2023年经济学人 维米尔画展: 帘幕与光线

（单词翻译）

    Culture

    文艺版块

    Back Story

    背后的故事

    The Curtain and the Light

    帘幕与光线

    In Amsterdam the genius of Johannes Vermeer is on display as never before.

    在阿姆斯特丹，约翰内斯·维米尔的天才以前所未有的方式得到展现。

    A young woman in a blue night jacket reads a letter that she holds up to her chest.

    一位身穿蓝色睡衣的年轻女子把一封信举到胸前，正阅读信上的内容。

    The morning light glints on the metal tacks¹ in her chairs.

    椅子上的金属钉子在晨光下闪闪发亮。

    Her lips are slightly parted, as if she is murmuring the message aloud.

    她的嘴唇微微张开，好像喃喃地把信念出了声。

    The intimacy² of Johannes Vermeer’s domestic scenes can seem almost voyeuristic³.

    约翰内斯·维米尔的家庭生活画中有一种近似偷窥的私密性。

    Some of his figures look at you as if turning towards an intruder.

    画中的一些人物看着你，仿佛转身面对一个入侵者。

    Yet they are also tantalisingly inscrutable, glimpsed from a distance or sealed in private reveries.

    然而，他们也有一种诱人的神秘，或是遥遥一瞥，或是自锁于隐秘幻想之中。

    In “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter”, you see the light but not the window it is pouring through.

    在《穿蓝衣读信的少女》中，你看到光，但没看到光线倾泻而入的窗户。

    You see the letter but not the words.

    你看到信，但没看到信上的字。

    The painting is among the treasures of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and among the 28 by Vermeer, gathered from seven countries, in an exhibition that opens there on February 10th.

    这幅画是位于阿姆斯特丹的荷兰国立博物馆的珍宝之一，馆内还有从七个国家收集而来的28幅维米尔画作，将于2月10日在博物馆进行展览。

    That is around three-quarters of his surviving works—more than have ever been shown together before, and more than the painter himself would have seen in one go, notes Taco Dibbits, the museum’s director.

    博物馆馆长塔科·迪比特指出，这些画作占据了维米尔存世作品的四分之三——超过以往展出作品的总和，也超过画家本人一次性看到的作品数量。

    It is a one-off tribute to his genius, and his particular form of it: the fierce, patient genius of perfected technique.

    这次展览是对其天才的绝无仅有的一次致敬，以及对他展现天才的独特形式的致敬：狂烈坚忍的天才加上臻于完美的技术。

    In the absence of letters or diaries, Vermeer’s personality is famously hazy⁵.

    因为没有信件和日记，维米尔的个性是出了名的模糊不清。

    Still, documents and records plot the outline of his life.

    尽管如此，各种文件和记录还是勾勒出了他的人生轮廓。

    He was born in 1632 in Delft, where his parents ran an inn called the Flying Fox.

    维米尔于1632年出生在代尔夫特，父母在那里经营着一家名为飞狐的旅馆。

    His well-heeled Catholic mother-in-law may have disapproved⁶ of him, a lowly Protestant-born artist.

    他的岳母是天主教徒，且富裕殷实，可能对他这个新教徒出身的卑微画家并不满意。

    He had more than a dozen children.

    他有十几个孩子。

    Early on, young and ambitious, he painted big: a myth, a Bible scene, a saint.

    早期，年轻而雄心勃勃的他喜欢描绘宏大图景：神话、圣经场景、圣人等。

    In around 1657 his canvases and themes shrank, and he made his leap to immortality⁷.

    大约在1657年，他的画布和主题缩小了，由此实现了向不朽的飞跃。

    In troubled times, nouveau-riche Dutch collectors wanted pictures of refined interiors and everyday life.

    在动荡时期，荷兰的暴发户收藏家想要精致的室内和日常生活画作。

    Vermeer’s contemporaries developed genres⁸ and techniques that he emulated⁹, then soared beyond them in his use of colour and perspective and, above all, his unmatched mastery of light.

    维米尔的同时代人发展出了一些流派和技巧，然后维米尔进行模仿并青出于蓝，包括对色彩和透视的运用，其中最重要的是他对光线的无与伦比的掌握。

    Take “The Love Letter”, in which a maid has handed a letter to her seated mistress.

    以《情书》为例，一位女佣把一封信递给坐着的女主人。

    The woman seems perturbed¹⁰, the maid puckish; perhaps she already knows the news.

    女主人看起来忐忑不安，女佣则有戏谑之意；也许她已经知道了这个消息。

    The viewer is positioned in the shadows beyond a drawn¹¹ curtain, a recurring¹² motif¹³ in these pictures.

