Russia Forgets a Writer’s Slights to Remember His Glory
屠格涅夫貶抑俄國 仍受克宮尊崇
By Andrew Higgins

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has often reveled in the majesty of Russian culture, particularly literary giants like Ivan Turgenev, whose country mansion the Russian state recently renovated as a showcase of national pride.
俄國總統普亭經常陶醉於俄國文化的偉大，尤其是屠格涅夫等文學巨擘，屠格涅夫的鄉間宅邸最近由國家整修，成為展示民族自豪感的櫥窗。

But Putin and his officials might want to take a closer look at the writer. Turgenev, a restless, cosmopolitan liberal who died outside Paris in 1883, had a decidedly dark view of his own country.
不過，普亭及其手下官員不妨更仔細地審視一下這位作家。屠格涅夫是心懷不滿且見多識廣的自由派人士，1883年死於巴黎市郊，對祖國無疑抱持負面看法。

“He never idealized anything and described the reality that he saw,” conceded Elena Levina, director of the Turgenev family estate, which reopened to the public in January after lavish renovation work. “This was sometimes not pretty.”
屠格涅夫家族莊園在投入巨資翻修後，1月重新開放。莊園負責人艾琳那．勒維納承認：「屠格涅夫從不把事情理想化，總是照著所見描述真相。這有時令人不快。」

Inside the writer’s now state-owned mansion 200 miles south of Moscow, celebration of Russia as a self-confident cultural power jostles uneasily with constant reminders of another, less secure country striving to join the West.
這位作家的宅邸目前為國有，位在莫斯科以南200英里（約322公里），在其中，兩個面相不自在地爭奪空間，一個頌讚俄國是自信滿滿的文化強國，另一個則不時令人想到俄國是個較沒把握、力求加入西方的國家。

Many of the books in Turgenev’s library are in French and German, two of the seven languages he knew aside from Russian.
屠格涅夫藏書多以法文和德文寫成，這是他在俄文之外還通曉的七種語言中的兩種。

Paintings and drawings on the walls recall the many years he lived outside Russia – attending college in Berlin and living in the German spa town of Baden-Baden and then in France, where he pursued a doomed love affair with Pauline Viardot, a married French opera singer of Spanish descent.
牆上的油畫和素描令人想起屠格涅夫住在國外的許多年月。他在柏林上大學，其後住在德國礦泉療養鎮巴登-巴登，後來又來到法國居住，在當地追求一段注定失敗的婚外戀情，與具西班牙血統的已婚法國歌劇演唱家魏雅朵墜入情網。

His writings contain sometimes withering comments about his homeland, which he sorely missed when he was absent but also often deplored.
屠格涅夫的作品有時包含對祖國的尖刻意見，他在國外時非常想念俄國，卻也時常對俄國大加貶抑。

“Russian people are lazy and slow, and not accustomed to thinking independently, nor acting consistently,” Turgenev wrote in an 1857 letter to a conservative Russian countess. “But necessity – that great word! – will stir even this bear up out of its den.”
屠格涅夫1857年在寫給一位保守派俄國伯爵夫人的信中說：「俄國人懶惰又遲鈍，不習慣獨立思考和行動前後一致。不過，迫切的需要—這絕妙的字！—就連這隻熊都能被它激出洞穴。」

He didn’t mellow much with time, writing two decades later to a friend: “We are so disgustingly poor in Russia – this is the problem and why we are so prone to steal.”
屠格涅夫並未隨著時光流逝而變得平和許多，20年後，他在寫給朋友的信中說：「我們俄國窮得令人生厭—這就是問題所在，也是我們如此習於偷竊的原因。」

From France, he delivered this judgment on his homeland: “In Russia, clever, talented and honest people are very rare.”
他曾在法國發表對祖國的意見：「在俄國，聰明、有天分又誠實的人非常稀少。」

Turgenev’s distaste for drunken disarray and slovenliness so exasperated some of his compatriots, particularly those prone to the habits he deplored, that Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a contemporary and dedicated Slavophile, urged him to get a telescope so that he could see Russia more clearly and more sympathetically.
屠格涅夫對酒醉混亂和邋遢的厭惡激怒了一些同胞，尤其是常有他強烈譴責的這些習慣的人，以致和他同一時代，屬斯拉夫國粹派的杜斯妥也夫斯基要他去找具望遠鏡，好把俄國看得更清楚，並以更大的同情心去看俄國。

A few hard-line Russian nationalists have again taken up that cudgel, demanding that Turgenev’s books be removed from school curriculums because he was too smitten with the West.
有些不妥協的俄國民族主義者再度堅決擁護信念，要求學校課程刪除屠格涅夫著作，因為屠格涅夫對西方太過神魂顛倒。

Turgenev was so out of step with some of the conventions of his own country that “he never drank vodka and always preferred wine,” said Levina.
勒維納說，屠格涅夫與祖國一些傳統嚴重脫節，以致「從不喝伏特加，老愛喝葡萄酒」。

