帕蒂史密斯新作 後視鏡中回望人生
Patti Smith’s achingly beautiful new book, “M Train,” is a kaleidoscopic ballad about the losses dealt out by time and chance and circumstance. Losing her husband, the guitarist Fred (Sonic) Smith, to heart failure in 1994 at the age of 45. Losing her brother, Todd, a month later to a stroke. Losing her early New York friend and roommate, Robert Mapplethorpe, to AIDS in 1989. Her book is about moving from a time when her children were little and “the things I touched were living” (“my husband’s fingers, a dandelion, a skinned knee”) to a time when she increasingly began to capture and memorialize moments from her life in photos and words — to create, as an artist, talismanic souvenirs of the past. Of which this book is one.
帕蒂·史密斯(Patti Smith)悽美動人的新書《M列車》(M Train)如同一曲千變萬化的歌謠，吟唱隨時間、際遇與環境所失去的一切。1994年，她的丈夫，吉他手弗萊德·“音速”·史密斯(Fred [Sonic] Smith)年僅45歲就死於心臟病。一個月後，她的兄弟託德(Todd)又死於中風。她早年在紐約的朋友與室友羅伯特·梅普爾索普(Robert Mapplethorpe)則在1989年死於艾滋病。這本書是關於她人生階段的轉變——曾幾何時，她的孩子們年紀還小，“我所觸碰的一切都還是活生生的”（“丈夫的手指、一朵蒲公英、削瘦的膝蓋”）；如今，她開始更多地捕捉和緬懷自己曾在照片和文字中記載的生活，以藝術家的身份，爲舊日時光創作出護身符式的紀念品。這本書也是其中的一件。
Musician, poet and photographer, Ms. Smith, 68, is remarkably attuned to the sound and sorcery of words, and her prose here is both lyrical and radiantly pictorial. Like her famous black-and-white Polaroid photos (some of which are scattered throughout the book), the chapters of “M Train” are magic lantern slides, jumping, free-associatively, between the present and the past, and from subject to subject. She captures a passing mood (melancholia she can turn in her hand “as if it were a small planet,” impossibly blue) as deftly as she conjures her cat Cairo (“an Abyssinian runt with a coat the color of the pyramids”) or a childhood memory (“a skate key on a cherished lace from the shoe of a 12-year-old boy”) or a sad, post-Sandy Christmas in the Rockaways. (“Styrofoam snowmen and waterlogged sofas were draped in tinsel.”)
身兼音樂家、詩人和攝影師的史密斯今年68歲，她極擅長將聲音與文字的魔力結合起來，她的文筆既充滿抒情色彩，又充滿畫面感。正如她那些著名的黑白寶麗來照片（書中就有一些），《M列車》的章節就像一幀幀神奇的幻燈，在過去與現在，乃至不同主題之間自由自在地連接，不住跳躍閃回。無論是一種轉瞬即逝的情緒（她在手中把玩自己的憂鬱，“彷彿它是一個小行星”，異常憂傷）；名叫“開羅”的貓咪（“一隻阿比尼西亞貓，小傢伙的皮毛有如金字塔的顏色”）；一段童年回憶（“那個12歲男孩鞋子上用珍藏的蕾絲繫着的滑輪鞋釦”）；亦或是桑迪颶風之後在羅卡韋度過的憂傷聖誕（“金箔包裹着泡沫塑料雪人和浸水的沙發”），在她筆下都有如信手拈來。
Whereas Ms. Smith’s haunting 2010 memoir, “Just Kids,” centered on her early years in New York in the late 1960s and ’70s and her friendship with Mr. Mapplethorpe, this volume is more peripatetic, chronicling her peregrinations around the world and into the recesses of her imagination, though always returning to her home base in Manhattan. Its unities are not of time and place, but the landscape of Ms. Smith’s own mind — her dreams, her memories, her preoccupation with certain artists (Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath), books (“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” “After Nature,” “2666”) and television shows (“The Killing,” “Law & Order,” “CSI: Miami”).
