怪才泰勒

闲情UID: 111016

The Monster
http://www.sina.com.cn 2002/11/12 11:55  《英语学习》


　　本文是美国音乐评论家、作曲家迪姆斯-泰勒(1885-1966)为电台写的一篇广播稿，讲述的是音乐怪才、大名鼎鼎的德国作曲家瓦格纳。本文写作手法独特，语言诙谐幽默但发人深思，是不可多得的佳作。

　　He was an undersized little man, with a head toobig for his body--a sickly little man. His nerves were bad. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had delusions of grandeur.

　　He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolledsintosone. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.

　　He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for hours, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with him, for the sake of peace.

　　It never occurred to him that he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He had theories about almost any subject under the sun, including vegetarianism, the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote pamphlets, letters, books ... thousands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages. He not only wrote these things, and published them—usually at somebody else's expense—but he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family.

　　He wrote operas, and no sooner did he have the synopsis of a story, but he would invite—or rather summon—a crowd of his friends to his house and read it aloud to them. Not for criticism. For applause. When the complete poem was written, the friends had to come again, and hear that read aloud. Then he would publish the poem, sometimes years before the music that went with it was written. He played the piano like a composer, in the worst sense of what that implies, and he would sit down at the piano before parties that included some of the finest pianists of his time, and play for them, by the hour, his own music, needless to say. He had a composer's voice. And he would invite eminent vocalists to his house, and sing them his operas, taking all the parts.

　　He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and stamp, or sinksintossuicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist monk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and heartless to a degree that would have made a Roman emperor shudder.

　　He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under any obligation to do so. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from everybody who was good for a loan—men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame, at others loftily offering his intended benefactor the privilege of contributing to his support, and being mortally offended if the recipient declined the honor. I have found no record of his ever paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it.

　　What money he could lay his hands on he spent like an Indian rajah. The mere prospect of a performance of one of his operas was enough to set him to running up bills amounting to ten times the amount of his prospective royalties. No one will ever know ?certainly he never knew ?how much money he owed. We do know that his greatest benefactor gave him ,000 to pay the most pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later, had to give him ,000 to enable him to live in another city without being thrownsintosjail for debt.

　　He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer, from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman ?any wealthy woman ?whom he could marry for her money.

　　He was completely selfish in his other personal relationships. His liking for his friends was measured solely by the completeness of their devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him, whether financial or artistic. The minute they failed him ?even by so much as refusing a dinner invitation ?or began to lessen in usefulness, he cast them off without a second thought. At the end of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he had known even in middle age.

　　The name of this monster was Richard Wagner.<注2> Everything that I have said about him you can find on record ?in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew him, in his own letters, between the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesn't matter in the least.

　　Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time. The joke was on us. He was one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living.

　　When you consider what he wrote ?thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the world's great musico-dramatic masterpieces ?when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him don't seem much of a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who ruined France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you will agree that a few thousand dollars' worth of debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring trilogy.

　　What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise with what he believed, with what he dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner. There is greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that his poor brain and body didn't burst under the torment of the demon of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had no time to be a man?




怪才
　　他身材矮小，头却很大，与他的身材很不相称——是个满脸病容的矮子。他神经兮兮，有皮肤病，贴身穿比丝绸粗糙一点的任何衣服都会使他痛苦不堪。而且他还是个夸大妄想狂。

　　他是个极其自负的怪人。除非事情与自己有关，否则他从来不屑对世界或世人瞧上一眼。对他来说，他不仅是世界上最重要的人物，而且在他眼里，他是惟一活在世界上的人。他认为自己是世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一、最伟大的思想家之一、最伟大的作曲家之一。听听他的谈话，仿佛他就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬、柏拉图三人于一身。想要听到他的高论十分容易，他是世上最能使人筋疲力竭的健谈者之一。同他度过一个夜晚，就是听他一个人滔滔不绝地说上一晚。有时，他才华横溢；有时，他又令人极其厌烦。但无论是妙趣横生还是枯燥无味，他的谈话只有一个主题：他自己，他自己的所思所为。

　　他狂妄地认为自己总是正确的。任何人在最无足轻重的问题上露出丝毫的异议，都会激得他的强烈谴责。他可能会一连好几个小时滔滔不绝，千方百计地证明自己如何如何正确。有了这种使人耗尽心力的雄辩本事，听者最后都被他弄得头昏脑涨，耳朵发聋，为了图个清静，只好同意他的说法。

　　他从来不会觉得，对于跟他接触的人来说，他和他的所作所为并不是使人产生强烈兴趣而为之倾倒的事情。他几乎对世间的任何领域都有自己的理论，包括素食主义、戏剧、政治以及音乐。为了证实这些理论，他写小册子、写信、写书……文字成千上万，连篇累牍。他不仅写了，还出版了这些东西——所需费用通常由别人支付——而他会坐下来大声读给朋友和家人听，一读就是好几个小时。

