像“三重华盖”一样喜欢D.I.Y.的小企业们比以往任何时候都显得落后，如果这说法不仅仅是堂吉诃德式的——一个来自获得首批出版商许可的小说中的词语。 我托运的书籍在肯尼迪机场没有遇到问题，在戴高乐机场一切顺利。我的行李也一并托运，完好无损地到达了泰格
尔。但是就在入境后，因为一个相对较小，带有小轮子装着衣服的包裹，我被注意了。当海关官员仔细在我的“恒适”中翻找时，我已经对接下来要发生的事情做好了准备。就要轮到那个小脚轮坏掉，把手生了锈的相对较大的箱子了。因为我在酒吧的善行，这个箱子到我手里时，它已经被用过了，这一点我确信无疑。 就在官员将要打开扣环，开始向里面捅时，我向他出示了证明文件。这份证明是“三重华盖”的编辑，亚历山大·普罗文昨晚用邮箱发给我的。难道是前天晚上？这些天有一天晚上我通宵在纽约淘一部打印机。现在不再有人打印了。这份文件用英语和德语说明了这些书是名副其实的书。他们是用来推广宣传的，会赠送给各高校，画廊和位于艺术工厂的“读书小姐”艺术书展。 “所有的都一样吗？”官员问道。 “全都一样。”我用德语答道。 一个年龄较大的守卫走过来，用手指戳了戳了书脊，说了什么，不过我没听懂。那个年轻点的官员笑起来，为我翻译说：“他想知道你是否每一本都读了。”第二天我和一位音乐家一起吃午饭。在纽约他一个月演奏两次，靠代金券填 2 饱肚子。在经济下滑的欧洲，他演奏15世纪的教堂礼拜仪式，一个晚上竟能赚2000欧元。 “你要把这些书送到哪里？”他问。 “一个艺术展览会。”“为什么是艺术展会？为什么不是书展呢？”“它是一个艺术书展。”“和专门的书展不同吗？”我告诉他，在专门的书展上，像在法兰克福那个著名的书展那样，大多数情况下他们只给出展出书籍的目录。 在柏林乘坐火车和有轨电车的时候，我注意到：人们在阅读。我说的是书籍，而不是口袋大小，发出哗哗声的电子设备，如果非要吹毛求疵的话，在那上面莎士比亚可以像计算机程序一样一览无遗。全世界售出的电子书，美国人购买了一半以上，除非欧洲人定期坐飞机去美国，目的只有一个，就是用美国的IP地址下载阅读材料。从那晚开始，我不再上网而是出去真正的享受柏林。电子书在美国出版商的总销量中约占20%，然而去年在德国，电子书仅仅占据了1%。我开始询问身边掌握多种语言，了解多个民族的艺术家为什么会这样。那是凌晨两点在一个私人会所，叫苏荷馆。在之前的青年希特勒总部中，我的电脑死机了。一个程序安装人员说：“美国人热爱电子书因为更方便买到。”一个表演艺术家说：“电子书也更方便随时不读。”的确，电子书的存在不会提醒你错过了什么，它不会占据书架上的空间。第二天上午，亚历山大·普罗文和我拖着那些书给大家免费的派发。问题是，如果书籍仅仅变成艺术品，那么电子书是不是要成为观念艺术呢？ 将内科医生兼小说家丽芙卡·戈臣的精神病学案例笔记和对于新奥尔良毁灭的惊人调查联系在一起，《无效的格式》是其中最狡猾的新尝试，它创造了原创书籍的网络，和网络中的原创书籍。它的文字能水平或垂直的滚动；标题能唤起与之联系的页面，重组的内容不是遵循一致性和流畅性，而是杂乱无章的纵列和字体。它最近的前辈可能是混合媒体达达（杜桑那拥有宽松页面，可移动的“绿色盒子”）；或者可能是“我能吃芝士汉堡”——一本畅销书，内容取自带搞笑标题的宠物图片的网站ICanHasCeezbu；又或者是相似的书册来自 StuffWhitePeopleLike.com 和AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com 网站。这之后的书不过是些庸俗的作品，是出版业在“后建筑时代”的一时冲动。这些是伪文学。一个多世纪以来，“电影”被暂停成“定格画面”，变成公关照片和宿舍的海报；刻录的唱片也变成五线谱。这些商品书籍势必将经历相同的转变过程。 诚然我没有时间去考虑柏林“适应性文化”背后的意义。我忙着在“IchLiebe Wie Du Lugst”中翩翩起舞，曲子又名“爱你说谎的样子”，是艾米纳姆创作的。忙着在“BiszumEndederNacht”又叫“暮光之城：破晓”中进入梦乡，就在配音后的贝拉为她意料之外的怀孕而恸哭之后。的确，
那是不可能的。 翻译媒体对于不相关的语言之间的翻译也可能是无计可施，将会遇到模糊不清，语意歪曲和技术的限制。网络和电子书只能在形式和主题上影响纸质书籍——没有相互联系，当然，仅仅是他们的比喻。“机器中的鬼魂”不能被驱散，只能倒过来说是：鬼魂体内的机器。 于我而言，我被自己的行李箱困扰着。那个多余的空箱子。我在克罗伊茨贝格的最后一天是忧虑着它的命运度过的。我那个带小轮子的包裹已经打包好了。我的笔记本电脑也已经整齐的收起。我想把这个人造革的产物扔在科特布斯的角 3 落，顺运河而下，但是我从不是一个浪费者。我又把箱子带了回来。它蹲坐在我公寓的正中间，即使修理也不能完好如初了。它失落地展开了盖子，中间空着，就像一本书的封面。
第八届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
来自: FLAA(《外国文艺》)
How Writers Build the Brand
By Tony Perrottet
As every author knows, writing a book is the easy part these days. It’swhenthepublication date looms that we have to roll up our sleeves and tackle the real literary
labor: rabid self-promotion. For weeks beforehand, we are compelled to bombard
every friend, relative and vague acquaintance with creative e-mails and Facebook
alerts, polish up our Web sites with suspiciously youthful author photos, and, in an
orgy of blogs, tweets and YouTube trailers, attempt to inform an already inundated
world of our every reading, signing, review, interview and (well, one can dream!) TV
¬appearance.
