【英文翻译版90】约瑟夫·索雷特：《下一次将是烈火》

英文文稿+中文翻译

Zachary Davis: The writer and activist James Baldwin grew up in a majority white America that saw white American lives as standard and universal, and Black American lives as different and particular.

扎卡里·戴维斯：作家和社会活动家詹姆斯·鲍德温成长于白人为主的美国。在美国，白人的生活是标准的、普遍的，而黑人的生活则被认为是有别于标准和普遍的，是一种特殊的生活。

Zachary Davis: But in his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, Baldwin showed that his life as a Black man in America was universally human. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：然而，在他1963年发表的散文集《下一次将是烈火》中，詹姆斯·鲍德温向人们展示了作为一个美国黑人，他在美国的生活所隐含的“普遍性”。

Josef Sorett: I mean, he's participating within a tradition that is insisting that the quotidien of Black life is, in fact, the path for him, as one who comes out of that experience to the universal right. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：那个所谓的“黑人的日常生活”，鲍德温曾置身其中。但他正是经历了这种被贴上“特殊性”标签的生活，才找到了其中的“普遍性”。

Josef Sorett: It's sort of refusing the logic that has insisted that the particular and the universal were at odds with one another. And that the Black experience especially could never transcend the realm of particular. Right. That his writing is going to bring readers to a view of the universal by mining the specifics of his own experience and the Black experience. Right. This is, I think, very much the space of the traditional Black modernist writing in which he is located. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：这其实是对将“普遍性”和“特殊性”对立起来的逻辑的拒斥。鲍德温尤其反对黑人生活经验无法超越“特殊性”的观点。鲍德温通过深挖自己的个人经历和其他黑人群体的具体经历，展现出黑人生活中的普遍性。这也是传统的黑人现代主义作家常用的手法。

Josef Sorett: The degree to which his own story becomes a space for thinking about these questions is in some ways, that's his gift, right, to American readers, to his brothers, Black and White, is that invitation to wrestle more honestly with this legacy that is the nation's. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温用自己的经历，引发大家对美国黑人生活的思考。这是他献给美国读者，献给黑人和白人兄弟的礼物，也是他向大家发出的邀请函。种族不平等是在美国长期存在的问题，鲍德温邀请更多人参与到同种族不平等的斗争中来。

Josef Sorett: My name is Josef Sorett, I'm a professor of religion and African-American studies at Columbia University. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：我叫约瑟夫·索雷特，是哥伦比亚大学的教授，主要研究宗教和非裔美国文化。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin chose the title The Fire Next Time to signal a warning.

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温为他的作品取名《下一次将是烈火》，也是希望借此传递对世人的警戒。

Josef Sorett: I mean, this was the prophecy right? He was appealing to the spirituals, but also appealing to the Biblical story of Noah, where no more water, this idea that if the nation does not rise to wrestle with the fullness of its history of white supremacist violence and colonialism, his argument is that these things were burning. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：这是鲍德温发出的预言。他相信黑人圣歌的力量；也相信圣经故事里诺亚方舟故事的隐喻：如果这个国家不能与其白人至上主义和殖民主义的历史进行搏斗，它或将再次面临毁灭，但这次来的不再是洪水，而是烈火。

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 Josef Sorett to discuss James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：改变你和世界的100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讨论一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我将和约瑟夫·索雷特教授一起讨论詹姆斯·鲍德温的《下一次将是烈火》。

Zachary Davis: James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem, New York City. His mother was from Maryland, but moved north to New York during the Great Migration. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1924年，詹姆斯·鲍德温出生在纽约市的哈莱姆区。他的母亲来自马里兰州，在黑人大迁徙时期北上来到纽约。

Josef Sorett: So when we're talking about the Great Migration, we're talking about the mass migration of millions of African-Americans from, on one hand, rural environments in the South to urban environments in the South, but then at the same time, from the South to the North. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：美国黑人大迁徙时期，数以百万计的非裔美国人，从南部的农村迁徙到了南部的城市，或从南部迁徙到了北部。

Josef Sorett: Right, and so you have millions of African-Americans around the period of World War One leaving the South, Mississippi, what is often referred to as the Black belt, which had been the home of plantation slavery. In the aftermath of World War One, throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s, you have millions of African-Americans leaving Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi and what have you and migrating to, of course, out west to California, but especially to the urban north with stopping in places like Memphis and Nashville, but ending up in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, where there had been a historic African-American community going back much earlier, but also to New York where Baldwin's family lands.

约瑟夫·索雷特：在第一次世界大战期间，数百万非裔美国人离开了南部的密西西比州。密西西比州通常被称为黑带，这里是种植园奴隶制的发源地。在第一次世界大战之后，即20世纪20至40年代间，又有数百万非裔美国人离开了佐治亚州、南卡罗来纳州、北卡罗来纳州和密西西比州，他们迁徙到了加利福尼亚州西部，主要是几个北部的城市，他们途经孟菲斯和纳什维尔等地，最终去到底特律、费城等地。费城有一个历史悠久的非裔美国人社区。也有人像鲍德温家一样，最终到了纽约。

Josef Sorett: So by the end of the 60s, right, if in the nineteen teens, the rural South was the primary home of African-American life, by the end of the 60s, we have a situation in which Black folk have become thoroughly urbanized, if you will. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：20世纪20年代，非裔美国人主要生活在南部农村，而到了20世纪60年代末，凡是有迁徙意向的黑人都到了城市。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin’s mother left his biological father before he was born and married a Baptist preacher in Harlem. His new stepfather was harsh and domineering, so young Baldwin spent a lot of time out of his house—often, at the library. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温的母亲在鲍德温出生前离开了他的生父，并嫁给了哈莱姆地区的一位浸信会牧师。鲍德温的继父是一位严厉的虎爸，儿时的鲍德温常常呆在图书馆里而不是呆在家里。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin's talent for writing emerged early. When he was 10, he wrote a play that one of his teachers directed. When he was 13, he published an article in his school’s magazine, and in high school, he worked as the literary editor for his school’s publication.

