【英文原声版34】Robert Harrison: Decameron

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When the plague visited Florence…

当黑死病在佛罗伦萨蔓延……

Zachary Davis: From roughly 1346 to 1353, Europe was paralyzed by the most fatal pandemic in recorded human history: the bubonic plague. This disease was caused by a deadly bacteria that lived inside the black rat. It infects a part of the immune system called the lymphatic system. It’s believed to have been transmitted to humans by infected fleas that were feeding on infected rats.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在1346年前后至1353年，一场前所未有的大瘟疫在欧洲肆虐，这就是黑死病，最常见的病型为腺鼠疫。黑死病的成因是黑鼠所携带的致命病菌。这些病菌会侵入人的淋巴系统，进而影响人的整个免疫系统。人们认为，寄生在黑鼠身上的跳蚤染上了这些细菌，然后将它们传染给了人类。

Zachary Davis: The disease also took the form of a pneumonic plague, which infected a person’s lungs and was easily spread through the air. There was also septicemic plague which infected a person’s blood. If you got the plague in any of these three forms, your chances of survival were slim.

扎卡里·戴维斯：另一种病型是肺鼠疫：病菌会侵入患者的肺部，也很容易在空气中传播。还有一种病型是鼠疫败血症，在这种情况下，病菌会侵入人的血液系统。若是患有上述任何一种病型，那么活下来的几率便十分渺茫。

Zachary Davis: The plague killed more than 60% of the total population in Eurasia. One city that was hit especially hard was Florence, Italy. In just the first four months of the pandemic, their population was reduced by almost 80% and the city spiraled into chaos. People began to fear one another. They abandoned their families and friends and locked themselves inside.

扎卡里·戴维斯：黑死病带走了亚欧大陆60%以上的人口。意大利的佛罗伦萨便是疫情最为严重的城市之一。仅仅在黑死病蔓延的前四个月里，佛罗伦萨的人口便减少了近80%，整个城市陷入混乱之中。人们害怕彼此接触，不再与亲朋好友会面，将自己紧锁在家中。

ZacharyDavis: Funeral practices stopped. No one was working. It was a complete collapse of society. This is the backdrop of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a collection of short novellas completed in 1353, just as the plague was ending.

扎卡里·戴维斯：丧葬仪式停止了，人们也不再工作，社会不再正常运转。这就是乔万尼·薄伽丘的著作《十日谈》的背景。1353年，疫情接近尾声，薄伽丘也完成了这部短篇小说集。

Robert Harrison:If there's an ethic that one can extract from Boccaccio’s Decameron, I think it revolves around Boccaccio’s vision of what storytelling does for human beings and how ultimately necessary it is in the grounding of human relations.

罗伯特·哈里森：若是要从薄伽丘的《十日谈》中总结出一套道德准则，那估计会谈到讲故事对人类乃至构建人际关系有什么作用。

Zachary Davis: Boccaccio recognized the important role storytelling played in human life, and he offered a new take on the age old tradition.

扎卡里·戴维斯：薄伽丘意识到讲故事在人类生活中有着重要作用，他在书中还发表了对这项古老传统的新看法。

RobertHarrison: His prose, what he did to the Italian prose, became a model for Italian literary history and prose for, you know, to this day, you could say. And what what he did to the short story? He didn't invent the genre of the short story. But in a sense, you could say that he's the inventor of the modern version of the short story.

罗伯特·哈里森：他的散文深刻地影响了意大利散文的发展，成为了意大利文学史上的典范之作，时至今日仍旧如此。在短篇小说方面，他虽然没有发明短篇小说这个体裁，但从某种意义上说，他可谓是现代短篇小说的奠基人。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Robert Pogue Harrison to discuss Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. Boccaccio was born in Florence, Italy, in 1313 and spent his early life between Florence and Naples.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和罗伯特·哈里森教授一起讨论乔万尼·薄伽丘的《十日谈》。薄伽丘于1313年出生在意大利佛罗伦萨，早年生活在佛罗伦萨和那不勒斯。

RobertHarrison: And he lived through the bubonic plague in Florence and lost his father. He lost his stepmother. He lost a number of his friends and he witnessed firsthand the ravages of the plague. And a year or two subsequent to its recession, he wrote this Decameron, which has as its frame, the plague of 1348.

罗伯特·哈里森：他在佛罗伦萨亲历了黑死病疫情，失去了父亲、继母和许多朋友，亲眼见证了瘟疫的肆虐。疫情结束前后的一两年，他完成了《十日谈》一书，书中故事的背景正是1348年黑死病的蔓延。

Robert Harrison:And it begins in the introduction with a rather long description, clinical description of the symptoms, of the sort of reactions that people had, the different medical theories about what was causing it, and all these various remedies that were proposed, all of them ending up being feckless. And he evokes this complete collapse of his society, where all the institutions and even the religious protocols and so forth, just give way to a kind of social anarchy, as it were.

