经济学人26:三千青丝飘万年 Hairy old myths

 　　Books and Arts; Exhibition Review;Human tresses;

　　文艺；书评；展览回顾;人类的头发;
　　Hairy old myths;The power of pilosity;
　　三千青丝飘万年;头发的魔力;
　　Blondes are dumber and brunettes more dependable. Or so it is said. But it is redheads who have long been the more feared, revered 1, loathed 2 and loved; hence the rumour 3 that it takes more than an average dose of anaesthetic to sedate 4 a carrot-top. As Sylvia Plath, herself a Titian tigress of sorts, once remarked, “Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, and eat men like air.”
　　据说，金发女郎有些傻气，而深褐色头发的女人比较可靠。但长期以来，人们又敬、又畏、又爱、又恨的却是红色头发的人。因此有传言说，给红头发的人进行麻醉都得多打一点麻药。西尔维娅·普拉斯本人就勉强算是一个长着“提香式红发”的母老虎，她曾经写道：“我站起身来 披着红发走出灰烬 我大啖人肉 如同吞噬空气”。
　　Man's fascination 5 with hair is almost as old as humanity itself. But humans have been cutting and coiffing their hair for at least 25,000 years, mostly with the aim of pleasing themselves and distancing or differentiating 6 themselves from others. Yves le Fur, curator of a new show about hair at the Quai Branly museum in Paris, is well aware that one of the earliest depictions of styled hair is a paleolithic figurine known as the Venus of Brassempouy, which was discovered in south-west France in 1894. But he hides his anthropological 7 light under a bushel and draws visitors into “Cheveux Chéris” with a quick tour d'horizon of stylists, styles and styled, from Gina Lollobrigida to Ingres and the sirens of Ulysses.
　　人们对头发的迷恋几乎和人类历史本身一样古老。但至少两万五千年以来，人们一直在修剪、打理自己的头发，主要是为了满足自己、胜过别人或是让自己显得与众不同。巴黎的凯布朗利博物馆举办了一场关于人类头发的新展览。展览负责人伊夫·乐福很清楚：对发型最早的刻画之一是1894年在法国西南部出土的旧石器时代雕像（被称为“布拉瑟普的维纳斯”）。但他并未显露自己在人类学方面的才华，而是快速而广泛地涉及了 历史上的一些造型师、发型和做发型的人（包括吉娜·劳洛勃丽吉达、安格尔和《尤利西斯》里的塞壬海妖等等），以此来把参观者吸引到“心爱的头发”这场展览中来。
　　Having enticed 8 the public in with the seductiveness of youthful locks, Mr le Fur moves on to hair loss and the show takes a serious and far more interesting turn. Middle age and chemotherapy are just two reasons why people lose their hair. Though often painful, at least privately 9, this is loss via a gradual process and in the case of the latter, is reversible. Examples of voluntary and instantaneous hair loss include styling by punk rockers of the 1980s and the swastika-shaped shavings of neo-Nazi thugs. Either way, the visitor is reminded of what rapid hair loss has meant over time.
　　乐福先是用充满朝气、富有魅力的头发展品吸引了观众的注意力，然后转移到了脱发的话题上，于是展览变得严肃了起来，却也更加有趣。上了年纪和化学疗法仅仅是人类脱发的两个原因。尽管脱发的过程往往比较痛苦（至少脱发者心里是痛苦的），但这是一个渐进的过程，而且如果因为化疗而脱发，头发还是可以再长回来的。而也有一些人出于自愿、快速地剃掉了自己的头发——包括八十年代的朋克摇滚歌手、以及在头上剃出“卍”型记号的新纳粹暴徒。无论如何，随着时间推移，参观者都明白了快速脱发意味着什么。
　　A ponytail of three thick curls severed 10 at the nape is all that remains 11 after a young Frenchwoman named Emma surrendered to a Carmelite convent. Where today parents save first curls as a souvenir of babyhood, in the 19th century it became fashionable to work the hair of a dead beloved into a locket, bracelet 12 or even a ring. One of the most touching 13 pieces in the show is a small curl of blonde hair pasted onto a heart-shaped piece of mother-of-pearl. It was cut from the head of Louis XVI's heir, Louis-Charles, who was born just before the French Revolution and died in the Temple prison two years after his parents were guillotined, having been put under the care of a shoemaker tasked with making him forget his royal origins.
