Doris Lessing:Brave Woman,Brave Writing

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2013年年底，诺贝尔文学奖迎来了一位女性得主，却又失去了一位。英国女作家、2007年诺贝尔文学奖得主多丽丝·莱辛生于1919年10月22日，卒于2013年11月17日，享年94岁。她被誉为继弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫之后最伟大的女性作家，是迄今为止获奖时最年长的女性诺贝尔获奖者，被读者亲昵地称为“文学祖母”。她童年不幸，半生飘零，但却一直笑看艰难过往，莱辛这一历经风雨的祖母形象将永远常青于文学之路上。

W onderful Doris Lessing has died. You never expect such a rock-solid feature of the literary landscape to simply vanish.1. rock-solid: 稳若磐石的，非常可靠的；literary landscape: 文学界；vanish: 消失，突然不见。It’s a shock.

She authored more than 50 works— fictions, non fictions and poetry ranging in subjects,won the Nobel Prize in 2007 and became the eldest recipient at age 88.2. author: v. 写作，著书；range: 涉及，谈到；recipient: 接受者。Among them,The Golden Notebook remained her best known, best loved and most controversial work.3. The Golden Notebook:《金色笔记》，莱辛的代表作，奠定了她在西方文坛的地位，这本书由五本笔记构成，借用女主角安娜的故事描写了20世纪中期整个世界的风貌；controversial: 引起争论的，有争议的。She without doubt was one of the towering figures of modern literature; in the course of a writing career that spanned the latter half of the 20th century, she commented on its grand sweeps and shed light on its many absurdities.4. 毫无疑问，她是现代文学的标志性人物之一；在其跨越了20世纪后半叶的漫长写作生涯中，她写下了这个世纪的跌宕起伏，揭示了其各式各样的荒谬之相。sweep: 磅礴的气势；shed light on: 阐明，使人理解某事。

A generous, open-minded character, she was, at various stages of her life, a communist, socialist, feminist, atheist,Laingian and finally a Su fi.5. feminist: 女权主义者；atheist: 无神论者； Laingian:莱因学说追随者。莱因（1927—1989）是英国著名的存在主义精神病学家，他把存在主义哲学与精神分析思想结合起来，用存在主义哲学的术语对精神分裂症患者的内部世界进行了生动的描述，使精神分裂的过程为世人所知；Su fi: 苏非行者。苏非主义是伊斯兰教的神秘主义派别，是为追求精神层面提升的伊斯兰教团。To each of these beliefs, she brought a tireless enthusiasm that sometimes obscured judgment.6. 对上述的每一种信条，她都持有一种孜孜不倦的热情，有时候这种热情减弱了她的判断力。obscure: 遮掩，遮蔽。She fell for ideas, digested then, outgrew them and then moved on.7. digest:（经反复思考后）吸收，理解；outgrow:成长（或发展）得不再需要，不再适用。While she still believed, she wrote novels out of the experience. Her interests were varied,but her ability to make fascinating fiction out of life was constant.

If she had written nothing else, The Golden Notebook(1962) would have secured Doris Lessing a place in the hall of fame. With it, she wrote about “new women” in a new kind of novel, one that stretched the boundaries of realist fiction.8. stretch: 延续，延伸；realist fiction: 现实主义小说。The Swedish Academy hailed her as an “epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.”9. 瑞典学院这样称赞她：一位表述女性经验的史诗诗人，以其怀疑主义精神，用其火一般的热情和想象力细细审视着一个分裂的文明。The Swedish Academy: 瑞典学院，由瑞典国王古斯塔夫三世于1786年创立，是瑞典皇家学院之一。自1901年以来，瑞典学院每年都颁布诺贝尔文学奖，以纪念阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔；hail: 赞扬，称颂（人、事件或成就）；epicist: 史诗作者，叙事诗人；subject:使……成为研究对象；scrutiny: 仔细观察，详细审查。

Her career is a matter of savage breakthroughs into quite new territory, as if her searching, sceptical intelligence could never be satis fied with stasis for long.10. savage: 凶猛的，野蛮的；stasis: 停滞，静止。It begins, dauntingly,with a novel of unmatched technical command, The Grass is Singing.11. dauntingly: 令人敬畏地，使人胆怯地；command:（对技术或资源）可运用自如，可充分运用；The Grass Is Singing: 《野草在歌唱》，多丽丝·莱辛的处女作，使她一举成名，被普遍认为是二战以后最优秀的作品之一。对英美乃至世界各地的许多读者来说，这是第一部直接表现南部非洲种族隔离题材的小说，第一次让他们真实体味到了种族分裂给人类所带来的灾难。This overwhelming tragedy, published as long ago as 1950, immediately revealed a novelist of huge natural gifts.12. overwhelming: 极其强烈的，令人不知所措的；natural gift: 天赋，天资才能。

