The Times Literary Supplement - 07.08.2026.pdf

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《泰晤士文学 supplement》

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August 7, 2026

《泰晤士文學 supplements》 / 3 歷史 / Michael Wood, Neil Price, T. G. Otte, Gary Sheffield, Lisa Hilton, Richard J. Aldrich, John Samuel Harpham, Miles Taylor, Anna Temkin / 《英格蘭之始》（How England Began）Nicholas J. Higham；《羅馬不列顛的物質衰落》（The Material Fall of Roman Britain）Robin Fleming；《眾神之錘》（Hammer of the Gods）Don Hollway；《和平締造者》（Peace Makers）Peter Ricketts；《遠見者》（The Visionaries）James Holland；《蒙哥馬利》（Montgomery）Gary Mead；《東條》（Tojo）Peter Mauch；《騙局》（Hoax）Madeleine Pelling；《偽造者》（Fakers）Rory Cormac；《賽跑締造者》（The Race Makers）Andrew S. Curran；《白人至上》（White Supremacy）John Broich；《王室的沉默》（The Crown's Silence）Brooke N. Newman；《國王的垮台》（Downfall of a King）Paul Preston / --- / 6 致編輯信函 / 《教授的黃昏》（Twilight of the Dons）、J. M. Coetzee 論種族滅絕、《等待戈多》在布萊克浦等 / 14 政治 / Sam Freedman / 美國大戰略與瘋子理論 James D. Boys；同輩之首（First Among Equals）Emma Ashford / 16 古典 / Barbara Graziosi, Peter McDonald / 《慰藉》（Consolations）Irene Vallejo；極化時代的古代智慧 Emily Katz Anhalt；《跨越酒色之海》（Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea）Emily Wilson；《荷馬之 haunting》（Homer-Haunted）Henry Power / 18 評論 / Kate Macdonald, Jenny Hartley, Norma Clarke / 韋爾斯先生與布坎先生——小說家如何與其出版商反目；被判刑——當時與現在囚犯最喜讀之書；來自……雅典的信 / 19 詩歌 / Selima Hill / 維根斯坦對日光之恨 / 22 藝術 / A. E. Stallings, Michael Caines, Adam Mars-Jones / 《奧德賽》（多個電影院）；《櫻桃園》安東·契訶夫（斯特拉特福-艾文，天鵝劇院）；《夏日之書》（多個電影院） / 26 小說 / Michael Caines, Keith Hopper, Dinah Birch, Martin Beagles, Christopher Shrimpton, Diana Darke, Alexander Leissle / 《不完備性》（Incompleteness）阿米特·喬杜里；《紅城堡》（Château Rouge）阿米特·喬杜里；《國王身在何處》（Where Are the Kings）Donal Ryan；《賦予的世界》（The Given World）Melissa Harrison；《女兒》（La hija）Sergio del Molino；《弗洛倫澤》（Florenzer）Phil Melanson；《瘋人院》（Bedlam）Jennifer Higgie；《展覽》（Exhibition）Alex Hyde / 30 法語文學 / Alexandra Reza, Franck H. Andrianarivo / 《政治著作》（Writings on Politics）利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾；Yohann C. Ripert 編訂並翻譯；《桑戈爾精選》（The Essential Senghor）利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾；Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall 及 Cheikh Thiam 編訂並翻譯；《馬達加斯加詩歌》（La Poésie de Madagascar）Dominique Ranaivoson 編 / 32 法國美食與文學 / Felicity Cloake, Daniel Culpan, Luke Warde / 《法國烹飪秘史》（The Secret History of French Cooking）Luke Barr；《白痴》（Idiocy）Pierre Guyotat；Peter Behrman de Sinéty 翻譯；《致其法國律師信函，1947-1953》（Lettres à ses avocats français, 1947-1953）路易-費迪南·塞林 / 34 德國研究 / Ben Hutchinson, Charlie Louth / 《塞普——我的半距離生活》（Sepp - Mein Leben auf Halbdistanz）Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht；《從文藝復興到現代主義》（From the Renaissance to Modernism）Jeremy Adler；《尊嚴之指南》（The Compass of Dignity）Jeremy Adler / 34 詩歌 / Sam Riviere / 《溫暖之戰》（Warm War） / 36 回憶錄 / Miranda France / 《字裡行間》（Between the Lines）Julia Bell / 37 科幻 / Emily A. Bernhard Jackson / 《第十六任貝特麗絲》（Beatrice the Sixteenth）Irene Clyde；《活著的女人》（Woman Alive）Susan Ertz / 38 自然歷史 / Sophie Yeo, Andrew H. Knoll, Jeremy Mynott / 《荒野之地》（Wilderlands）Eloise Kane；《鳥類的故事》（The Story of Birds）Steve Brusatte；《鸱鶿》（Cormorant）Gordon McMullan / 40 猶太研究 / Gabriel Motzkin, Carlos Fraenkel / 《愛強如死亡》（Love Is Strong as Death）Paul Mendes-Flohr；為何今日要閱讀邁蒙尼德？ Steven Nadler；《迷途指津》摩西·迈蒙尼德 / 42 文學 / Andrew Hadfield, Georgina Wilson / 《夜之影》與《奧維德的感官盛宴》George Chapman；《蜜蜂議會》（The Parliament of Bees）John Day；《惡魔的憲章》（The Devil's Charter）Barnabe

