Jhumpa Lahiri on Writing, Translation, and Crossing Between Cultures (Ep. 17 - Live at Mason)
Thank you for coming.
谢谢您的光临。
You’ve written a great deal about not having a native country, about not having a language of your own that’s clearly yours, or even a culture.
你写了很多关于没有祖国、没有明显属于你自己的语言、甚至没有文化的文章。
Having read or reread all of your work and surrounding works, and if I think, “How do I frame you?” I would say I think of you as a Rhode Islander because that’s where you grew up.
读过或重读过你所有的作品和周边作品后，如果我想，“我该如何框定你？”我想说，我认为你是罗德岛人，因为那是你长大的地方。
You were born in England but came here when you were three, grew up in Rhode Island.
你出生在英国，三岁时来到这里，在罗德岛州长大。
How would you react to that?
你对此有何反应？
Uncomfortably.
不舒服。
I mean, with all due respect.
我的意思是，恕我直言。
It’s true.
这是真的。
First of all, thank you all very much for coming and for your warm welcome.
首先，非常感谢大家的到来和热烈欢迎。
It is true that I lived there.
我确实住在那里。
Let’s see, how long did I live there?
让我看看，我在那里住了多久？
From the age of 3 to 18.
从3岁到18岁。
Right.
对。
So, 15 years?
那么，15年？
And you went to Barnard at 18, right?
你18岁就去了巴纳德学院，对吗？
I did.
我做到了。
So I lived for as long in New York as I did in Rhode Island.
所以我在纽约住的时间和在罗德岛住的时间一样长。
But, of course, one’s childhood is one’s childhood and is formative in a way that later experiences are not.
但是，当然，一个人的童年就是一个人的童年，它的形成方式是后来的经历所没有的。
So yes, it is a part of who I am, absolutely.
所以是的，这绝对是我的一部分。
But I’ve always had a very uneasy relationship with the place.
但我和这个地方的关系一直很不稳定。
Tyler’s research stack for Jhumpa
泰勒 (Tyler) 的 Jhumpa 研究堆栈
You mentioned the essay in State by State, one of these books that have been kindly assembled here.
您提到了《State by State》中的这篇文章，这是我们在此整理的这些书之一。
Such a lovely display.
如此可爱的展示。
Really, I’m so touched.
真的，我很感动。
I was asked to write about Rhode Island in this anthology called State by State, which invited a number of authors to write about their home state or a state that they had some sort of connection to.
我被要求在这本名为《State by State》的选集中写一篇关于罗德岛的文章，该文集邀请了一些作者写一篇关于他们的家乡或与他们有某种联系的州的文章。
And so I chose Rhode Island.
所以我选择了罗德岛。
I mean, I was asked to write about Rhode Island and I said yes.
我的意思是，有人要求我写一篇关于罗德岛的文章，我答应了。
But partly it was to get over this sense of discomfort about your very opening.
但部分原因是为了克服你一开口就感到的不适感。
Did it work?
有效吗？
LAHIRI: Well, I think what was helpful about it is that it opened up the setting of The Lowland, which is set in part in Rhode Island, but it’s the first of my books in which I can actually mention Rhode Island by its name.
拉希里：嗯，我认为它的有用之处在于它打开了《低地》的背景，其中一部分以罗德岛为背景，但这是我第一本可以真正提到罗德岛名字的书。
Whereas the other books, the preceding books, are set in these sort of fake Rhode Island slash Massachusetts, this area, this terrain that really is Rhode Island, just to boil it down.
而其他书，前面的书，都是以马萨诸塞州的假罗德岛为背景，这个地区，这个地形实际上是罗德岛，只是为了归结起来。
But I couldn’t mention it.
但我不能提它。
I couldn’t name it as such.
我无法这样称呼它。
And I think that’s telling.
我认为这很能说明问题。
It was saying something, the fact that in the earlier books I was writing about the ocean.
它在说明一些事情，事实上，在我早期的书中，我写的是关于海洋的事情。
I was writing about this small campus, this little town, and describing these settings that I knew very well, the settings I had grown up in, but I couldn’t come out and say that it was Rhode Island.
我写的是这个小校园，这个小镇，描述这些我很熟悉的环境，我成长的环境，但我不能出来说那是罗德岛。
I kept calling it some suburb of Boston.
我一直称其为波士顿郊区。
So I think the writing of that piece unlocked something.
所以我认为这篇文章的写作解锁了一些东西。
Then in The Lowland, they’re in Rhode Island, and I don’t pretend anymore.
然后在低地，他们在罗德岛，我不再假装了。
On early influences
论早期影响
We’ll get to your most recent work, but one of the things I like most about everything you’ve done is, I always get the sense you’re trying to work out some problem for yourself and also for us.
我们将讨论您最近的工作，但我最喜欢您所做的一切的一件事是，我总是感觉到您正在努力为自己和我们解决一些问题。
I’d like to survey your whole writing life and start with the question: When you were young, when you were, say, 15 years old, what was your favorite novel, and why?
我想回顾一下你的整个写作生涯，首先问一个问题：当你年轻的时候，比如15岁的时候，你最喜欢的小说是什么，为什么？
Well, I think I had started reading Russian literature around that age.
嗯，我想我大约在那个年纪就开始阅读俄罗斯文学了。
I had some friends, my family had friends.
我有一些朋友，我的家人也有朋友。
They had three daughters: one of them was a little bit older.
他们有三个女儿：其中一个稍大一些。
She was already in college.
她已经上大学了。
When I would visit them, I would see these big volumes of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy on her desk, these Norton Critical Editions, and they were really appealing to me.
当我去拜访他们时，我会在她的桌子上看到这些大部头的陀思妥耶夫斯基和托尔斯泰的作品，这些诺顿批评版，它们真的很吸引我。
So I tried to rise to another level of reading.
所以我尝试将阅读提升到另一个层次。
That’s probably what I was reading a lot of.
这可能就是我读过很多书的内容。
I loved Hawthorne even then.
那时我就喜欢霍桑了。
I was in 10th grade when I was 15.
我 15 岁时就读 10 年级。
I read The Great Gatsby that year.
那一年我读了《了不起的盖茨比》。
And the following year I was introduced to Hardy, who has become so important to me as well.
第二年，我被介绍给哈代，他对我来说也变得如此重要。
So it was in high school that I encountered, fortunately, certain authors who have stayed with me for all of this time, and who continue to inspire me.
因此，幸运的是，在高中时，我遇到了一些一直陪伴着我并持续激励着我的作家。
One of the things I’ve liked about comments you’ve dropped, is the way you read, say, Scarlet Letter, as actually a novel of immigrants.
我喜欢你发表的评论的一个原因是你阅读《红字》的方式，它实际上是一本关于移民的小说。
That maybe the characters wouldn’t have behaved that way in a “home” country.
也许这些角色在“家乡”不会有那样的行为。
Even a lot of Hardy, especially Tess, a favorite of yours, you can read as a kind of immigrant novel.
即使是哈代的很多作品，尤其是你最喜欢的《苔丝》，你也可以把它当作一种移民小说来读。
Coming from the countryside, moving somewhere quite strange — to use that as a lens for interpreting what otherwise might seem like strange character behaviors.
来自乡村，搬到一个相当奇怪的地方——用它作为一个镜头来解释那些看起来很奇怪的人物行为。
Reading them through you is actually very rewarding, through your eyes, through your fiction.
通过你的眼睛、通过你的小说来阅读它们实际上是非常有益的。
Does that make sense to you at all?
这对你来说有意义吗？
Yes.
是的。
I think what I’m responding to is the sense of displacement in those authors, in almost any author.
我想我所回应的是这些作者（几乎所有作者）的错位感。
Even Willa Cather you can read this way; Homer you can read this way.
即使是 Willa Cather，你也可以这样读；荷马你可以这样读。
So many authors you can read this way.
这么多作者，你可以通过这种方式阅读。
Some years ago I was asked this question by the New York Times Book Review about what was my problem with immigrant literature, and I made a maybe cheeky remark about how I didn’t believe in it.
几年前，《纽约时报书评》问我这个问题，关于我对移民文学的问题是什么，我说了一句也许是厚颜无耻的话，说我不相信它。
But it wasn’t being cheeky.
但这并不是厚脸皮。
It was just saying what I felt was true, which is that this is something I’ve responded to in literature from the very beginning.
这只是说我的感受是真实的，那就是我从一开始就在文学中对此做出了回应。
If I didn’t have this response to literature, then these writers wouldn’t have fed and inspired me the way they did because there would’ve been a “barrier” between their experiences and their times and mine, and that shouldn’t be the case.
如果我对文学没有这种反应，那么这些作家就不会像他们那样滋养和启发我，因为他们的经历、他们的时代和我的经历之间会存在“障碍”，但事实不应该如此。
That’s not what literature does.
这不是文学所做的。
Literature does the opposite.
文学则恰恰相反。
It allows us to cross over those boundaries in a beautiful way, in a magical way.
它使我们能够以一种美丽、神奇的方式跨越这些界限。
On Ashapoorna Devi
关于阿莎波娜·德维
If I can trust the Internet, you have three master’s degrees in creative writing, comparative literature, and English, and for one of your degrees, you translated six Bengali short stories by Ashapoorna Devi, who’s a Bengali writer, maybe the most famous woman writer or even most famous writer in Bengal for much of the 20th century.
如果我可以相信互联网，你拥有创意写作、比较文学和英语三个硕士学位，并且在你的一个学位中，你翻译了阿莎普尔娜·德维 (Ashapoorna Devi) 的六篇孟加拉语短篇小说，她是孟加拉作家，可能是 20 世纪大部分时间孟加拉最著名的女作家，甚至是最著名的作家。
What connects you to her and what problem were you trying to solve by engaging in her work?
是什么让你和她有联系？你想通过参与她的工作来解决什么问题？
I knew about her through my mother, who’s a devoted reader of Ashapoorna Devi’s work and talked about her a lot.
我是通过母亲认识她的，她是阿莎普尔娜·黛维作品的忠实读者，经常谈论她。
It’s interesting.
这很有趣。
My mother read a lot, but she didn’t really read in English very much at all.
我妈妈读了很多书，但她根本不怎么读英文书。
She read in Bengali.
她用孟加拉语读书。
And I remember the effort of going to Kolkata, ordering the books.
我还记得去加尔各答订购书籍的努力。
My mother .
我的母亲 。
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。
.
。
the list she would give my uncle, who had the connections with all the booksellers on College Street in Kolkata, which is the book district.
她会给我叔叔的清单，他与加尔各答大学街（图书区）的所有书商都有联系。
The drama of this — going and ordering all the books from the publishers and waiting, and bringing them back in the rickshaw, piling them, the whole thing, and then bringing them back to the United States.
这就是戏剧性的一幕——去出版商那里订购所有的书，然后等待，然后用人力车把它们带回来，把它们全部堆起来，然后把它们带回美国。
I saw what it meant to her, and I saw, as with everything, with trying to get the right ingredients.
我看到了这对她意味着什么，我看到了，就像所有事情一样，努力获得正确的成分。
I could see that those books simply weren’t available here, and they were, in some sense, her lifeline.
我看得出来，这些书在这里根本买不到，但从某种意义上说，它们是她的生命线。
Anyway, she would talk about the work of this particular author, among others, and I was struck by the things she described.
不管怎样，她会谈论这位特定作者的作品等，我对她所描述的事情感到震惊。
A very prolific author of short stories and novels, of some very incisive short stories about domestic life and classified — unfairly, I think — as a writer for women, which I don’t think she is at all.
她是一位多产的短篇小说和长篇小说作家，创作了一些关于家庭生活的非常深刻的短篇小说，并被归类为女性作家——我认为这是不公平的，但我认为她根本不是。
I think she has a much more universal power and vision.
