菲奥纳·肖 | 朗读《假如莎士比亚有个妹妹》

When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant.

得知大家请我来谈女性与小说后，我坐在河岸上，开始思索这几个字眼儿。

They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Bronte and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple.

它们可能意味着谈谈范伯尼；再谈谈简·奥斯丁；称颂一番勃朗特姐妹，连带勾勒一下雪中的霍沃斯寓所，就算中规中矩了。但转念一想，这几个字眼儿，似乎并不那么简单。

The title women and fiction might mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light.

所谓女性与小说，可能意味着女性和她们的处境；或意味着女性和她们所写的小说；也许，它意味着女性和关于女性的小说；还有可能意味着三者密不可分地交织在一起，而你们是要我从这个角度做出考虑。

But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion.

最后这个角度似乎最有意思，但当我真的如此来考虑这个题目时，才发现它有一个绝大的麻烦。我将永远得不出结论。

All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.

我能做的，只是就一个小问题发表一点看法——女人要想写小说，必须有钱，再加一间自己的房间；而如此这般，大家将会看到，女性的本质和小说的本质这个大问题仍没得到解决。

But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this.

为了略加弥补，我想尽自己的能力向大家说明，我是如何得出关于房间和钱的这一种看法的。我将尽可能完整和随意地向在座各位阐明我的思路，而它又是如何引导我想到这一点。

I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; 'I' is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.

不必说，我要讲述的事情并不存在；牛桥纯属杜撰；所谓的“我”只是对什么人的方便称谓，并非实有其人。我难免信口开河，但兴许会有几分道理夹杂其中；需要大家去伪存真，决定哪些部分值得留存。

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please - it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought.

那么，一两个星期之前，是气候和煦的十月，我（叫我玛丽·伯顿、玛丽·赛顿、玛丽·卡迈克尔或随便什么名字——这都无关紧要）坐在河岸上，陷入了沉思。

Thought - to call it by a prouder name than it deserved - had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?

思想——我这样来称呼它不免有些夸张——听任它的钓丝没入水流。时间一分分过去，钓丝随着倒影和水草，东游西荡，在水面上时起时伏，直到——大家知道那种突然的拽动，一种想法在钓丝的那一端咬钩了，于是，你小心翼翼地将它拖过来，慢慢拉出水面？

Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.

好了，不妨把这个想法摊在草地上，不管它是多么细小，多么微不足道。是一尾小鱼，聪明的渔夫会把它放回水中，等它长得再大一些，有朝一日，成为盘中的一道美味。

But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind - put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot.

我的想法，虽然细微，却有一种不可思议的性质——将它重新收拾到脑海里，它立即变得不安分，膨胀起来；它奔突冲撞，这里闪现一下，那里闪现一下，激起思想的湍流和波浪，让人不得安宁。就这样，不觉中我已疾步穿过了一片草地。

Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.

突然，一个男人的身形出现在我面前，拦截住我。他的脸上，纯是一副惊恐而又恼怒的表情。此时，直觉而不是理性搭救了我，他是校役，我是女人。这里是大学的赛马场，脚下就是跑道。只有研究员和学者方能来此驻足。我的位置是在沙砾路上。

Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done.

这些都是瞬间转过的念头。我转身回到路上，校役的双臂垂放下来，面部又恢复了以往的静漠，虽然跑道走起来要比沙砾路面舒服，但我也不能说受了很大委屈。

The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, they had sent my little fish into hiding.

对这所不管是什么学院的研究员和学者，我惟一能够抱怨的是，为了保护赛马场，他们搅得我的小鱼躲得无影无踪。

But curiosity remained. For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived?

但好奇心依旧存在。有一件事情时时困扰我，为什么在这类文学中，女性不曾留下只言片语，而男子似乎人人都能歌诗。

I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

我问自己，妇女究竟生活在怎样的状态下；因为小说虽然需要想象力，却不是从天而降，像石子坠落地面，科学或许才是如此；小说像一道蛛网，看去飘飘无依，却四下里伸展，依附于生活。

Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

这种依附往往很难察觉，比如莎士比亚的剧作，似乎无牵无挂，凭空悬在那里。但晃晃这张网，拉拉四边，扯扯中间，你就会想起，它不是给什么精灵古怪在半空中织就，倒是人们呕心沥血的结晶，依赖于种种大体上有形的东西，像健康啦，金钱啦，还有我们安身的房间。

I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and I looked up Women, found 'position of' and turned to the pages indicated. 'Wife-beating', I read, 'was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low.

因此，我走到插了历史书的书架前，发现了“妇女地位”一节，翻开相关部分，我读道：“殴打妻子是男人公认的权利，无论是上等人，还是普通百姓，都不以行使这一权利为耻。”

Similarly,' the historian goes on, 'the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents' choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion.

这位历史学家又说：“女儿如果拒绝嫁给父母为她选择的丈夫，很可能会被关在屋里，遭受拳打脚踢，公众对此也不吃惊。”

I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say.

望着书架上的莎士比亚著作，我禁不住想，至少在这一点上是对的；没有女人、绝对没有女人能够在莎士比亚的年纪上写出莎士比亚那样的剧作。既然很难找到事实，我不妨想象一下，假如莎士比亚有一个天资聪颖的妹妹，比如叫朱迪丝，情况会是怎样的。

Shakespeare himself went, very probably, - his mother was an heiress - to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin - Ovid, Virgil and Horace - and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right.

