哑剧艺术: 讲述沉默

Culture

文艺版块

The Art of Mime

哑剧艺术

Speaking Silence

讲述沉默

Marcel Marceau was a giant of an underappreciated art form.

马塞尔·马索是一种被低估的艺术形式的巨匠。

Say “mime” and the name that comes to mind is Marcel Marceau.

说到“哑剧”，浮现在脑海中的名字就是马塞尔·马索。

Despite a long history that embraces Greek tragedy and Roman farce, it is a much-derided form of art.

尽管哑剧有着悠久的历史，涵盖了希腊悲剧和罗马闹剧，但它仍然是一种备受嘲笑的艺术形式。

Its silent exponents, clowns you can’t hear coming, are the butt of a memorably dismissive sketch by Gary Larson, an American cartoonist:

沉默的哑剧表演者，也就是无声无息地到来的小丑，是美国漫画家加里·拉森在一幅速写中嘲笑的对象，这幅速写的轻蔑之意让人难忘：

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?"

“如果在森林里一棵树倒下，周围没有人，它砸中了一个哑剧演员，有人会在意吗？”

Marceau, who was born 100 years ago in March 1923, is an outlier, admired for a rare ability to transform his body.

马索出生于100年前的1923年3月，他是一个异类，因其罕见的改变身体的能力而受人钦佩。

Yet he, too, is underappreciated—today synonymous with his most famous creation, a chalk-faced clown called Bip who sported a striped jumper and a crumpled stovepipe hat topped with a limp red flower.

然而，就算是他也被低估了——如今他已是他创作的最著名形象的代名词，一个脸上涂满白粉的名叫毕普的小丑，穿着条纹套头衫，头戴一顶皱巴巴的烟囱帽，帽子上是一朵软趴趴的红花。

First presented in 1947, Bip was part harlequin, part homage to Charlie Chaplin’s melancholy bumbler, the Little Tramp.

毕普于1947年首次亮相，既是一个滑稽角色，也是向查理·卓别林扮演的那个忧郁又笨手笨脚的小流浪汉致敬。

His sad looks and elastic gestures would become a cliché, aped by every street performer who has wrestled with the wind or opened an imaginary door.

他悲伤的表情和富有弹性的动作会在后来变得俗滥，每一个与空气搏斗或假装开门的街头表演者都会对他进行模仿。

In fact Marceau was a complex artist, scarred by adolescent upheaval.

事实上，马索是一个复杂的艺术家，青春期时发生的剧变让他伤痕累累。

He was born Marcel Mangel, into a Jewish family in Strasbourg, and as a child revelled in drawing and gymnastics.

他原名是马塞尔·曼格尔，出生在法国斯特拉斯堡的一个犹太人家庭，小时候酷爱绘画和体操。

In 1939, ahead of the invasion by Nazi Germany, his home town was evacuated.

1939年，在纳粹德国入侵之前，人们纷纷搬离了他的家乡。

At the urging of a cousin he joined the French Resistance, and his enthusiasms proved invaluable:

在一位表亲的敦促下，他加入了法国抵抗运动，他的热情被证明是无价的：

he altered the documents of Jewish children and posed as a Boy Scout to smuggle others into Spain and Switzerland.

他篡改了犹太儿童的文件，并伪装成童子军，将其他儿童偷运到西班牙和瑞士。

(He used mime to encourage the youngsters to stay quiet en route.)

（在路上，他用哑剧鼓励孩子们保持安静。）

He did not manage to save his father, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 and died in Auschwitz.

他没能救出他的父亲，父亲于1944年被盖世太保逮捕，死于奥斯维辛集中营。

That year Marceau put on his first public entertainment as a mime, for a crowd of 3,000 American soldiers.

也是在那一年，马索作为哑剧演员为3000名美国士兵举行了他的首场公共娱乐活动。

Though his compositions could be intensely funny, they also paid oblique tribute to those who had been silenced during the bloodshed.

尽管他的作品可能非常有趣好笑，但这些作品也间接地向那些在流血事件中无法发声的人致以了敬意。

It was a tour of America in 1955-56 that brought him celebrity,

1955年至1956年的美国巡演使他声名鹊起，

and over the next half century he performed in more than 80 countries, clocking up as many as 300 solo shows a year and introducing a global audience to his brand of vivid yet fleeting poetry.

在接下来的半个世纪里，他在80多个国家演出，每年举行多达300场个人演出，向全球观众展示了他独有的鲜活而短暂的诗意。

Marceau’s subject matter ranged widely: pride, solitude, sin and the pathos of old age, as well as adaptations of Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka and Voltaire.

马索的主题十分广泛：傲慢、孤独、罪恶、暮年之悲哀，以及对尼古莱·果戈理、弗兰兹·卡夫卡和伏尔泰作品的改编。

When he enacted the Earth’s creation his fingers became birds and fish.

当他扮演地球的生物时，他的手指就变成了飞鸟和鱼。

In a piece called “The Tribunal” he played defendant, jury, judge and executioner.

在一部名为《法庭》的作品中，他扮演了被告、陪审团、法官和刽子手的角色。

His work for the big screen never quite captured the lyrical expressiveness of his stage act.

他在大银幕上的作品从未完全捕捉到他舞台表演的那种感情丰富的表现力。

His most notable moment on film came in 1976, uttering the one word spoken in Mel Brooks’s "Silent Movie"—"Non!"

他在电影中最引人注目的时刻是在1976年，在梅尔·布鲁克斯的《默片》中，他说出了影片唯一一句台词——“不！”

Offstage, Marceau was loquacious and in demand as a chat-show raconteur.

在台下，马索很健谈，是脱口秀中受欢迎的故事大王。

On it he was a model of lithe discipline and an inspiration to other theatre practitioners, showing how an art form that often favours text and talk could profit from the eloquence of the body.

在台上，他是身体柔软灵活的典范，也是其他戏剧从业者的灵感来源，他展示了一种偏爱文字和对白的艺术形式如何从身体的表现力中获益。

Reflecting on the power of his chosen medium, he wondered: “Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?”

在对他所选择的表现形式的力量进行思考时，他诧异地问道：“在生命中最感人至深的时刻，我们难道不都是无语凝噎的吗？”