我认为她拥有更普遍的力量和远见。
In graduate school, I was taking this translation workshop, and at some point, I was asked to translate something and I thought, “Well, what can I do here?” I had studied Latin and ancient Greek a little bit, and I had some French, and then I had Bengali as my first language.
在研究生院时，我参加了这个翻译研讨会，在某个时候，我被要求翻译一些东西，我想，“好吧，我能在这里做什么？”我学过一点拉丁语和古希腊语，还有一些法语，然后我把孟加拉语作为我的第一语言。
But you didn’t read Bengali and Bengali characters?
但你没读过孟加拉语和孟加拉语字符吗？
But I couldn’t read it and I still really can’t, and I couldn’t write in it, either, and I still really can’t.
但我读不懂，我仍然真的不会，我也不能在里面写，我仍然真的不会。
Yet I worked around this obvious obstacle.
但我克服了这个明显的障碍。
I asked my mother to read a number of these stories out loud, and I taped her.
我让妈妈大声朗读其中一些故事，然后给她录下来。
Then I listened to them and kept playing them back, playing them back, and I translated in this way.
然后我就听着，不断地回放，回放，我就这样翻译。
I can read enough, painstakingly, slowly, but it’s not completely incomprehensible to me.
我可以费力地、慢慢地读足够多的书，但对我来说并不是完全无法理解。
I could then go back; in addition to the tapes, I could also look at the text and see how things were structured, where the breaks were, etc., etc.
然后我就可以回去了；除了磁带之外，我还可以查看文本并了解内容的结构、中断的位置等等。
I even caught my mother a couple of times — she skipped a paragraph here and there, and I would call her up and say, “What about this part where she’s describing .
我什至有几次抓住我的母亲——她到处跳过一段话，我会打电话给她说：“她描述的这一部分怎么样？
.
。
.
。
?” So it was a really interesting project.
？”所以这是一个非常有趣的项目。
But that’s how it started.
但事情就是这样开始的。
There’s something about how she sets her stories in architectural space always that reminds me of your writings.
她如何在建筑空间中讲述她的故事总是让我想起你的作品。
When you have a scene, you describe a home very often or the place in advance, and that’s imposing a structure on the scene and that’s in her.
当你有一个场景时，你经常提前描述一个家或一个地方，这就是在场景中强加了一个结构，而这就是她的结构。
Do you get that from her?
你从她那里得到这个吗？
In the commentary I wrote to the thesis, if I’m not mistaken (this was a lifetime ago), I think that was part of the lens I brought to my critical reading of the stories — that she was a writer very attuned to space, to physical space.
在我为论文写的评论中，如果我没记错的话（这是上辈子的事了），我认为这是我批判性阅读这些故事时所采用的镜头的一部分——她是一位非常熟悉空间、物理空间的作家。
I must have been affected by this in some sense.
我一定在某种意义上受到了这件事的影响。
My doctoral dissertation built on this in that I wrote about Jacobean English drama and where it was set specifically, often in a corrupt Italian palazzo, and what that meant.
我的博士论文以此为基础，写了关于詹姆士一世时期的英国戏剧，以及它的具体背景（通常是在一座腐败的意大利宫殿中），以及这意味着什么。
So I think as a reader of literature when I was a student of literature I was very attuned to where things were set and why, and what it meant to have that literal architecture being an element of narrative.
因此，我认为，当我还是一名文学学生时，作为一名文学读者，我非常了解事物的背景和原因，以及将文字结构作为叙事元素意味着什么。
On architecture and physical settings
关于建筑和物理环境
We’re at George Mason University and George Mason, the man, lived in a place called Gunston Hall.
我们在乔治梅森大学，乔治梅森这个人住在一个叫冈斯顿大厅的地方。
That’s one of the best-known examples of Palladian architecture in Virginia, even on the whole Atlantic seaboard.
这是弗吉尼亚州乃至整个大西洋沿岸最著名的帕拉第奥式建筑范例之一。
You did a PhD dissertation on Renaissance studies.
您完成了一篇关于文艺复兴研究的博士论文。
What is it about Palladianism and palladia that drew your attention?
帕拉第奥主义和帕拉迪亚的什么吸引了您的注意？
What’s the magnet there for you?
对你来说有什么磁铁？
Now that you ask me, I’m thinking, “OK, what led me to this?”
现在你问我，我在想，“好吧，是什么导致我这么做的？”
One of the classes that I was taking as a graduate student was a broad seminar with lots of different professors.
我作为研究生参加的课程之一是一个由许多不同的教授参加的广泛研讨会。
There was one professor named Roger Scruton, who writes a lot about architecture.
有一位名叫罗杰·斯克鲁顿（Roger Scruton）的教授，写了很多关于建筑的文章。
Sure, I know him.
当然，我认识他。
I had a debate with him once on the nature of friendship.
我曾与他争论过友谊的本质。
Yes, he’s very .
是的，他非常。
.
。
.
。
I won.
我赢了。
Congratulations.
恭喜。
Yeah, he’s a very well-spoken man with a broad range of interests: aesthetics, philosophy, architecture.
是的，他是一个非常健谈的人，兴趣广泛：美学、哲学、建筑。
He taught part of this class and talked about the language of architecture, Italian architecture in particular.
他教授了这门课的一部分，并谈论了建筑语言，特别是意大利建筑。
I was really struck by the class, the idea of it, looking at space so carefully.
我真的被这门课、它的想法、如此仔细地观察太空所震惊。
These beautiful spaces, what they meant, the vocabulary implicit in architecture.
这些美丽的空间，它们的含义，建筑中隐含的词汇。
So that was step one, and then I went to Florence in this time.
这是第一步，然后我这次去了佛罗伦萨。
I went to Italy for the first time.
我第一次去意大利。
Not only did it lead to this whole other phase of my life, writing in Italian, but I toured the architecture, looking at the places that I was seeing in slides as a grad student in Boston and connecting to them.
它不仅引领了我人生的另一个阶段，用意大利语写作，而且我参观了建筑，查看了我在波士顿读研究生时在幻灯片中看到的地方，并与它们建立了联系。
Really experiencing those spaces for the first time.
第一次真正体验这些空间。
Then when I was reading these plays, I was always interested in where Shakespeare set his plays.
然后当我读这些戏剧时，我总是对莎士比亚戏剧的背景很感兴趣。
I was interested in his use of Italy as a setting, and that got me thinking about what was the relationship in Renaissance England.
我对他使用意大利作为背景很感兴趣，这让我思考文艺复兴时期的英国之间的关系。
What was it all about and what did Italy represent to England and to English artists and dramatists?
意大利对英国以及英国艺术家和剧作家来说意味着什么？
What was this choice all about?
这个选择到底是为了什么呢？
Why were they setting clearly English political drama on foreign soil, and what that meant.
他们为什么要在外国土地上上演清晰的英国政治戏剧，这意味着什么。
They’re also afraid of Italy, right?
他们也害怕意大利，对吗？
It’s a symbol of corruption and .
这是腐败的象征。
.
。
.
。
It’s a sort of love-horror, love-hate, attraction-repulsion, contradictory attitude, which I tried to unpack a little bit in the course of the dissertation.
这是一种爱与恐惧、爱与恨、吸引与排斥、矛盾的态度，我试图在论文的过程中对此进行一些阐释。
So, it’s still working through some set of related problems, in a way.
因此，在某种程度上，它仍在解决一些相关问题。
Yeah, and I think one thing that’s always in there is this idea of translation and bringing back and crossing over.
是的，我认为其中始终存在的一件事就是翻译、带回和交叉的想法。
One thing that was happening in the Renaissance was that these people were literally traveling to Venice, to Florence, to Rome, and seeing this architecture, which is born from that place, and then bringing those ideas back.
文艺复兴时期发生的一件事是，这些人确实前往威尼斯、佛罗伦萨、罗马，看到了从那个地方诞生的这座建筑，然后将这些想法带回来。
Translating the works of Vitruvius or Alberti or whomever, and then using those ideas literally to build buildings in England, and from there we have things here in the United States.
翻译维特鲁威或阿尔贝蒂或其他人的作品，然后用这些想法在英国建造建筑物，从那里我们在美国就有了东西。
So that also interested me.
所以这也让我感兴趣。
On the most intimate form of reading
关于最亲密的阅读形式
To continue the whirlwind tour of your career — in preparing for this, I reread Interpreter of Maladies, and this was the sense I had this time around: that one of your characters, Mr. Kapasi, who is the interpreter of maladies — so if people come to the doctor and they only speak Gujarati, he’s able to translate that for the doctor and explain what the symptoms are — that in a sense, in the book you view yourself, the author, as the interpreter of maladies.
为了继续你职业生涯的旋风之旅 ——为此做准备，我重读了《疾病的解释者》，这就是我这次的感觉：你的角色之一，卡帕西先生，他是疾病的解释者 ——所以如果人们去看医生而他们只会说古吉拉特语，他能够为医生翻译并解释症状是什么 —— 从某种意义上说，在在这本书中，你将自己（作者）视为疾病的解释者。
People are disconnected in different ways, and you’re the one doing the interpreting; and he’s at the center of the book, and he’s a stand-in for you.
人们以不同的方式断开联系，而你是负责翻译的人；他是这本书的中心，他是你的替身。
Is that just my imagination?
这只是我的想象吗？
Probably not, but I don’t think I was aware of it at the time.
可能不是，但我想我当时并没有意识到这一点。
Just yesterday, I was talking in Princeton at a place called Dorothea’s House, which is dedicated to Italian-American culture and so on, talking about the most recent book.
就在昨天，我在普林斯顿一个叫多萝西娅之家的地方谈话，那里致力于意大利裔美国文化等，谈论最新的一本书。
At one point I was talking about this idea, in antiquity: in Latin, the word for translator is interpreter.
我曾经在古代谈论过这个想法：在拉丁语中，翻译的词是口译员。
I teach translation now, and I talk a lot to my students about translation being the most intimate form of reading and how there was the time when translating and interpreting and analyzing were all one thing.
我现在教翻译，我和我的学生谈论了很多关于翻译是最亲密的阅读形式以及曾经的翻译、口译和分析是一回事的时代。
Now there are translators, and there are people who look at books and analyze them, and there are scholars, etc. It’s not necessarily the same activity.
现在有翻译家，有看书分析的人，还有学者等等，不一定是同一个活动。
So I wrote Interpreter of Maladies; that was my first book.
所以我写了《疾病的解释者》；那是我的第一本书。
I called it that — I heard the title in this strange flash.
我称它为 —— 我在这奇怪的闪光中听到了这个标题。
Now years have gone by, and I’m now just setting out on a new phase of my creative life as a translator.
现在已经过去了很多年，我现在刚刚开始作为翻译的创作生活的新阶段。
And so I think it’s all one continuum.
所以我认为这都是一个连续体。
But one can’t realize these things in the moment.
但人们暂时无法意识到这些事情。
It’s only looking back that you see certain patterns.
只有回顾过去，你才能看到某些模式。
On Elena Ferrante and becoming darker
关于埃琳娜·费兰特和变黑
Another thing that struck me about this book was how much it had in common with Elena Ferrante in some ways.
这本书让我印象深刻的另一件事是它在某些方面与埃琳娜·费兰特有很多共同点。
And of course, this is at a time when you wouldn’t have read her yet.
当然，这是你还没有读过她的作品的时候。
But this notion of both feeling a need to set everything right for so many different people and being unable to, and that carrying a kind of sadness.
但这种想法既感觉有必要为这么多不同的人安排好一切，却又无法做到，这带着一种悲伤。
And then interjected into the story, always, are books.
然后，总是插入故事的书籍。
Books in both have this immense power.
这两本书都具有这种巨大的力量。
Everyone’s reading them; everyone’s looking to them for answers.
每个人都在读它们；每个人都在向他们寻求答案。
Yet at the same time, books are somehow impotent because they don’t actually allow anyone to set everything right, for parents or other sets of people.
