Why should you read Kurt Vonnegut? - Mia Nacamulli

1,401,316 views ・ 2018-11-29

TED-Ed


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翻译人员: Sophia Wang 校对人员: Ella Chen
00:06
Billy Pilgrim can’t sleep
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毕利·皮尔格里姆难以入睡
00:08
because he knows aliens will arrive to abduct him in one hour.
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因为他知道一个小时后 外星人会来把他绑走。
00:13
He knows the aliens are coming because he has become “unstuck” in time,
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他知道外星人会来 因为他已经"脱离"了时间,
00:18
causing him to experience events out of chronological order.
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这让他经历的事情都不按照 正常的时间顺序。
00:23
Over the course of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five,
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在库尔特·冯内古特的 《五号屠宰场》中,
00:27
he hops back and forth between a childhood trip to the Grand Canyon,
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毕利穿梭于各种不同的经历中: 他儿时一次去大峡谷的旅行,
00:31
his life as a middle-aged optometrist,
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他作为一个中年配镜师的生活,
00:34
his captivity in an intergalactic zoo,
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他在一个外星动物园的囚禁遭遇,
00:37
the humiliations he endured as a war prisoner, and more.
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和他作为战俘时所经受的羞辱经历等等。
00:42
The title of Slaughterhouse-five and much of its source material
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《五号屠宰场》的标题和大量素材
00:45
came from Vonnegut’s own experiences in World War II.
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都来源于冯内古特 在二战中的亲身经历。
00:49
As a prisoner of war, he lived in a former slaughterhouse in Dresden,
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作为一个战俘,他被关押在 德累斯顿的一个废弃屠宰场中。
00:54
where he took refuge in an underground meat locker
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当盟军轰炸城市的时候, 他躲在一个地下肉窖幸免于难。
00:57
while Allied forces bombed the city.
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01:00
When he and the other prisoners finally emerged,
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当他和其他战俘从地窖中出来时,
01:03
they found Dresden utterly demolished.
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他们发现德累斯顿已被夷为平地。
01:07
After the war, Vonnegut tried to make sense of human behavior
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战后,冯内古特试图解释人类的行为
01:10
by studying an unusual aspect of anthropology:
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通过研究人类学中的一个独特分支:
01:14
the shapes of stories,
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故事的形状。
01:15
which he insisted were just as interesting as the shapes of pots or spearheads.
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他认为故事的形状和 罐子或者矛头的形状一样有趣。
01:21
To find the shape, he graphed the main character’s fortune
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为了探索故事的形状, 他用图表的形式表示
01:24
from the beginning to the end of a story.
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故事主人公从头到尾的经历。
01:27
The zany curves he generated revealed common types of fairy tales and myths
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这些独特的曲线展现了 很多童话或神话的常见模式。
01:32
that echo through many cultures.
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这些模式在很多文化中都很普遍。
01:34
But this shape can be the most interesting of all.
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但是接下来的这个形状 是所有曲线中最有趣的。
01:38
In a story like this,
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在这种类型的故事中,
01:40
it’s impossible to distinguish the character’s good fortune from the bad.
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你很难分辨主人公的遭遇是好是坏。
01:44
Vonnegut thought this kind of story was the truest to real life,
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冯内古特认为这样的故事 是最能真实反映现实生活的。
01:48
in which we are all the victims of a series of accidents,
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在这样的故事中, 我们对一系列偶然事件无法反抗,
01:51
unable to predict how events will impact us long term.
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我们无法预知这些事情对 我们会有什么长久的影响。
01:55
He found the tidy, satisfying arcs of many stories at odds with this reality,
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他发现那种平滑理想的故事走向 与现实不符。
02:01
and he set out to explore the ambiguity
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于是,他决定在他的作品中
02:03
between good and bad fortune in his own work.
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探索顺境与逆境之间的一步之遥。
02:06
When Vonnegut ditched clear-cut fortunes,
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冯内古特不仅抛弃了 绝对的好坏运气之分,
02:09
he also abandoned straightforward chronology.
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他也抛弃了简单的时间顺序描述。
02:12
Instead of proceeding tidily from beginning to end, in his stories
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不同于由开始到结尾的正常故事推进,
02:16
“All moments, past, present and future always have existed, always will exist.”
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在他的故事中,“过去、现在 和将来都始终共同存在并延续。”
02:23
Tralfamadorians, the aliens who crop up in many of his books,
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特拉法马多尔人是一群 在他书中反复出现的外星人,
02:27
see all moments at once.
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他们可以一次看到所有的时间节点。
02:30
They “can see where each star has been and where it is going,
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他们可以”看到所有星星所处的位置和 它们将移动的轨迹,
02:33
