Russ Roberts on Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (Ep. 227 - BONUS)
Thank you to listener Roger Barris for sponsoring this transcript.
感谢听众罗杰·巴里斯赞助这份文字记录。
Today is November 4, 2024, and my guest is economist, author, podcaster, and blogger Tyler Cowen of George Mason University.
今天是 2024 年 11 月 4 日，我的嘉宾是乔治梅森大学的经济学家、作家、播客兼博主泰勒·考恩 (Tyler Cowen)。
This is Tyler’s 19th appearance on EconTalk.
这是泰勒第 19 次出现在 EconTalk 上。
He was last here in November of 2023, discussing who is the greatest economist of all time.
他最后一次来这里是在 2023 年 11 月，讨论谁是有史以来最伟大的经济学家。
Our topic for today is Vasily Grossman’s masterpiece, Life and Fate.
我们今天的主题是瓦西里·格罗斯曼的代表作《生命与命运》。
We will minimize spoilers, but I’d encourage you to read the book before listening, if that’s your habit.
我们会尽量减少剧透，但我鼓励你在听之前先读一下这本书，如果这是你的习惯的话。
As I’ve suggested, you may want to read this on the Kindle, which makes it a little easier to follow the characters because it’s easy to search for them if you forget who they are.
正如我所建议的，您可能想在 Kindle 上阅读本文，这样可以更轻松地跟踪角色，因为如果您忘记他们是谁，也可以轻松搜索他们。
This episode is also available on Tyler’s podcast, Conversations with Tyler.
这一集也可以在泰勒的播客“与泰勒对话”中观看。
Tyler, welcome back to EconTalk.
泰勒，欢迎回到 EconTalk。
Thank you, Russ.
谢谢你，拉斯。
Is it a spoiler to tell them who won the war in the Battle of Stalingrad?
告诉他们斯大林格勒战役谁赢得了战争是剧透吗？
I was thinking of that.
我正在想这个。
I think we can reveal that.
我想我们可以透露这一点。
Okay, that’s fine.
好吧，没关系。
Let’s start then.
那么我们就开始吧。
You have some introduction.
你有一些介绍。
Well, I wanted to just say a little bit about Grossman and the book very briefly.
好吧，我只想简单地谈谈格罗斯曼和这本书。
Vasily Grossman was born in 1905 in Berdychiv.
瓦西里·格罗斯曼 1905 年出生于别尔季奇夫。
Berdychiv, at the time, was part of the Russian Empire.
别尔季奇夫当时是俄罗斯帝国的一部分。
It eventually, in 1922, after the revolution, became part of the Soviet Union.
最终，在 1922 年革命后，它成为苏联的一部分。
He rose to some fame as a war correspondent.
他作为一名战地记者而小有名气。
He covered the Battle of Stalingrad.
他报道了斯大林格勒战役。
People, when they talk about this book, Life and Fate, say it’s about the Battle of Stalingrad.
人们在谈论《生命与命运》这本书时，会说它是关于斯大林格勒战役的。
No, it’s not.
不，不是。
It takes place around the time of the Battle of Stalingrad.
它发生在斯大林格勒战役期间。
There is some war in the book, but that is, I think, a very misleading summary of what the book’s about.
书中有一些战争，但我认为这是对本书内容的非常误导性的总结。
He wrote the book after World War II.
他在第二次世界大战后写了这本书。
The book was arrested by the KGB in 1961.
这本书于 1961 年被克格勃扣押。
They came to his house.
他们来到他家。
They took the manuscript.
他们拿走了手稿。
They took all the typewriter ribbons.
他们拿走了所有的打字机色带。
Those of you who are older than a certain age will know what that is.
超过一定年龄的人就会知道那是什么。
They tried to find other copies.
他们试图找到其他副本。
They ended up digging up the garden of a friend of Grossman’s but did not find any other copies.
他们最终挖掘了格罗斯曼朋友的花园，但没有找到任何其他副本。
He was successful in hiding a couple of copies with friends.
他成功地和朋友藏了几份副本。
Eventually, the book was smuggled out in 1980 and published in Switzerland, published in the Soviet Union in 1988.
最终，这本书于1980年被走私出境，在瑞士出版，1988年在苏联出版。
Grossman died in 1964, unaware that his book had survived.
格罗斯曼于 1964 年去世，并不知道他的书幸存了下来。
Just one other biographical note, which is relevant because of the nature of the book.
只是另一篇传记，由于本书的性质而相关。
His mother was killed in 1941 when the Nazis overran Berdychiv.
1941 年，纳粹占领别尔季奇夫时，他的母亲被杀。
Berdychiv was a town of a little over 50,000 people.
别尔季奇夫是一个人口略多于 5 万的城镇。
About 40,000 were Jews.
大约有 40,000 人是犹太人。
It had 80 synagogues, and his mother died in the murders there.
它有 80 座犹太教堂，他的母亲在那里的谋杀案中丧生。
His mother is an important part of this book in a fictionalized role, and we’ll talk about that.
他的母亲是本书的重要组成部分，是一个虚构的角色，我们将讨论这一点。
Tyler, give us your short initial assessment of this book.
泰勒，请给我们您对这本书的简短初步评价。
On overall impressions of the novel
关于小说的总体印象
Amongst Soviet authors, he is the GOAT, one could say, to refer to our earlier episode.
在苏联作家中，可以说他是山羊，参考我们之前的情节。
But this, to me, is one of the very few truly universal novels.
但对我来说，这是极少数真正具有普遍性的小说之一。
The title itself, Life and Fate — it is about life and fate, but the novel is about so much more.
标题本身，《生命与命运》——讲述的是生命和命运，但小说的内容远不止于此。
It’s about war.
这是关于战争的。
It’s about slavery.
这是关于奴隶制的。
It’s about love, motherhood, fatherhood, childbirth, rape, friendship, science, politics.
它涉及爱、母性、父性、分娩、强奸、友谊、科学、政治。
How many novels, if any, can you think of that have all of those worlds in them in an interesting and insightful manner?
您能想到有多少本小说（如果有的话）以有趣且富有洞察力的方式包含所有这些世界？
Very few.
很少。
The one that comes closest to it is, in fact, his model.
事实上，最接近它的是他的模型。
That’s Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a three-word title with an and in the middle and two important concepts.
这就是托尔斯泰的《战争与和平》，一个三个单词的书名，中间有一个“and”，还有两个重要的概念。
They’re both about war.
它们都与战争有关。
They’re both about the invasions of Russia or the USSR.
它们都与俄罗斯或苏联的入侵有关。
There’s a central family in both stories.
这两个故事都有一个中心家庭。
The notion of what is fate or destiny is highly important to Tolstoy, as it is to Grossman, though they have different points of view.
什么是命运或命运的概念对托尔斯泰和格罗斯曼来说都非常重要，尽管他们有不同的观点。
Napoleon plays a significant role in War and Peace.
拿破仑在《战争与和平》中扮演了重要角色。
In Life and Fate, Hitler and Stalin make actual appearances in the novel, which I find shocking when I read it, like, here they are on the page, and it’s actually somewhat plausible.
在《生命与命运》中，希特勒和斯大林在小说中真实出现，当我读到它时，我感到震惊，就像他们就在书页上一样，这实际上有点合理。
So, he’s modeling this, I think, after War and Peace.
所以，我认为，他是在《战争与和平》之后对此进行建模的。
He actually pulls it off, which is a miracle.
他真的做到了，这真是一个奇迹。
I think it is a novel comparable in quality and scope and import to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which is sometimes called the greatest novel ever.
我认为这是一部在质量、范围和重要性上与托尔斯泰的《战争与和平》相媲美的小说，后者有时被称为有史以来最伟大的小说。
So that is a pretty amazing achievement.
所以这是一个相当惊人的成就。
Yes, I think I mentioned on the air in an earlier episode — when I was reading it, I enjoyed the first 100 pages.
是的，我想我在之前的一集节目中提到过 ——当我阅读它时，我很喜欢前 100 页。
After 200, it got a little better.
200以后，情况好一点了。
Somewhere around 300 or 400, I couldn’t put it down.
大约300或400，我无法放下。
There are so many passages that move you to tears or to incredible emotional reaction.
有很多段落让你感动落泪或令人难以置信的情感反应。
It’s not a traditional novel akin to War and Peace or akin to other Russian novels such as The Brothers Karamazov or In the First Circle, which we talked about here on the program.
这不是一部类似于《战争与和平》的传统小说，也不是类似于我们在节目中讨论的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》或《第一圈》等其他俄罗斯小说。
Previously, it is what our guest, talking about In the First Circle, Kevin McKenna, called polyphonic.
此前，这就是我们的嘉宾凯文·麦肯纳（Kevin McKenna）在谈论《第一圈》时所说的复调音乐。
Here’s how he described it.
他是这样描述的。
He said, “Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn are so similar.
他说：“陀思妥耶夫斯基和索尔仁尼琴非常相似。
Dostoevsky is famous for what is called the polyphonic structure of his novels.
陀思妥耶夫斯基以其小说的复调结构而闻名。
That is, rather than having — as we are used to in the West — one central, main character who stands as the centerpiece of everything that happens in the novel, the polyphonic structure of a Dostoevsky or Solzhenitsyn is that there is not a main central character.
也就是说，陀思妥耶夫斯基或索尔仁尼琴的复调结构并没有像我们在西方所习惯的那样，有一个中心人物作为小说中发生的一切的中心人物，而是没有一个主要的中心人物。
There is a cast, I would say perhaps five to eight central characters, as well as perhaps three to four central, major themes, so everything is kind of a fugue of characters, a fugue of plot.”
我想说，有一个演员阵容，也许有五到八个中心人物，也许还有三到四个中心主题，所以一切都是人物的赋格曲，情节的赋格曲。”
In the case of Grossman and Life and Fate, I would say there are eight to ten main characters.
就格罗斯曼和《生命与命运》而言，我想说有八到十个主角。
There are about 100 characters overall, and that can be discouraging when you start the book.
总共大约有 100 个字符，当你开始阅读这本书时，这可能会令人沮丧。
But if you keep reading, you’ll realize that only the eight to ten who are the main ones are going to reappear over and over again and, often, dozens or hundreds of pages apart when they reappear.
但如果你继续读下去，你会发现只有八到十个主要的人物会一遍又一遍地出现，而且每次出现时往往会相距数十或数百页。
But as you point out, Tyler, there are so many interesting intellectual and emotional themes of the book.
但正如你所指出的，泰勒，这本书中有很多有趣的智力和情感主题。
It really spans an enormous part of the human experience.
它确实涵盖了人类经验的很大一部分。
In that sense, you could argue it’s the greatest novel of the 20th century and, for me, one of the greatest novels of all time.
从这个意义上说，你可以说它是 20 世纪最伟大的小说，对我来说，也是有史以来最伟大的小说之一。
Certainly, one of the greatest I’ve ever read.
当然，这是我读过的最伟大的书之一。
I think another influence — and Grossman himself cites him repeatedly — is Chekhov.
我认为另一个影响——格罗斯曼本人多次引用他——是契诃夫。
The chapters in Grossman often are mirroring Chekhov short stories, but they’re woven together in a way that Chekhov short stories are not.
格罗斯曼的章节经常反映契诃夫的短篇小说，但它们以契诃夫短篇小说所不同的方式编织在一起。
But the notion of “How is it you tell a narrative during a war that is so big and important and tragic?” I take to be one of his central endeavors, and that, too, is something he mostly pulls off.
但是“在一场如此巨大、如此重要、如此悲惨的战争中，你如何讲述一个故事呢？”我认为这是他的核心工作之一，而这也是他最成功的事情。
Yes, the Chekhov part — there are just so many numerous, unforgettable vignettes of characters struggling with betrayal, struggling with the state bearing down on them, whether it’s the Nazis or the Communists.
