《李尔王》与黑暗时代中悲剧的使命 | 经济学人文化

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2023-11-17 02:11

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英文部分选自经济学人20231104期文化板块

Culture | Back Story

文化 | 幕后故事

“King Lear” and the purpose of tragedy in dark times

《李尔王》与黑暗时代中悲剧的使命

Sir Kenneth Branagh’s bold new production asks you to laugh, cry—and act

肯尼斯·布拉纳爵士（Kenneth Branagh）的大胆新作邀你笑中带泪，一同入戏

1-Murder on thetelevision, agony on the radio; lies and hatred on the internet, plus snuff videos that you click on before realising your mistake. The planet is a boiling cauldron in which you are the complacent frog. When the real world feels like a charnel house, why spend an evening and a chunk of cash watching bodies pile up on stage?

电视上播报着凶杀案，广播里诉说着苦难；互联网充斥着谎言与仇恨，有的视频点开之后才发现自己犯了错，居然是虐杀片。地球是一口滚滚沸腾的大锅，而你则是锅中那只自鸣得意的青蛙。既然现实世界感觉就像是藏尸所，为什么还要花上一大笔钱和一整晚的时间去看舞台上尸体成堆呢？

注释：

鼻烟胶卷（snuff video）一词，诞生于上世纪70年代，泛指某些通篇血腥、暴力的B级片或是类似主题的个人短片，大多数都是展现某人对某人施暴或是行凶的整个过程，爱好者将其观影的快感比作使用鼻烟壶。

And in “King Lear”,Shakespeare piles them high. “That’s but a trifle here,” a character says of another’s demise during the final die-in. But the play—and Sir Kenneth Branagh’s ingenious new production in London—make a powerful case for subjecting yourself to tragic art, even at a time of surround-sound horror.

莎士比亚的《李尔王》（King Lear）当中，尸体不仅成堆，还堆得很高。最后的死亡场景里，某个角色对于另一角色之死是这么评价的：“在这里，死只算小事一桩。” 不过，肯尼斯·布拉纳爵士在伦敦出演的新版《李尔王》巧妙地让观众即使在恐惧如环绕声般无处不在的当下，也深深沉浸于这部作品的悲剧艺术。

These days “King Lear” is performed less often than “Hamlet”, with its startlingly acute psychology, or “Othello” and“Macbeth”, with their overtly modern themes of race, misogyny and the corrupting effects of power. Critics have frequently regarded “Lear” as a triumph of philosophical poetry but impractical as a play. There is just too much of it, and too much in it: too many ideas and emotions, too many stories and, above all, too much desolation and despair.

如今，相比于心理冲击剧烈的《哈姆雷特》，或者涉及典型现代主题（如种族、厌女和权力腐败）的《奥赛罗》和《麦克白》，《李尔王》的演出频率并不高。评论家常常认为，《李尔王》从哲理诗的角度来看是一部成功之作；但作为戏剧，它显得不切实际。《李尔王》内容如此之多，令人难以承载：思想与情感层出不穷，情节又过于丰富，悲怆和绝望的情绪又过于丰满。

The evil characters destroy one another, but they take the good down with them. Love kills; man is nothing but a “poor, bare, forked animal”. Throughout the 18th century this bleakness seemed so shocking, even immoral, that “Lear” was staged with a revised happy ending. Audiences still struggle with emotional overload. A decade ago, at another vaunted production in London, people sniggered when they were meant to weep.

反派角色不仅互相毁灭，还会戕害好人。爱能致命，人类只不过是“一贫如洗、一丝不挂的两脚动物”。在整个18世纪，《李尔王》里的阴郁色彩令人惊异无比，甚至是不道德的，因此舞台呈现的是一个经过改编的圆满结局。观众们仍然难以接受过度的情绪。十年前，在伦敦的另一场名过其实的演出中，人们在本应哭泣时低声窃笑。

注释：

1.overload: an excessive load or amount of something

2.If someone sniggers, they laugh quietly in a disrespectful way, for example at something rude or unkind. 暗笑;窃笑

3.If you describe something as vaunted or much vaunted, you mean that people praise it more than it deserves.被吹嘘的;被过分夸耀的

Sir Kenneth, a British actor and director, stars in and directs the version that opened at the Wyndham’s Theatre on October 31st. (It goes to the Shed in New York in 2024.) Part of his response to the play’s scale is to cut lots of it. Running with no interval for ice-cream and gossip, this is two hours of neat tragedy—set, boldly, in Neolithic Britain. Wearing animal skins and wielding spears, the cast hulks around a stark set that recalls Stonehenge, their faces intermittently looming on the stones in un-Neolithic projections. Above them hangs an orb resembling both a planet and an eyeball, which sometimes seems to bleed.

