艾玛·多诺霍《房间》：分离焦虑

  译者： 小灰 原作者：AIMEE BENDER

 

艾玛·多诺霍的新小说令人印象深刻：《房间》（Room）设置了两个非常有趣的限制：一个名叫杰克的五岁孩子的有限视角以及杰克所生活的有限的物理空间——他和他的妈妈生活在一个11乘11英尺的房间里。故事情节很快得以展开，我们困惑道，为什么这些角色会被放置在这样一个地方。

Emma Donoghue’s remarkable new novel, “Room,” is built on two intense constraints: the limited point of view of the narrator, a 5-year-old boy named Jack; and the confines of Jack’s physical world, an 11-by-11-foot room where he lives with his mother. We enter the book strongly planted within these restrictions. We know only what Jack knows, and the drama is immediate, as is our sense of disorientation over why these characters are in this place. Jack seems happily ensconced in a routine that is deeply secure, in a setting where he can see his mother all day, at any moment. She has created a structured, lively regimen for him, including exercise, singing and reading. The main objects in the room are given capital letters — Rug, Bed, Wall — a ­wonderful choice, because to Jack, they are named beings. In a world where the only other companion is his mother, Bed is his friend as much as anything else. Jack, in this way, is a heightened version of a regular kid, bringing boundless wonder and meaning to his every pursuit.

艾玛·多诺霍的新小说令人印象深刻：《房间》（Room）设置了两个非常有趣的限制：一个名叫杰克的五岁孩子的有限视角以及杰克所生活的有限的物理空间——他和他的妈妈生活在一个11乘11英尺的房间里。故事情节很快得以展开，我们困惑道，为什么这些角色会被放置在这样一个地方。杰克看起来非常高兴自己被安置在一个守卫森严的日常居所里，在这个环境中，他一整天，随时都可以见到他的妈妈。他的妈妈为他创造了一个有序活泼的生活规则，包括运动、唱歌和阅读。房间里的主要物品都用大写字母标识出来——地毯、床铺、墙壁——真是一个好主意。因为对于杰克而言，它们都是一些有名字的活物。这一个只有妈妈做伴的世界里，床铺和其他东西一样都是他的朋友。从这一点来说，杰克是更为特别的孩子，懂得将无限的想象和意义赋予他的每一项爱好。

Donoghue navigates beautifully around these limitations. Jack’s voice is one of the pure triumphs of the novel: in him, she has invented a child narrator who is one of the most engaging in years — his voice so pervasive I could hear him chatting away during the day when I wasn’t reading the book. Donoghue rearranges language to evoke the sweetness of a child’s learning without making him coy or overly darling; Jack is lovable simply because he is lovable. Through dialogue and smartly crafted hints of eavesdropping, Donoghue fills us in on Jack’s world without heavy hands or clunky exposition. The reader learns as Jack learns, and often we learn more than he can yet grasp, but as with most books narrated by children, the gap between his understanding and ours is a territory of emotional power.

http://cdn.yeeyan.org/upload/attached/2011-02/13/20110213140233_33477.jpg多诺霍在这些限制中漂亮地操纵着故事。杰克的声音是这部小说最成功的部分之一：她创造了这个儿童视角的叙述者是这些年来最迷人的角色之一。他的声音十分普遍，当我没有阅读这本书的时候，仍然可以听到他在说话。多诺霍重新组织了语音塑造了一个孩子美妙的认知世界，而没有让他显得扭捏作态或是过度可爱。因为他的可爱，杰克才显得纯粹。通过对话和漂亮且经过精巧设计的在进行偷听的暗示，多诺霍带我们进入了一个没有高压手段或是沉重的阐述的，属于杰克的世界。

Donoghue’s ingenuity also soars as she animates the novel’s physical space through her characters’ rituals: they run around a homemade track; watch TV, but not too much, because “it rots our brains”; string eggshells together with a needle to make a kind of snake. Toys and books are treated like gold. A lollipop is a revelation.