是的，契诃夫的部分——有很多令人难忘的小插曲，人物与背叛作斗争，与国家的压力作斗争，无论是纳粹还是共产党。
One of the themes you didn’t mention that reverberates throughout the book is the parallels between the Nazis and the Communists.
你没有提到的贯穿整本书的主题之一是纳粹和共产党之间的相似之处。
They’re both, in many ways, fascist, authoritarian states, but what he’s really interested in is how they grind the individual down and how the individual stands athwart that grinding, stands and says, “Stop.
从很多方面来说，它们都是法西斯主义、独裁国家，但他真正感兴趣的是它们如何压制个人，以及个人如何对抗这种压制，站起来并说：“停止。
No, I’m a human being.”
不，我是一个人。”
I found that when I thought about the title, you’d think, “Well, why isn’t it called Life and Death or Freedom and Fate?” For Grossman, life is really about freedom, so in a certain sense, the title Life and Fate, for me, is very much not the only, but one of the central themes of the book, which is, how human beings caught in the throes and the gears of the state manage to maintain their freedom and their essential humanity despite that brutal, brutal reality.
我发现当我想到这个标题时，你会想，“好吧，为什么不叫《生与死》或者《自由与命运》呢？”对于格罗斯曼来说，生活实际上就是自由，所以从某种意义上说，《生命与命运》这个书名对我来说，并不是唯一的，而是这本书的中心主题之一，即，在残酷的现实中，陷入痛苦和国家机器的人类如何设法维持他们的自由和基本的人性。
This is where I think we might disagree because I disagree with everything else I’ve read about this book, including the main Grossman biography.
我认为这就是我们可能不同意的地方，因为我不同意我读过的关于这本书的所有其他内容，包括格罗斯曼的主要传记。
If I had to name a central theme of the book, I think it’s, in a funny way, a patriotic book, arguing that Communism, for all of its horrible faults, is actually better than fascism and explaining or showing to us why it is better than fascism.
如果我必须说出这本书的中心主题，我认为以一种有趣的方式，这是一本爱国书，认为共产主义尽管有所有可怕的缺点，但实际上比法西斯主义更好，并向我们解释或展示为什么它比法西斯主义更好。
I have a riff on that, which I’ll do, but let me just put that out on the table and hear your immediate reaction.
我对此有一个即兴发挥，我会这样做，但让我把它放在桌面上，听听你的立即反应。
I’m not sure I disagree with that.
我不确定我是否同意这一点。
I wasn’t suggesting that they were equivalent.
我并不是说它们是等价的。
It’s just that they have certain powerful equivalencies that the characters in the book find repellent.
只是它们有某些强大的相似之处，令书中的人物感到厌恶。
The idea to the Communists that they have a brother in the Nazis, the idea that to the Nazis, they have a brother in the Communists is extremely disturbing.
对于共产党人来说，他们有一个纳粹兄弟的想法，对于纳粹分子来说，他们有一个共产党兄弟的想法是极其令人不安的。
Grossman forces a number of his characters to confront those similarities.
格罗斯曼迫使他的一些角色面对这些相似之处。
But I agree it’s a very patriotic book.
但我同意这是一本非常爱国的书。
It’s a very Russian book.
这是一本非常俄罗斯化的书。
There’s a lot of talk in his biography and in people who write about him, how much he was pro-regime, how much his antagonism to the regime and the Soviet regime changed, how it grew over time, and like his characters, and it’s a very autobiographical book, which is bizarre, but it’s a very autobiographical book.
在他的传记和写他的人中，有很多谈论，他有多么亲政权，他对政权和苏联政权的对抗发生了多大的变化，它是如何随着时间的推移而增长的，就像他的人物一样，这是一本非常自传的书，这很奇怪，但它是一本非常自传的书。
The main character, Viktor Shtrum, is a physicist, a world-class physicist.
主角维克多·施特鲁姆（Viktor Shtrum）是一位物理学家，世界级的物理学家。
Grossman himself was a chemist, not a world-class chemist as far as I know, but he identified with Shtrum’s marital problems, his problems of keeping faith with his conscience.
格罗斯曼本人是一名化学家，据我所知，不是世界级的化学家，但他认同施特鲁姆的婚姻问题，以及他对良心保持信仰的问题。
In that sense, I think he’s overwhelmingly, certainly, on the side of the Russians, but I don’t think he has any romance about Communism.
从这个意义上说，我认为他绝对站在俄罗斯人一边，但我不认为他对共产主义有任何浪漫色彩。
I think what he sees as the fundamental difference is that for him, fascism is ultimately just a philosophy of death.
我认为他认为根本的区别在于，对他来说，法西斯主义最终只是一种死亡哲学。
He says on page 94, “Man and fascism cannot coexist.” The feature about Communism — and he’s under no illusions about its evils, as you just said — is there’s some degree of negotiability built into the system.
他在第 94 页上说：“人与法西斯主义不能共存。”共产主义的特点——正如你刚才所说，他对共产主义的邪恶不抱任何幻想——制度中内置了某种程度的可协商性。
If you look, say, when the Nazi commander, Liss, is interrogating Mostovskoy, Liss just keeps on asking questions.
如果你看一下，比如说，当纳粹指挥官利斯审问莫斯托夫斯科伊时，利斯只是不停地问问题。
There’s no dialogue.
没有对话。
Nothing can happen.
什么都不会发生。
There are no real questions, there are no real answers, and Mostovskoy simply ends up being killed.
没有真正的问题，也没有真正的答案，莫斯托夫斯基最终只是被杀了。
The other characters going to the camps — they’re simply killed.
其他前往集中营的角色 ——他们只是被杀了。
There is no negotiation.
没有谈判的余地。
But if you look at the main Soviet interrogation scene, when Katsenelenbogen is interrogating Krymov, a scene which goes on for quite a while, they talk back and forth.
但如果你看一下苏联审讯的主要场景，当卡茨内伦博根审问克雷莫夫时，这个场景持续了很长一段时间，他们来回交谈。
It’s weird.
这很奇怪。
It’s sick.
它病了。
It’s twisted.
它是扭曲的。
There’s torture involved.
其中涉及酷刑。
But actually, Krymov comes away from that scene alive.
但实际上，克雷莫夫活着离开了那个场景。
He at least learns something.
他至少学到了一些东西。
Also, you have figures–one of them is Viktor; another is Novikov, the tank commander — maybe they’re imperfect, but they’re not just all bad, by any means.
另外，你还有人物——其中一个是维克托；另一个是坦克指挥官诺维科夫——也许他们并不完美，但无论如何，他们也不全是坏人。
Oh, for sure.
哦，当然。
They’re virtuous in significant ways.
他们在很多方面都是善良的。
Fascism in this novel cannot create that.
这部小说中的法西斯主义无法创造这一点。
Even the nonbelievers in fascism, what’s the fellow’s name?
即使是法西斯主义的非信徒，这个家伙叫什么名字？
Ikonnikov?
伊康尼科夫？
No, no, no. He’s a German.
不，不，不。他是德国人。
He doesn’t really believe in Nazism, but he ends up going around raping Russian women.
他并不真正相信纳粹主义，但他最终却到处强奸俄罗斯妇女。
That’s the fascist version of someone who’s not a believer, not nearly as good as the Soviet version.
这是非信徒的法西斯版本，远不如苏联版本。
I think he knows he rooted for the USSR to win the war.
我认为他知道他支持苏联赢得战争。
In part, in this novel, he’s trying to explain to himself, “How could you root for such a horrible society, and how could it have been on the side of the Allies?” Which, of course, we would have been rooting for at the time.
在这部小说中，他在某种程度上试图向自己解释：“你怎么能支持这样一个可怕的社会，它怎么可能站在同盟国一边呢？”当然，我们当时会支持这一点。
That, I think, is part of his answer, the central idea of negotiability, that it never quite goes away under Communism.
我认为，这是他的答案的一部分，即可谈判性的核心思想，在共产主义统治下它永远不会完全消失。
Even Viktor is saved by this weird intervention from Stalin, which makes no sense, but there’s some outcome possible other than just death and destruction.
甚至维克托也被斯大林的这种奇怪的干预所拯救，这毫无意义，但除了死亡和破坏之外，还有一些结果是可能的。
Yes.
是的。
I want to come back to the torture theme, the scenes in the Lubyanka with Krymov.
我想回到酷刑主题，卢比扬卡和克雷莫夫的场景。
I’ve read a lot of Solzhenitsyn.
我读了很多索尔仁尼琴的书。
I’ve read all The Gulag Archipelago.
我读完了《古拉格群岛》的全部内容。
I’ve read many of his novels.
我读过他的很多小说。
I’ve read about a lot of scenes in Lubyanka.
我读过很多卢比扬卡的场景。
I can’t say I feel like I’ve been there, but it’s familiar to me.
我不能说我感觉我去过那里，但我很熟悉。
It’s the prison where people were tormented, not merely tortured but tortured until they confessed, often, sometimes tortured until they confessed things that weren’t true, sometimes tortured until they confessed about loved ones or comrades or colleagues.
这是监狱里的人们遭受折磨的地方，不仅是酷刑，而且是折磨直到他们招供，通常，有时是折磨到他们招供不真实的事情，有时是折磨到他们招供有关亲人、同志或同事的事情。
It’s an unbearable, tragic place.
这是一个令人难以忍受、悲惨的地方。
Having read all that before, I felt, reading Grossman’s account, an awareness of how hard it was to stay on your principles.
之前读过所有这些内容后，我在阅读格罗斯曼的叙述时，意识到坚持自己的原则是多么困难。
It’s almost, yes, they tortured their victims, and they extracted confessions under torture.
是的，他们几乎折磨了受害者，他们在酷刑下逼供。
But by the end, you feel like Grossman captured this idea that for many of them, they were glad to confess, even though they knew what they confessed to wasn’t true, but they did it out of love for the system.
但到最后，你会觉得格罗斯曼抓住了这个想法，即对于他们中的许多人来说，他们很高兴坦白，即使他们知道自己坦白的内容不是真的，但他们这样做是出于对体制的热爱。
All the purge, the show trials of the ’30s, which, in 1938 and ’37, keep coming back into this book, and the purges before that, where Stalin’s opponents were systematically killed, none of them were killed at night by the firing squad or with a murderer.
所有的清洗，30年代的表演审判，在1938年和37年，不断出现在本书中，以及在此之前的清洗，斯大林的反对者被系统地杀害，他们中没有一个是在夜间被行刑队或与凶手一起杀害的。
They all confessed.
他们都承认了。
What Grossman captures, which I’ve never really read with this level of intensity, the willingness of people to confess, even though they know it’s not true — what they’re confessing to — because they think the system itself is worth preserving.
格罗斯曼所捕捉到的是，人们愿意坦白，即使他们知道这不是真的——“他们坦白的内容”——因为他们认为这个体系本身值得保留。
They have a .
他们有一个。
.
。
.
。
I would make a distinction.
我会做出区分。
It’s a Dostoevskian distinction between the church and its practitioners, right?
这是教会及其实践者之间陀思妥耶夫斯基式的区别，对吗？
It reminds me of the grand inquisitor scene.
这让我想起了大审判官的场景。
The officers of the church — and here I’m talking about not any particular church but any religious dogma — they’re flawed.
教会的官员 ——在这里我谈论的不是任何特定的教会，而是任何宗教教条——他们是有缺陷的。
They’ve lost the original doctrine that inspired the believers, but the idea of giving up that doctrine is so painful to the adherents that they confess to things they didn’t do because they have to believe that the system, the church, still stands.
他们已经失去了激励信徒的原始教义，但放弃该教义的想法对信徒来说是如此痛苦，以至于他们承认他们没有做过的事情，因为他们必须相信这个系统，教会，仍然存在。
In this case, a secular church, the church of Communism.
在这种情况下，世俗教会，共产主义教会。
Do you feel that?
你有这样的感觉吗？
It’s a profound book on the psychology of confession.