但与此同时，书籍在某种程度上是无能为力的，因为它们实际上不允许任何人为父母或其他人把一切都安排好。
She has a bit of that, and you have a bit of that, and of course it’s completely independent.
她有一点，你也有一点，当然这是完全独立的。
But your later fascination with her seems, already, to be in Interpreter of Maladies in some ways.
但你后来对她的迷恋似乎已经在某些方面体现在《疾病的诠释者》中了。
Does that make sense to you?
这对你来说有意义吗？
I certainly recognized that in her work when I read her, and I wrote to her.
当我读到她的作品并给她写信时，我当然在她的作品中认识到了这一点。
I wrote two letters to her, that were sort of public letters that I read in Rome some years ago in public.
我给她写了两封信，这是几年前我在罗马公开读到的公开信。
And maybe she was there or maybe she wasn’t.
也许她在那儿，也许她不在那儿。
In any case, she did write back to me.
无论如何，她确实给我回了信。
And I talked precisely about this.
我正是谈到了这一点。
I talked about how books are characters in her work, and I think her work, in some sense, is about reading and about language and literature and what it means on a very deep level, a very sophisticated level.
我谈到书籍如何成为她作品中的角色，我认为她的作品在某种意义上是关于阅读、关于语言和文学，以及它在非常深层次、非常复杂的层面上的意义。
I don’t think my work is doing that at all, but I think about it a lot.
我认为我的工作根本没有做到这一点，但我想了很多。
And so I was very struck by that element of her work and this focus on characters who write, characters who become writers, how books shape and form us on the one hand, and how they betray us on the other hand and can’t really contain what life is — this contradiction at heart.
因此，我对她作品中的这一元素感到非常震惊，她对写作的人物、成为作家的人物的关注，一方面书籍如何塑造我们，另一方面书籍如何背叛我们，无法真正包含生活是什么——这种内心的矛盾。
If you compare Interpreter of Maladies to your other short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, do you think of the latter, more recent work as being more about reconciliation and there’s a greater role for children or families in at least some of the stories?
如果你将《疾病的解释者》与你的其他短篇小说集《不习惯的地球》进行比较，你是否认为后者是最近的作品更多地是关于和解的，并且至少在某些故事中儿童或家庭发挥着更大的作用？
Or do you think, overall, your fiction with time is moving in the direction of Hardy and becoming darker?
或者你认为，总的来说，你的小说随着时间的推移正在朝着哈代的方向发展，变得更加黑暗？
I think it’s becoming darker and I think that’s usually the case as we get older, right?
我认为它变得越来越黑，而且我认为随着年龄的增长，情况通常如此，对吗？
That’s my sense.
这是我的感觉。
Though I really try not to read a lot about what people say about my work, I also don’t live in a vacuum in outer space.
虽然我真的尽量不去读太多人们对我的作品的评价，但我也不是生活在外太空的真空中。
So I sense reactions to certain things.
所以我能感觉到对某些事情的反应。
As the years have gone by and the books have evolved, the vision has become a little less forgiving, less tolerant; a little less bittersweet and more just bitter.
随着岁月的流逝，书籍的发展，人们的视野变得越来越不宽容，越来越不宽容。少一点苦乐参半，多一点苦。
And that’s fine.
那很好。
I remember, even with The Lowland — and I don’t think my editor would mind if I shared this with you — but at one point she said, “Well, it’s just really grim sometimes, what goes on.” We share a love of Hardy, and I said, “Would you really have said that to Hardy?”
我记得，即使是《低地》——我认为我的编辑不会介意我与你分享这个——但有一次她说，“好吧，有时发生的事情真的很严峻。”我们都喜欢哈代，我说：“你真的会对哈代这么说吗？”
She didn’t say anything else.
她没有再说什么。
So I published the book I wanted to publish, but a lot of people have said to me, “I just couldn’t read the book.
所以我出版了我想出版的书，但很多人对我说，“我就是看不懂这本书。
It was just too heavy, too dark, too whatever.” They miss I think the bittersweet quality of, say, a novel like The Namesake.
实在是太重、太黑了，等等。”我认为他们怀念《同名小说》这样苦乐参半的品质。
On Bengal
关于孟加拉
You bring up Lowland.
你带出了低地。
I’d like to ask you a few questions about Bengal.
我想问你一些关于孟加拉的问题。
If someone’s visiting India, and they ask me for advice, I say, “You simply, absolutely must go to Kolkata.” To the extent you feel the same way, how would you articulate why it is people ought to go visit Kolkata?
如果有人去印度旅游，并向我寻求建议，我会说：“你绝对、绝对必须去加尔各答。”如果您有同样的感觉，您会如何阐明为什么人们应该去加尔各答？
Because it’s one of the most fascinating places on earth.
因为它是地球上最迷人的地方之一。
It’s a city that is like no other, with a life, a cultural life, a history utterly its own, and hard, and beautiful.
这是一座与众不同的城市，拥有完全属于自己的生活、文化生活和历史，并且艰苦而美丽。
Its beauty is not conventional.
它的美丽并不传统。
People say, “Is it a beautiful city?” Well, no. I mean yes, parts of it can be.
人们说：“这是一座美丽的城市吗？”嗯，不。我的意思是，是的，部分可能是。
Yes, of course, but not in that conventional sense, and it’s challenging on a whole host of levels.
是的，当然，但不是传统意义上的，而且它在很多层面上都具有挑战性。
Of course I don’t know it as a tourist because my family’s from there, and I’ve never known it in any other way other than — when I was very young — where my grandparents lived, and then my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and so forth.
当然，作为一名游客，我不知道这里，因为我的家人都来自那里，除了 ——“当我很小的时候”—— 我的祖父母住的地方，然后是我的阿姨和叔叔、我的表兄弟姐妹等等，我从来没有以任何其他方式了解过它。
So I have my own relationship to it.
所以我和它有自己的关系。
But it’s like not knowing New York City in the American context.
但这就像不了解美国背景下的纽约市一样。
It’s just its own thing, and it’s so strong in its flavor, and its power, and its energy.
它只是它自己的东西，它的味道、它的力量和它的能量是如此强烈。
So it has to be reckoned with, I think.
所以我认为必须考虑到这一点。
If I think of Indian economists, two of the best known would be Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee, and they’re both Bengali, of course.
如果我想到印度经济学家，最著名的两位就是阿马蒂亚·森和阿比吉特·班纳吉，当然，他们都是孟加拉人。
Why does it seem that so much of the Indian intelligentsia comes from Kolkata or Bengal?
为什么印度知识分子中有这么多人来自加尔各答或孟加拉？
What is in the water, so to speak?
可以这么说，水里有什么？
believes in its poets, that believes in its politics, believes in humanity in some sense.
相信它的诗人，相信它的政治，在某种意义上相信人性。
And life is so extreme there, in so many ways.
那里的生活在很多方面都是如此极端。
People are put to the test, and you see life being put to the test constantly around you.
人们都会经受考验，你会看到你周围的生活不断经受考验。
There’s nothing you can really accept easily or take for granted about yourself or about the universe if you’ve been there.
如果你身临其境，那么关于你自己或宇宙，你就没有什么可以轻易接受或认为是理所当然的。
It’s a jolt to your consciousness, but a fundamental one, an essential one, to shake us out of this, whatever takes over, if you protect yourself.
这对你的意识来说是一个震动，但这是一个根本性的、必要的震动，如果你保护自己的话，无论发生什么，都能让我们摆脱困境。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
I hate to make these kind of sweeping generalized comments.
我讨厌做出这种笼统的概括性评论。
I don’t believe in them.
我不相信他们。
But it’s a city that believes in its poets, that believes in its politics, believes in humanity in some sense.
但这座城市相信它的诗人，相信它的政治，在某种意义上相信人性。
And life is so extreme there, in so many ways.
那里的生活在很多方面都是如此极端。
People are put to the test, and you see life being put to the test constantly around you.
人们都会经受考验，你会看到你周围的生活不断经受考验。
There’s nothing you can really accept easily or take for granted about yourself or about the universe if you’ve been there.
如果你身临其境，那么关于你自己或宇宙，你就没有什么可以轻易接受或认为是理所当然的。
It’s a jolt to your consciousness, but a fundamental one, an essential one, to shake us out of this, whatever takes over, if you protect yourself.
这对你的意识来说是一个震动，但这是一个根本性的、必要的震动，如果你保护自己的话，无论发生什么，都能让我们摆脱困境。
If I were to take a superficial reading of Indian history, earlier Kolkata is the central capital for the British Empire in India.
如果我粗略地读一下印度历史，早期的加尔各答是大英帝国在印度的中心首都。
You could argue that, as the British left India since World War II, Kolkata has become significantly less central in some ways.
你可能会说，随着英国人自第二次世界大战以来离开印度，加尔各答在某些方面的中心地位明显下降。
Delhi and Mumbai seem to become more important.
德里和孟买似乎变得更加重要。
(a) Do you think that’s true?
(a) 你认为这是真的吗？
And (b) if it is true, do you think that, in part, accounts for why Kolkata has stayed so interesting?
(b) 如果这是真的，您认为这是否在一定程度上解释了加尔各答为何如此有趣？
That loss of centrality or existing on the margins?
失去中心地位还是处于边缘地位？
You even have a nice Italian word for this.
你甚至有一个很好听的意大利语单词来形容这个。
Well, I think it’s retained a certain character, that the other big cities have a more Western overlay at this point.
嗯，我认为它保留了一定的特征，即其他大城市在这一点上有更西方的覆盖。
Kolkata is not far behind, and it’s changed radically from the city I knew when I was a young girl.
加尔各答也不甘落后，它与我小时候所认识的城市相比发生了巨大的变化。
With developments, globalization, what have you, you have lots of development.
随着发展，全球化，你有什么，你有很多发展。
All the five-star hotels you could ever want, and all the companies and banks and things and fancy roads, all of that stuff that back in the ’70s, Kolkata didn’t have.
你想要的所有五星级酒店，所有的公司、银行、各种设施和漂亮的道路，所有这些东西在 70 年代加尔各答都没有。
Then the airport was distinctly not glamorous, and all of these things.
然后机场显然并不迷人，诸如此类。
So you felt, “OK, this is a different kind of experience.” Not designed for the tourists, not designed for the important person, shall we say.
所以你会觉得，“好吧，这是一种不同的体验。”我们可以说，不是为游客设计的，也不是为重要人物设计的。
So that has already changed, and that distance is smaller, significantly smaller.
所以情况已经改变了，距离更小了，明显更小了。
But in some sense, yes, I think it still retains its own particular flavor and energy because of this, maybe.
但从某种意义上说，是的，我认为它仍然保留着自己独特的风味和能量，也许正因为如此。
How emotionally tied do you feel to the earlier history?
您对早期历史的情感联系有多紧密？
In 1905, Curzon partitions what is now West Bengal from what is now Bangladesh, and you can easily imagine some alternate history where that hadn’t happened, and the way the national borders would have been divvied up would be quite different from what we see.
1905年，寇松将现在的西孟加拉邦与现在的孟加拉国分开，你可以很容易地想象出一些没有发生这种情况的替代历史，而且国家边界的划分方式将与我们所看到的完全不同。
Is that just abstract history to you, the way I might read about the English Renaissance?
对你来说，这只是抽象的历史吗？就像我读到的英国文艺复兴时期那样？
Or is that something that has emotional oomph in your mind, in your heart, and you feel somehow torn as a Bengali, that you’ve been separated from other Bengalis in some way?
或者是在你的脑海里、心里有一种情感上的魅力，作为一个孟加拉人，你感到不知何故撕裂，因为你在某种程度上与其他孟加拉人分离了？
Or is it just not part of your connection to West Bengal?
或者这不是您与西孟加拉邦联系的一部分？
Well, it’s interesting.
嗯，这很有趣。
My relationship with Indian history is in these two categories: In some sense, I didn’t study any of it because I was raised here, so India just wasn’t on any map anywhere ever.
