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Life during the Blitz
闪电战下的生活
Death threats
死亡威胁
Love and literature in the time of bombs
战乱中的爱与文学
The Love-charmof Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War. By Lara Feigel.
《战乱情迷》，Lara Feigel著。
FEW histories of the British home front during the second world warreally capture the “mood, temper and climate”, lamented Elizabeth Bowen, a novelist who lived in London at the time. Death's constant threat fuelled an apocalyptichedonism. The Blitz was grim, but glorious too, in its way. In addition, the experience left a distinct and enduring literary legacy, writes Lara Feigel,an academic at King's College London, in her new book, “The Love-charm ofBombs”, which came out in Britain in February and is now being published in America.
鲜有讲述二战期间英国大后方的故事能真正体现当时的“”心境、性情、风气”，当年生活在伦敦的小说家Elizabeth Bowen哀叹道。持续的死亡威胁燃起了享乐主义热潮。闪电战残酷无情，但另一方面，这也是场荣耀之战。此外，这次经历也带来了非同凡响不可磨灭的文化遗产，伦敦国王学院的学者Lara Feigel在她的新书《战乱情迷》中写道。该作品已于2月在英国面市，现于美国出版发行。
A fast-livingwriting trio Bowen, Graham Greene and Henry Yorke are the main protagonists. They mucked in with the wareffort, but their Blitz was made unique by love affairs. The passions it aroused, and the sense of timelessness that ensued a “suspended present”, Ms Feigel calls it were fertile muses. “These writers,firefighting, ambulance-driving, patrolling the streets, were the successors of the soldier poets of the firstworld war,” the author argues in her introduction.
三剑客 Bowen, Graham Greene 和Henry Yorke即是描写这段放纵生活的主要代表。他们分享各自在战时取得的成果，笔下的那些风流韵事也让他们的闪电战与众不同。被唤醒的热情以及时间的永恒性引发了一种 “现实静止”，Ms Feigel形容为 灵感的源泉。“这些作家，当过消防员，开过救护车，在街上巡逻，是一战时期士兵诗人的继任者”作者在引言中陈述道。
Bomb-hit London was surely of a different order to the peerless carnage of Flanders fields, but the literary impact of the war, she convincingly shows, is comparable. Yorke was at his most prolific then. For the others the experience bore fruit more slowly. The Blitz would provide the setting for Bowen's “The Heat of the Day”, and also for Greene's most passionate work, “The End of the Affair”.
轰炸伦敦造成的伤亡虽没有血流成河的佛兰德战役惨烈，但战争带来的文学冲击，却不相上下，Feigel在书中有力地证明了这点。Yorke当时文思泉涌，而其他作家的产量相对偏少。闪电战为Bowen的《炎日》，Greene最激情的作品《恋情的终结》提供了创作背景。
Peace was a disappointment. The democratic spirit ebbed and life lost its intensity. Bowen, repelled by the Labour Party's 1945 electionvictory, retreated to Ireland with her sexless husband, but really she lived in a world of letters with a Canadian lover. Yorke, who would never be more than a “writer's writer's writer”, became a drunk. Greene found new love and increased fame, but like the others, Ms Feigel suggests, he would never again “value the present moment so whole heartedly”.
和平令人沮丧。民主精神衰退，生活失去张力。1945年工党赢得选举，Bowen就此退出政治舞台，与她性冷淡的丈夫一同移居爱尔兰，但实际上她沉浸在与加拿大情人构筑起的情信世界。York，本可以超越“作家的作家的作家”，却成了酒鬼。Greene有了新欢，声名鹊起，但Feigel认为，就像其他人一样，他再也无法“全心全意地珍视当下”。
This is a strikingly original book. It succeeds in itsambitious combination of group biography and literary criticism. But it is notflawless. Ms Feigel focuses too widely on obscure novelists,in particular a melancholy Austrian emigre, Hilde Spiel,while more illustrious contemporaries Virginia Woolf, Anthony Powell and EvelynWaugh haunt the background like ghosts at the feast. The authors are also tooreadily believed. Yorke called his fellow firefighters “absolute heroes”, butWaugh, a marine, doubted their courage. Did Waugh have a point? The questiongoes unasked.
这是本非常具有创建性的作品。它成功地完成了集体传记与文学评论的宏伟结合。但也并非十全十美。Feigel过于专注冷门小说家，特别是忧郁的奥地利移民Hilde Spiel，而那些杰出的同代作家 Virginia Woolf, Anthony Powell和Evelyn Waugh 却像鬼魂般游离在盛宴之下。同时，作者对一些史料过于轻信。Yorke称他的消防伙伴“绝对是英雄人物”，但身为海军的Waugh却怀疑他们的勇气。Waugh的话是否中肯，我们也不得而知。
But these are minor complaints. For the ageing Rose Macaulay, another British novelist of the period, the war was shattering. Shelost a secret lover to cancer, and his letters to a bomb. The need to conceal the mourning deepened the grief. “The Love-charm of Bombs” excels in demonstrating that these years of bleakness and loss were also, for a fortunate few, a time of extraordinary excitement and literary inspiration.
但这些都是小瑕疵。对于另一位英国小说家，当时年迈的Rose Macaulay来说，战争粉碎了一切。她失去了身患癌症的秘密情人，炸弹摧毁了他们所有的情信。她必须隐藏这份悲伤，这反而加深了心中的痛楚。《战乱情迷》极力证明了那个不断失去的阴郁年代也是激情荡漾，充满文学启发的时代，多么难能可贵。