In this era when most writers are expected to do everything but run the printing
presses, self-promotion is so accepted that we hardly give it a second thought. And
yet, whenever I have a new book about to come out, I have to shake the unpleasant
sensation that there is something unseemly about my own clamor for attention.
Peddling my work like a Viagra salesman still feels at odds with the high calling of
literature.
In such moments of doubt, I look to history for reassurance. It’salways comforting to
be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-marketing — has been practiced by
the greats.
The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. “Forartists, the
great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,”Balzac observedin“LostIllusions,”hisclassic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another
master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography“Memoirs of an Egotist,”“Great
success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of
out-and-out charlatanism.”Those words should be on the Authors Guild coat of
arms.
Hemingway set the modern gold standard for inventive self-branding, burnishing his
image with photo ops from safaris, fishing trips and war zones. But he also posed for
beer ads. In 1951, Hem endorsed Ballantine Ale in a double-page spread in Life
magazine, complete with a shot of him looking manly in his Havana abode. As
recountedin“Hemingway and the Mechanism of Fame,”edited by Matthew J.
Bruccoli and Judith S. Baughman, he proudly appeared in ads for Pan Am and Parker
pens, selling his name with the abandon permitted to Jennifer Lopez or LeBron James
today. Other American writers were evidently inspired. In 1953, John Steinbeck also
began shilling for Ballantine, recommending a chilled brew after ahardday’slabor in
the fields. Even Vladimir Nabokov had an eye for self-marketing, subtly suggesting to
photo editors that they feature him as a lepidopterist prancing about the forests in cap,
shorts and long socks. (“Somefascinating photos might be also taken of me, a burly
but agile man, stalking a rarity or sweeping it into my net from a flowerhead,”heenthused.) Across the pond, the Bloomsbury set regularly posed for fashion shoots in
British Vogue in the 1920s. The frumpy Virginia Woolf evenwentona“Pretty
Woman”-style shopping expedition at French couture houses in London with the
magazine’sfashion editor in 1925.
But the tradition of self-promotion predates the camera by millenniums. In 440 B.C.
or so, a first-time Greek author named Herodotus paid for his own book tour around
the Aegean. His big break came during the Olympic Games, when he stood up in the
temple of Zeus and declaimedhis“Histories”tothewealthy, influential crowd. In the
12th century, the clergyman Gerald of Wales organized his own book party in Oxford,
hoping to appeal to college audiences. Accordingto“TheOxford Book of Oxford,”edited by Jan Morris, he invited scholars to his lodgings, where he plied them with
good food and ale for three days, along with long recitations of his golden prose. But
they got off easy compared with those invitedtothe“Funeral Supper”ofthe18th-century French bon vivant Grimod de la Reynière, held to promote his opus
“Reflections on Pleasure.”Theguests’curiosity turned to horror when they found
themselves locked in a candlelit hall with a catafalque for a dining table, and were
served an endless meal by black-robed waiters while Grimod insulted them as an
audience watched from the balcony. When the diners were finally released at ,
they spread word that Grimod was mad — and his book quickly went through three
¬printings.
Such pioneering gestures pale, however, before the promotional stunts of the 19th
century. In“Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris
During the Age of Revolution,”thehistorian Paul Metzner notes that new technology
led to an explosion in the number of newspapers in Paris, creating an array of
publicity options. In“LostIllusions,”Balzac observes that it was standard practice in
Paris to bribe editors and critics with cash and lavish dinners to secure review space,
while the city was plastered with loud posters advertising new releases. In 1887, Guy
de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story, “LeHorla,”painted on its side. In 1884, Maurice Barrès hired men to
wear sandwich boards promoting his literary review, Les Tachesd’Encre. In 1932,
Colette created her own line of cosmetics sold through a Paris store. (This first
venture into literary name-licensing was, tragically, a flop).
American authors did try to keep up. Walt Whitman notoriously wrote his own
anonymous reviews, which would not be out of place today on Amazon. “An
American bard at last!”heraved in 1855. “Large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking
and breeding, his costume manly and free, his face sunburnt and bearded.”Butnobody could quite match the creativity of the Europeans. Perhaps the most
astonishing P.R. stunt — one that must inspire awe among authors today — was
plotted in Paris in 1927 by Georges Simenon, the Belgian-born author of the Inspector
Maigret novels. For 100,000 francs, the wildly prolific Simenon agreed to write an
entire novel while suspended in a glass cage outside the Moulin Rouge nightclub for
72 hours. Members of the public would be invited to choose the novel’scharacters,
subject matter and title, while Simenon hammered out the pages on a typewriter. A
newspaper advertisement promised the result would be“arecord novel: record speed,
record endurance and, dare we add, record talent!”Itwasamarketing coup. As Pierre
Assouline notes in“Simenon: A Biography,”journalists in Paris “talked of nothing
else.”
As it happens, Simenon never went through with the glass-cage stunt, because the
newspaper financing it went bankrupt. Still, he achieved huge publicity (and got to
pocket 25,000 francs of the advance), and the idea took on a life of its own. It was
simply too good a story for Parisians to drop. For decades, French journalists would
describe the Moulin Rouge event in elaborate detail, as if they had actually attended
it. (The British essayist Alain de Botton matched Simenon’schutzpah, if not quite his
glamour, a few years ago when he set up shop in Heathrow for a week and became the
airport’sfirst “writer in residence.”Butthenheactually got a book out of it, along
with prime placement in Heathrow’sbookshops.)