不列顛的毀滅？

罗马人离开后发生了什么

迈克尔·伍德 (Michael Wood)

尼古拉斯·J·海格姆 (Nicholas J. Higham) 《英格兰如何开始》（How England Began）：从罗马不列颠到盎格鲁-撒克逊人，368页。耶鲁大学出版社。£25 (US $35)。

罗宾·弗莱明 (Robin Fleming) 《罗马不列颠的物质衰落》（The Material Fall of Roman Britain）：公元300-525年，320页。宾夕法尼亚大学出版社。平装本，£22.99 (US $29.95)。

“撒克逊人之到来”（Adventus Saxonum），即英格兰人的到来，或许是不列颠群岛史学中最大的谜团。在五世纪到七世纪之间，原本使用拉丁语和不列颠方言的罗马不列颠行省东部和东南部低地，是如何变成许多个主要使用古英语方言的盎格鲁-撒克逊英格兰小王国的？是从低地国家、丹麦和萨克森地区发生了大规模移民，还是仅仅是一次精英阶层的接管？留下了什么样的记录？而日益增多的考古证据又是如何契合其中的？

在1849年第一部伟大的现代记述中，约翰·肯布尔（John Kemble）遗憾地写道，想要还原这些事件的故事将永远不可能，且“日耳曼征服的真实细节[已]不可挽回地在我们面前丢失”。不过，肯布尔并不怀疑曾经发生过征服，自他以来，大量的文献便围绕这一点展开。

本次评述的两本书由该领域的资深学者撰写，他们对罗马晚期和中世纪早期不列颠群岛的历史变迁进行了长久且深入的思考。尼古拉斯·J·海格姆的《英格兰如何开始》是对这一迷人时期的重新审视，他早在三十多年前就曾在出版物中探讨过这一课题。这是一部关于四世纪和五世纪历史的、视野开阔且深思熟虑的叙事，对许多关键问题进行了详细讨论。（英格兰人直到第166页才进入故事。）然而，在陶器测年和沉积物分析等技术细节之中，海格姆从未忘记，五世纪的人们是在战争、瘟疫、迁徙、内斗和社会崩溃的历史风暴中生活、拥有真实生命的真实男女。

罗宾·弗莱明在《罗马不列颠的物质衰落》中同样关注人们和文化变迁，但她的重心从叙事历史转向了地下的物质遗存：即人们实际使用过的物品。

历史学家比德（Bede）在731年给出的关于“到来”的传统说法是，来自欧洲大陆的移民——盎格鲁人、撒克逊人、朱特人和弗里西亚人——在五世纪征服了不列颠低地的很大一部分，定居在东部地区，最终仅将不列颠（即凯尔特）语使用者留在西南部的山区、威尔士和北部。比德的故事被《盎格鲁-撒克逊编年史》（compiled from earlier materials in the 890s，于890年代根据早期资料汇编）所沿袭，并在本土记述中得到镜像反映。威尔士的历史和诗歌文本讲述了撒克逊人的入侵，这留下了对那些被描述为“狗”、“纵火犯”甚至“铲屎者”的“苍白面孔”移民的持久仇恨。（在本土传统中，这些新来者通常被招募为雇佣兵，同时也担任客工和体力劳动者。）