这是一本关于忏悔心理学的深刻书籍。
I think another element of how people come to confess is that in part, they believe they are guilty.
我认为人们认罪的另一个因素是，他们在某种程度上相信自己有罪。
They may not believe they’re fully guilty.
他们可能不相信自己完全有罪。
If you think of Krymov, if you reread the earlier parts of the book, he does, in fact, whine about his colleagues in such a minor way, but that looms larger and larger in his mind as they talk to him.
如果你想到克雷莫夫，如果你重读这本书的前半部分，你会发现，事实上，他确实以如此轻微的方式抱怨他的同事，但当他们与他交谈时，这种抱怨在他的脑海中变得越来越大。
He starts wondering, “Well, have I, in fact, done something against the system?” when confronted with the power of the interrogator.
他开始怀疑，“嗯，我实际上做了一些违反系统的事情吗？”当面对审讯者的力量时。
And, of course, the indirect reference to Dostoevsky and how the system, ex ante, takes advantage of what a Christian might call original sin, to put people in positions where they almost cannot help but confess because they believed something, to begin with.
当然，间接提及陀思妥耶夫斯基，以及该体系如何事前利用基督徒可能称之为原罪的东西，将人们置于几乎无法控制地承认的境地，因为他们一开始就相信某些东西。
Then the theme that passivity underlies how so many social structures operate, the novel is quite profound on, including how the camps operate, how an army battalion operates, how chains of command operate in the military — that the default of passivity is responsible for so much of social order, even when that social order can be very, very bad.
然后，被动性是许多社会结构如何运作的基础，小说对此进行了相当深刻的探讨，包括集中营如何运作，陆军营如何运作，军队指挥链如何运作——被动性的默认造成了如此多的社会秩序，即使社会秩序可能非常非常糟糕。
By the way, it’s Lieutenant Peter Bach who is the German I was referring to in my earlier comment.
顺便说一句，我在之前的评论中提到的德国人就是彼得·巴赫中尉。
I should just mention, as you’ve already alluded to, there are many historically real characters in the book, mixed in with the fictional ones, and the list of characters distinguishes those.
我只想提一下，正如您已经提到的，书中有许多历史上真实的人物，与虚构的人物混合在一起，人物列表将这些人物区分开来。
There’s another parallel between the Soviet and the Nazi systems that I found just fascinating.
我发现苏联和纳粹体系之间还有另一个令人着迷的相似之处。
Each side has its own hall monitors in the middle of a war.
在战争中，双方都有自己的大厅监视器。
You’re fighting a war.
你正在打一场战争。
It’s life or death.
这是生还是死。
And yet there’s a commissar, meaning an operative of the Communist Party on the Russian side, Soviet side, and on the German side, you’ve got the SS, and they’re both looking to uncover a sense of errors in dogma.
然而，还有一名政委，意味着俄罗斯一方、苏联一方和德国一方的共产党特工，还有党卫军，他们都在寻找教条中的错误感。
They’re looking for heresy.
他们正在寻找异端。
Whether it’s negative remarks about Stalin or Hitler or it’s something nice about the Jews, they’re all looking for things to crack down on.
无论是对斯大林或希特勒的负面言论，还是对犹太人的好话，他们都在寻找可以镇压的东西。
It’s such a handicap in a war.
这在战争中是一个很大的障碍。
Novikov, of course, has incredible moments of this.
当然，诺维科夫也有过令人难以置信的时刻。
The idea that you would hamper your war effort with ideological purity questions and that both sides did, at least in Grossman’s version, was really eye-opening for me.
你会用意识形态纯洁性问题阻碍你的战争努力，而且双方都这样做，至少在格罗斯曼的版本中，这一想法真的让我大开眼界。
Yes, absolutely.
是的，绝对是。
One thing I found striking in the book is just how many literary references there are, and they all seem relevant.
我在书中发现的一件令人震惊的事情是其中有大量的文学参考文献，而且它们似乎都是相关的。
One thing I did when reading through, I tried to note what was mentioned twice.
在通读时我做了一件事，我试图记下两次提到的内容。
Tolstoy is mentioned more than once.
托尔斯泰被不止一次提及。
There’s this Chekhov short story called “The Bishop.” It’s not only mentioned twice, but we’re told, “You must go away and read ‘The Bishop.’” Of course, I went away and read “The Bishop.”
契诃夫有一篇短篇小说，名叫《主教》。它不仅被提到两次，而且还告诉我们，“你必须离开去读《主教》。”当然，我离开去读《主教》。
“The Bishop” is about dying.
《主教》是关于死亡的。
It’s about what is transient in life.
这是关于生命中短暂的事情。
It’s about the fragility of a social reputation.
这是关于社会声誉的脆弱性。
It’s about a mother-child bond.
这是关于母子关系的。
And when the bishop, who was well known in his lifetime, dies, people were not sure he had ever been there.
当这位生前广为人知的主教去世时，人们不确定他是否曾经去过那里。
But the one person he had been real to was his mother, and that was more important than his social role as a bishop.
但他真正关心的人是他的母亲，这比他作为主教的社会角色更重要。
That’s the Chekhov story that he takes greatest care to point us to, and I think so much of the novel is about motherhood.
这就是他煞费苦心地向我们展示的契诃夫故事，我认为小说的大部分内容都是关于母亲的。
It’s Vera giving birth that is heralding the turn of the tide with the Battle of Stalingrad itself.
维拉的分娩预示着斯大林格勒战役本身的潮流的转变。
It’s when life is again possible that the Soviets start to win.
当生活再次变得可能时，苏联人开始获胜。
It’s a great insight.
这是一个很好的见解。
Viktor, the main character, sort of, one of the main characters in the book, receives a letter from his mother on her way to her death in a Nazi death camp.
主角维克多（Viktor），可以说是书中的主角之一，在他母亲前往纳粹死亡营的路上收到了一封来自她的信。
It’s quite powerful.
这是相当强大的。
It goes on for, I don’t know, 10 pages or so.
我不知道，它有 10 页左右。
One of the best parts of the book, maybe the most moving, yes.
是的，这是这本书中最好的部分之一，也许是最感人的部分。
Grossman writes this, really imagining what his own mother would’ve written had she been able to write to him before her death in the murders of Berdychiv in 1941 that I mentioned earlier.
格罗斯曼写下这篇文章时，实际上是在想象，如果他自己的母亲能够在我之前提到的 1941 年别尔季奇夫被谋杀案中去世之前给他写信的话，她会写些什么。
This is just stunning.
这真是令人惊叹。
Grossman wrote two letters to his mother, his actual mother, after her death.
格罗斯曼在他的母亲，也就是他的亲生母亲去世后，给她写了两封信。
One he wrote nine years after his mother died, and one he wrote 20 years after his mother died, right before his own death, and we have those letters.
一封是他在他母亲去世九年后写的，另一封是他在他母亲去世二十年后，也就是他自己去世之前写的，我们有这些信。
They’re in the back of a collection of Grossman’s we’re going to talk about in a future episode, called The Road, and they’re deeply moving.
它们位于格罗斯曼的一系列作品的后面，我们将在未来的一集《道路》中讨论它们，它们非常感人。
He believed and said — I think in the letters — that his mother would be eternal because of Life and Fate, which makes it even more poignant that at the time of his death, he didn’t know that the book would survive.
他相信并说——“我认为在信中”——他的母亲将因为生命和命运而永恒，这使得更令人心酸的是，在他去世时，他不知道这本书会幸存下来。
But clearly motherhood is a major theme of the book.
但显然，母性是这本书的一个主题。
Sofya’s scene — the doctor in the death camp — is also overwhelming.
索菲亚的场景——《死亡集中营的医生》——也令人震撼。
He clearly was fascinated by maternal love.
显然，他对母爱着迷。
What do you make of the fact that the very final chapter is characters who have no names whatsoever?
你如何看待最后一章中的人物都没有名字这一事实？
That reminds me a bit of the Chekhov story.
这让我想起了契诃夫的故事。
I took that to be, well, in some longer run, none of the particular identities of these individuals will be remembered, that simply the life and fate of humanity goes on, and its people, in essence, without names.
我认为，从长远来看，这些人的具体身份都不会被记住，人类的生活和命运只会继续下去，而其人民本质上是没有名字的。
That’s beautiful.
那好美丽。
I didn’t have any thoughts on that, other than that I was expecting something more dramatic.
我对此没有任何想法，除了我期待更戏剧性的事情。
I like how you’ve made that different.
我喜欢你的改变。
I wondered whether he’d had a chance to really edit the final version before it was confiscated, but I like your ending better.
我想知道他是否有机会在最终版本被没收之前真正编辑它，但我更喜欢你的结局。
I think it’s deliberately not dramatic.
我认为这是故意不戏剧化的。
It’s as far from drama as you can get, in a way.
在某种程度上，它与戏剧相去甚远。
Yes, that’s nice.
是的，那很好。
Stendhal is also mentioned several times, The Charterhouse of Parma, which is a book about war and individual fate, and I strongly suspect all of the literary references have some meaning to Grossman.
司汤达也多次被提及，《帕尔马宪章》，这是一本关于战争和个人命运的书，我强烈怀疑所有的文学参考文献对格罗斯曼都有一定的意义。
There’s Dante and Swift and Homer and Huck Finn, which are all about journeys, and he’s taking us on our journey through this war, through this battle, through Soviet and Nazi life.
但丁、斯威夫特、荷马和哈克·芬，都是关于旅程的，他带领我们踏上这场战争、这场战斗、苏联和纳粹生活的旅程。
I think that’s another way he thought of the book.
我认为这是他看待这本书的另一种方式。
That’s right.
这是正确的。
Dante, with the rungs of hell — obviously, we’re seeing the 20th-century version of the rungs of hell, and so on.
但丁，《地狱之梯》——显然，我们看到的是 20 世纪版本的地狱之梯，等等。
Yes.
是的。
It’s really a nice way to put it.
这确实是一个很好的表达方式。
There’s no clean narrative thread, and it captures the chaos of war that way.
没有清晰的叙事线索，它以这种方式捕捉了战争的混乱。
The characters who move away come back.
离开的角色又回来了。
They’re often homeless.
他们常常无家可归。
They’re thrown out of their own houses.
他们被赶出了自己的房子。
They’re forced to take in a boarder who’s richer than they are, more connected than they are, and they’re pushed into a smaller room in the back.
他们被迫收留比他们更富有、比他们更有人脉的寄宿生，然后他们被推到后面一个更小的房间里。
They leave their family and yearn to come back.
他们离开了家人，渴望回来。
There is this constant theme of journey and home, and everyone in the book is unsettled, not just by the war.
旅途和家园这个永恒的主题，书中的每个人都感到不安，而不仅仅是战争。
Their own emotional journey is troubled.
他们自己的情感历程也遇到了麻烦。
Viktor’s marriage — as Grossman’s marriage was — is deeply complicated.
维克托的婚姻——就像格罗斯曼的婚姻一样——非常复杂。
There’s a lot of betrayal in the book as well, and at the same time, there’s a lot of kindness.
书中有很多背叛，同时也有很多善意。
You say, “maybe the most powerful passage of the book.” There are so many.
你说，“也许是这本书中最有力的一段。”有这么多。
One of my favorite passages — I’m not going to read it, I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s about an act of senseless kindness, an act of kindness that a Russian woman does for a German soldier.
我最喜欢的段落之一——我不会读它，我不想破坏它，但它是关于一种毫无意义的善意行为，一种俄罗斯妇女对德国士兵所做的善意行为。
She actually says out loud to her friends that she can’t explain it.
她实际上对她的朋友大声说她无法解释。
This idea of senseless kindness standing in the universe up against evil — it says that explicitly.
这种毫无意义的善良在宇宙中对抗邪恶的想法——它明确地表达了这一点。
Let me see if I can find this passage.
让我看看能否找到这段文字。
Hang on.
不挂断。
Here it is.
