2012年11月8日 星期四

《凋謝的花朵》A Mortal Flower 韓素音1916-2012




韓素音|約1916-2012

傳奇華裔女作家韓素音逝世


韓素音是一位醫生兼作家,星期五(11月2日——譯註)在她瑞士洛桑的家中逝世。她所撰寫的一本膾炙人口的書被改編成好萊塢電影《生死戀》(Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing),她也因直言不諱地擁護毛澤東統治下的中國而廣為人知。
就像韓素音生平的很多方面一樣,她的確切出生年份亦無法確認,但普遍相信她已屆96歲高齡。她的外孫女卡倫·謝帕德(Karen Shepard)確認了她的死訊。
韓素音的父親是中國人,母親是比利時人,她在中國出生長大,但主要以英語和法語寫作。她撰寫的超過24本書,包括小說,一部多卷本回憶錄,以及為毛澤東與周恩來歌功頌德的傳記。從20世紀50年代以來,她的這些著作起到了向西方解釋中國乃至向中國解釋西方的非凡作用。
《生死戀》於1955年上映。這部電影的背景是20世紀40年代末的香港,當時中國正在進行國共內戰,影片由威廉·赫頓(William Holden)與詹妮弗·瓊斯(Jennifer Jones)主演,他們飾演一對不幸的戀人:男主人公是一位已婚的風流西方記者,女主人公則是一個歐亞混血的寡居醫生。影片優美傷感的主題歌由薩米·費恩(Sammy Fain)作曲,保羅·弗朗西斯·韋伯斯特(Paul Francis Webster)作詞,很快成為一首經典名曲,並獲得奧斯卡最佳歌曲獎。該片同時還贏得了奧斯卡最佳配樂獎和服裝設計獎。

電影是在韓素音1952年出版的她的第二部小說《瑰寶》(A Many-Splendored Thing)的基礎上改編的。小說帶有很強的自傳成分,植根於她在香港期間與一位澳大利亞記者的風流韻事,該記者後來在朝鮮戰爭中喪生。電影后來又被改編 為一部美國電視《生死戀》(Love Is a Many Splendored Thing),1967年至1973年在CBS電視台播放。

韓素音的其它著作包括小說《目的地:重慶》(Destination Chungking, 1942)、《青山青》(The Mountain Is Young, 1958)和《迷人的城市》(The Enchantress, 1985);多卷本傳記,包括《傷殘的樹》(The Crippled Tree, 1965)、《凋謝的花朵》(A Mortal Flower, 1966)與《吾宅雙門》(My House Has Two Doors, 1980)以及傳記《塔中之風:毛澤東與中國革命,1949-1975》(Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1975, 1976)和《長子:周恩來與現代中國的創建》(Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976, 1994)。
韓素音的生日是9月12日,據她的外孫女說,她很可能出生在1916年,而不是多年來普遍報道的1917年。她的出生地也無法確定,有可能是在河南省信陽市。她的父母后來定居北京,她在那裡長大。
韓素音出生時的中文名是周光瑚;早期曾用過羅莎莉·瑪蒂爾德·周(Rosalie Matilda Chou)這個西文名,但她更願意稱自己為伊麗莎白。寫作伊始時她給自己起了韓素音這個筆名,她將這個名字翻譯為“樸素的聲音”。
作為一個混血孩子,韓素音後來說,她覺得自己會兩種語言,但都不精通。1985年,在接受《紐約時報》採訪時,她說自己的母親曾經挖苦她是“黃玩意兒”。

韓素音結束了在燕京大學(Yenching University)和布魯塞爾大學(University of Brussels)的學習後,獲得倫敦大學(University of London)的醫學學位。那時,她是個寡婦,她的第一任丈夫是唐保黃,這位蔣介石國民革命軍將軍於20世紀40年代在東北前線戰死。(韓素音在1985 年接受《紐約時報》採訪時表示,這是一段痛苦的婚姻,她說每當自己表示渴望當醫生時都會遭到丈夫的毆打。)

