今天我要讲的是 I'm going to be talking today
我一直在做的一些工作 um, as it says about some work that I've been doing
我在编辑乔纳森•斯威夫特曾写过的一些书信 editing letters some letters by Jonathon Swift
一些他在都柏林写给两个女人的情书 some Love letters that he wrote to two women in Dublin
但是我想先将这些书信定位于 But I wanted to start off by locating those letters
浪漫爱情的文学传统 within a literary tradition of romantic love
尤其是情人节的范畴 and particularly St Valentine's Day
我在想情人节意味着什么 And I was thinking about Valentine's day and what it means
它的习俗是什么 and the conventions around it
在我看来 情人节有趣的其中一点是 and it seems to me that one of the funny things about Valentine's day
我们把它看成是可以表白心意的一天 is we think it's a day on which we declare ourselves
大多是以一种直接 坦诚 自我宣告的方式 in the most kind of straight-forward open and self-proclaiming way
向我们喜欢的对象宣布 to the object of our affection
但并不完全是在自我宣告 But it's not all about self-declaration
因为你隐藏了一部分自己 because it's partly about hiding yourself
隐瞒了一部分东西 it's partly about keeping something back
最明显的就是你的身份 which is obviously your identity
颇具代表性的是 我们会在情人节卡片上用问号署名 We sign these Valentine's cards with a question mark typically
所以我想探讨一些 So I wanted to talk a bit about that
关于保密和匿名的概念 about the idea of secrecy and anonymity
那通常与表达浪漫之爱有关联 that's traditionally associated with declarations of romantic love
另外 我还想探讨一下情人节 and I also want to talk about a feature of
陈词滥调的一种特色 Valentine's day, which is cliché
就是在试图说出 我爱你 时 which is the problem of trying to say I love you
要以不同于长年累月以来数百万人表白过的 in a different way from all the others of millions of people
其他方式的问题 who have said it throughout the course of time
所以我的标题 永恒的爱 是你的吗? So my title with undying love, yours?
那些陈词滥调的概念 colludes to both of those characteristics to the idea of cliché
与匿名或保密概念的特点是相互关联的 and the idea of anonymity or secrecy
那么 讨论下这些概念都从何而来 So just to talk about where both of those ideas have come from
保密和不完全声明你自己 The whole notion of secrecy
匿名的整个概念 and anonymity of not fully declaring yourself
我们可以回溯到 We can trace that right back in literature
文学史上的11世纪和12世纪 to the 11th and 12th century in the tradition
宫廷爱情的概念也起源于那时 and then the idea of courtly love that comes from that
因为我们有大量关于浪漫爱情的概念 Because loads of ideas that we have about romantic love
而且我们表达爱意的方式也起源于那时 and the ways in which we express it comes from there
所以你会有称赞 so the idea that you um say that
你恋人的嘴巴看起来像红玫瑰的想法 your lover's mouth looks like a red rose
座上你爱慕的女士有一头金发的想法 the idea of kind of golden hair of admiring women on a pedestal
看上去似乎很难能追到手 and a kind of slightly um who seems slightly kind of unobtainable
这些都是传统宫廷爱情的一种 those all kind of um a tradition of courtly love
所以我们就有了固定的概念 So we have this built-in idea
从那时候起就存在一些秘密隐藏的东西 that there is something secret and hidden right from back then
另外一个 陈词滥调的概念 and then the other thing this idea of cliché
或难以避免通过间接的方式 or the idea that it's difficult to get away from expressing yourself
通过别人的话来表达自己的想法 through second-hand sentiments, through other peoples words
这也有一段很长的文学史 that also have a long literary history
有个很有名的例子 and a really famous example
就是关于某个人的轻率对待 um of someone playing around with that
明确表达出你该如何再说一遍 and articulating just that problem of how you say it again
如何让自己的言语表达得有新意要属莎士比亚了 and how you say it new is Shakespeare
这里我们看下他的十四行诗第130首 who here we got sonnet number 130
