[转载]Alice Munro, Master of

Alice Munro, Master of Short Stories

短篇小说大师艾丽丝·门罗

（选自《英语世界》2013年第12期）

文/加兰·霍尔库姆   译/柴晚锁

By Garan Holcombe¹

Nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavour of a life in 30 pages. She tells us what it is to be a human being. She is wholly without cliché. At the end of one of her stories you have to pause, catch your breath, come up for air. Alice Munro has done more than any living writer to demonstrate that the short story is an art form and not the poor relation of the novel.

没有任何闲言废语，没有任何无关琐节，每个字词都熠熠生辉。短短30页篇幅内，门罗能够将生活的形状、情感以及本质捕捉无遗。她告诉我们生命的原本，毫无陈词滥调。读完其一篇小说，你需要静下心来细细思量，深深呼吸一口，才能从其引人入胜的氛围中解脱。与任何一位健在的作家相比，门罗在短篇小说方面的贡献都更深远。她向世人证实，短篇小说不是长篇小说可怜的远亲，而是自成一体的独立艺术形式。

[2] Munro’s fictions are usually set in small-town rural Ontario, where she has lived for much of her life. Her characters often leave the confines of the country for an intellectual and creative existence in the city, find that they have become ensnared within an undesired domesticity, which forces them into pale versions of themselves, and then, in later life once more feel the urge to break free. Yet the recurrent and very personal themes of Munro’s fiction—the stirring of the creative impulse, the bohemian rejection of provincial anonymity and conservatism, the refusal to be bound by narrow definitions of womanhood, and the complexity of female sexuality—are not what make her work so remarkable. For that we need to look to her style. Munro’s way with form, the scattered chronology of her stories, captures the drift of our thoughts, the endless movement in and out of moments. A Munro sentence, beguiling in its lucidity, compelling in its precision, seductive in its simplicity, offers constant enchantment. Munro’s prose, without sentiment, yet suffused with a hard melancholy, has a composed, wry, crystalline grace. Take this, from “Floating Bridge”, in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001): “what she felt was a light-hearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.” Read that last sentence again. From the honest beauty of “swish of tender hilarity”, to the striking “sores and hollows”, to those final words: “for the time given.” The time given contains multitudes.

〔2〕门罗的虚构作品通常以安大略省的乡间小镇为背景，也正是在这样的环境下，她度过了一生的大多数岁月。其故事的主角们年轻时总是急于摆脱乡村的束缚，渴望到城市去过知性而有创意的生活，却往往身不由己陷入另一牢笼，被恼人的家居琐事所累，难以挣脱，最终沦落成为自己曾经梦想的苍白影子，到了迟暮之年，渴望挣脱束缚的强烈愿望再一次涌上心头。然而，内心汹涌萌动的创意激情，对外省生活寂寂无名、僵化保守现状波西米亚式的抗拒，对囿于狭义女性身份定义的不甘，以及女性性别意识的种种复杂与微妙——所有这些在门罗作品中萦回复现、令人感同身受的主题，并不是其作品卓尔不群、独具风采的真正原因。真正的原因需要从其创作风格中慢慢寻找，用心感悟。她奇特的创作形式，即貌似散漫无章的叙事顺序，总能够恰如其分地捕捉到我们思绪中稍纵即逝的片段，捕捉到生活中每时每刻、无休无止的情思波动。她的句子清晰却又幽深微妙，精练却又摄人心魄，质朴却又难以抗拒，总能带给读者无尽愉悦。她的文章没有煽情，却总弥漫着一份浓浓愁思，呈现出一种泰然宁静、处变不惊、晶莹透彻的优雅。以《恨，友谊，追求，爱情，婚姻》（2001）中的“浮桥”为例：“她心中涌起一股淡然、轻松的温情，几乎想要笑出声来。一时间，一缕温润的喜悦袭遍周身，所有的伤痛与空虚消失得无影无踪。”细读最后一句并用心体会，不难领悟“一缕温润的喜悦”之坦荡与唯美、“所有伤痛与空虚”之感人肺腑，以及句子开头“一时间”之深远意蕴。“一时间”在此为多指复数，人一生中总会有若干这样的时刻。

[3] Munro has talked about “the complexity of things, the things within things.” It is her natural ability to describe the “shameless, marvelous, shattering absurdity” of life, to express it in just the right way, to capture it in all its endless, shapeless strangeness, which makes her so good. She has an acute sensitivity to the treasons, duplicities, evasions, snatched passions, tendernesses, compromises, commitments and pained avowals of human relationships. She teases the surface, until all that is hidden, all those tucked away pivots of a life are revealed. In her stories there are no neat endings, no straightforward progressions, no character arcs. There is a detachment from the crude mechanics of bold brushstrokes. Munro’s palate is infinitely subtle, with modulations of tone and colour that unsettle, surprise and delight. Munro finds the extraordinary within the ordinary, and reveals life to be a layering of secrets and lies, a meshing together of disparate elements. She shows us that we can never truly know anyone. After the travelling salesman father has visited a woman called Nora in “Walker Brothers County” (with his two children in tow), the narrator comments: “my father does not say anything to me about not mentioning things at home, but I know, just from thoughtfulness, the pause when he passes the liquorice, that there are things not to be mentioned. The whiskey, maybe the dancing. No worry about my brother, he does not notice enough. At most he might remember the blind lady, the picture of Mary.” This is note perfect writing. Munro plays with our own lack of knowledge; we feel complicit in the need to share a secret we know nothing of. We assume that Nora is a former love of the narrator’s father, and yet we are given no confirmation of this, no specific reason why the father has decided to visit her. We are, like the narrator and her brother, in the dark. As a consequence this scene becomes far more poignant.

