首页>> 文学论坛>> 女性小说>> 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫 Adeline Virginia Woolf   英国 United Kingdom   温莎王朝   (1882年1月25日1941年3月28日)
日日夜夜 Night and Day
  弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫 (1882年1月25日—1941年3月28日)。原名“Virginia Woolf‎”。中文译名或为“弗吉尼亚·伍尔芙”。英国女作家,被认为是二十世纪现代主义与女性主义的先锋之一。在两次世界大战期间伍尔夫是伦敦文学界的核心人物,她同时也是布卢姆茨伯里派(Bloomsbury Group‎)的成员之一。其最知名的小说包括《戴洛维夫人》(Mrs. Dalloway‎)、《灯塔行》(To the Lighthouse‎)、《雅各的房间》(Jakob's Room‎)。
  
    出生于伦敦的伍尔夫是在家中接受教育的。结婚以前她的名字是艾德琳·弗吉尼亚·斯蒂芬(Adeline Virginia Stephen‎)。1895年母亲去世之后,她第一次精神崩溃。后来她在自传《存在的瞬间》(Moments of Being‎)中道出她和姐姐瓦内萨·贝尔(Vanessa Bell‎)曾遭受同母异父的哥哥乔治和杰瑞德·杜克沃斯(Gerald Duckworth‎)的性侵犯。1904年她父亲莱斯利·斯蒂芬爵士(Sir Leslie Stephen‎,著名的编辑和文学批评家)去世之后,她和瓦内萨迁居到了布卢姆斯伯里(Bloomsbury‎)。后来以她们和几位朋友为中心创立了布卢姆茨伯里派文人团体。她在1905年开始职业写作生涯,刚开始是为《泰晤士报文学增刊》撰稿。
  
    1912年和雷纳德·伍尔夫(Leonard Woolf)结婚,丈夫是一位公务员、政治理论家。对于自己的婚姻,弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫曾大犯踌躇。她就像自己的小说《到灯塔去》里的莉丽,尽管认为爱情宛如壮丽的火焰,但因为必须以焚弃个性的“珍宝”为代价,因此视婚姻为“丧失自我身份的灾难”。
  
    一个女人抱持这样悲观的看法,又是在三十岁的“高龄”上才开始构筑“二人空间”,其困难是可想而知的。然而事后证明,弗吉尼亚的忧虑纯属多余,倒是她的心理症结落下的性恐惧和性冷淡,使婚姻生活从一开始就走上了歧路。伦纳德毕业于剑桥大学,饶有文才,深具眼力,与其说他欣赏弗吉尼亚的娴雅风度,毋宁说他倾慕弗吉尼亚的超凡智慧。在他眼里,弗吉尼亚是只可远观不可亵玩的 “智慧的童贞女”,在她身上完全不粘附世俗的肉欲色彩。应该说,起初,伦纳德心有不甘,他抱着幻想,认为自己能像王子唤醒睡美人那样唤醒弗吉尼亚体内的性意识。几经努力,徒劳无功之后,他创作小说《智慧的童贞女》,借用男主人公哈里·大卫的口吻谴责了冷血的女人,认为“那些长着白皮肤和金色头发的苍白的女人……是冰冷的,同时也使人冰冷”,他的这些心怀不忿的说辞(近乎指桑骂槐)无疑对弗吉尼亚的自尊构成了深深的伤害。
  
    弗吉尼亚婚后的“精神雪崩”给伦纳德适时地敲响了警钟,他决定从此认命,转而追求精神之爱这一更高远的境界。他这样做,仅需一条理由——“她是个天才”——就足够了。弗吉尼亚的感激之情也溢于言表,她明确地宣布伦纳德是自己生命中隐藏的核心,是她创造力的源泉。1930年,弗吉尼亚告诉一位朋友,没有伦纳德,她可能早就开枪自杀了。弗吉尼亚能以多病之身取得非凡的文学成就,伦纳德可谓居功至伟。
  
  1915年,她的第一部小说《远航》出版,其后的作品都深受评论界和读者喜爱。大部分作品都是由自己成立的“贺加斯岀版”推岀。
  
    伍尔夫被誉为20世纪最伟大的小说家之一,现代主义文学潮流的先锋;她对英语语言革新良多,在小说中尝试意识流的写作方法,试图去描绘在人们心底的潜意识。爱德华·摩根·福斯特称她将英语“朝着光明的方向推进了一小步”。她在文学上的成就和创新性至今仍然产生著影响。二战后她的声望有所下降,但随著70年代女权主义的兴起,她又成为文学界关注的对象。
  
    伍尔夫患有严重的抑郁症,她曾在1936年写给朋友的信中提及:
  
    "....never trust a letter of mine not to exaggerate that's written after a night lying awake looking at a bottle of chloral and saying, No, no no, you shall not take it. It's odd how sleeplessness, even of a modified kind, has the power to frighten me. It's connected I think with these awful times when I couldn't control myself."
  