What lessons can we draw from all this? Probably none, except that even the most
egregious act of self-¬promotion will be forgiven in time. So writers today should
take heart. We could dress like Lady Gaga and hang from a cage at a Yankees game — if any of us looked as good near-naked, that is.
On second thought, maybe there’sareason we have agents to rein in our P.R. ideas.
参考译文：
作家如何创品牌
托尼﹒佩罗蒂提
每位作者都知道，时下写书容易。只有在出版日期迫近时我们才卷起袖子来做真正的写作工作：疯狂地进行自我推销。提前好几个星期，我们就要搞一些有创意的电子邮件和脸谱网通知，然后狂轰滥炸似地发给每一个朋友、亲戚以及一般相识；用让人怀疑的充满朝气的个人照片美化自己的网站；铺天盖地地利用博客、微博和YouTube宣传片，企图让业已被各种信息淹没的世人知道我们的每一部读物、每一次签约、每一个书评、每一回访谈、（当然，你可以梦想！）每一次电视亮相。
在这个时代，大多数作家除了不亲自操作印刷机外，什么事情都做，搞自我推销是天经地义的事儿。然而，每当我有一本新书要问世时，我总要设法去摆脱那种难受的感觉——为自己鼓噪做宣传不够体面。我像一个贩卖伟哥的推销员，觉得这与文学的崇高使命格格不入。
在迷茫的时候，我从历史中寻找先例，从而使自己感到心安理得。得知大人物们早就做自我营销让我有一种宽慰的感觉。
法国最受人敬仰的小说家们早就认识到公关的必要性。《幻灭》是巴尔扎克关于十九世纪早期巴黎文学生活的经典小说。他在里面说过，“艺术家们需要解决的最大问题是如何让他人注意到自己。”另一位大师司汤达在他的自传《自我中心回忆录》中说，“没有一定程度的无耻、甚至是不折不扣的江湖游医的骗术，要想取得巨大的成功是不可能的。”这些话应该上美国作协徽章。
海明威用狩猎、钓鱼和战地镜头来装饰自己的形象，为创新式自主品牌设定了当代黄金标准。但他还摆弄姿势做啤酒广告。1951年，海明威在《生活》杂志上替百龄坛啤酒做代言，占了整整两个页面，照片显示的是其本人在哈瓦那个人住所里的一幅完完全全的男子汉气派。据马休•勃鲁柯里和朱蒂•丝鲍夫曼编的《海明威和声誉机制》一书中记述，他为泛美航空公司和派克笔做广告而引以自豪。他纵情恣意地推销自己，力度一点儿不亚于当今的珍妮弗•洛佩兹和勒布朗•詹姆斯。其他美国作家深受启发。1953年，约翰•斯坦贝克也开始为百龄坛做广告，向在田间辛苦劳作了一天的人们推荐一种冷冻啤酒。就连弗拉基米尔•纳博科夫也有自我营销的眼光。他让照片编辑将他巧妙地包装成一个头戴帽子、身穿短裤长袜、昂首阔步在森林当中的鳞翅类昆虫学家。（他曾满怀热情地说，“可能还给我拍过一些吸引眼球的照片，上面是一位身材魁梧而动作敏捷的男子，在跟踪一种罕见的昆虫或用网把它从花朵上罩住。”）二十世纪二十年代，《英国时尚》杂志常常用池塘映衬下的布卢姆斯伯里做背景拍时装照。土里吧唧的弗吉尼亚•伍尔夫甚至在1952年和该杂志的时装编辑在伦敦的法国时装屋搞了一次“麻雀变凤凰”式的购物探险活动。
但是，自我推销的传统要比照相机的发明早几千年。公元前440年前后，第一次出书的希腊作家希罗多德自费周游爱琴海地区推销自己的书。他的好运在奥运会期间降临。在宙斯神庙里他站起来慷慨激昂地向有钱、有影响力的人群朗诵他的《历史》。十二世纪，威尔士牧师杰拉尔德在牛津大学举办自己的图书晚会，希望能引起大学读者群的注意。据简•莫里斯主编的《牛津版之牛津史》记载，他把学者们邀请到自己的住处，在那里连续三天供给他们好吃的、让他们喝啤酒，向他们朗诵自己的美文。不过，他们都能轻松脱身。十八世纪的法国美食家格里莫•德•拉雷尼埃尔为了推销其著作《关于快乐之反思》，专门举办了一场“丧宴”。那些被邀请赴宴的人们就没有那么幸运了。客人们发现他们被反锁在一个用蜡烛照明、用停尸台作餐桌的大厅里，身穿黑色长袍的侍者无休止地给他们上餐，而格里莫却羞辱他们，让人从露台上观看他们。于是，他们的好奇心一下子变成了恐惧感。吃饭的人最终在早上七点获释。他们散布消息说格里莫疯了——他的书很快就连印三次。
不过，与十九世纪的宣传噱头相比，这种激进方式显得相形见绌。历史学家保罗•梅茨纳在《渐强之炫技：巴黎大革命时期自我推销之场面和技巧》一书中写到，新技术使得巴黎报纸的数量爆炸式地多了起来，从而给人们创造了大量可供选择的宣传途径。巴尔扎克在《幻灭》中说，尽管巴黎到处都张贴着宣传新书的海报，但要搞到版面发表书评，标准的做法就是用现金和豪宴贿赂编辑和评论家。1877年，莫泊桑在塞纳河上放了一个热气球，气球一侧印有其最新短篇小说的名子《奥尔拉》。1884年，莫里斯•巴雷斯雇人身挂广告牌，宣传他的文学评论《墨迹》。1932年，科莱特创造了以她自己的名字命名的化妆品系列，在巴黎的一家商店销售。（不幸的是，第一次以文学为品牌的投资以失败告终）。
美国作家也不甘落后。用匿名方式给自己的书写评论，这在今天的亚马逊网并没有什么不妥，而沃尔特•惠特曼却曾因此声誉扫地。 “美国终于有了自己的诗
人！”他在1855年狂言。 “他高大、自豪、充满激情；他会吃、会喝、会生育；他不修边幅、有男人味；他脸色黝黑、胡子拉碴。”但是，在创意上没有人能望欧洲人之项背。1927年乔治•西默农在巴黎策划的公关噱头也许是最吓唬人的——肯定会令当今的作家们感到敬畏。他生于比利时，是神探梅格雷系列小说的作者。西默农的创造力非常惊人。他接受十万法郎的酬金，同意被装进玻璃笼，在红磨坊夜总会外面悬挂七十二小时，此间写出一部完整的长篇小说。普通民众将被邀请选择小说的人物、主题及书名，而西默农将用打字机敲出文字。报纸广告断言结果将是“一部创纪录的小说：创纪录的速度、创纪录的忍耐力和（恕我们斗胆妄言）创纪录的才能！”这是一次成功的营销。正如皮埃尔•阿苏里在《西默农传》里所写，巴黎的记者们“不谈他事”。
事实上，西默农从未表演过玻璃笼绝技，因为赞助该活动的报社破产了。不过，他获得了巨大的知名度（还拿到了两万五千法郎的预付款），而且该创意本身被赋予了生命。这个故事太精彩了，巴黎人是不会轻易忘掉的。几十年来，法国记者们常常煞费苦心地详细描述红磨坊事件，仿佛他们亲自参与了似的。（如果说英国散文家阿兰•德•波顿的魅力不及西默农的话，那么其狂妄程度绝不亚于后者。几年前，他在希思罗机场设立工作室，在那儿呆了一个星期，成为该机场的第一位“特聘作家。”不过后来他真的根据这次经历写出了一本书。他的书摆放在希思罗机场书店里最醒目的位置。）
从这一切当中我们能得到什么启发呢？那就是：最臭名昭著的自我推销行为最终也会被谅解。除此之外，或许什么也没有。所以，当代的作家应当鼓起勇气来。在洋基队的赛场上，我们可以打扮成嘎嘎女郎的样子，再让人用笼子挂起来——只要半裸着能像她一样有性感就行。
仔细想一想，让官员约束我们的公关理念也许是有道理的。
第七届CASIO 杯翻译竞赛原文
The Use of Poetry Ian McEwan
It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class. In those harsh postwar years, ideals of
infant beauty resided chiefly in fat, in Churchillian multiple chins, in dreams of an end to rationing and of the reign of plenty to come. Babies were exhibited and judged like prize marrows, and, in 1947, the five-month-old Michael, bloated and jolly, swept all
before him. However, it was unusual at a village fête for a middle-class woman, a stockbroker’s wife, to abandon the cake-and-chutney stall and enter her child for such a gaudy event. She must have known that he was bound to win, just as she later claimed
always to have known that he would get a scholarship to Oxford. Once he was on solids, and for the rest of her life, she cooked for him with the same commitment with which she had held the bottle, sending herself in the mid-sixties, despite her illness, on a
