【英文原声版61】Flora Thomson-DeVeaux：The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas

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Zachary Davis: When Flora Thomson-DeVeaux showed up as a freshman at Princeton University, she wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to study. She randomly got invited to a department open house where she was talking into taking a class on Portuguese literature. Sure, she said, why not?

扎克里·戴维斯：当弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥刚来到普林斯顿大学的时候，身为大一新生的她还不确定自己想研究什么。一次偶然间，她被邀请参加一个系的开放日活动，旁听一节葡萄牙文学课。她想：“好呀，干嘛不去呢？”

Zachary Davis: One of her early assignments was to translate a biography of Brazilian dancer, singer, and actress Carmen Miranda, who famously wore elaborate hats made of fruit in her performances.

扎克里·戴维斯：课上，她开始要做的一份作业，是要翻译巴西舞蹈家、歌手兼演员卡门·米兰达的传记。精致的水果帽是这位舞蹈家为人熟知的演出造型。

Zachary Davis: The Carmen Miranda assignment sparked something in Thomson-Deveaux. She became more and more interested in Brazil and decided to dive deep into Brazilian literature. She decided to start with a 19th-century novel she’d kept hearing about called The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.

扎克里·戴维斯：这次翻译任务启发了汤姆森·德维奥。她对巴西文学越来越感兴趣，决定深入研究。她决定从一本一直听人讲起的19世纪小说入手。这本小说叫《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》，作者是若阿金·马里亚·马查多·德·阿西斯。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: There are certain encounters with books where you just feel like you’ve made a friend. And I actually still have the copy. And it’s still got all of my post it’s in it from when I read it at age 19. And I didn’t know much more about it than that it was just it was a very important novel. And I think I was not expecting to really enjoy myself, this is sort of like I’m going to take my medicine, I’m going to read this 19th-century novel. And very quickly, you know, a couple pages in, I was just shocked by how irreverent, how light, how unexpected, how sort of nasty this 19th-century novel was.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：有些书你读到它的时候，觉得像是交了一个朋友。其实，我还留着我19岁第一次读的那一版，里面还夹了我当时读完后写下的一些东西。我当时只知道这本小说很重要，其他什么也不知道。但没想到我会读得那么开心，完全入了迷，沉浸在这个19世纪的故事中了。我只是读了开首几页，就震惊于这19世纪的小说多么不落窠臼、引人入胜、出乎意料，又有些辛辣。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: You know, I just for a week, I must have just been insufferable, like, have you have you heard of this book? And I would I would just carry it around with me, like, this book is amazing. And what everything I would always say to people, it’s I can’t you know, you can’t believe it. It was written in 1880. And now after having translated it and worked with it, I can absolutely believe it was written in 1880. And I would submit that you can only understand how brilliant it is if you understand everything that was happening in 1880 around the time that it was written.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：那一整个星期，我周围人估计都要受不了我了。我把这本书随身带着，到处问别人：“你有没有读过这本书？它简直太棒了！”我总会对他们说：“这本书竟然是1880年写的，你敢相信吗？”当然，如今我翻译过它，也研究过它，可以肯定地说，它确实是1880年写的。而且我觉得，只有了解了1880年前后的社会背景，你才能意识到这本书多么了不起。

Zachary Davis: Thomson-DeVeaux got to know the book even more intimately when she translated it from Portuguese to English as part of her PhD dissertation. The first English translation was published in the early 1950s. Thomson-DeVeaux wanted her translation to capture the nuance Machado had so carefully crafted in the original Portuguese.

扎克里·戴维斯：汤姆森·德维奥把这本书从葡萄牙语翻译成英语，收进了她的博士论文。就这样，她对这本书的了解进了一步。20世纪50年代初，这本书的第一版英译本出版。汤姆森·德维奥希望自己的这版译文能够捕捉到马查多葡萄牙语原文中的每一丝语义。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So many authors, you read that you’re like, God, this would be really hard to translate, Machado. You read it and you think this would be easy. And then when you read it twice, you think this is impossible because he’s constructed something so subtle, and that nonetheless is the engine of what he’s describing to you.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：很多作家的作品看上去很难翻译。但马查多的作品不一样。第一遍读你会觉得很容易。第二遍读的时候，你会觉得完全翻译不了，因为他笔下的文字实在太精妙了，而他又用这么精妙的语言给你讲述他的所思所想。

Zachary Davis: Harvard professor and historian Sidney Chaloub also has a special relationship to this text. He, along with pretty much every Brazilian student, read Machado’s work in school. It was a strange, bold novel, a visionary work that broke new stylistic ground.

扎克里·戴维斯：哈佛大学教授、历史学家西德尼·查卢布也和这本书有着不解之缘。他和大多数巴西学生一样，都在学校里读过马查多的作品。这本小说风格奇特、手法大胆，开创了新的风格，影响深远。

Sidney Chaloub: I grew up in Rio and Machado de Assis, is the most prominent Brazilian writer of all times. He decided to experiment radically with the possibilities of the novel at the same time that he was in many ways mocking the previous models with which he was in dialogue on the romanticism and realism. Sometimes I think he’s our Shakespeare in many ways. He’s our classic. He’s our uncontroversial classic.

西德尼·查卢布：我在里约热内卢长大，马查多·德·阿西斯是巴西有史以来最杰出的作家。他在很多方面对旧的创作模式嗤之以鼻，积极探索新的小说创作方式，实现了浪漫主义和现实主义的美妙融合。有时候我觉得，他在很多方面堪称巴西的莎士比亚。他的作品是无可争议的巴西经典。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In this episode, I sat down with Flora Thomson-DeVeaux and Sidney Chaloub. We discuss Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.