    写作于一九四二年的《幕间》,是弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫辞世之前的最后一部作品。当这部小说进展到约前五分之一的部分时,作家在让波因茨宅一个干粗活的女仆到清凉的睡莲池旁喘息片刻时顺便交待,十年前曾经有一位贵妇人在该处投水溺亡。那是一片浓绿的水,其间有无数鱼儿“遨游在以自我为中心的世界里,闪着亮光。”
  
    这真是一个不祥之兆:仅在小说完成又过了一个月之后,也就是1941年3月28日,举世无双的伍尔夫在自己的口袋里装满了石头,投入了位于罗德麦尔(Rodmell)她家附近的欧塞河(River Ouse)自尽。她在给丈夫的遗书中写道:
  
  最亲爱的:
  
    我感到我一定又要发狂了。我觉得我们无法再一次经受那种可怕的时刻。而且这一次我也不会再痊愈。我开始听见种种幻声,我的心神无法集中。因此我就要采取那种看来算是最恰当的行动。你已给予我最大可能的幸福。你在每一个方面都做到了任何人所能做到的一切。我相信,在这种可怕的疾病来临之前,没有哪两个人能像我们这样幸福。我无力再奋斗下去了。我知道我是在糟蹋你的生命;没有我,你才能工作。我知道,事情就是如此。你看,我连这张字条也写不好。我也不能看书。我要说的是:我生活中的全部幸福都归功于你。你对我一直十分耐心,你是难以置信地善良。这一点,我要说----人人也都知道。假如还有任何人能挽救我,那也只有你了。现在,一切都离我而去,剩下的只有确信你的善良。我不能再继续糟蹋你的生命。
  
    我相信,再没有哪两个人像我们在一起时这样幸福。维


  Night and Day (published on 20 October 1919) is a novel by Virginia Woolf. Set in Edwardian London, Night and Day contrasts the daily lives of two friends, Katharine Hilbery and Mary Datchet. The novel examines the relationships between love, marriage, happiness, and success.
  
