丘吉尔：辩才造英雄

Successes in Rhetoric: Language in the Life of Churchill

丘吉尔：辩才造英雄

The orotund proclamations will be unavoidable at the new exhibition “Churchill: The Power of Words,” at the Morgan Library & Museum, because at the center of the gallery is a semi-enclosed theater. And from it, however muted, will emerge recordings of Winston Churchill’s voice, speaking to Parliament, to British radio listeners and to American audiences, breaking on the ear like waves, rising and falling with every breath, sometimes suspended unexpectedly in midair, other times rushing forward with renewed vigor.

“丘吉尔：言辞的力量” 展在摩根图书馆和博物馆(Morgan Library & Museum)举行。展览一定会传出响亮的宣言，因为场馆中央是一个半封闭式的剧场。剧场中播放着温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)的讲话录音，包括他对议会、英国的电台听众和美国听众的讲话。他的声音无论多么柔和，都会像波浪一样冲入人们的耳中，每一句话起落有致，声音有时出其不意地悬在半空中，其余的时间则气势非凡地勇往直冲。

If you enter that small theater to hear excerpts from eight of his landmark speeches more clearly, you will also see the words on screen, laid out in poetic scansion (“The whole fury and might of the enemy/must very soon be turned on us”), just as Churchill wrote them, to match the rhythms of his voice.

如果你走进小剧场，你会更清晰地聆听他那八个里程碑式的演说片段，还会在屏幕上看到字幕。文字正如丘吉尔当初所写那样，以诗歌的韵律显示(“敌人全部的狂暴和力量/肯定不久就会转向我们”)，以便与他的声音韵律相吻合。

But ignore the sound, if you can, and leave it for last. For it is best first to be reminded just how important those speeches by a British prime minister really were, and what difference they made.

如果可能的话，别去管声音，把声音留到最后再去听。因为最好先想想一位英国首相的这些演讲到底有多重要，它们产生了怎样的影响。

This isn’t a history exhibition, so you won’t be able to take their full measure; you won’t fully grasp how washed up Churchill’s political career was in the mid-1930s; how few in England were prepared to recognize what was taking place in Germany; how few were also prepared to think the unthinkable about war, scarcely 20 years after the continent was so stained in blood; and how visionary Churchill was, in knowing what would happen and in understanding what price would be paid.

这不是一个历史展览，因此你看不到它们整个的来龙去脉。你不能获悉丘吉尔在20世纪30年代中期的政治生涯是多么的潦倒;在英格兰，准备好认识到德国正在发生什么的人是那么少;准备思考战争的人也是那么少——不到20年前，欧洲大陆还沐浴在血泊之中;丘吉尔是多么的远见卓识，知道即将发生什么并且深知将付出怎样的代价。

So you won’t really be able to understand that there was a period — between Germany’s beginning to bomb England in 1940 (killing more than 40,000) and the United States’ entrance to the war at the end of 1941 — when England might well have fallen or made generous accommodation to German demands, had Churchill not been a master of words and ideas, rallying his “great island nation” as prime minister with promises of blood, toil, tears and sweat.

所以你不会知道，曾经有一个时期——在德国1940年开始轰炸英格兰(炸死了4万多人)和美国在1941年年底参战之间——要不是因为丘吉尔是一位语言和思想大师，一位首相，他以热血、辛劳、眼泪和汗水的许诺召集他“伟大的岛国”，英格兰可能会沦陷，或者慷慨地满足德国的要求。

But you will see enough to get a sense of what his wartime leadership meant. And what the rest of this fine exhibition accomplishes is to show how Churchill’s words can seem the expression of a life force, mixing mercurial passions and extraordinary discipline, passionate devotion and exuberant self-promotion, extravagant indulgence and ruthless analysis. The show, which opened on Friday, helps put a life in perspective that even during the years after the Sept. 11 attacks has been energetically celebrated as an ideal and just as energetically derided by critics for its intemperate character.

但是你看到的展品足以让你了解，丘吉尔在战时的领导意味着什么。这场精品展的其余部分，证明丘吉尔的演说是他的生命力表现，这些演说集雄辩的激情与非凡的克制于一身，既赤胆忠肝，又充斥着透彻的分析。展览于6月8日开幕，它有助于人们正确地看待丘吉尔的一生：在后“9·11”时代他被积极地颂扬为完人;因为激烈的性格，他也受到一些批评者同样的嘲弄。

More than 60 documents and artifacts have been gathered by Allen Packwood, the director of the Churchill Archives Center at the University of Cambridge, England, for this exhibition, also drawing on the holdings of Churchill’s house at Chartwell, Kent. There are few opportunities to see these documents on public display, even in England, though many have been digitized as part of the museum at the Churchill Center and Museum in London.

