Gabriel García Márquez, who died in April at 87, was a strong critic of American imperialism who was banned from entry to the United States for decades, even after “One Hundred Years of Solitude” vaulted him to international celebrity and, in 1982, the Nobel Prize in Literature.
加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯(Gabriel García Márquez)今年4月去世,享年87岁。他曾猛烈抨击美帝国主义,曾有几十年被禁止进入美国,甚至在《百年孤独》(One Hundred Years of Solitude)让他成为世界名人,并在1982年获得诺贝尔文学奖之后也是如此。
But now García Márquez, who was born in Colombia and lived much of his adult life in Mexico City, has “gone to Texas,” as they say.
但现在,在哥伦比亚出生、在墨西哥城度过大部分成年时光的加西亚·马尔克斯,就像他们说的,要在“德克萨斯州落户了”。
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin will announce on Monday that it has acquired García Márquez’s archive, which contains manuscripts, notebooks, photo albums, correspondence and personal artifacts, including two Smith Corona typewriters and five Apple computers.
周一,德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的哈里·兰塞姆中心(Harry Ransom Center)将宣布它获得了加西亚·马尔克斯的档案,包括手稿、笔记、影集、信件和私人物品——两部史密斯·科罗纳打字机(Smith Corona)和五台苹果电脑。
At the Ransom Center, one of the nation’s leading literary archives — and the only one “in the country’s borderlands with Latin America,” noted Steve Enniss, its director — García Márquez’s literary remains will be preserved alongside those of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges and other global figures.
兰塞姆中心的主管史蒂夫·恩尼斯(Steve Enniss)指出,该中心是美国首屈一指的文学档案馆,也是唯一一个“位于美国与拉美交界地区”的文学档案馆。这里不仅拥有加西亚·马尔克斯的文学遗产,还有詹姆斯·乔伊斯(James Joyce)、欧内斯特·海明威(Ernest Hemingway)、威廉·福克纳(William Faulkner)和豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯(Jorge Luis Borges)等其他世界文学大师的档案。
“It’s almost as if James Joyce meets Gabriel García Márquez, whose influence on the 20th-century novel in some way mirrored his own,” Mr. Enniss said of the acquisition. “It’s very fitting that García Márquez is joining our collections. It’s hard to think of a novelist who has had as wide-ranging an impact.”
“这几乎等于詹姆斯·乔伊斯与加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯的相会,两人对于20世纪小说的影响力从某种程度上说旗鼓相当。”恩尼斯对获得马尔克斯档案一事评论说,“加西亚·马尔克斯加入我们的收藏非常合适。你很难想出还有哪位小说家有如此广泛的影响力。”
The archive, purchased from his family, includes material relating to all of García Márquez’s important books, from the landmark “One Hundred Years of Solitude” — represented by the finished typescript sent to his publisher, bearing a hand-lettered title page and only a few corrections — to “We’ll See Each Other in August,” his final, unfinished novel, which exists in as many as 10 versions. Both the Ransom Center and the family declined to provide the price of the deal.
这份档案是从他的家人手中购得的,包括与加西亚·马尔克斯所有重要作品相关的材料,从标志性作品《百年孤独》到最后一部尚未完成的小说《我们八月份再见》(We’ll See Each Other in August)——前者包括他发给出版社的最终打印稿,扉页上有他手写的书名,稿件中仅有几处改动;后者有十个版本。兰塞姆中心和他的家人都拒绝透露交易价格。
“Solitude,” published in Spanish in 1967 and in English in 1970, may have transformed world literature and turned García Márquez into a global celebrity, but it is the messier drafts of subsequent books that may be of most interest to scholars.
《百年孤独》的西班牙语版1967年出版,英文版1970年出版。它改变了世界文坛,让加西亚·马尔克斯成为世界名人,但是学者们最感兴趣的可能是之后几本书更混乱的草稿。
“It’s like an open window into the lab of a renowned alchemist who didn’t always love the idea of having the recipes of his potions be known,” said Jose Montelongo, a Latin American literature specialist at the University of Texas who visited the García Márquez home in Mexico City with Mr. Enniss in July to evaluate the material. “They show you the weaknesses, the discarded versions, the eliminated words. You really see the struggle of creation.”
“它就像打开了一位不爱透露魔水配方的著名炼金士的实验室窗户,”德克萨斯大学拉美文学专家约瑟·蒙特隆戈(Jose Montelongo)说。今年7月,他和恩尼斯一同前往墨西哥城加西亚·马尔克斯家中评估这份档案的价值。“它们展示出作品的缺点、舍弃的版本以及遭到删除的文字。你真的能从中看出创作的艰辛。”
García Márquez certainly expressed wariness at the prospect of scholars picking over his traces. “It’s like being caught in your underwear,” he told Playboy in 1983.
加西亚·马尔克斯当然表达出对学者们可能研究自己踪迹的警惕。“那就像你只穿条内裤被人看见,”1983年他对《花花公子》(Playboy)说。
He destroyed his daily working notes and family trees for “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” according to Gerald Martin’s 2009 biography.
据杰拉尔德·马丁(Gerald Martin)2009年的传记,马尔克斯销毁了《百年孤独》的每天工作笔记和人物家谱图。
“My father was a perfectionist, and a perfectionist doesn’t show work in progress,” Rodrigo García, one of the author’s two sons, said in an interview. “He would always tell anecdotes about characters in the book he was writing, but would only show it when it was about 90 percent there.”