  Dialogue and descriptions of thought and actions are used in equal amount, unlike in Woolf's later book, To the Lighthouse. There are four major characters (Katharine Hilbery, Mary Datchet, Ralph Denham, and William Rodney) who are continually returned to. Night and Day deals with issues concerning women's suffrage, if love and marriage can coexist, and if marriage is necessary for happiness. Motifs throughout the book includes the stars and sky, the River Thames, and walks; also, Woolf makes many references to the works of William Shakespeare, especially from As You Like It.
  TO
   VANESSA BELL
   BUT, LOOKING FOR A PHRASE,
   I FOUND NONE TO STAND
   BESIDE YOUR NAME
  It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight. But although she was silent, she was evidently mistress of a situation which was familiar enough to her, and inclined to let it take its way for the six hundredth time, perhaps, without bringing into play any of her unoccupied faculties. A single glance was enough to show that Mrs. Hilbery was so rich in the gifts which make tea-parties of elderly distinguished people successful, that she scarcely needed any help from her daughter, provided that the tiresome business of teacups and bread and butter was discharged for her.
   Considering that the little party had been seated round the tea-table for less than twenty minutes, the animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively, were very creditable to the hostess. It suddenly came into Katharine's mind that if some one opened the door at this moment he would think that they were enjoying themselves; he would think, "What an extremely nice house to come into!" and instinctively she laughed, and said something to increase the noise, for the credit of the house presumably, since she herself had not been feeling exhilarated. At the very same moment, rather to her amusement, the door was flung open, and a young man entered the room. Katharine, as she shook hands with him, asked him, in her own mind, "Now, do you think we're enjoying ourselves enormously?" . . . "Mr. Denham, mother," she said aloud, for she saw that her mother had forgotten his name.
   That fact was perceptible to Mr. Denham also, and increased the awkwardness which inevitably attends the entrance of a stranger into a room full of people much at their ease, and all launched upon sentences. At the same time, it seemed to Mr. Denham as if a thousand softly padded doors had closed between him and the street outside. A fine mist, the etherealized essence of the fog, hung visibly in the wide and rather empty space of the drawing-room, all silver where the candles were grouped on the tea-table, and ruddy again in the firelight. With the omnibuses and cabs still running in his head, and his body still tingling with his quick walk along the streets and in and out of traffic and foot-passengers, this drawing-room seemed very remote and still; and the faces of the elderly people were mellowed, at some distance from each other, and had a bloom on them owing to the fact that the air in the drawing-room was thickened by blue grains of mist. Mr. Denham had come in as Mr. Fortescue, the eminent novelist, reached the middle of a very long sentence. He kept this suspended while the newcomer sat down, and Mrs. Hilbery deftly joined the severed parts by leaning towards him and remarking:
   "Now, what would you do if you were married to an engineer, and had to live in Manchester, Mr. Denham?"
   "Surely she could learn Persian," broke in a thin, elderly gentleman. "Is there no retired schoolmaster or man of letters in Manchester with whom she could read Persian?"
   "A cousin of ours has married and gone to live in Manchester," Katharine explained. Mr. Denham muttered something, which was indeed all that was required of him, and the novelist went on where he had left off. Privately, Mr. Denham cursed himself very sharply for having exchanged the freedom of the street for this sophisticated drawing- room, where, among other disagreeables, he certainly would not appear at his best. He glanced round him, and saw that, save for Katharine, they were all over forty, the only consolation being that Mr. Fortescue was a considerable celebrity, so that to-morrow one might be glad to have met him.
   "Have you ever been to Manchester?" he asked Katharine.
   "Never," she replied.
   "Why do you object to it, then?"
   Katharine stirred her tea, and seemed to speculate, so Denham thought, upon the duty of filling somebody else's cup, but she was really wondering how she was going to keep this strange young man in harmony with the rest. She observed that he was compressing his teacup, so that there was danger lest the thin china might cave inwards. She could see that he was nervous; one would expect a bony young man with his face slightly reddened by the wind, and his hair not altogether smooth, to be nervous in such a party. Further, he probably disliked this kind of thing, and had come out of curiosity, or because her father had invited him--anyhow, he would not be easily combined with the rest.
   "I should think there would be no one to talk to in Manchester," she replied at random. Mr. Fortescue had been observing her for a moment or two, as novelists are inclined to observe, and at this remark he smiled, and made it the text for a little further speculation.
   "In spite of a slight tendency to exaggeration, Katharine decidedly hits the mark," he said, and lying back in his chair, with his opaque contemplative eyes fixed on the ceiling, and the tips of his fingers pressed together, he depicted, first the horrors of the streets of Manchester, and then the bare, immense moors on the outskirts of the town, and then the scrubby little house in which the girl would live, and then the professors and the miserable young students devoted to the more strenuous works of our younger dramatists, who would visit her, and how her appearance would change by degrees, and how she would fly to London, and how Katharine would have to lead her about, as one leads an eager dog on a chain, past rows of clamorous butchers' shops, poor dear creature.
   "Oh, Mr. Fortescue," exclaimed Mrs. Hilbery, as he finished, "I had just written to say how I envied her! I was thinking of the big gardens and the dear old ladies in mittens, who read nothing but the "Spectator," and snuff the candles. Have they ALL disappeared? I told her she would find the nice things of London without the horrid streets that depress one so."
   "There is the University," said the thin gentleman, who had previously insisted upon the existence of people knowing Persian.
