自由

《自由》(Freiheit)德语版(2010纽约时报年度好书）[PDF] 29/291/291592

中文名: 自由原名: Freiheit别名: Freedom作者: Jonathan Franzen译者: Bettina Ababarnell图书分类: 社会资源格式: PDF版本: 德语版(2010纽约时报年度好书）出版社: Rowohlt Verlag书号: 978-3498021290发行时间: 2010年09月地区: 德国语言: 德文简介:

Im Mittelpunkt der Handlung stehen Walter und Patty Berglund, ein junges, liberales Paar, die als Vorboten der Gentrifizierung in die Innenstadt St. Pauls ziehen, wo ihre Kinder Joey und Jessica aufwachsen. Ein Teil des Buchs ist als autobiografische Skizze Pattys gestaltet und blickt auf Ereignisse ihrer Jugend in den 1960er und 70er Jahren zurück. Im Verlauf der Handlung, die sich bis in die Jahre der Präsidentschaft George W. Bushs erstreckt, entfremden die Kinder sich zunehmend von ihren Eltern. Die Berglunds verlassen schließlich ihr mühsam renoviertes Haus und ihre Ehe zerbricht, nachdem Patty eine Affäre mit Walters Jugendfreund Richard Katz beginnt und Walter daraufhin eine Beziehung mit seiner deutlich jüngeren Assistentin Lalitha eingeht. Nachdem die Kinder erwachsen geworden sind, verbessert sich das Verhältnis zu ihren Eltern jedoch wieder und einige Jahre nach dem Unfalltod Lalithas beschließen Walter und Patty, wieder gemeinsam zu leben.
Freedom is not the kind of Great American Novel that Franzen’s predecessors wrote — not the kind Bellow and Mailer and Updike wrote. The American scene is just too complex — and too aware of its own complexity, for anything to loom that large over it ever again. But Freedom feels big in a different way, a way that not much other American fiction does right now. It doesn’t back down from the complexity. To borrow a term from the visual arts, Franzen’s writing has an enviable depth of field: it keeps a great deal in focus simultaneously. Freedom is not just a domestic novel or a political novel. Franzen doesn’t chop the world up that way. Walter Berglund’s political and environmental passions began in his lousy childhood, which was a product of the history of his family, who emigrated from Sweden, and the vagaries of the economy, which are in turn fatally bound up with the health of the environment, and so on.
弗兰岑的小说同他前辈们写的那种伟大的美国小说不同，如多波，梅勒和厄普代克的小说。美国景象实在太复杂，并且对美国其自身的复杂性也太为熟悉，于是要再想让一些事情更为凸现，是不可能的。但《自由》以一套不同方式去显示出那种“大”环境，它在复杂面前并不退却。这种方式美国目前其他许多小说并不采用。借用视觉艺术中的一个术语，弗兰岑的小说有一种令人艳羡的视角深度：它同时关注许多方面。《自由》不仅仅是一本国内小说或政治小说。弗兰岑并不把世界这样分割开来。沃尔特•宾格莱对政治和环境的热爱始于他并不美满的童年时代，是他家庭经历的产物（他们是瑞典移民），经济无常的产物。经济反过来又不可避免与环境好坏紧密相连，等等。
The word freedom echoes down the corridors of Freedom. It stalks the characters, cropping up in chance remarks, in song lyrics, engraved on buildings. It seemed to me, Franzen says, that if we were going to be elevating freedom to the defining principle of what we’re about as a culture and a nation, we ought to take a careful look at what freedom in practice brings. The weird thing about the freedom of Freedom is that what it doesn’t bring is happiness.
在《自由》一书中各处都回响着“自由”一词。它在小说人物中蔓延，在偶然的话语中突然出现，夹杂在歌词中，印刻在建筑物上。弗兰茨说，“在我看来，我们若想把对‘自由’的定义，提升到一种文化上和民族上的对自身认识的定义原则，那么我们应仔细注意‘自由’实际上能给我们带来什么。”奇怪的是，《自由》一书中的自由给我们带来了除幸福以外的一切。
For Franzen’s characters, too much freedom is an empty, dangerously entropic thing. After all, energy companies are free to ravage and poison the breeding grounds of the cerulean warbler. If Patty and Walter divorced, they would be free, but it’s a freedom they would do almost anything to avoid. At her lowest ebb, Patty reflects that she had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. And no one is freer than a person with no moral beliefs. One of the ways of surrendering freedom is to actually have convictions, Franzen says. And a way of further surrendering freedom is to spend quite a bit of time acting on those convictions.
对于弗兰岑书中的人物来说，太多自由是无意义的，是危险的。毕竟能源企业不受约束便会去掠夺和污染深蓝色林莺的繁殖地。假如贝蒂和沃尔特离婚，他们便都自由了。但他们会不遗余力的去避免这种自由。当贝蒂处于人生的最低谷时，她思考着“自己每天都是不停地去寻找一种体面和令人满意的生活方式，然而她全部的选择和全部的自由给她带来的似乎只是更多的痛苦。”没有人能比一个毫无道德信仰的人更自由。“放弃自由的方法之一是去树立一种信念，”弗兰岑说，“而更进一步放弃自由的方法便是花点时间去实践这一信念。”
This idea may earn Franzen another all-American kicking — Oprah-Hating Writer Now Says Freedom Overrated! — but it is not only true; it is also important. There is something beyond freedom that people need: work, love, belief in something, commitment to something. Freedom is not enough. It’s necessary but not sufficient. It’s what you do with freedom — what you give it up for — that matters.
