The triumph of magic

魔法的造诣

本期讣告选自TE20200201期

Nell Gifford

内尔·吉福德

The triumph of magic

魔法的造诣

Nell Gifford, founder of Giffords Circus, died on December 8th, aged 46

内尔·吉福德，吉福兹马戏团创始人，于12月8日离世，享年46岁

Who would dream of starting a travelling circus at the dawn of the 21st century? Who would brave mud, late-night pull-downs, rats in the straw-bales, leaky caravans, temperamental animals, lack of loos, lack of baths, unless they had been born to it? Who would put up with, and then triumph over, suspicious local councils and the indifference of English rural folk? Nell Gifford would. From 1998, when she and her husband Toti took the great decision, she built up Giffords Circus from one ex-hire tent and one wagon found in a hedge to a treasured summer institution of the southern counties. As soon as her shining procession of hand-painted burgundy wagons appeared in a town, queues would form and tickets would fly out as fast as they could be printed.

谁会梦想在21世纪来临之际成立巡回马戏团？若非生来如此，谁愿意脚踩烂泥、工作到深夜才收工；谁愿意面对稻草堆里窜出的老鼠、漏水的大篷车、喜怒无常的动物；谁愿意过着如厕不便、洗澡不易的生活？谁又愿意去忍受、后来又能摆平疑心重重的地方议会和英国乡民的冷漠无情？内尔·吉福德愿意。从1998年她和丈夫托蒂做了这个重大决定开始，她把吉福兹马戏团从一顶淘来的租赁商变卖的旧帐篷和一辆树篱中捡到的马车，建成了南方各郡人士钟爱的夏季去处。每当她那手工彩绘的紫红色车队闪亮出现在小镇上时，人们都争相排队购票，一时间一票难求。

Audiences might have soured on the big noisy circuses of the recent past, with their sad exploited tigers and creepy clowns, but hers was different. It was a pocket circus, with a small ring and a troupe of perhaps four dozen performers, all of whom worked, sang and danced together. The horses were few but beautiful, and at various times there were hens, doves, hawks and five dachshunds. Most of the costumes were home-stitched and the sets were made on-site, the old-fashioned way. Yet all the thrill of the circus was there full-on, from the lights at evening strung around the tent to the flames struck up by the knife-thrower, from the fearless pirouetting of Rebecca, the bareback ballerina, to the risky tumbling of Tweedy the clown, from the glittering costumes of the dancers to the terrifying sky-flips of the gymnasts. And there she was at the centre of it all, dressed in whatever leotard or feathers or hat the show demanded, eyelashes curled with foil and make-up running with sweat, the picture of happiness.

近些年来，喧闹的大型马戏团里，可怜的老虎被驯服压榨，小丑怪诞骇人，观众可能会心生反感。但内尔的马戏团与此不同。它是个小型马戏团，圆形马戏场很小，班子也只有四五十来人，他们一起工作、一起唱歌、一起跳舞。马少但俊，时不时还有母鸡、鸽子、鹰外加五条腊肠狗。大部分服装都是自家缝制的，布景则是在现场搭建——一副老式的做派。虽看似简陋，吉福兹马戏团依旧充满了紧张与刺激：晚上帐篷周围串起的灯光，飞刀手引出的火焰；无畏的芭蕾舞女演员丽贝卡在没有马鞍的马上单脚旋转，小丑特威迪做着危险的翻筋斗动作；舞者的服装闪闪发光，体操员的空翻惊心动魄。内尔就站在这一切的中心，按演出需要穿着紧身连衣裤或羽毛或帽子，眼睫毛与锡箔彩纸卷在一起，汗水弄花了妆容，一幅快乐的画卷。

What was a middle-class graduate from Oxford doing in such a place? She had many answers. Childhood dreams came into it, of ponies, candy-striped tents and dressing-up boxes, and of living in a velvet-lined wagon under the stars. The ring allowed her to ride horses, which she loved, in ways that magnified their mystery and possibilities. She could push her fizzing creativity to the extreme, whether piling on sequins, plaiting manes, devising moons for actors to swing from, or deciding that the theme of the next show should be Cockerels, or Snow, or Xanadu. The minions of her imagination were scurrying round all the time, especially in haberdasher’s shops among the fabrics or in museums among the puppets, making a thousand little odd links, seeking out ideas.