20世紀40年代末,韓素音在香港從醫,與記者伊恩·莫里森(Ian Morrison)相戀,他就是赫頓先生在《生死戀》中所飾演角色的原型。莫里森於1950年身亡。

韓素音第二次結婚是嫁給英國情報官員里昂·唐柏(Leon Comber),婚後二人定居馬來亞,這段婚姻亦以離婚告終。她的第三任丈夫名叫陸文星(Vincent Ruthnaswamy),是一位印度工程師。二人婚後先後在班加羅爾和洛桑定居,陸文星於2003年逝世。

除了外孫女,韓素音留在世上的親人還有女兒唐榕梅(Yungmei Tang)、妹妹特麗莎(Teresa),以及三位重孫子女。

韓素音於20世紀60年代停止行醫,致力於教課和寫作。她的小說分別以中國、馬來亞、尼泊爾與柬埔寨為背景,她的小說經常因為能夠喚起對動蕩年代和地方的回憶而飽受讚揚;而她的非虛構作品因為毫無保留地讚美毛澤東、周恩來以及其他共產黨領袖,在西方經常受到嚴厲批評。

比如她曾在《塔中之風》中稱文化大革命(毛在20世紀60到70年代發起的社會運動,至少有數以十萬計的人在運動中身亡)是“創造性的歷史事業”,這一說法令她受到廣泛的批評。

1980年,記者與中國問題學者羅伯特·艾利根特(Robert Elegant)在《紐約時報》上稱韓素音是“過氣的諂媚者”。

儘管1989年天安門事件之後,韓素音修正了自己對中國共產主義的看法,但在內心深處,她仍是一個不屈不撓的愛國者。在1982年接受《華盛頓郵報》採訪時,她清楚地闡明了自己當時的立場:
“我覺得有些人可能不理解我的行為,”她說,“但這沒有關係,如果10億中國人喜歡我,覺得我在做好事,我不在乎有幾個外國人不理解我。” 