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，我和弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥博士、西德尼·查卢布教授一起探讨若阿金·马里亚·马查多·德·阿西斯的《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》[MTTH1] 。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: He’s such a major figure that you have a whole generation of authors in the early 20th century who are writing against him or writing, you know, trying to—he becomes this enemy figure because he’s you know, he’s the founding president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：他在文学史上的地位太重要了，以至于20世纪初整整一代的作家都在写文章批判他，或者想要这么做——他成了大家的公敌。至于遭人批判的原因，大概是因为他是巴西文学院的第一任院长。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So pretend you’re a Brazilian person. In 1880 you picked up your issue of Revista Brazileira, which is the publication in which it was serialized and you see The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and you probably know that. But Brás Cubas was the governor or the captaincy of some of his sanctuary in the 16th century, and then you start reading and you realize that that isn’t this guy.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：假设你是巴西人。1880年，你在一期《巴西杂志》上看到了连载的《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》。你可能听说过布拉斯·库巴斯这个人，16世纪他主持建造了一些圣殿。不过读着读着，你会发现书里讲的并不是这个人。

Zachary Davis: Machado’s Posthumous Memoirs is a novel, but there was a real person named Brás Cubas. He was a Portuguese nobleman and explorer in the 16th century who founded the village of Santos in what is today Sao Paulo. But, oddly, this story has nothing to do with him. Machado just decided to use the name Brás Cubas for his main character and narrator.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多的《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》是一部小说，但历史上有一个真实的人也叫布拉斯·库巴斯。他是16世纪的葡萄牙贵族和探险家，在如今的圣保罗建立了桑托斯村。但奇怪的是，小说中的故事与他毫无关系，马查多只是用布拉斯·库巴斯这个名字来称呼小说的主人公和叙述者。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: They’re not posthumous memoirs in the sense that, you know, it’s Brás Cubas who died in the 16th century. No, it’s this guy, you know, from Rio who is dead and is writing somehow to amuse himself from beyond the grave.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：这不是16世纪去世的那个布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆，而是一个里约日内卢人死后为了消遣，对前生前世的回忆。

Zachary Davis: The character of Brás Cubas is born into the elite upper class in Brazil. He doesn’t have a career and is basically just independently wealthy. Let’s talk about Machado’s life, How did he become the kind of person who writes this daring book?

扎卡里·戴维斯：布拉斯·库巴斯出生在巴西精英阶层家庭。他没有工作，但也还算富足。我们来谈谈作者马查多的生平吧。他为什么会写出这么大胆的书呢？

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is born in Rio in 1839. He is the mixed race grandson of former slaves on his father’s side. His mother is an immigrant, a white immigrant from the Azores. And if Brazil had a working class at that point, then you would call his family working class. It’s very hard. You know, you don’t have a functional working class because it’s you know, Brazil is still very much a slaveholding society, just but a poor family dependent on a wealthier family in the port zone of Rio.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：1839年，若阿金·马里亚·马查多·德·阿西斯出生在里约日内卢。他的祖父曾是奴隶，母亲是来自亚速尔群岛的白人移民。如果巴西当时有工人阶级的话，他们家可以说是典型的工人阶级家庭。不过严格来说还是不能这么划分，因为巴西当时还保留着奴隶制，没有真正的工人阶级。但总而言之，这个里约日内卢港口的家庭生活窘迫，不得不受一户富裕人家的照顾。

Zachary Davis: Machado attended public school until he was ten years old. At this time, his mother died and Machado and his father moved to a new town and his father remarried.

扎克里·戴维斯：10岁之前，马查多一直在公立学校上学。10岁那年，他的母亲去世了。后来，马查多和父亲搬到了一个新的城镇，父亲也再婚了。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: There’s this whole mythology about how on earth he came to write this brilliantly sophisticated Portuguese, how on earth he acquired this vast mental library.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：至于为什么他能写出这么漂亮的葡萄牙文章、能有这么精妙的想象力，坊间流传着种种说法。

Zachary Davis: But that’s all they are, myths and theories, it’s really a mystery how he came to possess such a genius for writing. But we do know how his career began.

扎克里·戴维斯：但这些都只是传言。他如何拥有了写作的天分，恐怕我们都不得而知。好在我们知道，他的写作生涯是如何开始的。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: He gets a job as a topographies apprentice as a teen. And he just manages to insert himself into this world of literary production in 19th century Rio. And he sort of moves his way up. He becomes a—one of his first jobs actually was a theatre censor because we’re in Imperial Brazil, and then he became a critic and a columnist.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：十几岁时，他找到了一份印刷学徒的工作。他成功地挤入了19世纪里约日内卢的文学创作圈子，开始不断发展。起初，他做过巴西帝国的戏剧审查员。后来，他成为了评论家和专栏作家。

Zachary Davis: Machado eventually gets a job at a local newspaper.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多最终在当地一家报社找到了工作。

Sidney Chaloub: He was employed in a daily paper, Cold-Hearted General. It’s a very staunchly liberal paper which criticized the concentration of power in the hands of the Emperor Brazil who was a monarchy at the time.

西德尼·查卢布：他受雇于一家名叫《冷血将军》的日报。这是一份非常坚定的自由派报纸，常常批评巴西帝国的君主专制。

Zachary Davis: The newspaper Machado worked for focused on social change and was openly critical of the Brazilian government.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多供职的报纸关注社会变革，公开批评巴西政府。

Sidney Chaloub: He struggled for the expansion of citizenship rights and had other types of critiques to the political status quo when he worked on this until the late 1860s.

