名人认知系列 文人骚客4：Autobiography of Hemingway 海明威传

Autobiography¹ of Hemingway

海明威传

Ernest Hemingway is a giant of modern literature. Among twentieth-century American fiction writers, his work is most often compared to that of his contemporaries William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Combined with his outstanding short stories, Hemingway’s four major novels — The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls² (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952) — comprise a contribution to modern fiction that is far more substantial than Fitzgerald’s and that approximates Faulkner’s.

海明威是现代文学巨匠。在二十世纪的美国小说作家之中，他的作品常常被人们和与他同时代的福克纳和菲茨杰拉德相提并论。海明威的四大小说，《太阳照常 升起》（1926年），《永别了，武器》（1929),《丧钟为谁 而鸣》（ 1940)和《老人与海》（ 1952年），加上他出色的 短篇小说故事，对现代小说的贡献远远超过斯科特.菲 茨杰拉德的小说，可以和福克纳相提并论。

Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years before Hemingway received this recognition, but their respective approaches to fiction are dissimilar. When set alongside Faulkner’s Mississippi novels, Hemingway’s major works feature simpler structures and narrative³ voices.

福克纳被授予诺贝尔文学奖，比海明威早几年获得 这样的认可，但他们各自小说的表现方式截然不同。和 福克纳的小说《密西西比》相比，海明威的主要著作表 现出更简明的结构，语气和人物角色也显得更具叙事的 特征。

As or more important, Hemingway’s style, with its consistent use of short, concrete, direct prose and of scenes consisting exclusively of dialogue, gives his novels and short stories a distinctive⁴ accessibility that is immediately identifiable with the author. Owing to the direct character of both his style and his life-style, there is a tendency to cast Hemingway as a “representative” American writer whose work reflects the bold, forthright⁵ and rugged⁶ individualism of the American spirit in action. His own background as a wounded veteran of World War I, as an engaged combatant in the fight against Fascism and as a “he-man” with a passion for outdoor adventures and other manly⁷ pursuits reinforce this association.

与此同样重要，甚至比这更重要的是，这种以坚 持使用简短、具体而直接的平铺直叙的文体和完全由对 话构成的场景为主要特点的写作风格，使海明威的小说 和短篇故事具有一种独特的、能够立即被确认是作者本 人所写。由于他写作的风格以及他个人的生活风格，人 们倾向于把他当作一群美国作家中的代表性人物，这些 作家的作品反映了美国人所特有的一种寓于行动中的精 神，即勇敢、直率以及坚定的独立精神。他本人是一个 曾经参加一战的负过重伤的老兵，一名直接参战的反法 西斯战士，同时还是一位热爱户外活动、有着诸多人生 追求的“硬汉”，这样的背景加深了他和他作品之间的 这种联系。

But this identification of Hemingway as a uniquely American genius is problematic. Although three of his major novels are told by and through Americans, Hemingway’s protagonists⁸ are expatriates, and his fictional⁹ settings are in France, Italy, Spain, and later Cuba, rather than America itself.

但是，这种把海明威仅仅作为一个美国式的独特天 才的认定方式是值得商榷的。虽然他的主要小说中有3 部是通过美国人并且是在美国人中叙述的，但是海明威 小说中的主角是旅居国外的人，而且小说的背景是在法 国、意大利、西班牙和后来的古巴，而不是美国。

While Hemingway’s early career benefited from his connections with Fitzgerald and with American novelist Sherwood Anderson, his aesthetic¹⁰ is actually closer to that shared by the transplanted American poets that he met in Paris during the 1920s; In this context, we must realize that Hemingway’s approach to the craft of fiction is direct but never blunt or just plain simple.

尽管海明威早期的创作生涯从他与菲茨杰拉德和美 国小说家舍伍德•安德森的联系中获益，但实际上他的 美学和20世纪20年代他在法国遇见的那些移居巴黎的 美国诗人所拥有的审美观更为接近。在这样的背景下,我们必须认识到，海明威的小说创作技巧的确是直接 的，但并不是简单平淡的。

Hemingway’s text is the result of a painstaking¹¹ selection process, each word performing an assigned function in the narrative. These choices of language, in turn, occur through the mind and experience of his novels’ central characters whether they serve explicitly¹² as narrators of their experience or as focal characters from whose perspectives the story unfolds. The main working :orollary of Hemingway’s “iceberg principle” is that the full meaning of the text is not limited to moving the plot forward: there is always a web of association and inference, a submerged reason behind the inclusion (or even the omission) of every detail.

