评论
打印
Culture
文艺版块
Book review
书评
Haruki Murakami’s fiction
村上春树的小说
Strange and familiar places
陌生而又熟悉的地方
The City and Its Uncertain Walls. By Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel.
《城市及其不确定的墙》，村上春树著，菲利普·加布里埃尔译。
Philip Roth never really left New Jersey.
菲利普·罗斯从未真正离开过新泽西。
Saul Bellow could not keep his characters out of Chicago.
索尔·贝娄无法让他笔下的人物离开芝加哥。
And Haruki Murakami’s narrators—unmarried, often middle-aged men with solitary habits—continually slip into eerie netherworlds.
而村上春树笔下的叙述者——未婚、通常喜欢独来独往的中年男子——则不断滑入神秘的异世界。
The alternative realm in the Japanese writer’s latest novel is the same one in which the narrator was marooned at the end of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” (1985).
这位日本作家最新小说中的另类世界就是《世界尽头与冷酷仙境》（1985年）结尾处叙述者被困的那个世界。
It is a town surrounded by an impregnable wall and governed by an inscrutable, imposing Gatekeeper.
这是一个被坚不可摧的城墙所围绕的城市，由一个神秘莫测、令人生畏的看门人把守着。
In “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” this locale—where the nameless narrator reads “old dreams” from unicorn skulls in a library—was part of the narrator’s subconscious.
在《世界尽头与冷酷仙境》中，这个地方——无名叙述者在此处图书馆里从独角兽的头骨中解读“旧日的梦”——是叙述者潜意识的一部分。
It was a place he had created in his own mind.
这是他在自己脑海中创造的地方。
In “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” characters find their way into that world.
在《城市及其不确定的墙》中，人物们找到了进入这个世界的方法。
As a teenager, this narrator falls in love with a girl whose “real self” is in the alternative world; she vanishes; he matures, and one day he falls into a hole and wakes up in the other place.
叙述者在青少年时期爱上了一个女孩，她的“真实自我”在异世界，后来她消失了，他成熟了，有一天他掉进一个洞里，然后在另一个地方醒来。
For the rest of the book the narrator flits between the two realms.
在书的其余部分，叙述者在两个世界之间穿梭。
Mr Murakami links the novels throughout.
村上先生将两部小说贯穿了起来。
(Both Raymond Chandler’s detective fiction and Jorge Luis Borges’s fantastical prose experiments seem to be influences.)
（雷蒙德·钱德勒的侦探小说和豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯的奇幻散文实验似乎都对村上先生产生了影响。）
In an afterword he writes that the tales stem from the same novella, “The City, and Its Uncertain Walls” (1980), and that the two novels are complementary.
在后记中他写道，这两个故事都源于同一部中篇小说《城市及其不确定的城墙》（1980年），而且这两部小说是互补的。（注：1980年发表的中篇小说与新小说同名，是新小说的基础。）
What distinguishes them is tone.
二者的区别在于语调。
“Hard-Boiled Wonderland” is a propulsive page-turner.
《世界尽头与冷酷仙境》情节不断推进，吸引人一页接一页地读下去。
“The City and Its Uncertain Walls” is more meditative: the work of an older author confident that he has earned readers’ attention over his long career.
《城市及其不确定的墙》则更具沉思性：作家在年岁增长后写下了这部作品，此时他相信自己在漫长的写作生涯中已赢得了读者的关注。
The novelist is 75; this is his first new novel in six years (and it is not entirely new).
这位小说家今年75岁了，这是他六年来的第一部新小说（而且并不完全算新作）。
If this is Mr Murakami’s last work, how will he be remembered?
如果这是村上春树的最后一部作品，人们会如何记住他呢？
He is best known for his mordant surrealism.
他以尖刻幽默的超现实主义而闻名。
But the flights of fancy work only because they are grounded in a detailed reality.
但这些奇幻想象之所以奏效，是因为它们基于充满细节的现实世界。
The archetypal Murakami protagonist is an observer.
村上春树小说的典型主人公是观察者。
Stories happen to them: they rarely instigate conflict or set out looking for adventure without being prodded.
故事发生在他们身上：他们很少挑起冲突，也很少自发地去寻找冒险。
Failure and unrequited longing define their romantic lives.
他们的恋爱生活以失恋和单恋为主。
The writer’s principal concern has always been the pain and necessity of learning to be alone, and the worthwhile difficulty of establishing real connections.
村上的主要关切一直是学会独处的痛苦和必要性，以及建立真正联系的价值和不易。
Those concerns are universal.
这些关切是普遍存在的。
Mr Murakami’s compassionate rendering of them is why millions seek solitude to read his books.
村上春树对这些问题的充满同情的描写，正是数百万人想要独自阅读他的书的原因所在。