这里是。
He says, “The private kindness of one individual towards another, a petty, thoughtless kindness, an unwitnessed kindness, something we would call senseless kindness, a kindness outside any system of social or religious good, but if we think about it, we realize that this private, senseless, incidental kindness is, in fact, eternal.
他说：“一个人对另一个人的私人善意，是一种琐碎的、轻率的善意，一种未被见证的善意，我们称之为毫无意义的善意，一种在任何社会或宗教善行体系之外的善意，但如果我们仔细思考一下，我们就会意识到，这种私人的、无意义的、偶然的善意实际上是永恒的。
It is extended to everything living, even to a mouse, even to a bent branch that a man straightens as he walks by.”
它延伸到一切生物，甚至是一只老鼠，甚至是一个人走过时伸直的弯曲的树枝。”
That’s another theme of the book.
这是本书的另一个主题。
Even when we might weight evil in its magnitude, dwarfing these small acts, he takes them and he elevates them.
即使我们可能会衡量邪恶的严重性，使这些小行为相形见绌，但他却接受并提升它们。
He makes them shine for us so that, in his view, they’re the whole thing.
他让它们为我们闪耀，所以在他看来，它们就是一切。
Tanner Greer said on Twitter that he thinks kindness is the central theme of the novel.
坦纳·格里尔在推特上表示，他认为善良是小说的中心主题。
There’s also a part on page 283 where Grossman gives what I think is his intellectual, ideological solution to the whole mess, and of course, he cites Chekhov.
第 283 页上还有一部分，格罗斯曼给出了我认为是他对整个混乱局面的智力和意识形态解决方案，当然，他引用了契诃夫。
Let me just read a short part here.
让我在这里读一小部分。
“Chekhov is the bearer of the greatest banner that has been raised in the thousand years of Russian history, the banner of a true, humane, Russian democracy, of Russian freedom, of the dignity of the Russian man.
“契诃夫是俄罗斯千年历史中最伟大旗帜的持有者，这是真正的、人道的俄罗斯民主、俄罗斯自由、俄罗斯人尊严的旗帜。
Our Russian humanism has always been cruel, intolerant, sectarian.”
我们俄罗斯的人文主义一直是残酷的、不宽容的、宗派主义的。”
And he talks about the partisans, the fanatics, and he thinks Tolstoy is also an intolerant fanatic.
他谈到了游击队、狂热分子，他认为托尔斯泰也是一个不宽容的狂热分子。
But Chekhov says, “Let’s put God and all these grand, progressive ideas to one side.
但契诃夫说：“让我们把上帝和所有这些宏伟、进步的想法放在一边。
Let’s begin with man.
我们先从人开始吧。
Let’s be kind and attentive to the individual man.” That, I think, is his bottom line, and that, too, comes from Chekhov.
让我们对每个人都友善和关心。”我认为，这就是他的底线，这也来自契诃夫。
Then he cites Chekhov’s book about prison camp, Sakhalin Island, which is also a fantastic story.
然后他引用了契诃夫关于库页岛战俘营的书，这也是一个奇幻的故事。
What other themes did you want to mention that we haven’t talked about?
您还想提及哪些我们尚未讨论过的主题？
The notion of what people will put up with and how they deal with it, of how they will keep on absorbing indignities.
人们将忍受什么、如何处理、如何继续承受侮辱的概念。
And the set point — you could say it gets reset, and then something else happens and something else happens.
设定点——你可以说它被重置，然后发生了其他事情。
And he’s so psychologically astute in presenting that in a wide variety of settings for different people, whether it’s interrogation, torture, being in the camp, seeing your child suffer.
他在心理上非常敏锐，能够在各种各样的环境中为不同的人呈现这一点，无论是审讯、酷刑、在营地里、看到你的孩子受苦。
It’s one of the hardest things about this novel to read.
这是这本小说最难读的地方之一。
There are so many instances of it, and any one of them is heartbreaking, and you keep on seeing it again and again.
这样的例子有很多，任何一个都令人心碎，而且你会一次又一次地看到它。
I take it you found that hard as well.
我想你也觉得这很难。
Well, it’s funny when you just .
嗯，当你刚刚的时候，这很有趣。
.
。
.
。
I think anyone listening to what we’ve said so far would say, “Boy, this is a depressing book.” Right?
我想任何听过我们到目前为止所说的话的人都会说：“天哪，这是一本令人沮丧的书。”正确的？
It’s about death and war, death under the Nazis, death under the Communists.
这是关于死亡和战争、纳粹统治下的死亡、共产党统治下的死亡。
I did not find it depressing.
我并不觉得这令人沮丧。
I did not find it a dark read.
我不觉得这是一本黑暗的书。
Let me expand on that a little bit, and I want your reaction.
让我详细说明一下，我想听听您的反应。
Yes, people go through horrible things, but one of the themes of the book is the resilience of the human spirit, and he talks about it explicitly in a few places.
是的，人们会经历可怕的事情，但这本书的主题之一是人类精神的韧性，他在几个地方明确地谈到了这一点。
He talks about the desire to live even when you think it’s “hopeless.” He talks about how people do things that are not going to have an impact for months and maybe years, even though they think they’re about to die, but they do them anyway.
他谈到了即使你认为“没有希望”也能活下去的愿望。他谈到人们如何做一些几个月甚至几年都不会产生影响的事情，即使他们认为自己快要死了，但他们还是这么做了。
The human circus or whatever you want to call it, the parade goes on.
人类马戏团或者无论你怎么称呼它，游行仍在继续。
It’s weird to say this.
说这个很奇怪。
I didn’t find it a particularly dark book.
我不觉得这是一本特别黑暗的书。
I was not depressed or down.
我并不沮丧或沮丧。
I found it a nice example of what I talked about with Susan Cain.
我发现这是我与苏珊·凯恩谈论的一个很好的例子。
I found it a very bittersweet book because there’s a lot of life in it.
我发现这是一本苦乐参半的书，因为里面有很多生活。
Do you agree with that?
你同意吗？
I don’t find many things depressing.
我不觉得很多事情令人沮丧。
It is tough to read.
读起来很困难。
I think most ordinary readers — if you just polled them, they would say, “This is depressing.” But that the book itself exists is part of the ultimate reason why it’s not depressing, that the book managed to survive.
我认为大多数普通读者 —— 如果你对他们进行民意调查，他们会说，“这令人沮丧。”但这本书本身的存在是它不令人沮丧的最终原因的一部分，它能够幸存下来。
That’s a testament to some of the negotiable elements in the Soviet system.
这证明了苏联体系中的一些可谈判因素。
Even though they tried to destroy it, you have to wonder, how hard did they try?
尽管他们试图摧毁它，但你不得不想，他们有多努力？
When you read the stories of how it survived, it seems maybe they could have destroyed it if they had truly wanted to.
当你读到它如何幸存下来的故事时，你会发现，如果他们真的想的话，也许他们可以摧毁它。
One thing I’m struck by — the terror reign of Stalin more generally — for all the terrible things he did, he had some modest tendency to protect his geniuses, whether it was Pasternak or Prokofiev or Shostakovich or Grossman.
让我印象深刻的一件事是——“斯大林的恐怖统治更普遍”——尽管他做了所有可怕的事情，但他有某种谦虚的倾向来保护他的天才，无论是帕斯捷尔纳克、普罗科菲耶夫、肖斯塔科维奇还是格罗斯曼。
Those are not the people he killed.
这些人不是他杀的。
Babel was killed, but the geniuses tend to survive, and they’re able to do something, however twisted it may have been, or whatever circuitous path it had to go through to come out and be shown to the public.
巴别塔被杀了，但天才们往往会活下来，他们能够做一些事情，不管它有多么扭曲，或者无论它必须经历什么迂回的道路才能出来并向公众展示。
Maybe Shostakovich is the clearest example of that.
也许肖斯塔科维奇就是最明显的例子。
It’s really interesting.
这真的很有趣。
Obviously, he was ruthless with respect to his political rivals, including people who —
显然，他对他的政治对手是无情的，包括那些——
And just kulaks, right?
只是富农，对吧？
Yes.
是的。
His best friends.
他最好的朋友。
He killed many millions of kulaks.
他杀死了数百万富农。
Yes.
是的。
No, I’m talking about his colleagues from the early days of the revolution.
不，我说的是他革命初期的同事。
He brutally killed them, and as I said earlier, he killed them after having them confess first, which I don’t know if that was gilding the lily or not for him, or if that added to the delight that he found in that.
他残忍地杀了他们，正如我之前所说，他是在让他们先招供之后才杀了他们，我不知道这是否为他锦上添花，或者这是否增加了他从中找到的乐趣。
I don’t know if he protected his geniuses.
我不知道他是否保护了他的天才。
He certainly didn’t generally let them thrive.
他当然不会让他们茁壮成长。
He forced them to conform to his own movement standards.
他强迫他们遵守他自己的行动标准。
On the the chapter on artificial intelligence
关于人工智能的章节
There’s a page.
有一个页面。
We mentioned it when we agreed to do this.
当我们同意这样做时，我们提到了这一点。
It’s page 217, on artificial intelligence.
这是第 217 页，关于人工智能。
What did you make of that?
你对此有何看法？
Oh, I loved it.
哦，我喜欢它。
I don’t agree with every word of it.
我不同意其中的每一个字。
I don’t know if prescient is the right word, but it was eerie.
我不知道“有先见之明”这个词是否正确，但这真是令人毛骨悚然。
It was one of the two most intellectually interesting things in the book for me, as opposed to literary, emotional power.
对我来说，这是书中最有趣的两件事之一，而不是文学和情感力量。
We’ll come back to the second in a second.
我们稍后会回到第二个。
You want to read that passage?
你想读那段话吗？
It’s a great passage.
这是一段很棒的段落。
It’s a whole chapter.
这是一整章。
It’s only a couple of paragraphs.
只有几段。
I’ll read part of it.
我将阅读其中的一部分。
“An electronic machine may carry out mathematical calculations, remember historical facts, play chess, and translate books from one language to another.
“电子机器可以进行数学计算、记住历史事实、下棋以及将书籍从一种语言翻译成另一种语言。
It is able to solve mathematical problems more quickly than man, and its memory is faultless.
它能够比人类更快地解决数学问题，而且它的记忆力也完美无缺。
Is there any limit to progress, to its ability to create machines in the image and likeness of man?
以人类的形象和相似性创造机器的进步和能力是否有任何限制？
It seems that the answer is no.” There’s more, but that’s just the opening part.
看来答案是否定的。”还有更多，但这只是开头部分。
There was, of course, throughout the 1960s, a Soviet obsession with artificial intelligence.
当然，整个 20 世纪 60 年代，苏联一直对人工智能十分痴迷。
We often forget in the West, but they, as a regime, were convinced it was going to be the future.
在西方，我们经常忘记，但他们作为一个政权，坚信这将是未来。
It pops up a great deal in Soviet science fiction.
它在苏联科幻小说中经常出现。
There’s that book about the science city in Siberia that was created by the Soviets.
有一本关于苏联人创建的西伯利亚科学城的书。
There’s a whole chapter in that book about what they were trying to do with AI.
那本书有一整章讲述他们试图用人工智能做什么。
It was one of their top priorities.
这是他们的首要任务之一。
Obviously, they didn’t get very far, but Grossman is showing he was swept up in that mania.
显然，他们并没有走得太远，但格罗斯曼表明他已经陷入了那种狂热之中。
I think what he says on this page is true, except for the memory being faultless.
我认为他在这一页上所说的是真的，除了记忆是完美的。
We know that’s not true.
我们知道那不是真的。
There are still hallucinations.
仍然有幻觉。
Yes — well, today.
是的 —— 好吧，今天。
We’ll get there, maybe.
也许我们会到达那里。
Today.
今天。
He wrote that in probably the late 1950s, sometime in the 1950s.
