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The Composer Who Never Grew Up
翻译：许婉燕
The Composer Who Never Grew Up
每当提到肖邦，人们首先想到的往往是他的音乐。本文作者却另辟蹊径，从其最后也是最重要的恋情说起，为我们展现了这位伟大音乐家的另一面—
For pianists and lovers of piano music, it is impossible to escape an acquaintance with the works of Frederick Chopin, who was perhaps the greatest composer of piano music during the Romantic Era of the 19th Century. What could almost be compared with his well-known music, however, is his final lover, George Sand注1, who was as famous for her love affairs as for her novels. In fact, her fictions made her, in the history of French literature, probably second only to Victor Hugo注2.
The relationship with Chopin is the last great emotional turning point in George Sand’s life. Chopin was the greatest 1)genius who ever loved her. It is rather strange that he loved her. She had known him for two years, and had not seriously thought of him. Then at last she once more met Chopin, when he was in a state of 2)melancholy, because a Polish girl had proved unfaithful to him.
Sand found him at a piano, 3)improvising a 4)lamentation. She stood beside him, listening. When he finished and looked up at her, their eyes met. She bent down without a word and kissed him on the lips. This kiss attached her to Chopin for eight years.
It was Sand who stage-managed the concert at the Salle Pleyel注3 about which her “little Chip-Chipworried so much. Chopin, in fact, disliked grand concert halls. His 5)delicate piano technique was better suited to 6)intimate salon performances. But his fear of appearing before a crowd of strangers has 7)psychological reasons too, suggesting the childlike insecurity which remained with him all his life. Chopin appeared to have had a 8)shaky sense of self. At the time of his early death in 1849, he was already a myth: the “an-ngelicartist, the heroic Polish 9)patriot, the 10)doomed lover. But of the thousands who crowded into ParisChurch of the Madeleine for his 11)magnificent 12)funeral, few, if any, really knew him.
Chopin’s life was 13)dominated by the 14)exile’s sense of 15)alienation. His adulthood was spent in France, far from his native Poland, but even as a child he must have felt like an outsider as the son of a struggling, self-made French immigrant who had risen above his peasant origins to become a language teacher. Chopin’s musical promise showed early, and by the age of eight he was named as a “second Mozart.” How to grow up is always a problem for the child 16)prodigy, and Chopin, it seems, never quite managed it.
It is hard not to conclude that the most significant relationship of Chopin’s life, with the older, more experienced George Sand, was in some ways 17)infantilizing. He was unable to resist her 18)overwhelming personality because it answered his neediness. She 19)took the reins and managed his life, creating the circumstances in which he could work and dealing with his failing health.
Liszt注4 once said that Chopin gave everything but himself. One feels this may have been because, in the end, he had little selfto give. What comes over most obviously from most biographies on Chopin is a weird sense of 20)disjunction between the 21)profundity of Chopin’s music and the comparative 22)shallowness of his character. He was emotionally dependent on others, yet his fragile 23)ego 24)barricaded by his pride.
His music, however, is so powerfully rooted in the tradition of Bach and Mozart that it found a voice that seemed surprisingly new and original to its audience, so intimate that listeners felt it was speaking to the hidden depths of their souls. For alongside its instantly recognizable style, Chopin’s music has an ability to reflect each listener’s own emotions. If the loss and longing we read into his music 25)derive more from its technique than from its composer’s depth of soul, so what? To us, what is more important is that his music remains fresh and 26)untarnished by the hands of time.
只要是钢琴家和钢琴曲的爱好者就不可能对弗雷德里克·肖邦的作品感到陌生，他也许是19世纪浪漫主义时期最伟大的钢琴曲作曲家。然而，几乎可以和他的著名音乐相提并论的，要数他最后的恋人乔治·桑—这位个人情史和她的作品一样有名的女性。事实上，她的小说将她推上了法国文学史上可能仅次于维克多·雨果的崇高地位。