2010年，史密斯那本令人難忘的回憶錄《只是孩子》(Just Kids)主要是關於20世紀60年代末到70年代她在紐約度過的早年歲月，以及她與梅普爾索普的友情，而這本書更像是漫遊，記錄她周遊世界的經歷，以及在自己幻想中的休憩，不過到最後她總會回到曼哈頓的家中。它並未串聯起時間與地點，而是連接起她心中的一處處風景：她的夢境、她的回憶，乃至她對某些東西的迷戀——諸如藝術家讓·熱內(Jean Genet)、威廉·S·巴勒斯(William S. Burroughs)、西爾維婭·普拉斯(Sylvia Plath)；還有《奇鳥行狀錄》、《追隨自然》(After Nature)、《2666》等書籍，以及《謀殺》(The Killing)、《法律與秩序》(Law & Order)、《犯罪現場調查：邁阿密》(CSI: Miami)等電視劇。
As in a poem or a song, leitmotifs occur again and again: a chair (her father’s, the novelist Roberto Bola ’s, an ornate white plastic one glimpsed in Tangier), a cafe (in Greenwich Village, in the Rockaways, in Berlin), the many, many cups of coffee consumed by the author at home and everywhere she traveled.
正如在詩歌或歌曲之中一樣，在她的書裏，某些主調也會一再重現，比如椅子（她父親的椅子、小說家羅貝託·波拉尼奧[Roberto Bola 、她在丹吉爾瞥見的一把華麗的白色塑料椅子）；咖啡屋（格林威治村的咖啡屋、羅卡韋的咖啡屋與柏林的咖啡屋），還有她在家裏和到處旅行時用掉的無數咖啡杯。
Many of Ms. Smith’s trips are quixotic to say the least. She and Fred journeyed to St.-Laurent-du-Maroni, a small border town in northwest French Guiana so that she could visit the ruins of a French prison colony — because Genet had once written about the place with reverence, and she wanted to retrieve some stones from the site and deliver them to him.
史密斯的許多旅行都如同堂吉訶德式的冒險。一次，她和弗萊德到法屬圭亞那西北部的邊境小鎮馬羅尼河畔聖洛朗區旅行，只爲探訪法國殖民者監獄的廢墟。這是因爲讓·熱內曾經滿懷敬畏地描寫過這個地方，她想從這裏帶回幾塊石頭送給他。
As a member of the Continental Drift Club — an obscure society dedicated to Alfred Wegener, an explorer who pioneered the theory of continental drift — she traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland, for a meeting, and stayed on to photograph the table used in the 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. A meeting was arranged with Mr. Fischer and after she stood up to one of his obscene tirades — “I can be just as repellent as you, only about different subjects,” she recalls saying — they end up spending several hours singing Buddy Holly songs and other tracks together, much to the surprise of his bodyguard.
她還是“大陸漂移俱樂部”的成員，這個鮮爲人知的社團是爲了向探險家與“大陸漂移學說之父”阿爾弗雷德·魏格納(Alfred Wegener)致敬，她到冰島的雷克雅未克參加社團會議，在那裏拍下了鮑比·菲捨爾(Bobby Fischer)與鮑里斯·斯帕斯基(Boris Spassky)象棋比賽時用的桌子。後來她還在那兒同菲捨爾見了面，他對她發表了一番頗爲淫穢的長篇大論，她也只能忍着——她記得自己當時說，“我可以像你一樣令人討厭，不過是以不同的話題”——後來他們一起唱巴迪·霍利(Buddy Holly)和其他人的歌，一連唱了好幾個小時，他的保鏢都驚呆了。
There is something faintly surreal or dreamlike about many of Ms. Smith’s adventures. She and Fred are taken into police custody during their trip to French Guiana, after officers pull over their hired driver — who resembles an extra in the Jamaican film “The Harder They Come,” wearing “aviator sunglasses, cocked cap and a leopard-print shirt” — and discover a man curled up in the trunk of his car. She takes Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” with her on a trip to Mexico City to give a speech about the painter Frida Kahlo and finds herself “looking forward to Mexican food, but the hotel menu was dominated by Japanese fare.”
