巨星埃德娜女爵士的扮演者巴瑞·哈姆弗莱斯 | 经济学人讣告

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巴瑞·哈姆弗莱斯

英文部分选自经济学人20230429期讣告

Barry Humphries

巴瑞·哈姆弗莱斯

Two lives entwined

两段纠缠交错的人生

Barry Humphries, manager of megastar Dame Edna Everage, died on April 22nd, aged 89. So, a little older, did she

巨星埃德娜女爵士的扮演者巴瑞·哈姆弗莱斯于4月22日去世，享年89岁。“她”确实享年大了点对吧？

The garden Barry Humphries walked through was not in the best part of Melbourne. Moonee Ponds was low-lying, swampy and the wrong side of the tracks. The lawn, with no effort at gentility, was of scratchy buffalo grass. There were few flowers, and they were ones he particularly disliked: gladioli, with their disagreeably optimistic thrusting spears and scentless flesh-pink florets. Little did he know that in years to come he would be ordering thousands of them every month, and that his distrust would have grown into burning hate.

巴瑞·哈姆弗莱斯走过的这个花园并不坐落在墨尔本最好的地段。穆尼塘（Moonee Ponds）地势低洼，路面潮湿泥泞，是城里的贫民区。草坪没有经过精心打理，长满了扎人的水牛草。这里的花也稀稀疏疏，而且都是他特别不喜欢的剑兰。这种肉粉色的小花毫无芳香，尖而突出的长叶也透着一股让人不快的乐观。当时的他还不知道，几年之后的自己每个月都会订购成千上万朵剑兰花，而他的疑心将会演变成强烈的厌恶。

注释：

the wrong side of the tracks: A part of a town or city that is particularly impoverished (and usually dangerous or undesirable as a result). "Tracks" refers to railroad tracks, which are sometimes thought of as demarcating different economic areas of a town. (Idioms by The Free Dictionary)

He was there because of a postcard, written in green ink in a studied but childish hand, from a woman called Edna, inviting him to a Passion play in the local hall. She was playing Mary Magdalen, shrilling “Christ, your feet look awful! Let me give them a bit of tlc”, before anointing them with Vicks VapoRub and drying them with her wisteria-coloured hair. She had written to “Mr Humphrey”, then touring in “Twelfth Night” with the Melbourne Theatre Company, hoping to get noticed. He had noticed, they had lunched on creamed corn, and now he was approaching her front door. Almost at once, he found himself advising her.

哈姆弗莱斯之所以出现在这里，是因为一张明信片。那是由一个叫“埃德娜”的女人用绿色墨水写的，笔迹刻意讲究但仍显幼稚，信中写到她邀请他去当地礼堂观看耶稣受难复活剧。在演出中，埃德娜扮演抹大拉的玛丽亚，她捏着嗓子喊道：“基督啊，您的脚看起来很糟糕！让我来好好爱护一下它们吧！”接着，她用涂圣水的方式给双脚涂上伤风膏，再用自己紫藤花色的头发擦干。她给“哈姆弗莱先生”写信，希望能引起他的注意。当时哈姆弗莱斯正跟随墨尔本剧院公司巡回演出《第十二夜》。他确实注意到了，他们还共进午餐，吃了奶油玉米。而现在，他已经快到她家门前了。没一会儿，他就发现自己正在指点她。

注释：

tlc：abbreviation for tender loving care: kindness, love, and attention （Cambridge Dictionary）

So occurred, in 1955, the entwining of two lives. He took charge of this young mother, watching her transform from a mousy figure in a blue frock and flatties into a towering vision in glittering silver lamé, butterfly-wing glasses and a perfect bouffant. By the 1990s she was the toast of Britain and America as well as Australia, a groundbreaking reinventor of stage and tv talk shows, a swami, a chanteuse, taste-maker to the legions of women who slavishly copied her outfits or, like her, splashed on Boots haemorrhoid cream to banish wrinkles, and a confidante to world leaders. She had homes in Sydney, London, Gstaad and Beverly Hills. It was a rise unprecedented in the history of housewifery.

于是，在1955年，这两个角色的人生就这样交织在了一起。哈姆弗莱斯开始经营这位年轻“母亲”的经纪工作，看着她从一个穿着蓝色连衣裙和平底鞋的无趣妇人，转变为一个穿着闪亮银缎、戴着蝶翼形眼镜、梳着蓬松发髻的杰出人物。到了20世纪90年代时，她已经成了英国、美国以及澳大利亚的风云人物，重新定义了舞台演出和电视脱口秀。她是圣人，是歌女，是潮流引领者——无数女性疯狂模仿她的穿着打扮，学着她用大量痔疮膏消除皱纹，也是许多世界领导人的密友。她在悉尼、伦敦、格施塔德和比弗利山庄都有自己的房产。她的走红在家庭主妇的历史上前所未见。

As her manager, he shared in that fame. But it was hardly the sort he craved. He might have been honoured for his vast library, his rescue from oblivion of the music of the Weimar Republic, his collection of Charles Conder paintings on silk, and especially for a career as a serious actor. That faltered, once Edna was on the scene, though he did play Fagin in the London revival of “Oliver!” in 1967. With enough encomiums, he might have been Lord Humphries of Melbourne. Instead he found himself hitched to a vulture disguised as a bird of paradise who, thanks to an Australian prime minister, was actually a Dame.