我与印度历史的关系分为两类：从某种意义上说，我没有研究过任何印度历史，因为我是在这里长大的，所以印度从来没有出现在任何地方的地图上。
There was a sort of formal separation as a child growing up in this country.
在这个国家长大的孩子有一种正式的分离。
On the other hand, I come from my family.
另一方面，我来自我的家庭。
And because we would go back to Kolkata quite often, and because my family and their friends talked a lot about their country, their city, history, events, I was always aware at the same time, of these incredibly traumatic events in Indian history and the Partition — most of all, what that meant, particularly for my father’s family, the neighborhood that my father grew up in, which I describe in The Lowland a little bit.
因为我们经常回到加尔各答，而且因为我的家人和他们的朋友经常谈论他们的国家、他们的城市、历史、事件，所以我总是同时意识到印度历史和印巴分治中这些令人难以置信的创伤性事件——最重要的是，这意味着什么，特别是对我父亲的家庭，我父亲长大的社区，我在《低地》中对此进行了一些描述。
I asked my parents when I was a young girl .
当我还是个小女孩的时候，我问过我的父母。
.
。
.
。
one of the stories in Interpreter of Maladies is called “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.” It comes from a vague memory of a man from Bangladesh, a scholar who was living in Rhode Island in the 1970s during that civil war, and my curiosity about who he was and why he was there, and stories my parents told me.
《疾病解读者》中的一个故事叫做“当皮尔扎达先生来吃饭时”。它来自于一个来自孟加拉国的男人的模糊记忆，他是一位 20 世纪 70 年代内战期间住在罗德岛州的学者，以及我对他是谁、为什么他在那里的好奇心，以及我父母告诉我的故事。
Then, as I grew older, as I became more of a conscious person, a teenager, wondering about things, going back to India — I was slowly starting to fill in pieces.
然后，随着年龄的增长，我变得更加有意识，一个青少年，对事物感到好奇，回到印度 ——我慢慢地开始填补碎片。
Like, “OK, so this is what happened and it happened at this time, and then this and this.
就像，“好吧，这就是发生的事情，它发生在这个时候，然后是这个和这个。
This meant this wave of people came and all of these people lived this thing.”
这意味着这一波人来了，所有这些人都过着这种生活。”
But on top of that there’s the residue.
但除此之外还有残留物。
There’s emotional residue of what it’s meant for certain people, either in my family or people that my family knows, who remain deeply scarred by those events.
对于某些人来说，无论是我的家人还是我家人认识的人，这些事件仍然给他们留下了深深的创伤，这在情感上留下了残余的痕迹。
Not only deeply scarred, but actively hostile, resentful — toward, for the case of my family, East Bengal and Muslims, for example.
不仅伤痕累累，而且对我的家人、东孟加拉邦和穆斯林充满敌意和怨恨。
So this was something that I took in, and I still take in.
所以这是我接受的，现在仍然接受。
That uneasy relationship between Hindus and Muslims in Bengali culture is still very alive today.
孟加拉文化中印度教徒和穆斯林之间的紧张关系至今仍然存在。
My daughter: her name is Noor, which is a Persian name.
我女儿：她的名字叫努尔，是一个波斯名字。
But there were people in my family who commented on that choice of name, thinking, “Well, what does she think she’s doing?”
但我家里有人对这个名字的选择发表了评论，他们想：“好吧，她认为自己在做什么？”
Because it’s Persian?
因为它是波斯语？
Because it’s associated with Muslims, etc., etc. This kind of hatred, intolerance, prejudice that is still very much in my family’s kitchen, at their dinner table.
因为它与穆斯林等有关。这种仇恨、不宽容、偏见仍然存在于我家的厨房、餐桌上。
My parents are not like that at all, and they taught me to be free of these kinds of attitudes.
我的父母根本不是那样的人，他们教导我要摆脱这种态度。
Perhaps that’s easier for me to say because I didn’t experience the trauma of my family losing their ancestral property, for example, which some of their friends experienced and therefore, even now, in 2016, they’re still saying, “Oh, but this horrible thing happened and we’re still upset about it.”
也许这对我来说更容易说，因为我没有经历过我的家人失去祖传财产的创伤，例如，他们的一些朋友经历过这种创伤，因此，即使是现在，2016 年，他们仍然会说，“哦，但这件可怕的事情发生了，我们仍然对此感到不安。”
What’s your literary or maybe also emotional relationship with the works of Tagore?
您与泰戈尔的作品在文学上或者情感上有什么关系？
He’s a towering giant in Bengali intellectual history.
他是孟加拉思想史上的一位高耸的巨人。
In your stories every now and then, someone’s reading his poems.
在你的故事中，时不时有人读他的诗。
There are a lot of themes from him that are in your work, like The Home and the World, this odd mix of tensions between the cosmopolitan and the particular.
你的作品中有很多他的主题，比如《家与世界》，这种国际化与特殊性之间的紧张关系的奇怪混合。
He was even interested in book design.
他甚至对书籍设计感兴趣。
He was a kind of polymath.
他是一位博学者。
He studied many things, worked in different forms.
他研究了很多东西，以不同的形式工作。
Is that just parallel or an influence or .
这只是平行还是影响？
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。
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。
Well, if you’re Bengali, he’s like a member of your family in some sense.
好吧，如果你是孟加拉人，从某种意义上说，他就像你的家庭成员。
He’s a god; he’s in this pantheon-like place — he’s not a god, he’s a person.
他是神；他在这个万神殿般的地方——他不是神，他是一个人。
My parents aren’t religious people, so they didn’t give us a religious education, but they certainly taught us to respect the great minds and the great visionaries, and Tagore is one of those, right?
我的父母不是宗教人士，所以他们没有给我们宗教教育，但他们确实教导我们尊重伟大的思想和伟大的梦想家，泰戈尔就是其中之一，对吗？
And the fact that he happens to be Bengali and won the Nobel Prize, well, details .
事实上，他恰好是孟加拉人并获得了诺贝尔奖，嗯，细节。
.
。
.
。
My grandfather was a painter.
我的祖父是一位画家。
My uncle was a painter.
我的叔叔是一位画家。
I grew up with portraits of Tagore all over our house.
我从小到大，家里到处都是泰戈尔的肖像。
I have a portrait of him in my house, a watercolor by my uncle.
我家里有一幅他的肖像，是我叔叔的水彩画。
I have a beautiful photograph my mother dug up recently.
我妈妈最近挖出了一张漂亮的照片。
My grandfather’s brother was a press photographer, and he took a picture of Tagore the last time he spoke in public.
我祖父的兄弟是一名新闻摄影师，他在泰戈尔最后一次公开演讲时拍了一张照片。
So I have this photograph that’s next to me when I’m writing.
所以当我写作时，我旁边放着这张照片。
I feel this constant presence, shall we say.
容我们说，我感觉到这种持续存在。
Again, my limitation in not really being a fluent reader of Bengali creates a situation.
再次，我不能真正流利地阅读孟加拉语，这造成了一种情况。
It does: I’ve read him mostly in translation.
确实如此：我读的大部分都是他的译本。
I’ve read fiction.
我读过小说。
I’ve read poetry.
我读过诗。
I grew up hearing all of the songs, 24 hours a day, in my house.
我从小到大都在家里每天 24 小时听着所有的歌曲。
But I’m not aware of any conscious influence, if that’s what you’re asking.
但如果你问的是的话，我不知道有任何有意识的影响。
But again, what’s conscious, what’s unconscious?
但话又说回来，什么是有意识的，什么是无意识的？
On lesser-known influences
关于鲜为人知的影响
Let’s move to maybe my favorite book of yours, In Other Words, which I take to be your memoir of learning to engage with reading Italian, dealing with Italian culture, and — most of all — writing in Italian, a remarkably brave thing to do.
让我们转向也许是我最喜欢的你的书《换句话说》，我认为这本书是你学习如何阅读意大利语、处理意大利文化以及用意大利语写作的回忆录，这是一件非常勇敢的事情。
It comes off extremely well.
它效果非常好。
I’m going toss out the names of a few Italian writers, the lesser-known ones, and if you have a connection to them, tell us why you think they’re interesting or how they’ve shaped you in some way.
我将列出一些意大利作家的名字，那些不太知名的作家，如果你与他们有联系，请告诉我们为什么你认为他们很有趣，或者他们如何以某种方式塑造了你。
Feel free to pass on any one, of course.
当然，请随意传递任何一个。
Lalla Romano.
拉拉·罗马诺.
I had never heard of her until I was living in Rome.
直到我住在罗马之前，我从未听说过她。
I was reading the paper one day and read an article about her, and it was interesting.
有一天我在读报纸，读到一篇关于她的文章，很有趣。
I took note of the name, and I went to the bookshop, and I said, “I’d like to read this author,” and they said, “Oh yeah, she’s sort of hard to find, not that well distributed.” Anyway, I ordered some books.
我记下了这个名字，然后去了书店，我说，“我想读这位作者的书，”他们说，“哦，是的，她有点难找到，分布也不是很好。”无论如何，我订购了一些书。
In fact, because it was so hard to find the books, I went through the person who wrote .
事实上，因为很难找到这些书，所以我就去找了写书的人。
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。
.
。
This is Italy, right?
这是意大利，对吗？
Everybody knows everybody.
每个人都认识每个人。
The person who wrote the article, I knew.
写这篇文章的人我认识。
So I said, “How do I get these books?” And he said, “Well, you need to write to her husband, who has all the books.”
于是我问：“我怎样才能得到这些书呢？”他说：“好吧，你需要写信给她的丈夫，他有所有的书。”
He has a warehouse in their house.
他在他们家里有一个仓库。
I said OK.
我说好的。
I wrote the husband, and there was some back and forth, and then he sent me a packet of books from Milan, and they never made it to Rome.
我写信给丈夫，有一些来回，然后他从米兰寄给我一包书，但它们从未到达罗马。
It happens.
它发生了。
They’re still on a train, somewhere.
他们还在火车上，某个地方。
Yes, so I waited.
是的，所以我等待。
I waited for these books and they weren’t coming.
我等待这些书，但他们没有来。
Then I said, “Listen, these books .
然后我说：“听着，这些书。
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。
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。
I know you kindly sent them, but .
我知道你好心寄来的，但是。
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。
.” Then one thing led to another, and I found myself in Milan and, again, I reignited this interest, and he said, “Why don’t you come over?” And I went to her house.
”。然后一件事接着另一件事，我发现自己在米兰，我再次重新燃起了这种兴趣，他说，“你为什么不过来呢？”我去了她家。
I saw her house, where she used to live, and we had a very interesting conversation.
我看到了她的房子，她以前住的地方，我们进行了一次非常有趣的谈话。
I saw her desk.
我看到了她的办公桌。
I saw her things.
我看到了她的东西。
I saw her paintings, and he gave me all of her books, like a cart full of her books.
我看到了她的画，他把她所有的书都给了我，就像装满了她的书一样。
And that was really exciting.
这真的很令人兴奋。
I started reading her with great interest.
我开始饶有兴趣地阅读她的作品。
She’s an incredibly modernist writer.
她是一位令人难以置信的现代主义作家。
Her language is incredible, essential in its quality.
她的语言令人难以置信，其品质至关重要。
She wrote an extraordinarily powerful book that, if life is long enough and there’s time, I would like to translate, called Nei mari estremi.
她写了一本非常有影响力的书，如果生命足够长并且有时间，我想翻译这本书，书名叫《Nei mari estremi》。
It’s a two-part memoir of losing her husband.
这是一本关于失去丈夫的回忆录，分为两部分。
You know, there’re so many books now about grief and the loss of a loved one and what that means.
你知道，现在有很多书都是关于悲伤和失去亲人以及这意味着什么。
But this was written a long time ago, before all of these books became part of our culture.
但这是很久以前写的，在所有这些书成为我们文化的一部分之前。
So that’s an amazing book of hers.