史密斯的冒險故事中總有種淡淡的超現實氣息或夢幻色彩。她和弗萊德去法屬圭亞那時，警察攔下了他們僱來的司機，那傢伙有點像牙買加犯罪電影《不速之客》(The Harder They Come)裏的人，“戴着飛行員目鏡、三角帽，穿着件豹紋襯衫”，警察發現他的車廂裏還蜷着一個男人，於是把她和弗萊德也一併拘捕起來。她去墨西哥城做一次關於畫家弗裏達·卡洛(Frida Kahlo)的演講時，隨身戴着村上春樹的《奇鳥行狀錄》，她“本來盼着能吃到墨西哥菜，卻發現酒店菜單上全是日本料理。”
During her travels, Ms. Smith makes pilgrimages to the graves of writers she admires: Brecht, Plath, Rimbaud, Genet. The ghosts of such artists haunt these pages, as do the spirits of her beloved husband and brother. And a dark melody of loss threads its way through this volume. Her favorite coat — lost. Her favorite Murakami book — left in an airport bathroom. Her favorite camera — left on a beach. Her favorite neighborhood cafe — closed. Ms. Smith buys a tiny house near Rockaway Beach, Queens, and while it somehow survives Hurricane Sandy, she witnesses the myriad losses of her neighbors — the boardwalk turned to splinters, a friend’s cafe gone, hundreds of homes burned to the ground or flooded.
旅行歲月裏，史密斯還去過不少自己敬仰的作家墓前朝聖：布萊希特、普拉斯、蘭波、熱內。這些藝術家們的幽魂在她字裏行間縈繞不去，當然也少不了她深愛的丈夫與兄弟的魂靈。關於失去的黑暗旋律貫穿這本書的始終。她最心愛的風衣——丟了。她最喜歡的一本村上春樹的書——忘在機場廁所裏了。她最愛用的相機——丟在海灘上了。她家附近最好的咖啡屋——關門了。史密斯在皇后區羅卡韋海灘買下了一處小小的房子，雖然它挺過了桑迪颶風，但她也親眼目睹了鄰居們的慘重損失，人行道成了廢墟、朋友的咖啡屋被沖垮、幾百戶人家被夷爲平地，或者被大水淹沒。
If “Just Kids” was about starting out as an artist and setting forth in the world, “M Train” feels more like a look at the past through a rearview mirror. Ms. Smith writes of feeling “a longing for the way things were.” She writes about ghosts drawing us away from the present. She writes about singing “What a Wonderful World” for Fred at his memorial service and she writes about realizing that she is now older than Fred when he died — and older than many of her departed friends.
如果說《只是孩子》是關於她作爲藝術家的起點，以及她如何在這個世界上啓程，《M列車》更像是通過後視鏡對自己的過去做一次回望。史密斯寫出了“對事物本來面目的懷念”；寫出幽魂如何指引我們暫且離開當下的時光；她寫到在弗萊德的追思會上爲他唱起《多麼美好的世界》(What a Wonderful World)；寫到她發現自己已經比弗萊德去世時年長、比自己所有英年早逝的朋友去世時都要年長時的心情。
“I’m going to remember everything,” she thinks, “and then I’m going to write it all down. An aria to a coat. A requiem for a cafe.” An eloquent — and a deeply moving — elegy for what she has “lost and cannot find” but can remember in words.
“我要記住一切，”她想，“然後我要把它們都寫下來：一首風衣的詠歎調，一支咖啡屋的安魂曲。”最終，她帶來了這曲意味深長而又深切動人的哀歌，那些“失落了就難以尋回”的東西，卻可以通過文字被永遠銘記。
