经济学人87:逆世唯心的巾帼

 　　Books and Arts; Book Review;20th-century women; Dandy dames 1;

　　文艺；书评；20世纪的女性；逆世唯心的巾帼；
　　Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson were remarkable 2—by any standards;
　　无论何时，Rebecca West和Dorothy Thompson都吸引着世俗的目光；
　　Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson, New Women in Search of Love and Power. By Susan Hertog.
　　代偿巨大的野望：Rebecca West和Dorothy Thompson，新时代女性追寻的爱与权力。作者：Susan Hertog。
　　Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West were career women long before the term had been invented. In the 1930s, when Thompson and West were making their mark as established professionals, a Gallup poll recorded that 82% of the American population believed women “should not have paying jobs outside the home” if their husbands were employed. Yet both women worked consistently from their early 20s in occupations that were almost entirely 3 male-dominated—Thompson as a foreign correspondent and then a political commentator 4; West (pictured) as a literary critic, lauded 5 novelist, historian and travel writer.
　　DOROTHY THOMPSON和Rebecca West是名符其实的”职业女性”----远在这个专有名词发明之前。在20世纪30年代，Thompson 和West凭其过硬的专业本领广为人知。一项盖洛普民意显示82%的美国国民坚信只要丈夫保有一份工作，妻子就“不应该在抛头露面赚钱养家”。然而就是在那样一个男性主导的工作环境中，两位女性从20几岁开始变贯己之念长驻岗位：thompson先是作为一个外国通讯记者，随后转职为政治评论员；West（如上图）则集文学评论家、广集赞誉的小说家、历史学者以及游记著撰者多职于一身。
　　Susan Hertog's biography, an accomplished 6 synthesis of these two lives and the remarkable parallels between them, is also a history of the 20th century, a study of female emancipation 7 and literary culture, and an acute analysis of dysfunctional family life.
　　这部由Susan Hertog所著的传记将两位女性的生涯与两人间惊人的相似之处完美地结合起来。它也是一部20世纪的史著，更是一份女性解放运动的研究报告和文学作品，同时亦敏锐地剖析了那个年代的人们真实的家庭生活。
　　The most striking similarity between Thompson and West is their seemingly innate 8 self-belief and fearlessness. On her 27th birthday in 1920 the American-born Thompson sailed for England. With no contacts but with portfolio 9 in hand, her goal was to gain credentials 10 as a freelance reporter and make her way across Europe to witness the aftermath of the revolution in Russia. By 1927 she was living in Berlin as the first female head of a news bureau in Europe. West, the daughter of an Anglo-Irish journalist who abandoned the family when she was eight, was a reviewer and essayist by the time she was 19, when “regardless of reputation” she published cutting critiques of established writers such as Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw. West wrote consistently until her death at 90 in 1983, and was in the enviable position of having Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker, write to her, pleading: “Please write any story you want for us, fact or fiction.” In 1941 West published her best-known book, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”, a history of the Balkans and a meditation 11 on the rise of Nazism 12.
　　两位女性让人最印象深刻的相似性在于她们看似天性使然的坚定自我和无所畏惧。在Thompson1920年27岁生日的那一天，这位美国年轻女子仅持一文件夹，心携能够取得自由时事记者的工作资格并穿越欧洲去见证俄国沙皇革命余波的目标，孤身一人远赴没有亲朋所在的英国。到1927年，她已定居柏林，成为首位欧洲新闻署的女性负责人。West的父亲----爱尔兰记者，抛弃妻子之时，她才8岁。幸而至19岁时已经是一位评论家和散文家，并“弃名声于不顾”地以初生牛犊之势发表了前辈级作家Arnold Bennett和George Bernard Shaw删减过的批判性评论。West女士直到1983年90岁与世长辞之前从未间断过写作，并曾得到让人梦寐以求的《纽约客》编辑Harold Ross的暗藏丰盛赞誉的来信：“请以我们写个故事吧，真实的虚构的都可以！”1941年，West出版了举世闻名的书：《黑色的小羊羔和灰色的猎鹰》---叙述了巴尔干半岛的历史以及对纳粹主义兴起的沉思。
　　Ms Hertog's style is frequently novelistic, which is less irritating than might be anticipated. In her description of Thompson's life in Berlin, for example, Ms Hertog assumes the voice of an omniscient 13 narrator: “As Dorothy walked to the small office she kept on Motzstrasse, she remembered the first time she had met Rebecca…” Her writing style can be fanciful, as when Ms Hertog imagines the colour of Thompson's dress and how her hair might have been styled for her un-photographed first wedding. But it works well in the passages where the author attempts to draw out the romantic and family dramas which so defined the lives of both women.