The scale of her ambition was immediately revealed after another novel with a substantial, five-volume bildungsroman,“Children of Violence”.13. substantial: 大量的，数目大的； bildungsroman:〈德〉成长小说，源于德国文学中一种传统的小说类型，主要以描述主人公成长过程为主题；“Children of Violence”:《暴力的孩子们》五部曲，即《玛莎·奎斯特》（Martha Quest）（1952）、《良缘》（1954）、《风暴的余波》（1958）、《被陆地围住的》（1965）和《四门之城》（1969）。这五部曲以细腻的笔触和颇有印象主义色彩的写实风格展示了一位在罗得西亚（今津巴布韦）长大的白人青年妇女的人生求索历程。The cycle14. cycle:（玛莎·奎斯特）叙述某一英雄或表现某一主题的）全套故事（或诗歌、小说等）。, concerning the political and sexual maturity of Martha Quest, could certainly not be regarded as perfect. It clearly shows the strain of its lengthy gestation, published over 17 years.15. strain: 气质，特性；gestation: （想法等的）构思，酝酿。The first volume, Martha Quest (1952), is a very different novel from the last, The Four-Gated City (1969).Only the most clairvoyant16. clairvoyant: 未卜先知的，有洞察力的。of readers could have predicted the next step in her career. From Journal of a Descent into Hell, much of the 1970s and early 1980s was spent in a visionary exploration of fantasy and science fiction, culminating in another quintet of novels, the perfectly astonishing Canopus in Argos: Archives.17. Journal of a Descent into Hell :《简述下地狱》，一部关于个人精神崩溃的小说；culminate:以……结束，以……告终； quintet: 五重奏，五个为一组；Canopus in Argo: Archives: 《天舟座老人星：历史档案》，莱辛另辟蹊径撰写的“太空小说”系列，以科幻小说的形式写出了对人类历史和命运的思考与忧虑。

In spite of her old age, that gift for provocation, intellectual and aesthetic, has never left her.18. provocation: 挑衅，煽动；aesthetic: 美学的，审美的。Many readers and reviewers were outraged by her latest novel, The Cleft, and its views of the prehistoric incapacities of men and women.19. outrage: 激怒，使……震怒；The Cleft:《裂隙》（2007），借罗马帝国历史学者之口，讲述人类起源的神话性质的作品。小说创造了一个女人先于男人存在的世界，颠覆了亚当夏娃的人类起源故事；prehistoric: 史前的，有文字记载之前的。I was struck by its confident technical liberties, as well as the boldness20. boldness: 大胆，无畏。of its chosen subjects.

But these provocations have the knack21. knack: 诀窍，本领。of acquiring truth and wisdom over time, or perhaps merely revealing it. The Good Terrorist,so alarming a book on its publication in 1985, is another of those tremendous Lessing-esques.22. The Good Terrorist: 《好人恐怖分子》（1985），小说讲述了在伦敦的一栋非法居住屋里，聚集了一群幻想改变社会的中产阶级青年。这群“反抗者”绝望地反抗着一切，却势若散沙。终于，“反抗者”幼稚而激进的幻想演变成一场真正的灾难，而他们并未感到激动和满足，一直在懵懂地咀嚼无法回头的人生；alarming: 使人害怕的，扰乱人心的；tremendous: 精彩的，出色的；-esque: 带有……风格的。It was her return to realist settings after the Canopus cycle and the experiment of the two “Jane Somers”23. “Jane Somers”:“简·萨默斯的日记”，是指莱辛在1982年使用“简·萨默斯”这个笔名发表的两部小说《好邻居日记》和《时不我予》，围绕女主人公简在人生道路上的沉浮起落展开。novels. A great surge24. surge: 急剧上升，突飞猛进。of renewed creative energy is unmistakably present.

That creative energy has continued unabated25. unabated: 未减弱的，未衰退的。to her newest novels; she has remained a presence in contemporary fictional life over 60 years. Though she has suggested that her next novel might be her last, saying “enough is enough”, I wouldn’t place a bet on that being the case.26. place a bet on: 在……上下赌注，就……打赌；be the case: 情况属实。She seems undiminished, unwearied, and full of new thoughts.27. undiminished: 未衰减的，没削弱的；unwearied: 不疲倦的，精神抖擞的。

“I have written in so many different ways,with never a thought that I didn’t have the right to,” she told an interviewer a week before she died. “It (all of her works) is an impressive list.” Indeed it is, and, since she has, it seems,no illusions28. illusion: 错误的观念，不现实的想法。, about the quality of her own achievement, she has the right to say so. No one would seriously question that impressiveness,or the acclaim and critical weight she has rightly accepted as no more than her due.29. acclaim: 赞扬，称赞；due: 应得的东西，这里是“应得的承认，该受的赏识”之意。