非常可能，莎士比亚——他母亲继承了一笔遗产——进了文法学校，在学校里，学习拉丁文——奥维德、维吉尔、贺拉斯，还有文法和逻辑原理。众所周知，他是个顽劣的儿童，到他人的地界偷猎野兔，可能还射杀了一头鹿，而且，年纪不大，就仓促娶了邻家女子，不到该当的时候，又早早生出了孩子。

That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.

一番胡闹之后，只好远走伦敦，碰一碰运气。他似乎迷上了戏剧，最初，是在剧院边门替人牵马。不久，就加入剧团，成为当红的演员，从此跻身浮华世界，交游又广，识的人又多，他有时登台演出，有时当街卖艺，甚至出入宫禁，为女王演戏。

Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil.

与此同时，且让我们假定，他的妹妹，尽管很有天分，却留在家中。她像莎士比亚一样不安分，爱幻想，渴望出外见见世面。然而，父母不让她上学。她没有机会学习文法和逻辑，更不要说研读贺拉斯和维吉尔。

She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers.

她间或抓起一本书，可能是哥哥丢下的，读上几页。然而，父母不让她上学。她没有机会学习文法和逻辑，更不要说研读贺拉斯和维吉尔。她间或抓起一本书，可能是哥哥丢下的，读上几页。

Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father.  

她也许会躲到阁楼上偷偷写几页纸，小心收藏好，或者举火烧掉。不久，她还不过十几岁年纪，父母就把她许配给邻近羊毛商的儿子。她讨厌这桩婚事，又哭又闹，为此遭父亲痛打。

He then ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart?

后来，父亲不再责骂她，转过头来求女儿不要惹他伤心，不要在婚姻大事上让他丢脸。他说，他会给她买一串项链或一条漂亮裙子，说着，已经声泪俱下。她怎么能这样不听话呢？怎么能惹他心碎？

The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre.

却总是天生的一点风流格调，让她欲罢不能。她将自己的衣物收拾成一个包裹，夏夜里从窗上缒下，直奔伦敦。当时，她还不足十七岁。她像哥哥一样，对音韵有天生的敏感。而且，她也迷恋戏剧。

She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager - a fat, looselipped man - guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting - no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted - you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft.

她来到剧院边门，她说，我想演戏。男人们听罢讪笑起来。剧院经理——一个身材肥胖、口无遮拦的家伙——捧腹大笑，聒噪些鬈毛狗撒欢儿和女人演戏什么的。他言道，没听说女人也能当戏剧演员。他还暗示——大家清楚他会暗示些什么。她找不到地方接受职业训练。

Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last - for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes - at last the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman.

不过，她的天分在于小说。她渴望观察男男女女的生活，研究他们的心性，从中汲取丰富的素材。最后——她还很年轻，长得酷似诗人莎士比亚，眼睛灰蒙蒙的——最后，演员经理心生怜悯，收留了她；她发现自己怀了这位绅士的孩子。

And so - who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body? - killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

因此——诗人的心禁锢在女人的身体内，谁又能说清它的焦灼和暴烈——一个冬日夜晚，她自杀了，死后葬在某个十字街口，近旁，大象城堡之外，现在有客车停靠。

Here I would stop, but the pressure of convention decrees that every speech must end with a peroration. When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends.

这里，我本该停下了，但按照常规，每次演讲都该有个结语。当我绞尽脑汁，想找些高尚的情感，说明应当作为伙伴和平等的人，为了更远大的目标影响世界。

I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if l knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

我却发现自己平平淡淡地讲出，做自己要比任何事情都更重要。如果我知道怎样把话说得更好，我会说，不要想着去影响别人。事情是怎样，就是怎样。

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say – and please attend, for the peroration is beginning – my suggestion is a little fantastic; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction.

我该如何鼓励你们投入生活？姑娘们，我要说，请注意了，因为现在是作结语的时候了，我得承认，我的想法有点不着边际；因此，我宁肯以小说的形式把它讲出来。

I told you that Shakespeare had a sister. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives, for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.

我在这篇文章中，告诉过大家，莎士比亚有一个妹妹。而我相信，这位从没有写出只言片语、葬在了十字路口的诗人仍然活着。她活在你们心中，活在我的心中，也活在其他许多女性的心中，她们今天没来这里，因为她们得洗刷碗盏，哄孩子入睡。但她确实活着，伟大的诗人不死；他们是不灭的魂灵；一有机会，就会活生生地出现在我们面前。

This opportunity is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals – and have each of us rooms of our own.

这个机会，目前就在你们的掌握中。因为我相信，假如我们再活上一个世纪——我说的是现实中的一般生活，而不是我们作为个人介入的具体生活——而且每人都有自己的房间；

If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality.

假如我们惯于自由地、无所畏惧地如实写下我们的想法；假如我们能够躲开共用的起居室；假如我们不是从人与人之间的相互关系、而是从他们与现实的关系出发去观察人；

If we face that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, she will be born.

假如没有臂膊可让我们倚靠，我们独自前行，我们的关系是与现实世界的关系，而不仅仅是与男人和女人的关系，那么，机会就将来临，莎士比亚的死去的诗人妹妹就将恢复她一再失去的本来面目。她将从那些湮没无闻的先行者的生命中汲取活力，再生于世间。

As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile.

没有这种准备，没有我们的努力，没有再生后，她将会发现自己能够生活和写诗的信念，我们就难以指望她的复活，因为这是不可能的。但我坚信，只要我们为她而努力，她就会复活，而这番努力，不管身处怎样的贫困和寂寞，都是值得的。