[2008.12.20] Playboy of the eastern world 东方世界的“花花公子”

“The Tale of Genji”
《源氏物语》

Playboy of the eastern world
东方世界的”花花公子”

Dec 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The first modern novel celebrates its 1,000th birthday
世界第一部现代小说迎来了自己1000周岁的生日

IT CONTAINS no military adventures nor epic journeys. Yet “The Tale of Genji” is in every way Japan’s equivalent of Homer’s “Iliad”. First mentioned in a diary exactly 1,000 years ago, in late 1008, it has over the centuries been subject to changes, adaptations, mutations and translations (not to mention being remade as a manga comic), all of which have helped it not just survive, but flourish. Today this account of the amorous escapades of an aristocratic aesthete is widely regarded as the first modern or psychological novel.

没有军事冒险活动，也没有史诗般的历程—然而，《源氏物语》在日本的影响力却完全可以与荷马所著的《伊利亚特》相媲美。就在1000年前（1008年年末），有人便首次在日记中提到了这部小说，几个世纪以来，对这部小说的变更、改编、更改和翻译（更别提改编为连环漫画）不仅让这部小说得以留存于世，还使其得到了发展和兴盛。如今，这部讲述了一位唯美贵族风流韵事的作品被公认为世界第一部现代或心理小说。

The book’s success lies in its broad appeal. Right-wing Japanese commentators point to “The Tale of Genji” and take great pride in emphasising how much more sophisticated civilisation was in Japan in the 11th century compared with Europe at that time. For middle-aged Japanese, reading the book at study groups in adult-education centres is as popular, and as quintessentially Japanese, as flower-arranging or the tea ceremony. Feminists rejoice that the author, Murasaki Shikibu, was a woman, even if writing fiction was generally regarded as frivolous and lowbrow; not an activity for men.

该书的成功之处就在于其拥有广泛的吸引力。日本的右翼评论家们将目光盯向了这部小说，他们骄傲地指出，比起同时期的欧洲，日本11世纪的文明要先进得多。对于日本的中年人而言，在成年教育中心的学习小组中研读本书与插花或茶道一样为人所喜闻乐见，并且与后者一道成为了日本文化的精髓。女权主义者为这本书的作者紫式部（Murasaki Shikibu）是一位女性而欢欣鼓舞，即使写小说在当时被普遍认为是一种无聊、粗俗，并不是男性应该从事的活动。

The book’s 1,000th anniversary is being celebrated in Japan with lectures, symposia, plays, conferences and concerts. A line of Genji tea and Genji sweets is already on the market and the CD of a newly composed Genji symphony goes on sale this month.

在日本，人们用演讲，座谈会，戏剧，讨论会和音乐会的方式来纪念该书诞辰1000周年。市场上还推出了一系列的”源氏茶”和”源氏糖”。本月，新创作的源氏交响乐还被制成CD出售。

Ruthlessly summarised, the book’s storyline goes like this. The “dazzlingly lovely” Genji, son of the emperor and one of his lower-grade consorts, is irresistible to women. He enjoys a string of affairs as a young man, even abducting a ten-year-old girl so he can mould her into the perfect life-companion. But sleeping with the daughter of the leader of the opposing political faction is one indiscretion too many and Genji is forced into exile. Recalled eventually to the capital, he builds himself a mansion with a different woman in each of its four wings. Honours are heaped upon him and he is offered the retired emperor’s daughter as a wife. But Genji’s royal bride betrays him with another man and when his beloved mistress dies after a long illness, our heartbroken hero follows her swiftly to the grave.

经过大量的删节，本书的故事情节大致如下：作为天皇和一位卑微妃嫔的儿子，外表”光彩四射”的源氏对女性有着不可抗拒的诱惑力。年轻的他在一连串的风流韵事中获得乐趣。他甚至还诱拐一个10岁大的女孩，将她塑造成一位完美的终身伴侣。然而，与一个对立政治派别领袖女儿的鱼水之欢却是一件极为草率的行为，源氏也因此被迫流亡。在召回国都后，他为自己建造了一座寓所，寓所的四翼居住着他的四位夫人。随后，各种名誉地位接踵而至，他被赐予了一位退位天皇的女儿作为自己的妻子。但是，这位出身皇族的妻子却背叛了他，与另一位男子私通。同时，他最深爱的夫人也在久病之后去世，万念俱灰的主人公不久也随着他的这位夫人过世。

At this point the reader is only two-thirds of the way through the book, which runs to 1,200 pages in its most recent English translation and boasts a cast of more than 400. The story resumes with new heroes. Two young men (the purported son and grandson of Genji) are wooing a trio of sisters. One of them succumbs to marriage, but of the other two sisters, one starves herself to death and the other chooses to become a nun rather than fall into male hands. Love, it turns out, is not innocent hanky-panky, but something noxious, corrosive-even deadly.