毕业于牛津大学、来自中产阶级家庭的内尔在这种地方做着什么？她有许多答案。马戏团可以实现她的童年梦想：小马、糖果色条纹的帐篷、变装盒子、住在星空下天鹅绒衬里的马车上。在马戏场，她能骑马驰骋——她爱骑马，她能尝试凸显马匹神秘感与可能性的各种骑法。她可以把自己汹涌的创意发挥到极致：无论是堆叠亮片、编辫子、设计让表演者能坐着摇摆的月亮；还是决定下一场演出的主题“小公鸡”或“雪”或“世外桃源”。她想象的仆从一直在四处奔走，尤其会在缝纫店的布料间隙或博物馆的木偶丛中穿行，构思出无数奇妙的小混搭，找寻新的想法。

注：

Xanadu：1617年Samuel Purchas在他的书中描述，Xanadu是呼必烈大汗庄严的宫殿，有十六英里宽，旗帜飘扬，野兽追逐，豪华的宫殿远远相对。1816年，柯立芝发表的这首新诗《呼必烈汗》，从此奠定"Xanadu"在西方文学上的象征意义。

Powerful magic also lay at the heart of this. She wanted people to imagine her tent was lit by candles. A good circus, she wrote, was a sublimely existential thing, a golden present moment, even a crisis that tipped into excess, and then it vanished. It was over, and she would sometimes wander into the tent before pull-down just for that still-magical smell of animals, popcorn and trodden grass.

强大的魔法同样也起着核心作用。她希望人们想象她的马戏帐篷是靠蜡烛照亮的。她曾这样写道：一台好的马戏是一份卓然的存在，一个金光闪闪的当下时刻，甚至是一场发酵过头的危机，然后一切烟消云散，恍然如梦。演出结束后，她有的时候会趁彻底收摊前“幌”进马戏帐篷里，只为闻一下那动物、爆米花和被踩得稀碎的青草所融合而成的仍然神奇的味道。

注：

存在主义（Existentialism），是当代西方哲学主要流派之一。该词最早由法国天主教哲学家加布里埃尔马塞尔提出。存在主义是一个很广泛的哲学流派，主要包括有神论的存在主义、无神论的存在主义和人道主义的存在主义三大类，它可以指任何孤立个人的非理性意识活动，并把它们当作最真实存在的人本主义学说。存在主义以人为中心、尊重人的个性和自由。人是在无意义的宇宙中生活，人的存在本身也没有意义，但人可以在原有存在的基础上自我塑造、自我成就，活得精彩，从而拥有意义。

Nonetheless it was a business, and the road had been long to get there. She and Toti started with a purple ring-binder of ideas, almost no money and almost no experience. He had a zebra-striped tractor, could landscape gardens and build things, and was good at keeping the mad project going. She had odd-jobbed for circuses for a while, selling ice-creams, rolling up rubber mats, raking sawdust and occasionally performing, as when the French Santus Circus allowed her to be a ring-mistress. In her head, though, were the images that had amazed her at the Circus Roncalli in Germany, where visitors sipped champagne and the front-of-house staff wore designer uniforms, celebrating shows that were also works of art. She would have elegance and order in her miniature circus, too.

尽管如此，这终究是门生意，他们一路走来实属不易。她和托蒂从一本紫色活页夹的构想起步，几乎没有钱，几乎没有经验。托蒂有一台斑马条纹的拖拉机，他还能美化园林、搭建物品，善于推进这个疯狂的计划。内尔曾在一些马戏团打过零工：卖冰淇凌、卷橡胶垫、耙锯末子她都做过，偶尔还会有表演机会，比如法国山特斯马戏团让她做马戏表演领班时。然而她脑海中不能忘怀的，是自己在德国隆卡利马戏团看过的惊艳画面：来宾们小口嘬着香槟，观众区的工作人员穿着知名设计师设计的制服，共庆一场场艺术品般的演出。她要自己的迷你马戏团也拥有这份优雅和井然。

注：

ring-mistress：A ringmaster or ringmistress, or sometimes a ringleader, is a significant performer in the many circuses. Most often seen in traditional circuses, the ringmaster is a master of ceremonies that introduces the circus acts to the audience. In smaller circuses, the ringmaster is often the owner and artistic director of the circus.

Meanwhile, as they renovated their first wagon, they worked in a freezing breeze-block hut, were fed for nothing by a friendly publican, and ran up debts of £100,000. Slowly they found performers—Rebecca in Stow-on-the Wold, her horse on the Welsh borders, a Russian strongman in Birmingham—and built movable accommodation for them. Then in 2000, penniless, they played at the Hay Festival, were packed out, and everything changed. They were in Tatler and Vogue; by 2007, ever-growing, they needed a choreographer and a director. By 2010 they had a permanent base on a farm, with a big rehearsal barn and a building for each section. They were no longer innocent, she felt. But they were famous.

与此同时，他们在一个能冻死人的煤灰砖小屋里翻新了自己的第一辆马车。一位友善的酒馆老板给他们提供了免费的食物，可是他们仍然债台高筑，达到了十万英镑。慢慢地，他们找到了马戏团的表演者们：在斯托小镇找到了丽贝卡，并在威尔士边境为丽贝卡找到了合适的马做表演搭档，在伯明翰找到了俄罗斯壮汉。他们还为这些表演者建起了供他们住宿的活动房。到了2000年，在身无分文的情况下，他们在“海伊文学节”上表演，演出座无虚席。然后一切都变了。他们登上了《尚流》和《时尚》杂志。到2007年，他们的演出队伍愈加壮大，需要招聘编舞和导演。而到了2010年，他们有了一个农场作为永久大本营，里面有大大的谷仓可以用来彩排，有一栋能容纳每个部门的小楼。内尔觉得他们变得不再纯粹天真了，但是，他们确实红了。

注：

1.ran up：verb To accumulate a large bill or debt that one is obliged to pay.

