On the Street (Excerpt)街上（节选）

【导读】约翰·班维尔（1945— ），爱尔兰小说家、编剧、戏剧改编作家、电影剧本作家，其小说《证词》（The Book of Evidence）曾入围布克奖提名，2005年凭借第14部小说《海》（The Sea）获得布克奖。他还斩获不少其他重要奖项，包括卡夫卡奖（2011）、爱尔兰笔会奖（2013）、澳大利亚国家文学奖（2013）、奥地利王子奖（2014）等。他曾以本杰明·布莱克（Benjamin Black）为笔名，创作了主角为奎尔克（Quirke）的犯罪小说系列。2007年，班维尔入选英国皇家文学学会。“街上”节选自班维尔的散文集《光阴拾碎——都柏林回忆录》（Time Pieces： A Dublin Memoir，2016）第四章。人的记忆不一定是连贯的，往往以碎片形式嵌于我们的脑中。那些可捡拾的记忆片段，是随着时间逐渐深刻的人生经验；我们年轻时错过不少“熟视之若无睹也”的事物，所幸，岁月会赋予我们辩识真善美的智慧，那些险些被记忆抛却的终将会被捡起。本文作者对乔治王朝风格的都柏林的情感可谓后知后觉，他带着一半遗憾与一半幸运为读者当向导，走街穿巷，让我们领略这座城市的前世今生。

I could not have lived in a lovelier location. The view from the Natural History Museum along Merrion Square and Mount Street to St Stephen’s Church—the Pepper Canister， as it is fondly called—is one of the most handsome and dignified prospects in any of the world’s cities that I know or have visited. Leinster， originally Kildare， House， which is now the seat of government， was built in the 1740s by the Earl of Kildare， James FitzGerald， in an unfavoured and marshy area south of the river Liffey. Poor though the site might be， the canny earl predicted that fashion would soon follow him， and he was right： before the end of the century the bulk of the city’s aristocracy had moved southwards across the river. The result was that in the following century， rich redoubts such as Henrietta Street and Rutland Square would fall into decrepitude and be sold off to rack-renting landlords， so that much of the north inner city was transformed into one of the worst slums in Europe. Meanwhile， on the south side of the river there grew up around Leinster House a grid of elegant streets and boulevards， a large number of which are still intact and in use today， though most of the fine old houses have been given over to office space.

我不可能住到比这儿还好的地方了。从自然历史博物馆沿梅里恩广场和芒特街往前，直至圣斯蒂芬大教堂——即人们戏称的胡椒罐教堂——这一带，在我所知道的或造访过的世界任何城市里，都是风景绝佳的。伦斯特（旧称基尔代尔）府，现今的政府所在，建于18世纪40年代，创建人为基尔代尔伯爵詹姆斯·菲茨杰拉德。府邸地处利菲河以南没人喜欢的沼泽区。尽管选址可能不很理想，老谋深算的伯爵预言，他将引领潮流——他还真说对了：18世纪末，大批城市贵族南迁至河对岸。结果，随后的一个世纪，亨丽埃塔街和拉特兰广场等富人庇护所将逐渐败落，被售予赚取高额租银的房东；如此，北部内城的大部分地区便沦为欧洲最糟糕的贫民窟。与此同时，河南的伦斯特府周边有了纵横交错的雅致街巷和林荫大道，现今好多仍然完好如初，照旧发挥作用，只不过精美的老宅大多变成了办公场所。

A lot of the Georgian city was still standing when I first came to live there， but a lot of it was gone， too. It is a fact， as Maurice Craig pointed out as recently as 1992， that ‘much more of Dublin survives， and in reasonable order， than might be deduced from listening to the lamentations of those who deplore its destruction’， but all the same， in the postwar years and up to the end of the 1960s， the city was subjected to appalling bouts of officially sanctioned destruction. The ultra-nationalist ideologues who ran the country then had scant regard for the delights of Georgian architecture， and indeed many of them would have seen Georgian Dublin as a despised monument to our British conquerors， who had been driven out in the War of Independence at the start of the 1920s. Hence permissions were liberally given for large-scale despoliation of， in Yeats’s words， ‘many ingenious lovely things’. A particularly deplorable instance of urban mutilation was the demolition of a large stretch of the south side of Fitzwilliam Street， to make way for the building of the Electricity Supply Board’s headquarters—one of the developments that Daithí Hanly had so passionately opposed. Had the state coffers been in a more healthy state， it is likely that many other such streets would have been razed to make way for the New Brutalism. There was even a plan to fill in the Grand and Royal Canals and build super-roads over them， with sewers underneath. And the bosky green heart of delightful Merrion Square， which was then the property of the Catholic Church， barely escaped having a monster cathedral erected on it， at the behest of the unspeakable Archbishop McQuaid.