Cordon Bleu cookery course so that she could try new meals during his occasional visits home. Her husband, Henry, was a meat-and-two-veg man, who despised garlic and the smell of olive oil. Early in the marriage, for reasons that remained private, Angela
withdrew her love from him. She lived for her son, and her legacy was clear: a fat man who restlessly craved the attentions of beautiful women who could cook.
Henry Beard was a lean sort with a drooping mustache and slicked-back brown hair,
whose dark suits and brown tweeds seemed a cut too large, especially around the neck. He provided for his miniature family well and, in the fashion of the time, loved his son sternly and with little physical contact. Though he never embraced Michael, and rarely laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder, he supplied all the right kinds of present—Meccano and chemistry sets, a build-it-yourself wireless, encyclopedias, model airplanes, and books about military history, geology, and the lives of great men. He had had a long war, serving as a junior officer in the infantry in Dunkirk, North Africa, and
Sicily, and then, as a lieutenant colonel, in the D Day landings, where he won a medal. He had arrived at the concentration camp of Belsen a week after it was liberated, and was stationed in Berlin for eight months after the war ended. Like many men of his generation, he did not speak about his experiences and he relished the ordinariness of postwar life, its tranquil routines, its tidiness and rising material well-being, and, above all, its lack of danger—everything that would later appear stifling to those born in the first years of the peace.
In 1952, when Michael was five, the forty-year-old Henry Beard gave up his job at a
merchant bank in the City and returned to his first love, which was the law. He became a partner in an old firm in nearby Chelmsford and stayed there for the rest of his working life. To celebrate the momentous change and his liberation from the daily commute to Liverpool Street, he bought himself a secondhand Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. This pale-blue machine lasted him thirty-three years, until his death. From the vantage of adulthood, and with some retrospective guilt, his son loved him for this grand gesture. But the life of a small-town solicitor, absorbed by matters of
conveyancing and probate, settled on Henry Beard an even greater tranquillity. At weekends, he mostly cared for his roses, or his car, or golf with fellow-Rotarians. He stolidly accepted his loveless marriage as the price he must pay for his gains.
It was about this time that Angela Beard began a series of affairs that stretched over eleven years. Young Michael registered no outward hostilities or silent tensions in the home, but, then, he was neither observant nor sensitive, and was often in his room after school, building, reading, gluing, and later took up pornography and masturbation full time, and then girls. Nor, at the age of seventeen, did he notice that his mother had retreated, exhausted, to the sanctuary of her marriage. He heard of her adventures only
when she was dying of breast cancer, in her early fifties. She seemed to want his forgiveness for ruining his childhood. By then he was nearing the end of his second year at Oxford and his head was full of maths and girlfriends, physics and drinking, and at first he could not take in what she was telling him. She lay propped up on pillows in her
private room on the nineteenth floor of a tower-block hospital, with views toward the
industrialized salt marshes by Canvey Island and the south shore of the Thames. He was grownup enough to know that it would have insulted her to say that he had noticed
nothing. Or that she was apologizing to the wrong person. Or that he could not imagine anyone over thirty having sex. He held her hand and squeezed it to signal his warm feelings, and said that there was nothing to forgive.
