五一节放假，我还是决定宅在家里。翻出卡的东西，看看读读，闻闻油墨的清香，想象圣雷莫的海滩，结果是无法遏制地手痒。

    卡已经去世二十多年了，如今我们这些读者怀念卡的方式不外乎阅读他的作品而已，甚至连他的影像也是难以寻觅。我并不能确切地知道，年轻时代的卡是什么样子，可是至少他的文字不老，那飘散至今的芬芳仍旧弥漫在书卷之中。我拿出这份标志着卡确实离我们远去的文章，一时竟心血来潮想翻译出来。因为除了这样纪念你，我别无他法。

    斗胆起笔，经验为零，欢迎拍砖。逛书店去也~

 

卡尔维诺的讣告

（《纽约时报》，1985年9月19日）

ITALO CALVINO, THE NOVELIST, DEAD AT 61

 

　　Date: September 19, 1985, Thursday, Late City Final Edition Section B; Page 20, Column 1; Cultural Desk， Byline: By HERBERT MITGANG

　　Lead:

    导语：

　　Italo Calvino, the master of allegorical fantasy who became Italy's leading contemporary novelist, died early today in a hospital in Siena, Italy, from the effects of a stroke he suffered on Sept. 6. He was 61 years old.

    伊塔洛·卡尔维诺，意大利当代首屈一指的小说家、寓言与奇幻文学的大师，由于9月6日突然罹患中风，于今日凌晨在意大利西耶那的一所医院中去世，享年61岁。

　　Mr. Calvino was among the handful of major novelists of international standing and was to have delivered the prestigious Norton lectures at Harvard this fall.

    卡尔维诺先生位列蜚声世界的少数顶尖小说家之列，他去世前正在为今年秋天前往哈佛大学为国际知名的诺顿讲座进行演讲而做准备。

　　John Updike, reviewing Mr. Calvino's ''Castle of Crossed Destinies,'' said that ''no living author is more ingenious.'' The novelist and critic John Gardner called Mr. Calvino ''possibly Italy's most brilliant living writer.''

    约翰·厄普代克评论卡尔维诺先生的作品《名运交叉的城堡》时如是说：“没有任何在世的作家比卡尔维诺更加匠心独运。”小说家兼批评家约翰·加德纳称卡尔维诺先生“或许是在世的意大利最才华横溢的作家”。

　　Text:

    正文：

　　Mr. Calvino was attracted to folk tales, knights and chivalry, social allegories and legends for our time: Fabulous and comic memory chips, slightly askew seemed to be imbedded in his unprogrammed mind. His characters defied the malaise of daily life in the modern world.

    卡尔维诺先生为我们时代的民间故事，骑士文学和侠义精神，社会寓言和传奇文学所吸引：寓言与戏剧的记忆芯片似乎多多少少机缘巧合地嵌入了他拒绝循规蹈矩的头脑。他笔下的人物反抗因现代社会世俗生活的弊端而产生的不适和抑郁。

　　When The New York Times Book Review asked him last December what fictional character he would like to be, Mr. Calvino revealed himself and his artistic intentions in his answer:

       去年十二月，当《纽约时报》图书评论栏目问及他乐意成为哪一位小说人物时，卡尔维诺先生在回答中透露了他自己和他的艺术倾向：

　　''Mercutio. Among his virtues, I admire above all his lightness in a world of brutality, his dreaming imagination - as the poet of Queen Mab - and at the same time his wisdom, as the voice of reason amid the fanatical hatreds of Capulets and Montagues. He sticks to the old code of chivalry at the price of his life, perhaps just the sake of style, and yet he is a modern man, skeptical and ironic - a Don Quixote who knows very well what dreams are and what reality is, and he lives both with open eyes.''

