寵兒

內(nèi)容概要

　　《寵兒》的主要情節(jié)取材于一個(gè)真實(shí)的歷史事件，19世紀(jì)50年代，一名女黑奴攜子女從奴隸莊園中出逃，但奴隸主追蹤而知，為了使兒女不再重復(fù)自己做奴隸的悲慘命運(yùn)，她抄起一把斧頭，毅然決定為他們選擇死亡，但實(shí)質(zhì)是殺死了一個(gè)女兒。作者看到這個(gè)故事后，經(jīng)歷了十年的醞釀和三年的寫(xiě)作，《寵兒》才終于問(wèn)世。在小說(shuō)中，女主人公的名字叫塞絲，而那昭示絕望、瘋狂、極端的愛(ài)的兇器也變成了一把更危險(xiǎn)的手鋸。小說(shuō)發(fā)表后在美國(guó)文學(xué)界、文化界的強(qiáng)烈震動(dòng)。各大報(bào)刊紛紛刊文給予最高規(guī)格的贊譽(yù)，認(rèn)為它是美國(guó)黑人歷史的一座紀(jì)念碑。

作者簡(jiǎn)介

　　托妮·莫里森（Toni Morrison)　　1931年2月18日出生于美國(guó)俄亥俄州，畢業(yè)于霍華德大學(xué)本科，獲康奈爾大學(xué)文學(xué)碩士學(xué)位。她曾在蘭登書(shū)屋做過(guò)編輯，在紐約州立大學(xué)，耶魯大學(xué)任教。1987年起任普林斯頓大學(xué)教授，講授寫(xiě)作至今。1993年，托妮·莫里森被瑞典文學(xué)院授予諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)。