“我父亲是个完美主义者,完美主义者是不会展示工作过程的,”加西亚·马尔克斯的长子罗德里戈·加西亚(Rodrigo García)在采访中说。“他经常谈论正在创作的人物的趣事,但只在差不多完成90%时才谈论。”
The author did not object that his wife, Mercedes, saved manuscripts of later books, Mr. García said, but was “adamant” about more private material. On their engagement, family legend has it, he offered to buy back the love letters he wrote to Mercedes so he could destroy them.
这位作家不反对妻子梅塞德斯(Mercedes)保留以往作品的手稿,但是罗德里戈·加西亚说,父亲对私密文件的态度“很强硬”。据他家里人说,订婚时,他要求买回写给梅塞德斯的情书,以便销毁。
“I don’t think he wanted to leave a personal paper trail,” Mr. García said, calling his father a “phone person” who wrote few family letters. “What he would say was, ‘Everything I’ve lived, everything I’ve thought, is in my books.’ ”
“我觉得他不想留下私人文件记录,”罗德里戈·加西亚说。他说父亲“爱打电话”,很少写家信。“他会说,‘我的生活和思想都在我的书里。’”
García Márquez, who kept few copies of outgoing letters, did correspond with other writers. The estimated 2,000 pieces of correspondence in the archive include letters from Graham Greene, Milan Kundera, Julio Cortázar, Günter Grass and Carlos Fuentes, who in 1979 discussed preparing a letter with Mr. Cortázar “to publicly address the issue of U.S. blacklists.” (The travel ban against García Márquez, ostensibly stemming from his involvement with the Colombian Communist Party in the 1950s, was lifted by President Bill Clinton in 1995.)
加西亚·马尔克斯确实与其他作家通过信,但只保留了少量信件。档案中的约2000封信包括格雷厄姆·格林(Graham Greene)、米兰·昆德拉(Milan Kundera)、胡里奥·科塔萨尔(Julio Cortázar)、君特·格拉斯(Günter Grass)和卡洛斯·富恩特斯(Carlos Fuentes)的来信。1979年,卡洛斯·富恩特斯在信中说他打算和科塔萨尔写一封“批评美国黑名单问题的公开信”(针对加西亚·马尔克斯的旅行禁令表面上是因为他在20世纪50年代与哥伦比亚共产党有牵连,1995年比尔·克林顿总统[President Bill Clinton]取消了这项禁令)。
The archive contains little material relating to his friendship with Fidel Castro or to his political activities, not because anything was held back by the family, his son said, but because García Márquez preferred to conduct such business in person or on the phone.
档案中几乎没有关于马尔克斯和菲德尔·卡斯特罗(Fidel Castro)的友谊或者他的政治活动的材料。他儿子说,这不是因为家人隐藏了这些材料,而是因为加西亚·马尔克斯喜欢当面或者通过电话处理这些事务。
“My father believed in behind-the-scenes political work,” Mr. García said. “Like with his books, he was interested in the results, not necessarily in people knowing what had been done to achieve what.”
“我父亲喜欢幕后政治活动,”罗德里戈·加西亚说,“跟写书一样,他只对结果感兴趣,而不一定想让人们知道他是如何实现的。”
The archive, which was prepared for sale by the dealer Glenn Horowitz but has yet to be fully cataloged, does show García Márquez’s political side “in oblique ways,” Mr. Montelongo said.
这份档案是经商人格伦·霍罗威茨(Glenn Horowitz)整理后出售的,不过仍需彻底整理。蒙特隆戈说,这份档案的确“隐晦地”展现出加西亚·马尔克斯的政治倾向。
He cited correspondence with the Spanish-language edition of Life, in which García Márquez declined to be interviewed for that magazine because he felt it would create a false sense of Life’s openness to left-wing ideas.
他引用了马尔克斯与《生活》(Life)杂志西班牙语编辑的通信。加西亚·马尔克斯在信中说,他拒绝接受该杂志采访是因为他觉得那会造成一种《生活》杂志包容左翼思想的虚假印象。
The archive also contains notes on a 1998 visit to the White House, when García Márquez asked Mr. Clinton if he had any advisers who weren’t “fanatically anti-Castro,” Mr. Montelongo said.
蒙泰隆戈说,档案中还有加西亚·马尔克斯1998年访问白宫的笔记,马尔克斯问克林顿他的顾问中有没有不是“疯狂反对卡斯特罗的人”。
The more than 40 photo albums in the collection contain some images of Mr. Castro, as well as a visual chronicle of the private Gabo, as García Márquez was affectionately known throughout Latin America, beginning with his early life in rural Colombia, Mr. Montelongo said.
蒙泰隆戈说,档案中的40多本相册生动记录了加博(Gabo,拉美人对加西亚·马尔克斯的爱称)的私人生活,从他早年在哥伦比亚农村时起。相册中还有卡斯特罗的一些照片。
There is also the matter of the unfinished novel. Mr. García, a director and screenwriter living in California, said he, his mother and his brother had not decided whether to publish that book, about a middle-aged married woman having an affair on a tropical island. It has been excerpted in The New Yorker and the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.
还有未竟小说的问题。罗德里戈·加西亚目前生活在加州,是一名导演和剧作家。他说,他和妈妈、弟弟还没决定是否出版该书。它讲述的是一个热带小岛上一个已婚中年妇女发生婚外情的故事。《纽约客》和西班牙语报纸《先锋报》(La Vanguardia)已经刊登了它的节选。
But that story was certainly not the last tale his father wanted to tell, Mr. García said.
罗德里戈·加西亚说,那一定不是父亲最后想讲述的故事。
He recalled a comment his father made not long before his death: “One of the saddest things about dying is that it’s the only event in my life I won’t be able to write about.”
他回忆起父亲去世前不久说的一句话:“死亡最可悲的一点是,它是我生命中唯一不能用笔来讲述的故事。”