10月31日，英国演员兼导演肯尼思·布拉纳爵士主演并执导了在温德姆剧院上映的《李尔王》，该版本将于2024年在纽约The Shed艺术文化中心上映。剧本本身规模较大，布拉纳对内容作了大幅删减。这是一部时长两小时的简短悲剧，从头到尾没有供观众吃冰淇淋和闲聊的中场休息。它大胆地把背景设定在新石器时代的不列颠，演员身披动物皮，挥舞着长矛，围绕着形似巨石阵的简陋布景笨拙地移动。有时，演员的脸会通过非新石器时代的投影技术赫然耸现在石头上。舞台上方悬挂着一个既像星球又像眼球的球体，有时看起来还像在流血。

注释：

1.An interval during a film, concert, show, or game is a short break between two of the parts.幕间休息;中场休息

2.Something that is intermittent happens occasionally rather than continuously. 间歇的;断断续续的

Here the power struggle that follows Lear’s division of his kingdom is less a clash of armies than a scrap for a bauble in the mud. Yet the absence of pomp also makes the family drama at the story’s heart seem movingly intimate and familiar. Captured by his foes, arms bound behind his back, Sir Kenneth’s Lear uses his beard to dry the tears of his beloved daughter Cordelia (Jessica Revell). Soon he heaves her corpse onto the stage, howling in grief; this time, nobody laughed.

在这部作品中，李尔王瓜分国土后发生的权力斗争与其说是一场军队冲突，不如说是为了争抢一个泥土里微不足道的小玩意而大打出手。没有豪华的布景，却让故事最核心的亲情戏显得格外感人、亲切和熟悉。在剧中，肯尼思扮演的李尔王被敌人俘获后双手被绑在身后；他用胡须擦干心爱的女儿考狄利娅（Cordelia）（杰西卡·雷维尔饰）的眼泪。随后，他将女儿的尸体拖上舞台，悲痛地嚎啕大哭。这一回，全场没有了笑声。

注释：

1.A bauble is a small, cheap ornament or piece of jewellery. 廉价小饰物（或珠宝）

2.If a person howls, they make a long, loud cry expressing pain, anger, or unhappiness. （人因疼痛、愤怒、愁苦而）吼叫，嚎哭，哀号

3.A corpse is a dead body, especially the body of a human being. (尤指人的)尸体

4.Pomp is the use of a lot of ceremony, fine clothes, and decorations, especially on a special occasion.（尤指特殊场合的）盛况，壮观景象

5.You can refer to a fight or a quarrel as a scrap, especially if it is not very serious. (尤指不激烈的)斗殴，吵架

6.文中“a bauble in the mud”这个比喻的意思是，李尔王在瓜分国土的过程中，将原本珍贵的事物（国土）视为无足轻重的物品（bauble），就像在泥巴里寻找一个微不足道的小玩意。

They chuckled at other moments though, as Sir Kenneth judiciously keeps and hones the funny bits to help the philosophy go down. It is not just the humour of absurdist madness and slapstick torment that hovers between pathos and ridicule, often called the “comedy of the grotesque”. There is also the comedy of charismatic devilment and gullibility, of champion wordplay and some of Shakespeare’s most colourful insults.

不过，观众也会在其他桥段发出笑声。布拉纳明智地保留并打磨了一些具有喜剧效果的片段，令观众更容易接受这部剧的哲理。这部剧不仅仅是通称的“怪诞喜剧”，即具有一种徘徊在感伤和戏谑、荒诞疯狂和闹剧折磨间的幽默，同时还体现了趣味十足的恶搞和欺骗戏码、最精彩的文字游戏和最生动的莎士比亚式嘲讽。

As for the purpose of tragedy: Edgar (Doug Colling) implies one as he drags his blind and suicidal father Gloucester (Joseph Kloska) across ancient Britain. “Men must endure/Their going hence, even as their coming hither,” he preaches. “Ripeness is all.” Life, in other words, is an endurance test. It follows that, for viewers, tragic art is a kind of practice in grinning and bearing it.