海明威的作品是一个艰苦的挑选的结果，作品中每 个单词都承担确定的叙事任务。语言上的精雕细琢，反 过来又会在作品中主角的思想和经历上体现出来，不论 这些角色是单纯的讲述者，或是逐步揭示情节的焦点角 色。海明威的“冰山原则”在作品中的必然表现就是， 作品的全部意义并不仅仅局限于推动情节发展：作品背 后总是有一个联系和逻辑性的世界，作品中包含的每个 细节（甚至是省略的细节）背后都有潜在的原因。

Hemingway is direct. But he is also quite subtle, and subtlety¹³ is not a trait that we ascribe to the American way. In the end, Hemingway is an international artist, a man who never relinquished¹⁴ his American identity but who entered new territories too broad and too deep to fit within the domain¹⁵ of any national culture.
 

海明威是率直的。但同时，他又非常细心和敏锐， 这种细心和敏锐不能认为是美国文学特色所致。总之， 海明威是一位国际艺术家，他从没有放弃他作为美国人 的标志性身份，但他所进入的艺术领域太深远也太广 大，根本不能用任何单一国家的文化去界定它。

1 autobiography   

n.自传

参考例句：

• He published his autobiography last autumn.他去年秋天出版了自己的自传。
• His life story is recounted in two fascinating volumes of autobiography.这两卷引人入胜的自传小说详述了他的生平。

2 tolls   

（缓慢而有规律的）钟声( toll的名词复数 )； 通行费； 损耗； （战争、灾难等造成的）毁坏

参考例句：

• A man collected tolls at the gateway. 一个人在大门口收通行费。
• The long-distance call tolls amount to quite a sum. 长途电话费数目相当可观。

3 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

4 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。

5 forthright   

adj.直率的，直截了当的 [同]frank

参考例句：

• It's sometimes difficult to be forthright and not give offence.又直率又不得罪人，这有时很难办到。
• He told me forthright just why he refused to take my side.他直率地告诉我他不肯站在我这一边的原因。

6 rugged   

adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的

参考例句：

• Football players must be rugged.足球运动员必须健壮。
• The Rocky Mountains have rugged mountains and roads.落基山脉有崇山峻岭和崎岖不平的道路。

7 manly   

adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地

参考例句：

• The boy walked with a confident manly stride.这男孩以自信的男人步伐行走。
• He set himself manly tasks and expected others to follow his example.他给自己定下了男子汉的任务，并希望别人效之。

8 protagonists   

n.（戏剧的）主角( protagonist的名词复数 )；（故事的）主人公；现实事件（尤指冲突和争端的）主要参与者；领导者

参考例句：

• Mrs Pankhurst was one of the chief protagonists of women's rights. 潘克赫斯特太太是女权的主要倡导者之一。 来自辞典例句
• This reflects that Feng Menglong heartily sympathized with these protagonists. 这反映出冯梦龙由衷地同情书中的这些主要人物。 来自互联网

9 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

10 aesthetic   

adj.美学的，审美的，有美感

参考例句：

• My aesthetic standards are quite different from his.我的审美标准与他的大不相同。
• The professor advanced a new aesthetic theory.那位教授提出了新的美学理论。

11 painstaking   

adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的

参考例句：

• She is not very clever but she is painstaking.她并不很聪明，但肯下苦功夫。
• Through years of our painstaking efforts,we have at last achieved what we have today.大家经过多少年的努力，才取得今天的成绩。

12 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

13 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

14 relinquished   

交出，让给( relinquish的过去式和过去分词 )； 放弃

参考例句：

• She has relinquished the post to her cousin, Sir Edward. 她把职位让给了表弟爱德华爵士。
• The small dog relinquished his bone to the big dog. 小狗把它的骨头让给那只大狗。

15 domain   

n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围

参考例句：

• This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
• This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。