西德尼·查卢布：一直到19世纪60年代末，马查多都在为扩大公民权利而奋斗，公开批判巴西当时的社会状况。

Zachary Davis: At this point, Machado took a job that he would hold for many years.

扎克里·戴维斯：这时，马查多接手了一份工作。他在这个岗位上做了很久。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: For most of his life, the way that he made a living and this even in you know, at the height of his fame, he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture. So this very typical 19th century thing of, you know, you make your living through this, you know, pen pushing and then you’re also an extremely active member of this literary society.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：他一生中大部分时候都在农业部当公务员，靠这份工作来谋生，即便在他名声最旺的时候也是这样。这个情况在19世纪非常典型：你做些不感兴趣的文职工作来养活自己，业余活跃于文学团体。

Zachary Davis: Although he had a day job, Machado still managed to make a name for himself in the literary world.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多虽然不是全职作家，但还是在文学界赢得了一席之地。

Sidney Chaloub: He was so successful that he was actually the founder and first—one of the founders and first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. And so, you know, this is a man who was the grandson of other enslaved people, growing up in relative poverty. And he became the most important writer. I mean, arguably, he is the most important Brazilian writer of all times.

西德尼·查卢布：他的文学事业非常成功，成为了巴西文学院的创始人之一和首任院长。谁也想不到，这个奴隶的孙子、这个曾经生活窘迫的穷孩子竟然成了巴西有史以来最重要的作家。

Zachary Davis: Machado wrote The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas in 1879, right in the middle of his literary career. Could you provide listeners a plot summary?

扎克里·戴维斯：1879年，马查多开始写《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》。这时他的文学生涯步入了中期。您能为听众们概括一下小说的情节吗？

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: He opens with a bit of a prologue, sort of not really explaining, but at least situating us, and he explains that he died both in spite of and because of his brilliant invention, the Brás Cubas plaster, which is this anti melancholy drug that we never get any details on, but we’re led to believe would have been revolutionary had he not come down with a cold and died as he was working on it.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：全书开篇是一段独白。主人公没有点明真正的情况，但交代了一些背景。主人公说，他死于一项神奇的发明，但也因此而复生。他发明了一种抗抑郁的膏药，叫“布拉斯·库巴斯膏药”。关于这个膏药，我们不清楚太多细节，但主人公似乎想让我们相信，若不是他患上了风寒，在研究膏药的时候病逝了，这保准会是一项革命性的发明。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: One of the chapters that really tends to bowl people over and really was the point at which, you know, I was just absolutely blown away by the novel when I was reading it is the chapter about his delirium where we get sort of the last, you know, sparks of his dying brain, taking him on this tremendous journey back to the origin of time and facing down with nature. And it’s just like that when I talk about Machado cutting loose, that is, you know, Brás Cubas writing through the ages on the back of a talking hippopotamus, that’s what happens in the first seven chapters.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：小说有一章特别震撼人心。我读到这一章的时候，心里特别受触动。那一章描述了布拉斯·库巴斯生命火光即将熄灭时的胡言乱语。他仿佛看到自己回溯时潮，来到了时间的源头，审视着人类的内心。在这一章，马查多充分发挥了自己的想象力。他让库巴斯骑着一头会说话的河马，回到了时间的源头。这就是小说第七章的情节。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And then he yanks us back into his comfortable childhood and lets us see how this, you know, little feckless boy king is raised, you know, pampered. He’s growing up along with this colony that becomes an empire without really having matured as he, you know, a teenager falls in love with this Spanish prostitute, and then gets separated from her and packed off to college in Portugal, where he doesn’t really learn anything either.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：之后，他又回过头，回忆起了温馨的童年时光。我们可以看到当年这个小不点如何备受宠爱。他在里约日内卢长大，这儿也从殖民地渐渐变成一个帝国。成年前，这个年轻人爱上了一个西班牙妓女，之后与她分手，前往葡萄牙读大学。不过在那儿，他没学到什么真才实学。

Zachary Davis: In Brazil at the time, going to college was a huge privilege. It was typically something only the elite class would do, someone of Brás’ background.

扎克里·戴维斯：在当时的巴西，上大学是一种奢侈的特权。往往只有布拉斯家这种精英阶层才会这样。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So he comes back, you know, not having learned much of anything. And first, the plan for him is that he’s going to become a politician and marry well and he manages to do neither of those, but then gets into an extramarital affair with the woman that he was supposed to marry and then becomes very briefly a politician before getting himself kicked out of Congress out over a misunderstanding about a speech about reducing the size of soldiers caps.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：他带着一副空皮囊回到了巴西。本来，他打算步入政坛，和心上人好好结婚，但这些规划最后都落空了。他的心上人嫁给了别人，还和他有了一段婚外情。他在政坛上待了一小段时间，却由于误解了一场改小军帽尺寸的演讲，被人逐出国会。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: There’s this great word, I couldn’t find a way to translate, which is “bacharelado”, and it literally just means someone with a college degree, and that is as if it were their profession. And this relic of, you know, you didn’t expect these young men to do anything, they’re expected to go to queen, but then come back with a law degree and then that’s like they’ve ticked the box. They don’t need to do anything else.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：有一个词可以很好地形容库巴斯，叫“巴沙赫拉多”。所谓“巴沙赫拉多”，是指空有大学文凭、却没有正经职业的人。人们一般不会指望这些“巴沙赫拉多”们能做什么事。家人一般起初对他们寄予厚望，却不成想他们拿了个法学学位，就觉得万事大吉，不需要再做什么了。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So he is the consummate bacharelado in that he, you know, he ends his days, you know, ignominiously taken in by a crazy philosopher. And then we wind up the book, you know, with this invention that never comes to be and which he assures us would have brought him fame and glory had he not been struck by a draft and tragically perished.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：库巴斯是一个很典型的“巴沙赫拉多”，他晚年的时候被一个疯疯癫癫的哲学家收留了，令人唏嘘。读完整本书，我们会发现，尽管库巴斯再三强调，若不是他身体不适、不幸死去，他的发明准会让他荣极一时，但最后他的发明还是没能成功。

Zachary Davis: What is the context in which this is written?