書(shū)籍目錄

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章節(jié)摘錄

　　"My woman ? You mean my mother? If she did, I dont remember. I didnt see her but a few times out in the fields and once when she was working indigo. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was in line. If the moon was bright they worked by its light. Sunday she slept like a stick. She must of nursed me two or three weeks　thats the way the others did. Then she went back in rice and I sucked from　　another woman whose job it was. So to answer you, no. I reckon not. She never fixed my hair nor nothing. She didnt even sleep in the same cabin most nights I remember. Too far from the line-up, I guess. One thing she did do. She picked me up and carried me behind the smokehouse. Back there she opened up her dress front and lifted her breast and pointed under it. Right on her rib was a circle and a　　cross burnt right in the skin. She said, This is your maam. This, and she pointed. I am the only one got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me and you cant tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark. Scared me so. All I could think of was how important this was and how I needed to have something important to say back, but I couldnt think of anything so I just said　　what I thought. Yes, Maam, I said. But how will you know me? How will you know me? Mark me, too, I said. Mark the mark on me too." Sethe chuckled.　　D E N V E RS S E C R E T S　were sweet. Accompanied every time by wild veronica until she discovered cologne. The first bottle was a gift, the next she stole from her mother and hid among boxwood until it froze and cracked. That was the year winter came in a hurry at suppertime and stayed eight months. One of the War years when Miss Bodwin,the whitewoman, brought Christmas cologne for her mother and herself, oranges for the boys and another good wool shawl for Baby　　Suggs. Talking of a war full of dead people, she looked happy——flush-faced, and although her voice was heavy as a mans, she smelled like a roomful of flowers　excitement that Denver could have all for herself in the boxwood. Back beyond I 24 was a narrow field that stopped itself at a wood. On the yonder side of these woods, a stream. In these woods, between the field and the stream, hidden by post oaks, five boxwood bushes, planted in a ring, had started stretching toward each other four feet off the ground to form a round, empty room seven feet high, its walls fifty inches of murmuring leaves.　　Bent low, Denver could crawl into this room, and once there she could stand all the way up in emerald light.　　It began as a little girls houseplay, but as her desires changed, so did the play. Quiet, primate and completely secret except for the noisome cologne signal that thrilled the rabbits before it confused them. First a playroom (where the silence was softer), then a refuge(from her brothers fright), soon the place became the point. In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denvers imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly　　needed because loneliness wore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear, and salvation was as easy as a wish.　　Once when she was in the boxwood, an autumn long before Paul D moved into the house with her mother, she was made suddenly cold by a combination of wind and the perfume on her skin. She dressed herself, bent down to leave and stood up in snowfall: a thin and whipping snow very like the picture her mother had painted as　　she described the circumstances of Denvers birth in a canoe straddled by a whitegirl for whom she was named.　　A F u L L Y　D R　E S S E D woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree. All day and all night she sat there, her head resting on the trunk in a position abandoned enough to crack the brim in her straw hat. Everything hurt but her lungs most of all.Sopping wet and breathing shallow she spent those hours trying to negotiate the weight of her eyelids. The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wind wrinkled it. Nobody saw her emerge or came accidentally by. If they had, chances are they would have hesitated before approaching her. Not because she was wet, or dozing or had what sounded like asthma, but because amid all that she was smiling. It took her the whole of the next morning to lift herself from the ground and make her way through the woods past a giant temple of　　boxwood to the field and then the yard of the slate-gray house. Exhausted again, she sat down on the first handy place——a stump not far from the steps of I24. By then keeping her eyes open was less of an effort. She could manage it for a full two minutes or more.Her neck, its circumference no wider than a parlor-service saucer,kept bending and her chin brushed the bit of lace edging her dress.　　Women who drink champagne when there is nothing to celebrate can look like that: their straw hats with broken brims are often askew;they nod in public places; their shoes are undone. But their skin is not like that of the woman breathing near the steps of I24. She had new skin, lineless and smooth, including the knuckles of her hands.　　By late afternoon when the carnival was over, and the Negroes were hitching rides home if they were lucky——walking if they were not——the woman had fallen asleep again. The rays of the sun struck her full in the face, so that when Sethe, Denver and Paul D rounded the curve in the road all they saw was a black dress, two unlaced shoes below it, and Here Boy nowhere in sight.　　I T W A S T I M E to lay it all down. Before Paul D came and sat on her porch steps, words whispered in the keeping room had kept her going. Helped her endure the chastising ghost; refurbished the baby faces of Howard and Buglar and kept them whole in the world because in her dreams she saw only their parts in trees; and kept her husband shadowy but tbere—somewhere. Now Halles face between the butter press and the churn swelled larger and larger, crowding her eyes and making her head hurt. She wished for Baby Suggs fingers molding her nape; reshaping it, saying, "Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside.Sword and shield. Dont study war no more. Lay all that mess down.Sword and shield." And under the pressing fingers and the quiet instructive voice, she would. Her heavy knives of defense against misery, regret, gall and hurt, she placed one by one on a bank where clear water rushed on below.　　Nine years without the fingers or the voice of Baby Suggs was too much. And words whispered in the keeping room were too little.The butter-smeared face of a man God made none sweeter than demanded more: an arch built or a robe sewn..Some fixing ceremony.Sethe decided to go to the Clearing, back where Baby Suggs had　　danced in sunlight.　　Before I24 and everybody in it had closed down, veiled over and shut away; before it had become the plaything of spirits and the home of the chafed, I24 had been a cheerful, buzzing house where Baby Suggs, holy, loved, cautioned, fed, chastised and soothed. Where not one but two pots simmered on the stove; where the lamp burned all night long. Strangers rested there while children tried on their shoes. Messages were left there, for whoever needed them was sure to stop in one day soon. Talk was low and to the point——for Baby Suggs, holy, didnt approve of extra. "Everything depends on knowing how much," she said, and "Good is knowing when to stop.”　　……