       “迈丘西奥。在他所有的美德中，我尤其赞赏的是他在一个非人道社会中秉持的轻松愉快，他幻象中的创造力——如同麦布女王——同时他聪慧明智，是间于凯普莱特和蒙太古家族疯狂仇恨之中的理性之声。他坚守着骑士品质的古老准则作为生命的价值，或许仅仅是个人品格使然，但他仍然是一个现代人，怀疑一切，爱讲反话——一个洞悉梦幻与现实、睁大双眼直面生活的堂吉诃德式人物。”

　　Many Stories and Novels

       故事与小说

　　Mr. Calvino has two books coming out in the United States this month. His new novel is ''Mr. Palomar.'' The title character, with a name that recalls the famous telescope, is a quester after knowledge, a visionary in a world sublime and ridiculous. He is impatient and taciturn in society, preferring to spin inner dialogues and listen to the silence of infinite spaces and the songs of birds.

       本月，卡尔维诺先生的两本书将在美国出版。他的新小说名为“帕洛马尔”。与小说同名人物名取自一架著名的望远镜，他是一名知识的渴慕者、是壮丽宏伟与荒谬可笑并存的世界上的空想家。他在人类社会中缺乏耐心又沉默寡言，倾心于杜撰精神的对话以及聆听无穷太空的沉寂和鸟类的歌声。

　　His second book, also published here by Helen and Kurt Wolff Books, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, is a trade paperback edition of earlier stories titled ''Difficult Loves.'' Its characters include a soldier caught up in a private world of seduction and a middle-class woman who discovers she has lost the lower half of her bikini while swimming.

       他的第二本书，同样是由海伦和柯特·沃尔夫出版社以及赫考特·布雷斯·乔瓦诺维奇在此发行，是早期名为“困难的爱”的故事集的商业平装版。其中的人物包括一名深陷在诱惑的泥潭中不能自拔的士兵和一名发现自己在游泳时丢失下半身比基尼的中产阶级妇女。

　　Mr. Calvino's other works include ''The Baron in the Trees,'' ''The Path to the Nest of Spiders,'' ''The Castle of Crossed Destinies,'' ''Invisible Cities,'' ''Italian Folktales,'' ''Cosmicomics'' and ''If on a Winter's Night a Traveler'' and ''Marcovaldo.'' The subjects range from takeoffs on Tarot cards to satires of literary styles.

       卡尔维诺先生的其他作品包括《树上的男爵》，《通向蜘蛛巢的小径》，《命运交叉的城堡》，《看不见的城市》，《意大利民间故事集》，《宇宙奇趣》，《如果在冬夜，一个旅人……》以及《马可瓦多》。其主题广泛，涉及从对塔罗牌的戏仿到对书面体式的嘲讽。

　　For a while after World War II, he tried to write realistic stories. His early novel, ''The Path to the Nest of Spiders,'' described his experiences while fighting with the partisans against the Nazis and Fascists in the mountains of Liguria. Eventually, he came to realize that the only way for him to write was to invent. Straight science fiction seemed too remote. In ''Cosmicomics'' he came close to science fiction, inspired by the workings of the universe.

       第二次世界大战之后的一段时间，他曾尝试创作现实主义的故事。他的早期小说《通向蜘蛛巢的小径》描述了他在利古里亚山区与敌后游击队员并肩作战打击纳粹和法西斯的经历。最终，他认识到自己写作的唯一途径就是虚构。朴实无华的科幻小说似乎太过脱离生活。在《宇宙奇趣》中，他接近了科幻小说，其灵感来源于在大学的任教。

　　Fables Crisscrossing Time

       时间交错的寓言

　　Thereafter, he began to grapple with modern events in his own way through fables that often crisscross time. ''If the reader looks,'' he said, ''I think he will find plenty of moral and political ideas in my stories. I suffer from everyday life. When I'm depressed, I start with some euphoric image that transmits itself. Anyway, I'm sure that I'm a man of my times. The problems of our time appear in any story I write. Knights and chivalry - they are related to today's wars. No, I'm not writing in a vacuum. The fables just make use of a different language. Politics is marginal, but literature moves along by indirection.''