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温自小就展露出了写作天赋。10岁的时候，鲍德温创作了一部剧本，交由他的一位老师担任导演；13岁的时候，他就在学校杂志发表了文章。到了高中阶段，鲍德温成为了学校校刊的文学编辑。

Zachary Davis: Despite his passion for writing, his stepfather decided he should follow in his footsteps and pursue a career as a preacher. Baldwin wasn’t really fond of the church but he did end up becoming a junior minister when he was still in high school. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温对写作极富热情，但他的继父还是决定让他继承自己的衣钵，成为一名牧师。鲍德温尽管并非真正地热爱教会，但还是在高中时期成为了一名年轻的牧师。

Zachary Davis: He later reflected on this decision by saying, “...I was so afraid of everything else, that in a way I ended up with the devil I knew.” 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温后来反思过自己的决定，他说： “我非常害怕一切外部事务，在某种程度上我最终成为了自己眼中的魔鬼。”

Zachary Davis: Even though his heart wasn’t in it, he was good at preaching. He quickly started drawing larger crowds than his stepfather did. But by age 17, he’d had enough. His time in the church led him to see Christianity as a racist, hypocritical practice built on false premises. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温尽管志不在此，可还是很擅长布道，很快他比他继父更受欢迎。但到了 17 岁的时候，鲍德温受够了在教会的生活。 他在教会的经历，让他认识到基督教建立在错误的前提上，带有种族主义色彩，是虚伪的。

Josef Sorett: After his foray in the church, exits the church and owns an aspiration as a writer. And so he's very much studying and reading profusely, the sort of range of the American literary tradition.

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温加入教会又离开教会，最终坚定了成为作家的理想。他大量地阅读和学习美国传统文学。

Zachary Davis: After graduating from high school, Baldwin moved from Harlem to New York’s Greenwich Village. It was the early 1940s, and Greenwich Village was bursting with artistic and cultural energy. Baldwin became friends with a painter named Beauford Delaney. Baldwin and Delaney had a lot in common. They were both gay, Black, and loved the arts. Delaney was a great role model for Baldwin, because he was a successful Black artist in New York—something Baldwin aspired to be. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：高中毕业后，鲍德温离开哈莱姆，搬到了纽约的格林威治村。20世纪40年代的格林威治村洋溢着艺术和文化的气息。鲍德温和画家博福德·德莱尼成为了至交好友。鲍德温和德莱尼有很多共通之处，比如都是同性恋，都是黑人，都热爱艺术。鲍德温将德莱尼视为偶像，他希望自己也可以像德莱尼一样，成为一名在纽约有影响力的黑人艺术家。

Zachary Davis: Delaney introduced Baldwin to jazz and taught him how to see the world through the eyes of an artist, encouraging him to look at things critically, to see beneath the surface, and find beauty in things that are seemingly ugly. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：德莱尼带领鲍德温走进爵士音乐，教鲍德温以艺术家的眼光看世界。德莱尼鼓励鲍德温以批判的眼光看待事物，穿透表象的丑陋找到内涵的美丽。

Zachary Davis: Around this time, Baldwin began to spend more time on his writing. He wrote mostly short stories, essays, and book reviews. Things were going well for him, but nearly every day he experienced some form of racism.

扎卡里·戴维斯：也是在这个时期，鲍德温开始将更多精力用于写作。他当时写的主要是短篇故事、散文随笔和书籍评论。鲍德温在格林威治村的生活过得还不错，但每天他都会经历不同形式的种族歧视。

Zachary Davis: One evening in 1948, he finally had enough. Baldwin went to see a movie with a friend and afterwards, he decided to get something to eat. He intentionally went to a restaurant that only served white people. When the waiter refused to serve him, he picked up a water glass and threw it at her. The glass shattered the mirror behind the bar, and Baldwin ran out of the restaurant. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1948年的某个夜晚成为了压垮鲍德温的最后一根稻草。当晚，他和朋友一起看电影，随后一起吃饭。他们特地选了一家只招待白人的餐厅。服务员拒绝了为鲍德温提供服务，鲍德温随手拿起一只玻璃水杯扔向了服务员。玻璃杯打碎了吧台后面的镜子，鲍德温随即跑出了餐厅。

Zachary Davis: He needed an escape from racism. One of Baldwin’s mentors, the American author Richard Wright, was living in Paris, and he encouraged Baldwin to join him. At age 24, Baldwin left New York for Paris. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温急需摆脱种族歧视。鲍德温的导师之一，美国作家理查德·赖特邀请鲍德温来巴黎跟自己一同生活。二十四岁的鲍德温离开了纽约，动身前往巴黎。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin’s time in France was liberating. In 1953 he published his first novel called Go Tell It on the Mountain—a semi autobiographical story of a young man growing up in Harlem. Two years later he published a collection of essays called Notes of a Native Son, which was a critique of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温到了法国后完全释放了自己的创作热情。1953年，他发表了小说处女作《向苍天呼吁》，这是一部半自传体作品，讲述了一个年轻人在哈莱姆地区成长的故事。两年后，鲍德温发表了散文集《土生子札记》，这部作品是对理查德·赖特小说《土生子》的反思。

Josef Sorett: The first Black literary celebrity, if you will, Richard Wright in Native Son, which becomes a Book of the Month Club celebration that sort of launches Richard Wright to literary fame, but then also becomes the subject of Baldwin's critique inNotes of a Native Son, especially within the context of his essay, “Everybody's Protest Novel”.

约瑟夫·索雷特：理查德·赖特可以算得上第一位黑人名作家，他的小说《土生子》获得了美国每月读书会推荐，他也因这部作品在文坛声名鹊起。但《土生子》随后成为鲍德温散文集《土生子札记》批判的对象。鲍德温将自己对《土生子》的批判与反思写在了散文《每个人的抗争小说》里。

Zachary Davis: Richard Wright published Native Son in 1940, and it was a huge success. The book was categorized as a protest novel because it is a fictional work that dramatizes racial injustice through its impact on the characters in the novel. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1940年，理查德·赖特发表了《土生子》，大获好评。这本书被归为抗争小说，赖特在书里用戏剧化的手段，刻画小说人物，将种族不平等展现在读者面前。

Zachary Davis: Native Son tells the story of a poor young Black man named Bigger Thomas who goes to work for a wealthy white family in Chicago and accidentally kills a young white woman. Throughout the novel, Wright does not apologize for Thomas’s crime, but shows how he is a product of a society built to oppress Black Americans. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《土生子》的主人公别格·托马斯是一位年轻又贫穷的黑人男性，他在芝加哥为富有的白人家庭工作， 但他错手杀死了一位年轻的白人女性。整部小说中，赖特并不是在为托马斯的罪行道歉，而是展现了别格的成长，他是如何在美国社会对黑人的重压下，成为了这样的人。

Zachary Davis: Native Son helped explain to white Americans the racial divide in America, and showed the ways that the dominant white society systematically oppressed Black Americans. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《土生子》向美国白人展现了美国的种族分裂情况，也描述了以白人为主的美国社会如何压迫黑人群体。