所以这是她的一本了不起的书。
She wrote a lot of very interesting novels.
她写了很多非常有趣的小说。
She wrote about homecomings to places that don’t exist anymore, also.
她还写了关于回到不再存在的地方的故事。
She did.
她做到了。
One of the things that also really struck me was, at the end of her life, she was almost blind.
让我印象深刻的一件事是，在她生命的最后，她几乎失明了。
And still the drive to write was so intense and constant.
但写作的动力仍然如此强烈和持续。
So her husband, her second husband, the one who survives her, was explaining that when she was in the final phase of her life and could barely see, she had these enormous pieces of paper and would just write a couple of words, a sentence or two, a day.
所以她的丈夫，她的第二任丈夫，在她身后的丈夫，解释说，当她处于生命的最后阶段，几乎看不见的时候，她有这些巨大的纸片，每天只会写几个字，一两句话。
The words were just burning with life and with her need to express herself in spite of the disability.
尽管身体残疾，这些话却充满了生命和表达自己的需要。
These writings were collected in a book called The Last Diary, which I read.
这些文字被收录在我读过的一本名为《最后的日记》的书中。
They’re almost like little fragments, epigrams, some of these little entries.
它们几乎就像小片段、警句、一些小条目。
And one of them says, “La mia quasi cecità = un punto di vista,” which means “My blindness is a point of view.”
其中一个说：“La mia quasi cecità = un punto di vista”，意思是“我的失明是一种观点”。
I really marveled at that because I felt it explained, at least to me, the purpose of writing in Italian.
我真的对此感到惊讶，因为我觉得它至少对我来说解释了用意大利语写作的目的。
Because, of course, she wasn’t totally blind; she was partially blind.
当然，因为她并不是完全失明；她并不是完全失明。她是半盲的。
And I’m not totally blind in Italian either, but I feel partially blind.
我对意大利语也不是完全失明，但我感觉部分失明。
I don’t want to compare myself to her because she had actually a physical issue with her eyesight.
我不想将自己与她进行比较，因为她的视力实际上有身体问题。
She didn’t choose that for herself, and she suffered for it.
她不是为自己选择的，她也因此受苦。
Whereas my project is something that comes from me and it’s voluntary.
而我的项目是我自己做的，而且是自愿的。
But it is this kind of voluntary blindness, right?
但这就是这种自愿失明，对吗？
But it’s richer for you to read in Italian, and maybe even sometimes to write in Italian now because the partial blindness gives you a new lens on all these problems you’ve been trying to come to terms with —
但用意大利语阅读对你来说更丰富，甚至有时甚至用意大利语写作现在更丰富，因为部分失明让你对所有这些你一直试图解决的问题有了新的视角——
Well, it makes you look harder.
嗯，这会让你看起来更难。
Yeah.
是的。
Another writer, Cesare Pavese.
另一位作家，切萨雷·帕韦塞。
Pavese’s huge.
帕韦塞很大。
He translated Moby-Dick.
他翻译了《白鲸》。
We were in Sicily a couple of years ago.
几年前我们在西西里岛。
We were sailing around the Aeolian Islands, and we had this long conversation one day with our skipper about how, according to him, Pavese’s translation of Moby-Dick surpasses the work of Melville.
我们正在伊奥利亚群岛周围航行，有一天，我们与船长进行了一次长时间的交谈，根据他的说法，帕韦斯翻译的《白鲸》如何超越了梅尔维尔的作品。
And does it?
是吗？
Well, I actually haven’t read it yet.
嗯，其实我还没读过。
I would like to.
我想。
I keep meaning to pick it up when I’m over there.
当我在那里时，我一直想把它捡起来。
But he was a colossal writer from Turin, that great literary city, where you have Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg, Einaudi (the publishing house), all concentrated in this part of Italy in the north over toward France.
但他是一位来自都灵的伟大作家，这座伟大的文学城市里有普里莫·莱维、娜塔莉亚·金兹堡、埃诺迪（出版社），他们都集中在意大利北部靠近法国的这个地区。
Pavese wrote very much in the autobiographical vein and did things that, again, I think now, “Oh, it’s fashionable when the writer becomes a character,” and “Oh, we all write about ourselves,” and there’re a lot of memoirs.
帕韦斯的作品非常具有自传性质，我现在想，“哦，当作家成为一个角色时，这很流行”，“哦，我们都写自己”，而且有很多回忆录。
But these are things that he was doing after World War II.
但这些都是他在二战后所做的事情。
He had a tragic life.
他的一生是悲惨的。
He suffered deeply.
他深受其苦。
He committed suicide.
他自杀了。
He left behind an incredible writer’s notebook that is an extraordinarily powerful work; very, very dark; very, very true.
他留下了一本令人难以置信的作家笔记本，这是一部非常有影响力的作品；非常非常黑暗；非常非常真实。
And wrote lots of short stories as well as a series of slim novels, and he worked really hard as a translator — not only his own translations of many American authors, had a very rich relationship with the English language — but also oversaw a lot of translation projects.
他写了很多短篇小说以及一系列薄薄的小说，作为一名翻译，他非常努力——不仅自己翻译了许多美国作家的作品，与英语有着非常丰富的关系——而且还监督了很多翻译项目。
He writes like an American writer in some ways.
在某些方面，他的写作就像美国作家一样。
Well, he was influenced.
嗯，他受到了影响。
This is what’s interesting: he was influenced by reading and translating Melville, among others, and his Italian has a different energy as a result of that translation.
有趣的是：他受到阅读和翻译梅尔维尔等人的影响，而他的意大利语由于翻译而具有不同的能量。
Those translations and his relationship with English — this is what’s missing in American literature right now, with the exception of poets, American poets who have devoted time and energy to other literatures, to translation.
这些翻译以及他与英语的关系——这就是现在美国文学中所缺少的东西，除了诗人，那些为其他文学、翻译投入时间和精力的美国诗人。
Whether it’s Ezra Pound or other poets, W.
无论是埃兹拉·庞德还是其他诗人，W.
S.
S。
Merwin, Mark Strand — you have examples of people who translate and make that part of their creative work, but relatively few fiction writers stop to think about it or engage with it.
默温（Merwin）、马克·斯特兰德（Mark Strand）——你有一些例子，有人翻译并将其作为他们创作的一部分，但相对较少的小说作家停下来思考它或参与其中。
Those translations and his relationship with English — this is what’s missing in American literature right now, with the exception of poets, American poets who have devoted time and energy to other literatures, to translation.
这些翻译以及他与英语的关系——这就是现在美国文学中所缺少的东西，除了诗人，那些为其他文学、翻译投入时间和精力的美国诗人。
Whether it’s Ezra Pound or other poets, W.
无论是埃兹拉·庞德还是其他诗人，W.
S.
S。
Merwin, Mark Strand — you have examples of people who translate and make that part of their creative work, but relatively few fiction writers stop to think about it or engage with it.
默温（Merwin）、马克·斯特兰德（Mark Strand）——你们有一些例子，人们翻译了这一点并将其作为他们创造性工作的一部分，但相对较少的小说作家停下来思考它或参与其中。
I think my knowledge of Italian writers has opened up something.
我认为我对意大利作家的了解打开了一些大门。
I just finished translating my first novel from Italian and it has been such a formative experience for me, powerful, and it deepened my awareness of what words are and literature and language and all of that.
我刚刚翻译完我的第一本意大利语小说，这对我来说是一次非常有影响力的经历，它加深了我对文字、文学、语言等等的认识。
I can’t believe it’s taken me this long, but I’m excited.
我不敢相信我花了这么长时间，但我很兴奋。
Someone like Pavese blazed the way.
像帕维斯这样的人开辟了道路。
One of my wishes is that you someday give us a book on Italian fiction.
我的一个愿望是有一天你能给我们一本关于意大利小说的书。
Now here’s a writer, not Italian, but writing in another language not the mother tongue: Agota Kristof.
现在有一位作家，不是意大利人，而是用另一种语言而非母语写作：阿戈塔·克里斯托夫。
Yes, amazing.
是的，太棒了。
What’s important?
什么是重要的？
You have her book there.
你那里有她的书。
Yes.
是的。
And that’s a trilogy, right?
这是三部曲，对吧？
Yeah, she wrote this trilogy and she wrote some other books too.
是的，她写了这三部曲，还写了其他一些书。
She was Hungarian and left during the invasion, fled to Switzerland with her small kids, her husband, and her dictionaries.
她是匈牙利人，在入侵期间离开，带着她的孩子、她的丈夫和她的字典逃到了瑞士。
And writes about this in an amazing little book called The Illiterate, “La analfabeta.” I read it in Italian; it must be called something else in French: “L’analphabete.” But she taught herself how to write in French and all of her literary work is in French.
并在一本名为《文盲》的小书中写到了这一点，“La analfabeta”。我读的是意大利语；它在法语中必须有另一个名字：“L’analphabete”。但她自学了如何用法语写作，她所有的文学作品都是法语。
I came to her in Italian.
我用意大利语来找她。
So I came to her in translation but not in an English translation, in Italian translation, and my life was never the same after reading her.
所以我通过翻译来找到她，但不是英文翻译，而是意大利语翻译，读完她之后我的生活就不再一样了。
She’s one of those writers — you just remain forever altered.
她是那些作家之一——你只是永远改变了。
Extraordinarily powerful, a deep, profound, profound writer.
气势非凡，深邃、深刻、深刻的作家。
Dark but very human and the kind of stuff that you don’t find very easily.
黑暗但非常人性化，而且是你不容易找到的东西。
She is inspiring to me, deeply, because of this incredible effort she made her whole life to try to express herself in a learned language.
她深深地激励着我，因为她一生都在努力用学到的语言表达自己。
Of course the difference between her and myself is that she always had an antagonistic relationship with French, even though she went out of her way to learn it and to express herself in it because she was living in Switzerland, and she felt that she couldn’t really function as a writer without expressing herself in French.
当然，她和我之间的区别在于，她对法语始终抱有敌对关系，尽管她因为生活在瑞士而不遗余力地学习法语并用法语表达自己，而且她觉得如果不用法语表达自己就无法真正发挥作家的作用。
Whereas I’ve gone out of my way to do this crazy thing that everyone discourages me from doing, which is writing in Italian.
而我却竭尽全力做了一件每个人都劝阻我不要做的疯狂的事情，那就是用意大利语写作。
And you were fascinated with Italy way back when, right?
你很久以前就对意大利着迷，对吧？
For a long time.
许久。
Well, yeah.
嗯，是的。
In a growing way, yeah.
以成长的方式，是的。
On book covers and blurbs
在书籍封面和简介上
Your most recent book, The Clothing of Books: it’s about book covers.
您最近的一本书《书籍的外衣》：是关于书籍封面的。
I once had a hypothesis about book covers.
我曾经对书籍封面有一个假设。
I thought I would go to Borders bookstore (when it still existed) and look at everything on the front table, and try to ignore all other information I had about the book, and simply buy the one whose cover appealed to me the most.
我想我应该去博德斯书店（当时它还存在），看看前面桌子上的所有东西，并尝试忽略我所掌握的关于这本书的所有其他信息，只购买封面最吸引我的那本。
I wanted to see whether the publishing trade actually would do a good job of designing a cover so that it would match what I was looking for in a book.
我想看看出版业是否真的能很好地设计封面，使其符合我在书中寻找的内容。
I ended up buying Kate Christensen’s The Great Man, which I thought was quite a good novel.
我最终买了凯特·克里斯滕森的《伟人》，我认为这是一本很好的小说。
I only did that once, but I considered the experiment to be a success.
我只做过一次，但我认为这次实验是成功的。
Do you think, based on your study of book covers — your own books aside — are book covers assigned to books efficiently, or is there something in the process that’s gone wrong?
根据您对书籍封面的研究 — 除了您自己的书籍 — ，您认为书籍封面是否有效地分配给书籍，还是在这个过程中出现了问题？
Well, I’ve never tried this experiment.