他大概是在 20 世纪 50 年代末、20 世纪 50 年代的某个时候写的。
You talk about the Soviet interest in AI.
你谈到了苏联对人工智能的兴趣。
There wasn’t much I in AI in those early days.
早期我对人工智能的研究并不多。
He was fascinated, clearly.
显然，他很着迷。
That page doesn’t really change much of the book, if at all.
该页面并没有真正改变本书的大部分内容，如果有的话。
He just threw that in there because he was interested in it, but it gets at —
他只是把它扔在那里，因为他对此感兴趣，但结果是——
Well, I don’t think it’s thrown.
好吧，我不认为它被抛出了。
It’s not thrown in there.
它没有被扔在那里。
It’s there for a reason.
它的存在是有原因的。
Yes, tell me.
是的，告诉我。
Let’s talk about that reason.
我们来谈谈这个原因。
Tell me.
告诉我。
Well, look, the very last sentence on that page, which is its own paragraph: “Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people.” Before that, he’s mentioning that the AI machine would be so large — he didn’t know Moore’s law — that it might take up the entire surface of Earth.
好吧，看，该页上的最后一句话，这是它自己的段落：“法西斯主义消灭了数千万人。”在此之前，他提到人工智能机器将会如此之大——“他不知道摩尔定律”——以至于它可能会占据整个地球表面。
There may not be room for humans on Earth, I think is what he’s saying.
我想他是这么说的，地球上可能没有人类的生存空间。
I think he’s worried about artificial intelligence, and he views it as potentially the new fascism.
我认为他担心人工智能，他认为它可能是新法西斯主义。
That’s how I took the section.
我就是这样选择这个部分的。
No, I think that’s fair.
不，我认为这是公平的。
I think that’s fair.
我认为这是公平的。
He’s saying fascism doesn’t go away.
他说法西斯主义不会消失。
It comes back in many forms.
它以多种形式回归。
There are always forces that could enslave or destroy mankind, and he worried — I’m speculating here — about his own regime’s embrace of the AI program.
总有一些力量可以奴役或毁灭人类，他担心“我在这里推测”他自己的政权对人工智能计划的拥抱。
So, he’s like an early Eliezer.
所以，他就像早期的以利以谢。
Or a worrier about technology.
或者是对技术的担忧。
I think his worries about the analogy he’s making there between fascism and technology, that they enslave us — I don’t think they enslave us the way our phones enslave us, but they have the potential to be a system.
我认为他担心他在法西斯主义和技术之间所做的类比，即它们奴役我们——我不认为它们像手机奴役我们那样奴役我们，但它们有潜力成为一个系统。
I think of the man of system, the Adam Smith quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, this idea that if you have a view of the world that you want to impose on the chessboard of the human experience, you’re going to do some bad things.
我想到了亚当·斯密在《道德情操论》中引用的“系统之人”，这个想法是，如果你想将一种世界观强加于人类经验的棋盘上，你就会做一些坏事。
I take it to be in that spirit.
我认为这是本着这种精神。
Note also the middle paragraph, where he’s talking about humans.
另请注意中间段落，他在其中谈论人类。
He cites, first, childhood memories, and a bit later on, a mother’s tenderness, thoughts of death.
他首先引用了童年的记忆，稍后又引用了母亲的温柔和对死亡的思考。
The main themes of the novel are being echoed by this interlude, where he is contrasting humans to the machine.
这段插曲呼应了小说的主题，他将人类与机器进行了对比。
The machine, for him, eventually becomes all-powerful.
机器对他来说最终变得无所不能。
It becomes a kind of god and can create humans in its image that are in a way superior, and I think he’s terrified by this.
它变成了一种神，可以按照它的形象创造出在某种程度上更优越的人类，我认为他对此感到害怕。
Yes.
是的。
Just like I am a little bit.
就像我有一点点一样。
Fair enough.
很公平。
I didn’t mean to suggest it didn’t belong at all.
我并不是想说它根本不属于。
It’s just a wonderful little interlude.
这只是一个美妙的小插曲。
I think I was overwhelmed by the fact that it seems like most of it could have been written yesterday.
我想我对大部分内容似乎都是昨天写的这一事实感到不知所措。
On fascism and science
关于法西斯主义和科学
The other part that I just was fascinated by was his comparison of fascism to quantum mechanics and the cutting edge of physics.
我着迷的另一部分是他将法西斯主义与量子力学和物理学前沿的比较。
What were your thoughts on that analogy and how .
您对这个类比有何看法以及如何看待。
.
。
.
。
Forgetting this particular example — I want your thoughts on that — but this idea that scientific metaphor and scientific narrative and the way we see our role in the universe doesn’t just affect the progress of science.
忘记这个特殊的例子 ——我想听听你对此的看法——但是科学隐喻和科学叙述以及我们看待自己在宇宙中的角色的方式不仅仅影响科学的进步。
It comes into our culture in all kinds of ways.
它以各种方式进入我们的文化。
That’s a very provocative idea.
这是一个非常具有挑衅性的想法。
I think it’s the same theme.
我认为这是同一个主题。
I read him as basically a humanist, like Chekhov, fairly skeptical about science.
我认为他基本上是一位人文主义者，就像契诃夫一样，对科学相当怀疑。
Viktor, yes, you could say he’s the hero or, certainly, center of the novel, but what ends up happening is, Viktor — this is not too much of a spoiler because we know what did happen — ends up helping Stalin build nuclear weapons, and he can’t be too thrilled by that.
维克托，是的，你可以说他是英雄，或者当然是小说的中心，但最终发生的事情是，维克托 ——这不算太多剧透，因为我们知道发生了什么 ——最终帮助斯大林制造核武器，他对此不会太兴奋。
He may see a positive side that the motherland could be defended against future fascists, but I think he has strongly mixed feelings about that.
他可能看到了可以保卫祖国免受未来法西斯分子侵害的积极一面，但我认为他对此有着强烈的复杂感。
Viktor is co-opted by something that Grossman himself does not quite believe in, and the scientific mentality is part of the problem.
维克托被格罗斯曼本人不太相信的东西所拉拢，科学心态是问题的一部分。
The way science operates in the novel and in this society — there’s more betrayal in science than anywhere else.
科学在小说和这个社会中的运作方式——科学中的背叛比其他任何地方都多。
You’re highly at risk in science.
你在科学领域面临着很高的风险。
I don’t think he feels that’s entirely accidental to science or fully the fault of Communism.
我不认为他认为这完全是科学的偶然或完全是共产主义的错误。
Viktor’s character deals relentlessly and painfully with the ethical dilemmas of being a favored citizen of the state, very similar to In the First Circle, where the characters — they’re in a gulag, but it’s a privileged gulag because they’re doing research that benefits the state, which puts them, as the prisoners, in a very unpleasant ethical situation, which is really the essence of that book.
维克多的角色无情而痛苦地处理着作为国家受青睐的公民的道德困境，这与《第一圈》非常相似，其中的人物 - 他们被关在古拉格中，但这是一个享有特权的古拉格，因为他们正在做有益于国家的研究，这使他们作为囚犯处于非常不愉快的道德境地，这确实是这本书的精髓。
In this case, another thing that Grossman captures, I thought, with such accuracy and lets you feel it, is the exhilaration of scientific discovery.
在这种情况下，我认为格罗斯曼如此准确地捕捉到并让你感受到的另一件事是科学发现的兴奋。
Viktor makes a discovery.
维克托有了一个发现。
The exact nature of it isn’t described, but he’s clearly on the cutting edge.
虽然没有描述其确切性质，但他显然处于最前沿。
And as you say, it may lead to many things, but it’s mainly a theoretical discovery.
正如你所说，它可能会导致很多事情，但它主要是一个理论上的发现。
And there’s an ego part to it, but most of it’s just, he’s just pushed out the frontiers of human knowledge, and it’s an incredible part of the human experience.
其中有一个自我的部分，但大部分只是，他刚刚推出了人类知识的前沿，这是人类经验中令人难以置信的一部分。
He’s so alive after that, and his mood so oscillates with his ability to do that or not do it, depending on whether he’s in a favored status with respect to the regime.
在那之后他就变得如此活跃，他的情绪随着他是否能够这样做而摇摆不定，这取决于他是否处于政权所青睐的地位。
I think that’s just so much more part of his psychological trials and tribulations, the ability to have that freedom or lose it clashing with the pressure the regime puts him under to serve its own purposes.
我认为这更多地是他心理考验和磨难的一部分，拥有或失去自由的能力与政权为实现自己的目的而给他施加的压力相冲突。
That, to me, is an enormous part of his character’s dilemma.
对我来说，这是他的角色陷入困境的一个重要部分。
Grossman’s also writing at a time where many, many intelligent people think science perhaps is about to end the world.
格罗斯曼写作的时候，许多聪明人都认为科学可能即将毁灭世界。
There’s that possibly apocryphal story that some of the people at the RAND Corporation, the decision theorists — not all of them put money into their retirement accounts because they thought it wouldn’t be necessary.
有一个可能是杜撰的故事，兰德公司的一些人，决策理论家，并不是所有人都把钱存入退休账户，因为他们认为没有必要。
A nuclear war would come.
核战争即将到来。
It was an extremely common view amongst the elite.
这是精英阶层中极为普遍的观点。
I think he held a Soviet version of that.
我认为他持有的是苏联版本的。
That pops up in the novel, that yes, you’re rooting for Victor, but there’s something about the logic of what went wrong that can so easily end up being recreated, but at a more destructive level.
小说中突然出现了这一点，是的，你支持维克多，但出了问题的逻辑很容易最终被重新创造，但更具破坏性。
That’s in the background of this novel.
这就是这本小说的背景。
I think it’s another reason why maybe I find it a bit less — heartwarming isn’t the word — but a bit less inspirational than one could otherwise make it out to be.
我认为这是另一个原因，为什么我觉得它有点不那么“温暖”这个词不是“温暖”这个词，而是比人们想象的更不那么鼓舞人心。
Fair enough.
很公平。
We can’t get rid of science.
我们无法摆脱科学。
Grossman himself is never quite reassured about science, and that one page about AI is put in there to tell us that.
格罗斯曼本人对科学从来都不太放心，而其中一页关于人工智能的内容就是为了告诉我们这一点。
That’s nice.
那很好。
I agree with that.
我同意这一点。
That’s very nice, Tyler.
这非常好，泰勒。
He’s got an essay in The Road, which we may talk about in a future episode, where he looks at a painting of Raphael’s called Sistine Madonna.
他在《道路》上发表了一篇文章，我们可能会在以后的剧集中讨论这篇文章，其中他看着拉斐尔的一幅名为《西斯廷圣母》的画作。
In the Sistine Madonna, Mary is holding the baby Jesus and pushing him forward.
在西斯廷圣母像中，玛丽抱着婴儿耶稣并推着他前进。
It’s a very Grossman painting because it’s about a mother’s love for her child and her willingness to put the child in harm’s way.
这是一幅非常格罗斯曼的画作，因为它讲述了一位母亲对孩子的爱，以及她愿意让孩子陷入危险的境地。
There’s a lot more to say about that, but in that essay, Grossman talks explicitly about the hydrogen bomb.
关于这一点还有很多话要说，但在那篇文章中，格罗斯曼明确谈论了氢弹。
This essay was written in 1955, which is about the time, I think, he was writing some of this book.
这篇文章写于 1955 年，我想他就是在那个时候写这本书的一些内容的。
You’re 100 percent right that the potential for human beings to be extinct and destroy themselves is very much in his consciousness.
你百分百正确地认为，人类灭绝和自我毁灭的可能性在他的意识中非常明显。
One thing I’ve been thinking about is the question, to what extent is this a Soviet novel, Jewish novel, Ukrainian novel, or Russian novel?
我一直在思考的一个问题是，这在多大程度上是一部苏联小说、犹太小说、乌克兰小说或俄罗斯小说？
Often, it’s thought of as a Russian novel.