翻譯:董楠、谷菁璐、許欣

Han Suyin Dies; Wrote Sweeping Fiction

Han Suyin, a physician and author known for writing the sweeping novel that became the Hollywood film “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” and for her outspoken championing of China under Mao Zedong, died on Friday at her home in Lausanne, Switzerland.
As with many aspects of Dr. Han’s life, the precise year of her birth is uncertain, but she was believed to have been 96. Her granddaughter, Karen Shepard, confirmed the death.
The daughter of a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, Dr. Han was born and reared in China but wrote primarily in English and French. In more than two dozen books, including novels, a multivolume memoir and laudatory biographies of Mao and Zhou Enlai, she had the singular task, during the 1950s and afterward, of simultaneously explaining China to the West and the West to China.
“Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” was released in 1955. A drama set in late-1940s Hong Kong amid the Chinese Civil War, it starred William Holden and Jennifer Jones as ill-fated lovers: he a dashing, married Western journalist and she a widowed Eurasian doctor. The film’s lush, sentimental theme song, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster, quickly became a standard and won an Academy Award for best song. The film also won Oscars for musical score and costume design.
The movie was based on Dr. Han’s second novel, published in 1952 as “A Many-Splendored Thing.” A highly autobiographical work, it was rooted in the affair she had in Hong Kong with an Australian correspondent who was later killed in the Korean War. The film adaptation in turn inspired an American television soap opera, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,” broadcast on CBS from 1967 to 1973.
Among Dr. Han’s other books are the novels “Destination Chungking” (1942), “The Mountain Is Young” (1958) and “The Enchantress” (1985); volumes of memoir including “The Crippled Tree” (1965), “A Mortal Flower” (1966) and “My House Has Two Doors” (1980); and the biographies “Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1975” (1976) and “Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976” (1994).
Dr. Han was born on Sept. 12, most likely in 1916, her granddaughter said — not in 1917, as has been reported over the years. The city of her birth is uncertain: it may have been Xinyang, in the Henan Province. Her parents eventually settled in Beijing, where she grew up.
At birth, Dr. Han was given the Chinese name Kuang-Hu Chou; she was also known early on by a Western name believed to have been Rosalie Matilda Chou, though she preferred to call herself Elizabeth. (At the start of her writing career she took the pen name Han Suyin, which she liked to translate as “a common little voice.”)
Growing up as a mixed-race child, Dr. Han later said, she felt she had a foot in each of two words but a secure footing in neither. Her mother, she told The New York Times in 1985, caustically referred to her as “the yellowish object.”
After studies at Yenching University and the University of Brussels, Dr. Han received her medical degree from the University of London. By this time she was a widow: her first husband, Tang Pao-Huang, a general in the National Revolutionary Army of Chiang Kai-shek, was killed on the Manchurian front in the 1940s. (Their marriage had been a miserable one, Dr. Han told The Times in the 1985 interview, saying that her husband beat her whenever she expressed her desire to become a doctor.)
In the late 1940s, working as a doctor in Hong Kong, Dr. Han fell in love with Ian Morrison, the journalist who was the model for Mr. Holden’s character in “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” He was killed in 1950.
Dr. Han’s second marriage, to Leon Comber, a British intelligence officer with whom she lived in Malaya, ended in divorce. Her third husband, Vincent Ruthnaswamy, an Indian engineer with whom she lived in Bangalore and Lausanne, died in 2003.
Besides her granddaughter, Dr. Han’s survivors include a daughter, Yungmei Tang; a sister, Teresa; and three great-grandchildren.
Dr. Han stopped practicing medicine in the 1960s to concentrate on lecturing and writing. Her fiction, which was set variously in China, Malaya, Nepal and Cambodia, was often praised for its ability to evoke tumultuous times and places. But her nonfiction was often castigated in the West for its seemingly unreserved admiration of Mao, Zhou and other Communist leaders.
She was widely criticized, for instance, for having called the Cultural Revolution — the Maoist social program of the 1960s and ’70s in which hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, were killed — “a creative historical undertaking,” as she described it in “Wind in the Tower.”
Writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1980, the journalist and China scholar Robert Elegant described Dr. Han as an “outmoded sycophant.”
Though Dr. Han revised her position on Chinese Communism somewhat in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, she remained, at bottom, an unapologetic patriot. In a 1982 interview with The Washington Post, she articulated her position at the time:
“I’m afraid that some people don’t understand my conduct,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. If one billion Chinese like me and think that I have done good, I don’t care about a couple of foreigners who don’t understand me.”

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看到《凋謝的花朵》 翻翻其中60年代的香港燕京大學同學會......

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维基百科,自由的百科全书

韓素音,(1917年9月12日-),是中國籍亞歐混血女作家伊莉莎白·柯默Elisabeth Comber)的筆名,原名周光瑚Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow),生於河南信陽。她的主要作品取材於20世紀中國生活和歷史,體裁有小說自傳
父親是留比的中國工程師周煒,字映彤。母親是比利時人。1931年,還沒滿15歲時,在北京醫院當打字員。1933年周光瑚入燕京大學學習,1935到比利時的首都布魯塞爾學醫。1938年回國,同年和國民黨軍官唐寶璜結了婚,後者於1947年戰亡。1944年留學英國倫敦,1948年畢業,返回香港從醫。1952年周光瑚嫁與出版商康柏( L.F. Comber),改名伊莉莎白·康柏。隨後兩人到馬來西亞柔佛州,韓素音繼續行醫;曾為新加坡南洋大學的創立而奔走。兩人離婚之後她嫁與印度軍隊上校陸文星,曾在班加羅爾居住過一段時間。
韓素音1952年的自傳小說《A Many-Splendoured Thing》曾被好萊塢拍攝成電影《生死戀》(Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing)。
1956年以後以至文化大革命期間,韓素音多次訪問中國,並出版關於中國及中國領導人的著作,用英文、法文寫作。韓素音現居瑞士洛桑市。
1989年,在她的資助下,中國翻譯協會開始舉辦韓素音青年翻譯大賽,以鼓勵更多中國國內青年翻譯人才的湧現。此項大賽目前已經成為中國翻譯界影響力最大的競賽。