英国剑桥大学丘吉尔档案中心主任艾伦·帕克伍德(Allen Packwood)为本次展览采集了60多份文件和展品，还动用了肯特郡查特威尔丘吉尔故居内的收藏。即使在英国也很少有机会看到公开展示的这些文件，不过许多文件已经被数字化，部分在伦敦伦敦丘吉尔中心和博物馆(Churchill Center and Museum)收藏。

There are letters from Winston’s difficult childhood, when his wealthy American mother and neglectful, titled father sent him to boarding school at 8. (An early letter home from 1883 or ’84 is scrawled with a child’s “X’s” — kisses rarely returned by any but his beloved nanny.) And there is a report card in which the child, not yet 10, is described as “a constant trouble to everybody.”

文件中有温斯顿在挣扎的童年时所写的信件。他的母亲是富有的美国人，他的父亲有爵位，对他不管不问，在他8岁时父母把他送往寄宿学校。(1883年或1884年的一封家书潦草地写着“吻你”——对于他的亲吻，只有他亲爱的保姆会回吻他。)还有一张学校成绩单，说这个还不到10岁的孩子“总是让所有人心烦。”

But we see the adventurer and historian begin to evolve, courting danger in battle and then writing its history. (“I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage,” he wrote his mother in 1897, “than of anything else in the world.”) There are drafts of speeches that are mapped out like poetry, a sample of Churchill’s amateur landscape painting, his Nobel Prize in Literature from 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory.” (The onetime Prime Minister Arthur Balfour described Churchill’s three-volume history of World War I as a “brilliant autobiography disguised as a history of the universe.”)

我们看到，这位冒险家和历史学家开始成长。他在战斗中甘于冒险，随后开始记录这场战斗。(1897年，他在写给母亲的信中说：“在这个世界上，我最热望获得的美名是勇敢。”)展品中还有写得像诗歌一样的演讲稿，一幅业余的风景画，以及他1953年获得的诺贝尔文学奖，这个奖颁给他，是“因为他不仅做过光辉的演说，还精通历史和传记写作的艺术”(曾担任首相的亚瑟·贝尔福[Arthur Balfour]说，丘吉尔的三卷本一战史是“伪装成宇宙史的精彩自传。”)

Perhaps the most remarkable document here is a New York doctor’s prescription from Jan. 26, 1932. Churchill had been on a lecture tour when he was hit by a car at Fifth Avenue and 76th Street and needed medical assistance.

也许最引人注目的文件是1932年1月26日由一位纽约医生开具的处方。当时丘吉尔在做巡回演讲，在第五大道和第76街的路口被一辆汽车撞到，需要医疗救助。

“This is to certify,” the doctor writes — this in the midst of Prohibition — “that the postaccident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.” The quantity, the doctor continues, is “naturally indefinite,” but the “minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters,” or just over 8 ounces.

时值禁酒期间，这位医生写道：“兹证明温斯顿·丘吉尔阁下遭遇意外后，在康复期间必须饮酒，尤其是在就餐时。”医生接着写，需要饮用的数量“自然是不确定的”，但“最低需要250毫升，”也就是8盎司多一点。

That “naturally indefinite” quantity would become one of Churchill’s trademarks, along with his cigars and the rhythms of his voice, which was heavily used in his political career. He was a candidate in 21 parliamentary contests between 1899 and 1955, losing 5 of them. But all of this — even the elaborate touch screens showing every document in the exhibition, along with other documents and transcriptions of handwriting — would inspire purely specialized interest had it not been for Churchill’s speeches and writings from the mid-1930s into the 1950s.

“自然是不确定的”数量的酒，后来成为丘吉尔的招牌之一。除了酒之外，还有香烟，以及他抑扬顿挫的声音——他在政治生涯中大量用到它。1899到 1955年之间，他21次竞选议员，只失败过5次。要不是因为丘吉尔从30年代中期到50年代的演说和著述，所有这些展品——哪怕是展览上显示所有文件的精致触摸屏，还有其他的文件和手稿——都只能激起专业人士的兴趣。

This was a rhetorical achievement, almost a musical one, in which Churchill’s innate optimism provided a kind of elevating promise even as he was trying to map out the scope of cataclysm. It was also a strategic achievement, for in his speeches we can see him demonstrating that there were choices to be made. And it was a political achievement because before the United States was involved in World War II, America had to be addressed as well, made to understand the stakes.