嗯，我从来没有尝试过这个实验。
I will, maybe.
也许我会的。
It’s hard to block out all the other information because you recognize names, publishing houses, where they put it on the table; but still, you can approximate it.
很难屏蔽所有其他信息，因为你认得名字、出版社，以及他们把这些信息放在桌子上的地方；但你仍然可以近似它。
Yeah, I talk a little bit in this little essay about being drawn to certain books just because there’s some allure, appeal, something I’m projecting, something the book is projecting, something I’m projecting onto the book, some relationship I want to have with the book because it’s — I don’t know — some landscape I want to find myself in someday, or I don’t know.
是的，我在这篇小文章中谈到了被某些书所吸引，只是因为有一些诱惑，吸引力，我正在投射的东西，这本书正在投射的东西，我正在投射到书中的东西，我想与这本书建立的某种关系，因为它是 - 我不知道 - 我想有一天发现自己在其中，或者我不知道的一些风景。
If you think of a book as a mirror, and if you think, “That’s how I would like to look if I were a tree, or if I were a whatever,” some image.
如果你把一本书想象成一面镜子，并且如果你想，“如果我是一棵树，或者如果我是一个什么东西，这就是我希望看到的样子”，一些图像。
But the essay is really about the disconnect between what’s on the outside and what’s on the inside often, and what that feels like from a writer’s point of view because it’s both a disconnect and a source of — can be at least for me — a source of real anguish because you can’t really disconnect yourself from what you look like.
但这篇文章实际上是关于外表和内在之间的脱节，以及从作家的角度来看这种感觉是什么样的，因为它既是一种脱节，又是“至少对我而言”的根源——“至少对我来说”——真正痛苦的根源，因为你无法真正将自己与自己的外表脱节。
You can try, but you can’t really.
你可以尝试，但你真的不能。
Like, when I read Unaccustomed Earth, and I try to think of it as a kind of song cycle.
就像，当我读《不习惯的地球》时，我尝试将其视为一种歌曲循环。
I try to put the cover out of my mind because I know how the covers are done and assigned.
我试着把封面从我的脑海中抹去，因为我知道封面是如何完成和分配的。
I figure the cover will mislead me because you didn’t do it, but I find I can’t put it out of my mind, even being aware of the entire process.
我认为封面会误导我，因为你没有这样做，但我发现我无法将它从我的脑海中抹去，即使知道整个过程。
And there’s something about the floating tiara, or crown, or whatever it is: it leaves an imprint on my impression of the book.
还有一些关于漂浮的头饰、王冠或其他什么东西的东西：它在我对这本书的印象中留下了印记。
Even though I know it’s not by you.
尽管我知道这不是你做的。
Uh-huh.
嗯嗯。
It’s this.
就是这个。
COWEN: It’s that?
考恩：是那个？
Oh, you have it on.
哦，你已经戴上了。
Yeah.
是的。
I think that’s what they had literally designed it after.
我认为这就是他们后来设计的。
Yeah, so it’s a very pretty cover, but maybe it’s too pretty?
是的，这是一个非常漂亮的封面，但也许它太漂亮了？
I think .
我认为 。
.
。
.
。
I’m not going to get into any trouble.
我不会遇到任何麻烦。
Any more trouble than I’m already in.
比我现在遇到的麻烦还要多。
How do you feel about blurbs?
您对宣传语有何看法？
Well, I say what I feel about blurbs in the essay.
好吧，我在文章中说出我对简介的感受。
Some of my publishers have been a little uncomfortable about publishing that sentence in my book, actually, because I just say what I feel.
事实上，我的一些出版商对在我的书中发表这句话感到有点不舒服，因为我只是说出了我的感受。
I think this is one of the things about writing in Italian that people aren’t prepared for: that I don’t pretend anymore.
我认为这是人们没有准备好用意大利语写作的事情之一：我不再假装了。
And I’m not concerned about making everybody happy.
我并不关心让每个人都开心。
One of the things I say in the book, in this essay, is that these books don’t even — as much as I appreciate, truly, this lovely display that you made — but this isn’t my book anymore.
我在书中、在这篇文章中所说的一件事是，这些书甚至不再 —— 尽管我真的很欣赏你制作的这个可爱的展示 ——但这不再是我的书了。
Once the cover is on it, it’s not my book.
一旦盖上封面，它就不是我的书了。
And again, having lived in Italy, and having Italian writer friends, so many examples of novels there have covers chosen by the author.
再说一遍，我在意大利生活过，并且有意大利作家朋友，所以那里的很多小说的封面都是作者选择的。
Imagine that.
想象一下。
I think this is one of the things about writing in Italian that people aren’t prepared for: that I don’t pretend anymore.
我认为这是人们没有准备好用意大利语写作的事情之一：我不再假装了。
And I’m not concerned about making everybody happy.
我并不关心让每个人都开心。
But suddenly, you have a whole.
但突然之间，你就拥有了一个整体。
You have the inside, you have the words, you have the pages that the author created, and you actually have an image that the author felt that they wanted, he or she wanted, to represent visually what the book is saying.
你有里面的内容，你有文字，你有作者创建的页面，你实际上有一个作者认为他们想要的图像，他或她想要的，在视觉上代表这本书所说的内容。
If I had that freedom, if I had that ability, I would be such a happy — it would make going to museums even more exciting because I would always be thinking, “Oh well, maybe this, maybe that.” Who knows?
如果我有那种自由，如果我有那种能力，我会很高兴——这会让去博物馆变得更加令人兴奋，因为我总是在想，“哦，好吧，也许这个，也许那个。”谁知道？
Maybe an image could even inspire a book, in that sense.
从这个意义上说，也许一张图片甚至可以激发一本书的灵感。
If one had that ability to say, “Oh, you know what?
如果一个人有能力说：“哦，你知道吗？
I went to this show, this gallery the other day, and I saw this image and it was so beautiful, and I was thinking about it, and this whole novel grew out of it,” or this whole collection of stories, or whatever.
前几天我去了这个展览，这个画廊，我看到了这个图像，它是如此美丽，我正在思考它，整本小说就是从中产生的”，或者整个故事集，或者其他什么。
These things can happen.
这些事情都有可能发生。
They just don’t happen here as much as I wish they did.
它们只是没有像我希望的那样在这里发生。
I brought a copy of a German book; it’s by Rilke.
我带了一本德语书；这是里尔克的。
The publisher is Reclam.
出版商是Reclam。
The cover is plain; it’s just a color.
封面是普通的；这只是一种颜色。
If you go to German bookstores, at least parts of them are actually organized by publishers.
如果你去德国书店，至少有一部分实际上是由出版商组织的。
You probably know other countries in Europe sometimes .
有时您可能认识欧洲的其他国家。
.
。
.
。
Like in Italy, too, and France, yeah.
就像在意大利一样，还有法国，是的。
And the books, more or less, all look the same.
这些书或多或少看起来都一样。
How do you feel about this system?
您对这个系统感觉如何？
I love them.
我爱他们。
So you would opt into this system for all of your books?
那么您会为您的所有书籍选择使用此系统吗？
Yeah, I talk about that in the book.
是的，我在书中谈到了这一点。
The whole piece is a kind of meditation on the idea of wearing a uniform and dressing yourself, and these contradictory approaches to presenting oneself — what they mean.
整件作品是对穿制服和打扮自己的想法的思考，以及这些矛盾的自我展示方式——它们的含义。
It’s like you have to make a statement about where you’ve decided to rest on the identity question.
这就像你必须就身份问题上决定的立场发表声明。
And a cover forces your hand when you’d rather be hovering in this ambiguity.
当你宁愿在这种模棱两可的环境中徘徊时，掩体会迫使你伸出手。
Yeah, I prefer this kind of cover because to me, there’s a protective quality to the lack of specificity, and the belonging to the series, which is what Europe .
是的，我更喜欢这种封面，因为对我来说，缺乏特异性有一种保护性，并且属于该系列，这就是欧洲。
.
。
.
。
In the US, you have certain series, as well.
在美国，也有某些系列。
I wrote the essay when I was in Rome, and I was far away from my American library and my books and things.
我在罗马时写了这篇文章，远离我的美国图书馆和我的书籍和东西。
But now that I’m back here and I unpacked a lot of my books .
但现在我回到这里，打开了很多书的包装。
.
。
.
。
there’re certain presses here that have that aesthetic philosophy.
这里有一些印刷机具有这种审美哲学。
City Lights books makes those beautiful little books, like my copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, etc. These are beautiful books, American books, that all looked the same, similar dimensions, have a kind of sober quality, a lot of emphasis on type.
城市之光书籍制作了那些漂亮的小书，比如我的艾伦·金斯伯格的《嚎叫》等。这些都是漂亮的书，美国的书，看起来都一样，尺寸相似，有一种清醒的品质，非常注重类型。
So I won’t say that it doesn’t happen here, but for the average writer and the average publisher, it’s a very different dialogue that’s happening when it comes to putting a cover onto a book.
所以我不会说这不会发生在这里，但对于普通作家和普通出版商来说，当涉及到给书上封面时，这是一种非常不同的对话。
If I had to choose, I would choose the safety of the uniform because, of course, the whole piece, the whole little essay begins with the memory of being a child and being traumatized by having to dress myself.
如果我必须选择，我会选择制服的安全性，因为当然，整篇文章，整篇小文章都是从小时候的记忆和因必须自己穿衣服而受到的创伤开始的。
Because it just churned up so many problems and was a source of true anguish for me, as a child, to have to choose clothes and put them on — and this has economic ramifications, this has cultural ramifications, this has all sorts of ramifications, because clothes are things we buy in stores, etc., etc.
因为它引发了很多问题，对我小时候来说，不得不选择衣服并穿上它们，这真是痛苦的根源——这会产生经济影响，这会产生文化影响，这会产生各种各样的影响，因为衣服是我们在商店购买的东西，等等。
I had this crazy envy, admiration, obsession with my cousins’ school uniforms in Kolkata because they were all the same.
我对加尔各答表兄弟的校服抱有疯狂的嫉妒、钦佩和痴迷，因为它们都是一样的。
They just put on what they had to wear to school every day and it was the same thing.
他们只是穿上每天去学校必须穿的衣服，都是一样的。
And I dreamed about that.
我也梦想过这一点。
I dreamed of being able to wake up in the United States and just put on my blue skirt and my white shirt and my black shoes, and going to school, and nobody commenting on what I was wearing.
我梦想能够在美国醒来，穿上我的蓝色裙子、白色衬衫和黑色鞋子，去上学，没有人评论我的穿着。
I was always so terrified because people were always commenting on what I was wearing.
我总是很害怕，因为人们总是评论我的穿着。
And they were teasing me or whatever.
他们在取笑我或者其他什么。
Where do you stand between wanting to express yourself and be free and being afraid of that freedom, being actually vulnerable to that freedom?
在想要表达自己和自由与害怕这种自由、实际上容易受到这种自由之间，你处于什么立场？
I think America represents Freedom with a big capital F.
我认为美国用大写的F代表自由。
And it always has, and we hope it always will for the good.
它总是如此，我们希望它永远是好的。
But there’s also the danger of that, even as a young girl in the ’70s, as a kid, a child of immigrants, I knew what it meant to shop in one store versus another store.
但这也存在危险，即使作为一个 70 年代的年轻女孩，作为一个孩子，一个移民的孩子，我知道在一家商店购物与在另一家商店购物意味着什么。
I think there’s this: Where do you stand between wanting to express yourself and be free and being afraid of that freedom, being actually vulnerable to that freedom?
我认为是这样的：在想要表达自己和自由与害怕这种自由、实际上容易受到这种自由之间，你处于什么立场？
I think America represents Freedom with a big capital F.
我认为美国用大写的F代表自由。
And it always has, and we hope it always will for the good.
它总是如此，我们希望它永远是好的。
But there’s also the danger of that, even as a young girl in the ’70s, as a kid, a child of immigrants, I knew what it meant to shop in one store versus another store.