扎克里·戴维斯：这本书是在什么背景下写的呢？

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: We have two time frames. We have, you know, Machado’s life, which is, you know, from 1839 to the point at which he starts to write the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, which is 1879, it was first published in 1880, comes out as a book in 1981. And then we have Brás Cubas’ life. So Brás Cubas is two generations older. He was born in 1805 and he dies in 1869.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我们需要谈到两个时代背景。一是马查多所处的时代。马查多于1839年出生。1879年，他开始写《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆》。1880年，故事在杂志上连载；1881年出版成书。第二个需要考虑的是主人公布拉斯·库巴斯所处的时代。他比作者大二十多岁，1805年出生，1869年去世。

Zachary Davis: Machado places the fictional Brás Cubas in an earlier era so that he can draw parallels to certain events in Brazilian history. Brás Cubas himself doesn’t do much in his life, but he became a vessel for Machado to address social issues.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多把主人公布拉斯·库巴斯安排在了一个稍早的年代，这样主人公就能亲历巴西历史上的一些事件。布拉斯·库巴斯一生没有什么作为，但透过他，马查多可以展现巴西的一些社会问题。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: He’s born at the turn of the 19th century, just a couple of years before the Portuguese court is forced to flee Lisbon because of Napoleon’s invasion.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：布拉斯·库巴斯出生在19世纪初。他出生后的几年，葡萄牙王室因拿破仑入侵而被迫逃离里斯本。

Zachary Davis: When Napoleon invaded Portugal, the Portuguese king fled to Brazil.

扎克里·戴维斯：拿破仑入侵葡萄牙后，葡萄牙国王逃到了巴西。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And then you have this strange, unique situation of one of the, you know, great Western European empires shifting its base to a colony. So during Brás’ childhood, you have the court establishing itself in Rio and transforming Rio entirely. There are all sorts of peculiar consequences of the Portuguese Empire’s center of gravity shifting to Brazil. And one of them is the fact that when Brazil becomes independent, unlike all the rest of Latin America, there is not a war of independence in the New Republic. There are some scuffles, conflicts. And then Brazil becomes an empire, an empire under the son of the king, the Portuguese king.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：于是就出现了一个非常奇特的情况——一个西欧帝国将统治中心迁到了殖民地。在布拉斯·库巴斯的童年时期，葡萄牙王室迁到了里约日内卢，将这里彻底改造了一番。葡萄牙帝国的统治中心转移到了巴西，也带来了种种奇特的影响。其中一个影响便是巴西的独立。巴西和其他拉美国家不同，并没有爆发独立战争，仅仅爆发了一些争论和冲突。之后，巴西变成了一个独立的帝国，由葡萄牙国王的儿子统治。

Zachary Davis: When Napoleon’s reign ended, the king returned to Portugal and left his son, Pedro I, to govern Brazil. But Pedro wasn’t interested in governing the way his father had. He declared independence from Portugal and established the Brazilian empire on September 7, 1822.

扎克里·戴维斯：拿破仑统治结束后，葡萄牙国王回到葡萄牙，让儿子佩德罗王子治理巴西。但佩德罗对父亲的治理方式不感兴趣，于是宣布巴西将从葡萄牙独立出去，并在1822年9月7日建立了巴西帝国。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So there’s this sort of bloodless, peaceful transition among elites. And, you know, this historical anomaly, anomaly of a Latin American empire, which I think most Americans will not be aware of. So Brás’ life takes place during the empire and as Machado is writing memories of Brás Cubas, we are entering into the last decade of that imperial monarchy. So Brazil becomes a republic in 1890. And so that, you know, that is operating at the level of the throne. But all, you know, all of these struggles and all of these dynamics are permeated by the question of slavery.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：巴西的独立没有流血牺牲，是上层阶级之间权力的和平让渡。这在拉美历史上实属罕见，我想大多数美国人也不太知道这件事。布拉斯·库巴斯生活在巴西帝国统治时期，而马查多写这本小说的时候，巴西帝国已经步入到最后十年。1890年，巴西帝国倒台，共和制政府建立。这就是巴西统治权的更迭，但所有这些斗争和更迭也受到了奴隶制问题的影响。

Zachary Davis: The slave trade had been a huge part of Brazil’s economy since the early 1500s. Enslaved Africans were brought across the Atlantic Ocean to work in Brazil’s sugar, diamond, gold, and later coffee industries. Brazil was the last country in the West to abolish slavery. This had a big impact on Machado.

扎卡里·戴维斯：自15世纪初以来，奴隶贸易一直是巴西经济的重要组成部分。被奴役的非洲人被带到大西洋彼岸，在巴西的糖料种植园、钻石矿场、金矿场和后来的咖啡种植园劳作。巴西是西方最后一个废除奴隶制的国家。这些社会现实深深地影响着马查多。

Sidney Chaloub: I think the experience of seeing that institution in crisis and all the violence associated with it, I think, and being himself a person of African descent with, you know, his father actually being the son of people who had lived in slavery, made him very acutely aware of how absurd exercising this type of domination of other people, how could that ever exist and made him reflect upon the justification for domination of other peoples in general. This is because I think this is a repeated message. Lots of details. If you think of them, they somehow seem to have an anchor in this general insight about humanity and about societies.