It was only after he had driven home, and drunk three nightcap Scotches with his father, then gone to his old room and lain on the bed fully dressed and considered what she had told him, that he
grasped the extent of her achievement. Seventeen lovers in eleven years. Lieutenant Colonel Beard had had all the excitement and danger he could stand by the age of thirty-three. Angela had to have hers. Her lovers were her desert campaign against Rommel, her D Day, and her Berlin. Without them, she had told Michael from her hospital pillows, she would have hated herself and gone mad. But she hated herself anyway, for what she thought she had done to her only child. He went back to the hospital the next day and, while she sweatily clung to his hand, told her that his childhood had been the
happiest and most secure imaginable, that he had never felt neglected or doubted her love or eaten so well, and that he was proud of what he called her appetite for life and
hoped to emulate it. It was the first time that he had ever given a speech. These half and quarter truths were the best words he had ever spoken. Six weeks later, she was dead. Naturally, her love life was a closed subject between father and son, but for years afterward Michael could not drive through Chelmsford or the surrounding villages without wondering whether this or that old fellow tottering along the pavement or slumped near a bus stop was one of the seventeen
诗的妙用
〔英〕伊恩·麦克尤恩 作 张春柏 译
迈克尔·比尔德是个独子。他自己就会首先承认，他根本不懂手足之情为何物，对于这一点，谁也不会感到诧异。他的母亲安琪拉，是位骨感美人，对他千般宠，万般爱，她表达爱的渠道便是食物，她拼命给他喂食，远远超出了他的需要。早在他荣获诺贝尔物理学奖四十年前，就曾在科尔德诺顿 地区0至6个月组超级宝宝大赛中拔得头筹。在那战后的艰难岁月里，人们理想中漂亮宝宝的主要特征，就是脂肪多多、有着邱吉尔式的多重下巴。人们梦想结束配给制，梦想物质丰富的时代早日到来。在那些竞赛中，宝宝们如同一根根参赛的西葫芦，公开陈列，供人评判。1947年，五个月大的迈克尔，圆滚滚，胖嘟嘟，惹人疼，惹人爱, 横扫群婴，轻松夺魁。不过，要她这样的中产妇女、证券经纪人的太太，在村里难得的盛会上，不去光顾糕饼甜酱摊子，而带孩子去参加这种俗气的比赛，绝非寻常。她一准知道他注定会赢。正如她后来常说的，她早就料定他将得到牛津大学的奖学金。一待他断奶，她便以同样的激情，为他烧饭做菜，乐此不疲，终此一生。六十年代中期，她甚至不顾病痛，到蓝带烹饪学校学习, 为的是他偶尔回家时能一显身手，端上三五盘新菜。她丈夫亨利，每餐一荤两素，但忌食洋葱，不喜橄榄油。两人新婚不久，由于迄今没有公开的原因，安琪拉便收回了对他的爱。她活着只是为了儿子，她留下的遗产也同样一目了然：一个大腹便便的男人，一个不停地追逐会烧菜的美女的男人。
亨利·比尔德，瘦瘦的身材，一对八字胡，垂向下方，光亮的棕发，整齐地梳向脑后。他那深色的花呢外套略嫌肥大，领子更是过于宽松。对这个小家庭，他供妻养儿，尽心尽责。对于儿子，他则一如当时典型的严父，很少有身体上的接触。他从不拥抱迈克尔，很少亲昵地拍他的肩膀，但却给了他所有合适的礼物——从麦卡诺牌的拆装玩具，到自己动手装的无线电收音机、百科全书和飞机模型，以及军事史、地质学著作和名人传记，无所不包，应有尽有。二战期间他长期服役，当过步兵的低级军官，在敦刻尔克、北非和西西里打过仗，到
了盟军进攻日 时，他已经是个中校，还获得了一枚勋章。贝尔森 集中营解放一周后，他到达那里，战后还在柏林驻扎了八个月。和许多同辈的男人一样，他对自己的经历绝口不提，只是尽情地享受着战后恬淡的生活，享受着那种宁静和整洁，以及日渐改善的物质条件。更重要的是，他享受着那种安全感 ——
一句话，后来令和平初期出生的人们感到窒息痛苦的一切东西，他都趋之若渴，甘之如饴。
1952年，迈尔尔五岁时，四十岁的亨利比尔德放弃·了他在伦敦老城商业银行的工作，重拾旧爱，干起了法律。他在不远的切姆斯福市 的一家老字号律师事务所当了合伙人，直到退休。为了庆祝这个重要的转变，庆祝自己从每天来往利物浦大街 的交通中解放出来，他买了辆二手的罗斯莱斯银云。 这台浅蓝色座驾，他一用就是三十三年，直到去世。他儿子成年后，回首当年，略有歉疚，他爱父亲的，就是这种手笔和气派。作为小镇上的初级律师，亨利·比尔德的生活很快便被财产转让、遗嘱检验之类的琐事所吞噬，此后的生活更加平淡，波澜不惊。每逢周末，他基本上就是种种花，养养车，或者和扶轮国际 的朋友打打高尔夫。他平静地接受了无爱的婚姻，那是为他的所得付出的代价。
也就是在这时候，安琪拉·比尔德开始了一系列长达十一年的婚外恋情。在家里，年轻的迈克尔，既粗心又麻木，对父母间的明争暗吵都毫无觉察。放学回家后，他常常关在家里，搭搭积木，做做功课，粘粘纸片。后来他开始沉迷色情，纵欲手淫，追逐女孩。十七岁时，他甚至没有注意到，他母亲在外面玩腻了，玩累了，撤回到了婚姻的庇护所。直到她五十多岁、乳腺癌晚期生命垂危之时，他才听到了她的婚外恋情。她似乎在恳求他原谅她毁了他的童年。那是他在牛津二年级即将结束的时候，脑子里装的除了数学物理，便是美酒靓女。一开始他云里雾里的，不明白她在说些什么。她躺在医院十九层的私人病房里，靠在枕头上。窗外，可以看到堪威岛边盐碱化的湿地上林立的工厂和泰晤士河的南岸。他已经成人，当然明白要是告诉她，说他什么也没注意到，说她的道歉搞错了对象，或者说他无法想象一个人三十多岁还能性交，那将是对她的莫大污辱。他只是抓住她的手，用力地握着，以此表达他的赤子温情，然后对她说，其实她没有什么需要他原谅的。
回家后，他和父亲喝了三杯威士忌，回到自己的房间，和衣倒在床上，回味良久，这才恍然大悟, 明白了她的非凡“成就”。天哪，短短十一年她竟有十七个情人！想当年，比尔德中校三十三岁时，经历过何等惊心动魄的战斗，何等险象环生的厮杀！可安琪拉也得有她的“惊”与“险”。她的情人便是她对隆美尔发起的沙漠之战 、她的情人便是她的进攻日、她的柏林之战。她靠在医院的枕头上, 对迈克尔说，没有他们，她准会自怨自责的，她准会神经崩溃的。可结果她还是自责不已，只不过这种自责是因为她觉得亏欠了自己唯一的儿子。
第二天他回到医院，任由她虚汗润湿的手紧紧攥住自己的手，告诉她说，他的童年最幸福了，他的童年最安全了，他从没觉得受过冷落，更没有怀疑过她的母爱，况且他吃的又是那么好，他甚至为她“对生活的胃口”感到骄傲，希望能出于蓝，胜于蓝。这是他有生以来第一次、也是最好的一次“演讲”，其中四分之三绝对是真情流露。
六星期后，她去世了。对于她的情史，父子俩自然讳莫如深。可是此后许多年，迈克尔每每驶过切姆斯福市或附近的村子，看到某个在人行道上蹒跚前行、或者在公交站边颓然瘫倒的老头，就禁不住想，他会不会是那十七分之
一？
第五届卡西欧杯翻译竞赛原文（英文组）
Optics
Manini Nayar
When I was seven, my friend Sol was hit by lightning and died. He was on a rooftop
quietly playing marbles when this happened. Burnt to cinders, we were told by the
neighbourhood gossips. He'd caught fire, we were assured, but never felt a thing. I