但这也存在危险，即使作为一个 70 年代的年轻女孩，作为一个孩子，一个移民的孩子，我也知道在一家商店购物与在另一家商店购物意味着什么。
I saw what the girls in my class were wearing: the kinds of shoes, the kinds of purses.
我看到我们班上的女孩们穿什么：什么样的鞋子，什么样的钱包。
I knew that my parents weren’t taking me to those stores, that they thought that was a waste of money and that we’re not going to pay $40 for Nike sneakers, or whatever it is, because it’s a waste and you’re going to grow out of them in six months.
我知道我的父母不会带我去那些商店，他们认为这是浪费钱，我们不会花 40 美元买耐克运动鞋，或者其他什么东西，因为这是浪费，六个月后你就会不再穿它们了。
Whereas my schoolmates had these things, and suddenly there was the gap between me and them, reinforced by these things.
而我的同学们却有这些东西，突然之间我和他们之间就出现了差距，这些东西又加深了我和他们之间的差距。
For a child, at least for me, these things were traumatizing.
对于一个孩子来说，至少对我来说，这些事情是令人痛苦的。
And I imagine for others as well.
我也为其他人想象。
On Indian classical music
论印度古典音乐
Two last questions before we get to Q&A.
在我们进入问答环节之前，还有最后两个问题。
I’ll give them to you together.
我会把它们一起给你。
First, what do you love most in Indian classical music?
首先，您最喜欢印度古典音乐中的什么？
And second, what are you working on next?
其次，你接下来要做什么？
Again, from my mother I inherited, received, learned to appreciate Indian classical music.
再次，我从母亲那里继承、接受、学会了欣赏印度古典音乐。
Most of all, sitar music, which she’s always been passionate about.
最重要的是，她一直热衷于西塔琴音乐。
And my family, all my uncles, my great-uncles, my cousins — I come from a broad extended family, passionate enthusiasts of the sarod mostly, the instrument of Ali Akbar Khan and Amjad Ali Khan.
我的家人，我所有的叔叔，我的叔祖父，我的堂兄弟姐妹——我来自一个大家庭，他们大多是萨罗德琴的狂热爱好者，萨罗德琴是阿里·阿克巴·汗和阿姆贾德·阿里·汗的乐器。
So I grew up my whole life listening to this very complex, beautiful music that really has spoken to me.
所以我一生都是听着这种非常复杂、美丽的音乐长大的，它确实对我产生了影响。
Just the other day I was in the Princeton Art Museum.
就在前几天，我在普林斯顿艺术博物馆。
There’s a beautiful exhibit there right now.
现在那里有一个漂亮的展览。
It’s not that far; I really do recommend it.
没那么远；我真的很推荐它。
A big collection of miniatures, two big rooms of extraordinary works.
大量的微缩模型收藏，两个大房间的非凡作品。
And one of the chambers of this exhibit is dedicated to miniatures that are basically inspired by the raga cycles.
该展览的其中一个房间专门展示了基本上受拉格周期启发的微型模型。
There were headphones, and I put them on and was listening to one of them.
有耳机，我戴上耳机听其中一首。
That music is a part of me.
音乐是我的一部分。
It’s part of my formation.
这是我阵型的一部分。
I think it’s extraordinary.
我认为这很了不起。
And your next work?
那么你的下一个作品呢？
Well, my next work .
好吧，我的下一个作品。
.
。
.
。
I have two things that are happening.
我有两件事正在发生。
One, I just translated this novel called Ties in English.
一，我刚刚翻译了一本叫《领带》的英文小说。
“Lacci” is the Italian title, by Domenico Starnone, who is my friend and whom I consider the finest Italian living author.
《Lacci》是意大利文，作者是多梅尼科·斯塔诺（Domenico Starnone），他是我的朋友，我认为他是在世的意大利最好的作家。
And I just translated this novel.
我刚刚翻译了这本小说。
I’m at the final stages, and it will be out in March.
我正处于最后阶段，它将在三月份发布。
I think it’s an amazing novel.
我认为这是一本很棒的小说。
I read it two years ago when it was first published.
两年前，当它首次出版时，我读过它。
And I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have brought it into English.
我非常感谢有机会将其翻译成英语。
I’m really excited about it.
我对此感到非常兴奋。
And then on the other side I am slowly, quietly writing some very short stories in Italian.
然后在另一边，我慢慢地、安静地用意大利语写一些非常短的故事。
Jhumpa Lahiri, Thank you very much.
琼帕·拉希里，非常感谢。
Q&A
问答
You mentioned that you really like Elena Ferrante and we all do too, at least most of us.
你提到你真的很喜欢埃琳娜·费兰特，我们也很喜欢，至少我们大多数人都是这样。
I wanted to hear your take on this anonymity situation, whether you think right now is it considered, in Italy, that everybody really knows who she is after all these articles which came out?
我想听听您对这种匿名情况的看法，您是否认为现在在意大利，在发表了所有这些文章之后，每个人都真正知道她是谁？
Or is it still a mystery?
或者说这仍然是一个谜？
What’s your take on the whole situation?
您对整个情况有何看法？
I think the whole situation is completely blown out of proportion and ridiculous.
我认为整个情况完全不成比例且荒谬。
I know personally the person who has been accused of being Elena Ferrante.
我个人认识被指控的那个人，她就是埃琳娜·费兰特。
She’s actually the wife of Domenico Starnone, who has also been “accused,” whatever the word is.
她实际上是多梅尼科·斯塔诺内的妻子，多梅尼科·斯塔诺内也被“指控”，不管这个词是什么。
It is like a trial, and this is the absurd thing because whoever wrote those books did nothing wrong.
这就像一场审判，这是一件荒谬的事情，因为写这些书的人没有做错任何事。
It’s been treated almost as if it were a crime, and the nature of the article, the very violent article, inappropriate article, that was published a couple of months ago, the language of that was very disturbing and offensive to me.
它几乎被视为犯罪，而这篇文章的性质，几个月前发表的非常暴力的文章，不恰当的文章，其中的语言对我来说非常令人不安和冒犯。
Whoever wrote those books, the world is no better off knowing who the actual person is.
无论是谁写了这些书，世界如果知道真正的人是谁也不会变得更好。
I think we’ve all completely lost perspective.
我认为我们都完全失去了观点。
So many beautiful things have been created by mankind that we still go to look at and marvel at or read or whatever the case may be, and nobody’s hung up on who exactly the person was and what their name was and what their birthday is.
人类创造了如此之多美丽的事物，以至于我们仍然会去观看、惊叹或阅读，或者不管是什么情况，没有人会关心这个人到底是谁、他们的名字是什么、他们的生日是什么。
This whole cult of the individual and the individual’s hand and signature behind what’s being done.
这种对个人的崇拜以及对所做事情背后的个人的手和签名的崇拜。
These are recent concepts if you think about them.
如果你仔细想想，这些都是最近的概念。
People in Italy just don’t care about this.
意大利人根本不关心这个。
They have other things to think about and worry about at this point.
此时他们还有其他事情需要考虑和担心。
So this whole Ferrante thing, the article came out, I exchanged some messages with my friends, saying, “This is just disgusting.
所以整个费兰特事件，文章出来后，我和朋友们交换了一些信息，说：“这太恶心了。
And why?
为什么？
And so unnecessary.” And then everybody moved on.
如此没有必要。”然后每个人都继续前进。
Whereas here, in America, it’s just ongoing and it’s just not dying.
而在美国，它只是持续存在，而且还没有消亡。
People aren’t saying, “Let’s either read the books or not read the books.” If someone goes out of their way to say “I would like to write in anonymity,” why that can’t be respected in our culture is really kind of mystifying to me, and also distressing.
人们不会说：“我们要么读书，要么不读书。”如果有人不遗余力地说“我想以匿名方式写作”，为什么在我们的文化中这一点不能得到尊重，这对我来说确实有点令人困惑，也令人痛苦。
And the projection people have onto the idea of who the writer might be, and the reasons, and all of this speculation, it could be a very simple thing.
人们对作者可能是谁的想法、原因以及所有这些猜测，这可能是一件非常简单的事情。
But it’s become contorted, I feel, at least in the United States, maybe in England.
但我觉得，至少在美国，也许在英国，它已经被扭曲了。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
But it’s not the same in Italy.
但在意大利就不一样了。
People aren’t really talking about it in the same way.
人们实际上并没有以同样的方式谈论它。
Hello, Miss Lahiri.
你好，拉希里小姐。
I admire your writing, so thank you for all your books.
我很欣赏你的写作，所以感谢你所有的书。
I grew up in Poland, actually, and my first degree is from Gdańsk University.
事实上，我在波兰长大，我的第一个学位是从格但斯克大学获得的。
I’m bilingual, but I teach English here and I write in English.
我会说双语，但我在这里教英语并用英语写作。
I’m a fiction writer.
我是一名小说作家。
When I think about being bilingual, I feel like I’m inhabiting two different types of personality.
当我想到自己是双语者时，我感觉自己拥有两种不同类型的性格。
When I am in Polish I’m a different person than when I am in English.
当我说波兰语时，我和说英语时是一个不同的人。
And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about being bilingual and writing in Italian now.
我想知道你现在是否可以谈谈双语和用意大利语写作。
Do you feel like you are one person who inhabits two different worlds or do you feel yourself splitting apart and feeling that you are, depending on the language, a totally different sort of person?
您是否觉得自己是一个生活在两个不同世界的人，或者您是否感觉自己分裂并感觉自己是一种完全不同的人，具体取决于语言？
I think anybody who is fortunate enough to have more than one language recognizes that.
我认为任何有幸拥有不止一种语言的人都会认识到这一点。
Some people go so far as to say, “If you know more than one language, you have more than one soul.” That’s a very thoughtful way of thinking about it.
有些人甚至说：“如果你懂得不止一种语言，你就有不止一个灵魂。”这是一种非常深思熟虑的思考方式。
But I think language represents a very specific but vast universe, and each language represents that.
但我认为语言代表了一个非常具体但广阔的宇宙，每种语言都代表着它。
Even before I learned Italian, I grew up with two languages side by side.
甚至在我学习意大利语之前，我就在两种语言并存的环境中长大。
And maybe I didn’t know them with the same level of proficiency, but they were both incredibly strong influences on who I was.
也许我对他们的了解程度不高，但他们都对我产生了极其强烈的影响。
So I always was divided in that sense, so I think that’s true.
所以我在这个意义上总是存在分歧，所以我认为这是真的。
For the Italian project, as I was saying, this new point of view that comes from a new language, and in addition, the sense of freedom that a learned language might provide you to set to the side certain baggage that the long distance you traverse in another language might be holding you back from saying what you really need to say.
对于意大利项目，正如我所说，这种新的观点来自一种新的语言，此外，一种所学的语言可能会给你带来一种自由感，让你把某些包袱抛在一边，因为你用另一种语言穿越的长途可能会阻碍你说出你真正需要说的话。
For example, I would never have written In Other Words in English.
例如，我永远不会用英语写《换句话说》。
I would never have written The Clothing of Books essay in English.
我永远不会用英语写《书的衣服》论文。
So this is why the Italian is valuable to me.
这就是为什么意大利语对我来说很有价值。
Hi Jhumpa.
嗨，琼帕。
One thing I found really interesting about The Namesake was how you describe Gogol as olive-toned and being able to pass as Mediterranean sometimes.
我发现关于同名者真正有趣的一件事是你如何将果戈里描述为橄榄色，有时能够被认为是地中海人。
I think that’s really interesting, especially given the obvious tension between his Indian identity and assimilating into American culture.
我认为这真的很有趣，特别是考虑到他的印度身份和融入美国文化之间明显的紧张关系。
Was this a conscious decision to make him able to pass as white, and if so, can you speak to how this relates to your own experiences of colorism in passing?