作为她的经理人，哈姆弗莱斯与她有名同享。但这并不是他渴望的那种名气。在成为“埃德娜”之前，他受人尊崇的原因可能是拥有庞大的图书馆、把魏玛共和国音乐从遗忘边缘挽救回来、收藏了查尔斯·康德（Charles Conder）的丝绸绘画，更因为他是一名严肃演员。但哪怕1967年他在伦敦重新排演的《雾都孤儿》中扮演费金一角，一旦埃德娜登台，那些属于他的身份都黯然失色了。凭借满堂赞誉，他本可能成为墨尔本的哈姆弗莱斯勋爵。而事实上，他却发觉自己跟一只伪装成天堂鸟的秃鹫紧紧捆在了一起。多亏了澳大利亚总理，这秃鹫还成了女爵。

注释：

费金（Fagin），查尔斯狄更斯小说《雾都孤儿》中的反派之一，也是英国文学中最臭名昭著的反犹太角色之一。

Some made the pretty insulting assertion that they were the same person. There were, he admitted, slight resemblances. They were roughly the same height and had the same inside-leg measurement. If she failed to turn up for a show he could just about wear her snug dress and force his voice into her fluty falsetto. Thanks to his mother, and their Sunday afternoon outings to view the new Lovely Homes springing up around Melbourne, he shared some of her suburban sensibilities: an appreciation of Frigidaires and Sunbeam Mastermixers, burgundy carpets and cut-moquette sofas, aqua bathrooms and glass screens etched with reindeer. He too tended to view the world through dusty venetians. Despite their ceaseless mocking of Australia they were both, at heart, patriots, nostalgic when abroad for asparagus rolls and lamingtons, terylene golfing hats and vanilla slices, though Edna took unkindly to recent immigrants. Both of them found Les Patterson, the drink-and-food-spattered Australian cultural attaché with Restless Penis Syndrome who was also, sometimes, within Mr Humphries’s control, completely disgusting, and neither of them would appear in public with him.

一些人无礼地认定他们两位是同一个人。他承认，他们两人确有些微的相似之处。他们身高相仿，裤管内缝尺码相同。如果她不能登台演出，他是可以穿着她的紧身裙，捏着嗓子伪装成她的假音。多亏他的母亲，还有他们每逢周日下午总会外出看房，当时Lovely Homes地产的楼盘在墨尔本周边如雨后春笋般兴建起来。哈姆弗莱斯和埃德娜都有一些郊区情结：喜欢北极牌冰箱、阳光牌搅拌器、酒红色地毯、割绒布艺沙发、水绿色浴室以及刻着驯鹿图案的玻璃屏风。他也喜欢透过落满灰尘的百叶窗审视这个世界。尽管他们不断嘲笑澳大利亚，尽管埃德娜对新移民不太友好，但他们都发自内心地爱国思乡，每当身在异国，总会怀念芦笋卷和拉明顿蛋糕，涤纶高尔夫球帽和香草切片蛋糕。他们都觉得“莱斯·帕特森（Les Patterson）”十分让人厌恶。这位澳大利亚文化专员角色，有时也由哈姆弗莱斯饰演，他身上总是沾着汤汁酒渍和食物残渣，还患有阴茎不宁综合征。因此他们都不会和他在公开场合一起出现。

注释：

Restless Penis Syndrome：Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder in males, also known as Male PGAD or Restless Genital Syndrome or Persistent Genital Arousal Syndrome, is a condition characterized by unrelenting, spontaneous and uncontainable genital arousal.

Yet there similarities ended. Mr Humphries was an intellectual who, since boyhood, had combed the secondhand bookshops of Melbourne for rare editions of Samuel Beckett or Oscar Wilde. His university studies were in fine arts, philosophy and law, with the legal part swiftly eclipsed by musical soirées where he immersed himself in Menotti, Prokofiev and Satie. He championed the almost unknown music of Jean-Michel Damase, commissioning him to write for the horn-player Barry Tuckwell, who was a friend. (Edna favoured Mantovani.) He was friends too with Patrick White, John Betjeman and Francis Bacon, and painted a bit himself. Edna’s background contained not one scintilla of intellectual stimulation. There was, though, an echo in her of Barry’s fondness for Dadaist shock-theatre, such as dressing as a tramp and rummaging horribly through a public bin to draw out a secreted bottle of champagne. In fact, Edna’s whole show was an example of the Dadaist slogan, “Thought is born in the mouth”. In this case a mouth well caked with her very own lipstick in Kanga Rouge.