媒體關(guān)注與評(píng)論

　　1989年春天，出于對(duì)虛擲光陰的恐懼，而且為作品中敘述文字的敷張揚(yáng)厲和對(duì)話描寫(xiě)的簡(jiǎn)約生動(dòng)所吸引，潘岳和我開(kāi)始嘗試合，作翻譯美國(guó)黑人女作家托妮·莫里森剛剛獲普利策獎(jiǎng)的長(zhǎng)篇小說(shuō)《寵兒》。起初對(duì)出版也沒(méi)抱什么希望，只是憑著青春的熱情一次。次地進(jìn)行修改、斟酌、打磨；而這種不期然的相遇竟導(dǎo)致我們沉迷于莫里森的精神世界數(shù)載之久，甚至思維方式、情感方式和審美方式也深受影響，卻是始料所不及的。1996年《寵兒》正式由中國(guó)文學(xué)出版社出版后，某電視臺(tái)曾為此書(shū)做專題節(jié)目，請(qǐng)我們介紹故事的埂概；談著談著，我們也會(huì)像小說(shuō)中的主人公一樣從話題的一側(cè)偏出，糾纏于某個(gè)細(xì)節(jié)而不能自己，就好像我們?cè)?jīng)身臨其境，為那些驚心動(dòng)魄的時(shí)刻作見(jiàn)證。1989年秋《寵兒》初稿譯畢后，我們?cè)谟懻撝姓J(rèn)定，這是一部在藝術(shù)質(zhì)量上堪與古今任何偉大小說(shuō)相媲美的杰作，它的作者應(yīng)當(dāng)能夠在十年之內(nèi)摘得諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)桂冠；1993年10月托妮·莫里森獲獎(jiǎng)消息傳出，遠(yuǎn)在大洋彼岸的潘岳便馬上打來(lái)電話與我分享喜悅；當(dāng)然，舉世稱譽(yù)和驚嘆的眾聲喧嘩中，不可能有人知曉和在意兩個(gè)中國(guó)年輕人的莫名激動(dòng)。　　我國(guó)讀者對(duì)托妮·莫里森應(yīng)當(dāng)不陌生。她的《秀拉》、《所羅門之歌》和《寵兒》已出版了中譯本，《所羅門之歌》和《寵兒》還有不止一個(gè)版本。作家本人也曾在80年代訪問(wèn)過(guò)我國(guó)。在1999年9月揭曉的“20世紀(jì)百部文學(xué)經(jīng)典”調(diào)查活動(dòng)(由外研社與《中華讀書(shū)報(bào)》合辦的《國(guó)際文化》?？鬓k)中，《寵兒》名列第30位。　　托妮·莫里森(Toni Morrison)，本名克婁·安東妮·沃福德(Chloe Anthony Wofford)，1931年2月18日出生于美國(guó)俄亥俄州洛雷恩鎮(zhèn)一個(gè)造船工人家庭。父母皆自信而富藝術(shù)細(xì)胞，母親是教堂唱詩(shī)班的領(lǐng)唱，父親是個(gè)講述黑人民間傳說(shuō)和鬼故事的高手，這都對(duì)她產(chǎn)生了潛移默化的影響，她兒時(shí)的理想就是做一名芭蕾舞演員。1949年，莫里森以優(yōu)等生從洛雷恩高中畢業(yè)，1953年，從華盛頓市的霍華德大學(xué)本科畢業(yè)，1955年在康奈爾大學(xué)獲文學(xué)碩士學(xué)位，其畢業(yè)論文的題目是《論威廉·福克納和弗吉尼亞·伍爾芙作品中的自殺主題》。莫里森一生從事的職業(yè)無(wú)非兩種，不是教師就是編輯。她先是在德克薩斯南方大學(xué)和霍華德大學(xué)教英語(yǔ)，然　　后在蘭登書(shū)屋下屬的辛格出版公司做教科書(shū)編輯，1967年任蘭登書(shū)屋高級(jí)編輯。1971年起，她相繼在紐約州立大學(xué)、耶魯大學(xué)授課；到1984年，她辭去蘭登書(shū)屋的工作，任紐約州立大學(xué)教授；1987年起任普林斯頓大學(xué)羅伯特·戈辛教席教授，講授寫(xiě)作至今。1958年，她與牙買加建筑師哈羅德·莫里森結(jié)婚，育有二子。但這樁婚姻僅維持六年便告破裂。此后她一直獨(dú)身。1993年，托妮·莫里森被瑞典文學(xué)院授予諾貝爾文學(xué)獎(jiǎng)，理由是她“以其富于洞察力和詩(shī)情畫(huà)意的小說(shuō)把美國(guó)現(xiàn)實(shí)的一個(gè)重要方面寫(xiě)活了”。　　按照莫里森本人的說(shuō)法，她“從來(lái)沒(méi)有準(zhǔn)備成為一名作家”。當(dāng)她的婚姻出現(xiàn)危機(jī)時(shí)，她積極參加一個(gè)寫(xiě)作小組的活動(dòng)，聊以暫時(shí)逃避不幸的婚姻生活。她的一篇匆匆寫(xiě)就的短篇小說(shuō)得到大家的稱許，該小說(shuō)取材于她的童年生活，寫(xiě)的是她相識(shí)的一個(gè)黑人小女孩祈求上帝給自己一雙藍(lán)眼睛的故事。離婚以后，莫里森獨(dú)自撫養(yǎng)兩個(gè)孩子，每天晚上安頓他們睡著后開(kāi)始寫(xiě)作，并且從中感受到了前所未有的樂(lè)趣。她翻檢出那個(gè)短篇，借助自己非凡的想象力把它敷演擴(kuò)充成一個(gè)篇幅不大的長(zhǎng)篇，名為《最藍(lán)的眼睛》(The Bluest Eye，1967)。在小說(shuō)中，又黑又丑、無(wú)人理睬的佩可拉對(duì)生活也有非分之求——一雙美麗的藍(lán)眼睛，可到頭來(lái)這奢望只能在瘋狂的幻覺(jué)中得以實(shí)現(xiàn)；她的悲劇就在于她生長(zhǎng)在一個(gè)名叫美國(guó)的國(guó)家，這個(gè)國(guó)家鐘愛(ài)的僅僅是她金色頭發(fā)、藍(lán)色眼睛的孩子。這部褐示白人文化和價(jià)值觀侵蝕和擠壓下黑人精神世界的畸變與扭曲的小說(shuō)幾經(jīng)周折，終于于1970年出版，并獲得評(píng)論界的好評(píng)，而此　　時(shí)莫里森已近40歲了。

