「今日薦書」這本《巴赫夫人傳》出自巴赫第二任妻子瑪格達萊娜之手，是一部妻子對已逝丈夫的溫柔回憶。書中記錄了瑪格達萊娜和巴赫相識相知的點滴，盡管當時巴赫還尚未被世人知曉，但在這位妻子心中她的丈夫已是時代的巨人，擁有神賜的天賦。她希望通過創作本書，將她丈夫的寬厚善良的品性，對上帝的敬畏，以及創造音樂上的奪目天賦以另一種形式留存下來。
The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach
《巴赫夫人傳》
By M.R.Bonavia
I have an ongoing ‘merry war’ with a friend of mine about whether Bach or Vivaldi is the better composer. Before you all splutter over your morning cups of Earl Grey, the squabble is primarily founded on an unjust comparison. I point out that Bach surely couldn’t have written a decent storm aria if he’d tried, whereas my friend quite reasonably argues that Vivaldi is nothing but a faint shadow of Bach when it comes to religious music. Anyway, when I spotted that this book was up for review, I thought I’d better show willing and try to understand a little bit more about (and here I quote my friend) ‘the best composer born in 1685’.
我和一位朋友之間持續進行著一場關于巴赫和維瓦爾第誰更棒的“歡樂對戰”。在噴出你們的伯爵早茶前，我得說這場口角基本都是建立在不公正的比較之上的。我指出，巴赫如果有嘗試過的話，絕對寫不出像樣的“風暴詠嘆調”，而我朋友則很有道理地指出在宗教音樂方面，維瓦爾第不過是巴赫暗淡無光的影子。總之，當我發現這本書需要書評時，我想最好表示樂意并試著去了解更多“1685年誕生的最偉大的作曲家”。
（譯者注：維瓦爾第生于1678年。意指巴赫要強于同年出生的亨德爾或多美尼科·斯卡拉蒂。storm aria：應當來自意大利語aria di tempesta，指歌唱家宛如風暴中顛簸不斷的船只一般歌唱的詠嘆調）
Magdalena is only nineteen when one day, while visiting her great-aunt in Hamburg, she hears someone playing the organ in the church of St Katherine’s. Ravished by the music, she runs away as soon as the organist spots her. However, when she tells her musician father about the experience, he realises that she must have overheard the Duke of C?then’s Capellmeister, who is due to give a concert on the organ the following day.
在漢堡拜訪姑祖母時的一天，年僅十九歲的瑪格達利娜聽到有人在圣凱瑟琳教堂演奏管風琴。她被音樂迷住了，卻在管風琴師發現她后馬上逃走了。然而，當她把這段經歷告訴她的音樂家父親時，他認為她偷聽到的一定是第二天就要在那臺管風琴上演奏音樂會的克滕公爵的樂長。
An association gradually develops between Magdalena’s father and Master Bach and, a year after Bach’s first wife dies, he asks for Magdalena’s hand in marriage. She has longed and wished for nothing more and, from that moment, her entire life is devoted to creating a comfortable home for her much older husband, to caring for his numerous children and to cherishing his incomparable genius.
瑪格達麗娜的父親與樂長巴赫先生的聯系日益緊密，而巴赫在第一任妻子去世的一年后，向瑪格達利娜求婚了。再沒有什么比這更讓她向往渴求的了，而從此她就把全部生活投入到為年長的丈夫創造舒適的家庭環境，照顧他的眾多兒女，以及珍愛他無可比擬的天賦之中。
Many years later, when Bach is dead and half-forgotten, his reputation overshadowed by those of his sons Friedemann and Emmanuel, Magdalena receives a visit from one of her husband’s former pupils, Caspar Burgholt. He encourages her to write down her memories of the great composer so that, when posterity is wise enough to recognise his brilliance, they will have a record by the one who loved him best. And so Magdalena sets to her task with determination, hoping to preserve her husband’s kindness and gentleness, his fear and love of God, and his dazzling gift for the creation of music.
多年之后，巴赫已經去世且被人淡忘，他的名聲也在他兒子弗里德曼和伊曼紐埃爾的光環下顯得遜色。這時，瑪格達利娜受到丈夫曾經的學生Caspar Burgholt的拜訪，他鼓勵她寫下她關于這位偉大作曲家的記憶，這樣當后世有足夠智慧領會巴赫的才華橫溢時，他們能有一份由最深愛他的人寫下的記錄。于是瑪格達利娜下定決心開始寫作，希望將她丈夫的寬厚善良，敬畏上帝，以及創造音樂上的炫目天賦留存下來。
The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach, a novel based on a close study of documents and histories of Bach’s life, was first published in 1925. It’s one of numerous books recently rescued from oblivion and given a new lease of life, and it raises a slightly controversial question. I’m generally all in favour of books being made available for new generations, but why, I wonder, was this particular book chosen? It is certainly a subject of interest.