　　一个叫做艾玛的法国女人进入加尔默罗会修行以后，所留下的只有从后颈处剪断的一条打了三个鬈的马尾辫。今天，有些父母会把孩子初生的鬈发保留下来，当作对他们儿时的纪念；而在十九世纪，人们流行把逝去挚爱的头发嵌进盒式吊坠、手镯甚至是戒指里。本次展览最为感人的展品之一就是粘在一块心形珍珠母上的一小鬈金发。这是从路易十六的子嗣——路易-查尔斯头上剪下来的。路易-查尔斯生于法国大革命前夕，后来他的父母被送上了断头台，而他被送给一名鞋匠抚养，鞋匠的任务就是让他忘记自己的皇室出身。两年后，路易-查尔斯死在狱中。
　　It should perhaps be obvious that such an exhibition in France would turn next to the second world war. But photographs of l'épuration, a grisly moment at the time of the liberation when the country rose up against those suspected of being collaborators, are still shocking. Taking a cue from the “purification” of Republican women in Spain in the 1930s, French women who had slept with the enemy were marched on to public squares and shaved.
　　在法国，这样的展览接下来可能显然要转到二战的方向上来。但这里展出的关于大清洗 的照片却更加令人震惊——恐怖的大清洗 发生在法国解放前后 ，当时全国人民起身反抗那些有通敌嫌疑的人。二十世纪三十年代，西班牙对支持共和的妇女进行了“清洗”。法国效仿此举，将曾经与敌人有染的妇女押往广场示众并强行剃去了她们的头发。
　　Jeering 14 crowds accompanied this public depilation, adding to the stigma 15. A series of pictures taken by a Magnum photographer, Robert Capa, in Chartres in August 1944, just a week before the liberation of Paris, are a testimony 16, three-quarters of a century later, to the hate, curiosity, shame and indifference 17 of crowds. Even more striking, because it is so rarely seen, is a montage of film clips of that time in which a group of women is trundled through the streets on a cart marked les poules à boche while a soldier chucks one of them under the chin.
　　这种公开脱发过程还引来了一些围观人群的嘲弄奚落，更是加重了这些妇女的耻辱。1944年8月，在巴黎解放前的一个星期，马格兰摄影通讯社的摄影师罗伯特·卡帕在沙特尔拍下了一组照片。事隔七十多年以后，这组照片仍然能证明当时围观人群的种种心理：厌恶、猎奇、羞耻和冷漠。还有一些电影片段的剪辑组合，从中可以看到一批妇女坐在推车上被推过大街，车身上标记着“德国佬的姘头”，有个士兵轻佻地摸着其中一名妇女的下巴。这些剪辑组合很少公诸于世，因此更是令人惊讶。
　　Hair shorn on these occasions was never kept. In other civilisations the power of hair lay in its importance as a trophy 18 believed to be infused with the strength or magic of its original owner. It is this appropriation 19 of hair that Mr le Fur explores in the final section of the show. From Peru to Gabon, and from India to China, coats, crowns and headdresses of human hair have been made for centuries. It is easy, in these politically correct times, to forget that similar practices were just as common in Europe and America. The Quai Branly museum may be just six years old, but it is in its way old-fashioned, a throwback to a less timorous 20 time when museums were proud to display human scalps and heads shrunken by Amazon tribes (pictured). By exhibiting such items, and putting them in an historical context, Mr le Fur has increased our knowledge and added to an exhibition that is hard to forget.
　　在这些场合里，人们从不保留剪下的头发。而在其他一些文明中，头发的魔力在于它作为纪念品的重要性——人们认为头发具有原主人的力量或魔力。乐福在展览的最后一个部分所探索的正是这种“移用”头发的现象。从秘鲁到加蓬，从印度到中国，数百年来人们一直在用头发制作外衣、帽子和头饰。在这些政治立场正确的时期，我们很容易忘记一点：类似行为在欧美也是司空见惯的。凯布朗利博物馆可能只有六年的历史，但它的展览方式却有些复古怀旧，回到了过去那种较为大胆的时期：以展出人类的头皮和亚马逊部落缩制而成的头颅（如图）为荣。乐福展出了这些物品并把它们放在了历史背景之中。通过这种方式，他让参观者大开眼界，也为一场令人难忘的展览增添了乐趣。