　　Hertog女士的写作风格极富新意，因此料想不大会像某些传记那样枯燥乏味。比如说，在她对Thompson女士的柏林生旅中，hertog女士以像如临现场那样通晓各事的口吻记叙道：当Dorothy漫行于专设于Motzstrasse的小工作室的途中，回忆起了初次与rebecca相见的场景。她的写作风格布满想象的泡泡，或者细细描绘Thompson的衣着之色，又或者刻画她初次婚礼所打理的发型，尽管现实里Thompson并未留下一张她初婚的照片。然而这虚构的情节却一反世人为她们所定性的刻板的职业女性形象，恰到好处地丰富了一个女人所拥有浪漫温馨的家庭生活的一面。
　　When she was 21 West had an illegitimate son with H.G. Wells, 26 years her senior and then on his second wife, before marrying Henry Andrews, a banker, who was frequently unfaithful and suffered early from a form of dementia. Thompson was married three times and also had a son, with Sinclair Lewis, her second husband and winner of the Nobel prize in literature. Resentful of their mothers after lonely childhoods, both sons married young before abandoning their first wives, pursued unrealistic ambitions, and, when they proved unsuccessful, demanded lifelong financial assistance.
　　West在21岁时与年长她26岁的H.G.Wells生下了一个非婚子之后便成为了他的第二任妻子。第二任丈夫Henry Andrews是早年罹患痴呆症并在婚姻生活中频繁出轨的银行家。Thompson历经三次婚姻，同样育有一子，是与第二任丈夫，荣获诺贝尔文学奖的Sinclair Lewis所生。两位儿子不满他们的母亲专注工作而导致自己孤寂残缺的童年，在首次婚姻中，妻室尚在却与年轻女子重婚，并追寻着不切实际的梦想，当最终幻灭之时，又央求母亲终身的经济援助。
　　The danger of the book's title refers to the effects of their ambitions to be, as Thompson put it, “something no other woman has been yet”. Both women turned out to be poor parents, even if they came up to roughly the standard expected of working fathers of the time; both chose work and travel over their child, sent them away to school and placated 14 them with lavish 15 gifts. Ms Hertog poignantly 16 renders the conflict between maternal 17 instinct and the desire for realisation of ambition, backed by a fear of diminished “intellectual lustre” and of becoming lost in a “cocoon of domesticity”. Thompson and West undoubtedly 18 chose work over family, but in doing so helped to break down barriers, not only for women journalists but for all working women.
　　剑走偏锋的书名披露了她们的事业野心，正如Thompson所说，这是“其他女性未曾经历的一切”。两位女士在养育子女方面是失败的典范，虽然可以说她们大致符合那个时代在外打拼的爸爸的标准：在子女年纪尚小时便投身事业周游列国，并且将儿子打发到学校，又用奢华的礼物慰藉他们缺乏母爱的童年。在担心以家庭为重会埋没聪颖天资与害怕投身事业会为家庭所茧缚而带来失落感的进退维谷的情境下，Hertog女士入木三分地刻画了母爱的天性与实现事业宏愿的冲突所带来的苦痛。两位女性毫不迟疑地选择了后者，但正因为这个选择，才帮助了千万女性记者乃至所有的在职女性跨越了世间予以她们的枷锁。