[2009.02.26] Christopher Nolan 爱尔兰残疾作家C·诺兰

obitury
逝者

Christopher Nolan
作家诺兰：一名“瘸子”的心声
Feb 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Christopher Nolan, the voice of the crippled, died on February 20th, aged 43
瘸腿者代言人———爱尔兰残疾作家克里斯托弗•诺兰卒于2月20日，享年43岁



YOU wouldn’t have wanted to be Christy Nolan. His two arms looked normal, but they would fly out randomly, like a clockwork doll’s. “Dreadful deadly spasms” of cerebral palsy shot their way from his cranium to his spine and into his feet. He needed carrying to the bath, to the toilet, to bed; his long legs were good for nothing, collapsing under him like a deck of cards. When he tried to talk, nothing came out but “dull looks, dribbles and senseless sounds”. He could not even wipe the saliva from his own face.

      你不会想要成为“诺兰二世”。克里斯托弗•诺兰的两条胳膊看上去与常人无异，但它们会随意扑闪个不停，如上了发条的玩偶。脑瘫所产生的“致命般的极度痉挛”从他的头颅贯穿到脊椎，最后达至脚跟。必须有人抱着他洗浴，扶着他如厕，搀着他上床。修长的双腿是一无是处的，若勉强起立就会像一副纸牌在他眼前整个塌陷下去。当他设法开口说话时，除了“表情呆滞、涎水四溢和胡言乱语”外，你别抱有任何期待。他甚至无法从自己的脸上揩去那些唾液。

In bed at night, when he was as able-bodied as anyone, he would rehearse what his “drunken, drooling body” could do, and what it couldn’t:

      晚上躺在床头，与任何一个体格健全的人没有差别时，他会默诵这个“麻醉着且淌着口水的身体”所能给他的一切，而它所不能给的，他也想冲着“它们”排练一番———

Can’t chew, can’t swallow, so why chew? Can’t call—can call, a famished moan maybe yet it suffices…can’t cry—can cry, can cry, can cry wet pillows full but who cares…can’t laugh—can laugh, can can can

      “不能咀嚼，不能吞咽，那么为何要咀嚼呢？不能喊叫———能喊叫，或许饿到极点时的一丝呻吟就够了……不能哭———能哭，能哭，能把枕头都哭湿了但谁去在意呢……不能笑———能笑，能能能”

At birth, at the County Hospital at Mullingar in Ireland, he had been deprived of oxygen for two hours. He should have died, but instead “sagaciously he dolefully held on”. People pitied him, stroked his head and said God was good, but even as a boy he was not so sure. The “closeted cossetted certainty of Christ” could always calm him, as could communion when Father Flynn was able to sneak the host between his spasming, locking jaws. But once, in St John the Baptist’s, he had himself wheeled to the life-size crucifix with its grey bloodied face and threw out his left arm in a great arc to give Christ two fingers, because he was to blame.

      在爱尔兰穆林加尔（Mullingar）市郡医院出生时，他大脑缺氧长达2小时。他本该就此“告别”这个世界的，可偏又“聪敏而悲伤地挺了过来”。人们纷纷怜悯他，抚摸着他的小脑袋说上帝真好———然而，即便到他长大成人，这句赞美仍令他将信将疑。那种“深藏密室已被宠坏了的对基督的笃信”总会使他复归平静，就如在圣餐仪式时，弗林神父（Father Flynn）能够不失时机地将祭饼塞进他不断抽搐、牙根紧咬的嘴中那样。然而，有一回在施洗者圣约翰教堂（St John the Baptist’s），他自己滚着轮椅溜到与真人相仿佛且血迹斑斑面容苍白的耶稣受难像面前，挥动左臂呈大弧状，试图给十字架上的基督插上两根手指，他觉得主有愧于他。

And yet, despite it all, he could use words. At the age of 13, he could write this:

      但不管怎么说，他能遣词造句。13岁那年，他能写出这样的作品：

Among firs, a cone high-flown,
Winged, popped,
Hied, foraying, embalming,
Sembling tomb
Among coy, conged fir needles,
A migratory off-spring
Embarks on life’s green film.

