累成了行尸走肉的星期二给大家摘录库切的一段父与子# LeisureTime - 读书听歌看电影
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J.M. Coetzee - "Summertime"
And then there is the matter of his father’s music. After Mussolini
capitulated in 1944 and the Germans were driven north, the Allied troops
occupying Italy, including the South Africans, were allowed to relax briefly
and enjoy themselves. Among the recreations mounted for them were free
performances in the big opera houses. Young men from America, Britain, and
the farflung British dominions across the seas, wholly innocent of Italian
opera, were plunged into the drama of Tosca or The Barber of Seville or
Lucia di Lammermoor. Only a handful took to it, but his father was among
that handful. Brought up on sentimental Irish and English ballads, he was
entranced by the lush new music and overwhelmed by the spectacle. Day after
day he went back for more.
So when Corporal Coetzee returned to South Africa at the end of hostilities,
it was with a newfound passion for opera. “La donna è mobile,” he would
sing in the bath. “Figaro here, Figaro there,” he would sing, “Figaro,
Figaro, Feeegaro! ” He went out and bought a gramophone, their family’s
first; over and over again he would play a 78 rpm recording of Caruso
singing “Your tiny hand is frozen.” When long-playing records were
invented he acquired a new and better gramophone, together with an album of
Renata Tebaldi singing well-loved arias.
Thus in his adolescent years there were two schools of vocal music at war
with each other in the house: an Italian school, his father’s, manifested
by Tebaldi and Tito Gobbi in full cry; and a German school, his own, founded
on Bach. All of Sunday afternoon the household would drown in choruses from
the B-Minor Mass; then in the evenings, with Bach at last silenced, his
father would pour himself a glass of brandy, put on Renata Tebaldi, and sit
down to listen to real melodies, real singing.
For its sensuality and decadence—that was how, at the age of sixteen, he
saw it—he resolved he would forever hate and despise Italian opera. That he
might despise it simply because his father loved it, that he would have
resolved to hate and despise anything in the world that his father loved,
was a possibility he would not admit.
One day, while no one was around, he took the Tebaldi record out of its
sleeve and with a razor blade drew a deep score across its surface.
On Sunday evening his father put on the record. With each revolution the
needle jumped. “Who has done this?” he demanded. But no one, it seemed,
had done it. It had just happened.
Thus ended Tebaldi; now Bach could reign unchallenged.
For that mean and petty deed of his he has for the past twenty years felt
the bitterest remorse, remorse that has not receded with the passage of time
but on the contrary grown keener. One of his first actions when he returned
to the country was to scour the music shops for the Tebaldi record. Though
he failed to find it, he did come upon a compilation in which she sang some
of the same arias. He brought it home and played it through from beginning
to end, hoping to lure his father out of his room as a hunter might lure a
bird with his pipes. But his father showed no interest.
“Don’t you recognize the voice?” he asked.
His father shook his head.
“It’s Renata Tebaldi. Don’t you remember how you used to love Tebaldi in
the old days?”
He refused to accept defeat. He continued to hope that one day, when he was
out of the house, his father would put the new, unblemished record on the
player, pour himself a glass of brandy, sit down in his armchair, and allow
himself to be transported to Rome or Milan or wherever it was that as a
young man his ears were first opened to the sensual beauties of the human
voice. He wanted his father’s breast to swell with that old joy; if only
for an hour, he wanted him to relive that lost youth, forget his present
crushed and humiliated existence. Above all he wanted his father to forgive
him. Forgive me! he wanted to say to his father. Forgive you? Heavens, what
is there to forgive? he wanted to hear his father reply. Upon which, if he
could summon up the courage, he would at last make full confession: Forgive
me for deliberately and with malice aforethought scratching your Tebaldi
record. And for more besides, so much more that the recital would take all
day. For countless acts of meanness. For the meanness of heart in which
those acts originated. In sum, for all I have done since the day I was born,
and with such success, to make your life a misery.
But no, there was no indication, not the faintest, that during his absences
from the house Tebaldi was being set free to sing. Tebaldi had, it seemed,
lost her charms; or else his father was playing a terrible game with him. My
life a misery? What makes you think my life has been a misery? What makes
you think you have ever had it in your power to make my life a misery?
Intermittently he plays the Tebaldi record for himself; and as he listens
the beginnings of some kind of transformation seem to take place inside him.
As it must have been with his father in 1944, his heart too begins to throb
in time with Mimi’s. As the great rising arc of her voice must have called
out his father’s soul, so it now calls out his soul too, urging it to join
hers in passionate, soaring flight.
What has been wrong with him all these years? Why has he not been listening
to Verdi, to Puccini? Has he been deaf? Or is the truth worse than that: Did
he, even as a youth, hear and recognize perfectly well the call of Tebaldi,
and then with tight-lipped primness (“I won’t!”) refuse to heed it? Down
with Tebaldi, down with Italy, down with the flesh! And if his father must
go down too in the general wreck, so be it!