多诺霍的精巧设置还表现在，她通过他对角色的日常行为的描写使得小说的物理空间鲜活起来：他们在自制的轨道上东奔西跑，看电视，但并不过度。因为“电视会让我们的大脑腐烂”；将蛋壳用针线穿在一起做成蛇的样子。对待玩具和书本就如同金子一样，一个棒棒糖就如同一个新发现一样。

Although I hate to reveal plot points, some are necessary to discuss the book, and early on, the story reveals that Room is actually a prison, with a villain holding the key, and that Ma (as Jack calls his mother) is being kept against her will. Fierce claustrophobia sets in — what had seemed an odd mother-child monastery is now Rapunzel’s tower or Anne Frank’s annex or a story from the news about a stolen child living in a hidden compound. Jack, interestingly, does not feel trapped; that the two live in Room against his mother’s will is not something the son knows right away, and this contrast creates the major fissures and complexities in the book: Room is both a jail and a ­haven.

虽然我讨厌剧透，但透露一些故事情节对于讨论这本书而言却是十分必要的。在故事的前面部分，它告诉我们，这间房间其实是个监狱，一个歹徒拿着房间的钥匙，而那个被叫做玛的人（杰克把她称为妈妈）则是被囚禁在此的。可怕的幽闭恐惧症出现了——这看起来显得有些奇怪的妈妈和儿子的处所，如今变成了长发公主的高塔，或是安妮·弗兰克的配楼，以及那些新闻里故事一个被拐走的孩子被藏在一个隐蔽的房子里。有趣地是，杰克并没有觉得自己身陷困境之中，对于儿子而言住在这个房子中并没有什么特别的地方。这样的对比产生了书中主要的分歧和复杂的情况：这间房间既是监狱也同样是避难所。

Once it is known that Ma doesn’t want to be there, the careful, painstakingly constructed framework of the characters’ days takes on a new tenor. That Ma can engage and interest a lively, bright boy while enduring the despair of their situation turns her into a heroic figure. When, later in the book, someone mentions how “zeitgeisty” it is, in our thing-ridden times, to make do on so little, Ma is horrified, and we are horrified, yet we are riveted by her manner of coping — in the same way we’re riveted by Anne Frank’s bravery — and amazed by her capacity for adaptation.

一旦知道玛并不想呆在这里，这个经过仔细，煞费苦心构造的角色的生活框架就进入了一个新的阶段。玛能在吸引一个活泼阳光的孩子的注意力和兴趣的同时，忍受着对他们处境的绝望使得她呈现了一个女英雄的形象。在书的后半部分，有人说道：这是一种“伟大的精神”。在我们这个被物质所支配的时代里，这种精神为数甚少。玛在害怕，我们同样觉得惊骇，我们被她的抗争说吸引，同样的，我们也被安妮·弗兰克的勇敢所吸引，惊叹于她的适应能力。

Jack doesn’t need to adapt; this is his norm. Room functions like a big womb, the space in many ways a true extension of a mother’s body, a limited area of total closeness and care. It is a child’s heaven for a time and, were he to grow older there, would be his nightmare. At 5, Jack is somewhat delayed developmentally, still living wholly in the unity he feels with his mother. “Maybe I’m a human,” he thinks, “but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.”

而杰克不需要去适应。这是他的准则。房间就如同一个巨大的子宫，这个空间在许多地方就如同母体的真实延伸，一个亲密而充满关怀的有限的空间。在一段时间内，那里是孩子的天堂，而当他成长起来以后，则成了他的噩梦。五岁的杰克有些发育迟缓，依然认为自己与母亲是一体的。“也许我是个人，”他想道，“但我同时也是我和玛。”

Which brings up the one part I struggled with a bit. Very early on, we see that Ma breast-feeds her son. The book opens on his birthday, and she tries, halfheartedly, to wean him, but he loves this intimate connection to his mother’s body as much as he loves all the walls and objects and routines of Room. There’s a flicker of unease in the reader here — and it’s a good and interesting flicker. Room is a sanctuary for Jack, but where are the lines, the boundaries between mother and son? When does security go too far?

