Joseph Luzzi on Finding Inspiration Through His Mother’s Storytelling
My career as a writer—and life writ large—took a dramatic turn when I received a contract to write My Two Italies in 2011, my first book for general readers and a swerve from the more academic work I had done till then.
2011 年，当我收到撰写《我的两个意大利》的合同时，我的作家生涯（以及更广泛的生活）发生了戏剧性的转变，这是我的第一本面向普通读者的书，也是我迄今为止所做的更多学术工作的一个转变。
I was initially planning to a write a cultural history of Italy, culminating in the turbulent Berlusconi era.
我最初计划写一部意大利的文化史，最终在动荡的贝卢斯科尼时代达到顶峰。
Neither I nor my editor was sure exactly what form the book would take: the contract even listed the work as untitled.
我和我的编辑都不确定这本书会采取什么形式：合同甚至将作品列为无标题。
I had reams of material on Italy that I had gathered as a student, scholar, and teacher.
我有大量关于意大利的材料，这些材料是我作为学生、学者和老师收集的。
But I was missing the engine that could move along this bulk of information.
但我缺少可以传输大量信息的引擎。
So I struggled.
所以我挣扎着。
Weeks, months passed, and still I had no book, no narrative center.
几周、几个月过去了，我仍然没有书，没有叙事中心。
Then one day I went to the Bard library, punching the metaphysical clock once again for work on this unborn book, and as so often happens to me when I am in a comfortable space surrounded by books…I fell asleep.
然后有一天，我去了巴德图书馆，再次敲响形而上学的时钟，开始写这本未诞生的书，就像我经常发生的那样，当我在一个被书包围的舒适空间里时……我睡着了。
And dreamed.
并梦想。
I found myself back in my childhood home, bursting into the house after a day at school, hoping for a buttered slab of my mother’s freshly baked bread or warm, crispy wine biscuits.
我发现自己又回到了儿时的家，在学校度过一天后冲进屋子，希望能吃到一块母亲刚出炉的黄油面包或热腾腾的脆酒饼干。
Instead, a smell from the downstairs oven stopped me dead in my tracks, filling me with nausea.
相反，楼下烤箱里传来的一股气味让我停下了脚步，让我感到恶心。
She was making tripe.
她正在做牛肚。
In two large black cauldrons, my mom was boiling cow stomach.
两个黑色的大锅里，妈妈正在煮牛胃。
Somehow, the awful scent was a wakeup call, reminding that I shouldn’t try and “write” this book; I should just remember it, let the stories of my childhood tell themselves and spill onto the page.
不知何故，这种可怕的气味是一记警钟，提醒我不应该尝试“写”这本书；我应该这样做。我应该记住它，让我童年的故事自己讲述并溢出到书页上。
You could say that I smelled the sources for the book as much as remembered them.
你可以说我闻到了这本书的来源，就像记住了它们一样。
The taste of a tiny madeleine cake in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time famously unleashes a flood of memories in the narrator.
普鲁斯特的《追忆似水年华》中的小玛德琳蛋糕的味道众所周知地释放了叙述者的大量回忆。
For me, the Prime Mover had been the lowly tripe.
对我来说，原动力就是卑微的牛肚。
To this day, I can’t pass by a Tuscan tripe stand without holding my nose and expressing my literary gratitude.
直到今天，我每次路过托斯卡纳牛肚摊时都会捂着鼻子表达我的文学感激之情。
In the suspended space of her stories, my mom ceased being the one thing that had defined her life since age seventeen and her first child: a mother.
在她故事的悬浮空间中，我的母亲不再是自十七岁和她的第一个孩子以来定义她生活的那个人：母亲。
My book now had a center of gravity: I would reproduce the smells, sounds, and stories of my childhood, a point of intersection between Italy’s ancient culture, the aspirations of the American Dream, and the struggles of a large family caught between Calabrian lore and the secular freedoms of a me-first consumer culture.
我的书现在有了一个重心：我将再现我童年的气味、声音和故事，这是意大利古代文化、美国梦的愿望以及一个大家庭在卡拉布里亚传说和以我为先的消费文化的世俗自由之间的挣扎的交汇点。
All I had to do was close my eyes, like that fateful day in Bard’s Stevenson Library, and remember.
我所要做的就是闭上眼睛，就像巴德史蒂文森图书馆那决定命运的一天一样，然后记住。
But, of course, as all authors know, you can’t write a book alone.
但是，当然，正如所有作者都知道的那样，你无法独自写一本书。
Whether it’s a dedicated editor who inhabits your prose as intensely as you do, or a loving partner who keeps the children from shouting outside your office door, you need a scaled-down version of the proverbial village to get your work done.
无论是像你一样专注于你的散文的敬业编辑，还是阻止孩子们在办公室门外大喊大叫的慈爱伙伴，你都需要一个缩小版的谚语村庄来完成你的工作。
I had all the material I needed and then some, and after that epiphany in the library I now had a plan.