乔治·桑与肖邦之间的恋情是她人生中最后的重大感情波折。肖邦是爱过她的人中最有才华的。他爱上她是一件非常让人惊讶的事。她认识他两年了，（一开始）并没把他当回事。后来她终于再一次遇见肖邦，当时他正因发现一个波兰女孩对他不忠而备感沮丧。
乔治·桑在钢琴前找到了正在即席演奏悲叹调的肖邦。她站在他身旁，默默地聆听着。当他一曲奏毕抬头看她时，两人目光相遇。她一语不发地弯下腰，在他唇上吻了一下。这一吻便将她和肖邦此后的8年捆到了一起。
在她的“小心肝”为巴黎普莱耶厅的演出焦虑不已的时候，负责全面策划的正是乔治·桑。事实上，肖邦并不喜欢大型音乐厅，他精巧的钢琴技艺更适合在私人沙龙演出。但他对在满堂陌生听众面前表演的畏惧也有其心理原因—这体现了伴随他毕生的孩子气般的不安全感。肖邦并没有很强的自我意识。当他于1849年早逝时，他已经是一个神话般的人物：他是一个“天使般”的艺术家、英雄式的波兰爱国者以及天生的情人。但是在他的盛大葬礼上，在成千上万挤满了巴黎马德莱娜教堂的人当中，几乎没有谁真正了解他。
肖邦的一生都充满了被放逐者的疏离感。成年后，他住在法国，远离祖国波兰；但即使在童年时期，他也会觉得自己是个外人。因为他的父亲是法国移民，经过一番挣扎求存和独立奋斗才脱离了原来的农民出身，成为一名语言教师。肖邦的音乐天赋很早就展现出来了，8岁时便被誉为“莫扎特第二”。如何成长一向是神童都会遇到的困扰，而肖邦似乎一直都没解决这个问题。
因此，我们不难得出一个结论：肖邦一生中最重要的一段感情—与比他年长且更富阅历的乔治·桑交往—从某种意义上来说是大小孩式的恋情。他根本无法抗拒她的迷人个性，因为那正是他所需要的。她掌握了主控权，为他打理生活，创造了一个良好的环境，让他得以专心工作和应付自己每况愈下的身体状况。
李斯特曾经说过，肖邦付出了一切，除了他自己。有人认为，说到底，这是因为他最终并没有多少“自己”可供付出。大部分肖邦的传记都明显出现一种怪异的两极分化：肖邦的音乐所蕴含的深刻和他与之相比显得浅薄的个性。他在情感上很依赖他人，但他的自尊心不允许他表现自己的脆弱。
然而，他的音乐却深深植根于巴赫和莫扎特的传统风格，让它的听众感受到一种惊人的、崭新又有独创性的声音，如此扣人心弦，以至于听者会觉得他的音乐似乎在与他们隐匿的灵魂深处直接对话。因为伴随着那一听到就能辨认出来的风格，肖邦的音乐能反映出听者自己的情感。即使我们从他的音乐中体会到的失落与渴望，更多是源自其中的艺术技巧而非音乐家本人的深刻思想，那又如何？对我们来说，更重要的是他的音乐将永葆青春，时间之手也抹不去其永世光芒。
注1：乔治·桑（1804-1876），法国著名女作家，主要作品有《印第安娜》、《魔沼》等。
注2：维克多·雨果（1802-1885），法国大文豪，主要作品有《巴黎圣母院》、《悲惨世界》、《笑面人》、《九三年》等。
注3：普莱耶厅，巴黎有名的装饰艺术派音乐厅，肖邦、拉威尔等大师都曾在这里演出。
注4：李斯特（1811-1886），与肖邦同时代的匈牙利著名钢琴家、作曲家。
翻译：许婉燕
The Composer Who Never Grew Up
每当提到肖邦，人们首先想到的往往是他的音乐。本文作者却另辟蹊径，从其最后也是最重要的恋情说起，为我们展现了这位伟大音乐家的另一面—
For pianists and lovers of piano music, it is impossible to escape an acquaintance with the works of Frederick Chopin, who was perhaps the greatest composer of piano music during the Romantic Era of the 19th Century. What could almost be compared with his well-known music, however, is his final lover, George Sand注1, who was as famous for her love affairs as for her novels. In fact, her fictions made her, in the history of French literature, probably second only to Victor Hugo注2.
The relationship with Chopin is the last great emotional turning point in George Sand’s life. Chopin was the greatest 1)genius who ever loved her. It is rather strange that he loved her. She had known him for two years, and had not seriously thought of him. Then at last she once more met Chopin, when he was in a state of 2)melancholy, because a Polish girl had proved unfaithful to him.
Sand found him at a piano, 3)improvising a 4)lamentation. She stood beside him, listening. When he finished and looked up at her, their eyes met. She bent down without a word and kissed him on the lips. This kiss attached her to Chopin for eight years.
It was Sand who stage-managed the concert at the Salle Pleyel注3 about which her “little Chip-Chipworried so much. Chopin, in fact, disliked grand concert halls. His 5)delicate piano technique was better suited to 6)intimate salon performances. But his fear of appearing before a crowd of strangers has 7)psychological reasons too, suggesting the childlike insecurity which remained with him all his life. Chopin appeared to have had a 8)shaky sense of self. At the time of his early death in 1849, he was already a myth: the “an-ngelicartist, the heroic Polish 9)patriot, the 10)doomed lover. But of the thousands who crowded into ParisChurch of the Madeleine for his 11)magnificent 12)funeral, few, if any, really knew him.
Chopin’s life was 13)dominated by the 14)exile’s sense of 15)alienation. His adulthood was spent in France, far from his native Poland, but even as a child he must have felt like an outsider as the son of a struggling, self-made French immigrant who had risen above his peasant origins to become a language teacher. Chopin’s musical promise showed early, and by the age of eight he was named as a “second Mozart.” How to grow up is always a problem for the child 16)prodigy, and Chopin, it seems, never quite managed it.
It is hard not to conclude that the most significant relationship of Chopin’s life, with the older, more experienced George Sand, was in some ways 17)infantilizing. He was unable to resist her 18)overwhelming personality because it answered his neediness. She 19)took the reins and managed his life, creating the circumstances in which he could work and dealing with his failing health.