〔3〕门罗作品始终关注挖掘“事件之繁杂纷扰性以及故事中的故事”。她能够将生活中“或厚颜无耻、或精妙绝伦、或令人震撼的各种荒诞”表现得恰如其分，淋漓尽致；能够透过永无休止、变幻无踪的诡谲片段将它捕捉定格——这与生俱来的禀赋，正是她过人之处。对人际关系中背信弃义、虚与委蛇、含糊闪避、强言欢情、温柔细腻、妥协让步、真情付出以及海誓山盟等各种微妙情感，她都有极为敏锐的触觉。她对肤浅表象不屑一顾，而致力于挖掘呈现生活中所有秘不示人、所有雪藏于心底最深处的东西。她的故事没有井然完美的结局，没有行云流水的情节推进，也没有泾渭分明的角色类别，有的只是与浓墨写意粗犷风格截然不同的细腻笔触。她的风格微妙无比，语调和色彩张弛交织、疏密有致，带给人不安，带给人惊奇，也带给人欣悦。她总是能透过平凡洞悉不平凡，揭示出生活本就是秘密与谎言层层叠加、各种迥异成分错综交织的。她向我们揭示，我们永远不可能完全看透一个人。走乡串镇做推销的爸爸（拖车上载着一对儿女）拜访了“沃克尔兄弟郡”一位名叫诺拉的女子之后，叙述者这样讲述：“爸爸从来不曾叮嘱我在家里不要提起这事，但由于我比较细心周到，从他递甘草时犹疑不决的举止里我意识到，有些事情不可提起。或许是喝的威士忌？又或许是跳的舞曲？至于弟弟，根本不用在意，他压根儿没看到多少。最多他或许能记住那位盲人太太，照片中的玛丽。”这简直是神来妙笔！门罗吊足了我们的胃口。我们仿佛成了同谋，迫切期待分享一个自己都知之甚少的秘密。我们猜测诺拉或许是叙述者爸爸的旧爱，然而门罗对此未予证实，也未告知爸爸之所以下决心去看她的具体原因。与叙述者及其弟弟一样，我们茫然不知。正因如此，这幅场景显得尤为生动。

[4] Munro narrators are philosophical, melancholic, at an ironic distance from their own lives. In Lives of Girls and Women (1973), a collection of interlinked short stories, Del, unflinching in her examination of concealed motive, says: “I wanted to know. There is no protection, unless it is in knowing. I wanted death pinned down and isolated behind a wall of part facts and circumstances not floating around loose, ignored but powerful, waiting to get in anywhere.” Del is the classic Munro narrator—a woman in opposition to her family, her home town, her upbringing, a woman seeking her own kind of order. Munro’s narrators have an eloquent intelligence, a controlled ferocity of spirit. They possess, at centre, a sense of disquiet, an amused despairing wonder at the knowledge of the way life is tainted by its brevity and unexpected twists. The Munro narrator is the voice in your head that will not be silenced.

〔4〕门罗笔下的叙述者总是如同哲学家一般深邃、忧郁，令人啼笑皆非地疏离于自己的生活之外。《女孩和女人们的生活》（1973）辑录了一系列彼此交织的短篇故事。其中，黛儿对深藏心底的探究动机予以直言不讳的剖析：“我渴望了解。如果茫然不知，也就无从防御。我渴望将死亡之神锁定并阻挡在高墙之外，哪怕只是对事实、情势一知半解的高墙；我无法听任其逍遥于外、虎视眈眈、随时伺机越墙进来而对它漠然不顾。”黛儿是门罗最具代表性的叙述者，与自己的家庭、故乡、成长经历等一切都截然对峙，是一位执意于追寻自我秩序的女子。门罗的叙述者通常精明灵巧、口才滔滔、思想奔放却又节制有度。她们内心深处涌动着隐隐不安，深知生命短暂且充满无法预料的波折变数，因而对此有着近乎绝望的好奇与戏谑。门罗式叙述者，是萦绕于每个人脑海中挥之不去、永不停歇的那个声音。

[5] Alice Munro is routinely spoken of in the same breath as Anton Chekov. She resembles the Russian master in a number of ways. She is fascinated with the failings of love and work and has an obsession with time. There is the same penetrating psychological insight; the events played out in a minor key; the small town settings. In Munro’s fictional universe, as in Chekhov’s, plot is of secondary importance: all is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail. Another significant feature of Munro’s is the (typically Canadian) connection to the land, to what Margaret Atwood has called a “harsh and vast geography”. Munro is attuned to the shifts and colours of the natural world, to life lived with the wilderness. Her skill at describing the constituency of the environment is equal to her ability to get below the surface of the lives of her characters.