这是一个有意识的决定，让他能够冒充白人吗？如果是的话，你能谈谈这与你自己过去的肤色歧视经历有何关系吗？
Well, I wasn’t really thinking about those things.
好吧，我并没有真正考虑这些事情。
I’m now recalling, maybe, there’s a moment in the book where someone says to him, “Oh, you could be Spanish,” or something, but I think that’s more about projecting.
我现在回想起，也许书中有一个时刻，有人对他说，“哦，你可以是西班牙人，”或者其他什么，但我认为这更多的是关于投射。
Not about who he is but maybe how we project, how we like to project sameness onto other people to make them more comfortable to us and to dilute the sense of difference.
不在于他是谁，而在于我们如何投射，我们如何喜欢将相同性投射到其他人身上，以使他们对我们更舒服并淡化差异感。
Maybe that’s what it’s really about.
也许这就是它的真正意义。
To go back to this book-covers piece, there’s a certain part of the essay in which I talk about the intolerance of my foreign publishers for the various book covers.
回到这篇关于书籍封面的文章，在文章的某个部分，我谈到了我的外国出版商对各种书籍封面的不容忍。
I remember showing one of my publishers, I’m not going to specify anybody here, but I’ll just say this: I was in Rome and the Italian cover of In Other Words — “In altre parole” — had come out.
我记得向我的一位出版商展示过，我不会在这里指定任何人，但我只想说：我在罗马，《换句话说》的意大利语封面已经出版了。
One of my other publishers was visiting and I showed it to this person, and I remember the expression, and it was like, “.
我的另一位出版商来访，我把它拿给这个人看，我记得当时的表达方式，就像是，“。
.
。
.
。
Interesting.”
有趣。”
And I think that is really what is at the heart of the matter.
我认为这才是问题的核心所在。
It’s just that refusal to recognize ourselves in the other.
这只是拒绝在他人身上认出自己。
So if you have someone who has features that can be perceived as this or perceived as that .
因此，如果你有一个人具有可以被视为这样或那样的特征。
.
。
.
。
depending on where I go in the world I’m mistaken for lots of things.
根据我在世界上的哪个地方，我会被误认为很多事情。
If I’m in Latin America, if I’m in India, if I’m in some other places.
如果我在拉丁美洲，如果我在印度，如果我在其他地方。
And sometimes I’m immediately identified as the other, but I think it’s more based on the context and not on the person.
有时我会立即被认为是另一个人，但我认为这更多是基于上下文而不是基于人。
But I wasn’t really thinking very deeply about it, to be honest with you.
但说实话，我并没有真正深入地思考过这个问题。
I think it was just one of those small details about other people’s desire to render the same people who are actually different.
我认为这只是其他人渴望呈现实际上不同的同一个人的小细节之一。
Next question.
下一个问题。
One thing that I find so powerful about your work is that you not only understand the viewpoint of being a child of immigrants, but also your parents’ viewpoint as well.
我发现你的工作如此有力的一件事是，你不仅理解作为移民孩子的观点，而且也理解你父母的观点。
If you feel comfortable sharing, I’m wondering, to what extent have you spoken to your parents about the joys and challenges of the immigrant experience?
如果您愿意分享，我想知道您在多大程度上与您的父母谈论了移民经历的乐趣和挑战？
Or was that something that you more inferred from your own observations?
或者这是您根据自己的观察得出的更多结论？
You’re asking if I asked my parents what it was like to be an immigrant?
你问我是否问过我的父母作为移民是什么感觉？
Uh-huh.
嗯嗯。
Did you ever have those deep, meaningful conversations about that experience, or did you feel it was more something that you observed?
你是否曾对那次经历进行过深入、有意义的对话，或者你是否觉得这更像是你观察到的东西？
I was living that experience.
我就经历过这样的经历。
That was my whole experience.
这就是我的全部经历。
That was my whole life.
那就是我的一生。
There was no moment where I wasn’t aware that my parents came from a place that was very far away, where people spoke a different language, and ate different food, and wore different clothes, and thought about the world in different ways, and that they were not there.
我无时无刻都意识到我的父母来自一个非常遥远的地方，那里的人们说着不同的语言，吃着不同的食物，穿着不同的衣服，以不同的方式思考世界，而他们并不在那里。
And that’s my life.
这就是我的生活。
That’s my whole life, and there’s no part of my life that was anything else.
这就是我的全部生活，我的生活没有任何其他部分。
Every relationship I had, that I made, that I created, that I forged outside of my family base, was informed by that awareness — that these were the parents that had brought me into the world and this is what their experience was.
我在家庭基础之外拥有的、我建立的、我创造的、我建立的每一种关系，都源于这种意识——这些是把我带到这个世界上的父母，这就是他们的经历。
So no, I never sat down and asked them what it was like because I was living it every single day, and I saw the effects of what it means to live your life away from your point of reference.
所以不，我从来没有坐下来问他们那是什么样的，因为我每天都过着这样的生活，我看到了远离你的参照点生活意味着什么的影响。
This goes so deep, and so vast, and so specific, and so minute-by-minute.
它是如此深入、如此广阔、如此具体、如此分秒必争。
And that constant back and forth in one’s being to make sense .
以及一个人不断地来回寻找意义的过程。
.
。
.
。
it’s like, again, the interpreter; it’s like being a simultaneous interpreter all the time.
再次，它就像口译员；这就像一直担任同声传译员一样。
Of course, it’s not ironic that my book is called The Interpreter of Maladies and involves this character who is literally interpreting simultaneously for people.
当然，我的书名叫《疾病的解释者》，其中涉及的角色实际上是同时为人们进行解释，这并不讽刺。
But that’s not what I was necessarily doing for my parents, it was what I was doing for myself.
但这不一定是我为父母做的事情，而是我为自己做的事情。
Next question.
下一个问题。
Thank you — firstly my compliments to both of you for such wonderful conversation.
谢谢你们——首先我对你们俩如此精彩的谈话表示赞赏。
My question is related to the journey of an author.
我的问题与作者的旅程有关。
Do you think, compared to when you began writing, do you feel more inhibited or uninhibited as an author now?
您认为，与您刚开始写作时相比，您现在作为作家感到更加内敛还是不拘一格？
And what brings that about?
是什么导致了这一点？
Well, writing always scares me and intimidates me.
好吧，写作总是让我感到害怕和恐吓。
I’ve always felt that, and if I ever stopped feeling that, I probably shouldn’t write anymore.
我一直有这种感觉，如果我不再有这种感觉，我可能就不应该再写了。
Now there’s a formal challenge of writing in a language that I don’t have full control of.
现在，我面临着用一种我无法完全控制的语言进行写作的正式挑战。
So that’s intimidating and very daunting.
所以这很令人生畏，也非常令人畏惧。
I was talking to a group of students before this larger conversation about how even in English I started out with that same trepidation.
在这次更大的谈话之前，我正在和一群学生谈论即使是在英语中我也带着同样的恐惧开始。
And I don’t want to lose touch with that unease, because I think that’s important.
我不想摆脱这种不安，因为我认为这很重要。
It’s important to approach in that way, at least for me, to not feel totally comfortable, and certainly not to feel confident because it’s really more about an investigation, an experiment, a challenge.
以这种方式进行处理很重要，至少对我来说，不要感到完全舒服，当然也不要感到自信，因为这实际上更多的是一项调查、一项实验、一项挑战。
These things cannot be undertaken in the spirit of, “Sure, I can do that.” You have to question it at every step, and you have to question what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and why you’re doing it.
这些事情不能本着“当然，我能做到”的精神来进行。你必须在每一步都提出质疑，你必须质疑你在做什么、如何做以及为什么这样做。
I believe that that’s very important.
我相信这非常重要。
Next question.
下一个问题。
Hi, I want to start off by thanking you for Gogol’s character because there are very few authors that truly understand the Indian-American immigrant narrative as well as you do.
嗨，首先我想感谢你塑造果戈里的性格，因为很少有作家像你一样真正理解印裔美国移民的叙述。
My question is, of all the characters you’ve penned, which one do you see yourself most in, or is there one, and why?
我的问题是，在你笔下的所有角色中，你最能在哪一个角色中看到自己，或者有没有一个角色，为什么？
Thank you.
谢谢。
There are pieces of me in various things I’ve written, aspects, concealed or jumbled together, rearranged.
我写过的各种东西、各个方面都有我的碎片，这些碎片被隐藏或混杂在一起，重新排列。
So various characters, if I had to say, they’re shadings that I feel close to literally.
这么多不同的角色，如果我不得不说的话，他们的阴影我感觉很接近字面意思。
But as I say in the afterword to In Other Words, the most explicitly autobiographical story I’ve ever written is the first story I wrote in Italian, which is called “The Exchange” , which is a very weird, abstract story.
但正如我在《换句话说》的后记中所说，我写过的最明确的自传体故事是我用意大利语写的第一个故事，叫做《交换》，这是一个非常奇怪、抽象的故事。
But that came literally from an experience I had, and I wrote this story very quickly afterward, based on that experience.
但这确实来自我的一次经历，我根据那次经历很快就写了这个故事。
It was just lifted from something that had happened to me, so I feel very close to that character, needless to say, because I shared what happened.
它只是从发生在我身上的事情中解脱出来，所以不用说，我感觉与那个角色非常接近，因为我分享了发生的事情。
Though there are certain invented details in that story as well, because it’s fiction; it’s not the truth.
尽管这个故事中也有一些虚构的细节，因为它是虚构的；这不是事实。
Agota Kristof: if you really want to talk about this stuff and think about it, read Agota Kristof because she’s a genius.
阿戈塔·克里斯托夫（Agota Kristof）：如果你真的想谈论这个问题并思考它，请阅读阿戈塔·克里斯托夫（Agota Kristof），因为她是个天才。
She’s like the oracle of all of this stuff.
她就像所有这些东西的神谕。
She really knows what it means to create out of life, and that incredibly fluid, mysterious boundary between real life and art.
她真的知道从生活中创造意味着什么，以及现实生活和艺术之间令人难以置信的流动和神秘的界限。
Her work investigates it head on in a way that’s unforgettably powerful.
她的作品以一种令人难忘的强大方式正面调查了这一问题。
I have a couple of quick nuts-and-bolts questions about writing and your process.
我有几个关于写作和你的流程的简单问题。
Your prose is very much characterized by restraint and economy, and I’m curious what kind of writer you are.
你的散文非常克制和简洁，我很好奇你是一个什么样的作家。
Are you a linear writer who gets each sentence right before you move on to the next, or do you overwrite and cut back mercilessly?
你是一个线性作家，在继续下一个句子之前就读完每个句子，还是会无情地重写和删减？
And my other question is, you write often of nostalgia and longing, and I’m curious how you avoid sentimentality.
我的另一个问题是，你经常写怀旧和渴望，我很好奇你如何避免感伤。
Well, that’s nice to hear.
嗯，很高兴听到这个消息。
I’m glad that that’s the case in your opinion.
我很高兴您认为情况如此。
I think I write about loss.
我想我写的是关于损失的。
I write less about nostalgia.
我写的有关怀旧的文章较少。
It’s connected, of course, but everything I’ve written has that at its core, the idea of loss.
当然，它们是相互联系的，但我写的所有内容的核心都是“失去”的想法。
And as for how I write, I don’t know how I write.
至于我怎么写，我也不知道我怎么写。
But I go through a million drafts and I’m constantly reworking everything.
但我会审阅一百万个草稿，并且不断地修改所有内容。
So the idea of writing a sentence that’s all set to go and then moving on to the next one, it’s the opposite.
因此，写一个已经准备好的句子然后继续下一个句子的想法是相反的。
Whatever the opposite of that is .
不管它的反面是什么。
.
。
.
。
That’s how I work.
我就是这样工作的。
Jhumpa, thank you very much.
琼帕，非常感谢你。
Thank you.
谢谢。
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在 iTunes 上评论我们，帮助我们传播信息。