通常，它被认为是一部俄罗斯小说。
I’m not sure how much it is because he’s clearly not ethnic Russian.
我不确定多少钱，因为他显然不是俄罗斯人。
How does the patriotic side of this differ from how a Russian writer would have presented the same?
这其中的爱国主义一面与俄罗斯作家的表达方式有何不同？
I’ve been pondering.
我一直在思考。
I don’t have a clear answer, but that’s another undercurrent in the book, that it’s very subtly not entirely Russian per se.
我没有明确的答案，但这是书中的另一个暗流，它本身并不完全是俄罗斯的。
His Jewishness was not always front and center in his mind.
他的犹太身份并不总是在他的脑海中占据首要位置和中心位置。
He was forced to confront it as the Holocaust arrived, and eventually, as Stalin accused Jewish doctors of trying to kill him.
随着大屠杀的到来，以及最终斯大林指责犹太医生试图杀死他，他被迫面对这个问题。
There’s a strong antisemitic thread in Soviet and Russian life.
苏联和俄罗斯的生活中存在着强烈的反犹太主义倾向。
It’s not a Jewish novel, I don’t think.
我不认为这不是一本犹太小说。
I wouldn’t call it that, but it is written by a Jewish Ukrainian living in a Soviet state with a Russian culture.
我不会这么称呼它，但它是由一位生活在具有俄罗斯文化的苏联国家的犹太乌克兰人写的。
In a certain sense, I think it’s the ultimate Russian novel.
从某种意义上说，我认为这是一部终极的俄罗斯小说。
It’s polyphonic.
这是复调的。
It’s about life and fate.
这是关于生命和命运的。
There are really few things more Russian than that.
确实没有比这更俄罗斯的东西了。
Yet at the same time, he writes as a Jew.
但与此同时，他以犹太人的身份写作。
The Jewish parts of the book are not that many, but he gives you a flavor of what it’s like to live in a place where antisemitism can be openly espoused, and it’s painful for some of the characters.
这本书中关于犹太人的部分并不多，但他让你体验到生活在一个可以公开支持反犹太主义的地方的感觉，这对一些角色来说是痛苦的。
They try to hide their Jewishness at times.
他们有时试图隐藏自己的犹太身份。
Of course, we have the Shoah, the Nazi, the Holocaust going on at the same time.
当然，大屠杀、纳粹、大屠杀同时发生。
An editor might have said to him, “The book’s got a lot in it already.
编辑可能会对他说：“这本书已经包含了很多内容。
Do you need to put that in?” But he did.
需要把它放进去吗？”但他做到了。
He did need to put that in.
他确实需要把它放进去。
So, that’s a good question, Tyler.
所以，这是个好问题，泰勒。
It strikes me as more Jewish than you’re making it out to be.
我觉得它比你想象的更像犹太人。
Why?
为什么？
Not in the religious sense —
不是宗教意义上的 ——
No.
不。
— but the notion of how tragedy is possible and how tragedy can befall you in quite arbitrary ways, or the sudden twists and turns of fate, come very much from the Hebrew Bible, I think.
——但我认为，关于悲剧如何可能发生、悲剧如何以任意的方式降临到你身上，或者命运的突然曲折的观念，很大程度上来自希伯来圣经。
He probably was aware of that.
他大概也意识到了这一点。
Oh, for sure.
哦，当然。
But he must have been brought up learning it.
但他肯定是从小就学习这个的。
For me, it’s a highly Jewish novel.
对我来说，这是一部高度犹太化的小说。
Not only, by any means.
不仅如此，无论如何。
It’s a universal novel above everything else.
这是一部高于一切的普遍小说。
It’s interesting to me.
这对我来说很有趣。
My wife, Natasha, a Jew from the Soviet Union — this and Master and Margarita are her two favorite novels.
我的妻子娜塔莎是一位来自苏联的犹太人——这本书和《师父》和《玛格丽特》是她最喜欢的两本小说。
That she so much relates to this — it tells me something, because she’s uneasy with a lot of what you might call purely Russian fiction, including Tolstoy.
她与此有如此多的联系——这告诉了我一些事情，因为她对很多你可能称之为纯俄罗斯小说的东西感到不安，包括托尔斯泰。
Very uneasy with Tolstoy.
对托尔斯泰很不安。
It’s only one data point, but worth thinking about.
这只是一个数据点，但值得思考。
That’s interesting.
那很有意思。
I was going to say, when you talked about the twists and turns, that makes it more of a Yiddish novel.
我想说，当你谈到曲折时，这使它更像是一部意第绪语小说。
Of course, Pale of Settlement.
当然，苍白的结算。
It wasn’t written in Yiddish, but there’s a certain .
它不是用意第绪语写的，但有一定的意义。
.
。
.
。
I’ll say it a different way to take it a little more seriously.
我会用不同的方式来更认真地对待它。
There’s a certain fatalism in Jewish fate, a feeling that we are endlessly the punching bags of the rest of the world, and that is our fate.
犹太人的命运有某种宿命论，感觉我们永远是世界其他地方的出气筒，这就是我们的命运。
Obviously, we’re living in a moment where the world’s a little different, with the current situation in Israel.
显然，我们生活在一个世界与以色列目前的情况有所不同的时刻。
But I think the characters in Life and Fate obviously do feel that they are beleaguered.
但我认为《生命》和《命运》中的人物显然确实感到自己陷入了困境。
There’s a certain Yiddish flavor to that that I can’t explain.
有一种我无法解释的意第绪语风味。
Also, consider the Book of Job.
另外，请考虑一下《约伯记》。
Who can, himself or herself, actually defend what he or she has done in the eyes of God is another underlying theme in this book.
谁能够亲自捍卫自己在上帝眼中所做的事情，这是本书的另一个基本主题。
Is it Victor in fact?
真的是维克多吗？
Not entirely clear, even though he’s the center, mostly a sympathetic character.
还不完全清楚，尽管他是中心人物，而且大多是一个富有同情心的角色。
Who really is doing right under the eyes of God is highly unclear, I think, in Life and Fate.
我认为，在《生命与命运》中，谁真正在上帝的眼皮底下做事是非常不清楚的。
Oh, I agree, but we shouldn’t mislead readers.
哦，我同意，但是我们不应该误导读者。
There’s very little God in this book.
这本书里上帝很少。
He doesn’t mention God a lot.
他很少提到上帝。
God looms over the book to some extent, indirectly, implicitly, but what it means to be a human being and to live a life that is defensible, whether it’s to God or to your friends or to whomever, is a central part of this book.
上帝在某种程度上间接地、含蓄地笼罩在这本书中，但是作为一个人以及过一种可以辩护的生活意味着什么，无论是对上帝、对你的朋友还是对任何人来说，都是这本书的核心部分。
Grossman himself — again, no spoilers here, but look up Grossman’s entries in Wikipedia or articles that had been written about him.
格罗斯曼本人——再次强调，这里不剧透，但可以在维基百科中查找格罗斯曼的条目或有关他的文章。
There’s a nice article in 2006 in The New Yorker by Keith Gessen.
2006 年，Keith Gessen 在《纽约客》上发表了一篇不错的文章。
Grossman himself did some things he was deeply ashamed of.
格罗斯曼本人也做了一些让他深感羞愧的事情。
He was ashamed, I think, as far as we know, that he didn’t get his mother out of Berdychiv and that she’d perished there at the hands of the Nazis in 1941.
据我们所知，我认为他感到羞愧，因为他没有把他的母亲从别尔季奇夫救出来，而她却在 1941 年死于纳粹之手。
He does sign some things publicly that benefit the regime that he, I think, regrets, and Victor goes through very similar throes of conscience.
他确实公开签署了一些有利于政权的东西，我认为他对此感到遗憾，而维克多也经历了非常相似的良心痛苦。
Let me talk a bit about how I read this book, which was extremely absorbing, highly worthwhile, but it was tough.
我来谈谈我是如何读这本书的，这本书非常吸引人，非常有价值，但是很难。
One thing I did that helped more than anything else was an extensive use of large language models, in particular, the o1 version of GPT.
我做的最有帮助的一件事是广泛使用大型语言模型，特别是 GPT 的 o1 版本。
Whenever I would come across a name and not feel I had a full command of what that person had done, I would just ask GPT, “Give me the account of what this person did in the book.”
每当我遇到一个名字，但感觉自己不能完全掌握那个人所做的事情时，我就会问 GPT，“给我描述一下这个人在书中做了什么。”
I did that dozens of times.
我这样做了几十次。
As you mentioned, many characters.
正如你提到的，有很多角色。
I didn’t catch any hallucinations, actually.
事实上，我没有出现任何幻觉。
It was extremely useful.
这非常有用。
I don’t think I could have read the book nearly as well as I read it without doing that.
如果不这样做，我想我不可能读得那么好。
Interestingly, there’s one character where it just failed.
有趣的是，有一个角色刚刚失败了。
It delivered for me dozens of times, but when I asked it about Vera, like, “Tell me the story of Vera,” it just gave me back, “Oh, I’m a large language model.
它为我提供了数十次信息，但当我向它询问有关 Vera 的信息时，比如“告诉我 Vera 的故事”，它只是回答我：“哦，我是一个大型语言模型。
I don’t know who Vera is.
我不知道维拉是谁。
Check your other sources.” I don’t know why, but other than that, it was flawless and highly useful.
检查你的其他来源。”我不知道为什么，但除此之外，它完美无缺，而且非常有用。
Well, she doesn’t get a lot of air time, and she isn’t written about a lot.
好吧，她的播出时间不多，也没有太多报道。
It might have had trouble finding any kind of references to her.
可能很难找到任何有关她的资料。
As you point out, she plays a very powerful, symbolic role, but she doesn’t take up a lot of pages.
正如你所指出的，她扮演了一个非常强大的、具有象征意义的角色，但她并没有占据很多篇幅。
I mentioned the essay a minute ago, “The Sistine Madonna.” I asked ChatGPT what it was about, and it totally got it wrong.
我刚才提到了这篇文章，《西斯廷圣母》。我问 ChatGPT 这是关于什么的，它完全搞错了。
It said it was about beauty and art.
它说这是关于美和艺术的。
It is not what it is about at all.
这根本不是它的目的。
Claude got it right exactly, which is maybe neither here nor there other than it’s good to have, sometimes, two LLMs to ask questions of.
克劳德说得完全正确，这也许不在这里也不在那里，但有时有两个法学硕士可以问问题是件好事。
I found my reading of the book was very inconsistent.
我发现我对这本书的阅读非常不一致。
I struggled in the early pages, as I’ve mentioned, to get my momentum going.
正如我所提到的，我在前几页中努力保持动力。
When I read Brothers Karamazov, I read it over a fairly long period of time, but the last 300 or 400 pages I read in a couple days because it’s such a page-turner.
当我读《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》时，我读了相当长的一段时间，但最后的300或400页我是在几天内读完的，因为它太引人入胜了。
This book is not a page-turner.
这本书不是一本引人入胜的书。
As I said, you might get discouraged, but I found myself more, if I may say so, engrossed in it, engrossed in a Grossman novel.
正如我所说，你可能会感到沮丧，但如果我可以这么说的话，我发现自己更加全神贯注于其中，全神贯注于格罗斯曼的小说。
There’s almost no or very little narrative suspense.
几乎没有或很少有叙事悬念。
We know how the Battle of Stalingrad turns out.
我们知道斯大林格勒战役的结果如何。
The tide turns.
潮流发生转变。
I found it interesting that Novikoff, I think, is part of the lead tank group going into Ukraine.
我发现有趣的是，诺维科夫是进入乌克兰的先头坦克大队的一部分。
He’s very excited to reclaim Ukraine for the Soviets and take it back from the Germans.
他非常高兴能为苏联夺回乌克兰并从德国手中夺回它。
It was a slightly eerie shadow of the current moment, but I just kept going.