西德尼·查卢布：马查多亲眼目睹了摇摇欲坠的奴隶制以及奴隶制下的种种暴行。他自己也是黑奴的后裔，祖父曾经就是奴隶，所以他很清楚奴役他人多么荒谬，简直找不到任何奴隶制存在的理由。同时，他也开始思考对其他民族实行殖民统治到底正不正当。我觉得书中的许多细节都不断透露出这些思考。只要你能想起来，你会发现它们似乎都关乎这些人性和社会方面的大问题。

Zachary Davis: There were many attempts to abolish slavery in Brazil throughout the 19th century. The Aberdeen Act of 1845 authorized the British Navy to intercept any Brazilian or Portugese slave bound ship. Things finally began to change in Brazil in the 1870s when The Rio Branco Law was passed. This stated that any child born to enslaved parents would be free. Machado himself played a key role in enforcing this law.

扎克里·戴维斯：在整个19世纪，巴西多次尝试废除奴隶制。1845年颁布的《阿伯丁法案》让英国海军有权拦截任何巴西或葡萄牙运载奴隶的船只。19世纪70年代，巴西通过了《里约布兰科法案》，情况终于开始好转。法案指出，任何奴隶生下的子女都是自由人。在推动执行这项法案的过程中，马查多发挥了关键作用。

Sidney Chaloub: A very important aspect of his biography is that in the 1870s he is working in the Ministry of Agriculture and he becomes chair of a department within the ministry that was in charge of overseeing the application of the Slave Emancipation Law of 1871. So he worked for several years trying to make sure that the dispositions of the law that recognized several rights to enslaved people and several avenues to freedom that they started to have after that law of 1871. So Machado’s job was to make sure that dispositions of the law would be respected by slaveholders, that they could not find ways around the law to keep people under slavery that should be considered free or freed.

西德尼·查卢布：19世纪70年代，马查多在农业部任职，成为该部一个组织的负责人，专门负责监督1871年法案的执行情况。这部法案承认了奴隶的几项权利，确立了奴隶获得自由的几种方法。在该组织工作的几年里，马查多一直确保这部法案被有效执行，同时确保奴隶主们按照法案办事，不会想方设法钻法案的空子，让本该获得自由的奴隶无法脱身。

Zachary Davis: But despite his efforts, not all slave holders obeyed this law. Machado commented on this by paralleling it in his novel with an affair that Brás Cubas is having with a married woman in the story. It is a very open secret in their social circles: it’s technically not allowed, but everyone turns a blind eye. This was a metaphor for slavery: there were laws against trafficking people and keeping children as slaves, but many in power ignored them.

扎克里·戴维斯：尽管他做了种种努力，但并不是所有的奴隶主都遵守这条法案。马查多在小说中用布拉斯·库巴斯与一个已婚女性的婚外情来比喻这一现实。婚外情在他们的社交圈子里成了个公开的秘密——严格来说这是不允许的，但大家都视而不见。这便是对奴隶制的隐喻：法律禁止人口贩卖和把儿童收为奴隶，但许多有权有势的人却无视这些法律。

Zachary Davis: But it wasn’t just about slavery. Brás Cubas was a member of the elite who was relatively unaware of most of the politics and social issues of the time.

扎克里·戴维斯：小说反映的不仅仅有奴隶制的问题。布拉斯·库巴斯是精英阶层的一员，对当时多数政治和社会问题都不太了解。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: This is the brilliant thing about having a member of—a clueless member of the elite as your as your narrator, you know, all of these things come up. But Brás isn’t really paying attention to them. You know, he’s sort of half paying attention them. They’re sort of they’re in the water.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：让一个不谙世事的精英阶层成员做整个故事的叙述者——这个设定实在太高明了。你知道历史上的那些事情会一一发生，但布拉斯·库巴斯并没有真正注意到它们。它们仿佛潜藏在水面之下，不为人知。

Zachary Davis: Machado was trying to reflect the issues of the Brazilian elite to his readership, which was the Brazilian elite.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多想向他的读者、也就是巴西的精英阶层展现他们自身的问题。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: The first modern census done in Brazil was done in 1872 and came up in 1876. And this is sort of a blow to Machado’s and other contemporary writers hopes of creating a literature, a national literature for Brazil, because the census shows that of, you know, I’ve forgotten the figure of the total population, but only 14 percent of the population was literate.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：1872年，巴西进行了第一次现代人口普查。1876年，普查结果引发了人们的关注。马查多和其他想要创建巴西民族文学的作家感到深受打击。虽然我已经不记得当时巴西的总人口数了，但我记得人口普查结果显示，巴西人口的识字率只有14%。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So you have these aspirations of writing these great novels that will synthesize the national spirit and show Brazil to Brazilians. And then you realize that you’re really you know, it’s almost worse than, you know, just talking to a very small group of people. You’re talking to a very small group of people and they’re all, you know, they’re all Brás Cubases. You know, the people who could write and read, you know, with very few exceptions, you know, Machado being one, these are the ruling class, so what do you do? You slip into their skin and then you hold them up to themselves.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：你正想写几部融合民族精神的伟大小说，向巴西人民展现巴西。然而你突然发现，识字的只有这么一小撮人。这可以对着一小撮人说话还要糟糕，因为不仅人数少，他们还都是像布拉斯·库巴斯这样的精英阶层分子。除了极少数马查多这样的例外，其他人都是出身高贵、受过良好教育的社会精英。所以你要怎么办？或许会和他们说说笑笑、随声附和。