only remember a frenzy of ambulances and long clean sirens cleaving the silence of
that damp October night. Later, my father came to sit with me. This happens to one in
several millions, he said, as if a knowledge of the bare statistics mitigated the horror.
He was trying to help, I think. Or perhaps he believed I thought it would happen to
me. Until now, Sol and I had shared everything; secrets, chocolates, friends, even a
birthdate. We would marry at eighteen, we promised each other, and have six
children, two cows and a heart-shaped tattoo with 'Eternally Yours' sketched on our
behinds. But now Sol was somewhere else, and I was seven years old and under the
covers in my bed counting spots before my eyes in the darkness.
After that I cleared out my play-cupboard. Out went my collection of teddy bears and
picture books. In its place was an emptiness, the oak panels reflecting their own
woodshine. The space I made seemed almost holy, though mother thought my efforts
a waste. An empty cupboard is no better than an empty cup, she said in an apocryphal
aside. Mother always filled things up - cups, water jugs, vases, boxes, arms - as if
colour and weight equalled a superior quality of life.
Mother never understood that this was my dreamtime place. Here I could hide, slide
the doors shut behind me, scrunch my eyes tight and breathe in another world. When I
opened my eyes, the glow from the lone cupboard-bulb seemed to set the polished
walls shimmering, and I could feel what Sol must have felt, dazzle and darkness. I
was sharing this with him, as always. He would know, wherever he was, that I knew
what he knew, saw what he had seen. But to mother I only said that I was tired of
teddy bears and picture books. What she thought I couldn't tell, but she stirred the
soup-pot vigorously.
One in several millions, I said to myself many times, as if the key, the answer to it all,
lay there. The phrase was heavy on my lips, stubbornly resistant to knowledge.
Sometimes I said the words out of context to see if by deflection, some quirk of
physics, the meaning would suddenly come to me. Thanks for the beans, mother, I
said to her at lunch, you're one in millions. Mother looked at me oddly, pursed her lips
and offered me more rice. At this club, when father served a clean ace to win the
Retired-Wallahs Rotating Cup, I pointed out that he was one in a million. Oh, the
serve was one in a million, father protested modestly. But he seemed pleased. Still,
this wasn't what I was looking for, and in time the phrase slipped away from me, lost
its magic urgency, became as bland as 'Pass the salt' or 'Is the bath water hot?' If Sol
was one in a million, I was one among far less; a dozen, say. He was chosen. I was
ordinary. He had been touched and transformed by forces I didn't understand. I was
left cleaning out the cupboard. There was one way to bridge the chasm, to bring Sol
back to life, but I would wait to try it until the most magical of moments. I would wait
until the moment was so right and shimmering that Sol would have to come back.
This was my weapon that nobody knew of, not even mother, even though she had
pursed her lips up at the beans. This was between Sol and me.
The winter had almost guttered into spring when father was ill. One February
morning, he sat in his chair, ashen as the cinders in the grate. Then, his fingers
splayed out in front of him, his mouth working, he heaved and fell. It all happened
suddenly, so cleanly, as if rehearsed and perfected for weeks. Again the sirens, the
screech of wheels, the white coats in perpetual motion. Heart seizures weren't one in a
million. But they deprived you just the same, darkness but no dazzle, and a long
waiting.
Now I knew there was no turning back. This was the moment. I had to do it without
delay; there was no time to waste. While they carried father out, I rushed into the
cupboard, scrunched my eyes tight, opened them in the shimmer and called out 'Sol!
