大街

Sinclair Lewis，第一位荣膺诺贝尔文学奖的美洲大陆作家，耶鲁大学毕业，在纽约当了八年打工人后辞职回到小镇全职写作，造出了“戈镇“——就像《Tell Me Why》游戏里的 Delos Crossing、马尔克斯《世上最美的溺水者》里偏远的西班牙语小镇，代表着一百年前美国中西部无数个与之相似的小镇。 饱满的人物塑造和细致入微的观察和描述让《大街》成为他的成名作，这本书也被评为“20世纪最佳英语小说”排行榜第68名。 本书女主出场时，是位刚从大学逃课出来的女学生，麦田里微风吹吹起她的翩翩裙摆，读这段文字时，耳边回响的是那首《夏天的风》： 夏天的风 正暖暖吹过 穿过头发穿过耳朵 你和我的夏天 风轻轻说着 温柔懒懒的海风 吹到高高的山峰 温的风 山的风 吹成了山风 A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth. 有几处用词我很喜欢： （1）bellied her skirt 当背对着风时，前面肚子那块的衣服就会被风吹得鼓鼓的，belly肚子，名词作动词，鼓鼓的，用这个词就特别贴切； （2）a lock blew wild裙摆像锁一样是遮住下体的，可当风吹过，这把锁就被风吹开了，她飞扬起的裙摆给山丘下的路人heart tightened to wistfulness紧绷着心渴望去看裙摆下面； （3）credulous是耳朵软、轻信他人，大学生未经社会磨练就是这样，可接下来的 plastic难道是“塑料姐妹花“？当然不是，plastic作形容词还有可塑性强、适应力强的意思，哇塞，褒义呀； （4）drinking the air as she longed to drink life 用drink动词来搭配air和life，超简单的几个词（幼儿园孩童都会的）却能用错位的搭配传达出深层的意味，让人浮想联翩，在这之前咋没人这么搭配过呢？可以说，读到这儿（第一页），许多读者都能认定这是一本值得读的书了； （5）aching comedy 不就是痛并快乐着么，expectant youth有种很激动、期待美好的事情到来的感觉，至此，对笔者巧妙的用词造句三鞠躬。 描述美丽的女孩子怎能不用一段来写她的明眸呢？水汪汪的大眼睛，明亮、清澈，这些词哪里够用？怎么也得巫山神女般夸一下，可诺奖得主偏偏不，来看看笔者是怎么写女主的眼睛： Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant. She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous. 首先是形容词observant中性词，敏锐善于观察的，接下来，假使全世界都冷酷无情、沉闷无趣，她的双眼也不会闷闷不乐、沉重或rheumily amorous，这是笔者的独家用法，rheum是名词，小猫小狗大眼睛水汪汪的样子，而amorous是形容词，一种强烈的、被感动的爱，让人想起“为什么我的眼里常含泪水？因为我对这土地爱得深沉“。 全世界都无趣，好奇怪的假设，这么描写可是在给第三章做铺垫呀，这样就一点都不奇怪了，被烧过荒的铁路两旁一片焦黑，只留下一些残余的焦草枯根，每一块地都足有一百多英亩，虽然近看满地都是灰败的残枝： The grass beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudge prickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched like soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields were black banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity, vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens. 面对如此无趣的、寸草不生的荒原，乐观的女主眼中看到的却是油画般的美好景致，还能哼出小曲儿来赞美这块glorious的土地： The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild grass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the flicker of blackbirds' wings across them. All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. The sunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense cumulus clouds were forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider and loftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities . . . she declared." It's a glorious country; a land to be big in," she crooned. 说实话，笔者用exuberance时，我是大吃一惊啊，这词的意思是being full of energy, excitement, and cheerfulness; ebullience; growing profusely; luxuriance. 简直是反差萌啊，兴奋的、快乐的、沸腾的、繁荣生长的、奢华的，请问哪一点能和荒原联系上？然而，女主满满正能量，心怀正义与大爱，快乐、积极、并充满热诚，拜服。 新婚不久的女主一步步适应当地生活，直到第10章，自问难道自己就仅仅止步于一个“已婚妇女”吗？小镇问题多多，可为一个小镇操心究竟值不值得？ Am I really this settled thing called a 'married woman'? I feel so unmarried tonight. So free. To think that there was once a Mrs. Kennicott who let herself worry over a town called Gopher Prairie when there was a whole world outside it! 从这儿开始，笔者开始描写他最熟悉乡镇风土人情、中西部的中产阶级精神上的空虚、自鸣得意的保守主义、狭隘的思维方式和井底之蛙式的生活态度。 女主在振兴乡村（咦 大学生村官？）的尝试（图书馆、读书会、俱乐部、宴客、拜访前辈、筹建市政厅、搞人际关系）失败后也开始自我怀疑（第16章）： How? I've failed at everything: the Thanatopsis, parties, pioneers, city hall, Guy and Vida. But——It doesn't MATTER! I'm not trying to 'reform the town' now. I'm not trying to organize Browning Clubs, and sit in clean white kids yearning up at lecturers with ribbony eyeglasses. I am trying to save my soul. 我以为，女主早晚有一天会爆发，会像《三十而已》里的王漫妮一样离开小镇。可全书39章，女主的爆走是在第36章，去华盛顿工作也只有短短两年时间（37和38章），之后又回到这个小镇。 所以，这本书不是在讲女主受不了无趣的生活要逃离，而是明明认识到这种现状有问题，尝试改变却有心无力，直到偏远小镇把外来媳妇同化成其中一份子的过程，尽管内心一万个嫌弃，想要改变、逃离，可最终还是自主选择留下，她没有更好的选择，而最容易的选择就是相夫教子重复每天二十四小时（第22章）： In Carol's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, dressed the baby, had breakfast, talked to Oscarina about the day's shopping, put the baby on the porch to play, went to the butcher's to choose between steak and pork chops, bathed the baby, nailed up a shelf, had dinner, put the baby to bed for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the baby out for a walk, called on Vida, had supper, put the baby to bed, darned socks, listened to Kennicott's yawning comment on what a fool Dr. McGanum was to try to use that cheap X-ray outfit of his on an epithelioma, repaired a frock, drowsily heard Kennicott stoke the furnace, tried to read a page of Thorstein Veblen—and the day was gone. 来感受一下以上这段话的节奏，全段就一个句号，一个接一个的逗号就像是马不停蹄的任务，简单的动词就像一个接一个的无趣且重复的指令，读完后整个情绪就出来了：墨守成规、按部就班、循规蹈矩、日复一日。 笔者对无趣的生活的描写，也是金句不断——“满足于悄无声息的死去“、“消极的生活态度是种美德“、”无趣生活至上“，能如此描写平淡的、麻木的、被社会驯化的乡下白人每天吃饱、躺平、晒太阳的生活，也是非常坦诚的： It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment . .. the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world. 把To be "intellectual" or "artistic" or, in their own word, to be "highbrow," is to be priggish and of dubious virtue 稍改一下就是“女子无才便是德”。 有趣的情节直到第28章生不逢时的约翰·济慈——瑞典小裁缝埃里克的出现，此时本书正式走向《包法利夫人》里的情节。 按照通俗的剧本情节发展，能敲开女文青心门的必是关于爱好、梦想、未来的话题，是在不出意料的在第29章两人散步偶遇时两人有了一段很长的对话。 首先是爱学习却没读过几本书的小裁缝为了迎合女主说自己爱读书、爱绘画、爱设计，问是否要放弃裁缝这个职业，女主没回答是，也没回答否，而是巧妙地搪塞了他，指正了小裁缝的用词错误，站在制高点指点江山：是梦想就不要放弃，年轻时就该出去闯闯，不要束缚手脚、害怕失败。 I don't see why a surgeon should spend very much time cobbling shoes. But what if I find I can't really draw and design? After fussing around in New York or Chicago, I'd feel like a fool if I had to go back to work in a gents furnishings store! Please say haberdashery. Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember. What if you do have to go back? Most of us do! We can't all be artists—myself, for instance. We have to darn socks, and yet we're not content to think of nothing but socks and darning cotton. I'd demand all I could get—whether I finally settled down to designing frocks or building temples or pressing pants. What if you do drop back? You'll have had the adventure. Don't be too meek toward life! Go! You're young, you're unmarried. Try everything! Don't listen to Nat Hicks and Sam Clark and be a 'steady young man'—in order to help them make money. You're still a blessed innocent. Go and play till the Good People capture you! 小裁缝接话说自己读书少，对前途感到迷茫和困惑，渴望欧洲的文化底蕴，又对在美国开荒感到不甘心，求安慰、求理解： But I don't just want to play. I want to make something beautiful. God! And I don't know enough. Do you get it? Do you understand? Nobody else ever has! Do you understand? Yes. And so——But here's what bothers me: I like fabrics; dinky things like that; little drawings and elegant words. But look over there at those fields. Big! New! Don't it seem kind of a shame to leave this and go back to the East and Europe, and do what all those people have been doing so long? Being careful about words, when there's millions of bushels off wheat here! Reading this fellow Pater, when I've helped Dad to clear fields! 女主赶紧接话说开荒很有意义啊，就等你去东部长见识后回到这里带领人们致富呀，简直就是开启了圣母心爆棚的教诲模式，一直讲到小裁缝直勾勾地看着她，目光中充满了敬意，一边是对知识的渴望，一边是接受崇拜的目光，简直是给满了情绪价值，内心超满足的。 It's good to clear fields. But it's not for you. It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. I thought that myself, when I first came to the prairie. 'Big—new.' Oh, I don't want to deny the prairie future. It will be magnificent. But equally I'm hanged if I want to be bullied by it, go to war on behalf of Main Street, be bullied and BULLIED by the faith that the future is already here in the present, and that all of us must stay and worship wheat-stacks and insist that this is 'God's Country'—and never, of course, do anything original or gay colored that would help to make that future! Anyway, you don't belong here. Sam Clark and Nat Hicks, that's what our big newness has produced. Go! Before it's too late, as it has been for—for some of us. Young man, go East and grow up with the revolution! Then perhaps you may come back and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with the land we've been clearing—if we'll listen—if we don't lynch you first! 由此可见，这段感情的开始就是小裁缝的见风使舵、刻意奉承迎合，而陷入其中、自我陶醉的只有女主。不出意外的话，不出三集，小裁缝就要提出上床的请求。