Zachary Davis: Machado used Brás Cubas as a caricature of the elite ruling class in Brazil at the time. Brás was born into this class and acted in a way that was supposed to show the ruling class what they were actually like. But as clever as this idea was, it didn’t quite land. When this novel was first published, many of Machado’s critiques on society went unnoticed and the book was largely misunderstood.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多用布拉斯·库巴斯这个角色勾勒出巴西精英统治阶级的样子。布拉斯出自这个阶级，言谈举止自然也能展现出这个阶级里人们的样子。虽然这个想法不错，但却没有完全起效果。这部小说刚出版时，读者们都没有注意到马查多对社会的许多批判。这本书在很大程度上被人们误读了。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: You know, people didn’t really understand what he was up to. You know, the extent to which this critique is pervasive and yet subtle made people only sort of see that he was doing formal experimentation and they thought that that was peculiar, but it wasn’t understood as sort of a searing critique of the society until much, much later.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：人们并没有真正理解他的创作目的。他对社会的批判无处不在，却又微妙至极，以至于人们只能注意到他在文本形式上的创新，觉得这很奇特。直到很久之后，人们才明白这是对社会的辛辣批判。

Zachary Davis: Machado’s critiques may have gone over the heads of his audience at the time because Brás Cubas was such a familiar character to them, not a caricature in the way Machado had intended.

扎克里·戴维斯：马查多的批判在当时可能被读者们所忽视，因为对他们来说，布拉斯·库巴斯这个形象并不陌生，并没有马查多本来设想的那么夸张。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: We may enjoy the experience of him guiding us sort of wildly through the novel, but he’s able to do that because he’s this, you know, horrible little boy king. And that’s, you know, these are the people who are who are running Brazil. And that is just, that takes a very, very long time to sink in for people. And sort of the tragedy of Machado, you know, making a mark or failing to make a mark is that he is absorbed. He is able to circulate and be absorbed so much later that, you know, the subtlety of those critiques. Once you’re distancing yourself from the historical and social context, it’s much harder to pick up on what he’s doing.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我们可能会享受小说中主角带我们领略的种种狂热的事情，但他之所以能这么为所欲为，是因为他是个被宠坏的上流社会小伙子。而恰恰是这些人领导着当时的巴西社会。马查多想将自己吸收到的经验输出出来，塑造出一个人物符号，却最终未能如愿，这不得不说是个悲剧。他吸收、整合的东西如此之多，以至于书中的批判显得如此微妙含蓄。你若是不熟悉巴西的历史和当时的社会背景，就很难读懂他的批判。

Zachary Davis: Even Thomson-DeVeaux didn’t quite understand the specific context at first.

扎克里·戴维斯：就连汤姆森·德维奥博士一开始也不太了解具体的社会背景。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: One of the things while I was translating that I hadn’t realized and which I only came to understand as I was doing the footnotes is the amount of money that he just has at his sticky little fingertips. So there’s an episode early on where he falls in love with a Spanish prostitute and, you know, just runs through all the jewelry stores in Rio, trying to keep her appeased. And the amount of money, you know, that it’s a large amount of money that he spends on her because his father is not pleased. But when I did the calculations to try to bring it up to current dollars, I thought that can’t possibly be right.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我翻译的时候都没有意识到布拉斯·库巴斯手头多阔绰，还是做脚注的时候才注意到这一点。书的前一部分中，有一段写道，他爱上了一个西班牙妓女，跑遍了里约热内卢所有的珠宝店，想要讨她欢心。布拉斯在她身上花了很多钱，惹得父亲颇为不悦。我计算了一下，想要把这笔钱换算成如今的美元，这时候我才发现情况不太对。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And I got in touch with an economic historian who works with 19th century Brazil and, you know, he basically confirmed that, you know, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars that this teenager is able to spend on his Spanish lady friend. And then just there are these things that, you know, once you’re able to understand the scale of this comedy, then you can understand the scale of the tragedy. Just being a member of this upper crust, he just wields this tremendous, you know, obscene power.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我问了一位研究19世纪巴西经济史的朋友，他说，这个年轻人在西班牙女朋友身上花了几十万美元。所以透过这个我们可以发现，一旦你能理解这是多么夸张的一出喜剧，你就能意识到这是多么瘆人的一出悲剧。身为巴西上流社会的一员，他竟然能这么挥霍无度。

Zachary Davis: What are some of your favorite moments?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您最喜欢这本书的哪些地方呢？

