【TED演讲】为什么应该要阅读弗兰纳·里奥康纳的作品？

中英文字幕

A garrulous grandmother and a roaming bandit face off on a dirt road.

一位喋喋不休的祖母，和一位流浪强盗在一起泥土路上对峙。

A Bible salesman lures a one-legged philosopher into a barn.

一位圣经销售员引诱一位单脚哲学家进入一个粮仓。

A traveling handyman teaches a deaf woman her first word on an old plantation.

一个旅行的杂工，在一个老农场上教导着一位耳聋的女子她的第一个字。

From her farm in rural Georgia, surrounded by a flock of pet birds, Flannery O'Connor scribbled tales of outcasts,

在位于格鲁吉亚乡村里的农村，被一群家禽鸟围绕着，弗兰纳里·奥康纳刻画的故事讲的是被抛弃者，

intruders and misfits staged in the world she knew best: the American South.

入侵者，以及无法融入者， 而都是她最熟知的世界：美国南方。

She published two novels, but is perhaps best known for her short stories, which explored small-town life with stinging language, offbeat humor,

她出版了两部小说，但最为所知的应该是她的短篇故事，这些故事探讨小镇人物，用尖酸，非传统的幽默，

and delightfully unsavory scenarios.

以及令人讨厌又愉快的情境来描写。

In her spare time O'Connor drew cartoons, and her writing is also brimming with caricature.

在闲暇的时间，奥康纳会画些漫画，她的写作中也充满着漫画手法。

In her stories, a mother has a face "as broad and innocent as a cabbage," a man has as much drive as a "floor mop,"

在她的故事中，一位母亲的脸孔 “和白菜一样宽，一样无辜”，男人的干劲就像“地板拖把”一样，

and one woman's body is shaped like "a funeral urn."

一位女子的身体形状和“骨灰坛”一样。

The names of her characters are equally sly.

她在设计角色名字时也同样淘气。

Take the story "The Life You Save May be Your Own,"

以《你救的可能是你自己的命》这个故事为例，

where the one-handed drifter Tom Shiftlet wanders into the lives of an old woman named Lucynell Crater and her deaf and mute daughter.

故事中，单手的浪人汤姆一位老女人露西妮尔·克雷特及她的聋哑女儿的生命当中。

Though Mrs. Crater is self-assured, her isolated home is falling apart.

虽然克雷特女士很有自信，但她那孤立的家正在四分五裂中。

At first, we may be suspicious of Shiftlet's motives when he offers to help around the house,

一开始，我们可能会怀疑许佛特雷特愿意协助房子的杂物背后有什么动机，

but O'Connor soon reveals the old woman to be just as scheming as her unexpected guest– and rattles the reader's presumptions about who has the upper hand.

但奥康纳很快就揭露出这位老女人其实和她的不速之客同样奸诈——让读者感到不安， 无法推定到底谁站上风。

For O'Connor, no subject was off limits.

对奥康纳而言，选主题没有禁忌，

Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn't afraid to explore the possibility of pious thought and unpious behavior co-existing in the same person.

虽然她是虔诚的天主教徒, 但她并不害怕去探索各种可能性，能将敬神的想法以及不敬神的行为在同一个人身上共存。

In her novel The Violent Bear it Away, the main character grapples with the choice to become a man of God – but also sets fires and commits murder.

在她的小说《暴取天国》中，主角努力的做出选择，成为神的孩子，但却也会杀人放火。

The book opens with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position:

这本书的开场，是这位不情愿的预言者处在一个特别妥协的位置上：

"Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave."

“法兰西丝·玛莉安塔·华特的叔叔半天前才刚刚过世，那时这个男孩喝的太醉了，无法挖好坟墓。”

This leaves a passerby to "drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it … with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up."

这就导致一位路人要把 “还趴在早餐桌上的尸体拖下来，将他埋掉…… 用足够的沙土覆盖，以确保狗不会挖出来。”

Though her own politics are still debated, O'Connor's fiction could also be attuned to the racism of the South.

虽然奥康纳自己的政治立场还有争议，她的小说可被视为是非常理解南方的种族主义。

In "Everything that Rises Must Converge," she depicts a son raging at his mother's bigotry.

在《一切崛起都必须融合》中，她描述一个儿子对于他母亲的偏执感到愤怒。

But the story reveals that he has his own blind spots and suggests that simply recognizing evil doesn't exempt his character from scrutiny.

但这个故事揭露出她也有自己的盲点，说明了若仅仅只是辨识出邪恶，并不能让她的角色免受检视。。

Even as O'Connor probes the most unsavory aspects of humanity, she leaves the door to redemption open a crack.

即使当奥康纳在探究人性不好的面向时，她也会让通往救赎的门留下一道缝隙，不会关闭。

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find,"she redeems an insufferable grandmother for forgiving a hardened criminal, even as he closes in on her family.

在《好人难寻》中，她挽救了一位令讨厌的祖母，因为她原谅了一名惯犯，尽管他正在接近她的家人。

Though we might balk at the price the woman pays for this redemption,

既然我们这位女子为了救赎和付出的代价不能得到赞同，

we're forced to confront the nuance in moments we might otherwise consider purely violent or evil.

我们仍然被迫去正视这些本来可能的，被我们视为纯粹的暴力或者邪恶的时刻，都不见得是如此。

O'Connor's mastery of the grotesque and her explorations of the insularity and superstition of the South led her to be classified as a Southern Gothic writer.

奥康纳精通怪异风格，且会探究南方的偏狭以及迷信，这些特性让她被归类为南方的哥德风作家。

But her work pushed beyond the purely ridiculous and frightening characteristics associated with the genre to reveal the variety and nuance of human character.

但她的作品超越了这个类别常见的纯粹荒诞以及吓人特点，揭示出人类性格的多样性和细微差别。

She knew some of this variety was uncomfortable, and that her stories could be an acquired taste – but she took pleasure in challenging her readers.

她知道有些多样性会让人不舒服，而且她的故事要慢慢才能被欣赏—— 但她从挑战她的读者来得到乐趣。

O'Connor died of lupus at the age of 39, after the disease had mostly confined her to her farm in Georgia for twelve years.

奥康纳在三十九岁时死于狼疮，这之前的十二年，这疾病使她无法离开她在乔治亚的农场。

During those years, she penned much of her most imaginative work.

在那些年里，她写了许多最具想象力的作品。

Her ability to flit between revulsion and revelation continues to draw readers to her endlessly surprising fictional worlds.

她在现实和虚幻之间灵活切换的能力持续吸引读者进入她那惊喜不断的虚构世界中。

As her character Tom Shiftlet notes, the body is "like a house: it don't go anywhere, but the spirit, lady, is like an automobile:

如同她笔下的角色汤姆·许佛特雷特提到的，身体就“像是一间房子：它不会移动，但女人的心就像是一台汽车：

always on the move."

总是在移动。"