罗伯特·哈里森：书的开头首先详细介绍了黑死病的症状，描绘了患者的表现，阐述了关于其缘由的几种医学解释，以及当时的几种救治方法，但所有这些方法无一奏效。他还提到了社会秩序全然崩塌，所有风俗习惯乃至宗教习俗都被人们抛之脑后，社会陷入了一派混乱之中。

Zachary Davis: There are ten narrators in the Decameron: ten young people living in Florence at this time. They, too, have seen the horrors of the plague and have lost family members to it.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《十日谈》中有十位叙述者，他们是十位当时住在佛罗伦萨的年轻人。他们也见证了黑死病的肆虐，也有亲人感染黑死病去世。

RobertHarrison: And they decide that they need to respond in order to save their own psychic well-being to the situation. And they decide to take a two-week sojourn in the surrounding mountains of Florence, in beautiful garden settings with villas, and for two weeks they engage in merrymaking song, dance, but above all, storytelling.

罗伯特·哈里森：他们决定需要做点事情，来调节黑死病带给自己的心理压力。于是他们决定去佛罗伦萨周边的山区待两周，在花园与别墅中游玩欢宴、唱歌跳舞，当然重中之重是讲故事。

Zachary Davis: They end up in an abandoned villa in the town of Fiesole.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他们最终来到了菲耶索莱镇一栋废弃的别墅中。

RobertHarrison: Members of the brigade very deliberately go to the margins of Florence in order to reconstitute in an almost ideal form, the forms of conviviality and neighborliness and social ordering that would, in their case, maximize the two-week sojourn in order to give them what I would call an immune response.

罗伯特·哈里森：这群人特意来到了佛罗伦萨郊外，想要以一种近乎理想的方式重建欢乐、友邻关系以及社会秩序，尽可能地充实这两周的生活，摆脱对黑死病的恐惧。

RobertHarrison: This is not just a psychological immune response to the plague, but a social and even quasi-political immune response. It's actually a co-immune response because it's a community response to the collapse of community in the city. And one of the primary immune responses is storytelling that Boccaccio presents as having a very therapeutic and society reconstructing power of it.

罗伯特·哈里森：这不仅仅是要从个人心理层面摆脱对黑死病的恐惧，更是要从全社会以及整个政治层面出发来摆脱恐惧。这可谓是从集体层面去对抗疫情，因为这需要人们齐心协力应对当时佛罗伦萨混乱的社会秩序。摆脱恐惧的重要方式之一就是讲故事。薄伽丘在书中展现了，故事可以治愈人心、帮助重建社会。

Zachary Davis: While they’re out in the countryside, they decide to entertain themselves by telling each other stories.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他们身处郊外，决定靠讲故事来自我消遣。

Robert Harrison:So the Decameron presents itself as the one hundred stories that this brigade of seven young women and three young men would tell over the course of 10 days. That's what “Decameron” means. Boccaccio gets it from the Greek “dekameron”.And over the course of 10 days, each of the storytellers narrates one story a day for a total of one hundred.

罗伯特·哈里森：《十日谈》记录了七个年轻女子和三个年轻男子在十天里讲述的一百个故事。这便是“十日谈”原书名的含义，即“十日”，而原书名的词形源于同含义的希腊语词根。在这十天里，每天每个人各讲一个故事，累计起来便是一百个故事。

Zachary Davis: So let's go a little bit more into the stories themselves. What are these stories like?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们来稍微聊聊这些故事吧。它们都讲了什么呢？

Robert Harrison:Well, this every day is, has a theme, with the exception of the first day. And keep in mind that there are these 10 members of the brigade. They take turns being the king or queen of each day. And it's the king or queen who decides that the basic theme, like stories with a happy ending of love or unhappy or moments of generosity and so forth.

罗伯特·哈里森：好的。除了第一天，其余几天每天都有一个故事主题。这十个人轮流担任一天的国王或女王。每天，国王或女王会确定故事的主题，比如皆大欢喜的爱情故事、悲情故事或是展现慷慨品性的故事。

Robert Harrison: It's a great variety of stories and it's difficult when you have 100 stories that are not only about different topics, but seem to convey different visions of what virtue is and what vice is. It's very hard to subsume the Decameron under one story. What Boccaccio does by putting all these stories in sequential order is that he's always shifting the perspective on reality and thereby reminding us that there is no one privileged view of what the real is or should be.