我爱人的眼光并非如阳光般灿烂 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
这首诗就完全在于你如何能别出心裁地表达 and this is a poem which is all about how you do it differently
如何让你的言语独具一格 how you make your words different from everybody else's words
所以他说 我爱人的眼光并非阳光般灿烂 so he saying my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
珊瑚也远比她的红唇红艳 coral is far more red than her lips red
她的胸脯也说不上雪白光鲜 if snow be white why then her breasts are dun
满头乌丝 无法与金线比拟 if hairs be wires black wires grow on her head
他贯穿这些对比 and he runs through all these comparisons
并表示 你知道并不是所有的事物都适用于你 and says you know all this stuff they don't really apply to you
你并非如此 you're not quite like that
然后在最后他说 然而 天啊 我的爱人弥足珍贵 and then at the end he says and yet by heaven I think my love
这句话掩盖了之前的虚构对比 as rare as any she belied with false compare
所以他在谈论虚构对比的概念 so he's talking about the idea of false comparison
他谈论的概念 事实上 he's talking about the idea that the fact that
其他人已经说过 all these other people have said these things
但事实上 用那些词语 but actually it doesn't matter that
去表达并没有关系 they use those hack phrases
但是他真的是爱这个女人 but he really loves this women
她肯定美极了 she is absolutely fantastic
即使事实上她与这些陈词滥调不符合 and the fact that she doesn't measure up to those kinds of clichés
也是没关系的 doesn't matter
所以我觉得这种手法的开始 So this establishes I think
给了我们一个很好的榜样 it gives us a really good example of of a kind of interest
如何用不同方式去表达爱意 in the problems of how to say in a different way
如何不重复使用别人的言语的问题 how not to use other men's words
所以我们现在有了陈词滥调 So we can see we got these two ideas about cliché
和匿名这两个概念 and about anonymity
目前我正致力于研究乔纳森•斯威夫特写过的书信 and at the moment I'm working on some letters by Jonathan Swift
正在为剑桥大学出版社编辑这些书信的新版本 I'm editing them for a new edition by Cambridge University Press
这些书信只是引入 and these letters just to set the scene
这些是一系列的65封信 these letters are a series of 65 letters
是斯威夫特在18世纪初 that Swift writes to two women
写给两位住在都柏林的女士的 who are living in Dublin at the beginning of the 18th century
她们的名字是 哦 我这有些图片 稍等 and their called oh I've got some pictures, hang on
我可不能忘了 I mustn't forget that
那是乔纳森•斯威夫特的照片 Picture of Jonathan Swift there
这张是他写信的那两位女士的照片 and this is a picture of the two women that he's writing to
我们可以看到艾斯特•乔纳森 so Esther Johnson we can see
还有可怜的丽贝卡•丁格蕾 她的照片没有保存完好 and then poor Rebecca Dingley hasn't got her picture surviving
但我觉得她应该会满意 but I think she'll be right pleased with this
我给她做的这张轮廓剪影 with a silhouette I've given her
这就是斯威夫特 so there's swift
他写信给了艾斯特•乔纳森女士和丽贝卡•丁格蕾女士 and he's writing to Esther Johnson and to Rebecca Dingley
这些信真的很有趣 um and the letters are really interesting
内容混杂了很多事情 they're a mix of things
包括政治 也包括午饭吃了什么 They're combination of high politics, of what he's had for lunch
他见了谁 他和谁一起打牌 who he's seen, who he's played cards with
信中也包括 每天结束时 but they also contain at the end of every day
他会写下一段深情的爱语短文 he signs of with a passage of affectionate endearment
写给这两位女士的爱语 endearments towards these two women
与众不同的是 And the distinctive thing
这些短文有两个显著的特点 well, there are two distinctive things about these passages
其中一方面是它们是用婴儿语言写的 one of them is that they are written in this kind of baby language
也被叫做儿童语言 which is going to be called the little language
另一方面是所有这些表达爱语的短文 And the other thing is that all those passages of endearment
