《巴黎评论》：与多和田叶子的访谈 草译
Between Two Languages: An Interview with Yoko Tawada
By Alexandra Pereira November 16, 2018
(* Alexandra Pereira is a British writer whose work has appeared in Playboy, Vice, Condé Nast Traveler, and Stride. She is an editor at Pariah Press and lives in Copenhagen. )
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/11/16/between-two-languages-an-interview-with-yoko-tawada/
Yoko Tawada (b. 1960), who writes in Japanese and German and has been translated around the world, studied Russian literature in Tokyo before hotfooting it to Hamburg: “Russian writing was just the greatest, but I couldn’t study in the Soviet Union for political reasons, so I got a job in Hamburg.” She settled in Berlin, and has now published numerous novels, plays, poems, and essays. Her latest novel, The Emissary (translated by Margaret Mitsutani), won the inaugural National Book Award for translated literature this week.
多和田叶子（生于1960年）用日语和德语写作，其作品在世界范围内得到翻译和传播。她在东京时专攻俄罗斯文学，后来却移居汉堡：“俄国文学最伟大了，但我出于政治原因未能在苏联学习，于是就在汉堡找了个工作。”多和田定居于柏林，已经出版了多部小说、戏剧、诗作和散文。最新出版的小说《献灯使》本周获得了首届美国国家图书奖·翻译文学奖。
Among the finest of Tawada’s works are short stories about adapting to new cultures, both physically and linguistically. The daughter of a nonfiction translator and academic bookseller, Tawada learned to read in over five languages; she speaks English, but doesn’t write it. “I feel in between two languages, and that’s big enough,” she told me. Her stories often turn on feeling outside the culture, as an immigrant, as a citizen witnessing great national change, or even as a tourist.
在多和田最精妙的短篇小说中，人们在身体和语言的双重意义上适应新的文化。身为一名非虚构译者和学术书商的女儿，多和田能够阅读五种以上的语言。她会说英语，但不用英文写作，“我感到身居两种语言之间，这对我来说已经足够了。”她的故事常常涉及外来者对文化的感受，包括身为移民、亲历国家巨变的公民，甚或是一名游客的视角。
In between collecting several other prizes, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Kleist Prize, and the Goethe Medal, Tawada has fashioned the dream bohemian existence for herself in Berlin, writing forewords and books and collaborating with the likes of Wim Wenders and Ulrike Ottinger.
在揽获芥川赏、克莱斯特奖和歌德奖章等文学奖项之余，多和田在柏林为自己打造了一种幻梦般的波西米亚生活，撰写自己的序言和著作，并与维姆·文德斯和乌尔里克·奥廷格等人合作。
When we met at Denmark’s Louisiana Literature Festival this past summer, I made it a personal mission to ask Tawada polar bear questions she hadn’t heard before. Tawada, who has a long-standing interest in the Cold War and socialism, based the protagonist of her best-selling Memoirs of a Polar Bear on the Berlin Zoo’s star resident, Knut, who was born and raised in captivity, and died in captivity as well. “Danish sounds quite polar-bear-ish,” the author said. Tawada peppers her speech with German phrases and portmanteaus. She is cheeky, full of light, and modestly, sagaciously witty.
这个夏天，当我们在丹麦的路易斯安那文学节见面时，我决心要向多和田提出一个她此前未曾听过的北极熊问题。本着对于冷战和社会主义的长期兴趣，在她的畅销作品《北极熊回忆录》中，多和田以柏林动物园的明星成员Knut为原型，它在圈养环境中出生、长大，也在圈养中死去。“丹麦语听起来很有北极熊的感觉，”她说。多和田在发言中穿插了德语短语和合成词，她是如此俏皮，明丽，谦逊而又机敏。
INTERVIEWER
When do you write?
你通常在什么时间写作？
TAWADA
I look like a person who cannot think when I wake up, because I’m still quite between the sleep and the dream and the waking, and that’s the best time for business.
我看起来就像个无法清醒着思考的家伙吧，因为我还处在睡眠、做梦和醒来之间，这就是最适合干活的时候了。
INTERVIEWER
Of the three bears’ stories in Memoirs of a Polar Bear, which was the most challenging to write? Did you feel a deeper responsibility, emotionally, to any one of the three?
在《北极熊回忆录》[注：即为田肖霞中译《雪的练习生》]的三篇熊故事中，哪一篇写起来最有挑战性？你有没有对其中哪一只熊体会到更强烈的责任感和情感连接？
TAWADA
The first bear [Knut’s grandmother, a dancer turned author fleeing Soviet Russia], perhaps. And Knut was in my mind with each of them, naturally, but I am not Knut.