罗伯特·哈里森：这些故事多种多样。要写一百个主题相异、善恶观不同的故事，这着实不容易，所以你很难把《十日谈》中的这些小故事整合到一个故事中。薄伽丘的做法是让这些故事依次排列，不断转换叙述者对现实的看法，从而提醒读者：对现实的看法没有优劣之分。

How did Boccacciosee the wheel offortune?

薄伽丘如何看待命运之轮？

Zachary Davis: By giving each storyteller equal power, Boccaccio levels the playing field. He isn’t claiming that any one perspective is better than any other. There is no one true perspective. This idea of shifting perspectives was commonly represented in medieval times through the theme of fortune.

扎卡里·戴维斯：薄伽丘赋予了每个叙述者同等的叙述权，打造了一个公平的发声环境。他没有说哪个观点比其他观点好，而是告诉读者不存在某一种绝对的观点。在中世纪，人们对命运也常常抱有这种“万事都不绝对”的态度。

Zachary Davis: In ancient and medieval Europe, many people believed in a goddess called Fortuna or Lady Fortune. She had a large wheel of fortune, similar to the kind of wheels used in watermills. The different locations on the wheel represented different states of being, and a person would move around the wheel throughout their life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在古典时代和中世纪的欧洲，许多人都信奉命运女神福图纳。福图纳有一个巨大的命运之轮，形状类似于水车的轮子。轮子上的不同位置代表着不同的运势，人们一生中会绕着轮子不停地转动。

Robert Harrison:Fortune blindfolded as so when she turns her wheel and the people on the top of the wheel of fortune with their wealth, eventually, you know with time, that everything will circulate in a way that shows that you have your perspective, where you stand on the wheel of fortune is always a question of perspective, and Boccaccio is through his Decameron as he's kind of turning that wheel of fortune through the various stories that make up the hundred stories and show us what it's like to be an aristocrat in one case, you know, a servant and the other woman versus a man.

罗伯特·哈里森：福图纳蒙住双眼，转动着命运之轮，位于轮子顶部的人会收获财富。随着时间的推移，所有东西都会循环往复。这就表明每个人都可以从自己的角度出发。至于是否位于轮子的顶部，这取决于自己的视角。在《十日谈》中，薄伽丘似乎也在转动着命运之轮，讲述着一百个多种多样的小故事，展现着贵族、仆人、男男女女的生活百态。

Zachary Davis: Boccacio also used this perspective shifting technique as a way to comment on the various religions of his time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：薄伽丘还以这种多元视角来看待当时的各个宗教。

Robert Harrison: And he does it with a very clever story of a father who, you know, leaves a ring for the favorite son and that ring gets reproduced in perfect simulation. So each of the three sons has a ring that they say this is the real one. And the others are simulacra. And, but there is no objective way of establishing which is the authentic and which is the copy.

罗伯特·哈里森：他讲了一个非常机灵的故事：一个父亲给自己最爱的儿子留了一枚戒指。没想到戒指被原模原样地仿制了两份，于是三个儿子手里都有一枚戒指，都声称自己的才是真品，其他人的都是仿制品。但是没有什么办法来确定哪个是真的、哪个是仿的。

RobertHarrison: And this is how Boccaccio provides a kind of allegory for the Abrahamic, say, the Hebrew, the Christian and the Muslim religions, in order to leave things open for plurality without having to make that gesture of finding one single truth that must prevail over all the other truths.

罗伯特·哈里森：这就是薄伽丘关于犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教的寓言。他想要表明，要开放包容地接纳每一种宗教，不要妄图将某一种宗教奉为绝对真理，将其凌驾于其他宗教之上。

Zachary Davis: In other words, there might not be a single truth, even in religion. But even if there is, stories won’t necessarily communicate it. Storytellers might spin the story in whatever way suits their agenda. This is what Boccaccio’s first story is about.

扎卡里·戴维斯：换句话说，在宗教方面方面也没有单单一条真理。不过即使有的话，也很难借助故事来传达，因为讲故事的人可以根据自己的意愿来更改故事的内容。薄伽丘在第一个小故事中就展现了这一点。

RobertHarrison: The first story of the Decameron is interesting because it's about the worst scoundrel who ever lived. Cepparello, and he gets misnamed Ciappelletto. On his deathbed, he engages in a false confession to a priest and he presents himself as the most virtuous person who had ever lived. And upon his death, the priest goes and gives a sermon and chastises his people for saying, I'll look at how holy this man has been. And the rumors start spreading that Ciappelletto was a saint and everyone rushes to get the relics and things of that sort.