我拥有了我需要的所有材料，然后还有一些，在图书馆的顿悟之后，我现在有了一个计划。
All I needed was a muse.
我所需要的只是一个缪斯。
This source of inspiration would come not from some elusive ideal of youthful beauty like Dante’s Beatrice or Petrarch’s Laura, but rather in the nurturing form of my eighty-something mom, Yolanda Luzzi, who had swathed herself in mournful black for years after the death of my father in 1995.
这种灵感的源泉并非来自但丁笔下的贝阿特丽斯或彼特拉克笔下的劳拉等难以捉摸的青春美丽理想，而是来自我八十多岁的母亲尤兰达·卢齐 (Yolanda Luzzi) 的养育方式，1995 年我父亲去世后，她多年来一直把自己裹在悲伤的黑色衣服里。
Now that I could smell the past, I needed to hear its voice.
既然我能闻到过去的味道，我需要听到它的声音。
My mother supplied that, not only reporting past events but also acting them out, giving life to what would have otherwise remained abstract fragments of memory.
我母亲提供的内容不仅是报告过去的事件，而且还把它们表演出来，赋予原本抽象的记忆碎片以生命。
Her performances took place either in the morning, as we drank coffee together, or in the evening, when we would convene for dinner in her yellow kitchen or, in summertime, in the backyard at the picnic table.
她的表演要么在早上，我们一起喝咖啡，要么在晚上，我们会在她的黄色厨房里吃晚饭，或者在夏天，在后院的野餐桌旁。
This was the setting I loved best.
这是我最喜欢的环境。
It was filled with ghosts.
里面充满了鬼魂。
I could feel my late father lurking by the cement steps where he had signed his named decades earlier, as if to record with sober fatality his arrival in the United States and the definitive loss of his native land: P.
我能感觉到我已故的父亲潜伏在水泥台阶旁，他在几十年前签下了自己的名字，仿佛在清醒地记录着他到达美国和彻底失去祖国的命运：P。
L.
L。
Nato Acri 1923 , Pasquale Luzzi Born in Acri, Calabria, 1923.
Nato Acri 1923 帕斯夸莱·卢齐 1923 年出生于卡拉布里亚阿克里。
The tree that hovered above our picnic table had been the site of my childhood forts and my mother’s tireless industry, where she hung clothes and dried rugs on its branches.
我们野餐桌上方盘旋的那棵树是我童年堡垒的所在地，也是我母亲不知疲倦的劳作之地，她把衣服和干地毯挂在树枝上。
Our summer dinners consisted of wedges of heirloom tomatoes from her garden, sprinkled with salt and coated in oil, then paired with slices of her homemade bread.
我们的夏季晚餐包括来自她花园的传家宝西红柿，撒上盐并涂上油，然后搭配她自制的面包片。
There was of course an obligatory pasta dish, on lucky nights hand-rolled fusilli that she somehow cranked out with a thin iron rod.
当然，还有一道必点的意大利面，在幸运的夜晚，她会用一根细铁棒以某种方式制作出手卷螺丝粉。
My mom generally did not drink wine: bygone Calabrian gender protocols held that men could and should imbibe it in industrial quantities, but ladies should demur, except for the occasional goccia , drop, on holidays and saints’ days.
我妈妈一般不喝酒：过去的卡拉布里亚性别协议认为，男性可以而且应该以工业量饮酒，但女士们应该反对，除了在假期和圣日偶尔喝点“goccia”。
Yet, as she narrated stories from her homeland, Yolanda would agree to have a glass of the Calabrian red that we continued to make in my father’s honor.
然而，当约兰达讲述她家乡的故事时，她会同意喝一杯我们继续为我父亲制作的卡拉布里亚红葡萄酒。
Yolanda Luzzi understood the first cardinal rule of a great story: it has to be interesting to you first, if it’s going to hold the attention of your listeners and readers.
尤兰达·卢齐 (Yolanda Luzzi) 深知精彩故事的第一条基本规则：如果要吸引听众和读者的注意力，它首先必须对你来说有趣。
In the suspended space of her stories, my mom ceased being the one thing that had defined her life since age seventeen and her first child: a mother.
在她故事的悬浮空间中，我的母亲不再是自十七岁和她的第一个孩子以来定义她生活的那个人：母亲。
As she narrated the tale of how my father forced her into marrying him by trapping her inside her house when she was fourteen, making their village think that he had his way with her and thus stolen her honor, she became the frightened young girl whose childhood was taken her from her in the space of an afternoon.
当她讲述我的父亲如何在她十四岁时将她困在自己的房子里强迫她嫁给他的故事时，让他们的村庄认为他对她为所欲为，从而窃取了她的荣誉，她变成了一个受惊的小女孩，她的童年在一个下午的时间里就被夺走了。
When she told me what it felt like to arrive in America alone in her twenties, without her husband and four children, tasked with establishing her family in a strange new land, she was once again the confused but determined immigrant ready to break with all that she had known till then.