这是一项辩才的成就，他的演说如音乐一般动听，丘吉尔天性乐观，在演说中，哪怕在他描绘灾难之无远弗届时，也给人们做出了振奋人心的许诺。这也是一项战略成就，因为从他的演说中我们可以看出，他宣告人们面前仍有选择。这还是一项政治成就，因为在英国卷入二战之前，他需要让美国人听到，使他们明白其中的利害。

Churchill shaped a notion of the “English-speaking peoples” that proved fundamental because he understood that the English literary and political traditions had defined the very character of liberal democracy that was coming under threat. Churchill’s speeches declared an allegiance of language and of ideology. They also helped shape that allegiance, celebrating a particular heritage and its possibilities, while emphasizing its vulnerabilities and the need for its defense.

丘吉尔塑造了“说英语的人”这一概念。事实证明这个概念至关重要，因为他知道，英语文学和政治传统确定了正遭受威胁的自由民主的特征。丘吉尔的演说宣布要忠诚于英语和意识形态。这些演说也帮助塑造了这种忠诚，赞颂一种特定的传统及其可能性，同时强调它容易受到伤害，需要加以守卫。

The achievement is a little like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, defining the stakes of the Civil War while reshaping the America’s conception of itself. There are a few comparisons between Churchill and Lincoln in these documents, which seem thoroughly appropriate. (President Roosevelt framed some lines by Lincoln as a 70th-birthday gift for Churchill in 1944.)

这一成就有点像林肯的葛底斯堡演说的成就。林肯的演说指出了内战的利害关系，并重塑了对于美国的认知。展览中多处把丘吉尔和林肯相提并论，这一对比完全是恰当的。(1944年，罗斯福总统曾经抄了林肯的几句话，作为生日礼物，送给70岁的丘吉尔。)

Churchill was attentive to the long line of historical ideas. And his ability to conjure that tradition for support is another reason individual setbacks were less crucial for him. Something larger was at stake. It wasn’t just a matter of opposition; it was a matter of what was being championed, even if the British Empire was in its twilight and the United States was beginning to bear the standard.

丘吉尔十分留意长线的历史观。他借助英语传统支持自己的能力也证明，个人的得失对他来说并不那么重要。某种更重大的东西处于危急关头。这不仅是意见相左的问题，而是捍卫什么的问题，虽然大英帝国已经日薄西山，美国正开始撑起大旗。

This was a reason Churchill urged the United States to claim European territory in the late days of the war, to prevent Stalin from gaining too much control. It was Churchill, in the wake of the war, who saw what was on the horizon. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” he said in his famous 1946 speech in Fulton, Mo., “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” There would be no respite for the war-weary.

因此丘吉尔催促美国在战争后期为欧洲人争取领土主权，以阻止斯大林控制太多地盘。在战争结束后能够高瞻远瞩的是丘吉尔。在密苏里州的富尔顿，他在著名的1946演说中说：“从波罗的海边的斯德丁到亚德里亚海边的的里雅斯特，一幅横贯欧洲大陆的铁幕已经降落。”被战争弄得疲惫不堪的欧洲并没有喘息的时间。

All this is latent in this marvelously compact and suggestive show. It also demonstrates why attempts to displace Churchill from a central position in recent history are misguided. Flaws and failings are plentiful in individual lives, as in cultures and civilizations, but there are more important things deserving recognition: traditions that run deep and wide, that justly inspire advocacy and allegiance and that might even lead, as Churchill promises, to “broad, sunlit uplands.”

这一展览布置紧凑，发人深思，丘吉尔所有的考虑都在展览中若隐若现。它还说明，为何近年来把丘吉尔赶下核心位置的企图是错误的。个人生活，跟文化、文明一样，都存在许多缺陷和失误，但其中还有值得赏识的更重要的东西：深厚和深远的传统，这一传统恰当地激发人们的拥护与忠诚，可能还会如丘吉尔所许诺的，把人们带进一个“阳光普照的辽阔高地”。