比德的主要书面来源是神秘的吉尔达斯（Gildas），海格姆为此专门写了两章极具启发性的内容。吉尔达斯是一位出身不明的不列颠人，可能出生在斯特拉斯克莱德王国，在六世纪初的不列颠西部某地接受了极佳的拉丁语语法和修辞教育。他著名的《论不列颠的毁灭》（On the Ruin of Britain）写于公元540年左右，是对当时不列颠统治者的猛烈抨击，受众是知识渊博且具有高度文化素养的基督徒；他说，其目的是为了给同时代人的罪孽“照一面镜子”。在吉尔达斯那迷人且充满典故的叙事核心，是不列颠人在446年向高卢的罗马执政官埃提乌斯（Aetius）发出绝望的最后军事援助请求后，被入侵的撒克逊人剥夺了财产。

来自欧洲大陆的资料少得令人心焦。拜占庭外交官佐西姆斯（Zosimus）似乎提到，410年，深陷内部冲突的皇帝霍诺里乌斯（Emperor Honorius）给不列颠当局写了一封信，告知他们应自行负责防御。里昂的康斯坦提乌斯（Constantius of Lyon）在五世纪撰写的《奥克塞尔的圣日耳曼传》（Life of St Germanus of Auxerre）记载了这位圣徒在十九年后对该岛的访问。在那时，尽管经历了数十年的蛮族袭击，不列颠依然“非常富裕”，拥有公民生活、城镇议会、富裕的中产阶级，甚至还有大规模的朝圣活动（前往圣阿尔班的圣地）。然而，452年的《高卢编年史》（Gallic Chronicle）则晦涩地指出，“在经历各种灾难之后，不列颠落入了萨克逊人的统治”。此后，关于该岛事件的消息显然变得越来越难以获得。与吉尔达斯（Gildas）大致同时代的拜占庭历史学家普罗科匹厄斯（Procopius）掌握了一些碎片信息，这些信息可能来自法兰克驻君士坦丁堡使团中的盎格鲁随员。他提到不列颠本土有三个“民族”——不列颠人、弗里西亚人和盎格鲁人——且各自拥有国王。但直到大格列高利（Gregory the Great）与被奴役的盎格鲁人（Angli，这个名字通过比德之手后来被应用于不列颠所有德语使用者）的著名邂逅，以及他在597年对肯特国王埃塞尔伯特（Æthelberht）进行的皈依传教活动之后，文字才重新回到不列颠低地（尽管拉丁语读写能力在威尔士和爱尔兰从未消失）。因此，从某种意义上说，“到来”（Adventus）讲述的是新政治权力形式、继任王国以及国家在旧罗马不列颠行省中兴起的故事。盎格鲁-萨克逊人将这个故事变成了国家起源神话，其中像亨吉斯特（Hengist）和霍尔萨（Horsa）这样英雄般的开国人物乘坐三艘船在肯特登陆，正如后来一位诗人所写，“跨越广阔的大海而来，寻找不列颠，以征服威尔士人并赢得这片土地”。但长期以来人们普遍认为，在这背后是真实发生的事件。现代关于盎格鲁-萨克逊迁徙的图景是由这些文本资料与考古学相结合而得出的，特别是对不列颠东部和南部约420年代起迁徙时代墓地的挖掘，以及其中具有特征的日耳曼随葬品、陶器和武器。表面上看，这些遗址中日耳曼与凯尔特物质文化之间缺乏融合的现象似乎 [...OMITTED...]

奥古斯特·威尔逊的美国世纪：作为艺术的生活

劳伦斯·A·格拉斯科 (Laurence A. Glasco)

“《奥古斯特·威尔逊的美国世纪》是对二十世纪最才华横溢的美国剧作家之一的生活及其遗产所作的优美且动人的刻画。” ——凯莎·N·布莱恩 (Keisha N. Blain)，《无畏：黑人女性与人权的构建》作者

精装本 ISBN: 9780822948544

匹兹堡大学出版社 (UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS)

2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 3 © HOLMES GARDEN PHOTOS / SLAV ---