so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.”
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所以对他们来说天空像是 覆满了缥缈闪烁的意大利面”。
02:38
But although they can see all of time,
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但即使他们可以看透时间,
02:40
they don’t try to change the course of events.
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他们不会试图改变任何事件发生的轨迹。
02:43
While the Trafalmadorians may be at peace with their lack of agency,
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虽然特拉法马多尔人 安于不干涉外界的状态,
02:47
Vonnegut’s human characters are still getting used to it.
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冯内古特的人类角色还在为之苦恼。
02:51
In The Sirens of Titan,
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在《泰坦星的海妖》中,
02:53
when they seek the meaning of life in the vastness of the universe,
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主人公们在浩瀚的宇宙 中探索生命的奥义。
02:57
they find nothing but “empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.”
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到头来,他们只发现了“空洞的宏大、 庸俗的滑稽以及无意义的死亡。”
03:02
Then, from their vantage point within a “chrono-synclastic infundibulum,”
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以他们所处的一个 “时间-弹性漏斗”的视角,
03:07
a man and his dog see devastating futures for their earthly counterparts,
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一个人和他的狗看到了 他们令人惊愕的未来,
03:12
but can’t change the course of events.
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但他们却不能改变事情发生的轨迹。
03:15
Though there aren’t easy answers available, they eventually conclude
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虽然一句话很难概括他们的体会, 但他们最终总结出
03:18
that the purpose of life is “to love whoever is around to be loved.”
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人生的意义就在于 “去爱身边可以去爱的人”。
03:23
In Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut’s characters turn to a different source of meaning:
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在《猫的摇篮》中,冯内古特笔下的角色 有着另一种人生哲学:
03:28
Bokonism,
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布克农教。
03:29
a religion based on harmless lies that all its adherents recognize as lies.
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这个宗教的信徒都公认 这个宗教中的一切都是善意的谎言。
03:35
Though they’re aware of Bokonism’s lies,
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即使信徒们知道 布克农教的一切都是谎言,
03:38
they live their lives by these tenets anyway,
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他们还是依照教义信条生活,
03:40
and in so doing develop some genuine hope.
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并以此来获得一些抚慰人心的希望。
03:44
They join together in groups called Karasses, which consist of people we
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书中的人聚集在一起 组成了许多叫“卡拉斯”的群体,
这个群体中的人是“偶然相识, 但经过选择而在一起”。
03:48
“find by accident but […] stick with by choice”—
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03:51
cosmically linked around a shared purpose.
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大家因为一个共同的目的, 机缘巧合中产生了联系。
03:54
These are not to be confused with Granfalloons,
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这个群体不能与格朗法伦群体混为一谈,
03:57
groups of people who appoint significance to actually meaningless associations,
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格朗法伦群体的人是给 本身泛泛无意义的联系强加以重要意义,
04:02
like where you grew up, political parties, and even entire nations.
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比如你长大的地方、政治派别、 甚至国籍之类的联系。
04:08
Though he held a bleak view of the human condition, Vonnegut believed strongly that
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虽然冯内古特对于人类的处境 很悲观,但他认为
04:12
“we are all here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
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”我们存在是要帮助彼此共度难关, 无论难关是什么。”
04:17
We might get pooped and demoralized,
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我们可能被困难打倒而意志消沉,
04:19
but Vonnegut interspersed his grim assessments
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但冯内古特也在他尖锐的评论中,
04:22
with more than a few morsels of hope.
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穿插着很多乐观和希望。
04:25
His fictional alter ego, Kilgore Trout, supplied this parable:
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他在小说中的分身,基尔戈·特劳特, 曾给出了这个比喻:
04:30
two yeast sat “discussing the possible purposes of life
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两个酵母坐在一起“探讨人生的意义”,
04:34
as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement.
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他们一边吸收糖分 一边又因他们产生的排泄物窒息而死。
04:39
Because of their limited intelligence,
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因为他们智慧有限,
04:41
they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”
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它们从不曾想到 它们其实是在生产香槟酒。
04:46
In spite of his insistence that we’re all here to fart around,
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尽管他常说我们始终在四处闲荡;
04:49
in spite of his deep concerns about the course of human existence,
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尽管他为人类的生存忧愁思虑,
04:53
Vonnegut also advanced the possibility, however slim,
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冯内古特也提出了微小但存在的可能性,
04:57
that we might end up making something good.
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就是——我们终将创造美好。
05:00
And if that isn’t nice, what is?
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还能有什么比这更好呢?
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