果然，在第31章，小裁缝来到女主房间，开始亲亲抱抱，女主推开：“I am fond of you，但还是做朋友吧“，气氛都到位了，哪能算了呀，油嘴滑舌的小裁缝赶紧再加把柴火： How many thousands and millions of women must have said that! And now you! And it doesn't spoil everything. It glorifies everything. Dear, I do think there's a tiny streak of fairy in you—whatever you do with it. Perhaps I'd have loved that once. But I won't. It's too late. But I'll keep a fondness for you. Impersonal—I will be impersonal! It needn't be just a thin talky fondness. You do need me, don't you? Only you and my son need me. I've wanted so to be wanted! Once I wanted love to be given to me. Now I'll be content if I can give. . . .Almost content! 女主的回应也很有意思，再次绕弯子，巧妙地搪塞了他。这次，两人在女主闺房的床沿边，让他去中国进口棉花（我都要笑哭了）： We women, we like to do things for men. Poor men! We swoop on you when you're defenseless and fuss over you and insist on reforming you. But it's so pitifully deep in us. You'll be the one thing in which I haven't failed. Do something definite! Even if it's just selling cottons. Sell beautiful cottons—caravans from China. 第33章，小裁缝被女主拒绝后，离开了小镇去往州首府一座大城市谋生，女主开始怀念他，想要找到勇气迈出一直想走的那一步，终于说服了自己，带着儿子去华盛顿工作两年（第37和38章），见识到外面五彩斑斓向往的世界里也有冷漠残酷的一面后，与老公和解、与自己的梦想和解，带着身孕回到小镇，生活还要继续，无数个平凡的我们是历史长河里的绝大多数人： a hundred generations of Carols will aspire and go down in tragedy devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdrum inevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia. 一代又一代人就这么悄无声息的死去，没有身着黑色哀悼服的亲友和教堂唱诗班和乐队的送葬，少数人对一成不变的生活的反抗，这些都是不可避免的。 在文末，女主放下“改变世界“的执念，加入到村民日常的活动中，打野鸭、看电影，开始懂得欣赏平淡普通的生活，妥协和放下，又何尝不是一种人生智慧呢？ 另外，本书的翻译还是很不错的，以上英文原文来自于辽宁人民出版社的《大街 = Main Street》。

有趣易读，超越时代的书，现在也意味深长

卡罗尔身上，能看到很多女孩、女人的影像。纠结彷徨犹豫茫然失望期待幻想快乐忧伤…… 我不认为她的回归是一种妥协，看清现实之后的直面人生，是真正的勇敢。

读辛克莱-刘易斯《大街》 作为第一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的美国作家辛克莱·刘易斯，以现实主义小说《大街》、《巴比特》、《灵与欲》、《阿罗史密斯》为世人所知。他的作品带有强烈的批判色彩，对两次世界大战里美国人的拜金主义与物质享乐主义作一针见血式的揭露与挖掘。美国评论家门肯如是说：“假如我们中间要推出个小说家，他说的话全都真实可信，那这个人必定是辛克莱·刘易斯。”《大街》的故事很简单，写一个名叫卡罗尔的女子，结婚以后把家搬到了明尼苏达州的一个小镇上，这是她丈夫出生的地方。在去小镇之前，她丈夫是这么说的：“你一定会爱上格菲尔草原镇的。过去几年，我们整理了不少草坪和花园，非常舒适。镇上还有很多高大的树木，那里的人也是天下极好的人，充满热情。”可是真的到了小镇，卡罗尔才发现她与当地居民在思维方式上有着剧烈的冲突。小镇沉闷保守，充满着陈腐世俗的压抑气息。卡罗尔不甘心自己在闲适里虚掷青春，立志改革乡镇的传统陋习。在这样的主题之下，作者书写了浓郁的美国中西部的地方风情。美国评论家威克代尔盛赞：“《大街》是美国文学中描述地方风情最出色的作品。”辛克莱-刘易斯借助小说《大街》，刻画了一个小镇上生活着的各色人物，字里行间充斥着对这些人物的狭隘的思维方式、井底之蛙式的生活态度的讽刺。小说的结尾很有意思，主人公卡罗尔最后发现，自己悄然间已经变成小镇上的女人了。“她知道，在这之前，将有好几代人像他们自己渴望的那样挣脱囚笼，摆脱枷锁，最终却免不了悲剧的发生”。事实上，没有政治权力的加持，改变传统几乎是不可能的。辛克莱·刘易斯以其敏锐的洞察力以及犀利的笔锋生动细致地刻画了美国小镇的生活，颠覆了以往美国小镇田园牧歌式的美好形象，揭露了20世纪20年代美国社会存在的种种弊端，体现了他对现代社会人类生存状态的深切关注和深刻的思考。可以说没有任何其他美国作家像辛克莱·路易斯那么笔酣墨饱地写下了美国精神。辛克莱-刘易斯的另一部作品《巴比特》被公认为是他的巅峰之作，以美国的经济文化繁荣时期为背景，刻画“巴比特”这样一个典型的商人形象，来讽刺美国中产阶级存在的势利、虚伪、虚荣和愚昧。《巴比特》真实再现了那个时代的日常风尚与精神风貌，揭示出了盛世之下，民众的狂欢和自信，一个被金钱统治的社会以及个体面对标准化、世俗化生活方式的徒劳无益的反抗与挣扎。《灵与欲》又名《埃尔默·甘特里》书写了一位年轻自负、玩弄女性的经典投机分子。小说的开篇写道：“埃尔默·甘特里醉了。他醉得酒话连篇，寻衅滋事，又醉得如此可爱。他靠在老家酒房酒吧——一家位于密苏里州加图市的最奢华高档的沙龙——的吧台上，正要邀请酒保一起来唱当代华尔兹《美好夏日旧时光》。”这样的人在世俗的社会里获得成功，彰显着一个新的时代的到来。诺贝尔文学奖的颁奖词确实深得辛克莱·刘易斯作品的神髓：“辛克莱·刘易斯带着智慧与幽默，在充满活力的图画般的描写中，展示出创作新式人物的能力。”