GMovier - 极影客

Hermione Lee（Virhinia Woolf Biographer）:It's Clear from the evidence that Virginia Woolf could be described as manic-depressive. And, who knows, if she had had lithium, she might have lived longer. We don't know that. She did alternate between periods of mania and high excitement and periods of very inert depression. She suffered terribly from sleeplessness. She had appalling headaches. I mean, these are not just headaches as you and I know them, but these are really terrible... incapacitating headaches. She clearly suffered tremendously from a lot of physical pain all through her life. And I think her life is a story of great courage and stoicism.

 

      有很多迹象显示弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙患有狂燥抑郁症。如果她当时有服用含锂（抗抑郁药物）药物的话，可能会活的更久一些，谁知道呢。她有时情绪高昂，有时意志消沉。她深为失眠症困扰。她常常头痛欲裂，我是指，不是你我所能体会到的头痛，而是那种会让人发疯的头痛。显然，她一生都被病痛困扰，我认为她的一生是勇气和淡泊的写照。

 

"Two days ago, Sunday, the 16th of April, 1939, to be precise, Nessa said that if I did not start writing my memoirs, I should soon be too old. There are several difficulties. In the first place, the enormous number of things I can remember. Many bright colors, many distinct sounds, some human beings, caricatures, comic, several violent moments of being. Always including a circle of the scene which they cut out. And all surrounded by a vast space. That is a rough visual description of childhood. This is how I shape it and how I see myself as a child."

 

“两天前，也就是1939年4月16日星期天，娜莎说我要是再不动笔写回忆录，很快就会老的写不动了。不过有很多问题，第一，我记得的事情实在太多了，我记得许多鲜明的色彩和独特的声音、很多人、讽刺漫画、还有一些充满暴力的时刻，这些场景环绕在我记忆的四周，并被广袤的虚无包裹。这是对我童年的粗略描写，也是我看待自己童年的方式。”

 

Dr. Francis Spalding（Art Historian, Critic And Biographer): Virginia Woolf was born in London. Her parents were Leslie and Julia Stephen. Her mother was descended from an Anglo-Indian family. The women in the family were famous for their beauty and something of that, Virginia Woolf inherited. Her father, Leslie Stephen, who became Sir Leslie Stepjen, was an eminent author and editor. He edited 26 volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography. He was really at the very center of the English literary establishment.

 

      弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙生于伦敦，是莱斯利和朱莉亚·斯蒂芬的女儿，她妈妈是英印混血儿，这个家族的女性以惊人的美貌著称，弗吉尼亚多少也遗传了她们的美丽。她父亲莱斯利后来被封为爵士，是位杰出的作家和编辑，他编辑了26册传记大辞典，是英国文坛上的重要人物。

 

Molly Hite（Professor of English, Cornell University)：Her father and her mother were both on second marriages, they were both widowed. They were much older than the group of children that started with Vanessa. Then there was Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian. So she grew up with parents she said were really the age of grandparents.

 

      她父母都曾遭丧偶之痛，这是他们俩的第二次婚姻。他们比自己的儿女凡妮莎、弗吉尼亚和艾德恩都年长很多。所以弗吉尼亚说感觉好像是在祖父母家长大一样。

 

Dr. Francis Spalding: And her mother, Julia, had had two sons by her previous marriage, George and Gerald Duckworth. And one of these two brothers has become notorious because later on in life, Virginia Woolf wrote a memoir in which she suggested that George Duckworth had sexually molested her as child.

 

      她妈妈在前一次婚姻中，生了两个儿子，乔治和杰拉德·达克沃斯。其中一人之后恶名昭著，因为伍尔芙在她的回忆录中暗示，小时候乔治曾对她进行过性侵害。

 

Hermione Lee: There was obviously some very traumatic sexual interference going on. And there is a school of thought that argues that her life is dominated by childhood sexual abuse. I am not of that opinion because I don't read her life as that of a victim.