   "I know there are moors there, because I read about them in a book the other day," said Katharine.
   "I am grieved and amazed at the ignorance of my family," Mr. Hilbery remarked. He was an elderly man, with a pair of oval, hazel eyes which were rather bright for his time of life, and relieved the heaviness of his face. He played constantly with a little green stone attached to his watch-chain, thus displaying long and very sensitive fingers, and had a habit of moving his head hither and thither very quickly without altering the position of his large and rather corpulent body, so that he seemed to be providing himself incessantly with food for amusement and reflection with the least possible expenditure of energy. One might suppose that he had passed the time of life when his ambitions were personal, or that he had gratified them as far as he was likely to do, and now employed his considerable acuteness rather to observe and reflect than to attain any result.
   Katharine, so Denham decided, while Mr. Fortescue built up another rounded structure of words, had a likeness to each of her parents, but these elements were rather oddly blended. She had the quick, impulsive movements of her mother, the lips parting often to speak, and closing again; and the dark oval eyes of her father brimming with light upon a basis of sadness, or, since she was too young to have acquired a sorrowful point of view, one might say that the basis was not sadness so much as a spirit given to contemplation and self-control. Judging by her hair, her coloring, and the shape of her features, she was striking, if not actually beautiful. Decision and composure stamped her, a combination of qualities that produced a very marked character, and one that was not calculated to put a young man, who scarcely knew her, at his ease. For the rest, she was tall; her dress was of some quiet color, with old yellow-tinted lace for ornament, to which the spark of an ancient jewel gave its one red gleam. Denham noticed that, although silent, she kept sufficient control of the situation to answer immediately her mother appealed to her for help, and yet it was obvious to him that she attended only with the surface skin of her mind. It struck him that her position at the tea-table, among all these elderly people, was not without its difficulties, and he checked his inclination to find her, or her attitude, generally antipathetic to him. The talk had passed over Manchester, after dealing with it very generously.
   "Would it be the Battle of Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada, Katharine?" her mother demanded.
   "Trafalgar, mother."
   "Trafalgar, of course! How stupid of me! Another cup of tea, with a thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr. Fortescue, please explain my absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman noses, even if one meets them in omnibuses."
   Mr. Hilbery here interposed so far as Denham was concerned, and talked a great deal of sense about the solicitors' profession, and the changes which he had seen in his lifetime. Indeed, Denham properly fell to his lot, owing to the fact that an article by Denham upon some legal matter, published by Mr. Hilbery in his Review, had brought them acquainted. But when a moment later Mrs. Sutton Bailey was announced, he turned to her, and Mr. Denham found himself sitting silent, rejecting possible things to say, beside Katharine, who was silent too. Being much about the same age and both under thirty, they were prohibited from the use of a great many convenient phrases which launch conversation into smooth waters. They were further silenced by Katharine's rather malicious determination not to help this young man, in whose upright and resolute bearing she detected something hostile to her surroundings, by any of the usual feminine amenities. They therefore sat silent, Denham controlling his desire to say something abrupt and explosive, which should shock her into life. But Mrs. Hilbery was immediately sensitive to any silence in the drawing-room, as of a dumb note in a sonorous scale, and leaning across the table she observed, in the curiously tentative detached manner which always gave her phrases the likeness of butterflies flaunting from one sunny spot to another, "D'you know, Mr. Denham, you remind me so much of dear Mr. Ruskin. . . . Is it his tie, Katharine, or his hair, or the way he sits in his chair? Do tell me, Mr. Denham, are you an admirer of Ruskin? Some one, the other day, said to me, 'Oh, no, we don't read Ruskin, Mrs. Hilbery.' What DO you read, I wonder?--for you can't spend all your time going up in aeroplanes and burrowing into the bowels of the earth."
   She looked benevolently at Denham, who said nothing articulate, and then at Katharine, who smiled but said nothing either, upon which Mrs. Hilbery seemed possessed by a brilliant idea, and exclaimed:
   "I'm sure Mr. Denham would like to see our things, Katharine. I'm sure he's not like that dreadful young man, Mr. Ponting, who told me that he considered it our duty to live exclusively in the present. After all, what IS the present? Half of it's the past, and the better half, too, I should say," she added, turning to Mr. Fortescue.
   Denham rose, half meaning to go, and thinking that he had seen all that there was to see, but Katharine rose at the same moment, and saying, "Perhaps you would like to see the pictures," led the way across the drawing-room to a smaller room opening out of it.
   The smaller room was something like a chapel in a cathedral, or a grotto in a cave, for the booming sound of the traffic in the distance suggested the soft surge of waters, and the oval mirrors, with their silver surface, were like deep pools trembling beneath starlight. But the comparison to a religious temple of some kind was the more apt of the two, for the little room was crowded with relics.
   As Katharine touched different spots, lights sprang here and there, and revealed a square mass of red-and-gold books, and then a long skirt in blue-and-white paint lustrous behind glass, and then a mahogany writing-table, with its orderly equipment, and, finally, a picture above the table, to which special illumination was accorded. When Katharine had touched these last lights, she stood back, as much as to say, "There!" Denham found himself looked down upon by the eyes of the great poet, Richard Alardyce, and suffered a little shock which would have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes looked at him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with divine friendliness, which embraced him, and passed on to contemplate the entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the beautiful large eyes were left, dark in the surrounding dimness.