但是，他们的相似之处也就这么多了。哈姆弗莱斯先生从孩提时代起便热爱学习，穿行在墨尔本的一众二手书店，四处寻觅塞缪尔·贝克特（Samuel Beckett）或奥斯卡·王尔德（Oscar Wilde）作品的珍本。大学期间，他曾学习美术、哲学和法律专业。不过他对音乐晚会的热爱很快便盖过了法律，沉浸在梅诺蒂、普罗科菲耶夫和萨蒂的音乐作品中。他对让·米歇尔·达马斯（Jean-Michel Damase）近乎无人知晓的音乐作品也甚是捧场，并委托他为友人兼圆号手贝瑞·塔克威尔（Barry Tuckwell）作曲。（埃德娜则偏爱曼托瓦尼。）他还是帕特里克·怀特（Patrick White）、约翰·贝杰曼（John Betjeman）和弗朗西斯·培根（Francis Bacon）的朋友，自己也画些画。埃德娜则没有受到任何知识氛围的熏陶。然而，她对于哈姆弗莱斯喜爱的达达主义震撼戏剧表演形式颇有共鸣，比如打扮成流浪汉，在垃圾桶里一阵乱翻，找出一瓶秘藏的香槟。事实上，埃德娜所有演出都完美诠释了“思想在口中孕育（Thought is born in the mouth）”这一达达主义的口号。因为节目所需要的，正是她那张厚厚地涂着自己联名的“袋鼠红”唇膏的伶利嘴。

Barry’s cultivation she found frankly irritating. He was always droning on, and had put her on stage only to belittle her. He wrote novels; she produced a seminal autobiography, “My Glorious Life”, a Bedside Companion, a Coffee Table Book and an “Ednapedia” about all things Australian. From the moment she cried “Hallo Possums!”, her audience ate from her hand. He was a poor would-be comedian and a sick man, often the worse for drink, a habit he didn’t conquer until, in the mid-1970s, he spent a night unconscious in the gutter. His first three marriages were failures, too; her sole marriage to dear Norm, with his wretched prostate and testicular murmur, had been a model of caring. As mega-stardom grew she would gladly have got rid of Barry, except that he handled her bookings and wrote her scripts. Relations were strained even before The Great Betrayal, when in “Handling Edna”, in 2009, he claimed that she was difficult. He also exposed to the world the fact that Kenny, her favourite son, designer of all her costumes and a practising homeopath (as she thought he said), was the result of a date-rape by Frank Sinatra. The book began, “I wish I had never met Edna Everage.” So hurtful, so unfeeling.

坦率地说，埃德娜觉得哈姆弗莱斯的说教令人恼火。因为他总是喋喋不休，让她上台表演只是为了贬低她。他写了很多小说，而埃德娜也出版了一本意义非凡的自传，名为《我的华丽生活》。这本书适合睡前读，也可以喝咖啡时读，是一本埃德娜式的澳大利亚百科。从她喊出经典开场白“你好，负鼠！”的那一刻起，就已经拥有了自己的忠实观众。哈姆弗莱斯本人却一贫如洗，想成为一名喜剧演员，却体弱多病，经常醉醺醺的。直到1970年代中期，他在阴沟里昏迷了一夜，才最终戒酒成功。他前三段婚姻都以失败收场，而埃德娜的唯一伴侣是“丈夫”诺姆先生，虽然他的前列腺有问题，睾丸有“杂音”，不失为相濡以沫的典范。随着巨星埃德娜名气渐长，她很想要摆脱哈姆弗莱斯的控制，但是他负责为她安排档期和写剧本。甚至在2009年的《大背叛》之前，两人关系就已经紧张了。在当年出版的《操控埃德娜》中，他声称她难以相处。他还爆料她的“儿子”肯尼是她被弗兰克·辛纳屈约会强暴所生。肯尼是埃德娜最喜欢的儿子，为她设计了所有服装，还是一位顺势疗法执业医师（她认为他是这么说的）。所以书的开头写道：“我多希望从未遇见过埃德娜·埃弗拉奇。”写得如此伤人，如此无情。

In later years, therefore, they did not communicate. In 2012 he announced a farewell tour, but she kept going. Once she actually fired him, but he would not accept dismissal. It was a blessing, in the end, that Fate took them on the same day.

因此，后来的岁月里，他们互不往来。2012年，哈姆弗莱斯举办了告别巡演，而埃德娜则继续演出。有一次她真的解雇了他，但他拒不接受。命运终究会在同一天带走了他们，这或许是件幸事吧。

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