 

      虽然她小时候有过非常惨痛的性经验，而且有一派学者认为，她的一生都受到了儿时性侵害的极大影响，但我不同意这种说法，因为我没有把她的一生看作一个受害者的一生。

 

Molly Hite: She grew up in a very Victorian household, despite the fact she was born in 1882, very, very near the end of the century. And she basically, until the death of her father, lived under quite Victorian circumstances and disliked them intensely.

 

      她在一个典型的维多利亚式家庭长大，尽管她出生于1882年，已经接近19世纪的尾声，在她父亲死前，她一直生长在一个典型的维多利亚式环境中，但她对此及其反感。

 

"By nature, both Vanessa and I were explores, revolutionists, reformers, but our surroundings were at least 50 years behind the times. Father himself was a typical Victorian."

 

“我和凡妮莎天生喜爱冒险、叛逆、革新，但是我们周围的环境至少落后了50年。我父亲就是一个典型的维多利亚时代的人。”

 

Hermione Lee: Virginia Woolf's whole political argument, which had to do with the unfair treatment of women in British society in the early 20th century, was based on the fact that she didn't go to school and she didn't go to university. She was burningly resentful of the fact that she was self-taught and that she didn't have an education like her brothers.

 

     弗吉尼亚的政治主张，主要是和英国女性在20世纪初期所受到的不平等待遇有关，并且根植于她没有上学，也没有念大学的事实，她对自己必须自学，没有办法像哥哥那样接受教育这件事感到很气愤。

 

"Was I clever, stupid, good-looking, ugly, passionate, cold? Owing partly to the fact that I was never at school, never competed in any way with children of my own age, I have never been able to compare my gifts and defects  with other people's."

 

“我是否聪慧、愚蠢、美貌、丑陋、热情、冷漠？有部分原因是以为我从未上过学，不能与同龄的孩子竞争，从来没有机会和别人比较我的优劣。”

 

Dr. Francis Spalding: She was very close, particularly, to her sister because both her brothers were sent away to school, but she remained at home. And her sister, Vanessa, very early on decided she wanted to be a painter. And Virginia, perhaps, wanting also to have a route, decided that she was to be the writer.

 

      她和姐姐的关系很好，她的兄弟都去学校念书了，但她一直呆在家里。她姐姐凡妮莎很早就立志要成为画家，而弗吉尼亚，很可能也立志要成为作家。

 

Hermione Lee: I think she probably started writing about the age of three and was writing nonstop and unstoppably all through her life from the minute she could hold a pencil until the day she walked in the river.

 

      她好像从三岁起就开始写作，此后终生笔耕不辍，从她开始拿笔的那一刻，到投河自尽的那一刻。

 

Molly Hite: She was also a superb artist, as it turned out, and one of the real phenomena of that family was how these two daughters both came out as highly significant artists.Her mother died when Virginia was 13. This was an absolute catastrophe in her life.

 

      她也是个非常卓越的艺术家，一个家庭两个女孩都成了杰出的艺术家，实在难能可贵。弗吉尼亚13岁失去了母亲，对她来说是个不小的打击。

 

"We had been sent up to the day nursery after she died and were crying. How that early morning picture has stayed with me."

 

“她死后，我们被送到日间托儿所，整日以泪洗面。我永远不能忘记那天早上的情景。”

 

Dr. Francis Spalding: The first serious bout of mental illness which Virginia Woolf underwent happened soon after her mother's death at the age of around 13.

 

      弗吉尼亚丧母不久，就首度出现明显的精神病症状，当时她大约13岁。

 

"There was the moment of the puddle in the path, when, for no reason I could discover, everything suddenly became unreal. I was suspended. I could not step across the puddle. I tried to touch something. The whole world became unreal."

 

“我不知为何发现了路上的水坑，突然间，我发现一切都变得好不真实。我无法移动，怎么也越不过那个水坑。我试着伸手触摸，但整个世界都变得很不真实。”

 

Hermione Lee: Then immediately, her half sister, to whom she was very close, Stella, died. And then her father, died. I mean, it's just a sort of staggering succession of blows.