此时的读者只看到了全书三分之二的内容。在该书最新的英译本中，这部分内容共有1200页，所涉人物超过400位。接下来的故事则是围绕新的主人公展开：两个年轻人（一个是据说是源氏的儿子，另一个则是源氏的孙子）热切地追求着三姐妹。她们中的一位被迫出嫁，另外两个姐妹：一位绝食至死，另一位宁可落发为尼也不肯落入男性手中成为玩物。在书中，爱情不再是纯洁的鱼水之欢，而成为了堕落，腐朽—甚至致命的代名词。

Sheer scale is not all that is forbidding about the book. Japanese prose was still in its infancy in Murasaki’s day, so her syntax can be opaque. Sentences lack subjects, direct speech is often unattributed and, most alarmingly, the characters change names according to their rank or circumstances. Genji, for instance, is variously referred to as the captain, the consultant, the commander, the grand counsellor, the palace minister, the chancellor and the honorary retired emperor.

这部小说令人悚然止步的地方并不完全在于它的洋洋万言。在紫式部所处的时代，日本的散文创作依旧处于萌芽状态，因而书中所用的句法晦涩难懂。书中的句子缺少主语，直接引语往往无法找到相应的人称，最让人头疼的是，书中的人物角色是根据他们的官衔或所处的环境来变换名字的。例如，”源氏”在书中有着各种不同的名称：中将之君，纳言，大将之君，大纳言，太政大臣，尚书大臣，太上天皇。【注】

The subject matter is also challenging. There is polygamy, bisexuality (when one young woman rebuffs his advances, Genji consoles himself with her younger brother who turns out to be “no bad substitute for his ungracious sister”) and something very close to incest. Genji is attracted to Fujitsubo, one of his father’s consorts, because of her resemblance to his dead mother. Even though she is, in effect, his stepmother, he fathers a child with her.

本书的主题也是饱受争议。书中包括了一夫多妻，双性恋（当一位年轻女子拒绝自己的追求后，源氏将这位女子的弟弟作为抚慰自己的对象，而这位弟弟最终成为了他那位不识趣姐姐的一个不算坏的替代品）以及近乎乱伦的描写。源氏被他父亲的一位妃嫔藤壶所吸引，原因则是藤壶长得很像他已故的母亲。实际上，尽管藤壶是自己的继母，源氏还是与她生育了一位孩子。

Murasaki’s language was already archaic and impenetrable a century after it was written, so the Japanese have been reading annotated, abridged, simplified and illustrated versions of the book since as early as the 12th century. The same holds true today. In the last century, four Japanese writers produced a total of seven updated versions of the book. The most recent of these was by Jakucho Setouchi, a female novelist whose own work deals with issues of women’s independence. Setouchi’s “Genji” has sold more than 3m copies since it was published in December 1996, a success that Kodansha, the publisher, attributes to the author’s empathy with the women in the tale and her colloquial writing. Canny marketing also played a part, with Kodansha organising lectures and discussion groups all over the country at the time of the launch.

《源氏物语》完成100年后，紫式部时代的语言便已经显得陈旧和费解。于是，早在12世纪，日本人便一直阅读着评注、删节、简化和配图版本的《源氏物语》。如今，这种情况依旧如此。上个世纪，四位日本作家共创作出7个最新的版本。最近的一个版本是由濑户内寂听（Jakucho Setouchi）创作的。这位女性小说家的作品涉及的是女性的独立问题。自1996年12月出版以来，濑户内寂听创作的《源氏物语》版本已经售出了超过300万册。该书的出版商—讲谈社（Kodansha）将这一成功归功于作者描写书中女性人物时的全情投入以及作者口语化的写作风格。精明的营销手段也起到了作用，新书面市期间讲谈社在全国范围内组织了针对《源氏物语》的演讲和讨论活动。

Freer and less reverential adaptations exist as well. Also from Kodansha is Waki Yamato’s “Fleeting Dreams”, a “sugar and spice and all things nice” take on Genji in manga form that has sold 17m copies. For those who prefer a less saccharine approach, Shogakukan, a rival publisher, came up with another manga version that emphasises the malicious female characters and includes plenty of explicit sex.

除此之外，也有一些形式更加自由，内容不太严肃的改编版本存在。同样是讲谈社出版，大和和纪（Waki Yamato）创作的《逝梦》以连环漫画的形式赋予了源氏”丰富而又完美的形象”。该连环画册已售出1700万套。为了取悦那些不太喜欢缠绵悱恻风格的读者，讲谈社的竞争对手—小学馆推出了另一个漫画版本，该版本突出了女性人物阴险恶毒的性格，同时包含了大量露骨的性爱场面。

It took until the 20th century before a complete English-language version appeared. Arthur Waley, a Cambridge classicist who taught himself Japanese and Chinese, produced the first English translation in six instalments between 1925 and 1933. Waley was much more interested in readability than fidelity. He sped up the plot, cut long descriptive scenes and the occasional entire chapter. He clarified many of the sentences, added psychological background to the characters and westernised the Japanese architecture. The result was a prose masterpiece, though one which modern scholars prefer to call an adaptation rather than a translation.