对于其中的一部分内容，我有些抗拒。在书的早先部分，我们看到了玛给她的孩子哺乳的情节。本书开始于杰克的生日。玛半认真的想要尝试给他断奶，但他却非常喜爱与他的母亲身体的亲密接触，如同他喜欢日常居室中的所有的那些墙壁和物件。对于读者而言，这是一个不安的片段。也是一个有趣的片段。房间对于杰克而言是个避难所，但孩子与母亲之间的界限在什么地方，在何时这种安全感会走得太远？

Eventually the book takes a turn; I will note only that more characters enter, and that the world extends beyond its original setting. The development is thrilling and at moments palm-sweatingly harrowing. But that darker flicker of unease around the breast-feeding grows smaller. When Ma is questioned about it a couple of times, she turns on her interrogators with anger. She’s a sympathetic figure, and her choices, in her situation, are believable, even understandable, but by shaming the questioners, Donoghue also cuts off a reader who may have similar wonderings. I trusted and valued that flicker of unease, and I wanted to feel it play out more, to see Donoghue go deeper into the mucky, messy territory of growth. When Ma takes an action that ends up resolving some of these questions, I found her choice surprising, even puzzling; it just didn’t quite address this issue, which was not about the breast-feeding concretely, but more about breast-feeding as an effective symbol for that initial, primal bond between mother and child, a bond that has to evolve over time. The internal claustrophobia, the blurry and often complicated area between closeness and autonomy, is acknowledged but moved through quickly, in favor of managing the joys and terrors of the outside world.

最终这个故事发生了转向。我注意到更多的角色被引入其中，而这个世界则超越了它原本的设定。故事的发展让人惊栗，时常手心冒汗。但环绕在哺乳四周的不安的更加黑暗的场景变得渺小。但玛被多次询问有关此事的情况后，她愤怒了。她是一个值得同情的角色。置身于她所处的情况下，她的选择是可信的，也是可以理解的。但通过咨询者对她的羞辱，多诺霍同时也斩断了一个读者可能有的相同的疑问。我信赖同时也珍视这一让人不安的片段，我想更多的感受和玩味，看看多诺霍更加深入那些关于成长的晦暗，混乱的领域。当玛采取行动来解决其中问题时，我发现她的选择令人惊奇，甚至疑惑不解；它并非完全解决了某一个问题：不单单是具体的关于哺乳的问题，更多的是关于哺乳成为了母亲与孩子之间的一种首要的，最初的纽带的象征的问题。这一纽带会随着时间不断发展。内在的幽闭恐惧症，模糊的，有时甚至是复杂的存在于亲密和自立之间的区域，是被承认的，但同时也被迅速穿越，而这有利于对于外部世界的快乐与恐惧的操控。

There’s a lot to manage — the external, vivid, social world is a huge and gratifying resource here, and Jack’s eyes remake the familiar. It is invigorating, watching him learn, and the way Donoghue reveals the consequences of Room through her attention to detail is tremendous. But in a world where bed is Bed and outside is Outside, I thought anxiety might be Anxiety, and somewhat harder to resolve. Part of Jack’s appeal is that heightened kidness in him, and if his wonder is 10 times larger, so might have been the resolutions of his internal struggles and regressions.

这里有许多东西需要操控——外在的，鲜活的，社会化的世界是一个大型的悦人的资源。杰克的眼睛则重塑了这些熟悉的事物。观察他的学习是一件让人精神为之一振的事。通过多诺霍对于细节的注意说揭示的小说《房间》的结局是惊人的。但在一个床铺拥有一个叫做“床铺”的名字，外面被称为“外面”的世界里，我想焦虑大概也是一种被叫做“焦虑”的生命。有些东西是很难解决的。杰克的部分吸引力来自于他是一个更高意义上的孩子，如果他的疑惑扩大十倍，那么吸引力可能就来自于他内心的挣扎与退行。

But these are objections based on the very high standards set by the beauty of the book. On the whole, Donoghue goes the distance with “Room,” and she brings her story to a powerful close that feels exactly right. This is a truly memorable novel, one that can be read through myriad lenses — psychological, sociological, political. It presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live.

然而所有的这些反对意见都是基于这本漂亮的书说设立的高标准。总体而言，多诺霍成功了完成了《房间》一书，她给她的故事带来了一个强有力且感觉良好的结局。这是一本真正令人难忘的小说，一本可以从多方面进行解读的书——心理学，社会学，政治学。它以一种独一无二的方式来探讨爱，自始至终为我们提供了新鲜，广阔的视野来观察我们生活的世界。

作者艾米‧班德的最新作品是《柠檬蛋糕的忧伤》（The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake）

 

http://article.yeeyan.org/view/56513/171738/