Sol! Sol!' I wanted to keep my mind blank, like death must be, but father and Sol
gusted in and out in confusing pictures. Leaves in a storm and I the calm axis.
Here was father playing marbles on a roof. Here was Sol serving ace after ace. Here
was father with two cows. Here was Sol hunched over the breakfast table. The
pictures eddied and rushed. The more frantic they grew, the clearer my voice became,
tolling like a bell: 'Sol! Sol! Sol!' The cupboard rang with voices, some mine, some
echoes, some from what seemed another place - where Sol was, maybe. The cupboard
seemed to groan and reverberate, as if shaken by lightning and thunder. Any minute
now it would burst open and I would find myself in a green valley fed by limpid
brooks and red with hibiscus. I would run through tall grass and wading into the
waters, see Sol picking flowers. I would open my eyes and he'd be there,
hibiscus-laden, laughing. Where have you been, he'd say, as if it were I who had
burned, falling in ashes. I was filled to bursting with a certainty so strong it seemed a
celebration almost. Sobbing, I opened my eyes. The bulb winked at the walls.
I fell asleep, I think, because I awoke to a deeper darkness. It was late, much past my
bedtime. Slowly I crawled out of the cupboard, my tongue furred, my feet heavy. My
mind felt like lead. Then I heard my name. Mother was in her chair by the window,
her body defined by a thin ray of moonlight. Your father Will be well, she said
quietly, and he will be home soon. The shaft of light in which she sat so motionless
was like the light that would have touched Sol if he'd been lucky; if he had been like
one of us, one in a dozen, or less. This light fell in a benediction, caressing mother,
slipping gently over my father in his hospital bed six streets away. I reached out and
stroked my mother's arm. It was warm like bath water, her skin the texture of hibiscus.
We stayed together for some time, my mother and I, invaded by small night sounds
and the raspy whirr of crickets. Then I stood up and turned to return to my room.
Mother looked at me quizzically.
Are you all right, she asked. I told her I was fine, that I had some cleaning up to do.
Then I went to my cupboard and stacked it up again with teddy bears and picture
books.
Some years later we moved to Rourkela, a small mining town in the north east, near
Jamshedpur. The summer I turned sixteen, I got lost in the thick woods there. They
weren't that deep - about three miles at the most. All I had to do was cycle for all I
was worth, and in
minutes I'd be on the dirt road leading into town. But a stir in the leaves gave me
pause.
I dismounted and stood listening. Branches arched like claws overhead. The sky
crawled on a white belly of clouds. Shadows fell in tessellated patterns of grey and
black. There was a faint thrumming all around, as if the air were being strung and
practised for an overture.
And yet there was nothing, just a silence of moving shadows, a bulb winking at the
walls. I remembered Sol, of whom I hadn't thought in years. And foolishly again I
waited, not for answers but simply for an end to the terror the woods were building in
