July 14th 1789
1789年七月十四日
Remembering the barricades
铭记那坎坷
Jul 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
France’s national day is a tribute to militarism, mythology and media kitsch
法国的国庆日是对黩武主义，神话故事，媒体庸俗报道的溢美之辞
JULY 14th 1789, the day the Bastille prison was stormed, has an iconic hold on the French imagination. Schoolchildren are taught that it is the republic’s founding moment. It is France’s national day and a public holiday. A military parade is held on the Champs Elysées, and fighter jets, blazing a trail of red, white and blue, screech low over Paris.
1789年7月14日，巴士底狱掀起腥风血雨，这一天在法国人的想象带来具有象征意义的冲击。此后人们谆谆教导学校的孩童这一天乃是法兰西共和国的奠基时刻，同时还是法国的国庆日和公共节日。一列列军队在香榭丽舍大街上举行游行，喷气式战斗机在天空划出红白蓝三色轨迹，呼啸着在巴黎上空低掠而过。
This year will be particularly grandiose. President Nicolas Sarkozy has invited as his guests European Union and Mediterranean leaders, as well as Ingrid Betancourt, the recently liberated Franco-Colombian hostage. But, of all the pivotal dates during the French Revolution, how did July 14th come to acquire such mythical status? This, rather than the events of the day itself, is the subject of this intriguing little book by Christopher Prendergast, an historian at Cambridge University.
今年仪式将尤其盛大。总统尼克拉萨科齐邀请了最近才获释的法籍哥伦比亚人Ingrid Betancourt，欧盟以及地中海国家的领导人。但是在法国大革命期间所有意义重大的日子中，七月十四日又是怎样获得如同神话一般的崇尚地位？这一疑问取代了这一天所发生的事件，成为了牛津历史学家Christopher Prendergas篇幅较小，但却兴味盎然的新书的主题。
The taking of the Bastille fortress, a symbol of arbitrary royal authority, was undoubtedly of revolutionary importance, in terms of weakening the monarchy and legitimising popular defiance. But other days have a fair claim to historic symbolism too: August 26th 1789, when the Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted, for instance, or August 10th 1792, when the Tuileries Palace was stormed and the monarchy suspended. Besides, the commemoration of July 14th scarcely began in revolutionary spirit.
毫无疑问，从削弱君权、合理反抗王权来说，巴士底狱–这座代表皇权专制权威的沦陷具有革命性的意味。但是其他一些时日也拥有相当深远的历史象征意义：例如，1789年8月26日，人权宣言宣告诞生，1792年8月10日，杜勒丽王宫沦陷，君主政权宣告终结。此外，7月14日的庆典并非在一开始就拥抱革命精神。
At a military fete to mark its first anniversary in 1790, and to celebrate the new constitutional settlement, the Marquis de Lafayette, a French general, swore an oath “to be forever faithful to the Nation, to the Law and to the King”. Dismayed, Jean-Paul Marat, a radical journalist and politician, described the proceedings that day as “shameful”, adding: “The Revolution, as yet, has been merely a sorrowful dream for the people!”
1790年为了庆祝周年纪念，同时也庆祝修宪问题得以解决，法国将军拉法叶侯爵宣誓”永远效忠于国家，法律和国王”。惊愕之下，激进的记者兼政客Jean-Paul Marat评论说，”迄今为止，革命仍旧只是令大众无限伤感的旧梦。”
As Mr Prendergast recalls, the fall of the Bastille was not quite the stuff of epic myth. Strictly speaking, the prison was not “taken”; the mob surged into its inner courtyard only after the governor, the Marquis de Launay, had offered a surrender. Although the crowd was primarily in search of arms, it found just seven prisoners to be freed. “Happenstance, paranoia and random violence” characterised the event, with rumour and counter-rumour fuelling acts of ferocious brutality. Launay himself was dragged out by the mob, his body ripped to shreds and his head hacked off by a cook with a kitchen knife, before being stuck on a pike for public view.