And then there is the matter of his father’s music. After Mussolini
capitulated in 1944 and the Germans were driven north, the Allied troops
occupying Italy, including the South Africans, were allowed to relax briefly
and enjoy themselves. Among the recreations mounted for them were free
performances in the big opera houses. Young men from America, Britain, and
the farflung British dominions across the seas, wholly innocent of Italian
opera, were plunged into the drama of Tosca or The Barber of Seville or
Lucia di Lammermoor. Only a handful took to it, but his father was among
that handful. Brought up on sentimental Irish and English ballads, he was
entranced by the lush new music and overwhelmed by the spectacle. Day after
day he went back for more.
So when Corporal Coetzee returned to South Africa at the end of hostilities,
it was with a newfound passion for opera. “La donna è mobile,” he would
sing in the bath. “Figaro here, Figaro there,” he would sing, “Figaro,
Figaro, Feeegaro! ” He went out and bought a gramophone, their family’s
first; over and over again he would play a 78 rpm recording of Caruso
singing “Your tiny hand is frozen.” When long-playing records were
invented he acquired a new and better gramophone, together with an album of
Renata Tebaldi singing well-loved arias.
Thus in his adolescent years there were two schools of vocal music at war
with each other in the house: an Italian school, his father’s, manifested
by Tebaldi and Tito Gobbi in full cry; and a German school, his own, founded
on Bach. All of Sunday afternoon the household would drown in choruses from
the B-Minor Mass; then in the evenings, with Bach at last silenced, his
father would pour himself a glass of brandy, put on Renata Tebaldi, and sit
down to listen to real melodies, real singing.
For its sensuality and decadence—that was how, at the age of sixteen, he
saw it—he resolved he would forever hate and despise Italian opera. That he
might despise it simply because his father loved it, that he would have
resolved to hate and despise anything in the world that his father loved,
was a possibility he would not admit.
One day, while no one was around, he took the Tebaldi record out of its
sleeve and with a razor blade drew a deep score across its surface.
On Sunday evening his father put on the record. With each revolution the
needle jumped. “Who has done this?” he demanded. But no one, it seemed,
had done it. It had just happened.
Thus ended Tebaldi; now Bach could reign unchallenged.
For that mean and petty deed of his he has for the past twenty years felt
the bitterest remorse, remorse that has not receded with the passage of time
but on the contrary grown keener. One of his first actions when he returned
to the country was to scour the music shops for the Tebaldi record. Though
he failed to find it, he did come upon a compilation in which she sang some
of the same arias. He brought it home and played it through from beginning
to end, hoping to lure his father out of his room as a hunter might lure a
bird with his pipes. But his father showed no interest.
“Don’t you recognize the voice?” he asked.
His father shook his head.
“It’s Renata Tebaldi. Don’t you remember how you used to love Tebaldi in
the old days?”
He refused to accept defeat. He continued to hope that one day, when he was
out of the house, his father would put the new, unblemished record on the
player, pour himself a glass of brandy, sit down in his armchair, and allow
himself to be transported to Rome or Milan or wherever it was that as a
young man his ears were first opened to the sensual beauties of the human
voice. He wanted his father’s breast to swell with that old joy; if only
for an hour, he wanted him to relive that lost youth, forget his present
crushed and humiliated existence. Above all he wanted his father to forgive
him. Forgive me! he wanted to say to his father. Forgive you? Heavens, what
is there to forgive? he wanted to hear his father reply. Upon which, if he
could summon up the courage, he would at last make full confession: Forgive
me for deliberately and with malice aforethought scratching your Tebaldi
record. And for more besides, so much more that the recital would take all
day. For countless acts of meanness. For the meanness of heart in which
those acts originated. In sum, for all I have done since the day I was born,
and with such success, to make your life a misery.
But no, there was no indication, not the faintest, that during his absences
from the house Tebaldi was being set free to sing. Tebaldi had, it seemed,
lost her charms; or else his father was playing a terrible game with him. My
life a misery? What makes you think my life has been a misery? What makes
you think you have ever had it in your power to make my life a misery?
Intermittently he plays the Tebaldi record for himself; and as he listens
the beginnings of some kind of transformation seem to take place inside him.
As it must have been with his father in 1944, his heart too begins to throb
in time with Mimi’s. As the great rising arc of her voice must have called
out his father’s soul, so it now calls out his soul too, urging it to join
hers in passionate, soaring flight.
What has been wrong with him all these years? Why has he not been listening
to Verdi, to Puccini? Has he been deaf? Or is the truth worse than that: Did
he, even as a youth, hear and recognize perfectly well the call of Tebaldi,
and then with tight-lipped primness (“I won’t!”) refuse to heed it? Down
with Tebaldi, down with Italy, down with the flesh! And if his father must
go down too in the general wreck, so be it!