“在冷杉林中，一颗球果高不可攀，
它插上了翅膀，肉身膨胀而饱满，
它一阵疾驰，四处奔袭，为死亡抹上防腐的香油，
荒冢聚拢着，抱成团
在含羞离别的松叶中，
一颗嫩芽即将迁徙而去
开始它生命中绿意盎然的演出。”

For a long time, no one knew. He could communicate: yes with upshot eyes, a neck-bow for affirmation, a drubbing of feet on his wheelchair for attention. The IQ tests always went well, well enough for him to go to “ordinary” school at Mount Temple in Dublin. His blue eyes blazed with intelligence. But no one suspected that in his head were stored millions of words, “nutshelled” and ready. They included all the songs and stories he had heard from his father, the poems recited by his teachers, the alphabet-words stuck up round the kitchen by his mother, glittering fragments of Hopkins and Joyce and Yeats. His overriding ambition was how to “best his body” and get them out.

      很长一段时间，无人知晓他的“能”。他能够与人交流：眨眼表示YES，弯弯脖子表示肯定，用脚敲打轮椅就表示要引起你的注意。他的IQ测验也总是很完美，完美到他可以去都柏林教堂山（Mount Temple）上“普通”学校。他的蓝眼睛闪着智性的光芒。但是，谁也没有想到在这样的大脑里面竟储存着数百万个词汇，它们时刻等待着破“茧”而出。这浩瀚的词海来源于他从父亲那儿听来的一切歌谣和故事，来源于老师朗诵的诗篇，来源于母亲粘贴在厨房的字母表，来源于霍普金斯、乔伊斯和叶芝所留下的璀璨绚烂的残篇断章。他的至上野心乃是如何“挫败他的躯体”，将这些蠢蠢欲动的词语“挥毫”而出，炼成文字。

At the age of 11 he learned how. With a rubber-tipped stick strapped like a unicorn’s horn to his forehead, and dosed with a new pill that calmed his neck muscles a little, he picked out one letter, then another, on a typewriter, “by a bent, nursed, and crudely given nod of his stubborn head”:

      11岁时，他学着如何写作。他仿佛一只独角兽，将带有橡胶头的棍子绑定在前额，服上一种新药丸，那药能使他的颈上肌肉得到少许的松弛和镇静。然后他对着打字机，在上面拣出一个字母，“在有人看护或搂抱的特定情况下，用他那执拗的头机械而笨重地敲下去”，接着要提起头，再弯腰，去捶打下一个字母……

His own mother cradled his head but he mentally gadded here and there in fields of swishing grass and pursed wildness. His mind was darting under beech copper-mulled, along streams calling out his name, he hised and frolicked but his mother called it spasms. Delirious with the words plopping onto his path he made youth reel where youth was meant to stagnate. Such were [his] powers as he gimleted his words onto white sheets of life.

      母亲轻轻搂着他的头，而内心深处的他却在云游四海———飘向一望无垠蔓草摇曳的旷野，任那野性的呼唤引逗他。在紫色的山毛榉林中，“他”一路飞奔而下，沿着溪流高声呼喊他的名字。他在嬉闹中不肯作罢，口中只发出嘶嘶的啸叫声，母亲却把这“撒野”叫做———痉挛。都说青春容易流于一潭死水般的黯淡，在它踯躅不前的地方，诺兰却因“珠落玉盘”的词语而雀跃癫狂，他虽步履蹒跚，却开了一扇窗。当词语被他一笔一划镌刻在纯净而单薄的生命之上时，这便成了（他的）力量。

Sometimes one word would take 15 minutes to write. It never got faster; his last work, “The Banyan Tree”, a novel based on his family’s farming history in Westmeath, took a decade. But as soon as he began to get the “beautiful words” on paper, he won competitions. Weidenfeld & Nicholson published his poems and writings when he was 15. The book was called “Dam-Burst of Dreams”, as it was. He could speak, and not just for himself, but for all the other, silent, damaged boys of the world.