例句：We ran up a huge bill staying in that luxury resort in Las Vegas, but Jake insisted on paying for it.

1. 2.be packed out:very full of people

例句：The bar was packed out last night.

People still wondered why she had plunged into circus so entirely. It was, after all, a closed world in which she would always be a “josser”, an outsider. She was asked once by one of her gymnasts, as they ate together after a show, what she had been running away from when she founded Giffords, and that took her aback. But it was a pertinent question. In 1991 her mother Charlotte had fallen so badly from a horse that she had been irreversibly brain-damaged. In her loving untidy bohemian way, Charlotte had created the world for her children—the large messy breakfasts, the fairy stories she told on walks, the wet roses she brought in from the garden. When that world suddenly collapsed all her children, then teenagers, needed to build another. Nell’s was the circus.

人们仍旧想知道为什么她能如此全身心地投入到马戏团。毕竟，在那样一个封闭的世界里，她永远是个“傻子”，一个局外人。一次表演之后，团里的一位体操员和她一起吃饭，问她当初是在逃避什么才创建的吉福兹，这让她大吃一惊。不过，这个问题很中肯。1991年，她的母亲夏洛特从马背上摔下来，伤势严重，脑部损伤无法治愈。夏洛特曾用她不修边幅、随性不羁但也慈爱的行为方式，为孩子们创造出一片天地：大分量凌乱的早餐，走路时嘟囔的童话故事，从花园里带回来的湿玫瑰。当这样的世界突然崩塌时，她所有的孩子——当时还是青少年的他们，需要筑建另一个世界。内尔的新世界就是马戏团。

注：

1.be taken aback (by sth): to be very surprised or shocked by sth （对某事）大吃一惊

2.pertinent:directly relating to sth that is being considered直接相关的，有关的

3.bohemian: living in a very informal or relaxed way and not accepting society’s rules of behavior不拘于传统的，放荡不羁的

For circus was also family. She felt safe and at home there, being by the horses, in her community, in her tribe. And it was through families that circus was passed down. So when in 1999 she and Toti wrestled with names for theirs, “Giffords” came to seem obvious. Here was her multilingual travelling world of Cuban strongmen, Ethiopian jugglers, Italian acrobats and even a dashing Hungarian rider, Attila, in his glorious indigo robes—all helping, when necessary, to babysit her twins, Cecil and Red, or cook up a pot of supper, or give a wagon a strong shove out of the mud.

因为马戏团也是家。有马儿们伴随，置身于这样一个社群、部落之中让她感到安全、自在。正是通过家庭，马戏团才能延续下去。所以当1999年她和托蒂为他们马戏团的名称而绞尽脑汁时，“吉福兹”这个名字看上去理所应当。马戏团就是属于她的移动的多语世界，这里有古巴大力士、埃塞俄比亚杂耍演员、意大利杂技演员，甚至还有一位打扮时髦的匈牙利骑手阿提拉，身着华丽的靛蓝长袍。大家互帮互助，必要时，还照顾她的双胞胎子女塞西尔和雷德，或者烧一锅晚饭，或者一起将陷入泥泞的马车推出来。

注：

1.wrestle with: to try to understand or find a solution to a difficult problem 努力解决，绞尽脑汁

2.dashing: a man who is dashing wears nice clothes and is very attractive and confident（男子）风度翩翩的，时髦的

She needed them, too, when the cancer struck, not that she intended to slow down for a minute. If she felt tired at Giffords she would paint vivid watercolours of circus scenes, or recline on her day-bed to watch rehearsals. When her blonde hair fell out she liked the boyish cropped look, which went well with the dashing outfits she copied from her Cossack riders. Or she could wear, as she did in the ring last summer, a flowing wig crowned with flowers to complement her long white dress and her wonderful white stallion, a queen of circus, not about to fade away. 

而当癌症找上门来时，她也需要他们。倒并非是她想要放慢哪怕一分钟。在吉福兹，若她感到疲惫，她便把马戏团场景用水彩画生动地描绘出来，或睡在躺椅上看排练。她的金发脱落后，她喜欢自己男孩子般的发型，这与她从团里哥萨克骑士模仿来的时髦穿着很相配。或者，就像去年夏天在马戏场里那样，她可以戴着飘逸的长假发、头顶花冠，来搭配她的白色长裙和她美丽的白色种马——马戏团女王，永不消逝。

翻译组：

Vicky，少儿英语老师+笔译新人

Lucia，英语专业学生，经济学人爱好者

Sheri，坚信可以forever young的老年人

校核组：

Kemay，决心练好笔译的未来口译员

Qianna，追求专业的非英专，很讲逻辑，英伦摇滚迷

Dave，实力校对，肌肉男大学教师，文学翻译+CATTI一笔二口