也许是第一只吧（Knut的祖母，逃离苏联的舞蹈家、后来成为作家）。自然，在我写它们中的任何一只时，Knut都在我的脑海里，不过我并不是Knut。
INTERVIEWER
You’re not?
你不是吗？
TAWADA
I’m not Knut! The second bear is also okay … and there it was most difficult to measure the historical facts, to research.
我不是啦！第二只熊也还可以……在查阅历史事实的时候，它是最艰难的部分。
INTERVIEWER
I noticed the way you switch, in the book, between the words paw and hand.
我注意到你的书里出现了“爪子”和“手”之间的切换。
TAWADA
Yes, it’s a story about human and animal rights. The circus was important for the socialists, it demonstrated a control of nature. In the Middle Ages, court cases were brought against animals. Essentially, though, Memoirs is a novel about writing, and it’s inspired by Kafka, Heinrich Heine, Bruno Schulz. On a symbolic level, the Cold War is what drives the bears. Snow is so important, not warmth or the sun. Winter is a time when we are thinking more deeply.
是的，这是一篇关于人类和动物权利的故事。马戏团对于社会主义者来说很重要，它展示了对自然的控制。中世纪时，人们会针对动物提起法庭诉讼。不过从根本上来讲，《回忆录》是一部关于写作的小说，它的灵感来自卡夫卡、海因里希·海涅和布鲁诺·舒茨。在象征的层面上，冷战是熊们行为背后的驱动力。其中，雪非常重要，而不是暖和天气或者阳光。只有在冬天，我们才会更深入地思考。
INTERVIEWER
Do you feel that writing for you, as a multilinguist, is an anarchic act?
作为多语言写作者，写作对你来说是一种无政府主义的行为吗？
TAWADA
Being multilingual is tricky. I feel more as though I am between two languages, and that feels like enough. To study that in-between space has given me so much poetry. I don’t feel like one of those international people who juggles many tongues.
成为多语者是件棘手的事。我觉得自己更像是处在两种语言之间，这对我来说已经足够了。那个居间的所在为我带来了许多的诗。我并不觉得自己是那种掌握多门语言的国际人士。
INTERVIEWER
Do you spend much time in nature?
你在大自然里呆的时间多吗？
TAWADA
German people often go to the forest, and I like it, too. In Tokyo, they don’t have the forest, so people have bonsai trees as their computer wallpaper and go “forest bathing” via their screens. I must say, I prefer Norway’s forests and landscapes. For meditative reasons I love to do Tai Chi in Berlin.
德国人常常去森林里，我也很喜欢。东京没有大森林，所以人们把盆栽树的图片设置为电脑桌面，通过屏幕享受“林浴”。我得承认，我更喜欢挪威的森林和景色。为了冥想，我会在柏林练习太极。
INTERVIEWER
In The Emissary, Japan isolates itself from the world after a disaster. Children become frail, and the elderly are the only ones with real agency. Yoshiro witnesses the decay of his great-grandson. You write, “When he had seen Mumei’s baby teeth drop out one after another like pomegranate pulp, leaving his mouth smeared like blood, Yoshiro had been so distressed he’d wandered aimlessly around the house for a while.” He also has a close relationship with his knife. “When he grasped the handle, a second heart began to beat in Yoshiro’s hand.” Why this violent imagery?
《献灯使》中，日本在一次灾难后将自身与世界其他地方隔离开来。孩子们变得柔弱多病，老人成了唯一有能力行动的人。义郎目睹了曾孙的朽迈。你写到， “那天，无名嘴边沾着血，牙齿轻轻一拨动便掉了，就像石榴籽。义郎看到后非常慌张，毫无意义地在房间里转圈。”【以下《献灯使》的中译都来自蕾克译本，语感太好。】 义郎与他的刀也有一种亲密的连接。“义郎只要握住刀，第二心脏便开始在手中怦怦鼓动。”这种暴力的意象有何用意呢？
TAWADA
The Japanese knife is just so very good. The idea is about quitting the industry of cars and modern electrical appliances and going back to the things Japan produces very well.
日本刀实在是太好了。这里的用意在于退出汽车工业和现代电器用具生产，回到日本擅长制造的物件。
INTERVIEWER
In The Emissary it’s the older generation who must keep the frail, younger generation alive. How did this idea come to you?
《献灯使》里，老一辈人必须让柔弱的年轻一代活下去。你是怎么想到这个设定的？
TAWADA
On top of the aging population in Japan, there was the Fukushima disaster. The old people did not become sick from nuclear poisoning, but small children did. Some of the elderly claim they are impervious to it. It’s also a story about the isolation of Japan following national disasters.
