评论
打印
Culture
文艺版块
The art of dying
死亡的艺术
Lots of people mourn when famous writers and musicians die. Why?
当著名作家和音乐人去世时，很多人都会哀悼。为什么？
After Alexander Pushkin was shot in a duel in 1837, crowds of mourners formed in St Petersburg.
1837年亚历山大·普希金在决斗中被枪杀后，圣彼得堡聚集了大批哀悼者。
Russia’s nervy authorities moved his funeral service and mustered 60,000 troops.
紧张不安的俄罗斯当局转移了他的葬礼地点，并召集了6万名士兵。
When the wagon bearing the poet’s body reached Pskov province, where he was to be interred, devotees tried to unharness the horses and pull it themselves.
当载着诗人遗体的马车到达埋葬他的普斯科夫省时，其崇拜者试图卸下马具，自己把棺材搬下来。
The death of Rudolph Valentino, a silent-movie idol, in 1926 set off similarly fervid lamentation.
1926年，默片偶像鲁道夫·瓦伦蒂诺的去世也引发了同样热烈的哀悼。
Mounted police restrained the fans who mobbed the funeral parlour in New York where he lay on view (several reportedly killed themselves).
骑警控制了聚集在纽约殡仪馆的粉丝，瓦伦蒂诺的遗体被安置在那里供人观瞻(据报道，有几名粉丝自杀了)。
In 1975 some of the millions of Egyptians who paid their respects to Um Kalthoum, a megastar singer, took hold of her coffin and shouldered it for hours through the streets of Cairo.
1975年，数以百万计的埃及人向超级巨星歌手乌姆·库勒苏姆致敬，其中一些人抱着她的棺材，扛着它走过开罗的街道长达几个小时。
Today’s celebrity obsequies tend to be less fanatical, and largely digital rather than in-person.
如今的名人葬礼往往不那么狂热，而且主要以线上而非线下形式进行。
But they are passionate all the same.
但在这些葬礼上人们仍然充满热情。
In the past few months, grief has coursed around the Internet for Martin Amis, Cormac McCarthy, Tina Turner and, most recently, Jimmy Buffett.
过去几个月，互联网上充满了对马丁·艾米斯、科马克·麦卡锡、蒂娜·特纳以及最近的吉米·巴菲特的哀悼。
If you stop to think about it, many such outpourings for writers, actors and musicians are odd, even irrational.
如果你停下来想一想，会发现对作家、演员和音乐家的这种情感迸发很多都是奇怪的，甚至非理性的。
Unlike other kinds of grief, this one does not stem from personal intimacy.
与其他类型的悲伤不同，这种悲伤不是源于个人的亲密关系。
If you ever interacted with a cherished author, it was probably during a book tour when, caffeinated to the eyeballs, she signed your copy of her novel and misspelled your name.
如果你曾与一位受人喜爱的作家互动过，那可能是在巡回售书期间，她因为喝了太多咖啡而眼球布满血丝，在你带来的小说上签了名，还把你的名字拼错了。
Maybe you delude yourself that you once locked eyes with a frontman hero during a gig and that he smiled only for you.
也许你会自欺欺人地认为，你曾在一场演唱会上与一位主唱目光相遇，他的微笑只对着你一个人。
But you didn’t really know them, and they certainly didn’t know you.
但你并不真正认识他们，他们也肯定不认识你。
Nor would you always have liked them if you had.
如果你真的认识了他们，你可能也不会一直喜欢他们了。
Their books or songs may be touching and wise, but (in the parlance of criticism) it is a biographical fallacy to assume that the work reflects an artist’s life or beliefs.
他们的书或歌曲可能充满智慧且感人至深，但认为作品反映了艺术家的生活或信仰是一种传记性谬误(用批评家的话来说)。
Your favourites may indeed have been lovely people; or perhaps, beneath their curated images, they were spiky money-grubbers, consumed by rivalry or solipsists who drove their families nuts.
你最喜欢的人可能确实是可爱的人；或者在他们精心打造的形象下，他们是小肚鸡肠的敛财者，一心想着竞争，把家人逼到发疯的自我中心主义者。
Rarely do you know for sure.
很难确定地说他们是什么样。
Though the artists are gone, meanwhile, the art you prize is not.
与此同时，尽管艺术家们去世了，但你所珍视的艺术却还在。
Death does not delete it—on the contrary, curiosity and nostalgia often drive up sales.
死亡不会删除它，相反，好奇和怀旧情绪往往会推高销量。
(David Bowie’s only number-one album in America was “Blackstar”, released days before he died in 2016.)