我初到此处，这座乔治王朝风格的城市还保留着许许多多旧时的风物，不过丢失的也不少。事实上，如莫里斯·克雷格1992年指出的那样，“听到那些痛恨拆除者的哀叹，可能会以为都柏林没剩什么了，其实都柏林保留下来的东西要多得多，并且井然有序”；尽管如此，战后及至20世纪60年代末，这座城市经历了数次骇人的官方拆毁。那个时候，极端民族主义意识形态拥护者掌控国家，蔑视乔治王朝风格建筑的趣味，实际上，他们中的很多人将乔治王朝风格的都柏林视为我们英国征服者可耻的历史见证，尽管20世纪20年代初的独立战争早已驱赶了征服者。因此，就有了大规模的自由掠夺令，掠夺叶芝所说的“许许多多巧夺天工的美好事物”。有一起城市破坏案例尤令人震惊，即菲茨威廉街南边的大片拆毁，为的是腾出地方修建供电局总部——这是达西·汉利极力反对的开发项目之一。倘若市府财政有更多结余，很可能其他更多类似的街道会被夷为平地，助长建筑的新粗野主义。甚至还有一个计划要填平大运河和皇家运河，上建高速公路，下修排水系统。美丽的梅里恩广场那时隶属天主教会，广场中心地带林木繁茂，也差点未能逃脱建一座丑陋教堂的命运，那曾是臭名昭著的大主教麦奎德的要求。

In 1969， Green Property—my Mount Street landlords， as it happened—a development company with strong links to the ruling Fianna Fáil party， were given permission by the then Minister for Local Government to knock down a large chunk of Hume Street， another fine example of Georgian architecture， that leads from Ely Place on to St Stephen’s Green. When the plan became public， the buildings were promptly occupied by a band of architectural students， who in time were joined by a number of public figures， including Garret FitzGerald， a Member of Parliament who would later become Taoiseach， and the future President of Ireland， Mary Robinson. However， late one night Green Property sent in a demolition crew， who destroyed the roofs and much of the interiors of the houses. In the end the company was compelled to erect fake Georgian buildings on the spot—‘unconvincing paraphrases masquerading as replicas’， in Maurice Craig’s disdainful judgement—while the rest of the street was saved.

1969年，绿色物业——恰巧为本人的芒特街房东——一家与爱尔兰共和党有着牢靠关系的开发公司，经当时的地方政府部部长批准，拆除了休姆街相当大的一片建筑，这里由伊利广场直通圣斯蒂芬绿地，为乔治王朝风格建筑的另一优秀范例。拆除计划一经公布，这里旋即为一批建筑系的学生占领，许多公众人物紧接着也加入其中，包括后来成为爱尔兰总理的国会议员加勒特·菲茨杰拉德和未来的爱尔兰总统玛丽·罗宾逊。然而，一天深夜，绿色物业派来拆迁组，掀翻了屋顶，房子内部破坏得也十分严重。最终，该公司被责令于原址仿建乔治王朝风格的建筑——莫里斯·克雷格对这种做法很是嗤之以鼻，他评价道：“不能令人信服的套用，权且乔装为复制品。”——所幸街上的其他部分被保存下来。

Strangely， perhaps， none of this seems to have had much effect on me. The truth is， I had little interest in Dublin’s past， and not much in its present， either， if it came to that. What was it to me that in its days of glory Dublin had been the second city of the British Empire—‘the finest classical city in Europe’， according to the architectural historian Mark Girouard—or that it was unique in having two major canals， or that the Duke of Wellington had been born in Merrion Street opposite what is now the Department of the Taoiseach？ For me， as a writer in the making， the fact was that Joyce had seized upon the city for his own literary purposes and in doing so had used it up， as surely as Kafka did with the letter K， and consequently the place was of no use to me as a backdrop for my fiction. True， some of my early short stories take place in an identifiable Dublin， but they could as well have been set in London， or Paris—or Moscow， for that matter. It was not until much later， when I invented my dark brother Benjamin Black， that I saw the potential of 1950s Dublin as a setting for his noir novels.