根据Prendergast先生后来回忆，巴士底狱的陷落不能称之为史诗般的神话。严格来讲，这座监狱不是被”夺取”–在监狱长de Launay侯爵下令投降后，暴徒们一拥而上，冲进监狱的内庭。尽管这群暴徒主要是搜寻武器，但是他们也只仅仅释放了七人，”偶发事件”，”偏执狂”，” 随心所欲的暴行” 贯穿于整起事件当中，流言以及抵制流言引发了令人发指的罪行，Launay自己未能幸免，被暴徒拖出来后，他的肢体被撕成了碎片，一位厨子刀起刀落，他便身首异处，头颅被钉在长矛上示众。
Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the July 14th celebration altogether. It was not resurrected as “Bastille Day” until 1880, nearly a century after the original events. The idea then, proposed by Benjamin Raspail, a deputy, was to create a “national festival”, as part of a republican package that also included adopting “La Marseillaise” as the French national anthem. Composed by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a young engineer stationed with the army of the Rhine, it was written in a single night in 1792. In 1880 the deputies argued passionately about which date to pick for the “national festival”. Nobody, as Mr Prendergast points out, proposed September 22nd 1792, the actual date of the founding of the first French republic, for fear of legitimising the Terror that it unleashed.
拿破仑波拿巴废除了7月14日全部的庆祝活动，直到1880年，巴士底狱日才得以恢复，此时距当年的原始事件已有百年之遥。然而，议员Benjamin Raspail提出的观点乃是制定一个全国性的节日，作为具有共和色彩的一揽子计划的一部分，该计划还包括采纳马赛曲为法国国歌。由莱茵军中的一位年青的工程师Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle作曲，该曲目在1792年的一夜之间便宣告诞生。1880年，议员们就国庆日的日期进行了激烈的辩论。但是如Prendergast先生所指出那样，无人提议将这一天定在1792年9月22日，即法兰西第一共和建立的日子，都惧怕将那一天所发生的暴行合法化。
July 14th was thus a political compromise. It merged the revolutionary message of 1789 with that of unity and reconciliation expressed by the anniversary fete of 1790. Partly to help heal the wounds of defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, Bastille Day was given a military theme which lasts to this day, and wrapped up in nationalist imagery “the union of army and nation under the flag”.
因此7月14日是一种政治妥协。它将1789年革命的信息和1790年周年庆典所传达的大一统和解信息融合在一起。为了部分弥合普法战争失利的伤痕，巴士底狱日被赋予了军事主题，延续至今，并挟裹于”法兰西旗帜下军队与国家的统一”的国民形象中。
Since then, at various moments of crisis in French history, Bastille Day has been invested with differing messages, according to the needs of the time: working-class solidarity and revolutionary promise for the Front Populaire and the government of Léon Blum in 1936; liberation from occupation and the resistance-as-revolution myth in 1945. Today, it is mostly pageantry, with a lingering touch of popular festivity. But Mr Prendergast cannot conceal his scorn for what, he considers, has become “an altogether shoddier affair, progressively mummified into formal ritual orchestrated by assorted dignitaries” and “media kitsch”. For the French these days, he concludes a little too cruelly, it is perhaps above all regarded as “essentially a day off work”.
自那时起，在法国历史上的诸多生死存亡之际，根据时代的需要，巴士底狱日被赋予了不同的信息：1936年， “为人民阵线和莱昂波鲁姆政府而生-工人阶级的团结和革命的承诺”，1945年，则是”挣脱奴役的束缚，抵抗即为革命的神话”。时至今日，它仍然是最为华丽的节日，残存着丝丝普世同庆之感。但是Prendergast无法掩饰自己的轻蔑，他认为该节日已经成为一项虚情假意的活动，并日渐萎缩成由任一小撮高官和媒体的庸俗报道所主导的形式上的仪式。他略显冷峻地指出，近日来，对法国人而言，巴士底狱日已经超越其他节日，被人们认为”本质上就是放了一天假”。
译者：vicent1986 http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12630&extra=page%3D1