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: I really, I have sort of two categories of favorite moments. And the first category, my favorite moments from the first times I read it where I just thought this was one of the funniest books that I had ever read. And I was really taken aback by its modernity in the sense of just constantly shattering the fourth wall. You know, there’s a chapter where he’ll use a metaphor and then the next chapter is entitled to a critic.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：有两种地方我都很喜欢。第一种是我最喜欢的。我第一次读它的时候，就觉得这是我读过的最有趣的书之一。我被书中的现代手法深深地震撼到了。在小说里，马查多不断地打破第四面墙。而且在某一章他会用一个比喻，而在下一章他又会评论起这个比喻。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And he says, I know you’re going to take issue with that metaphor. And let me just tell you, you know, I did, I said it deliberately. God, I have to explain everything. So it’s just like as a freshman in college, you know, starting to venture into literary criticism, that was a welcome, you know, poke in the eye. Just the sheer craziness, the deranged beauty of the delirium and these moments of self-awareness in the book. Plus the moments of experimentation.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：他说：“我知道你会跟我争论这个比喻。但你得知道，我是故意这么说的。天呐，我竟然要把所有这些都解释一遍。”这种感觉就像是，身为一个大学新生，你开始壮着胆子了解文学批评。而这本小说似乎向读者敞开了文学的大门，让人大开眼界。它展现了纯粹的疯癫、错乱的癫狂之美、自我意识的闪耀以及创作者的伟大实验。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: There are a couple chapters that are all punctuation and, you know, just the point at which one other thing that we did in this edition was preserve the layout of the editions that were published when Machado was alive. And, you know, when you think that he started out as a typographer’s apprentice, you know, that it’s and this is a book that reflects on itself as a book. It’s very, you know, it functions at that level.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：有几个章节全是大段大段的标点。我们在这个译本中还做了一件事，就是保留了马查多在世时出版的那版原著中的排版。要知道，马查多年轻时做过印刷学徒，而这本书恰恰又是他对自我经历的反思。所以从这个层面讲，排版在这本书里有着很重要的作用。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So there are lots of, you know, you turn the page and then the next page is all punctuation. There’s the thing since the chapters are so short, lots of the previous editions had just run them all together to save space. But the blank page is actually a really important part of the novel as well. So that sort of, that level of material concern, I just you know, I’m really blown away by the sort of, you know, the pauses and the gasps and the letdowns that he’s able to construct just in the way that he arranges the text on the page. So that’s one category.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：于是就出现了很多这样的情况：你翻了一页，然后下一页全是标点。之前的很多版本为了节省空间，把它们全都压缩到了一起。但空白页其实也是小说中非常重要的部分。这种对排版的关注，这种用印刷排版来构建停顿、传递低落情绪的方式，让我印象很深。这是第一类我喜欢的地方。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And then the second category is the moments of really well constructed cruelty, these are the jokes that as I’m reading them, it’s just like they’re a punch in the stomach and you’re like, “God! Can’t believe he said that!” You know, like you find yourself questioning how you could ever have felt some sort of sympathy for this guy. You can only really understand the depths of his cruelty when you understand his place in society and the way he’s being so tremendously callous with the lives of others around him.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：还有一类地方我也很喜欢。这些地方很巧妙地展现了布拉斯的冷酷无情，让你感觉他像是在对人拳脚相向。你会忍不住想：“天呐！他竟然这么说！难以置信啊。”还会懊恼自己刚刚为什么还在同情这个家伙。只有当你了解到他在社会中的地位，了解到他对周围人多么漠不关心，你才会意识到他有多么冷酷无情。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So I actually I went through a phase of, you know, first thinking this is the most hilarious book I’ve ever read. And then as I learn more about this whole context of slavery and imperial Brazil in this tremendously unequal society, I started thinking this is one of the cruelest books that I ever read. And I felt, you know, sort of dumb for having been able to laugh at so much of it because, you know, that’s like Machado is, you know, putting up this song and dance. And, you know, when you just twitch back the curtain, you see that this is actually a tragedy. And so there’s this moment of almost guilt. And then you see that, you know, this is a deliberately constructed comedy.

弗洛拉・汤姆森・德维奥：所以一开始，我仅仅觉得这是我读过的最好笑的书。之后，我了解到了历史背景，了解到了巴西的奴隶制和社会不平等状况，我才发现这其实是我读过的最残酷的书。我觉得之前的那些哈哈大笑都有些傻，因为马查多给它披上了一层喜剧外衣，然而掀开这层外衣，你会发现里面其实是悲剧。这时候你会觉得心怀一丝愧疚，因为你知道这是一个有意包装的喜剧。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: But it’s this comedy that is rooted very much in pain. So that that’s sort of where I’ve come to as a resting point. Where were the places that I keep coming back to in the book are places where the punch line almost makes you want to cry because it’s just, you know, it’s funny because it’s tragic.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：但这出喜剧却深深扎根于悲剧之中。所以我会在这些地方停下来，反复阅读，不断回味着书里妙趣横生却让人忍不住落泪的句子。它们很有意思，也很有悲剧色彩。

Zachary Davis: So let’s now move to its afterlives, posthumous reception of The Posthumous Memoirs. So I guess it would be helpful for you to take us through, and you’ve alluded to it before a little bit, but this text influence on Brazilian culture and life.

扎克里·戴维斯：我们来谈谈这本书的后续影响吧——后世的人们如何回忆这本“死后的回忆录”呢？您刚刚也提到了一点这方面的内容，不过可以再带我们了解一下吗？这本书对巴西社会与文化的影响太大了。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: Within Brazil is sort of the novel, you know, it has this pioneering aspect of the novel that showed what Brazilian novels could do. And once you’ve had your dead narrator riding a hippopotamus toward the source of all time in Chapter Seven, that’s just like that has this tremendously fertile effect. And so there’s the narrative impact and then there’s the sort of the social impact of what Machado did in, you know, being this very prominent author and being the founding president of, you know, the Brazilian Academy of Letters is really his baby and sort of fostering this space for the professionalization of literature.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：这本小说在巴西具有开创性的意义，展现了巴西小说可以是什么样的。在第七章，你可以看到死去的主人公骑着河马来到了时间的源头，这些手法都给后世的作家带去了丰富的灵感。这是文学层面的影响。在社会层面上，马查多成长为一个举足轻重的作家，担任了巴西文学院的首位院长，关注着文学院的发展，搭建了一个文学职业化发展的平台。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: You know, I think there have been very few times in Brazilian history or in history in general when authors have been able to live from their craft. But at least this is a step towards that sort of formal recognition in institutionalization of Brazilian letters, and that really in a nation that had not that much literary production.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我觉得巴西乃至全世界的历史上，很少有作家能靠自己的作品安身立命。但在这个文学作品相对不那么丰富的国家，巴西文学院的建立至少标志着对巴西文学体系化发展的正式认同。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: So it’s astounding that, you know, this is you know, it’s not one of the first Brazilian novels by any means. But it is, you know, it’s almost a foundational novel. And Machado has never gone away. Machado has never not been canonical. He’s everywhere. And this notion of the sardonic narrator, I mean, of the I’ve seen people link it to the ways in which voiceover is used in in Brazilian TV. I mean, it’s just something that gets baked into the DNA of cultural production.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：从任何层面上看，《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆录》都不是巴西第一部小说。但它却是巴西一部奠基性的小说。马查多的影响从未消失，他的影响不仅渗透到了文学经典中，还渗透到了方方面面。这种讽刺式的叙述方式甚至影响了如今巴西电视节目解说词。他的这些贡献已经完全渗入到了巴西文化中。