罗伯特·哈里森：《十日谈》的第一个故事很有意思，讲的是一个泼皮无赖，真名叫“恰贝莱洛”，但人们都把他误叫成“恰泼莱托”。临终时，他向神父假意忏悔，把自己包装成前所未有的高尚之人。恰泼莱托断气后，神父向众人宣扬他的种种事迹，并斥责众人要像他一样高尚圣洁。于是他的圣名越传越响，人们都听说有个叫“恰泼莱托”的圣人，争先恐后的来瞻仰他的遗容。

RobertHarrison: And this is the first story of the Decameron where Boccaccio is warning us about the dangers of storytelling, because you can end up sanctifying, you know, the most vile individual, morally vile individual who had ever lived because we don't understand. And he said God will know who deserves his rewards and who doesn't.

罗伯特·哈里森：这就是《十日谈》中的第一个故事。薄伽丘借此来提醒我们，讲故事也有负面的一面，可以将一个混蛋美化成圣徒，而我们也不清楚是真是假。只有上帝才知道谁真正可以享有洪福、而谁又不可以。

RobertHarrison: But here in our human world, we are within the perspective of the sublunar, world of appearances where we can never be completely sure what is true and what is not true. And storytelling has a way of also promoting falsehoods that we buy into.

罗伯特·哈里森：但我们人类无法洞悉全貌，只能看到零星表象，无法确定何为真、何为假。故事也可以打造成让我们信以为真的谎言。

RobertHarrison:And we know that in our own day and age that if, you know, ideology often takes the form of stories and each ideology has to tell, has a master narrative that does the work of persuasion. Boccaccio, I am particularly fond of that story, let's say, more for doctrinal reasons. In the sense of his book, Boccaccio warning us, like, “OK, you're in for one hundred stories, but let me warn you that storytelling is not always an innocent activity.”

罗伯特·哈里森：我们也知道，如今意识形态常常以故事的形式展现，每种意识形态都有一种想要让大众接受的宏大叙事。我之所以对薄伽丘的这个故事感兴趣，是因为它有着深刻的寓意。借由这个故事，薄伽丘似乎在提醒我们：“你会在这本书中看到一百个故事，但我必须提醒一下，讲故事并不是一种完全无害的行为。”

How did a bad storyteller scare a lady away?

不擅长讲故事的人如何吓跑了一位女士？

Zachary Davis: Storytelling isn’t always an innocent activity, but it is necessary. And being necessary, it is important to be good at it. He stresses the importance of this skill in a story told on day six.

扎卡里·戴维斯：讲故事并不总是中立的，但讲故事是必要的。擅长讲故事很重要。在第六天的一个故事中，薄伽丘强调了这项技能的重要性。

Robert Harrison:The first story of that day is a story about a Knight. They're out on a kind of countryside excursion. And on the way home one knight tells the other lady, even though they're on foot. Look, can I take you riding on my horse? Let me tell you a story that will put you on a horse back. And he makes such a mess of his story and can't get the sequence right.

罗伯特·哈里森：那天的第一个故事涉及到一位绅士。大伙儿一起去郊游，回家的路上，绅士对一位女士说：“我可以跟你讲一个故事吗？保准会让你津津有味，感觉像是骑了马一样，忘记路途的遥远。”可结果他把故事讲得一团糟，颠三倒四的。

RobertHarrison: And always saying, oh, I did bad. The lady starts perspiring and is suffering through the bad storytelling and then through a little witticism telling him that, sir, you know, your horse jerks and please do me the favor of putting me down from the horse.

罗伯特·哈里森：他还老是说：“哎呀，我讲错了。”这位女士听得浑身冷汗，被这个烂故事折磨得不行。最后她打着趣儿对绅士说：“先生，您的马太野了，还是让我下马吧。”

Zachary Davis: The knight quickly gets the message and abandons the story.

扎卡里·戴维斯：绅士很快心领神会，就此打住。

Robert Harrison:This guy is a bad storyteller and it's a moral flaw of his virtue. So storytelling becomes a kind of social virtue in day six. There is a truly humanistic vision at work in Boccaccio’s Decameron, where he's always has his eye on how the important thing in life is not so much to save the soul of your fellow man, but how can we help each other get through the day? How can we add to the pleasure rather than the misery of life in the everyday modes? And conviviality, generosity, gratitude, the proper use of language, all these things are our kind of the more modest, humanistic virtues in Boccaccio’s view.