Zachary Davis: The success of the book made Wright a public figure, however, Baldwin felt that there was more to say. He was quite critical of protest novels, and he shared his view in his 1955 collection of essays called Notes of a Native Son. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《土生子》的成功让赖特成为了公众人物。但是鲍德温认为《土生子》也有局限性。鲍德温对抗争小说一直持有异议，他将自己的观点集结成散文集《土生子札记》，并在1955年发表。

Josef Sorett: This sort of critique of the protest novel, he likens it, or locates it within a tradition going back to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Right. And the idea and the argument is that novels within this tradition traffic in racial caricatures and stereotypes and don't give you a sense of the full complexity of humanity. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温认为抗争小说体系的形成，可以从《汤姆叔叔的小屋》说起。他认为这一体系下的小说过于注重展现对种族歧视的讽刺和刻板印象，而没有展现出人性的复杂。

Zachary Davis: Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. LikeNative Son, it attempted to portray Black Americans in a more human light. But Baldwin thought these novels did just the opposite—they were limiting in their portrayal of Black Americans.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：《汤姆叔叔的小屋》是哈里特·比彻·斯托在 1852 年发表的小说。与《土生子》 一样，这两部小说都试图用人性的视角描绘美国黑人形象。 但鲍德温认为这两部小说呈现出来的东西恰恰相反，它们对美国黑人的刻画有局限性。

Josef Sorett: So he critiques, I guess, you could write a case of literary patricide, where he's attacking, going after, taking down his mentor as a sort of key way of differentiating his own vision. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温公开发表对《土生子》的质疑，可以称之为文坛“弑父”行为。他通过攻击和贬低自己的导师，凸显自己观点的与众不同之处。

Zachary Davis: Was it that the Black characters were flat because they were tools rather than humans? That they were meant to reveal injustice, but through that, they strip kind of the complex humanity, the flawed details that actually mark a real life human being?

扎卡里·戴维斯：为什么小说中的黑人角色总是比较扁平化？是因为作者将黑人角色视作展现不公平的工具，而忽视了对人性的细节和多面性的刻画吗？

Josef Sorett: That's exactly right. So, you know, for Baldwin, he begins in that critique by looking at Uncle Tom's Cabin, right? And so looking at the figure of Uncle Tom, these characters, which he would call them caricatures, right, are less about a complicated human being with a range of emotions and experiences and sort of an individual, and this is very much a focus of the modernist novel of the sort of individual, individuation, and they're more stand-ins for a particular theme, for a particular problem, for a particular question. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：你说的很对。鲍德温首先对《汤姆叔叔的小屋》提出质疑。汤姆叔叔这个角色，鲍德温称之为戏剧化的形象，并不是一个丰满的人物。汤姆叔叔没有感情，没有经历，只是某一特定议题的化身。而鲍德温所推崇的现代主义流派，特别强调人物个性的塑造。

Josef Sorett: And so we move in Baldwin's critique from a discussion of Uncle Tom to, right, Bigger Thomas, the central protagonist in Native Son, where again, Richard Wright is working within a tradition of the naturalist novel, which part of the goal is to demonstrate the degree to which a set of structural arrangements reduce human capacity for flourishing, right? And so a set of structural forces compound and come down upon Bigger that place real constraints on his ability to flourish as a human being. That's part of the point of the tradition of naturalism is to show what these structures of oppression do to individuals. But Baldwin's point, sort of the critique, the argument is that Richard Wright, through taking on the tradition of naturalism, falls prey to a similar critique.

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温接着批判《土生子》的主人公别格·托马斯。理查德·赖特沿袭了自然主义小说的传统，着重展现社会结构对人自身发展的限制。社会结构的重压限制了别格自我发展的潜力。自然主义讲究展示结构性压迫对个人的影响。理查德·赖特沿袭了自然主义的传统，也就自然成为了鲍德温质疑的对象。

Josef Sorett: We get less of a capacity to see the complexity of what a young Black man growing up within the context of racial segregation, within the context of the urban north, in a place of Chicago, you don't get to see the complexity of what it would be mean to be Bigger Thomas, rather than getting to see Bigger Thomas as representative of the plight of young African-American men. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：《土生子》的读者无法看到，在种族隔离的大背景下，成长于芝加哥北部城区的黑人男青年性格的多面性。我们看到的只是以别格·托马斯为代表的年轻非裔美国男性面临的困境，但看不到别格·托马斯这个人物的个性。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin wasn’t interested in writing protest novels, he wanted his writing to embrace the universal.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温对创作抗争小说不感兴趣，他希望自己的作品能够呈现普世的价值观。

Josef Sorett: He is part of a new generation of Black writers who squarely see themselves within a tradition of modernism, the modernist novel, the sort of emphasis on form and the sort of claim of universal literature over against sort of political themes. And so Baldwin alongside a figure like Ralph Ellison, whose book Invisible Man, his first novel comes out around the same time and wins the National Book Award. And Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain was also shortlisted for the same award around the same time. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温是新一代黑人作家，尊崇现代主义流派的传统，强调文学的形式，认为文学作品应该传递普世的价值而非针对特定的政治议题。拉尔夫·埃里森也是现代主义流派的代表人物，他的第一部小说《看不见的人》和鲍德温的《向苍天呼吁》差不多同时出版，两部作品也同时入围了美国国家图书奖，最终《看不见的人》获得此项奖项。

Josef Sorett: As early as the late 1940s, there is an effort to emphasize experimentalism and formalism over against racial themes. And this is sort of part of a tradition that going back to the 1920s, Black writers have been grappling with, what Langston Hughes describes as the Negro artist and the racial mountain, what the Black visual artist Romare Bearden writes about in the 50s as the dilemma of the Negro artist, right, this sort of idea that regardless of how one writes, the Black writer is placed in a particular kind of category because of the racial descriptor.