这一思想也许会再次使美国人齐心协力，给弗兰岑狠狠一“踢”——反对奥普拉的作家现在又说对《自由》评价过高——但弗兰岑的思想不仅正确而且重要。在自由之外，人们还有其他的需要：工作，爱情，信仰和对某事的承诺。仅有自由还不够。自由是必须的，但还不完满。真正重要的是我们如何去对待自由，不沉溺于自由而另有专注。
Early readers of Freedom, including this one, have found that the book has an addictive quality, the kind one usually associates with mysteries or thrillers. This isn’t by accident. Franzen is very conscious that people are freer than ever — that word again — to spend their time and attention being entertained by things that aren’t books. That awareness has changed the way he writes.
《自由》的早期读者，包括这本，都发现该书能让人上瘾，正如未解之谜和惊悚小说通常都能让人上瘾一样。这并不偶然。弗兰岑十分清楚人们比以往更加自由——又说到自由了——他们的时间和精力往往消耗在其他娱乐而非书本上。这一认识，改变了弗兰茨的写作方法。
A lot of literary fiction strikes a bargain with the reader: you suck up a certain amount of difficulty, of resistance and interpretive work and even boredom, and then you get the payoff. This arrangement, which feels necessary and permanent to us, is primarily a creation of the 20th century. Freedom works on something more akin to a 19th century model, like Dickens or Tolstoy: characters you care about, a story that hooks you. Franzen has given up trying to impress with his scintillating prose (which he admits he was still doing in The Corrections). It seems all the more imperative, nowadays, to fashion books that are compelling, because there is so much more distraction they have to resist, he says. To me, now, to do something new is not to develop a form for the novel that has never been seen on earth before. It means to try to come to terms as a person and a citizen with what’s happening in the world now and to do it in some comprehensible, coherent way.
大量文学小说同读者达成了一个协议：要先克服某些困难和抵制心理，认真解读乃至忍受乏味，然后你才会获得报偿。这种我们认为必要并且会永久存在的安排，是20世纪的产物。《自由》所写作的更像是一种19世纪的样式：人们所关注的人，能勾住人们的故事（例如狄更斯和托尔斯泰的小说）。弗兰岑往往努力想以充满才气的散文给人们留下印象，而这次他没做这种努力。（他承认在写《纠正》时他还在这样做）“目前，似乎能吸引眼球的时装书势在必行，因为人们得经受住更多的干扰。”他说，“现在，对我来说创新并不是去开创一种新的从未在地球上出现过的小说形式。作为一个人和一位公民，创新意味着关注当前世界上正在发生的事，并以简单连贯的文字记录下来。”
There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can’t. He cites — as one does — the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it’s easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it’s ever been.
让小说存在的理由有许多。关于这一点，弗兰岑认为书能替我们做些事情，一些其他媒介无法做到的有助于社会的事情。关于对“忙碌”的认识，他引用了哲学家基尔克歌德的观点来说明：“忙碌”是一种注意力经常分散的状态，借此人们能逃避艰难的现状并维持一种自我欺骗。有了手机，电子邮件和手持游戏设备，基尔克歌德认为，人们比以往更容易保持一种“忙碌”状态。
Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we’ve created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful, Franzen says. The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.
阅读是忙碌的反面，它是在一种安静和持续专心的状态下进行的。“我们发明的科技产品及接触到的大量所谓信息如此干扰和吞没了我们，以至专心阅读比以往似乎更有益于社会，”弗兰岑说，“你要写作和认真阅读就得去一个宁静的地方，在这里你能真正做出负责任的决定；外面的世界虽令人提心掉胆，难以对付，但在这里你能开展有成果的工作。”
As a biographical subject, Franzen is no prize. Unlike, say, Hemingway’s or Mailer’s, his life doesn’t exactly teem with incident. He was married once — an autoclave of a marriage, to another writer, is how he describes it — but he’s divorced now. The most striking fact about Franzen’s life is that although he writes almost exclusively about families, he has not made one of his own.
要写一本传记，弗兰岑可不是个好人选。比如他并不像海明威和梅勒的生活那样充满变故。他结过一次婚——和另一个作家的一次满是压力的婚姻——这就是他对那次婚姻的描述。不过他现在离婚了。弗兰岑的生活最引人注目的一点便是他虽专门写家庭生活，却还没有自己的家庭。
This minor detail hasn’t escaped his notice. In fact, a few years ago, when he was in the weeds with Freedom, he suggested to Chetkovich — this story comes with a rueful I-can’t-believe-I-did-that laugh — that they acquire some children. Adopt some Iraqi war orphans maybe. I began to think the reason I’m not getting anywhere is that I’m a family guy, he says. Family is perhaps my primary prism for refracting the world into meaningful constituents, and one way or another we need to have some kids in our lives.