 

      没过多久，和她感情甚笃的同母异父的姐姐史黛拉也与世长辞，然后她父亲也去世了，我是说，她在短短的时间里就要承受这么多打击。

 

Alastair Upton（Director, The Charleston Trust）: Virginia Woolf had serious and very debilitating attacks of mental illness throughout her life. They came at times of great stress. She was visited by voices. She was incapable of getting up, working, or looking after herself.

 

      弗吉尼亚一生都有严重的精神疾患，只要她承受莫大压力时，精神病就会发作，她会听到奇怪的声音，无法起床工作或照料自己。

 

Molly Hite: And those voices for her were about it. They were masculine voices. They told her she was worthless. They told her she was terrible.

 

      她听到的都是男人的声音，他们说她一无是处，毫无可取。

 

Hermione Lee: She spent her whole life, actually, coming to terms with the deaths of her parents. Trying to prove herself to them. There's a scene, in a novel by Virginia Woolf called Mrs. Dalloway,  where the grown-up Mrs. Dalloway imagines herself carrying her life in her arms as if it's a baby. And walking towards her parents, who are both dead in the novel, and putting this thing down in front of them and saying, "This is my life. This is what I've made of it."  And I always feel that's autobiographical and that that's what Virginia was always doing when she was writing... she was proving herself to her dead parents.

 

      她终其一生都没能走出双亲死亡的事实，并试图向他们证明自己。在弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙的《达洛薇夫人》中有这样一个场景，成年后的达洛薇夫人想象自己用双臂抱起自己的一生，就向婴儿那样。并朝着她的双亲走去，在小说中，他们都已经死去了。她把自己的一生放在他们面前说：“这是我的一生，这是我努力的结果。”我总觉得她写的就是自己，弗吉尼亚写作的时候，就是想向自己死去的双亲证明自己的能力。

 

Alastair Upton: And it was in 1904 that the Stephen family, Vanessa, Virgina, Thoby, Adrian moved from the Victorian house in Hyde Park Gate to Bloomsbury, then an area what was not considered to be a good place to live. They set up home there, invited their friends and the place became a meeting point for artists, writers, intellectuals.

 

      1904年史蒂夫一家，凡妮莎、艾德恩从海德公园搬到二流住宅区，布伦斯贝瑞，他们在那里安顿下来，邀请朋友来，那里成了艺术家、作家、知识分子聚会的场所。

 

"We were full of experiments and reforms. We were going to do without table napkins. We were going to paint, to write, to have coffee after dinner instead of tea at 9:00. Everything was going to be new. Everything was going to be different. Everything was on trial."

 

“我们充满冒险和改革精神，我们要吃饭不用餐巾。我们要写作绘画，晚餐后喝咖啡，而不是9：00喝茶，一切都是全新的，一切都感觉不同，一切都受到质疑。”

 

Dr. Francis Spalding: Virginia's elder brother was called Thoby Stephen. And he's a crucial character in the story of both Virginia Woolf's life and of Bloomsbury, because when he left Cambridge, he began holding, at homes, at their house in 46 Gordon Square, in Bloomsbury, and he invited his Cambridge friends to those events.

 

      弗吉尼亚的哥哥叫托比·斯蒂芬，他对弗吉尼亚的一生以及布伦斯贝瑞都是个很重要的人物。因为他从剑桥毕业后，就常常在位于布伦斯贝瑞的家中举行聚会，并邀请他在剑桥认识的朋友。

 

Alastair Upton:  The Bloomsbury group was never a club, it was just a collection of friends.

 

      布伦斯贝瑞算不上是俱乐部，它只是普通的朋友聚会。

 

Hermione Lee: It consisted of Thoby Stephen and his serious, young philosophical and literary friends from Cambridge who were mostly gay or bisexual.

 

      与会成员包括托比·斯蒂芬和他在剑桥结识的热爱哲学、文学有很认真的朋友，多半都是同性恋或双性恋。

 

 

                 （未完待续）