除了日本的人口老龄化，还有福岛核灾难的背景。老人没有因为核中毒而得病，小孩却生病了。一些老年人称他们未受影响。此外，这也是一个关于日本在国家灾难后隔绝于世的故事。
INTERVIEWER
Japan does seem to be a modern, advanced country, and yet it is hit by natural and chemical disasters like no other.
日本看起来是个现代化的发达国家，它所经受的自然灾害和生化灾难却是罕见于别处的。
TAWADA
And there’s an island mentality still, even after the event. That people must stay in the damaged territory and rebuild it. People in Europe are different. People fled Chernobyl.
即便在灾难发生以后，日本仍然有一种岛国心态，认为被毁地区的人们必须留下来重建。欧洲就不一样了，人们逃离了切尔诺贝利。
INTERVIEWER
The Japanese sensibility of staying with the pain and learning, rather than abandoning: that seems slightly masochistic, but also Shintoist?
日本这种与苦难共存的心态，企图研究它而不是抛弃它，听起来有点受虐狂的倾向，而且是神道教的？
TAWADA
Absolutely. It comes from history: it was always better to stay than to leave. To stay independent and to remain connected to the ancient. In the fictional world of The Emissary, new public holidays are declared. I’ve always liked the sound of the Day of the Ocean [created in 1941 to commemorate the Meiji emperor and his 1876 voyage in the Meiji Maru] and Day of the Mountain [inaugurated December 11, 2016], et cetera, but in reality, because most of them were created under the former emperor, I don’t like them. It’s the government’s way of getting around the law that forbids tying politics with religion. The Japanese cannot, for example, celebrate the emperor’s birthday with a holiday. That’s Shintoism. Instead they have something like Ocean Day. Much like in East Germany.
绝对如此。它在历史上根深蒂固：留下总比离开要好。保持独立，维持与祖先的连接。《献灯使》的虚构世界中设立了很多新的公共节日。我一直很喜欢“海之日”和“山之日”的读音，但因为大多数这样的节日都是在此前的天皇治下设立的，我并不喜欢它们本身。这是政府绕开政教捆绑禁令的一种方式。比如说，日本人不能以公共假期的形式庆祝天皇的生日。那就是神道教。相反，他们用海之日这样的节日作为替代。这很像东德的做法。
INTERVIEWER
There’s a sense of nostalgia in the book. Yoshiro yearns for the simple days of yesteryear. “This was how Yoshiro wanted to live: shedding not blood, not tears, but a steady stream of juice.” Do you feel that your student days in early-eighties Germany—a relatively free-spirited, happy time, by all accounts—laid the foundations for the novels you’ve produced in recent years?
这本书里有一种怀旧之情。义郎希望回到单纯的往日时光。 “这是义郎想要的生活，不流血，不流泪，橙汁日日流淌。” 你有没有觉得在八十年代初德国的学生生涯，那段相对来说自由、无忧的日子，为你近年来的小说创作奠定了基调？
TAWADA
Everything began for me in Hamburg in the eighties. It was like nowhere else, you could just go in and out of any classes you liked. It opened up my learning and my reading. In my early Russian-literature days, Dostoyevsky became a sickness, an addiction for me. Then came Walter Benjamin, Edgar Allan Poe, Gertrude Stein, and Jorge Luis Borges.
对我来说，一切都是在八十年代的汉堡开始的。它不像任何别的地方，你可以随意出入于任何你喜欢的课堂。这大大拓宽了我学习和阅读的边界。在我早年学习俄罗斯文学时，陀思妥耶夫斯基成了我的顽疾，成了一种执迷。那之后是本雅明、爱伦·坡、斯泰因，还有博尔赫斯。
INTERVIEWER
Do you think people still run away to Berlin, and if so, why?
你觉得人们仍会逃离到柏林去吗？如果是的话，为什么呢？
TAWADA
The city is unlike anywhere else. It’s like a big artist’s project. Writers, artists, performances, concerts, lectures, constantly. It’s a stage and not a city.
这座城市和其他地方不一样。它就像一个大型的艺术家项目。作家，艺术家，表演，演唱会，讲座，所有这一切不断上演。比起城市，它更像是舞台。
不大必要的草译自存，多和田叶子太可爱了，没有办法。这篇访谈的节奏也很好，从轻松的日常问题进入，拉近距离，抛出阅读体验和关于写作者本人的好奇。以敏锐的细节观察和对意象的捕捉带出主题与隐喻层面的思考，纠出元素之间织密的线索，也撬开写作者思考的现实地景。