《瑪格達萊娜·巴赫的編年小傳》是一部基于對巴赫生平的文獻與歷史深入研究的小說，首次出版于1925年。這是近期從遺忘中被搶救過來并予以新生的眾多書籍中的一本，而且它還產生了一個略有爭議性的問題。我通常對為新一代再版的書籍懷有偏愛，但我好奇為什么這本書被選中了？這肯定是個有趣的主題。
Bach has, of course, been recognised by posterity for the great musical genius that he was, and I suppose the novel also buys into the current vogue for books about the wives or daughters of great men. The insurmountable problem about Meynell’s book, however, is that it doesn’t transcend its era in the same way that, for example, Elizabeth von Arnim's refreshing and humorous books manage to do. Meynell’s book, in fact, felt old-fashioned even on its publication in 1925. I unearthed a review published at the time in The Spectator, which is worth quoting because it identifies the problems that bedevil the book even more to a modern reader’s eye:
巴赫自然是因其卓越的音樂才華而馳名后世，而且我想此書也屬于時興的那類關于偉大男人的妻子或女兒的書籍。可梅內爾這本書難以克服的問題不在于沒有超越其寫作的時代，像作者阿尼姆寫的令人耳目一新而富于幽默的書設法做到的那樣。梅內爾的書，說實話，在1925出版的那一年就已經顯得老套了。我找到了一篇當時發表在《觀察者》雜志上的書評，它甚至比現代讀者更多地指出了困擾著本書的問題所在，因而值得我摘錄如下：
In the absence of any more dramatic material, however, the author has woven out of the facts of Bach’s life a tender and graceful domestic idyll. Whether, at any rate among musical geniuses, there have ever been husbands so perfect as Sebastian appears in these pages to Magdalena, and whether, even in eighteenth-century Leipzig, wives were ever quite so flawless in self-effacement, are matters for conjecture.
然而，由于缺少任何更戲劇性的材料，作者用巴赫生平為材料編織出一部柔和雅致的家庭生活田園詩。在眾多音樂巨匠中，是否可能存在像瑪格達萊娜筆下的塞巴斯蒂安那樣的完美丈夫，即使在十八世紀的萊比錫，又是否存在那樣在恭敬謙卑上無可指摘的妻子，全都源自猜想。
The main issue is that Bach, for all his musical brilliance, led a very quiet life. The book records a few disputes with the philistines on the board of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, where Bach serves as Cantor, and occasional tidings of composers who think they’re better than Bach – who swiftly realise their error and flee in ignominy when threatened with a direct comparison – but the brutal fact of it is that very little happens.
關鍵在于音樂上才華出眾的巴赫卻過著十分平靜的生活。書中記錄了巴赫在萊比錫的托馬斯學校擔任樂監時與校董會里毫無藝術修養的市儈們的幾次爭執，還有偶爾幾個認為自己強于巴赫的作曲家——他們很快意識到自己錯了，并且在面對面較量的挑戰下落荒而逃——但殘酷的事實表明這很少發生。
Domestic harmony is a wonderful thing in real life, but not so much in fiction. Even when events do happen, they occur off-stage, because Magdalena rarely ventures beyond her hearth and, when she does ask her husband about work, is more often than not told not to bother her pretty little head about it.
家庭和諧是現實生活中的妙事，可對小說而言就不盡然了。即使真的有什么事件發生，那也是在幕后進行的，因為瑪格達利娜很少冒險離開她的壁爐旁，而當她問丈夫工作上的事的時候，他不僅不說，還不想讓她漂亮的小腦袋瓜為此操心。
And Magdalena is perfectly happy with this. She considers herself weak, foolish and a clumsy musician and in all ways inferior to her paternalistic, multi-talented, wise husband. She makes throwaway comments like, 'a woman’s brain is hardly fitted for these high matters', regrets that her 'weaker mind' makes her unfit to play some of her husband’s compositions, and confesses that ‘only once do I recall when I had the temerity to think he was in the wrong’.
而瑪格達萊娜對此完全滿意。她把自己看作一個無力、愚笨而拙劣的音樂家，在任何層面上都遠遜于她那大家長一般、多才多藝而富有智慧的丈夫。她半開玩笑地認為，“女人的大腦難以處理這些高層次的問題”，為自己“較為無力的心智”難以演奏丈夫的一些曲目感到遺憾，并承認“我只能回想出一次我膽敢認為他錯了的時候”。
Such sentiments evoke a pious, godly, angel-of-the-hearth style of Victorian moral writing. We have no sense of Magdalena as an individual, as a woman: all her thoughts and desires are focused on her husband and on making a little home for him so that he can be happy. I know that this has been the lot of women throughout history and that perhaps some women genuinely want nothing more than to worship their spouse and to sit on his knee in the evening and absorb the glory of his being, but it doesn’t make for a particularly scintillating novel.
這種情緒引發一種虔誠的，神圣的，爐邊圣母般的，符合維多利亞時期女德的寫作風格。我們無從了解作為一個個體，一個女人的瑪格達利娜，她的全部思想與欲念全都圍繞著她的丈夫和為他創造一個小家庭來取悅于他。我知道歷史上大多數女性都是如此，而且可能有些女人的的確確除去崇敬她們的伴侶，夜里坐在他的膝頭，專注于由他存在而帶來的自豪之外別無他求，但單靠這些并不能寫出一部引人矚目的小說。
My rating doesn’t criticise the quality of the book so much as the fact that its spirit is out of kilter with our modern age. We’ve come to expect something slightly deeper from fiction, but by the same token I can’t really criticise Meynell for being a product of her own period. There must have been hundreds of similarly undemanding, polite, domestic novels written about women who had no greater desire than to make a cosy home and to love God, but most of them have fittingly faded away with the Victorian era.