(大卫·鲍伊唯一一张在美国排名第一的专辑是《黑星》，在他2016年去世的前几天发行。)
The dead, it is true, write no more books and record no songs.
的确，死者不再写书，也不再录制歌曲。
Philip Roth will never set a novel in the era of Donald Trump; you will never hear another operatic Meat Loaf ballad.
菲利普·罗斯再也不会以唐纳德·特朗普时代为背景写小说，你再也不会听到肉块（美国歌手）唱歌剧般的歌曲。
The cold reality, however, is that many artists’ best work was done long before their demise.
然而，冷酷的现实是，许多艺术家最好的作品都是在他们死去之前很久就完成的。
The sorrow makes more sense when a star dies young or violently.
当一位明星英年早逝或猝然离世时，悲伤才更说得通。
Had she not perished at 27, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who knows what music Amy Winehouse would have added to her small, exquisite oeuvre?
如果艾米·怀恩豪斯没有像吉米·亨德里克斯和珍妮丝·乔普林那样在27岁时去世，谁知道她会在她那数量不多但优美精致的作品集中再增添些什么呢？
Sinéad O’Connor, another casualty of 2023, lived a troubled life that ended too soon.
西亚德·奥康纳是2023年的另一位辞世者，他的生活坎坷，且过早地结束。
Buddy Holly (killed in a plane crash), Amedeo Modigliani (dead of tubercular meningitis at 35), Wilfred Owen (slain in action a week before the armistice in 1918): such premature and cruel exits are tragic.
巴迪·霍利(在一次飞机失事中丧生)、阿梅迪奥·莫迪利亚尼(35岁时死于结节性脑膜炎)、威尔弗雷德·欧文(1918年停战前一周在行动中被杀)：这种过早且残酷的离世是一种悲剧。
Objectively, though, the death of a long-lived and fulfilled artist is far from the saddest item in an average day’s headlines.
然而，客观地讲，一位寿终正寝且功成名就的艺术家去世，这远远算不上日常头条新闻中最令人悲痛的事情。
And whereas most mortals sink into oblivion, laureates live on in their output, which Horace, a Roman poet, called a “monument more lasting than bronze”.
尽管大多数人死后都会被遗忘，但桂冠艺术家却在作品中不朽，罗马诗人贺拉斯称这是“比青铜更隽永的纪念碑”。
The standard reasons for mourning don’t apply.
哀悼的一般理由并不适用于名人去世。
Why, then, are these losses felt so widely and keenly?
那么，为什么这些失去引发了如此广泛和强烈的感受呢？
One interpretation is that the departed celebrities are merely the messengers.
一种解释是，辞世的名人只是信使。
The real news is death itself, which comes for everyone, immortal or impervious as some may seem.
真正的信息是死亡本身，死亡会降临到每个人身上，尽管有些人看起来似乎是不朽的和不受影响的。
If the reaper calls for Prince, with all his talent and verve, he will certainly knock for you.
如果死神带走了Prince（美国音乐家），他洋溢的才华和激情也未能让他幸免，那么死神也一定会敲响你的门。
As Jim Morrison sang before he, too, died at 27: “No one here gets out alive.”
正如吉姆·莫里森在27岁去世前所唱的那样：“这里没有人能活着出去。”
Part of your past—the years in which the mute musician was the soundtrack, the silenced writer your ally—can seem to fade away with them.
你生命中过去的一部分--不再开口的音乐家曾是你生活中的背景音乐，永远沉默的作家曾是你的盟友--似乎会随着他们一起消散。
Just as plausibly, the grief can be seen as a transmuted form of gratitude for the solidarity and joy they supplied.
同样说得通的是，这种悲痛可以被视为对从他们身上所获得的团结和喜悦的一种变异的感激之情。
On your behalf, they undertook to make sense of the world and distil beauty from the muck of life.
他们代替你去理解了这个世界，并从生命的泥泞中提炼出美好。
Yet as much as anything else, the passing of an artist is an occasion for communion.
然而，与其他事情一样，艺术家的逝世也是一个情感交融的时刻。
In an atomised age, in which the default tone is abrasive, a beloved figure’s death is a chance to share benign feelings and memories with fellow admirers.
在这个原子化的时代，人们默认的语气是生硬的，而一个所爱人物的离世让人们有机会与其他仰慕者分享良性的情感和回忆。
Like water-cooler moments in a cemetery, these sombre holidays from spite and strife are the artists’ parting gifts.
这就像墓地里的饮水机聊天时间，让人们从恶意和冲突中脱离出来，这种略带阴郁的短暂逃离就是艺术家们赠予的临别礼物。