约瑟夫·索雷特：在20世纪40年代后期，文学界掀起了一股潮流，推崇实验主义和形式主义，而不是拘泥于反对种族不平等的议题。这股潮流甚至可以追溯到20世纪20年代，黑人作家一直在尝试推翻兰斯顿·休斯笔下的“黑人艺术家与种族大山”。黑人视觉艺术家罗马勒·比尔敦在 50 年代发表了《黑人艺术家的困境》，无论一个黑人作家创作出的作品是怎样的，黑人作家总因为他们的种族标签被单独划分出来。

Josef Sorett: And so there's a tradition of writing within, through and against that to argue that Black writing ought not be subject to the same sort of racial logics of Jim Crow, of racial segregation or the sociological categories that Black writing ought to be subject to the same literary and aesthetic categories. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：黑人作家反对用吉姆·克劳法案的逻辑，以种族隔离的标准来审视黑人文学作品，他们认为黑人文学作品应该和别的文学作品一样，用同样的文学和审美标准来研读。

Josef Sorett: But how does one insist on creative expression and independence of mind in light of a set of expectations, whether from racial leadership on one hand, or from a white public and readership on the other, that expects certain things, whether thematically, aesthetically or structurally from Black writers. And so you see both Ellison and Baldwin, right, sort of making a claim for the universal and for the formal excellence of Black folk culture. And for Baldwin especially, this is seen in the context of the Black church, right. That here is the stuff of human art. And so Baldwin is making that critique and claim within his sort of nonfiction essay writing, in Notes of a Native Son and something like “Everybody's Protest Novel”, and then he enacts it and performs it in Go Tell It on the Mountain. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：无论是种族斗争的领导者，还是白人读者，都会对黑人作家呈现的文学作品主题、内容和结构有所期待。在这些期待之下，作家如何保持创造力和思考的独立性呢？埃里森和鲍德温都强调黑人民间文化的普世性和形式上的卓越性。这一点也体现在鲍德温对黑人教会的看法里。鲍德温在散文集《土生子札记》和批评文章《每个人的抗争小说》中对自然主义提出了质疑，他强调黑人文学的普世性，也在自己的作品《向苍天呼吁》里将这一点发挥到极致。

Zachary Davis: So he publishes these works in the 50s, they're well received, he keeps publishing. What else does his life and literary career look like until his death?

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温在20世纪50年代发表的作品都获得了好评，他也一直在坚持创作。他之后的人生和文学创作又发生了什么呢？

Josef Sorett: So he does continue to publish. He publishes other novels. Themes that are there in Go Tell It on the Mountain he continues to wrestle with. The story of a young man coming of age, grappling with a religious tradition, sorting through questions of sexual desire, right, Baldwin’s own sexuality. He’s writing about sexuality in his own sort of movement between Black Harlem and the downtown scene.

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温一直在坚持写作，发表了很多小说。小说主题和《向苍天呼吁》一脉相承，大多以年轻人为主人公，讲述了他们长大成人，打破宗教传统，直面性向偏好的故事。鲍德温以自己从哈莱姆黑人区搬到市中心格林威治村的故事，呼吁读者正视同性恋。

Josef Sorett: So he’s wrestling with these questions. And he writes about this first in the context of Paris, as a space that’s seen as liberating as it relates to the context of the racial and gender mores of a Harlem and of the United States in Giovanni’s Room. But it’s not a Black space that he’s writing about, it’s in a different context. And then he brings these themes together in his 6th novel Just Above My Head, where he now is wrestling with questions of race and homosexuality and identity but within the context of the African-American experience. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温一直试图打破外界对黑人和同性恋的成见。 当时的巴黎对种族和同性恋议题的态度更为开放，鲍德温在巴黎发表了《乔凡尼的房间》，这是他第一次在作品中涉及同性恋议题。《乔凡尼的房间》这本书并没有涉及种族问题，主要聚焦同性恋议题。随后，鲍德温的第六部小说《就在我头上》塑造了一个非裔美国人形象，通过他的故事论述种族、同性恋和身份认同等主题。

Josef Sorett: So, you know, we can see all these things as a through line through his novels. But then we can also see the degree to which he is writing on a range of questions about race and about identity and about citizenship, we think about collections of essays like “No Name in the Street”. And so I think to look at The Fire Next Time at the heart of the 1960s, Baldwin still has a couple of decades ahead of him before his death in 1984, and so this is very much a text in between the times, and also in the middle of his life in thinking about his production as his career.

约瑟夫·索雷特：这些议题贯穿鲍德温所有作品，他发表了很多散文，包括《街上的无名者》，借作品表达自己对种族、身份认同、公民权利等话题的看法。《下一次将是烈火》是鲍德温在60年代发表的作品，此时距离他1984年离世还有二十多年的时间，这部作品可以看作鲍德温对自己前半生创作生涯的一个总结。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin stayed in France for about 9 years. Back home in the US, the civil rights movement was just beginning. Black Americans and their allies were campaigning to end legalized racial discrimination and segregation. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温在法国呆了约九年。他回到美国时，民权运动刚刚萌芽。美国黑人和盟友要求结束种族歧视和种族隔离的合法地位。

Zachary Davis: The movement had some initial success. In 1954, in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：民权运动取得了初步成功。在1954年的布朗诉教育委员会案中，最高法院裁定公立学校的种族隔离行为违宪。

Zachary Davis:Many white Americans fought integration. In 1957, a fifteen year old Black student named Dorothy Counts enrolled in a previously all white school in Charlotte, North Carolina. On her first day of school she was met with an angry mob who yelled, spat, and threw rocks at her. When Baldwin saw news coverage of the event, he decided to move back home and join the fight for civil rights. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：也有许多白人反对种族融合。1957年，15岁的黑人小女孩多罗西·康茨被北卡罗莱纳州夏洛特市的一所学校录取，这所学校此前仅录取白人学生。康茨到学校报道的第一天，她遇到了一群愤怒的暴徒，这群暴徒肆意地冲她喊叫、吐口水、扔石头。鲍德温看到这条新闻后，决定回到美国加入民权运动。

Zachary Davis: He returned to the United States in 1957 and became an active member in the civil rights movement. He continued writing, and in 1962 published two essays that would become The Fire Next Time. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1957年，鲍德温回到美国，积极地参与到民权运动中。他也坚持写作，并在1962年发表了《下一次将是烈火》，这部作品收录了两篇散文。

Zachary Davis: The first essay, "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" was originally published in a magazine called The Progressive in 1962. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：其中的第一篇散文是《我的地牢在震动：在解放黑人奴隶一百周年纪念日，给我侄子的信》，这篇散文此前刊登在《进步》杂志上。

Zachary Davis: What is that first essay arguing? How does it make its argument?

扎卡里·戴维斯：这第一篇散文的主要观点是什么？他是如何论述的？

Josef Sorett: So the first, shorter essay, which is almost often overlooked, is a letter to his nephew, right. Basically about the inheritance and burden of growing up as a young Black man. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：第一篇散文是比较短的，也经常被读者忽视。这是鲍德温写给侄子的一封信，主要关于黑人青年在成长过程中，如何继承黑人文化，打破外界成见。

Josef Sorett: I mean, it's akin to the sort of conversation that we often talk about as “the talk”. It’s a sort of preface, Baldwin’s wishes for his nephew and thinking about "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation", sort of the question of unrealized freedom and what does that mean for a young Black man coming of age in the 1960s? Right. As we're talking about this, you know, the years after Brown v. Board, but the years before the passing of civil rights legislation, what does it mean for his nephew to live in the body of a young Black man? And so the sort of promises and hopes and desires for his nephew. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：这篇散文形式上类似我们常说的“议论文”，是一篇序言，是鲍德温对侄子的寄语。鲍德温在这篇散文里强调了自由尚未实现，也论述了这对于成长在20世纪60年代的年轻黑人意味着什么；以及在布朗诉教育委员会案之后，民权法案正式通过之前的几年时间里，年轻的黑人应该做些什么。总结来说，这篇散文是他对侄子的承诺、期望和寄语。

Zachary Davis: What is he trying to help his nephew understand?

