经济学人229:老人与海 The old man and the sea

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　　老人与海

　　He loved to rock the boat

　　他喜欢乘风破浪

　　Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961. By Paul Hendrickson. Knopf.

　　《海明威的船：他生命中所热爱的一切，失去的一切，1934-1961》； 作者：保罗?亨德里克森、科诺夫。

　　PAUL HENDRICKSON’S bibliography¹ lists 76 biographical works about Ernest Hemingway, nine of them by wives, siblings² and children, followed by memoirists, respected biographers and hangers³ on, pretenders and doctoral students. “Scholarly forests have been clear-cut in the service of explaining his so-called fetishes,” he writes. That does not mean there is nothing new to say on the subject, but Mr Hendrickson, a former journalist and American author of non-fiction, intends to tell it differently: “I want it to be less of a biography than an interpretation⁴, an evocation⁵, with other lives streaming in.” Having picked his way through this thick undergrowth of biographical criticism and research, he believes that by focusing on Pilar, the 38-foot cabin cruiser Hemingway purchased in New York in 1934 for $7,495, he has found a fresh way of telling a familiar story.

　　保罗?亨德里克森传记的参考目录中列举了76部关于海明威的传记作品，其中9部是由海明威个位妻子、兄弟姐妹及孩子所著。其他作品则是由回忆录写手、有威望的传记作家、逢迎拍马之辈、冒充顶替之徒及博士学生所写。“在学术原野上，阐释对他盲目崇拜的果实已被收割殆尽。”保罗写道，但这并不意味再没东西可写了。亨德里克森曾是一位记者，也是美国纪实文学作家，他想以不同的角度书写海明威：“我想写的并不仅仅是一部传记，想用更多分析阐释，唤起人们的记忆，并为作品注入更多新鲜血液。”在传记批评与研究的茂密丛林中，他开辟出了自己的道路。他相信借助于“比拉号”----海明威于1934年从纽约以7,495美元买回来的38英尺渔船，新坛装老酒。

　　Pilar was designed for catching⁶ big fish in the Caribbean. By describing Hemingway’s life on board, Mr Hendrickson can concentrate on fishing, friendship and fatherhood. Because he likes Hemingway more than many other recent biographers have done, Mr Hendrickson lavishes⁷ pages on cordial relationships that blossomed on the boat with otherwise anonymous⁸ characters: an American diplomat⁹ in Havana whose wife typed Hemingway’s letters; an aspiring¹⁰ writer who knocked on Hemingway’s door in Key West seeking advice and was co-opted as a crewman. Both tried to write about their experiences, but their memoirs¹¹ went unpublished and unknown until Mr Hendrickson came along. Pilar was also the scene of time spent with wives and children, and those reflections do not sweeten Hemingway’s reputation. His youngest son, Gregory, a tortured transvestite who eventually changed sex, once called his father “a gin-soaked monster”.

　　“比拉号”最初是为在加勒比海上捕获大鱼而设计。通过叙述海明威船上的生活，亨德里克森先生叙述了捕鱼经历、船上友谊以及为父之道。他比近期的几位传记作家更热爱海明威，亨德里克森不惜花费大量笔墨描写海明威与船上无名小卒之间的真挚友谊：驻哈瓦那的美国外交官，其妻帮助海明威打印信件；在基?韦斯特，一位踌躇满志的作家敲开海明威的门，寻求指点，却被海明威安排做船员。这两位都曾记录下他们的经历，但并未出版，所以无人知晓，直到亨德里克森发现了他们。“比拉号”也是海明威同妻儿们一起生活过的地方，但这段往事并未给海明威的声誉锦上添花。他的小儿子格雷戈里---饱受煎熬的异性模仿者，最终变性，曾说他的父亲是“泡在松子酒缸里的怪兽”。

　　Hemingway’s fiction is sometimes said to express the anxiety of American men about their masculinity. Mr Hendrickson argues that behind the mask of hyper- masculinity lies “tuning-fork tremulousness”, which is why Hemingway’s writing survives, and also why there have been “years of innuendo¹² and psychosexual speculation¹³”. The idea that this he-man might actually have been gay is, he thinks, shallowly rooted—though Gregory did provide ammunition¹⁴ by calling his father “Ernestine, dear”. Mr Hendrickson, who regards Gregory as a tainted¹⁵ witness, concedes the possibility of a certain amount of sexual role-swapping between Hemingway and his wives. But this obsessive¹⁶ biographical speculation has managed to obscure Hemingway’s considerable literary achievement, especially in the years before he bought Pilar.

　　有些人评价海明威的小说表达了美国男性对于自身男子气概的忧虑，亨德里克森辩解道，在硬汉的面具下，潜藏着“音叉般的颤抖”，这也是海明威作品长盛不衰的原因，也是为什么会有“长期含沙射影及性心理推断”存在。这个硬汉是同性恋？亨德里克森认为这种观念不靠谱-------------虽然格雷戈里也确实透漏过类似信息，如叫他的父亲“亲爱的欧内斯廷”。亨德里克森先生认为格雷戈里是承认海明威与其众多妻子之间可能会有性角色互换的污点证人。但这种反常的传记推测不能磨灭海明威令人瞩目的文学成就，特别是在买到“比拉”号之前的辉煌。

　　By the mid-1930s Hemingway found it easier to catch huge marlin than to write. In 1954, when he won the Nobel prize, his friend, John O’Hara, declared extravagantly¹⁷ that he was the most outstanding author since Shakespeare. But what Hemingway heard loudest in those years was criticism. While sailing on Pilar he read a good deal of it, and he found it intolerable. “I am supposed to lay back and come in with ‘War and Peace’ or be considered a bum,” he said. Hemingway’s pain is part of the personality that Mr Hendrickson evokes¹⁸; and his assiduous research among those friends who shared life on the boat humanises the later Hemingway’s image as a bullying¹⁹ old booby.

　　十九世纪三十年代中期，海明威发现捕捉大金枪鱼比写作更容易。1954年，海明威获得了诺贝尔文学奖，他的朋友奥哈拉高调宣称海明威是继莎士比亚之后最杰出的作家。然而此时的海明威，听到的却多是批评斥责。乘“比拉号”航行期间，他读了大量批评，愈发忍无可忍，愤慨道：“都认为要么我穿越回去带着《战争与和平》再来，要么我就是不名一文的乞丐。”亨德里克森发现海明威的痛楚部分源于其性格，他孜孜不倦的研究与海明威同船生活的朋友，将海明威后来的形象更加人性化--------迟钝的倔老头子。

　　Pilar is now a museum piece “like some old and gasping²⁰ browned-out whale” in the garden of Hemingway’s house outside Havana. That image contributes to the strong feeling of melancholy²¹ that pervades²² this book. Mr Hendrickson says he sometimes feels we have lost all sense of who the man really was. By evoking²³ and interpreting Hemingway’s smaller moments, the author has found an ingenious way of showing how this unhappy and vulnerable man was generally nicer outside his family than in it.

　　在哈瓦那海明威故居展览馆，“比拉号”“像一只老得泛黄的鲸鱼”一般躺在花园里-----这样的画面渲染了书中弥漫着的强烈忧郁之感。亨德里克森先生感叹道，有时候我们并不真正了解海明威。通过挖掘和分析那么多细枝末节，作者从另一个角度展示另一个闷闷不乐而又内心脆弱、对待外人比对家人更友善的海明威。

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