    观者被放置在拉开的帘幕之后的阴影中，帘幕是这些画作中反复出现的主题。

    Eavesdropping¹⁴ on the conversation in “Officer and Laughing Girl”, you see the girl’s bright grin but the features of the hulking officer are obscure.

    在偷听《军官和微笑少女》中两人的对话时，你会看到女孩灿烂的笑容，但身影高大的军官的面容是模糊不清的。

    When men intrude⁴ into Vermeer’s domesticity, tension courses beneath the decorum.

    当男人闯入维米尔笔下的家庭生活时，庄重得体的外表之下涌动着紧张气氛。

    In “The Glass of Wine”, light sparkles on the emptying glass that masks the woman’s face.

    在《酒杯》中，空玻璃杯上闪着光，杯子遮住了女子的脸。

    The man’s hat shades his eyes.

    而男子的帽子则遮住了他的眼睛。

    Vermeer’s solo figures read and write, pour milk, make music or lace.

    在维米尔画作中单独出现的人物或是读书写字，或是倒牛奶，或是弹奏音乐和织花边。

    A quiet drama hums below their repose¹⁵, too.

    在她们的娴静之态下，也上演着幽然心曲。

    Nothing happens yet something seems to, in their heads and yours.

    在她们和你的脑海中，似乎无事发生，但又似乎思绪微动。

    The longing¹⁶ and vulnerability in the face of “Girl with a Pearl Earring” are an invitation to storytelling and memes;《戴珍珠耳环的少女》所表现的渴望和脆弱引人编写故事或制作迷因。

    here she keeps company with the other close-up character studies he painted in the mid-1660s.

    维米尔在17世纪60年代中期创作的其他人物特写也有同样效果。

    Through such juxtapositions¹⁷ the show traces the development of Vermeer’s craft and the modulations in its themes and moods.

    通过把这些不同画作并置对比，这场展览追溯了维米尔绘画技巧的不断发展，以及主题和情绪的变调。

    He was probably familiar with the camera obscura, a device that projected an image through a pinhole and onto a screen in a darkened chamber维米尔可能对暗箱技术很熟悉，这种装置可以让图像透过小孔，投映到光线较暗的室内幕布上。

    (new research suggests he may have been introduced to it by the Jesuits of Delft).

    (新的研究表明，这种技术可能是代尔夫特的耶稣会士介绍给他的)。

    As Mr Dibbits explains, the contraption’s influence is evident in the dots of colour the artist used to simulate the effects of light, the resulting mix of sharpness and blur¹⁸ making his vision seem startlingly real.

    正如迪比特先生解释的那样，这个奇特装置对维米尔产生了明显的影响，他用色点来模拟光线带来的效果，由此产生的清晰和模糊的混合使他的画作栩栩如生。

    In this way he turned a couple of rooms and a few objects—a lute¹⁹, a glass, some pearls—into miniature breathing worlds.

    通过这种方式，他把几个房间和几件物品——一把鲁特琴、一个玻璃杯、一些珍珠——变成了有生气的微型世界。

    You need not know all the allegorical meanings of his props²⁰, nor the socioeconomic connotations of the clothes, to sense the depth under the surface.

    你不需要知道那些道具的喻义，也不需要知道服饰中的社会经济内涵，就能感受到表象之下的深度。

    Letters written and received, the maps mounted on Vermeer’s walls—and, above all, those windows and that light—imply and withhold²¹ the promise and peril²² of the world outside.

    写出和收到的信件、墙上挂着的地图——以及最重要的，窗户和光线——暗示或隐瞒了来自外部世界的希望和危险。

    He died in 1675, penniless at 43 after the outbreak of war ruined the Dutch art market and him.

    在战争摧毁了荷兰艺术市场和他之后，维米尔于1675年去世，那时他43岁，身无分文。

    Little-known for the next two centuries, today he is an artistic²³ deity²⁴.

    在接下来的两个世纪，维米尔寂寂无名，但如今，他在艺术界已被奉若神明。

    At the heart of the Rijksmuseum’s mesmerising homage²⁵ is that exquisite²⁶ combination of intimacy and distance.

    荷兰国立博物馆向维米尔致敬的此次引人入胜的展览，其核心是私密与距离的巧妙融合。

    Painted more than 350 years ago, his subjects still seem hauntingly alive, but their thoughts and secrets will for ever be theirs alone.

    维米尔画中的人物绘于350多年前，至今仍有绵绵不绝的生命力，但他们的思绪和秘密将永远只属于他们自己。

    As well as any painter, in other words, Vermeer did something that painting may do best: he captured the eternal mystery of other people.

    换言之，与任何画家一样，维米尔做到了绘画最为擅长之事：他捕捉到了他人的永恒秘密。