罗伯特·哈里森：这个家伙不是个讲故事的好手，这也似乎成了他的小小缺陷。所以在第六天的故事里，会讲故事是社会所推崇的一项特长。薄伽丘的《十日谈》中洋溢着人文主义精神。他着眼于人生中重要的事情，不再关注灵魂救赎，而是关注人们在当时如何互帮互助，如何驱赶生活的阴霾、迎来欢声笑语。在薄伽丘看来，欢乐、慷慨、感恩之心以及对语言的正确运用才是更值得歌颂的人文主义精神。

Zachary Davis: Boccaccio lived during the early years of the European Renaissance when humanism and humanistic virtues were gaining popularity, especially in Italy. If you had to sum up or define Italian humanism or humanism in general, what did it mean to the people at the time who were developing this way of thinking? Why did they use the word humanist or where did it come from?

扎卡里·戴维斯：薄伽丘生活在欧洲文艺复兴早期，当时人文主义精神越来越受推崇，尤其是在意大利。若是要定义意大利的人文主义精神，或是笼统地概括一下，那么您觉得人文主义对当时的人们来说意味着什么？他们为什么会用这个词？这个词从何而来？

RobertHarrison:Well, “humanitas” belongs originally to the sphere of education. It was a certain kind of humanistic education of what we would call arts and letters. What, we even speak about the liberal, but the liberal arts is really what “humanitas” referred to originally. And so it was a curriculum.

罗伯特·哈里森：“人文”一词最初是用在教育领域的，指艺术与文学这类人文教育。我们常常所说的“博雅教育”就是这个词的原始内涵。所以它最初指的是某种课程方案。

Zachary Davis: Part of the Renaissance humanism movement was reviving the study of classical antiquity. Before the Renaissance, the church held most of the power, and the primary form of education was scholasticism. Scholasticism incorporated the supernatural and was built on spiritual faith. Humanism emphasized human achievement and reasoning. The idea behind humanism was to create an educated citizenry that could engage in civic life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：文艺复兴时期，人文主义运动的表现之一就是古希腊、古罗马文艺作品的复兴。文艺复兴之前，教会享有绝大部分权力，经院哲学是最主要的教育内容。经院哲学宣传神的力量，将一切建立在宗教信仰的基础之上。而人文主义则强调人的成就与理性思考，旨在培养一批可以参与公共生活、受过良好教育的公民。

RobertHarrison: The Italian tradition of humanism begins largely in Florence with this so-called civic humanism, which was more of a political view of humanism as a form of government in which the people or the citizens had sovereignty rather than a king or the prince.

罗伯特·哈里森：意大利的人文主义传统始于佛罗伦萨，最初表现为市民人文主义。市民人文主义更多地是将人文主义作为一种政治观点，提倡建立公民自治的政府，而不是由国王或公爵统治的政府。

Zachary Davis: This was very different from the other city states in Italy at the time. Typically, a city state was ruled by an authoritarian prince. The prince had almost all the power, and the citizens had very little. In Boccaccio’s time, Florence was ruled by a council made up of nine men. The council was re-elected every two months, and its members were chosen at random. This system of self-governance was a point of pride for Florentines—both real and fictional.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这与当时意大利的其他城市截然不同。通常情况下，城市共和国由公爵统治，公爵拥有至高无上的权力，而公民则几乎没有什么权力。不过在薄伽丘的时代，佛罗伦萨已经建立了由九个人组成的执政团。执政团每两个月重新选举一次，所有公民皆可当选。佛罗伦萨人对这套自治体制颇为自豪，不论是在生活中还是在作品中，他们都无不流露出这种自豪之情。

RobertHarrison: The Decameron has 10 members of the brigade. They take turns being king and queen. No one is the king and queen for longer than a day. It enacts in an allegorical way that the values of the civic humanism of Florence for sure.

罗伯特·哈里森：《十日谈》中有十个人，他们轮流扮演国王或女王，每个人扮演的时间不超过一天。薄伽丘以这样一种寓言的方式表达了对佛罗伦萨市民人文主义理念的肯定。

Zachary Davis: So civic humanism, which sounds more like a republic form of government, requires capable citizens who can make choices together. And therefore, you need really good public communication skills, presumably to give speeches in front of, you know, councils and members of the community.

扎卡里·戴维斯：市民人文主义听起来更像是共和制政府的理念，需要公民有能力共同决策。所以需要你有很好的公共沟通能力，能够在执政团和全体公民面前演讲。

Robert Harrison:You have to know how to persuade your fellow citizens of the opinion or political policy that you're proposing. And eloquence flourishes in these moments of republican-based forms of government. And that was certainly the case also in Florence, where rhetoric or eloquence was exalted as primarily, at first and foremost, a political virtue. How can I persuade my fellow citizens? Boccaccio belongs clearly in that civic humanism.