me, chord by chord, like dissonant music. When the cacophony grew too much to
bear, I remounted and pedalled furiously, banshees screaming past my ears, my feet
assuming a clockwork of their own. The pathless ground threw up leaves and stones,
swirls of dust rose and settled. The air was cool and steady as I hurled myself into the
falling light.
光学
玛尼尼·纳雅尔
谈瀛洲译
在我七岁那年，我的朋友索尔被闪电击中死去了。当时他正在楼顶上安静地打弹子。邻居们传说，他被烧成了焦炭。他们又安慰我们说，尽管他是被烧死的，但毫无痛苦。我只记得救护车乱纷纷地驶来，警报器悠长而尖利的鸣声划破了那个潮湿的十月夜晚的宁静。后来，爸爸过来陪我坐了一会儿。他说，这种事是几百万里才有一个的，似乎知道了这干巴巴的统计数字，就能减轻这件事的可怖。我知道，他只是想安慰我。也许他以为，我担心同样的事也会发生在我的身上。迄今为止，索尔和我分享了一切：我们相互倾吐秘密，有共同的玩伴，分食巧克力，甚至我们的生日也是相同的。我们还相互约定，要在十八岁的时候跟对方结婚，生六个孩子，养两头母牛，并在我们的屁股上纹上一个心形图案，里面刺上“永远爱你”的字样。但现在索尔去了另外一个世界，而我只有七岁，蒙着被子在黑暗中数我眼前的光点。
在这之后我清空了我的玩具柜。我的那些玩具熊和图画书都被扔了出来。玩具柜内空空如也，只剩下橡木板泛着漆光。我腾出的空间近乎神圣，不过妈妈认为我是白费力气。空柜子比空杯子好不了多少，她在边上有深意似地说。妈妈喜欢把所有东西都装得满满的---杯子、水壶、花瓶、盒子，连臂弯里也要抱上点东西---好像色彩与重量就等同于生活的更高品质。
妈妈一直不懂这里是我做梦的地方。我可以躲到里面，拉上滑门，紧闭双眼，然后吸入另外一个世界。在我睁开眼睛的时候，唯一的一盏柜灯照得光滑的橱柜四壁似乎闪烁起来，于是我感觉到了索尔一定感觉过的，那就是眩目与黑暗。和以前一样，我跟他分享着这一切。不管他在哪里，他都会晓得，我知道了他所知道的，看见了他所看见的。但在妈妈面前，我只说自己腻味了玩具熊和图画书。我看不出她是怎么想的，她只是用力地搅拌着锅里的汤。
几百万里才有一个的，我一遍遍地自言自语，似乎一切的谜底、答案，就在这几个字里。它们在我的舌尖上沉甸甸的，顽固地拒绝让我理解。有时我会不分场合地用这句话，看看它的意义是否会通过折射，物理上的一个古怪现象，突然出现在我的脑海中。谢谢你做的豆子，妈妈，午餐时我对她说，你真是几百万中才有一个的。妈妈奇怪地看着我，噘起了嘴，然后给我添了米饭。在俱乐部，在爸爸用一个干净利落的发球赢了“退休人员循环赛杯”之后，我说他是几百万中才有一个的。哦，那记发球才是几百万中才有一个的，爸爸谦虚地纠正说，但他看上去很高兴。但这不是我在寻找的东西。慢慢地这句话从我身边溜走了，失去了它神秘的紧迫性，变得跟“把盐递给我”和“浴缸里的水烫么？”一样淡而无味了。如果索尔是几百万中才有一个的，那么我就常见得多，比如说十几个中就有一个。他是上天选中的。我是普通的。我所不理解的力量点化了他，剩下我孤零零地清空玩具柜。只有一个办法才能跨越这深渊，才能让索尔复活，但我要等到那最神秘的时刻降临，才能尝试。我要拿捏好那灵光闪烁的时机，那样索尔就不得不回来了。这是我的法宝，没人知道，甚至妈妈也不知道，即便她曾对着豆子噘起嘴唇。这是我和索尔之间的秘密。
残冬将尽，新春将至的时候，爸爸病了。一个二月的早晨，他坐在椅子上，脸色就像壁炉里的炭灰。这时，他突然五指箕张，嘴巴噏动，沉重地发出了一声叹息，然后倒下了。这一切都发生得如此突然，如此利索，就像经过了几个星期的排练和提高似的。于是又是警报器声，轮子在急刹车时发出的尖锐摩擦声，穿白大褂的人不停地进进出出。心脏病突发不是几百万中才有一个的。但它同样会夺去你的亲人，它并不眩目，但它同样带来了黑暗，还有漫长的等待。
我知道没有回头路了。这便是关键时刻。我必须毫不犹豫地马上行动；没有时间可浪费了。在他们把爸爸抬出去的时候，我冲到玩具柜里，紧闭双眼，然后在闪烁的灯光中睁开，开始高叫：“索尔！索尔！索尔！”我想让我的头脑保持空白，就跟死后一样，但爸爸和索尔交织在一起的画面不停地在我的头脑中闪现，就像风暴中的树叶，而我是宁静的中心。一会儿是爸爸在楼顶上打弹子。一会儿是索尔一个接一个地发球得分。一会儿是爸爸和两头母牛，一会儿是索尔弓着背倒在早餐桌上。这些画面旋转着，涌动着。他们变得越是纷乱，我的
声音就变得越是清楚，有如钟鸣一般：“索尔！索尔！索尔！”玩具柜中鸣响着几种声音：有的是我的呼唤，有的是回声，有的似乎来自另一个世界---也许是索尔所在的世界。玩具柜似乎也在呻吟和振荡着，被闪电和雷声摇撼着。在这关头它随时可能迸裂，而我就会发现自己身处一个绿树成荫的山谷，里面流淌着清澈的小溪，开满了鲜红的木槿花。我会穿过高草，趟过小溪，然后就会看见索尔在采花。我只要睁开眼他就会在那里，臂弯中抱满了木槿花，笑着。你去哪儿了，他会说，好像被烧焦，变成灰烬掉下来的是我。我的心中充满了强烈的信念，几乎要炸开了，似乎已在经历一场庆典。抽泣着，我睁开了眼睛。只有那盏孤灯对橱壁眨着眼。
我想，我是睡着了，因为我醒来的时候周围是更深沉的黑暗。已经晚了，过了我平时上床的时间很久了。我慢慢地爬出了玩具柜，舌头木木的，双脚沉沉的。我的心如铅般沉重。这时我听见有人叫我。妈妈坐在窗边的椅子里，细细的一道月光勾勒出了她身体的轮廓。你爸爸会好的，她轻轻地说，不久他就会回家的。她坐在那束光线中一动不动；如果索尔运气好的话，如果他跟我们一样，是十几个，甚至几个中就能找出一个的，他就会被同样的光线所触摸。这道光线就像一道祝福，拥抱着妈妈，又温柔地滑过躺在六条街外的医院病床上的爸爸。我伸出手去，轻抚妈妈的手臂。它就跟浴缸里的水一样温暖，她的皮肤质地就跟木槿花瓣一样。
我们在一起呆了一会，母亲和我。夜晚的各种轻微的噪音，还有蟋蟀刺耳的“瞿瞿”声，侵扰着我们。然后我站了起来，向我的房间走去。妈妈探询地看着我。你没事吧，她问。我告诉她我没事，我只是需要整理一下东西。然后我走到玩具柜跟前，重新把它堆满了玩具熊和图画书。
几年后我们搬到了洛尔克拉，东北部的一座矿区小城，靠近詹普谢尔（注：印度东北部城市）。我十六岁那年的夏天，我在那里的一片密林中迷路了。林子其实并不深---最多三英里了。我只要奋力骑车，几分钟就会到达通往市区的泥路。但树叶中的一种扰动让我停了下来。
我从自行车上下来，站着倾听。树的枝桠在头顶如脚爪般拱成弧形。天空匍匐在白云的肚皮上。灰色和黑色的斑驳阴影落在地面。四周有一种低沉的嗡嗡声，似乎有人在拨弄空气，练习一首前奏曲。
然而又什么都没有，只有无声移动着的阴影，和对橱壁眨着眼的一盏孤灯。我记起了索尔，我有好几年没想起过他了。于是我又一次开始傻乎乎地等待，不是等待着答案，而是等待着心中恐惧的结束。一个和弦，又一个和弦，树林把这张恐惧营造起来，就像是不和谐的音乐。当我再也不能忍受那刺耳的声音的时候，我重新上了车，拼命地踩着踏板。我仿佛听见女妖的尖叫，在我的耳边呼啸而过。我的脚上了发条似地自动踩踏着。无路的地面扬起了树叶和石子，尘土旋转着飞升起来，又慢慢落定。我向着越来越暗的暮色飞驰，空气清凉而沉静。