这是当前时刻的一个有点令人毛骨悚然的阴影，但我只是继续前进。
One of my followers on Twitter .
我在 Twitter 上的一位关注者。
.
。
.
。
I apologize to you because this is such a good joke, and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes that don’t have it.
我向你道歉，因为这是一个很好的笑话，我们会在没有它的节目笔记中放置一个链接。
But when I said, “We’re reading this book.
但当我说：“我们正在读这本书。
You should get started.
你应该开始了。
It’s going to air soon,” he wrote back, “I’m on page 12, and all the characters are named Stroganoff.
很快就要播出了，”他回复道，“我在第 12 页，所有角色都叫斯特罗加诺夫。
I need more time.” The names are hard.
我需要更多时间。”名字都很难。
The names are tough.
这些名字都很难。
The names are hard.
名字都很难。
Here’s the other thing I did, and this was difficult, but once I finished it, the next day, I started over again at page 1 and reread the whole thing.
这是我做的另一件事，这很困难，但是当我完成它后，第二天，我从第一页重新开始并重新阅读整件事。
I’m a big advocate of doing that.
我是这样做的大力倡导者。
I realized I had understood very little of the first 200 or 300 pages the first time I read it.
我意识到第一次读这本书时，我对前 200 或 300 页的内容了解甚少。
Not that I didn’t understand the words, but I didn’t understand how any of it fit into the story.
并不是我听不懂这些话，而是我不明白这些话是如何融入故事的。
I don’t think you can.
我认为你不能。
It’s not a question of if I’d been a better reader or had paid more attention or had been less distracted by the dog.
问题不在于我是否是一个更好的读者，或者是否更加集中注意力，或者是否较少被狗分心。
I just think many books — the best thing you do is read them twice directly in a row.
我只是认为很多书 ——你做的最好的事情就是直接连续读两遍。
As you get to the latter third of the book, actually, probably you could stop it.
事实上，当你读到本书的后三分之一时，你可能可以停下来。
You don’t have to reread the last third, but certainly the first half, you just have to do it again.
你不必重读后三分之一，但当然前半部分，你只需要再读一遍。
I read this version.
我读过这个版本。
I’m holding this up for YouTubers.
我为 YouTube 用户保留了这个。
Me too.
我也是。
Same.
相同的。
Same print, same publisher.
相同的印刷品，相同的出版商。
It’s New York Review Books Press, who issued a lot of Grossman.
纽约书评出版社出版了很多格罗斯曼的书。
It’s about 872 pages.
大约有 872 页。
We haven’t actually mentioned that.
我们实际上还没有提到这一点。
It’s really long.
真的很长。
I should also mention, there’s a prequel which was issued initially under the title For Just Cause, that you can read in English under the title of Stalingrad, which is confusing because Life and Fate, people say, is about Stalingrad.
我还应该提到，有一部前传最初是以《正当理由》为标题发行的，你可以在《斯大林格勒》的标题下阅读英文版，这很令人困惑，因为人们说《生命与命运》是关于斯大林格勒的。
He wrote a book called Stalingrad in English, anyway.
无论如何，他用英文写了一本叫做《斯大林格勒》的书。
It’s also about 900 pages.
它也有大约900页。
I may read that next.
接下来我可能会读到这一点。
It’s funny, when I finished the book, I had the exact same urge.
有趣的是，当我读完这本书时，我也有同样的冲动。
I’m not a re-reader the way you are, Tyler.
我不像你那样重读，泰勒。
I thought, “I want to read this again, and I want to do justice to it.” I felt a certain ethical virtue in honoring this man who had written this book and to give it even a second reading, but I felt, well, I should read The Road — this collection of shorter pieces that he wrote — in preparation for our conversation.
我想：“我想再读一遍，我想公正地对待它。”我觉得向这位写这本书的人表示敬意并再读一遍是有某种道德美德的，但我觉得，好吧，我应该读一下《路》——他写的这本较短的作品集——为我们的谈话做准备。
But I wanted to read it again.
但我想再读一遍。
I will.
我会。
I hope I will read it again.
我希望我能再读一遍。
The great, great novels from the ’20s — there’s Thomas Mann, there’s Proust through James Joyce from around that time.
20 年代最伟大的小说——有托马斯·曼 (Thomas Mann)，有那个时期的普鲁斯特 (Proust) 到詹姆斯·乔伊斯 (James Joyce)。
I think it’s hard to compare this to those, but if you think of the somewhat latter part of the 20th century, this has a claim to be the best novel of a very, very important century.
我认为很难将这本书与其他小说进行比较，但如果你想想 20 世纪后半叶，这本书可以说是一个非常非常重要的世纪中最好的小说。
It’s remarkable how few people know it.
值得注意的是，很少有人知道这一点。
I wouldn’t say it’s a page-turner, but I never lost interest, I would say that, not once.
我不会说这是一本引人入胜的书，但我从来没有失去兴趣，我想说，一次都没有。
I was never thinking, “If I wasn’t doing this podcast with Russ, would I keep on going?” Just was never a question, so in that sense, it was a page-turner for me.
我从来没有想过，“如果我不和 Russ 一起做这个播客，我会继续做下去吗？”只是从来都不是一个问题，所以从这个意义上说，这对我来说是一个引人入胜的故事。
I want to make sure I say this, Tyler.
我想确保我这样说，泰勒。
I’m very grateful you agreed to do this because, I think the quote is from William F.
我非常感谢您同意这样做，因为我认为这句话来自 William F.
Buckley.
巴克利。
I want to say it’s Moby-Dick.
我想说这是《白鲸》。
I might get it wrong.
我可能会弄错。
He read it late in life, and he said it would’ve made him really sad to have died without reading this book.
他在晚年读到了这本书，他说如果没有读过这本书就去世了，他会感到非常难过。
That’s the way I feel about Life and Fate.
这就是我对生命和命运的感受。
I feel it would’ve been a loss for me not to have finished it.
我觉得如果不完成它对我来说是一种损失。
I read the book in a very strange way, by the way.
顺便说一句，我以一种非常奇怪的方式读这本书。
I read it both on my phone and on my Kindle app, where I highlighted profusely.
我在手机和 Kindle 应用程序上阅读了这本书，并在其中大量强调了内容。
Then I read it on Shabbat, on the Jewish Sabbath, when I couldn’t use my Kindle, and I read the paper version.
然后我在安息日读了它，在犹太安息日，当我无法使用我的 Kindle 时，我读了纸质版本。
You can see where I bent down page corners.
你可以看到我把页角向下弯曲的地方。
I’m holding this up for YouTube watchers.
我为 YouTube 观看者保留了这个。
I bent down page corners thinking, naively, I would go back and re-highlight those in the Kindle version because they were so good.
我弯下页角天真地想，我会回去重新突出 Kindle 版本中的内容，因为它们太棒了。
It’s a compulsion I have.
这是我的强迫症。
It doesn’t really make sense.
这确实没有意义。
I’m glad I read it both ways.
我很高兴我以两种方式阅读它。
They were both helpful.
他们都很乐于助人。
Did you ever get in touch with Robert Chandler, the translator?
您与翻译罗伯特·钱德勒联系过吗？
I did.
我做到了。
What did you learn?
你学到了什么？
He’s scheduled to appear on this program shortly.
他计划很快出现在这个节目中。
I want to talk to him about two things.
我想和他谈两件事。
I want to talk to him about The Road, which he edited.
我想和他谈谈他编辑的《路》。
He translated it and edited it.
他翻译并编辑了它。
I also want to talk to him about the art of translation.
我还想和他谈谈翻译的艺术。
Obviously, we’ll talk a little bit about Life and Fate in passing.
显然，我们会顺便谈谈生命和命运。
I’ll put an ad in for The Road.
我会在《The Road》中投放广告。
The Road has short stories by Grossman.
《路上》收录了格罗斯曼的短篇小说。
It has his remarkable essay on Treblinka.
其中有他关于特雷布林卡的精彩文章。
It’s about a 40-, 50-page essay on entering Treblinka.
这是一篇 40、50 页的关于进入特雷布林卡的文章。
He was the first journalist to enter a death camp.
他是第一个进入死亡集中营的记者。
That’s a must-read for anyone.
这对任何人来说都是必读的。
It’s an incredible, incredible essay.
这是一篇令人难以置信、令人难以置信的文章。
The short stories are really lovely.
短篇小说真的很可爱。
The short story of “The Road” is from the perspective of a donkey, which is interesting.
《路》这个短篇故事是从驴子的角度出发的，很有趣。
Tolstoy wrote a wonderful short story called “Pacesetter” that is life from the perspective of a horse.
托尔斯泰写了一篇精彩的短篇小说，名叫《标兵》，这是一匹马的生活。
I assume Grossman was riffing on that in some way.
我认为格罗斯曼以某种方式重复了这一点。
This idea that this dumb — meaning mute — creature, that its observations of the human being might be more accurate than our own and give us insight, is really a beautiful idea.
这种“哑巴”——“哑巴”——“生物”的想法，它对人类的观察可能比我们自己的更准确，并给我们洞察力，这确实是一个美丽的想法。
It’s also peppered with lovely pieces from Chandler, with biographical detail.
它还充满了钱德勒的可爱作品，带有传记细节。
I can’t imagine what it was like to — I’ll ask him — but to translate a book of this size, which, of course, Russian translators are doing this all day long.
我无法想象‘——‘我去问他’——‘但是翻译一本这么大的书会是什么样子，当然，俄语翻译人员整天都在这样做。
Constance Garnett and others are translating very large books from a very different language.
康斯坦斯·加内特和其他人正在用一种截然不同的语言翻译非常大的书籍。
It must be a fascinating experience.
这一定是一次令人着迷的经历。
I’m sure it took longer to translate than it took me to read it, so I’ll be interested.
我确信翻译花费的时间比我阅读它花费的时间更长，所以我会感兴趣。
I want you to ask him, how funny is the book in Russian?
我想让你问他，这本书的俄语有多有趣？
In English, it’s basically not funny, but I hear my wife tell jokes in Russian to her friends all the time.
用英语来说，基本上不好笑，但我经常听到我妻子用俄语给她的朋友讲笑话。
Everyone laughs.
大家都笑了。
I get an English translation; it’s not funny.
我得到一份英文翻译；这不好笑。
I suspect the joke, in fact, was funny.
我怀疑这个笑话实际上很有趣。
The Russian jokes don’t translate well.
俄语笑话翻译得不太好。
That’s what I want you to ask him.
这就是我想让你问他的问题。
Will do.
会做。
Another thought I had on the question of how is this not quite a Russian novel though it’s in the Russian language.
我的另一个想法是，尽管它是俄语的，但它怎么不完全是一部俄罗斯小说。
If I think of Tolstoy a lot in Russian culture — he even says this about Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Scriabin — it’s fanatical of different sorts.
如果我在俄罗斯文化中经常想起托尔斯泰——他甚至这样评价托尔斯泰、陀思妥耶夫斯基、斯克里亚宾——那就是不同类型的狂热。
Obviously, Bolsheviks were fanatical, and this novel is extremely anti-fanatical.
显然，布尔什维克是狂热的，而这部小说是极其反狂热的。
It’s like Montaigne in France.
就像法国的蒙田。
It’s like Chekhov is his model for how to be an anti-fanatic.
就像契诃夫是他如何成为反狂热分子的典范一样。
So part of what he’s doing, I think, is trying to retell Tolstoy, but from a humanist, anti-fanatical point of view.
因此，我认为，他所做的部分工作是试图从人文主义、反狂热的角度重述托尔斯泰。
I feel a certain fanaticism about, certainly, Solzhenitsyn, certainly about Dostoevsky.
当然，我对索尔仁尼琴、陀思妥耶夫斯基有某种狂热。
I can think of a few things that are fanatical about Tolstoy.
我能想到一些关于托尔斯泰的狂热的事情。
What comes to mind?
我想到了什么？
Well, his views on everything were extreme.