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温想向侄子传递哪些内容？

Josef Sorett: One of the themes that shows up throughout the book, and I think across both the essays is a brute recognition of the realities of race and the degree to which they can lead you to a place of bitterness, rightfully. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：对种族现实的片面认识，以及这种狭隘认知可能带来的痛苦，是贯穿全书的一个主题。

Josef Sorett: Baldwin will write elsewhere, that to be relatively conscious as a Black person in the world is to be in an almost constant state of rage. Yet, the exhortation in this loveless world is to push towards this idea of love—to resist and refuse that bitterness, even if that is your portion every day. So there's a degree to which Baldwin wants to exhort his nephew to embrace the fullness of his own humanity—to not accept the expectations of the world for him as a young Black man. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温在别的作品中提到过，如果黑人在生活中总是比较清晰地认识到自己的黑人身份，这意味着他们几乎要时时处于愤怒的状态里。鲍德温对侄子的劝诫是，你应该在这个无爱的世界里保持爱，以此来抵御你所经历的那些苦涩，哪怕这是你天天都会经历的事。鲍德温希望他的侄子可以拥抱自己完整的人性，不要被外界对黑人青年的成见所禁锢。

Josef Sorett: He points to the language of mediocrity. He is inspiring his nephew towards excellence, even though the expectation in the world, by virtue of the color of his skin, would be for him to embrace mediocrity. And so Baldwin is, on one hand, attempting to be brutally honest about how the world views him and his nephew and what the world might present to them and expect of them, but insisting that his duty is to not concede to those forces.

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温还提到了他对平庸的理解。虽然外界对黑皮肤的青年人并没有太高期待，但鲍德温鼓励自己的侄子以卓越为目标。鲍德温将社会对他，对他侄子，对黑人的偏见和成见赤裸裸地呈现在侄子面前，但也告诫侄子不要跟外界的评价和压力妥协。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin doesn’t shy away from telling his nephew of the brutal realities of life for a Black man in America. But despite the racial divide in this country, Baldwin’s message is a unifying one. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温坦诚地将黑人在美国面临的残酷处境告诉他的侄子，但无论这个国家多么的分裂，鲍德温始终在期待种族融合。

Josef Sorett: Baldwin, throughout the book, wrestles and is exhorting his readers, in this case, his nephew, to recognize the persistence and power of race and the nation's capacity willfully to ignore the history, to deny it, to render it invisible. And yet the insistence that despite that divide, that his fellow citizens, white folk, are still his brothers and sisters and right. So we see this very much at the end of his letter to his nephew.

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温在整本书中都在努力告诫他的侄子，要认识到种族分歧的持久力和破坏力，以及美国故意无视历史、否认历史、使之遁匿于历史视野的可能性。鲍德温在信的最后还提到，尽管种族间存在分裂，白人依旧是黑人的兄弟姐妹。

Josef Sorett: Despite the reasonable response to the realities of Jim Crow and white supremacy, the refusal to allow those logics to govern one's relationship across the color line, right. Here, I think about just the final page where he says, “But these men are your brothers.” And he's thinking here, of course, about other young Black men growing up. But Baldwin continues to extend the language of brotherhood across the lines of race. And so America is home, Black and white are brothers and sisters, regardless of the ways in which white supremacy continues to bear down on those relationships, and Baldwin extends that argument, that insistence on a kind of humanity across the lines of race, of brotherhood. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：尽管对吉米·克劳法案和白人至上主义提出了一些合理的解释，鲍德温坚持拒绝按肤色将人类分群，限制不同肤色间的往来。鲍德温在书的最后一页写道“这些人是你的兄弟。”这句话是鲍德温想传递给其他黑人青年的，他还有很多关于打破种族壁垒的言论。美国是家，黑人和白人是兄弟姐妹，无论白人至上主义如何影响着兄弟姐妹之间的情谊，鲍德温坚持打破种族界限，建立跨种族的兄弟情谊。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin’s hope for racial harmony was met with criticism.

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温对种族融合的希望受到了很多质疑。

Josef Sorett: And this is at a particular moment where the sort of tensions between civil rights organizing which, associated with a figure like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the sort of tradition of nonviolent resistance is increasingly growing in tension with a younger generation of activists and artists associated with the Black Power, which was also a longer standing tradition within African-American culture, but it is reaching the fore in the 1960s. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：当时不同民权组织之间关系紧张。以马丁·路德·金为代表的传统民权运动家主张非暴力，与年轻一代的社会活动家和艺术家关系紧张。年轻一代的社会活动家和艺术家大多受到黑人权力理念的影响，这一理念在20世纪60年代萌芽，继承了非裔美国人的传统和习俗。

Josef Sorett: It’s in these early 60s that a figure like Stokely Carmichael, who had been in Mississippi and marching alongside King, gives voice to this growing intensity and mobilization around the language of Black Power as a critique of the perceived limitations of integrationist politic. And so as a sort of the artistic iteration of a Black nationalist politic that sort of is very clear about the limits of the nation state for providing Black people with emancipation and freedom, there is a clear frustration with an insistence on the universalism, on a vision of human brotherhood across the lines of race that remains a through line. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：正是在 60 年代初，来自密西西比州、曾经与马丁·路德·金并肩作战的斯托克利·卡迈克尔为逐渐壮大的黑人权力发声，批评种族融合理念的局限性。不同于黑人民族主义政治家，新一代的艺术家们认为民族国家难以为黑人提供解放和自由。他们认为普世的价值无法实现，也不相信种族之间可以建立起跨越肤色鸿沟的情谊。

Zachary Davis: The second essay in The Fire Next Time is called, "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind". 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《下一次将是烈火》收录的第二篇散文是《十字架之下：来自我脑海中某个区域的信》。

Zachary Davis: Could you take us through, what is the argument of this essay?

