翻译练习——弗兰肯斯坦

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein still stokes our fear of apocalypse, bad science and corruption. As a new documentary looks at its cultural legacy, Philip Hoare explains why gothic remains a perennial theme.

玛丽·雪莱所著的《弗兰肯斯坦》一书至今仍能引发我们心中对于世界末日，科学灾难以及腐败的恐惧。通过新式纪实视角来看待文化遗产，菲利普·霍尔对哥特体为何能成为经久不息的话题作出解释。

Gothic remains a perennial theme but never more so than today. Why so? For one thing, the gothic imagination of writers such as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoke is so vividly visual that it is eminently adaptable into 21st-century media – from cinema to TV to video games. Also it reflects teenage angst – Shelley was just 17 when she wrote Frankenstein.

哥特体确实仍然流行，尤其是在当今时代。为何？首先，像玛丽·雪莱，埃德加·爱伦·坡，布莱姆·斯托克这些作家凝聚了哥特式想象力的作品都具有生动的画面感，而21世纪的媒体能完美地将之展示出来，如电影，电视及游戏。再者，哥特式文体能宣泄青少年的焦虑——雪莱创作《弗兰克斯坦》时年仅17岁。

But it also reflects deeper contemporary fears of the apocalyptic and the macabre: of bad science and corrupt power. It reflects dark times, too, and offers escapism from austerity or insecurity – a safe, containable way to be scared.

哥特体也反映了更深层次上当代人对于末日与死亡的恐惧，恐惧感来自科学灾难或是腐败势力；同时重现了黑暗艰辛的年代，并让人暂时忘记现实的苦难与不安——人们得以在哥特式作品营造的虚假的灾难中，安全且舒适地体验恐惧感，而不必真正对事实感到担忧。Like Moby-Dick and Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein is a unique, sui generis work, born of obsession. It feeds on sensational, science-fiction elements to make subtler points about our essential disconnect with nature. It's why Shelley's image of the Creature – as much pathetic as it is terrifying – is invoked ever more often in contemporary culture and a world in which science and technology appear to be stealing a march on the species that created them. Commentators evoked Frankenstein when the Japanese tsunami broke open the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

像《白鲸》和《呼啸山庄》，《弗兰克斯坦》是一部独特而自成一格的作品，创作灵感产生于妄想，依靠感性、科幻的元素从更加细腻的角度叙述出我们与大自然的背离。这也是为什么，雪莱笔下描绘的这个令人既同情又恐惧的生物，在当今时代中可以引发更多共鸣。因为当今世界的科学与技术也有逐渐“反哺”它们的创造者的趋势。当日本海啸引发福岛核电站爆炸时，时事评论员便联想到了《弗兰克斯坦》。

What is extraordinary is that all this was the product of the mind of a woman barely out of girlhood. Storms attended her life: from her illicit start as the bastard child of the revolutionary writers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, to the climatic catastrophes in the year of her birth and that of her novel, which coincided with a volcanic eruption that darkened the skies of Europe and America. "She entered the world like the heroine of a gothic tale," Shelley's biographer, Emily Sunstein has written, "conceived in a secret amour, her birth heralded by storms and portents, attended by tragic drama, and known to thousands through Godwin's memoirs".

更值得注意的是，《弗兰克斯坦》全部来自于一个女人在少女时代的想象。雪莱的生命一直伴随着灾难：首先，雪莱是两位伟大的作家威廉·戈德温与玛丽·渥斯顿克雷福二人见不得人的私生子；再者，雪莱出生的那一年发生了气候突变，她的小说发布的那年恰巧还碰上一场造成欧美两大洲上空黑云笼罩的火山爆发。“她就像哥特式故事中的女英雄一般降临人世。”雪莱的自传作者，艾米丽·桑斯坦曾写道，“雪莱的出身隐藏于一段秘密的奸情，出生伴随着灾祸与凶兆，成长过程时有悲剧情节，而这一切还是通过戈德温的回忆录为世人