历史支持入侵甚至种族清洗的观点，而非渐进式的迁徙与同化。在过去的 40 年里，考古数据的巨大增加既使局面复杂化，也使其丰富化，而这个故事现在正受到新的审视。例如，牛津大学的“威塞克斯起源”（The Origins of Wessex）项目表明，西撒克逊人的开端并非如神话所言，是由塞迪克（Cerdic）及其子金里克（Cynric）在索伦特海峡（Solent）岸边登陆，而是始于一群由不列颠人和撒克逊人混血组成的后罗马同盟军（雇佣兵），他们定居在罗马小镇多切斯特-昂-泰晤士（Dorchester-on-Thames）周围。有人指出，塞迪克这个名字很可能是威尔士语。最近，苏珊·奥斯特海森（Susan Oosthuizen）一项具有挑战性的偶像破坏式研究则走得更远，她认为说日耳曼语的人民在四世纪的蛮族袭击之前就已经定居在东南部沿海，并主张我们应该彻底抛弃“抵达”（Adventus）的神话。正如海格姆（Higham）所解释的，目前呈现出的基本图景是日耳曼战士团的定居，其中一些人（根据吉尔达斯 Gildas 的记载）是被陷入内斗的地区势力邀请而来的。与此同时（如考古所示），人们逐渐向不列颠东部迁徙，尤其是在 420 到 470 年之间这关键的半个世纪里。迁徙者在六世纪建立了一些部落王国，这些王国可能由追溯其祖先至欧洲大陆的国王领导，正如萨顿胡（Sutton Hoo）的挖掘者鲁珀特·布鲁斯-米特福德（Rupert Bruce-Mitford）等前一代学者所认为的那样。以东安格利亚的王朝武芬加（Wuffingas，以其创始人武法 Wuffa 命名）为例，他们可能从 520 年代开始被埋葬在萨顿胡墓地。他们后来的书面谱系声称可以追溯到瑞典，而且他们的物质文化确实与瑞典的文德尔（Vendel）墓地有直接联系——顺便一提，古英语诗歌《贝奥武夫》（Beowulf）也是如此，该诗的部分场景设定在瑞典南部。萨顿胡主墓中的随葬品包括一顶紧密模仿瑞典东部样本的头盔。这是研究晚期古典不列颠的激动人心的时代，文本资料中仍有争议的叙述正与考古学和科学相结合，而海格姆让读者感受到了这种探索的纯粹快感。罗宾·弗莱明（Robin Fleming）的书则提供了一种截然不同但互补的方法。与海格姆的作品一样，它是其早期著作《罗马之后的不列颠》（Britain After Rome，2010）的续作。该书关注点极其细微，考察陶瓷和金属制品、植物和动物，以及它们所揭示的人类生活。由于附有百页末注，它并非面向普通读者，但充满了对近期海量考古数据的敏锐观察。弗莱明的主题是物质历史：在国王及其精英阶层之下的世界，变革是如何发生的。在晚期罗马世界与早期英格兰世界之间的两个世纪里，当城市生活、货币经济和运作中的国家衰落并崩溃时，发生了什么？用《高卢编年史》（Gallic Chronicle）的话说，当不列颠“落入撒克逊人的统治”时，在基层意味着什么？原住民不列颠人和新来者是如何在东南部汇聚，并锻造出后来被认为是“英格兰”的新身份的？在这一时期，罗马物质文化的许多元素消失了。铁和铜的冶炼、木板和厚板的制造、石材开采、商业屠宰、园艺和鞣制皮革在很大程度上消失了，生产轮制窑烧陶器所需的知识也随之消失。石造建筑也消失了——古英语中表示“建造”的词 getimbran 并非偶然。在不列颠的（前）历史上，没有其他时期出现过如此迅速的技能丧失。这种崩溃的原因仍不清楚，但它正是我们将之定义为早期中世纪的世界之基石。