扎卡里·戴维斯：能否请您分析一下这一篇散文的主要观点？

Josef Sorett: Yes, I mean, it's deeply personal. From the outset, it's his own story of religious crisis. This is where he begins in his teenage years and an account in some ways, you could say, as a psychology of religion—about what he was going through as a young man in Harlem, wrestling with sort of the pronounced racial politics of Harlem at this particular moment in time, which is to say in segregated Harlem of the Great Migration, and what were perceived to be the limit opportunities for him as a young Black man, the expectations that he has already sort of written about in thinking about his nephew in the earlier essay, talking about his efforts to come of age with his own Black sexual body as a young man in Harlem. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：这是一篇非常个人化的文章。鲍德温以自己经历的宗教灾难开篇，他记录下自己青少年时期的经历，也是这些经历塑造了他之后的性格，可以称之为宗教心理学。鲍德温记录下自己年轻时在哈莱姆地区的经历。在黑人大迁徙时期，他在实行种族隔离的哈莱姆地区，与极端种族主义政治家的抗争，以及他因为肤色所面临的限制。他回忆了自己的青年时期。作为一名生活在哈莱姆地区的黑人，他在成长过程中面临的重重阻碍，以及他如何克服这些阻碍。这也呼应了他在第一篇散文中对侄子提出的期望。

Josef Sorett: And what drives him into the church is a deep anxiety. Right. And so a desire for safety from society, a desire for safety from himself, a deep shame about his body. It's all these forces that lead him into the church with the invitation of a preacher figure who promises to protect him. Right. And so the desire for that safety, driving him into the church in the face of a range of forces that are compounding on his life as an adolescent young Black man in Harlem. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温在焦虑感的驱动下，选择加入教会。鲍德温渴望获得外界和内心的安全感，他对黑人身份充满了羞耻感，这些因素交织在一起，促使鲍德温接受牧师的邀请，牧师曾承诺为鲍德温提供保护。对安全感的极度渴望驱使鲍德温加入教会，直面一个哈莱姆黑人男青年都需要面对的压力。

Josef Sorett: And so on one hand, he gives I think, a very powerful account logically, but also at the affective level of why church is so valuable, why church meets a whole host of human needs, why church meets a whole host of specific human needs for Black people in a particular moment in time and space. And yet he then also gives us a story of how his fall from faith takes place. Because he identifies within the context of church, right, what we might think of as sort of adolescent critiques of hypocrisy, if you will, as it relates to race, as it relates to gender, what he also identifies within church as a sort of space in which different kinds of hatred are perpetuated. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：不仅仅是基于理性的考量，鲍德温也认为教会可以提供感情价值，可以在当时的社会环境中满足黑人的情感需求，所以他选择加入教会。但后来鲍德温在教会经历了信仰的崩塌。他发现教会关于种族和性别问题的反思，是一种非常不成熟的、虚伪的反思； 教会无非是一个让不同仇恨永存的场所。

Josef Sorett: Hatred of the other, sort of an inversion of the racial logics, self-hatred and shame within a doctrine of theology that equates rightness with whiteness. Right. So the degree to which the church is a space that both affirms Black people, but also participates in a logic of white supremacy. And so Baldwin talks about the power of this church, but then also the limits of what a church can do, and can't do for Black people. And within that context, the appeal of a different kind of religiosity. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：不同人群对彼此的仇恨，是种族歧视逻辑的一种反向的表现。黑人对白人的仇恨，其实是他们在“白人的即正义的”这个理论体系之下感受到的一种自我仇恨和自我羞耻。所以，教会实际上是同时肯定了黑人的价值和白人至上主义。鲍德温向我们展现了教会的力量，也指出了教会力量的局限性，它无法为黑人群体实现的目标。鲍德温呼吁另一种形式的宗教。

Zachary Davis: Although Baldwin left the church, it never really left him. His time in the church influenced his writing and worldview for the rest of his life. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温离开了教会，但教会却从未离开他。终其一生，他的写作和世界观其实都受到这段教会经历的影响。。

Josef Sorett: And he's not exceptional in that regard, right, this is the American literary tradition and very much is the case. But he is exceptional at it in the degree to which he can draw on the aesthetics of Black church to create, you know, what scholars refer to as a sort of structure of feeling that conjures the Black church experience, even as he has sort of left behind the sort of orthodox teachings of the tradition. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：就这方面而言他并不特殊，因为这是美国的文学传统，好多作家都经历过类似的与教会的离合。但鲍德温的独特之处在于，他所创造出的某种“感觉结构”，在相当大的程度上是借鉴了黑人教会的美学特质才完成的。尽管他最终摒弃了正统的教会宣教传统，但这种“感觉结构”，其实来源于他在黑人教会的经历的创造性转化。

Zachary Davis: What should we know that might be helpful in understanding Baldwin about Black church culture?

扎卡里·戴维斯：黑人教会文化可以如何帮助我们理解鲍德温的作品？

Josef Sorett: Historically, the earliest Black churches were primarily Baptists and Methodists. And here we’re going back all the way to the 18th century in the aftermath of independence, where you have First African Baptist in Savannah, Georgia, and then you have what becomes Bethel AME Church and now is Mother Bethel in Philadelphia. Right. The very seat of American independence, where you have the emergence of these independent Black churches which leave their white Baptist and Methodist counterparts. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：历史上，黑人教会的雏形可以追溯到18世纪独立战争后，主要是浸信会和卫理公会。佐治亚州的萨凡纳出现了第一非洲浸信会，费城出现了非裔卫理圣公会大教堂，现在被称为圣母贝特利大教堂。 在签署《美国独立宣言》的费城，涌现了一批专门服务于黑人的教会，这些教会从白人浸信会和卫理公会独立出来。

Josef Sorett: And there's these early stories of exiting, not because they disagree with the theology or polity or forms of governance, unless, of course, we think of white supremacy as itself of theology, and that's a conversation to be had, but they largely take the tenets of Methodism, the theology and doctrine, but exit because they were being treated as second class citizens within the context of that Methodist church. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：最初，黑人教会选择从传统教会中独立出来，不是因为他们不认同传统教会的神学或管理体制，除了有部分人认为白人至上主义就是教义，这个稍后可以详细展开说。他们很大程度上沿用了卫理公会的信条、神学和教义，他们选择独立出去，是因为他们在传统的卫理公会教堂通常被当作二等公民对待。

Josef Sorett: And so the desire to have self-determination over one’s spiritual practices is what gives birth to these early independent Black Baptists and Black Methodist churches. And they continue to grow over the long haul of the 19th century, and especially in the aftermath of emancipation in the end of slavery.

