Boxing
拳击
A cultural history
跟文化沾边儿的历史
Jun 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition
PUGILISTS and aesthetes are not necessarily in opposing corners. In a history of the sport that dates back to Homer, Virgil and other ancient fight fans, Kasia Boddy, a lecturer in English at University College London, examines the strange attraction boxing holds for highbrow folk. She provides much merriment along the way as she explores the ways professional fighters excite the imagination of writers, artists and intellectuals.
拳击家和美学家未必就凑不到一块儿。一位伦敦大学学院的教师，Kasia Boddy，研究了从荷马、维吉尔等搏击痴迷者的时代开始，在体育运动史中，拳击对那些智者的奇特吸引力。在她探索技艺纯熟的搏击者如何激发作家、艺术家和思想家想象力的过程中，她发现了一些很有趣的东西。
Some of the sport’s most pretentious followers are French intellectuals. François Mauriac described Georges Carpentier, a world light-heavyweight titleholder, as “one of those graceful Apollos slightly grazed by the pick in the process of their exhumation” and as “the type of honest man dear to Pascal”. Jean Cocteau managed a professional boxer and rhapsodised about his “active poetry” and its “mysterious syntax”. Jean Genet wrote poems to a “thief-boxer” and a “muscled rose”.
在这些运动爱好者中，最矫情的要数一群法国知识分子。François Mauriac曾这样描述那位世界轻量级拳王乔治斯·卡朋泰尔，说他是”如阿波罗般完美的人之一，他们就算死了被人掘尸的时候叫镐头砸一下，也不过破层皮罢了”，又说他”简直是帕斯卡理论的完美诠释”。让·科克托则为一位职业拳击手疯狂，他狂热地赞叹其拳法”如诗般灵动鲜活”，”似句法般变幻莫测”①。让·热内还曾为某”小偷拳手”和”肌肉玫瑰②”写过赞美诗。
Their American equivalents are more macho. Several climbed into the ring to try their hand at the sport, though only to engage in sparring matches. Rudolph Valentino was an exception in threatening a real fight. The 1920s matinee idol was so angered by being called a “powder puff” in a Chicago newspaper that he challenged the reporter to meet him in the ring. Norman Mailer viewed boxing as a metaphor for his ambitions to be writing champion of the world. T.S. Eliot took boxing lessons from an ex-pugilist in a toughish gym in Boston’s South End. Wyndham Lewis was surprised on entering Ezra Pound’s Paris studio to find the American poet swinging gloved fists at a splendidly built young man who turned out to be Ernest Hemingway. Thomas Eakins’s celebrated studies include a photograph of bare-fisted youths fighting in a wood that is said by Ms Boddy to evoke both pastoral classicism and Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l’herbe”.
在美国也有这么群人，不过他们的表现更有男子气概。其中有不少人曾站到拳击台上一试身手，虽然从未获得过什么名次。鲁道夫·瓦伦蒂诺算是一个例外。他差一点儿上了拳击台，可最终还是没能去成。在20世纪20年代，这位万人迷被芝加哥一家报纸称为”娘娘腔”，他拍案大怒，向那位记者发出挑战，欲在拳击台上与之一决雌雄。诺曼·梅勒把他登上世界文学高峰的雄心寄情于拳击③。T.S.艾略特在波士顿南端一个简陋的④体育馆里，跟一位退役拳击手学拳击。当韦德汉姆·刘易斯进入艾斯拉·庞德在巴黎的工作室时，他惊奇地看到这位美国诗人正戴着拳击手套跟一个体型健美的年轻人挥动着拳头，而那个年轻人就是海明威。在托马斯·艾斯金那著名的书房里，挂着一幅画，一个赤手空拳的青年正在树林里打拳。Boddy女士说，这既可以使人领略到田园诗般的古典美，又能叫人想起马奈的《草地上的午餐》。
A few boxers fraternised with the intelligentsia. Gene Tunney numbered George Bernard Shaw, Sherwood Anderson and Thornton Wilder among his friends and slipped into his conversation such words as “ineffectual” and “cosmeticise”. Muhammad Ali, more typically, accepts the admiration of his cultured fans with bemused affection. He even posed for George Lois for an Esquire magazine cover as Botticelli’s “St Sebastian” until the subject’s provenance suddenly struck him. “Hey George”, he blurted out, “this cat’s a Christian!” The photographic session had to be suspended until Mr Ali had consulted his Muslim spiritual leader on the propriety of the pose.