罗伯特·哈里森：你必须知道如何说服同胞同意你提出的意见或政策。于是在这种共和制政府组织形式下，人们的口才得以锻炼。在佛罗伦萨，情况也一定如此，人们肯定会把口才看作重要乃至首要的政治才能，思考如何说服自己的同胞。薄伽丘无疑是赞成市民人文主义的。

Robert Harrison: And in addition to which, he belonged to a different kind of social or what I would call civil humanism rather than civic humanism, which is the problem of human relations with my neighbor, and the enhancement of those relations.

罗伯特·哈里森：除此之外，他还赞成另一种人文主义，我称之为“公民人文主义”。这种人文主义更关注邻里关系等人际关系，注重增进这些关系。

ZacharyDavis:This was humanism on the personal level.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这是个人层面的人文主义。

Converting to Christianityinspite of the corruptedchurch?

不顾教会腐败，仍然坚持皈依？

Robert Harrison:Boccaccio’s humanism is not the triumphalist humanism of the Renaissance, which took human beings to be the authors of their own destiny and the great heroic enterprises of the anthropocentric view. He had a more, a humanism of humility where the human condition is intrinsically fragile, it's vulnerable. It is, to be human, largely means to be in need of help. And he says that in the preface to the Decameron, which begins with the word “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti”. It is a human thing to have compassion for those who are afflicted in moments of distress.

罗伯特·哈里森：薄伽丘的人文主义思想并非文艺复兴时期常见的那种激情澎湃的人文主义。后者强调人是自己命运的主宰，是世界的中心，可以创造伟大的事业。而薄伽丘的思想更平和，对人常常抱有同情之心，认为人本质上很脆弱，需要外界的帮助。在《十日谈》的开头他便写道：“对不幸的人寄予同情，是一种德行。”

RobertHarrison: The other way in which the Decameron is humanistic is again, as we said, it focuses on our human limitations, what we can know what kind of truth we can have access to. But the heroes and heroines of the Decameron tend to be people who are not the passive victims of circumstance and of the abuse of others, but who are, find a way to act.

罗伯特·哈里森：《十日谈》的人文主义精神还在于，正如我们刚才所说，它展现了人类的局限性，展现了人类可以获取哪些知识、哪些真相。不过《十日谈》中的男女主并没有消极地忍受来自环境与他人的影响，而是积极主动地采取行动。

RobertHarrison: To act in situations that are highly determined, where the right act at the right moment, the opportune moment can lead to consequences very different than had you not acted or had not acted in in the right way. And therefore, they are heroes of a certain kind of humanistic call to action.

罗伯特·哈里森：他们在特定环境下采取行动，在正确的时机采取正确的行动。如果时机不错，行动与否、或是行动正确与否会带来截然不同的结果。所以说，这些主人公将人文主义精神发挥得淋漓尽致。

Zachary Davis: Now the challenge of the ancients is that it's an authority different than equal to or maybe sometimes superior to the church. So, could you tell us a little bit more about what does the Decameron say about the church? What's its approach to the Catholic clergy, to Catholic life? I  mean, a lot of it seems extremely satirical and, you know, not particularly respectful of Christian teaching and leadership.

扎卡里·戴维斯：于是在当时，教会的权威受到了挑战，人的权威开始等同于、甚至有时会高于教会的权威。您可以跟我们说说，《十日谈》讲了哪些关于教会的故事，如何描绘了天主教神职人员的做派？书中似乎极力地讽刺了基督教教义和基督教会的统治。

RobertHarrison: Oh, no. It's absolutely a mockery of the institutional corruption of the church. I think the second story of the Decameron is about a Christian who's trying to persuade his good friend Abraham, who is Jewish, to convert to Christianity in order to save his soul.

罗伯特·哈里森：确实，可以说是彻底讽刺了教会的腐败行为。《十日谈》中的第二个故事便是关于天主教的。一个天主教徒想要劝自己的犹太朋友亚伯拉罕皈依天主教，好拯救他朋友的灵魂。

ZacharyDavis: Abraham decides to indulge his friend and travels to Rome, the headquarters of the Roman-Catholic Church, to get a better understanding of the religion. But once he arrives, he sees the pope, bishops and cardinals acting in disgraceful ways.