       后来，他开始以自己的方式、通过时常时间交错的寓言着手解决当代重大事件。“如果读者阅读，”他说，“我想他会在我的故事中找到丰富的道德和政治理念。我承受着每一天的生活。当我沮丧消沉，我就从一些传达愉快的影像着手。至少，我确定自己是一个属于当下时代的人。这一时代的弊病出现在我写的故事里。骑士文学和侠义精神——它们与当今的战争不无关系。不，我并不是在真空中写作。寓言只是利用了不同的语言。手段是无足轻重的，但文学的动向是迂回渐进。”

　　By contrast to his own work, Mr. Calvino ridiculed commercial fiction, including American novels. In ''If on a Winter's Night a Traveler,'' he invented a group called the Organization for the Electronic Production of Homogenized Literary Works. He said it was inspired by the market research conducted by the television networks and some book publishers to determine what audiences wanted to see and read - and then to manufacture it.

       与他的作品相反的是，卡尔维诺先生嘲笑包括美国小说在内的商业上的虚构小说。在《如果在冬夜，一个旅人……》中，他虚构了一个名为“均质文学作品电子创作组织”的团体。他说其灵感来源于电视网络和图书出版商进行市场调查而确定观众们想要看什么和读什么——然后再批量制造这些东西。

　　''The Baron in the Trees'' is about a young Italian nobleman in the 18th century who rebels against parental authority and lives for the rest of his life in ''an ideal state in the trees.'' Louis Malle, the film director, has said he has long dreamed of turning the novel into a movie.

       《树上的男爵》是关于一名十八世纪的意大利年轻贵族的故事，他公然反抗父母的权威，并在“树上的理想国度”度过余生。导演路易·马勒称，他曾在很长一段时间里梦想把这部小说拍摄成电影。

　　To help preserve literary traditions and promote new writers, Mr. Calvino edited a fiction series called ''Cento Pagi'' (One Hundred Pages), short novels that are published by Giulio Einaudi in Turin. He explained: ''Italian literature today does not have any real school or current but only complex personalities of writers who are so different. But difference is what is worth encouraging.''

       为了有助于保持文学传统和拔擢新人，卡尔维诺先生编辑了名为“一百页”的小说系列，它是由都灵Giu lio Einaudi出版社发行的短篇小说集。他解释道：“当今的意大利文学并没有真正的流派或趋势，只有彼此不同的作家们复杂的个性。但差别才是值得鼓励的。”

　　Joined Italian Resistance

       加入意大利抵抗组织

　　Italo Calvino was born on Oct. 15, 1923, in Santiago de Las Vegas, Cuba, of Italian parents, both of whom were tropical agronomists. Several years later they returned to San Remo, on the Italian Riviera. Mr. Calvino enrolled at the University of Turin, intending to study agronomy. After Italy's entry into World War II, as a compulsory member of the Young Fascists, he participated in the Italian occupation of the French Riviera, but in 1943 he joined the Italian Resistance and fought the Germans in the Ligurian mountains.

       伊塔洛·卡尔维诺于1923年10月15日出生在古巴的圣地亚哥德拉维加，父母都是意大利热带植物学家。几年后它们回到了意大利里维埃拉的圣雷莫。卡尔维诺先生进入都灵大学，意在学习农学。意大利参加第二次世界大战后，作为“青年法西斯”的强制成员，他被迫参加了意大利对法国里维埃拉的占领，但在1943年，他加入了意大利抵抗组织并在利古里亚的山区与德国纳粹进行战斗。

　　In 1945, he joined the Communist Party and began contributing to party journals. With the writers Cesare Pavese and Elio Vittorini, he shared an involvement in Socialist politics and in the neorealistic literary vogue. ''The Communist Party seemed to have the most realistic program for opposing a resurgence of Fascism and for rehabilitating Italy,'' he said, ''but I left the party in 1957, and today I am apolitical.''

       1945年，他加入了意大利共产党，开始为党刊撰文。他与西塞里·帕维塞、依莱尔·维特里尼一起被卷入社会党人的政治活动和新现实主义文学风潮。“共产党似乎拥有压制法西斯主义死灰复燃和复兴改造意大利的最现实方案，”他说，“但是1957年，我退党了，现在的我无心政治。”

　　In the opinion of his fellow-writers and critics, Mr. Calvino was a world-class author. His stories and especially his folk tales were translated in many countries.