But still, she added: “He was an extraordinary Russian writer. That is all that really matters.”
不過她接著說：「屠格涅夫是傑出的俄國作家，這才要緊。」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/11/world/europe/russia-turgenev.html

2019-03-31 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 李京倫

說文解字看新聞 李京倫

本文討論俄國文學家屠格涅夫經常批評祖國，但仍因文學成就受到俄國政府尊崇。

confident和secure在本文第四段是同義詞，都是「對自己的價值或能力有信心的」，不過，「對自己價值、能力或外表有信心」一般會用confident，比較少用secure，secure多半是指「感到安全、不會受侵害」。

對某件事confident是指「確信事情會按期望發生」，例如總理appeared confident of winning an overall majority。對某件事secure是指「確信情況不會變動、可以依靠」，例如feel financially secure。

remind和recall都是「令人回想過去的人或事」，不過，使用remind有固定句型，基本上是remind somebody of something，例如：That song always reminds me of our first date.

recall比較自由，如：I seem to recall I’ve met him before somewhere.

Dickens Tried to Send Wife to Asylum, Letters Show
狄更斯想把妻子關進精神病院
By Palko Karasz

As a great novelist and a master journalist, Charles Dickens maintained tight control over what the public learned about his 1858 separation from his wife, perhaps the most scandalous story in his eventful life.
狄更斯身為知名小說家和優秀記者，牢牢控制大眾對他1858年與妻子分居這件事知道的程度，分居可能是他多采多姿人生中最不名譽的事。

But letters revealed recently cast the episode in a new and cruel light. Dickens, they suggest, not only sought to banish Catherine, his companion of two decades and the mother of his 10 children, while pursuing an affair with a young actress, Ellen Ternan.
不過，日前公布的信件揭露了這段插曲新而殘忍的部分。信件顯示，狄更斯與年輕女演員艾倫．特南發生婚外情時，不只企圖將結縭20年、為他生下十個孩子的妻子凱瑟琳趕走。

He also tried to have his wife imprisoned in an asylum.
狄更斯還試圖把妻子關進精神病院。

“This is a stronger and more damning account of Dickens’ behavior than any other,” John Bowen, a professor of 19th-century English literature at the University of York in northern England, wrote in The Times Literary Supplement .The article accompanied the publication of an analysis of letters held at Harvard.
波恩是英國英格蘭北部約克大學研究19世紀英國文學的教授，他在「泰晤士報文學增刊」撰文指出：「這是關於狄更斯行為，比其他材料更強烈且更具譴責性的描述。」這篇文章與波恩另一篇針對哈佛大學持有信件的分析文同時發表。

Dickens was careful of his image and legacy. In the 1860s, he burned the letters and papers of 20 years. Still, scholars and biographers continue efforts to pierce the privacy of his life and his relationship with women. The circumstances of the separation have inspired fiction, biography and a feature film, “The Invisible Woman.”
狄更斯很注意自己的形象和後世評價。他在1860年代燒掉20年來的書信與文件。不過，學者和傳記作者一直努力挖掘他的隱私和情史。分居這件事的原委啟發後人寫出小說、傳記和拍攝劇情片「狄更斯的秘密情史」。

Catherine Dickens herself rarely spoke of the separation. Nearly a decade after her husband’s death, she confided in Edward Dutton Cook, a theater critic and her neighbor in Camden, north London. The letters Bowen analyzed were based on those conversations.
凱瑟琳本人絕少提及分居這件事。在丈夫過世近十年後，她向戲劇評論家，同時也是她在倫敦北部肯頓地區鄰居的庫克吐露秘密。波恩分析的信件內容以這些對話為基礎。

Charles Dickens fell out of love with his wife, Dutton Cook wrote in a letter. “She had borne 10 children and had lost many of her good looks, was growing old, in fact.
庫克在一封信中寫道，狄更斯對妻子已無愛可言，「凱瑟琳生了十個孩子，事實上是已人老珠黃」。

“He even tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, poor thing!” Dutton Cook continued. “But bad as the law is in regard to proof of insanity he could not quite wrest it to his purpose.”
庫克繼續寫道：「狄更斯甚至試圖把她關進精神病院，可憐的人哪！不過，儘管當時要求提供精神失常證明的法律極為窳陋，他還是沒能得逞。」

The collection of 98 letters from Dutton Cook to a journalist friend, William Moy Thomas, was bought at auction in 2014 by the Houghton Library at Harvard.
庫克寫了98封信給記者朋友湯瑪斯，這批信件2014年拍賣時由哈佛大學霍頓圖書館買下。

“Reading the material was quite difficult to be honest,” Bowen wrote in a statement from the University of York. “Dickens is a literary great who I have studied and admired for many years but some of the letters made very uncomfortable reading.”
波恩在發自約克大學的聲明中說：「老實說，閱讀這些材料相當不容易。狄更斯是我研究仰慕多年的文學巨人，但這些信件讓我讀來非常不舒服。」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/world/europe/charles-dickens-wife-asylum.html

2019-03-31 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 李京倫