      有时他要花上15分钟才能敲出一个词。这速度从来没变快过。诺兰的临终之作，即据其家族在韦斯特米斯郡（Westmeath）的一段农耕史而写就的小说———《菩提树》（The Banyan Tree）花了他整整十年的工夫。然而，一当那些“美丽的词语”化作文字时，各式各样的文学竞赛就会被他一网打尽。15岁那年，他的诗作与文章在威登菲尔&尼克尔森出版社（Weidenfeld & Nicholson）得以出版。集子叫《梦海泛滥》（Dam-Burst of Dreams），这书名真是名副其实。他不仅能自我代言，更能为这世上其他那些静默着的残障儿童一吐心声。

Insults ran off him. Forgetfulness, he wrote, “fugues tongues and balms words”. He called himself a cripple unsparingly in his autobiography, “Under the Eye of the Clock”, which won the 1988 Whitbread Book of the Year. Some said disability got the prize for him, but what won it was the language, uncorralled and fresh as though the words had never been tried before. He made words do everything his body could not. Among his favourites were “frolicking” and “rollicking”; “hollyberries”, meaning compensations among the sharp things of life; and “crested”, meaning glorious, as though he lifted his head to say it.

      残疾人常逢的侮辱似与他绝缘。他曾写道，健忘“令欺侮之语松软淡化，使伤人之辞平复可安”。他在获得1988 •Whitbread年度图书大奖的自传《钟眼之下》中，曾很不留情面地自嘲为“一名瘸子”。有人说，是因为残疾，因为人们的恻隐心，才给他颁的奖。但打动人心的还是那语言，它们恣肆奔放，鲜活欲滴———就像那些词语从未被人使用过从未遭受污染似的。身体所不能给予他的一切，他可以从词语中求得满足。他特别钟爱的几个词有：“嬉耍无边”和“嬉闹无常”，而“冬青果”（hollyberries），则象征着对冷寂孤苦的生活的诸多温暖补偿，“羽冠盖头”当然意味着集万千荣耀于一身了———他恨不得昂首挺胸，将它朗声而出。

Nothing could have happened without his parents. To the end, his mother gripped his chin as he wrote. They carried him on their shoulders, held him, one on each side, to let him ride a pony, steadied him in a stream to feel the icy water on the rocks beneath his feet. His mother had told him, when he was three and crying with frustration, that she liked him just as he was. From that point, “he [fanned] the only spark he saw, his being alive”.

      若无父母双亲，这一切终将成泡影。写作时，母亲的手会时刻紧紧地托住儿子的下巴。当他想去户外骑骑小马驹，想到溪边赤脚踩踩石头任由那冰凉的溪水轻抚他的脚底板时，父母就要将他挑起来，一人一边，稳住，稳住，极小心异常地架着他。3岁时的诺兰因沮丧而啼哭，母亲告诉他，她就喜欢他身上的那股不服输的犟劲儿。因为只有从那里，“他才能（激活）自己惟一的希望，他是鲜活的，那是他的生命之光啊。”

Once, on holiday on the Burren, his family buried him standing up in sand, just his head and shoulders showing. He knew then what it felt like to be able-bodied and straight. But his head was at the level of people’s feet; so he asked to be returned to his wheelchair. He might loll and flop in it, “zoo-caged” as he was. But it was also his proud podium and his throne.

      有一回他们全家去布伦（Burren）度假，家人将诺兰大半个身子直立着埋在沙里，仅仅露出他的头和肩膀。那时他感受到了一个健康人该是什么样子，他对“站立”也有了切身体会。但“挺直腰板”的他，视野所及却是人家的双脚，他的脑袋还不够“高”，于是他要求回归轮椅生活。至少在那里，他可以懒懒地躺着，可以笨拙地摇晃着，他就像“关在动物园的”动物一样，已经不适应笼子外面的生活了。不过，那轮椅也是让他无限骄傲的乐队指挥台，他的风光宝座。

译者/Alex147    http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=17555&extra=page%3D1