会在他寄信前被划掉 are then crossed out by him before he sends the letters
之前有几周 Um and there was quite a couple of weeks
就有很多新闻报道 where there was quite a lot of press coverage of
是关于我在编辑的这些书信 kind of the work that I've been doing on the letters
你可以看到这里有一些鲜亮的标题 and you can see there some of the brilliant headlines
斯威夫特 一个幼童… Swift, well, toddler…
实际上我儿子也参与了此次编辑 My son was involved spuriously in this exercise
因为他的口齿不清反而有助于我理解 because he… I said that his lisp helps me to understand
书信中用婴儿语言描写的东西 the ways that which the letters were written in baby talk
所以这一条标题说明了幼童的角色 So this one headline from the guardian about the role of the toddler
第二条是关于不庄重求婚的概念 there's another one playing with the idea of the immodest proposal
而最杰出的就是这条很有主见的标题 and the most brilliant one was the independent one
叫做邪恶的院长 which was Dirty dean
安迪•格雷可以向斯威夫特学到什么呢? What Andy Gray could have learnt from swift
利用这个说法 and that was playing on the idea
说安迪•格雷和斯威夫特都不恰当地描述了女士 that both Andy Gray and Swift say inappropriate things around women
所以我们把他们两人放到一起了 So we can think about them together
这一点我在其他地方也有提到过 So I've talked a little bit about this elsewhere
那就快速看一下这些信 研究下它们是如何奏效的 Just to have a quick look at the letters and how they work then
看一下 这是其中一封信的图像 You've got you can see here this is an image of one of the letters
这些弯弯曲曲的 被划掉的黑色部分 and all those little squiggly squirly blacked out bits
频繁地出现在整篇文章 都是关于亲密爱语的 are the crossings out over the passages of intimacy frequently
他用的也都是儿童语言 where he's using the little language
或者是他对女士的专用宠爱表达方式 or his special pet terms for the women
所以他在寄信前都划掉了 So he squirls them out before he does each letter
如果你想要一些婴儿语言的例子 And if you want a couple of examples of the baby language
看看它们怎么表达的 这里我们看下 and the way it works, we've got here
会觉 耐pdfr 暖安 亲耐的小叨气 do seep and rove pdfr. So Nite deelest logues
它的意思是 去睡觉吧 亲爱的pdfr which clearly means go to sleep and love pdfr
pdfr 是他为自己取的小名 pdfr is his little name for himself
晚安吧 我亲爱的小淘气 so night dearest rogues
接下来另一条是 And then another one is
咿无须知道介些东西 嗒们是秘密 oo must not know zees sings, zey are secrets
我们必须让它们远离淘气的努孩们 we must keep them flom nauty dallars
意思是 你无须知道这些东西 它们是秘密 you mustn't know these things they are secret
我们必须让它们远离淘气的女孩们 and we must keep them from naughty girls
所以你可以看到他用的这种方式 So you can see the way in which he's using this as a kind of
作为一种向这两位女士表达深情的方式 it becomes an affectionate way of talking to these two women
让思绪回到 and thinking going back to
表达爱意的惯例和尝试用新的方式 this whole idea of conventions around expression of romantic love
或以小说形式和个人独特的表达方式 and the idea of trying to express yourself in a new
来表达你自己的概念上 and novel and personal way
我想那可能有助于我们解释 I think that, that may help start to explain
为什么他选择使用婴儿语言来表达对这些女士的爱意 why he chose to use this baby language to talk to these women
因为从某种意义上说 它成为 Because in a way it becomes
他们两人之间的一种特殊的语言 a special language that they've got between the two of them
这使得他… 虽然我们觉得很奇怪 It enables him… however weird we think
这使他能够跳过陈词滥调 it enables him to get beyond those stereotypical
或用一些陈腐的词语来表达爱意 and kind of hackneyed phrases for the expression of love
因此我们可以把它跟如何新颖地 So I think we can relate that back to
表达爱意的理念联系起来 the idea of kind of making it new
接着我们思考下被划掉的部分 And then thinking about the crossing out business