Liszt注4 once said that Chopin gave everything but himself. One feels this may have been because, in the end, he had little selfto give. What comes over most obviously from most biographies on Chopin is a weird sense of 20)disjunction between the 21)profundity of Chopin’s music and the comparative 22)shallowness of his character. He was emotionally dependent on others, yet his fragile 23)ego 24)barricaded by his pride.
His music, however, is so powerfully rooted in the tradition of Bach and Mozart that it found a voice that seemed surprisingly new and original to its audience, so intimate that listeners felt it was speaking to the hidden depths of their souls. For alongside its instantly recognizable style, Chopin’s music has an ability to reflect each listener’s own emotions. If the loss and longing we read into his music 25)derive more from its technique than from its composer’s depth of soul, so what? To us, what is more important is that his music remains fresh and 26)untarnished by the hands of time.
只要是钢琴家和钢琴曲的爱好者就不可能对弗雷德里克·肖邦的作品感到陌生，他也许是19世纪浪漫主义时期最伟大的钢琴曲作曲家。然而，几乎可以和他的著名音乐相提并论的，要数他最后的恋人乔治·桑—这位个人情史和她的作品一样有名的女性。事实上，她的小说将她推上了法国文学史上可能仅次于维克多·雨果的崇高地位。
乔治·桑与肖邦之间的恋情是她人生中最后的重大感情波折。肖邦是爱过她的人中最有才华的。他爱上她是一件非常让人惊讶的事。她认识他两年了，（一开始）并没把他当回事。后来她终于再一次遇见肖邦，当时他正因发现一个波兰女孩对他不忠而备感沮丧。
乔治·桑在钢琴前找到了正在即席演奏悲叹调的肖邦。她站在他身旁，默默地聆听着。当他一曲奏毕抬头看她时，两人目光相遇。她一语不发地弯下腰，在他唇上吻了一下。这一吻便将她和肖邦此后的8年捆到了一起。
在她的“小心肝”为巴黎普莱耶厅的演出焦虑不已的时候，负责全面策划的正是乔治·桑。事实上，肖邦并不喜欢大型音乐厅，他精巧的钢琴技艺更适合在私人沙龙演出。但他对在满堂陌生听众面前表演的畏惧也有其心理原因—这体现了伴随他毕生的孩子气般的不安全感。肖邦并没有很强的自我意识。当他于1849年早逝时，他已经是一个神话般的人物：他是一个“天使般”的艺术家、英雄式的波兰爱国者以及天生的情人。但是在他的盛大葬礼上，在成千上万挤满了巴黎马德莱娜教堂的人当中，几乎没有谁真正了解他。
肖邦的一生都充满了被放逐者的疏离感。成年后，他住在法国，远离祖国波兰；但即使在童年时期，他也会觉得自己是个外人。因为他的父亲是法国移民，经过一番挣扎求存和独立奋斗才脱离了原来的农民出身，成为一名语言教师。肖邦的音乐天赋很早就展现出来了，8岁时便被誉为“莫扎特第二”。如何成长一向是神童都会遇到的困扰，而肖邦似乎一直都没解决这个问题。
因此，我们不难得出一个结论：肖邦一生中最重要的一段感情—与比他年长且更富阅历的乔治·桑交往—从某种意义上来说是大小孩式的恋情。他根本无法抗拒她的迷人个性，因为那正是他所需要的。她掌握了主控权，为他打理生活，创造了一个良好的环境，让他得以专心工作和应付自己每况愈下的身体状况。
李斯特曾经说过，肖邦付出了一切，除了他自己。有人认为，说到底，这是因为他最终并没有多少“自己”可供付出。大部分肖邦的传记都明显出现一种怪异的两极分化：肖邦的音乐所蕴含的深刻和他与之相比显得浅薄的个性。他在情感上很依赖他人，但他的自尊心不允许他表现自己的脆弱。
然而，他的音乐却深深植根于巴赫和莫扎特的传统风格，让它的听众感受到一种惊人的、崭新又有独创性的声音，如此扣人心弦，以至于听者会觉得他的音乐似乎在与他们隐匿的灵魂深处直接对话。因为伴随着那一听到就能辨认出来的风格，肖邦的音乐能反映出听者自己的情感。即使我们从他的音乐中体会到的失落与渴望，更多是源自其中的艺术技巧而非音乐家本人的深刻思想，那又如何？对我们来说，更重要的是他的音乐将永葆青春，时间之手也抹不去其永世光芒。
注1：乔治·桑（1804-1876），法国著名女作家，主要作品有《印第安娜》、《魔沼》等。
注2：维克多·雨果（1802-1885），法国大文豪，主要作品有《巴黎圣母院》、《悲惨世界》、《笑面人》、《九三年》等。
注3：普莱耶厅，巴黎有名的装饰艺术派音乐厅，肖邦、拉威尔等大师都曾在这里演出。
注4：李斯特（1811-1886），与肖邦同时代的匈牙利著名钢琴家、作曲家。