〔5〕提及艾丽丝·门罗，人们常常将她与安东·契诃夫相比较。在诸多方面，她的确与这位俄国文豪有相似之处。她对描写婚恋和工作中的种种不如意情有独钟，对时光流逝这一主题近于痴迷。两者有着同样入木三分的心理分析洞见，同样习惯以小调般的舒缓节奏铺陈事件，同样喜欢将故事置于小镇生活场景之下。与契诃夫的作品一样，在门罗的虚构世界里，情节的重要性位居其次。一切都根植于豁然开朗的顿悟时刻，那种恍然大悟，那种简洁、微妙、天启般的细节铺呈才是关键。门罗作品中另一个显著的特点（同时也是加拿大人的典型特征）表现为对土地难以割舍的依恋，玛格丽特·阿特伍德曾用“环境严苛险恶、地域广袤无垠”来描写这片土地。对自然世界的演化变迁、光影色泽，对生活在荒凉旷野的生活情状，门罗了然于心。她描摹自然环境及其要素的技法，丝毫不亚于透过角色生活表象洞悉其内心的能力。

[6] Now in her mid 70s², Munro’s work has inevitably shifted focus of late. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) shows the effect of memories arriving as jolts to the present. There is the failure of mind and body and the constraints of loneliness. The final story, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”, recently filmed as Away From Her by Sarah Polley, begins as a story about the onset of Alzheimer’s. With Munro’s sure command of detail, pace, and the incremental revelation of past incidents, it gradually becomes an incredibly powerful examination of betrayal and the many varieties of love.

〔6〕如今年已七十过半的门罗，近期作品关注的焦点不可避免有所转移。《恨，友谊，追求，爱情，婚姻》（2001）表达的是岁月倏忽而过，过往记忆重现心头，与现实形成鲜明反差时的冲击，既有心理、生理机能退化所带来的悲凉无奈，也有老年孤苦寂寞生活的困扰拘囿。其中最后一则短篇故事“熊越过山顶”不久前被萨拉·波莉拍成了电影《柳暗花明》。故事一开始看似在讲述阿尔茨海默病来袭时的情状，然而，门罗凭借对细节、节奏的娴熟把握，对往事层层剖析推进的高超技法，将故事逐步发展成为一场难以置信的反思，对背叛、爱的不同表现形式等严肃话题进行探讨，感人至深。

[7] The stories in Runaway (2005), of trapped lives and missed opportunities, of dulled passions and the need for flight; they are among the most beautiful and haunting that Munro has ever written. There is a lingering sense of regret throughout this true and heartbreaking collection, and a resigned acceptance of that. Munro’s most recent book, The View From Castle Rock (2006), is a memoir that reads like a collection of stories, an emotional treatise on memory, and an attempt to find the pitch of the present in the distant past. It is an outstanding achievement, a characteristically intricate weaving of fact and fiction. Munro shows the pull of the past, exploring the pressing and urgent need to make our own personal myths as the drift of the years begins to narrow the future.

〔7〕《逃离》（2005）中的各篇故事探讨生活僵滞、机遇流逝、激情消退、渴望逃离等话题，是门罗所有作品中最优美、最难以忘怀的佳作。在这部真实感人、透心入肺的集子中，始终弥漫着一丝挥之不去的淡淡悔意，还有几分不得已放弃抗争、屈从命运的无奈。门罗的最新作品《石堡远眺》（2006）是一部读来如同故事集的回忆录，对记忆进行满怀深情的剖析解读，意图通过遥远过往找寻当下本真。这部作品以独特的方式，巧妙地将现实与虚构错综交织，具有极高造诣。门罗充分展示了过往岁月的引力，探讨当感知年华流逝、未来时日渐少时每个人心中都会油然而生的强烈而迫切的愿望：打造属于我们每个人自己的传奇。

[8] Everything in Alice Munro’s fiction is tinged with irony. There is the possibility of failure, hope, redemption and despair, but only the possibility, the suggestion. Nothing is ever fixed, nothing is closed off or closed down. It is in this treatment of the essential imperfection of life and its failure to conform to the quick of our fantasies, that Munro achieves greatness.  ■

〔8〕艾丽丝·门罗小说的每一细节都略带一丝讽喻色彩，涉及失败、希望、救赎和绝望的种种可能性，但仅仅是一种可能性、一种征兆而已。世间无所谓定数，无所谓绝尘，也无所谓终了。人生本质并不完美，无法与我们的种种异想天开全然应和合拍——正是对这一题材的斟酌阐释，成就了门罗的伟大。  □

1. 英国自由撰稿人、记者、英语语言教材编撰人。

2. 本文写作于2008年。门罗出生于1931年7月10日。