约瑟夫·索雷特：黑人对精神自决权的渴望，促使了这些专门服务于黑人的浸信会和卫理公会教会的出现。这些教会在19世纪里蓬勃发展，尤其是在《解放黑人奴隶宣言》颁布、奴隶制被废除之后。

Josef Sorett: So that by the end of the 19th century, you have I mean, much earlier you had the AME Church forming a denomination, you know, as is the case with Methodist, the connectional church that is governed by bishops, but then by the end of the 19th century, you also have Black Baptists which pride themselves as independent congregations, the free church forming national conventions. And so the growth of these churches throughout the country lead to these larger national bodies that are sites of spiritual and social organization and political mobilization within African-American life. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：之前我们提到的非裔卫理圣公会，信仰卫理教，是由主教管理的关联教会。到了19世纪末期，还出现了黑人浸信会，他们标榜自己是独立的会众，各地独立的教会达成了全国性的公约。这些教会在全国范围内蓬勃发展，成为非裔美国人生活中重要的精神寄托、社会组织和政治动员机构。

Josef Sorett: And so Baldwin was very much aware of these distinctions, has also, in the sort of tensions between these denominations, is also one way to sort of understand his, not embracing his father's-- stepfather's ministry, but this other form of Christianity that enlisted him on his own terms as a teenager and introduced him to the pulpit. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温非常清楚教会间的区别和教会间的紧张关系。鲍德温的继父是牧师，但他没有继承他对基督教的理解，而是开创了另一种教会形式。也正是基于自己对基督教的理解，青年时期的鲍德温应征加入教会，走上了讲道台。

Josef Sorett: So the Pentecostal tradition and sort of what is now the largest Black Pentecostal denomination is known as the Church of God in Christ. And so it's important to note about the Black church, those denominational differences, and with regards to Black Pentecostalism particularly, while there is that founding story of interracial worship, by the time Baldwin is being introduced to the Black Pentecostal church, it has largely comported itself to the logics of racial segregation, despite its founding story of itself. And so you have the Assemblies of God on one hand as the largest white denomination and Church of God in Christ in a range of other smaller donations that still hold to that story of Azusa as central to the history, but in terms of social patterns, largely worship under the same sort of racial logics of segregation.

约瑟夫·索雷特：在五旬节流派中，目前最大的黑人五旬节教会是基督神教会我们需要理解不同的黑人教会所遵从的不同教派。说回黑人五旬节教会，尽管其成立的初衷是不分种族的礼拜，但当鲍德温接触到黑人五旬节教会时，这个教会已经对会众进行了种族隔离。无论是最大的白人教派神召会，还是基督神教会，或者是其他一些比较小的分支，大家都认同亚苏撒街是五旬节运动的中心，但是进行礼拜时依旧会遵循种族隔离的规则。

Zachary Davis: Baldwin believed that the church, although embraced by the vast majority of Black Americans, was still a space created by white Christians and carried the logic of white supremacy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：鲍德温认为尽管大部分美国黑人已经融入了教会，但教会本质上是由白人基督教徒创建的，带着白人至上主义的意味。

Zachary Davis: In the early 1930s, a new Black nationalist religious organization called the Nation of Islam was established in the United States. It offered a different origin story than that of Christianity. The Nation of Islam believes in a succession of mortal Black gods, each named Allah, and claims that humans were created by the very first Allah. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：20世纪30年代初期，美国成立了一个叫“伊斯兰国度”的宗教组织，这是一个新的黑人民族主义宗教团体。这个团体提出了一个不同于基督教的创世说。伊斯兰国度相信存在黑皮肤的神，每一个都被称为真主，并认为人类皆是由第一位真主创造的。

Zachary Davis: In his second essay in The Fire Next Time, Baldwin describes a dinner he had with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad encouraged Baldwin to join the group, but he never did. Baldwin goes on to discuss how Black Muslims created a “Black god” in reaction to the “white god” that Christianity established in the Black community. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《下一次将是烈火》收录的第二篇散文里，鲍德温记录了自己与伊斯兰国度领导人华莱士·穆罕默德共进晚餐的场景。穆罕默德盛情邀请鲍德温加入伊斯兰国度，但鲍德温从来没有应允。鲍德温认为黑人穆斯林教徒创造了一个“黑皮肤的上帝”，以此反对基督教给黑人教徒灌输的“白皮肤的上帝”。

Josef Sorett: And yet, Baldwin, at the end of the day, refuses that logic as itself, in his estimation, another form of racial hatred and racial provincialism that is still bound by the logics of race.

约瑟夫·索雷特：但鲍德温终究是反对这种逻辑观念的。因为穆罕默德的这种逻辑，是另一种形式的种族仇恨和种族狭隘主义；他依然是在“种族”这个逻辑框架的限制之下在思考问题。

Josef Sorett: And so for Baldwin, at the end of the day, he takes us in these two different models. Right. Meanwhile, narrating the history of Christianity and colonialism and race and religion as divvying up the modern world, which is so powerful. On one hand, you're in the midst of his teenage experience and then all of a sudden you're encountering a story of European colonizers on the African continent, the divvying up of the Americas. So his ability to zoom in an ultra personal, powerful way, his experience, and then somehow step back and give us a picture of the marking and mapping of the modern world, I think it's something that is especially powerful. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温向我们呈现了两种叙事方式。一方面，他写基督教的历史，写殖民主义，写种族、写宗教，这些都是构成现代世界的大议题。而在另一方面，你可能正在读着他青春期中经历的故事，忽而又转到了欧洲人殖民非洲大陆的故事、欧洲人瓜分美洲的故事。。也就是说，鲍德温有一种在两种叙事中跳转的能力：他可以用极有冲击力的方式写极其个人化的故事；同时又能从这些细部的个人化经验中跳将出来，呈现给我们一个现代世界形成和重组的大图景，我认为这是鲍德温最厉害的地方。

Josef Sorett: And at the end of the day it's both that deeply personal narrative and is deeply powerful account of the degree to which our personal is so dramatically shaped by these larger forces and the American incapacity and unwillingness to wrestle with those larger forces and still its desire to see those larger forces through an account of personal piety that Baldwin then pushes us towards something else, a vision of justice, a vision of love that is trying to find its way out of just an overly individualized account of race and religion and its mapping of the modern world in American democracy.

约瑟夫·索雷特：所以归根到底，鲍德温一方面讲述了一些极度个人化的故事，但同时他也向我们展示了这些个人经验是在多大程度上被那些更大的力量所左右的，让我们看到了美国人在抗争这些外部力量时的无能和不情愿。可即便如此，他仍然想要通过他个人化的虔敬来看待和理解这些大的外部力量。正是借由他这种个人化的虔敬，鲍德温鼓励人们去谋求一种正义的观念，一种爱的观念。这种爱的观念可以让人挣脱过于私人化和偏狭的种族认知，也让人可以超越正统的宗教教义、超越正统宗教对美国现代民主社会的规训与布局。

Zachary Davis: Let's talk about impact now. So what's the afterlife of this text and his work as a whole?