[編輯] 著作

  • Destination Chungking (1942): 《目的地:重慶》
  • A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952) 《愛情多美好》
  • L'abbé Pierre (1965, 法語) 《皮埃爾神父》
  • L'abbé Prévost (1975, 法語) 《普雷沃神父》(安托萬·弗朗索瓦·普雷沃)
  • And The Rain My Drink (1956) 《餐風沐雨》
  • The Mountain Is Young (1958) 《青山青》
  • Asia Today: Two Outlooks (1969): 《今日的亞洲: 兩種觀點》
  • China In The Year 2001 (1967): 《2001年的中國》
  • 五卷自傳:
    • The Crippled Tree (1965):《傷殘的樹》
    • A Mortal Flower (1966):《凋謝的花朵》北京:三聯 1982
    • Birdless Summer (1968): 《無鳥的夏天》
    • My House Has Two Doors (1980): 《吾宅雙門》
    • Phoenix Harvest (1982): 《鳳凰的收穫》
  • Fleur de soleil, histoire de ma vie (1988, 法語): 《太陽之花,我一生的故事》
  • Lhasa, the Open City (1976) 《拉薩,開放的城市》
  • The Morning Deluge; Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954 (1972) 《早晨的洪流》
  • Wind In The Tower: Mao Tsetong and Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965 (1976)
  • Till Morning Comes (1982) 《盼到黎明》
  • The Enchantress (1985)
  • A Share Of Loving (1988)
  • Wind In My Sleeve (1992)
  • Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the making of modern China (1994)《周恩來傳》大陸刊行版與港台版相比,與原版有很大差異。



Han Suyin (simplified Chinese: 韩素音; traditional Chinese: 韓素音; pinyin: Hán Sùyīn) (born September 12, 1917), is the pen name of Elizabeth Comber, born Rosalie Elisabeth Kuanghu Chow (Chinese: 周光湖; pinyin: Zhōu Guānghú). She is a Chinese-born Eurasian[1] author of several books on modern China, novels set in East Asia, and autobiographical works, as well as a physician. She currently resides in Lausanne and has written in English and French.



Novels

  • Destination Chungking (1942)
  • A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952)
  • And the Rain My Drink (1956)
  • The Mountain Is Young (1958)
  • Winter Love (1962)
  • Cast But One Shadow (1962)
  • Four Faces (1963)
  • L'abbé Pierre (1965, French only)
  • L'abbé Prévost (1975, French only)
  • Till Morning Comes (1982)
  • The Enchantress (1985)

[edit] Autobiographical works

  • The Crippled Tree (1965)
  • A Mortal Flower (1966)
  • Birdless Summer (1968)
  • My House Has Two Doors (1980)
  • Phoenix Harvest (1982). (This is Volume II of the hardback edition of My House Has Two Doors, published separately in paperback.)
  • Wind In My Sleeve (1992)
  • A Share of Loving (1988)
  • Fleur de soleil, histoire de ma vie (1988, French only: Flower of sun: the story of my life)

[edit] Historical studies

  • China in the Year 2001 (1967)
  • Asia Today: Two Outlooks (1969)
  • The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution 1893-1954 (1972)
  • Lhasa, the Open City (1976)
  • Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetong and the Chinese Revolution, 1949-1965 (1976)
  • China 1890-1938: From the Warlords to World War (1989; historical photo-reportage)
  • Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China (1994)

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