       按照他同辈的作家和批评家的观点，卡尔维诺先生是一位世界级的作家。他的作品尤其是民间故事已经被翻译到许多国家。

　　Margaret Atwood, the novelist, compared Mr. Calvino's urban landscapes to ''the early Fellini films.''

       小说家玛格丽特·阿特伍德，把卡尔维诺先生的城市景致比作“费索里尼早期电影”。

　　Ursula K. Le Guin, the American novelist whose work includes science fiction and fantasy, said, ''One of the innumerable delights of 'Italian Folk Tales' is its mixture of the deeply familiar with the totally unexpected. He is one of the best storytellers alive telling us some of the best stories in the world - what luck!''

       厄休拉·K·勒·古恩，一位作品中包含了科学性虚构和幻想的美国小说家如是说：“《意大利民间故事集》中不可胜数的乐趣之一就是它是熟识详知与预料之外的混合物。卡尔维诺先生是在世的最棒的故事作者之一，向我们讲述着世界上最好的故事——真是三生有幸！”

　　'A Valuable Service'

       重要的贡献

　　Commenting on the same book, Anthony Burgess, the British novelist, said, ''Calvino has performed a valuable service to his own culture and, by extension, to our own. Reading his book, we are confirmed in our belief that human aspirations are everywhere much the same.''

       同样是评论这本书，英国小说家安东尼·伯吉斯说：“卡尔维诺作出了重要贡献，无论是对于他本国的文化，还是推己及人对于我们自己的文化。阅读他的书，使我们证实自己的信仰——人类的梦想在各处都无甚差别。”

　　Of Mr. Calvino's ''If on a Winter's Night a Traveler,'' Michael Wood, the critic, wrote, ''Architect of scrupulously imagined, apparently fantastic, insidiously plausible words, Calvino occupies a literary space somewhere east of Jorge Luis Borges and west of Vladimir Nabokov. Borges dreams of libraries and Nabokov texts and commentaries, but Calvino pictures acres of vulnerable print, gathered into volumes but constantly menaced with dispersion or vertiginous error.''

       关于卡尔维诺先生的作品《如果在冬夜，一个旅人》，批评家迈克尔·伍德写道：“一丝不苟的幻想缔造者，显而易见的异想天开，机智聪慧和模棱两可的语言，卡尔维诺占据了文学的一席之地，它在博尔赫斯之东、纳博科夫之西。博尔赫斯幻想图书馆，纳博科夫倾心文本和纪事，而卡尔维诺描绘了大量敏感脆弱的蓝图并收录成集，但他却不停地以分散或多变的误差实施威胁。”

　　Mr. Calvino himself talked enigmatically about his writing.

       卡尔维诺先生曾神秘莫测地谈及自己的创作。

　　''When I'm writing a book I prefer not to speak about it,'' he said, ''because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.''

       “当我写一本书时我更愿意避之不谈，”他说，“因为只有当一本书写完时我才能试着理解自己确实完成了什么，并将自己的本来意图与结果加以比较。”

　　While he was writing ''Mr. Palomar'' two years ago, Mr. Calvino said, ''What can I say of the book I'm working on now is that it is a quite different one, but it also deals with the relations between a man and nature. Here the hero is called Mr. Palomar, like the astronomical observatory, but he observes only the nearest things around him.''

       当他两年前创作《帕洛马尔》时，卡尔维诺先生曾说：“对于这本正在创作中的新书，我能说的就是它是与以往大不相同的一本，但它也论及一个人与自然之间的关系。此处的主人公叫作帕洛马尔先生，与天文观象台同名，但他只观察自己周围最近的事物。”

　　Mr. Calvino is survived by his wife, Chichita Singer, a former translator for Unesco in Paris whom he married in 1964, and a daughter, Giovanna.

       齐齐塔·辛格，一名前联合国教科文组织驻巴黎的翻译人员，于1964年与卡尔维诺先生结为连理，如今，卡尔维诺先生撇下他的妻子和女儿乔凡娜匆匆而去。

 

Translated by Cosimo, May-1-2009~May-2-2009