扎卡里·戴维斯：亚伯拉罕决定和他的朋友去罗马天主教会看看，来更好地了解一下天主教。可他们到了罗马之后，发现教皇、主教和红衣主教一个个都行事卑鄙。

RobertHarrison: Much to the friend’s astonishment, the Jewish Abraham decides to convert to Christianity because he says, if you know the representatives of God can be, you know, this sinful, then there must be a higher truth to it, because this religion has managed to thrive despite the fact that it has the worst kinds of representatives in it. So he just took that as an indication that it would be a good investment, you know, to convert to Christianity.

罗伯特·哈里森：然而出乎朋友意料的是，犹太人亚伯拉罕竟然决定要皈依天主教。他说，既然上帝在人间的代表都这么罪大恶极，可天主教还是屹然不动，所以一定是有圣灵或是更高的真理来给它做基石。因而他判断，天主教一定值得皈依。

ZacharyDavis: Other ways that this text is modern. I'm curious about parts of it do seem to me proto-feminist. The fact that there's seven female narrators compared to three. The fact that there seem to be stories that talk about how brilliant and amazing women are and how capable they are. Could you speak to this aspect of Boccaccio’s thought?

扎卡里·戴维斯：这本书还有其他一些比较现代的地方。有一点我很好奇，就是我感觉它带有一点女权主义色彩。书中女性叙述者有七位，而男性只有三位。书里的一些故事还展现了女性的才华、魅力与能力。您可以谈谈薄伽丘在这方面的思想吗？

Robert Harrison:Most of the heroines in the Decameron are really remarkable, kind of proto-feminist figures who show that they are, in every respect, equal to their male counterparts. They have the intelligence, discernment, use of language. And let's not forget that the Decameron is dedicated to women. Because of Boccaccio’s understanding that most of the women in his day and age lived within the confinement of their own rooms because they were subjected to the will of their fathers, brothers and husbands.

罗伯特·哈里森：《十日谈》中的大部分女性都非常杰出，可以说是女权主义的代表人物。她们在各个方面都不输于男性，富有聪明才智与远见卓识，而且还谈吐不凡。《十日谈》是一部献给女性的书。薄伽丘认为，他那个时代的女性很多都被兄弟或丈夫的意志所困，囿于自己的闺房中。

RobertHarrison: And they needed the consolation of literature because they did not have the male privilege to go out and pursue entertainments that distracted them from their own dread. So there is a kind of celebration of femininity. But then when you get into the stories, you find that the women are in every respect, the equals of, and in some respects, you know, the superiors of their male counterparts.

罗伯特·哈里森：她们需要文学的慰藉，因为她们无法像男性一样，出门娱乐消遣来排遣自己对当时环境的恐惧。所以书中表达了对女性的某种赞扬。当你阅读这些故事时，你会发现女性在各个方面都不输于男性，甚至在某些方面还略胜一筹。

Zachary Davis: Is it fair to think of the Decameron, I don't know as it's the first modern book? I mean, does it usher in a new modern perspective that we still see in our societies today?

扎卡里·戴维斯：所以可以说《十日谈》是史上第一部现代作品吗？它是否开启了全新的现代观念，让我们如今仍然可以从中受益？

RobertHarrison:I think that's a very fair characterization. This book has had an enormous sort of reception in the West.

罗伯特·哈里森：我觉得完全可以这么说。这本书在西方很受欢迎。

Welcome to theage that moneytalks

打那时起，有钱能使鬼推磨

ZacharyDavis: Because of the plague and the earlier crusades, there was a shift in the Italian economy. When Boccaccio was writing, Italy was moving from a farming-based economy, with feudal lords and an underclass of farmers, to a trade-based economy, with a new class of merchants. These merchants made their money selling food and supplies around the Mediterranean. The merchants were able to grab more power and influence than the farmers ever could. As a result, they rose in the ranks in society, sitting just below the noble class.

扎卡里·戴维斯：由于黑死病和此前的十字军东征，意大利的经济发生了巨变。薄伽丘写这本书时，意大利正由农业经济转型为商业经济，商人取代封建领主和底层农民，成为新的社会阶层。这些商人在地中海沿岸开展贸易，售卖食品与原料。他们比农民有更多的财富，因而也有更大的权力。他们在社会中的地位逐渐上升，一跃成为仅次于贵族的阶层。

RobertHarrison: How many of the stories have to do with merchants? A great number of them. You also have stories about the aristocratic class, but mostly we're talking here about the new mercantile reality of the Naples that Boccacio spent time in and also Florence, obviously.So here it's like a mercantile epic for a new modern era, which Boccaccio understood is going to be dominated by money rather than, you know, power. Or where money is now becoming the new currency of power.