相比本書的質量，我的評分（2/5）更著重強調的是其精神偏離了我們這個時代。如今的我們期待從虛構的小說中獲得一點更深層次的東西，但因為同樣的原因我并不能對梅內爾成為了她那個時代的產物而過多苛責。一定有成百上千部類似無欲無求，恭順有禮，專注家庭的小說，描寫那些除了營造溫馨愛巢和侍奉上帝別無他求的女人們，但大部分這些作品都適時地隨著維多利亞時代的終結推出了歷史的舞臺。
I feel that Meynell’s book doesn’t quite have the verve or sophistication to speak to a modern audience. I’m not suggesting that it would be better with bodice-ripping and tempestuous affairs: you know me better than that. But I think, if this story were written nowadays, it would have more psychological insight and would be more perceptive about the challenges of the different spheres of domestic and public life. One moment of liveliness comes with a visit from the composer Johann Adolph Hasse and his wife Faustina Bordoni, about whom Magdalena displays a rare and welcome flash of pique:
我感覺梅內爾的書不太具備向現代讀者傳遞信息的活力或老練。我不是說這個故事最好加上誘拐情節或者混亂的私通：要知道我可不是那種人。但我想，如果這個故事是現在寫成的，它應該具有更多心理上的洞察力，對于家庭生活與公共生活兩個不同側面帶來的挑戰更加敏感。有一瞬的活力迸發于音樂家Johann Adolph Hasse攜妻子Faustina Bordoni造訪的時候，瑪格達利娜對此難能可貴地表現出了一剎那的惱火：
I think that people who have travelled a great deal and seen the world and received so much fame and applause as Frau Faustina Hasse, always seem to take up a great deal of room in any apartment where they may be.
我覺得那些像福斯蒂·娜哈太太那樣到處旅行，見識甚廣，芳名遠揚的人，好像不論所到何處，總要占據房間里很大一部分空間。
If only we had seen a little more of Faustina! And yet, for the most part, Meynell’s novel flows very well. She does write beautifully, it’s just that she has little to say: the substance is a little dull. And there are occasions when, fitting the book’s description as a ‘chronicle’, she simply inserts letters or descriptions which I suspect are copied word-for-word from history books, which interrupt the flow a little.
要是我們能看到更多關于福斯蒂娜的事該多好呀！當然，大部分時候，梅內爾l的小說讀起來還不錯。她的確寫得很漂亮，只不過她能寫的非常有限，內容有些枯燥沉悶。有些時候，為了貼合“編年史”的書名，她簡單粗暴地把來自史料中的書信或描述不加刪改地插入文中，有點擾亂了文思。
Perhaps I’m being a little hard on the book, because its heroine felt so meek and so in awe of the wonderful husband with whom heaven had blessed her. It felt too homely and schmaltzy to be entirely satisfying. And it also glosses over the true hardships of the widowed Magdalena’s later life. While she refers to her ‘poverty’ in this novel, one gets the sense that it’s a rather genteel kind of poverty, but in reality I believe she was left so destitute that she was almost living on the street by the time she died.
或許我對此書有些過分苛責，因為女主實在是太溫順賢良，太敬畏上天賜予她的如意郎君了。全書過于舒適自在，耽于感性，難以讓人完全滿足。而且，它把寡居后瑪格達利娜所面臨的真實艱辛粉飾了過去。當她在小說中提到“貧困”時，讀者會覺得那不過是那種更溫和些的清貧，但事實上我認為她被一貧如洗地遺棄在世上，在死時幾乎流落街頭。
That’s a stroke of brutal reality that Meynell prefers to keep out of her ‘idyll’, I note. For those who are interested in Bach himself, a better bet would probably be John Eliot Gardiner’s Music in the Castle of Heaven. I haven’t read this myself but I’ve seen good reviews of it, and I bought it as a birthday present for my friend last year. She hasn’t told me that she didn’t like it, so I presume it’s good.One good thing about having read this book, though, is that I feel encouraged to dip my toe into slightly more of Bach’s music. But don’t tell my friend that, because I’ll never hear the end of it.
我發覺，梅內爾情愿將這殘酷的現實排除在她那田園牧歌以外。那些對巴赫本人更感興趣的人，約翰·艾略特·加迪納的《天空城里的音樂》是個更好的選擇。我自己還沒讀過，但我看到了很多好評，而且我去年把它作為生日禮物送給了那位朋友。她沒跟我說不喜歡這本書，所以我姑且認為還不錯。不過，讀過此書給我帶來的一點好處就是，我敢于嘗試去涉足更多一點巴赫的音樂了。但是別告訴我朋友，不然我又要聽個沒完沒了啦。