Zachary Davis: Not many Brazilian texts get translated for American readers. In fact, not many translated texts in general make it into the hands of American readers at all. Only 3% of published works in the US are translations.

扎克里·戴维斯：译介到美国的巴西文学不是很多，其实译介到美国的非英语文学总的来看也不多。在美国出版的文学作品中，只有3%是翻译文学。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: He was translated into only a few languages during his lifetime. He died in 1908 and his first novel to be published in English, which was this one, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, but it was published as Epitaph of a Small Winner in 1952. So, you know, from 1880 to 1952, you’re obviously going to lose a lot of the impact.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：在马查多生前，他的作品仅仅被翻译成了寥寥几种语言。1908年，马查多去世了。1952年，这部小说被首次翻译成英文。这一版的名字是“小赢家的墓志铭”。从1880年小说问世，到1952年进入美国市场，中间这几十年，小说失去了多少在美国传播的机会。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And then he arrives in English literature as this peculiar anachronism where in reading it, you can certainly appreciate the humor, the delicacy, the sort of deranged aspects of it. But you won’t understand necessarily why this is so much more than a, you know, Tristram Shandy in the tropics, unless you have this historical context.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：它步入了英语文学市场，姗姗来迟。翻开书页，你可以感受到书中的幽默、精巧与癫狂。但除非你了解巴西的历史，否则你很难理解，为什么不能把它单单看作热带版的《项狄传》。

Zachary Davis: The most popular Latin American authors that the US reads are Gabriel García Márquez, and Jorge Borges. When Machado’s work made it to the US in the 1950s, readers were given an entirely new view of Latin American literature and culture. And slowly but surely, Machado kept gaining admirers.

扎克里·戴维斯：美国人最喜欢的拉美作家是加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯和豪尔赫·博尔赫斯。20世纪50年代，当马查多的作品引入美国之后，读者对拉美文学和文化有了全新的认识，喜欢马查多的读者也渐渐变多了。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: With every generation, so to speak, of translations, Machado gains a little great, a little, you know, a few more people in the fan club. And it’s an illustrious fan club. You know, there’s Susan Sontag and, you know, Salman Rushdie and Allen Ginsberg. And, you know, it’s just, you know, it’s a who’s who. Woody Allen, and now Dave Eggers.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：可以说，每一代译本都能为马查多带来一批忠实粉丝。而且不少粉丝可都大名鼎鼎，比如苏珊·桑塔格、萨尔曼·鲁西迪、艾伦·金斯伯格、有名的伍迪·艾伦和当代作家戴夫·艾格斯。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: And in terms of how it’s received, you know, for a novel written in 1880, maybe it had to arrive in the United States again after we had absorbed this sort of sardonic, very matter literature of a whole generation, you know, of the likes of Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, you know, getting used to people really playing with text and even with, you know, formatting and things like that to be able to feel at home with a Latin American piece of work that is doing exactly the same thing. But, you know, a full century earlier.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：至于读者反响如何，或许对于这部1880年问世的小说来说，它在美国姗姗来迟是一种必然。这时的我们已经读过了戴夫·艾格斯、大卫·福斯特·华莱士这一代作家的小说，已经习惯了作者在形式和排版上做文章，也就更容易接受一部同样这么做的拉美小说。但我们要知道，这部拉美小说在形式上的创新可是要早了整整一个世纪。

Zachary Davis: With The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, Machado de Assis found a way to depict society and government from a different angle and reveal truths often overlooked by those in power. This indirect style has been adopted by many authors and artists over the years as a more effective method for critiquing the way we live and function as a society.

扎克里·戴维斯：在《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆录》中，马查多·德·阿西斯找到了一种新的方式来描绘巴西社会与巴西政府，揭示了常常被巴西权贵们忽视的一角。多年来，这种间接的手法被许多作家和艺术家运用，以此更有力地批判我们的生活方式和社会运转模式。

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux: We have all these debates and all these anxieties about, you know, what art is relevant and urgent in these times of such great evil and Brás Cubas is a strange, you know, example of what you can do. You know, when talking about a mixed race man in a society where slavery is legal, writing to the slave owners. It’s this very clever and unexpected way of posing a social critique within something that is nonetheless the finest, you know, literature that that you could want.

弗洛拉·汤姆森·德维奥：我们常常会探讨，同时也会担心，在一些乌云密布的时代，艺术能有怎样的现实意义。《布拉斯·库巴斯死后的回忆录》这部奇特的小说给了我们答案。在奴隶制尚未彻底废除的年代，这个奴隶的后代给一群奴隶主贵族写了一本批判他们的书。这种以喜剧为外壳、以批判现实为内核的手法非常聪明，也非常出人意料，也让这本书成了大家心中无可替代的文学经典。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu 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！