我们该到哪儿去寻觅安慰——凯伦·索利诗三首

凯伦·索利(Karen Solie)

译 | 陶志健，学者、翻译，麦吉尔大学博士

作者投稿，转载须取得授权

值此国际社会关注人类环境和气候之际，笔者特介绍凯伦·索利反思现代社会的三首诗作。

凯伦·索利(Karen Solie)是一位颇具国际声望的当代加拿大诗人。她出生于加拿大萨斯喀彻温省穆斯乔市，长于该省西南部自家农场。多年来，当过农场工人，咖啡师，场地看管，报纸记者/摄影记者，学术研究助理和英文教师，现居安大略省多伦多市。

索利发表有《短途引擎》 (2001，获Dorothy Livesay诗歌奖)、《现代与正常》(2005)、《鸽子》(2009，获2010加拿大格里芬诗歌奖、Pat Lowther奖、及延龄草图书奖)、《人生抉择》(2013)、《进路与出路不是同一路》(2015)、《凯普利洞穴》(2019)等六部诗集。她的诗作已经被译成荷兰文、法文及韩文等。索利曾担任多个诗歌奖评委，并于2014年被任命为加拿大的格里芬优秀诗歌信托基金会董事。

人生就是一场狂欢

诗/凯伦·索利 译/陶志健

晚餐已毕，酒杯在手，隐约带着争相表露

的心思，我们追循谷歌地球那隐身老变态

穿行各自家乡的街道，却发现家乡更寒碜了，臃俗地

当代化了，剥光了儿时熟悉的当地植物，

满眼是拉毛灰泥，要么带着别样的敌意

阻止我们期待中的旧时场景

重现眼前。多可悲啊，那废弃的冰壶场——它的非法

地下室酒吧在塌陷，那颗沃尔玛的种子——

它随着人口在冒芽，那谷歌街景的永久正午。苍白

而虚高的制作价值，让调幅台的热播歌曲[1]

浮现在消退已久的社会关系网表面。我们感到

共鸣不再。不过多么可心啊那坚守不变的

斜向泊车！我们宁愿烧毁这些地方也不愿看到它们

改变，还是就是乐意烧毁它们，这些残破之地

从那里我们带着塑入人格的创伤摇摇晃晃地走入

余生。这种地方可没法托付给四维体[2]，

不过我们那个时龄已为他人所有。就像我们的老

屋。看看它被折腾成什么样子了。谁能觉得这是趣事？

要不来场音乐会吧，Youtube上Youtube之前那无法想象

的日子，那时代像破产的乡村小店一样门窗都封了板

瓶瓶罐罐还在架上，我们却急急离去。多漂亮啊

那些人，穿着花哨的衣裳，唱着青春的高

音，全屏显示，有两个已不在人世。这便是

永恒？再来一个，鼓掌，再来一个；真有点身临其境了。

[1]译注：调幅台的热播歌曲（hits of AM radio）：60-70年代的流行歌曲。

[2]译注：四维体（the fourfold）：德国哲学家海德格尔的天地人神四维体。

原文：

Life is a Carnival

By Karen Solie

Dinner finished, wine in hand, in a vaguely competitive spirit

of disclosure, we trail Google Earth's invisible pervert

through the streets of our hometowns, but find them shabbier, or grossly

contemporized, denuded of childhood's native flora,

stuccoed or in some other way hostile

to the historical reenactments we expect of our former

settings. What sadness in the disused curling rinks, their illegal

basement bars imploding, in the seed of a Walmart

sprouting in the demographic, in Street View's perpetual noon. With pale

and bloated production values, hits of AM radio rise

to the surface of a network of social relations long obsolete. We sense

a loss of rapport. But how sweet the persistence

of angle parking! Would we burn these places rather than see them

change, or just happily burn them, the sites of wreckage

from which we staggered with our formative injuries into the rest

of our lives. They cannot be consigned to the fourfold,

though the age we were belongs to someone else. Like our old

house. Look what they've done to it. Who thought this would be fun?

A concert, then, YouTube from those inconceivable days before

YouTube, an era boarded over like a bankrupt country store,

cans still on its shelves, so hastily did we leave it. How beautiful

they are in their poncey clothes, their youthful higher

registers, fullscreen, two of them dead now. Is this

eternity? Encore, applause, encore; it's almost like being there.