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　　一些介于報(bào)告文學(xué)和小說(shuō)之間的文字。一個(gè)黑人奴隸家庭在莊園中為爭(zhēng)取自由和平等作出的重中掙扎和悲情的結(jié)局。這樣一個(gè)故事，這樣一段歷史，這樣一種感情定會(huì)讓讀者深深為之震動(dòng)。　　1988年度《寵兒》被授予普里策獎(jiǎng)。進(jìn)入90年代以后，《寵兒》已經(jīng)躋身于現(xiàn)代文學(xué)的經(jīng)典之列了。在《寵兒》中，作者展現(xiàn)了高超的寫(xiě)作技巧和深刻的思想基礎(chǔ)。在揭示黑人奴隸被剝削和虐待下的精神狀況和心理活動(dòng)方面尤其到位。這樣的特點(diǎn)使得直到現(xiàn)在，心理分析、結(jié)構(gòu)主義、女性主義、西方馬克思主義、敘述學(xué)等學(xué)派紛紛從中找到證明自己理論的材料?！秾檭骸肪褪沁@樣一本文字具有極強(qiáng)的震撼力，內(nèi)容具有巨大的吸引力，思想具有最深刻的感染力的好書(shū)，這樣的好書(shū)，不容錯(cuò)過(guò)！

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