有一些拳击手也对知识分子表现得很友好。吉讷·腾尼就把乔治·萧伯纳、舍伍德·安德森和桑顿·威尔德列为自己的朋友，不过背地里却说他们是些”无用的家伙”，不过是自己用来”装点门面”的。穆罕默德·阿里则更有代表性一些，他只是乐呵呵地稀里糊涂地接受着他那些文化界粉丝的崇拜。他甚至在乔治·路易斯的邀请下帮《时尚先生》杂志拍封面照，摆出波提切利的名画《圣塞巴斯蒂安》的造型，直到他忽然意识到这个造型的原意。”我说乔治”，他叫了起来，”这厮可是个基督徒啊。”于是拍摄工作不得不暂停，等待阿里先生请教他的穆斯林精神导师摆这个造型是否合适。
More seriously, Ms Boddy explores ethnic tensions in the sport, especially those between whites and blacks in America. Racism was once raw. When Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, entered the ring in Reno in 1910 to defeat the latest “White Hope”, the band played “All Coons Look Alike to Me”. Less than three decades later things had changed markedly. Joe Louis, “the Brown Bomber”, enjoyed the fervent support of Americans of all colours when he defended the same title against Germany’s Max Schmeling in a fight billed as a contest between democracy and Nazism.
还有更严肃点儿的，Boddy女士也探讨了体育运动中的种族问题，特别是针对美国的白人和黑人。种族主义曾经是人们根深蒂固的观念。1910年，当杰克·约翰逊，这位第一个黑人的世界重量级拳王，在拳击台上击败新升起的”白人希望之星”时，乐队演奏的是《黑鬼在我眼里都一个样儿》。而此后三十年不到，在那场带着民主政治与纳粹主义之争味道的比赛中，有”棕色轰炸机”之称的乔伊·路易斯击败德国人马克思·史迈林成功卫冕。他得到了不同肤色的美国人的全体热烈拥戴。
Their successor, Mr Ali, a radical turned patriot, became a thoroughly establishment figure. He campaigned in 1980 for the presidential election of Ronald Reagan and in 1990 flew to Iraq to try to secure the release of American hostages held by Saddam Hussein. President George Bush has been especially appreciative of the former champion’s efforts to persuade Muslim Americans to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in 2005 awarded him the Presidential Medal. This cat is now a pillar of society.
他们的后辈，阿里，由激进者转而成为爱国者，现在已经是一个炙手可热的公众人物了。 1980年，他为罗纳德·里根总统的竞选而奔忙⑥；1990年，他又飞到伊拉克，去保护被萨达姆·侯赛因释放的人质的安全。他还曾努力劝说美国的穆斯林支持伊拉克和阿富汗战争，从而使乔治·布什总统对这位前拳王非常欣赏。2005年，阿里被授予了总统勋章。看来，这厮现在已经俨然社会栋梁了。
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①、这三句实在不好明白，我绞尽脑汁揣摩出来的可能含义。大家看我揣摩对了没？
②、估计是个女拳击手，肌肉玫瑰有点儿难听，还有什么好听点儿的叫法没？
③、这句翻得好诡异啊，有没有什么好点儿的说法？
④、toughish的意思我无法确定。
⑤、没搞明白establishment figure的确切含义(大致了解了)。
⑥、网上没查到相关资料，wiki也没有。
Book details
Boxing: A Cultural History
By Kasia Boddy
Reaktion Books; 480 pages; $35 and £25.
译者：being http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12241&extra=page%3D1