罗伯特·哈里森：书里有多少故事和商人有关？答案是很多。当然书里也有关于贵族的故事，但显然提到更多的是当时新兴的商业社会，比如薄伽丘本人在那不勒斯和佛罗伦萨亲身经历的商业盛况。这本书像是那个新时代的商业史诗。薄伽丘认为，在当时金钱而非权贵的权力主导着整个社会。或者换句话说，金钱成了新的权力象征。

Zachary Davis: This marked a shift from the power of the nobility to the power of the self-made merchant. Boccaccio often depicted the heroes in his stories as having similar qualities to these new merchants.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这标志着权力从贵族手中转移到商人手中。薄伽丘在故事中经常赋予主人公新兴商人阶层的品质。

RobertHarrison: Thus many of the heroes are part of a middle class, an entrepreneurial middle class. And oftentimes their actions have an entrepreneurial aspect to them that the merchants clearly responded to very positively at the time.

罗伯特·哈里森：许多主人公都是中产阶级，都是商人或作坊主。他们往往很有企业家精神，积极应对着当时的环境。

Zachary Davis: And how was he received and read over the centuries?

扎卡里·戴维斯：几百年来，薄伽丘的名气和影响力如何呢？

Robert Harrison:He's less celebrated now and maybe even in the 20th century than he ought to be. The Decameron, not only as a whole, but many of its individual stories have gone through many different iterations and rewriting and retellings.

罗伯特·哈里森：在如今、乃至在20世纪，读他作品的人变少了，尽管他值得被更多人关注。《十日谈》这一整本书以及其中的许多小故事都被以不同的方式改编或转述。

Zachary Davis: Over the years, there have been many adaptations of stories in the Decameron. It impacted some of the most canonical European writers, including William Shakespeare and Geoffry Chaucer.

扎卡里·戴维斯：几百年来，《十日谈》中的许多故事都被后人改编。它还影响了欧洲最重要的几位作家，如威廉·莎士比亚和杰弗里·乔叟。

RobertHarrison: He has had enormous literary influence across the ages that has rarely had the big ups and downs of people who come into fashion and out of fashion. Our time is ripe for a revitalization of the real greatness of this masterpiece.

罗伯特·哈里森：几百年来，它一直影响着文学的发展。流行作品不断更迭，而它却一直在文学史上熠熠生辉。如今，是时候来重新挖掘这部作品的伟大之处了。

Zachary Davis:Boccaccio recognized how timeless and important stories are for society. They give us new perspectives on life and offer up lessons to help us deal with our complex worlds.

扎卡里·戴维斯：薄伽丘意识到，故事对于整个社会来说至关重要、永不过时，它们会带给我们新的生活观念，给予我们经验教训，帮助我们应对复杂的世界。

RobertHarrison: Where would we be without stories? If you think of any human society, storytelling is the real foundation of the social and communal identity of different cultures. It's the way in which values, the founding values of a community are also reaffirmed and dramatized. The conflicts that arise invariably in human relations find expression in stories.

罗伯特·哈里森：如果没有故事，人类会去往何处？不论在哪个社会，故事都构建了各个文化中人们的社会认同，以戏剧化的方式展现了社会价值观以及人际关系中不断发生的冲突。

Robert Harrison:And therefore, what at first glance might seem like a light entertainment activity on the part of the brigade to go and tell stories to each other for 10 days actually has a very serious ethical component to it that I personally very much appreciate in Boccaccio’s vision of what can we do in order to enhance the relations we have with one another and the role that our use of language plays in this enhancement.

罗伯特·哈里森：所以书中这场充满欢声笑语的十日游其实有着非常深刻的寓意。我也很欣赏薄伽丘的观点，认为我们需要做些什么去增进人际关系，以及语言在这方面能起到什么作用。

Zachary Davis: Yeah, it makes me think about how the plague cuts off human life literally because of the bodies dying and decaying. But also without social life, you can't have a true human life without the exchanges, without the expression. And you can see that I think even in our own time, like we are hungering for that same kind of connection with other people. And it feels like a kind of death to be socially isolated from one another.

扎卡里·戴维斯：没错。我觉得黑死病夺走了人们的生命。但没有社交、缺乏表达与交流的话，人们也很难焕发活力。即便在当下也是如此，我们仍然渴望和他人交流。如果人们彼此隔绝、不再交流，那么生与死又有什么区别？

RobertHarrison: The absolutely fundamental human need to reconnect in, socially, with one's fellow citizens is as important to need as even any biological medical need we have. And Boccaccio was well aware of that.

罗伯特·哈里森：我们需要与其他人建立联系，这一点的重要性甚至不亚于我们的任何生理和医学需求。而薄伽丘则深深地意识到了这点。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Galen Beebe, Jack Pombriant and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！！​