   Katharine waited as though for him to receive a full impression, and then she said:
   "This is his writing-table. He used this pen," and she lifted a quill pen and laid it down again. The writing-table was splashed with old ink, and the pen disheveled in service. There lay the gigantic gold- rimmed spectacles, ready to his hand, and beneath the table was a pair of large, worn slippers, one of which Katharine picked up, remarking:
   "I think my grandfather must have been at least twice as large as any one is nowadays. This," she went on, as if she knew what she had to say by heart, "is the original manuscript of the 'Ode to Winter.' The early poems are far less corrected than the later. Would you like to look at it?"
   While Mr. Denham examined the manuscript, she glanced up at her grandfather, and, for the thousandth time, fell into a pleasant dreamy state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of their own lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment was put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on the canvas, surely, never beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon, and it did not seem to matter what she and this young man said to each other, for they were only small people.
   "This is a copy of the first edition of the poems," she continued, without considering the fact that Mr. Denham was still occupied with the manuscript, "which contains several poems that have not been reprinted, as well as corrections." She paused for a minute, and then went on, as if these spaces had all been calculated.
   "That lady in blue is my great-grandmother, by Millington. Here is my uncle's walking-stick--he was Sir Richard Warburton, you know, and rode with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow. And then, let me see--oh, that's the original Alardyce, 1697, the founder of the family fortunes, with his wife. Some one gave us this bowl the other day because it has their crest and initials. We think it must have been given them to celebrate their silver wedding-day."
   Here she stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr. Denham said nothing. Her feeling that he was antagonistic to her, which had lapsed while she thought of her family possessions, returned so keenly that she stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at him. Her mother, wishing to connect him reputably with the great dead, had compared him with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in Katharine's mind, and led her to be more critical of the young man than was fair, for a young man paying a call in a tail-coat is in a different element altogether from a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing immutably from behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to her of Mr. Ruskin. He had a singular face--a face built for swiftness and decision rather than for massive contemplation; the forehead broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean-shaven and at once dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean, with a deeply running tide of red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine impersonality and authority, might reveal more subtle emotions under favorable circumstances, for they were large, and of a clear, brown color; they seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate; but Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes if it had been adorned with side-whiskers. In his spare build and thin, though healthy, cheeks, she saw tokens of an angular and acrid soul. His voice, she noticed, had a slight vibrating or creaking sound in it, as he laid down the manuscript and said:
   "You must be very proud of your family, Miss Hilbery."
   "Yes, I am," Katharine answered, and she added, "Do you think there's anything wrong in that?"
   "Wrong? How should it be wrong? It must be a bore, though, showing your things to visitors," he added reflectively.
   "Not if the visitors like them."
   "Isn't it difficult to live up to your ancestors?" he proceeded.
   "I dare say I shouldn't try to write poetry," Katharine replied.
   "No. And that's what I should hate. I couldn't bear my grandfather to cut me out. And, after all," Denham went on, glancing round him satirically, as Katharine thought, "it's not your grandfather only. You're cut out all the way round. I suppose you come of one of the most distinguished families in England. There are the Warburtons and the Mannings--and you're related to the Otways, aren't you? I read it all in some magazine," he added.
   "The Otways are my cousins," Katharine replied.
   "Well," said Denham, in a final tone of voice, as if his argument were proved.
   "Well," said Katharine, "I don't see that you've proved anything."
   Denham smiled, in a peculiarly provoking way. He was amused and gratified to find that he had the power to annoy his oblivious, supercilious hostess, if he could not impress her; though he would have preferred to impress her.
   He sat silent, holding the precious little book of poems unopened in his hands, and Katharine watched him, the melancholy or contemplative expression deepening in her eyes as her annoyance faded. She appeared to be considering many things. She had forgotten her duties.
   "Well," said Denham again, suddenly opening the little book of poems, as though he had said all that he meant to say or could, with propriety, say. He turned over the pages with great decision, as if he were judging the book in its entirety, the printing and paper and binding, as well as the poetry, and then, having satisfied himself of its good or bad quality, he placed it on the writing-table, and examined the malacca cane with the gold knob which had belonged to the soldier.
   "But aren't you proud of your family?" Katharine demanded.
   "No," said Denham. "We've never done anything to be proud of--unless you count paying one's bills a matter for pride."
   "That sounds rather dull," Katharine remarked.
   "You would think us horribly dull," Denham agreed.
   "Yes, I might find you dull, but I don't think I should find you ridiculous," Katharine added, as if Denham had actually brought that charge against her family.
   "No--because we're not in the least ridiculous. We're a respectable middle-class family, living at Highgate."
   "We don't live at Highgate, but we're middle class too, I suppose."
首页>> 文学论坛>> 女性小说>> 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫 Adeline Virginia Woolf   英国 United Kingdom   温莎王朝   (1882年1月25日1941年3月28日)