扎卡里·戴维斯：现在我们来聊一下这部作品的影响力吧。这部作品发表之后，鲍德温的生活和创作发生了怎样的变化？

Josef Sorett: He is perceived to have taken sides in support of the civil rights movement. And so on one hand, he's prey to a critique of being swept up in the political fervors and allowing those to take up, take over his literary commitments. And at the same time, as he's doing so, he becomes a spokesperson. This makes him a different kind of celebrity, sort of public intellectual where, you know, to look at the afterlives of Baldwin baldness to find him on the Internet, on talk shows, right, waxing eloquent about the plight of the Negro. Right. Because he has become a public intellectual and a perceived spokesperson on behalf of the race. Right. That he is enlisted in this way at this time, which then again becomes also a point of critique by folks within the space of Black power circles who don't see him as radical enough. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：大家普遍认为鲍德温是支持民权运动的。 一方面，有人批评他加入政治斗争，参与政治胜过文学创作。但同时他也被视为民权运动的发言人。鲍德温是特殊的公共人物，我们今天依旧可以在互联网上，在脱口秀里看到当年鲍德温的身影，诉说着黑人的困境。正是因为鲍德温的公众人物身份，大家都将他视为黑人的发言人。不过，到了当下的美国社会语境中，鲍德温积极投身民权运动的方式和他的公众人物身份又再次遭到了来自另一方面的批评：当下的黑人权力派反而认为他不够激进。。

Josef Sorett: So, certainly his place of prominence in the moment of the work makes him both a source, a figure of praise, but also a target of critique from a number of angles. I think if we think about his afterlives in the current moment, you know, it's hard to imagine a figure over the decade, the decade of 2010s, if we think about it on the heels of an Obama presidency, the rise of Black Lives Matter, the movement for Black lives, and then, of course, the ultimate backlash, both the movement and the presidency of Obama, in the figure of Donald Trump, if you will. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温作品的突出历史地位为他赢得了很多赞赏，也招致不少非议。鲍德温已经离开了我们，我们很难想象如果他活在最近10年，会如何被评价。这十年发生了太多事情，奥巴马任期结束，“黑人的命也是命”运动萌芽并持续发展，也出现了很多反对黑人运动的声音，奥巴马结束任期后又有特朗普上台。

Josef Sorett: What struck me as so powerful about Baldwin's legacy is that it almost appeared as we as a nation were struggling for language to name the complexities and contradictions that were very much a through line of a longer story of the nation in this particular moment, one could go on to social media and literally Twitter would be littered by Baldwin quotes, because almost in the absence of language, his language spoke to the moment in ways that made sense, right. And so we see that as sort of a lay invocation of Baldwin in the sphere of social media. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：鲍德温的文字是留给我们的宝贵财富。当我们尝试找到合适的语言，描述种族问题的复杂性和矛盾性，很多人都选择了鲍德温的文字，我们可以在推特和其他社交媒体上看到很多对鲍德温的引用。我们很难找到其他合适的文字来描述当下的事件，但是他的语言却能适切地表达当下的情况，所以社交媒体上充斥着大量鲍德温的名言。

Josef Sorett: What I think is also interesting, and this is some of this goes back to the 1960s, is something that Baldwin models that a number of the writers within the tradition of the Black arts movement, and Black power art and politics attempt to do, is they turn to the church as a model of Black independence and a model of Black aesthetic development. And there's this move to sort of disconnect the content of Christianity from the forms of the Black church. We could think of the dancing, the singing, shouting, but in an effort to divorce it from the doctrinal dogmas associated with the churches. 

约瑟夫·索雷特：我们回头再看看20世纪60年代，鲍德温为黑人作家树立了一个榜样，黑人教会被视为黑人独立和黑人艺术发展的模范。黑人教会试图建立新的基督教形式，可能是唱歌、跳舞或是喊叫，无论哪种形式，总之要将自己区别于传统的教会。

Josef Sorett: I think Baldwin does that. This is something that Baldwin exemplifies throughout his writing, drawing on the iconic forms while also critiquing the theology, doctrines and dogmas. And sort of raises the question of how the church continues to shape Black literary production, Black cultural production, even Black political life, even when these forms are not taking shape within a position of confession or within the institutional context of Black churches.

约瑟夫·索雷特：这是鲍德温带给黑人教会的变化。他在文学作品中一边批判基督教的神学、教义和教规，一边也从基督教的标志性形式中汲取灵感。鲍德温的作品引发了读者们去思考教会的影响：即便人们不再去教堂忏悔，不再置身于黑人教会的机构及其环境之中，但黑人教会仍然对黑人文学、黑人文化、甚至黑人的政治生活产生着持续性的影响。

Zachary Davis: James Baldwin provided us with exquisite and alive language for thinking about race, religion, gender, and sexuality. His work pushed against the portrayal of the Black American experience as particular, instead revealing its universal humanity. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：詹姆斯·鲍德温用精致而生动的语言，引发我们对种族、宗教、性别和性取向的思考。 他反对将美国黑人的生活定性为“特殊”，他一直在通过作品展现黑人生活中的普世人性。

Josef Sorett: I think through, not just The Fire Next Time, but through the corpus of the writings, he really provided us, us as a nation, us as a global community, with some of the most precise and powerful language for thinking about the ways in which it's impossible to understand the making of and map of the modern world. Right. The emergence of the Americas, the Atlantic world, American democracy, up to the present day, the way in which he invites us and provides us with a language for thinking about race, for thinking about religion, for thinking about also gender and sexuality. I think that is part of why we see the continued power of his works in the present moment is because his language for helping us make sense of who we are and for what race and religion have meant and continue to mean in shaping American society fundamentally changed, certainly changed how I see the world and I think continues to be a gift to so many other readers in providing a language to understand a world that continues to confound us.

约瑟夫·索雷特：不单单是《下一次将是烈火》这一本书，鲍德温在他一系列的作品中，用最精炼、最有力的语言，带领整个国家，带领全世界的读者，思考现代世界的形成和布局，如美国的崛起、大西洋世界的出现、美国民主体系和当今的国际体系等。鲍德温也通过文字引发我们对种族、宗教、性别和性取向的思考。鲍德温的作品对当今社会依旧有很深的借鉴意义。他的作品可以帮助我们理解我们是谁，理解种族和宗教在过去和现在如何构成美国社会的根基，以及这一根基发生了怎样的变化。鲍德温的作品影响了我对世界的理解，也帮助很多别的读者更好地解读当下这个令人困惑的世界。

Zachary Davis:Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, 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！