　　他写歌剧，但往往是刚有个故事梗概，他就邀请——或者更确切说是召集——一群朋友到家里，高声念给大家听。不是为了获得批评，而是为了获得称赞。整部剧的歌词写好后，朋友们还得再去听他高声朗读全剧。然后他就拿去发表，有时几年后才为歌词谱曲。他也像作曲家一样弹钢琴，但要多糟有多糟。然而，他却要坐在钢琴前，面对包括他那个时代最杰出的钢琴家在内的聚会人群，一小时接一小时地给他们演奏，不用说，都是他自己的作品。他有一副作曲家的嗓子，但他会把著名的歌唱家请到自己家里，为他们演唱自己的作品，还要扮演剧中所有的角色。

　　他的情绪犹如六岁儿童，极易波动。心情不好时，他要么用力跺脚，口出狂言，要么陷入极度的忧郁，阴沉地说要去东方当和尚，了此残生。十分钟后，假如有什么事情使他高兴了，他就会冲出门去，绕着花园跑个不停，或者在沙发上跳上跳下或拿大顶。他会因爱犬死了而极度悲痛，也会残忍无情到使罗马皇帝也不寒而栗。

　　他几乎没有丝毫责任感。他似乎不仅没有养活自己的能力，也从没想到过有这个义务。他深信这个世界应该给他一条活路。为了支持这一信念，他向一切借得着钱的人借债——不管是男是女，也不管是朋友还是陌路人。求助信他一写就是二十封——有时卑躬屈膝，不顾羞耻，有时又趾高气扬地授予他预期的资助人资助他的殊荣，要是对方谢绝这一荣誉，他会气得要死。我还没见到如果债主不告上法庭他会主动付帐或还钱的记录。

　　只要他能弄到钱，他花起来总是像个印度王公。只要他的某部歌剧一有上演的可能，他便会马上肆意花钱，迅速积欠一笔十倍于预期所得版税的债务。没有人搞得清楚——他自己肯定也不清楚——他欠了多少钱。但我们确实知道，他的一位最慷慨的资助人曾给他六千美元偿还他在某市最急迫的债务；一年之后，不得不再给他一万六千美元，使他得以在另一城市安身，而不致因欠债去坐牢。

　　他在其他方面也是放荡不羁。无数个女人曾进入过他的生活。他的发妻与他一起生活了二十年，是在不停地忍受和原谅他的不忠中度过的。他的第二个妻子本是最崇拜他、对他最忠实的朋友的妻子，他从好友手中夺走了她。他甚至在劝说她离开第一个丈夫之际，还同时写信给一个朋友，询问能否给他介绍个阔妇人——有钱就行——他可以为了金钱跟她结婚。

　　他在其他私人交往中也极端自私。他对朋友有无好感，完全取决于他们对他是否绝对忠诚，抑或他们在经济上或艺术上对他是否有用。一旦他们使他失望——即使是拒绝赴宴之类的小事——或者他们对他不再那么有用，他就会毫不犹豫地与他们断绝来往。在他生命的最后日子里，他只剩下了一个朋友，就连这个朋友也还是他在中年时才认识的。

　　这位怪才的名字叫理查德-瓦格纳。我所谈到的关于他的一切情况都有记录可查——包括报纸、警方报告、认识他的人的证词、他本人的信件以及他的自传。但令人奇怪的是，这种记录对他的名望丝毫无损。

　　因为，这个身材矮小、满脸病容、脾气古怪、令人着迷的小个子自始至终都是对的。该受嘲笑的是我们。他是全世界最伟大的剧作家之一，一位伟大的思想家，是迄今为止全世界最了不起的音乐天才之一。这个世界确实应该养活他。

　　当你掂量他的作品时——十三部歌剧和音乐剧，其中十一部仍然长演不衰，八部当之无愧地位于世界音乐剧伟大名作之列——当你聆听他的作品时，他欠债不还也好，伤透人心也罢，这些代价似乎都不算什么。想一想命运至少曾一度赐给拿破仑，那个断送法国、洗劫欧洲的人何种的奢华吧。相比之下，你也许会同意，用几千元的债务来换得《指环》三部曲并不太贵。

　　即使他不忠于朋友和妻子，又有什么关系呢？他有一位他至死都忠贞不渝的情侣：音乐。他一刻也没有动摇过自己的信念和憧憬。他的作品中没有一行乐谱是平庸之辈构想得出的。即使他有枯燥乏味或极其糟糕的作品，其乏味中仍可见伟大之处。他最糟的败笔中也有不凡之处。人们聆听他的乐曲时，并不因他也许曾是或不是什么样的人而宽恕他。这不是宽恕不宽恕的问题。这是件令人惊讶得目瞪口呆的事情——他体内无限的创造力，像魔鬼般拼命挣扎、又挖又挠试图冲出体外；这恶魔撕扯着他，冲他狂叫，要他谱写出藏于体内的乐曲。遭受如此痛苦的折磨，他那可怜的脑袋和身躯竟没有被压垮，这岂不是人间奇迹？而真正的奇迹在于，短短七十年，他居然完成了那么多的工作，即使是一个伟大的天才，也难以做到。因此他没有时间过常人的生活，这又有什么好奇怪的呢？
Annotation


1. monster:这个词除了“怪兽”之外，还有“魔星(指极受欢迎的歌唱家或音乐家)”的意思。

2.理查德-瓦格纳(1813-1883，德国作曲家，毕生致力于歌剧(自称“乐剧”)的改革与创新，作品有歌剧《漂泊的荷兰人》、《纽伦堡名歌手》及歌剧四联剧《尼伯龙根的指环》等)。