当她告诉我二十多岁的时候，独自一人来到美国，没有丈夫和四个孩子，肩负着在陌生的新土地上建立家庭的任务，她又是一个困惑但坚定的移民，准备与她迄今为止所知道的一切决裂，这是什么感觉。
And when she spoke of losing her domineering husband after fifty years of difficult, devoted love, her eyes flashed with a mix of anger and sadness, the wish that their life together had been more gentle and the regret of being divided from the person who had shared her soul.
当她谈到在经历了五十年艰难而忠诚的爱情之后失去了专横的丈夫时，她的眼里闪烁着愤怒和悲伤的光芒，她希望他们在一起的生活更加温柔，并为与分享她灵魂的人分离而感到遗憾。
Soon after my book was published, I returned to my mom’s kitchen and, with a cup of coffee between us, filmed our conversation.
我的书出版后不久，我回到妈妈的厨房，我们喝了一杯咖啡，拍摄了我们的谈话。
When I asked her why she had come to America, she replied, “ Siamo venuti ca per campare più buono perchè c’era la fatiga ,” “We came here to live better because there was work here.” The word she chose for work , which in standard Italian is lavoro , was fatigare , “to tire oneself, become fatigued,” the perfect signifier for men like my father, for whom America entailed endless manual toil and passing out from exhaustion at the dinner table in a haze of cigarette smoke.
当我问她为什么来美国时，她回答说：“Siamo venuti ca per Campare più buono perchè c’era la fatiga”，“我们来这里是为了生活得更好，因为这里有工作。”她为“工作”选择的词，在标准意大利语中是“lavoro”，是“fatigare”，“使自己疲惫不堪，变得疲倦”，这对像我父亲这样的人来说是完美的象征，对他们来说，美国意味着无休止的体力劳动，在餐桌上疲惫不堪，在烟雾缭绕中昏倒。
When I asked her what she missed about Italy, my mom surprised me, answering in broken English: “To tell you the truth, I no miss it…my husband miss, not me.” “I missed my mother, my father,” she went on, always in English.
当我问她想念意大利什么时，妈妈用蹩脚的英语回答，让我大吃一惊：“说实话，我并没有想念意大利……我丈夫想念，不是我。” “我想念我的母亲，我的父亲，”她继续说道，总是用英语。
But by the time of the interview, everyone from her childhood family had died, so she added with typical matter-of-factness, “I got no brothers, no sisters, what am I going to miss?”
但到接受采访时，她儿时家里的人都死了，所以她以典型的实事求是的方式补充道：“我没有兄弟，没有姐妹，我会怀念什么？”
What strikes me now, in watching the video, was how bored and uncomfortable, even annoyed, my mom looks in it.
现在，在观看视频时，令我印象深刻的是，我妈妈在视频中的表情是多么无聊、不舒服，甚至恼怒。
And how different these no-nonsense responses were from the poetry that issued from her mouth when we would sit out by the picnic table and she would reanimate her past.
当我们坐在野餐桌旁，她会重温她的过去时，这些严肃的回答与她口中发出的诗歌是多么不同。
I understand why.
我明白为什么。
In this interview, my mom is not sharing stories.
在这次采访中，我妈妈没有分享故事。
Rather, she’s responding to questions and cues in what must have felt like an interrogation to her.
相反，她是在回答问题和暗示，这对她来说一定像是在审讯。
Under the family oak tree, the storyteller in her was allowed to speak more naturally and, even better, rewrite her own life story.
在家族的橡树下，她的故事讲述者被允许更自然地说话，甚至更好地重写她自己的人生故事。
My mom was not one to put things down on paper—that was my terrain and she was more than happy to assist me.
我妈妈不是一个会把事情写在纸上的人——那是我的领域，她非常乐意帮助我。
But make no mistake, those summertime stories about love and loss in Calabria, about the first uncertain steps of a family in the New World, were as much for her as for me.
但请不要误会，那些关于卡拉布里亚的爱与失落的夏日故事，关于一个家庭在新世界迈出的第一步的不确定的脚步，对她和我来说都是一样的。
Yolanda Luzzi understood the first cardinal rule of a great story: it has to be interesting to you first, if it’s going to hold the attention of your listeners and readers.
尤兰达·卢齐 (Yolanda Luzzi) 深知精彩故事的第一条基本规则：如果要吸引听众和读者的注意力，它首先必须对你来说有趣。
And so she held forth, the words pouring out of her in what would be her lone work and her masterpiece, the Book of Life.
她就这样滔滔不绝地倾诉，这本书将成为她唯一的作品和杰作，《生命之书》。
The Innocents of Florence: The Renaissance Discovery of Childhood by Joseph Luzzi is available from W.W.
约瑟夫·卢齐 (Joseph Luzzi) 的《佛罗伦萨的无辜者：文艺复兴时期对童年的发现》可从 W.W.
Norton & Company.
诺顿公司。