该书完整的英译本直到20世纪才出现。亚瑟•韦利是剑桥大学的古典主义学家，曾自学日语和汉语。1925年至1933年间，他以6期连载的方式创作出该书的第一部英译本。韦利在翻译该书时更加关注译文的可读性，而非忠实程度。在译文中，他加快了故事节奏，删除了较长的描述性情节以及整个为故事做铺垫的章回。他还阐明了许多句子的含义，增加了人物心理背景方面的描写，对日本建筑进行了西式的刻画。这一切使得这部作品成为了一部散文杰作，尽管现代学者更愿意称这部作品是一部改编本，而非译作。

Lytton Strachey, a neighbour of Waley’s, considered his translation “beautiful in bits”, but the reaction from Japan was much warmer. Even if Waley’s Japanese noblemen sound a little like early-20th-century Cambridge undergraduates, one contemporary Japanese writer famously declared that the Englishman had breathed life into a work that had been tottering around like a headless corpse. Indeed, Waley’s stature in Japan is such that Heibonsha, another publisher, recently released a retranslation of Waley’s “Genji” back into Japanese. “Even in the modern-language versions of ‘Genji’, the majority of Japanese readers don’t make it much past the opening chapters,” explains Takao Hoshina, an editor at Heibonsha. “Waley’s is the most accessible version for us too.”

韦利的朋友林顿•斯特来彻认为，韦利这部译作的个别地方较为出彩，然而日本对这部作品的反应更加热烈。即使韦利笔下的这位日本贵族有点像个20世纪早期的剑桥大学生，但是一位日本当代作家宣称，韦利将这部一直以来如同无头尸一样步履蹒跚的作品赋予了鲜活的生命力。事实上，韦利的这部译作所达到的水准使得另一个出版商—平凡社在最近发行了韦利版《源氏物语》的日译本。来自平凡社的编辑高雄星奈（Takao Hoshina）解释道，”即使在现代版的《源氏物语》中， 绝大多数的日本读者依然无法很顺利地读懂该书开头几回的内容，韦利翻译的《源氏物语》对于我们来说也是最易懂的版本。”

In 1976 Edward Seidensticker, an academic already celebrated for his translations of Yasunari Kawabata, a Nobel prize-winning novelist, brought out a new version. Torn between admiration for Waley’s narrative verve and horror at the liberties he had taken with the text, Seidensticker produced a “Genji” that was doggedly faithful but a little lacking in grace.

爱德华•塞登斯蒂克是一位曾翻译过诺贝尔文学奖得主小说家川端康成（Yasunari Kawabata）的著作而饱受赞誉的学者。1976年他创作出一部新的《源氏物语》译本。在对韦利叙事热忱的崇敬和对自由风格的恐惧之间，两难抉择的塞登斯蒂克选择了忠实原文。他创造了一部完全忠实原著的《源氏物语》，但是这部作品却少了几分美感。

It was left to Royall Tyler, whose charming and urbane “Genji” came out in 2001, to chart the course between the exuberance and the exactitude of his two predecessors. Perhaps because he lives in the Australian bush, Mr Tyler was willing to recognise that readers can lose their way in the novel’s vastness and so provides a handy kit of orientation tools: chapter-by-chapter lists of the characters and footnotes to explain the imagery of the poems dotted throughout the text.

轮到罗耶尔•泰勒了。他笔下的那位风度翩翩，温文尔雅的”源氏”于2001年出版。他在前两位译者生气勃勃和循规蹈矩的风格中间开辟出一条自己的道路。可能是由于自己居住在澳洲的荒野之地，泰勒先生认为读者会在这部小说的广袤无垠中迷失方向，因此他提供了”一套方便的定向工具”：通过对每一回中出现的人物进行列表并添加脚注的方式来解释散落在全书中各种诗歌的意境。

“The Tale of Genji” rewards perseverance, but just as young Genji flits from one mistress to the next, so the reader can choose between the three English versions of the story. Effervescent Waley, prim Seidensticker or suave Tyler-who will you take to bed with you tonight?

《源氏物语》值得读者将这部小说坚持读完，但是，正如那位年轻的源氏辗转于一个又一个的情人一样，读者也可以在三种英译本之间进行选择。是”热情洋溢”的韦利，”循规蹈矩”的塞登斯蒂克还是”温文尔雅”的泰勒—今晚，你会选择谁与你一道”同床共枕”？

【注】《源氏物语》中对许多人物的称谓采用的方式往往是男性多以官衔来称呼，例如：‘头中将’、‘大纳言’，‘左大臣’等；女性则以自己的身份或所处的住所来称呼，例如：‘公主’，‘女御’‘南殿夫人’等。这种称谓往往因书中各回内容而异。

译者： Phantom       http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=16210&extra=page%3D1&page=1