这里有个关于删减的例子 If I give you here this is an example of some of the crossings out
大家可以看到最上面有几行文字 so the top bit you can see some lines of text
上面有些弯弯曲曲像铁丝网一样的东西就是 and in that squiggly kind of barbed wire looking thing is
在书信里被他划掉的部分 the crossing out that he did over the top of the writing
曾经有人猜想这些是被后来的编者 It used to be assumed that that crossing out was done
在审查信件时删掉的 by a later editor who was trying to censor the letters
但是根据墨迹的一致性和信的内容等 but for a variety of reasons due to the consistency of the ink
种种原因 and internal references
我觉得是斯威夫特自己在寄信前删掉的 I think that Swift did it himself before he sent the letters
这便更加怪异 which is kind of doubly weird
首先他用婴儿语言写 First of all he writes in baby language
然后他只是在上面划掉去掩饰它 and then he's just crossing out of the top in order to disguise it
不过我觉得我们也可以这么想 But I think one way in which we can think about
划掉那些也是惯例的一部分 the crossing out business is as part of this tradition
作为自我隐藏的一种方式 as self-hiding of kind of revealing yourself
展现自己的同时隐藏一部分的自己 and not revealing yourself at the same time
这个我之前就讲过了 that I talked about earlier
大家看一下这个例子 他这么写 So in this example you can see that he writes this
去打牌吧 快心点 亲耐的小叨气 Go play cards and be melly deel Logues
耐那个Md比耐他自己还多的pdfr吧 rove pdfr who roves Md bettle zan his Rife
意思是去打牌吧 开心点 亲爱的小淘气 Which means go play cards and be merry dear rogues
爱那个爱着mder的pdfr and love pdfr who loves mder
Mder是他给她们的小名 Mder is his little name for them
比爱他自己还更爱 better than his life
别了 我最亲耐的人 farewell deelest
这些缩略词的意思 And all those abbreviations are
我们其实并不知道 just we don't really know what they mean
它们就像是他们之间亲密爱语的一些代码 They're a little kind of code about intimacy that he has between them
是他们三个人之间的亲密爱语代码 that they have between the three of them
这里我们还有一个例子 And then we've got another example here
大家又可以看到他划掉了 where you can see again that he's crossed out
在信的结尾的顶部 over the tops of the ending of the letter
他这里写着 and he writes there
哦 可怜滴银 架次低下咿的头 信昂 我云亮咿 o poo ppt, lay down ee heads aden; fais I flodive ee:
我总是在想 如果你病了我肯定会知道的 I always reckon, if y are ill I shall hear it
这里他的意思是 and he's saying there
哦 可怜的人 再次低下你的头 oh poor puppet lay down your head again
信仰 我原谅你 faith I forgive you
我们可以看到这就是 so you can see here that this is a way of
他对喜爱的事物表达爱意的一种方式 you know he says these affectionate things
同时他也隐藏了一部分 then he kinds of unsays them at the same time
我想这就是 and I guess what
就是我一直在说的 what the kinds of things that I've been talking about
表达自己对浪漫爱情的惯例 about traditions of expressing yourself for romantic love
这个有助于我们理解 can help us to understand
为什么一位历史人物会用到一些标志性的事物 why one historical person might use these material things
像笔 墨水和用语方式 pen and ink and the words on it
特别是那些他写给那两位女士的私人信件 particular individual historical letters that he sent to two people
我们怎么样把这些信件融入悠久的历史 how we might put that back into a longer history
了解他们是如何尽力地表达自己 of how people have struggled to express themselves
或是尽力表达爱意的 or struggled to express concepts of romantic love
或者是清楚地表达对某个人的情感的 or express their feelings for someone else and to make sense of it
我觉得简而言之 我们可以说 and I guess to put it in a nutshell we could say that
通过这些我们可以看到 有时候在文学里 what all this is showing us is that in literature sometimes
说我爱你可能会是最难的 saying I love you can be the hardest thing to say
谢谢 Thank you