嗯，他对一切的看法都很极端。
It’s true.
这是真的。
Beethoven, Shakespeare, religion, property.
贝多芬、莎士比亚、宗教、财产。
It’s hard to think of a more fanatical human being.
很难想象还有比这更狂热的人了。
Sex, God, marriage.
性、上帝、婚姻。
It’s true.
这是真的。
It’s true.
这是真的。
He’d make a great podcast guest, but where would you even start?
他会成为一位出色的播客嘉宾，但你会从哪里开始呢？
Dostoevsky, clearly a fanatic from the biography, from his works.
从传记和作品来看，陀思妥耶夫斯基显然是一位狂热分子。
If you read Armenian Sketchbook, which is also a great short book to read by him, he just seems so much not a fanatic.
如果你读过《亚美尼亚素描书》，这也是他写的一本很棒的短书，你会发现他看起来并不是一个狂热分子。
That’s the most inspiring thing for me about this novel, that you can be, for him, committed to principles and morality and not be fanatic.
这本小说对我来说最鼓舞人心的一点是，对他来说，你可以坚守原则和道德，而不是狂热。
He’s pulling that from Chekhov.
他是从契诃夫那里学来的。
When you’re from the smaller part of the empire you’re probably going to be less fanatical.
当你来自帝国的较小部分时，你可能不会那么狂热。
It’s a bit like Americans and Canadians, perhaps.
也许有点像美国人和加拿大人。
That, to me, really shone through in Life and Fate, the anti-fanaticism.
对我来说，这在《生命与命运》中真正体现了反狂热主义。
Let me ask you a personal question.
让我问你一个私人问题。
I really like that, by the way.
顺便说一句，我真的很喜欢这样。
It’s a certain detachment, is the way I would describe it.
这是一种某种超然的态度，我是这样描述的。
His anti-fanaticism takes the form of a detachment of the observer who hovers over his characters and describes them calmly without overdoing it.
他的反狂热主义采取了一种超然的观察者的形式，他们盘旋在他的人物上方，平静地描述他们，但又不过分。
I’m less fanatical than when I was younger.
我不像年轻时那么狂热了。
Would that be true of you?
你也是这样吗？
Of course.
当然。
It’s true for almost everyone.
这对几乎每个人来说都是如此。
Is it?
是吗？
Especially if you have libertarian roots.
尤其是如果你有自由主义根源的话。
No, it’s not true of almost everyone.
不，并非几乎所有人都是如此。
But if you have libertarian roots, you either go crazy or you become less extreme, right?
但如果你有自由主义根源，你要么会发疯，要么会变得不那么极端，对吗？
What do you mean, “right”?
你说的“对”是什么意思？
Expand.
扩张。
We each know some people who just went crazy, often in non-libertarian directions.
我们每个人都认识一些刚刚发疯的人，通常是朝着非自由主义的方向发疯。
Some of them become, oddly enough, fans of Putin, while we’re on the Russian topic, or they just stop believing in scientific argument and discourse.
奇怪的是，当我们谈论俄罗斯话题时，他们中的一些人变成了普京的粉丝，或者他们只是不再相信科学论证和话语。
The saner thing to do — and you see this with many people from the progressive left as well — is just to become more moderate, more uncertain, to have better epistemic practices and take a broader swathe of history more seriously, and I think Grossman is doing that.
更明智的做法是变得更加温和、更加不确定，拥有更好的认知实践，更认真地对待更广泛的历史，我认为格罗斯曼正在这样做。
How much of history he’s taking seriously, not just the one point in front of his eyes, the Battle of Stalingrad, but the AI section — whether you agree or not, he’s looking to the future.
他对历史有多少重视，不仅仅是眼前的斯大林格勒战役，还有人工智能部分——无论你同意与否，他都在展望未来。
He’s definitely looking for the Russian and Soviet past as well, the Ukrainian past, Jewish history, the Hebrew Bible.
他肯定也在寻找俄罗斯和苏联的过去、乌克兰的过去、犹太历史、希伯来圣经。
It’s spanning a lot.
它涉及很多。
That’s one reason why I think it’s epistemically pretty non- or anti-fanatical and pretty rational.
这就是为什么我认为它在认识上相当非或反狂热并且相当理性的原因之一。
I have a couple fanaticisms.
我有一些狂热。
I’ve got my libertarian flavor and my religious observance.
我有我的自由主义风格和我的宗教信仰。
They’ve both become tempered in some dimension as I’ve gotten older.
随着我年龄的增长，他们在某种程度上都变得更加温和。
I don’t think it’s to avoid insanity, by the way.
顺便说一句，我不认为这是为了避免疯狂。
It wasn’t why you did it, but if you hadn’t done it —
这不是你这么做的原因，但如果你没有这么做 ——
Maybe, but I’m curious —
也许吧，但我很好奇 ——
The people who don’t do it can just get worse, right?
不这样做的人只会变得更糟，对吗？
I’m curious why you think that is.
我很好奇你为什么这么认为。
I don’t think it’s true, by the way.
顺便说一句，我认为这不是真的。
You did suggest it might not be.
你确实建议它可能不是。
It’s not obvious to me that people get less fanatic as they get older.
对我来说，随着年龄的增长，人们的狂热程度并不明显。
In fact, supposedly as people get older — it’s not my personal experience; I’m grateful for that — but a lot of people, when they get older, just get crankier, and they get more obsessed with their obsessions, more fanatical about their fanaticisms.
事实上，据说随着人们变老——这不是我个人的经历；这是我的经历。我对此很感激——但是很多人随着年龄的增长，变得更加暴躁，他们更加沉迷于自己的痴迷，更加狂热于自己的狂热。
I think I’ve been spared that.
我想我已经幸免了。
But why do you think that happens?
但你认为为什么会发生这种情况？
I think I should have said it’s a bimodal distribution, that you go one way or another.
我想我应该说这是一种双峰分布，你可以采取这样或那样的方式。
Look at it this way: In the simplest Bayesian model, your views should be a random walk, that the recent evolution of your views shouldn’t predict where you’ll end up tomorrow.
这样看：在最简单的贝叶斯模型中，你的观点应该是随机游走，你的观点的最近演变不应该预测你明天的最终结果。
But that’s not the case, really, with anyone that I’ve ever met.
但实际上，我见过的任何人都不是这样的。
There’s some kind of trend in your views.
你的观点有某种趋势。
You’re either getting more fanatical, getting more moderate, getting more religious, more or less something.
你要么变得更加狂热，要么变得更加温和，要么变得更加虔诚，或多或少有些东西。
And that, to me, is one of the most interesting facts about human belief, is how hard it is to find belief as a random walk.
对我来说，关于人类信仰最有趣的事实之一是，找到随机游走的信仰是多么困难。
So, what’s wrong with all of us?
那么，我们大家到底出了什么问题呢？
If you’re getting more moderate all the time, that’s wrong too.
如果你一直变得更加温和，那也是错误的。
That’s a funny kind of, you could say, almost fanaticism, where you ought to say, “Well, I see the trend so I’m just going to leap to where I ought to be.” Then the next day, maybe 50 percent chance I’ll take a step back toward being more dogmatic or less moderate.
这是一种有趣的，你可以说，近乎狂热，你应该说，“好吧，我看到了趋势，所以我要跳到我应该去的地方。”然后第二天，也许有 50% 的机会我会退一步，变得更加教条或者不那么温和。
But again, that’s not what we see from the moderates either.
但同样，这也不是我们从温和派身上看到的。
I wonder how much of it is the fact that it’s really convenient to have a system, gives you something to shove into the box.
我想知道有多少是因为拥有一个系统真的很方便，可以给你一些可以塞进盒子里的东西。
You’ve got this black box that you take the world’s events and you’ve decided how they should be processed.
你有一个黑匣子，可以记录世界上发生的事件，并决定如何处理它们。
Then something new comes along, and you know how to deal with that because you’ve got this box; you’ve got all these great examples from the past.
然后新的东西出现了，你知道如何处理它，因为你有这个盒子；你已经得到了过去所有这些伟大的例子。
At some point for me, I just started thinking that maybe the box doesn’t work all the time.
对我来说，在某个时刻，我开始思考也许这个盒子并不总是有效。
I think a lot of people love the box.
我想很多人都喜欢这个盒子。
It’s a great source of comfort, whether it’s religion or ideology or other things.
无论是宗教、意识形态还是其他事物，它都是安慰的重要来源。
Maybe there’s just something peculiar about me.
也许我身上有一些奇怪的东西。
When you’re younger, certainty is deeply comforting because the world’s a bit too complicated to deal with.
当你年轻的时候，确定性会让人深感安慰，因为世界有点太复杂而难以应对。
It still is, but I’m just less certain.
现在仍然如此，但我只是不太确定。
There’s also a more charitable interpretation of what you’re describing.
对于你所描述的内容，还有一种更友善的解释。
Think of yourself as working through problems, which is fine.
认为自己正在解决问题，这很好。
Working through problems takes some time.
解决问题需要一些时间。
You can’t every day pick up a new problem.
你不可能每天都会遇到新问题。
The problems you’re working through as you — I wouldn’t say solve them, but as you somewhat make progress on them — that’s going to give you some persistence in the deltas of how your beliefs change.
当你正在解决的问题 ——我不会说解决它们，但是当你在这些问题上取得一定进展时 —— 这会让你在信念改变的过程中保持一定的坚持。
I’m not sure — the pure Bayesian model might just be wrong.
我不确定——纯贝叶斯模型可能是错误的。
It’s so far from actual human practice.
这与人类的实际实践相去甚远。
Maybe we shouldn’t just damn humans for not meeting it, but realize there are structures to how you work through things, and they are going to imply certain trends that go on for periods of time.
也许我们不应该仅仅因为人类没有满足它而诅咒人类，而应该意识到你如何处理事物是有结构的，它们将暗示某些持续一段时间的趋势。
Want to say anything else about this book, about will it persist with you?
还想对这本书说点什么，关于它会持续存在吗？
Will you think about it?
你会考虑一下吗？
I’ve had a number of the stories and vignettes I think will stick with me for a long, long time.
我有很多故事和小插曲，我认为这些故事和小插曲会伴随我很长一段时间。
Many, many of them that I loved, I did not talk about.
很多很多我喜欢的人，但我没有谈论。
Listener, you will have to read them for yourself and make your own list.
听众，你必须自己阅读它们并列出你自己的清单。
But this book will haunt me.
但这本书会困扰我。
Part of it’s because I’m reading it recently.
部分原因是我最近在读它。
I’m not haunted by a lot of the books I read when I was younger because I’ve forgotten most of the haunting parts, and I read this recently.
我年轻时读过的很多书并没有让我感到困扰，因为我已经忘记了大部分令人难以忘怀的部分，而我最近读了这本书。
It’s quite an achievement in that way, I think.
我认为从这方面来说这是一项相当大的成就。
It will last with me.
它将伴随我一生。
Do you want to add anything else?
您还想添加其他内容吗？
You’re living under wartime conditions in a way that I am not.
你们生活在战时条件下，而我则不然。
I would just say my reading opportunity costs are very high for me to read an 872-page book twice in a row and be glad I did it.
我想说的是，我的阅读机会成本非常高，因为我连续读了一本 872 页的书，并且很高兴自己这么做了。
There’s no higher endorsement I can give to a novel than that.
我对一本小说没有比这更高的认可了。
My guest today has been Tyler Cowen.
今天我的客人是泰勒·考恩。
Tyler, thanks for being part of EconTalk.
泰勒，感谢您参与 EconTalk。
Russ, thank you for thinking of me for this and thinking I might be crazy enough to actually do it.
拉斯，谢谢你为这件事想到我，并认为我可能会疯狂到真正做到这一点。
It’s been a great, great pleasure, both the reading and the chatting with you.
阅读和与您聊天都是一种非常非常愉快的感觉。
Ditto.
同上。