至于这部悲剧的宗旨，埃德加（道格·科灵饰）拖着失明且有自杀倾向的父亲格洛斯特（约瑟夫·克罗斯卡饰）穿越古不列颠时就已经有所暗示。他讲道：“人须耐得住离世的日子，正如他们来到此世。”，接着是“生长成熟即是全部。”换言之，人生就是一场耐力考验。进一步讲，对观众来说，悲剧艺术亦是一场需得咬牙坚持的考验。

We have had quite enough practice in that, today’s punters may think; and a homily on stoicism makes a priggish sort of moral. Edgar’s conclusion, however, is not the play’s. The rationale it offers for its spectacle of pain is more than a lesson in patience, more even than the sense of solidarity in suffering that acting as fine as Sir Kenneth’s can provide.

如今的观众可能会认为，我们在咬牙坚持这一方面已经有足够的经验了；而关于坚忍的说教则是一种自以为是的道德。然而，埃德加的结局并非该剧的结局。这部作品呈现出的悲壮场面，不只是要教人忍耐，甚至也不只是教人像布拉纳爵士的表演展现的那样要在苦痛当中团结一致。

10-“King Lear” is full of audiences: characters who witness folly, misery or cruelty and must choose what to do about them. Some weigh their interests and join in. Some wring their hands. A few resist, such as the heroic servant who objects as Cornwall (a sinister Hughie O’Donnell) rips out Gloucester’s eyes in a spasm of bloodlust and impunity.

《李尔王》不缺观众：剧中人物目睹了愚蠢、苦难与残忍，而且必须选择如何应对。有些人权衡利弊，然后自甘堕落。有些人踌躇不前。少数人选择抵制，比如在康沃尔（休吉·奥唐纳饰演的阴险角色）肆无忌惮地残忍挖出格洛斯特的双眼时，最英勇的仆人选择抵抗。

It is hard to imagine yourself as Lear, even one as denuded as Sir Kenneth’s. But maybe you could, just about, be like the unheralded minor figures who opt to act instead of merely watching. “O, you are men of stones,” the king cries at the close, demanding greater compassion for injustice from the surviving characters—and from the audience, too. Don’t just sit there, the play urges. Do something.

你很难把自己带入李尔王的立场，哪怕是像布拉纳爵士那样潦倒的李尔王。不过，或许你可以像那些默默无闻的小人物一样，选择采取行动而不是袖手旁观。李尔王在结尾处大喊：“啊，你们这些人像石头一样无动于衷。”他请求剧中幸存的人物——当然也包括观众——对不公给予更多的同情。这部戏剧呼吁大家：不要只是干坐着，做点什么吧。

翻译组：

Ryan，译海徜徉的一条咸鱼

Alfredo，男，真实主义歌剧发烧友

Trista，女，虽然我是无业游民，但是我并没有骄傲

Albert，男，热爱笔译的摸鱼人。希望一直有求知和宽阔的心

校对组：

Clover，怀民亦未寝

YY，愿逆风如解意，容易莫摧残

Nikolae，新手人民教师，声优探索者，乃木坂47与AKB49

观点|评论|思考

本期感想

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

非常喜欢古典名著的现代改编剧，莎士比亚的，福尔摩斯的（这大概是最出圈的吧），勃朗特姐妹的。如果细心一点不难发现，很多改变剧可能会沿用经典的名字，但背景却换成了现代甚至是当代。若是更细心一些，则会发现，所有改编剧对于原著内核的传承却是一致的。所以我们不难看出，他们对于经典名著的改编是充满自信的。且不同编剧在改编时都将自己对于原著内核的理解放入新剧中，并透过现代的场景和现代的表达方式来诠释这个内核。至少在我们这一层面或者所处文化环境来看，这需要莫大的勇气。

倘若孙悟空是个在汽车厂里打螺丝的普通工人，或者贾宝玉是个霸道总裁，拍出来的戏大概是褒贬不一，当然是否允许拍都是两说的，一不小心就会被戴上历史虚无主义的帽子。如此环境的原因说穿了仍然是一种骨子里的不自信，我们害怕老祖宗的东西被夺走，被剥夺解释权，被剥夺定义权。殊不知只有在诠释百花齐放的环境下，经典著作才可能焕发出新的光彩，尊旧守故只会让这些宝贵的历史文化遗产逐渐失去光泽，最终落得消亡陨落的结局。

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