他自己也注意到了这个小细节。事实上，几年前在他写《自由》期间，他因为毫无灵感便向克莱克维奇提议领养一个孩子，也许领养一个伊战孤儿。（诉说时，他说他无法相信竟做过那件令人发笑的事，面带悔意）“我开始把写作毫无进展的原因归结于缺少一个家，”他说，“家庭也许是我的主棱镜，它帮我把世界折射成有意义的部分。无论如何我们的生活中需要孩子。”
But the moment passed. Cooler heads convinced him that the way to get his novel written wouldn’t be to adopt children, it would be to write his novel. If Freedom is all about giving up freedom by committing to things — people, causes, beliefs, life — what Franzen has committed to is not life but art. Novels are his family. As he did with his laptop, Franzen has stripped his world of virtually all distractions. He has never had any other career than this. He doesn’t take vacations. Freedom is dedicated to his editor and his agent.
但这一念头很快过去了。更加冷静的头脑使他相信小说写成与否，与领养孩子无关，而是静下心去写就是了。假如《自由》是一本提倡放弃自由，另去专注的书——专注人，事业，信仰和生活——那么弗兰岑所专注的不是生活而是艺术。小说就是他的家。当他把电脑“清洗”完后，弗兰岑几乎在他的世界里驱除了所有干扰。他从未放弃小说而去另辟他路。他从不度假。他把《自由》献给了他的编辑和代理商。
Franzen’s main extravagance is watching birds, a hobby he took up after The Corrections. Until then, his life had been geared and balanced for constant struggle. I don’t think, until The Corrections was published and had done well, I’d ever allowed myself joy for its own sake, he says. And the bird-watching happened to be what was lying at hand, and I indulged it.
看鸟是弗兰岑主要的奢侈行为。这一爱好是他写完《纠正》后培养起来的。在那以前，他老是上紧发条，协调好一切，时刻准备同生活做斗争。“我认为，在《纠正》出版和取得成功前，我从未允许过自己为快乐而去追逐快乐。”他说，“而观鸟恰好就在手边，随时都可以去做，我就欣赏起来了。”
The bird-watching isn’t much at Moss Landing, at least while the tide is in. But as the afternoon wears on and the water retreats, a crowd of little birds arrives to feast in the shallows: short-billed dowitchers, Western sandpipers, a black-bellied plover. Franzen hands me the binoculars so I can admire that last, and he’s right: even I, who do not twitch, can see that it’s a hell of a bird, with its solid breastplate of black feathers.
在莫斯兰汀并没有太多鸟可看，至少在涨潮时是这样。但随着夜幕降临，潮水退去，一群小鸟在一处浅滩落下，尽情吃喝起来，有短嘴半蹼鹬，西部鹬黑腹繢。弗兰岑把望远镜递给我，让我最后再观赏一次。尽管我不常赏鸟，但他是对的，我看到了好大一群鸟，它们腹部黑黑的羽毛好像一个护胸甲。
But not even Franzen can watch birds all the time. There were a couple of years when I could enjoy blowing off a workday and going bird-watching, he says, followed by some years in which I came to realize that because my purpose on earth seems to be to write novels, I am actually freer when I’m chained to a project: freer from guilt, anxiety, boredom, anger, purposelessness.
但即使是弗兰岑也不能一直赏鸟。“过去有两三年，我能给自己放一天假去看看鸟，”他说，“随后几年我逐渐意识到我生活的目的似乎就是写小说。事实上，当我有一个计划的时候，我感到更自由：远离罪恶，焦躁，无聊，愤怒和迷茫。”
Birds are supposed to be free, or that’s what the song says, but when Franzen looks at them, that’s not what he sees. Birds aren’t free. They have work to do — eat, breed, fly, sing — and they do it. They’re not paralyzed by self-consciousness or indecision. When Franzen watches birds, he sees himself, but himself at his best, which is at work, miserable work, in his rented office, chewing tobacco (he’s still at it), shouting himself hoarse in front of his crippled laptop. Birds don’t take vacations, and neither does he. I’m already losing sleep, Franzen says, trying to figure out how to lock myself inside a big novel again.
人们认为鸟是自由的，或者歌词中都是这样歌颂的，但当弗兰岑观察它们的时候，他看到的并不如人们所认为的。鸟并不自由，它们有工作要做，它们要吃，繁殖，飞翔，还要唱歌，这就是他们的工作。它们并不因为忸怩和犹豫不决而丧失勇气。弗兰岑在观看鸟类时，他看到了自己，是处于最佳状态的自己：在租来的工作室里工作着，痛苦的工作着，嘴里嚼着烟草块（他目前还在嚼），在他那老掉牙的电脑前大声呼喊直至嘶哑。鸟类并不给自己放假，他也是这样。“我已经失眠了一阵子，我正努力构思另一部长篇小说，再次让自己去忘我地工作。

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