原载：The Road In Is Not The Same Road Out. Copyright ? 2015 by Karen Solie

北方

诗/凯伦·索利 译/陶志健

我们该到哪儿去寻觅安慰，

既然身居北方？处于坎坷存活的

植物生命之中——它紧抠着

生命的边缘，任空气凌虐或无视

也要繁衍？带着两种心境，

既柔弱又滋蔓，它探望海外

同时本性又弯向陆内。

又何必辩解我们农业上的

强耕力作，企业上的

大胆无耻？昏昏欲睡

的愤怒中表演的深冬的

独特闹剧？有闲阶级

赞美努力工作的美德，说那

高于一切，而我们却在劳作，受制于

冰冷的规章制度和法规的黑色

字母，陷在猪臭和

崩塌的矿渣之中，刚一出生

便成中年，全心全意地

诽谤这个地方，莫名其妙地

仇外。与其说超然其上

还不如就迁移南下。同情之心

跟维生之举难道就

不可分割吗？自我还能是啥

除了跟寒冷搏斗？

原文：

The North

By Karen Solie

Where should we find consolation,

dwelling in the north? Amid the stunted

desperate plant life clinging

to its edges, thriving on atmospheric

vengeance or neglect? Of two moods,

fragile and invasive, it gazes out to sea

as its character bends inland.

And why defend our poignant attempts

at agriculture, the gall

of our entrepreneurs? The defining

mid-winter pageants performed

in a somnolent rage? The leisure class

commends the virtues of hard work

above all else, and we labour under

frost-cramped statutes, the black

letters of legislation, in hog-reek

and land-driven slag, middle-aged

from birth and, given our devotion

to slandering this place, illogically

xenophobic. We could as soon move

south as rise above it. Are sympathies

inseparable from what one does

to stay alive? What is a self

but that which fights the cold?

原载：The Caiplie Caves?by Karen Solie (July 7, 2019)

改建

诗/凯伦·索利 译/陶志健

仓促一览的第一印象。是万能

溶剂，还有床底的魔障。一股既

抱歉又敌意的气息，一些被遗弃的

用具来自甩卖场，窗帘材料是化纤的

也是虔诚的，其份量和能量都足以

吸收愧罪。这兴旺生态系统的栖居者

从织料的毛边和破败踢脚板的边缘

探望一阵，就壮起胆来。一只门把手

脱落在我手里，像个荒唐的假肢。

这类的房间到处黏着我都已经

二十年了。好像我嫁入了表亲众多

的糟糕人家。而我是那唯一

爱他们的人。我就是这种感觉。

就算一个家庭牛排馆把呛人的废气

排放进我的门槛，就算带着重现的谜团，

那蛾子是如何进来的谜团——

一到早晨它们就用自身的钩子把自己

无处不在地挂起，像一件件小外套——

我照样安然处于这不操闲心的奢侈之中。

这是一种技能，就像系鞋带。其他一切

都失去了，技能还会在。燃气爆炸

摧毁了美景山汽车旅馆东翼，使之仅仅

略微不适合居住的责任——尽管没有登记

在册——依然是，一个秘密

藏在重建的房中。借烧渣砖和柏油屋顶

之形再次立起，一副天真，名称照旧，仿佛

本可积累的还有待来日。不要

再次派我去那个地方。那最后一晚

在鲑鱼湾，也可能是温赖特，韶那氛，或

者苏城[1]，不管是哪儿，那最后内置的又外垮，

或外展的又内垮了，我想起了你呢。

[1]译注：鲑鱼湾、温赖特、韶那氛、苏城(Salmon Arm, Wainwright, Shaunavon,

The Sault)都是加拿大的小城镇，分属卑诗省，埃尔伯塔省，萨斯喀彻温省和安大略省。

原文：

Conversion

By Karen Solie

First impression of a hasty once--over. Of universal

solvent and under--the--bed. An atmosphere both

apologetic and hostile, orphaned

amenities procured at clearance, curtains synthetic

and religious in their weight and ability

to absorb guilt. A thriving ecosystem’s residents

stared from fringes of the textiles, the debased

baseboards, and would grow bold. A doorknob

came off in my hand like a joke prosthetic.

Rooms like this have followed me around

for 20 years. It’s as though I married into a bad

family of many cousins. I was the only one

who loved them. That’s what I thought.

Even as a family steakhouse vented its cruel exhaust

across my threshold, even in the resurrected mystery

of how the moths get in –

by morning they’d hung themselves everywhere

like little coats by their own hooks –

I was at peace in the luxury of all that lack of care.

It was a skill, like tying knots. When all else

had gone, it would be there. Blame

for the propane explosion that destroyed the east wing

of the Monte Vista Motel, rendering it only slightly

less habitable, though not registered

in the paperwork, remains, a secret

crouched in the rebuild. In cinder block and flat tarred

roof it rose again, innocent, under the same name, as if

what could accrue had yet to do so. Don’t

send me back out there again. That final night

in Salmon Arm, maybe Wainwright, Shaunavon or

The Sault, wherever it was the last built-in fell out,

or the fold-out fell in, I thought of you then.

原载：Hazlitt: https://hazlitt.net/poetry/conversion, October 21, 2013

原标题：《我们该到哪儿去寻觅安慰——凯伦·索利诗三首》

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