这与地中海东部的古老省份（如叙利亚或埃及）截然不同。在盎格鲁-撒克逊人大迁徙之后，罗马特质在不列颠似乎迅速消褪，而早期的伊斯兰世界则并非表现为一种断裂，而是罗马方式的延续。中东的城市文明根深蒂固，在伊斯兰早期，其古老城市依然是经济和文化的中心。尽管阿拉伯语被引入社会高层，但变革进展缓慢。在埃及，税务文件直到8世纪末仍是用希腊语书写的。直到10世纪，基督徒在埃及和伊拉克仍占大多数。而在遥远的、处于“世界边缘”的不列颠，由于罗马特质是通过一种榨取式经济由上而下强加的，事情进展得如此之快或许并不令人惊讶。大多数城市被废弃，人们回归到铁器时代的社会组织方式。吉尔达斯描述了人们重新回到山堡的情况，这一点已得到考古学的充分证实。直到7世纪采用拉丁基督教之后，不列颠早期日耳曼王国的统治者们才开始恢复——或者或许是追溯性地创造？——他们的罗马认同感。在这一切中，海格姆正确地强调了不列颠在罗马帝国中的独特性，称其为“大洋中的一座岛屿，而大洋在其他地方界定了世界的边界，这使得其居民比其他地方具有更强的‘他者性’”。

放下这些视角迥异的书籍，人们会产生这样一种印象：尽管经过了重要的修正，早期中世纪文学资料所提供的框架依然具有价值。传到我们手中的证据是碎片化的，但随着考古学的进步，构建肯布尔所期待的那种令人信服的故事已开始成为可能。也许在不久的将来，我们甚至可以期待一位专业学者尝试撰写一部费尔南·布罗代尔风格的宏大叙事，在视角上涵盖整个大陆，并将考古学、文献、地名、DNA、气候和景观整合在一起。如果真是这样，我敢说，最终呈现的图景将是比德——甚至吉尔达斯——也能认出来的。

迈克尔·伍德（Michael Wood）的著作包括《追随杜甫的足迹：中国最伟大的诗人》（In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China's greatest poet），2023年出版。他关于埃塞尔斯坦（Æthelstan）的传记将于明年出版。

挪威国王奥拉夫的圣徒传

尼尔·普莱斯（Neil Price）

Don Hollway 《众神之锤》（Hammer of the Gods）奥拉夫国王的维京征服 392页. Osprey. £20. 维京时代有其自身的（大多为男性的）名人：拉格纳·洛德布罗克，当代流媒体电视的明星；红发埃里克，格陵兰殖民地那情绪不稳定的创始人；以及在斯坦福桥战役中率军冲锋而死的是哈拉尔德·哈德拉达。挪威国王奥拉夫·特里格瓦松并不在其中，但其最新的传记作者坚信他应当在其中。在新作中，Don Hollway 将奥拉夫重新推向聚光灯下，并公正地将其地定义为该时期最有趣的人物之一。如果萨迦（sagas）中关于他的记载哪怕只有一小部分是真的，奥拉夫也过了一段非凡的生活。撇开夸张不谈，人们确实可以将他视为某种“终极维京人”。他出生于960年代，母亲在逃离挪威王朝冲突的屠杀，他早年一直在逃亡——首先前往奥克尼群岛（或瑞典，取决于你相信谁），最终前往诺夫哥罗德和基辅，期间在爱沙尼亚经历了恐怖的六年童年奴隶生活。他在斯拉夫人的土地上成为了领袖，在西北欧的一半地区进行掠夺（991年，他率领维京人在埃塞克斯的马尔登战役中获胜，该战役是著名的古英语诗歌的主题），并与丹麦人打成僵局。在接受基督教后，奥拉夫成为了信仰的捍卫者，利用其贵族出身夺取了挪威王位，并开始强行使该国皈依。他作为“上帝之锤”所采取的暴力手段，在北欧旧宗教的信徒中显然不受欢迎，他的政治对手也随之增加。通常认为奥拉夫死于1000年的斯瓦尔德战役，当时他的旗舰“长蛇号”被敌人包围，他身披全甲跳入大海而非被俘。有说法认为他可能游上岸并幸存了下来，但无论如何，他在波罗的海的水域中消失在历史长河中。上述内容几乎没有一项是真正确凿的，因为我们对奥拉夫生活的了解源自许多地点和时代的重写文本（palimpsest），其中最详尽的记录是在他去世两个多世纪后才写成的。Hollway 在书的开头就明确指出了这些资料巨大的局限性和矛盾，但他也坦率得令人振奋地表示自己并不太在意：他的书是“部分汇编，部分评论，部分冒险，而且是的，有一点幻想……但全部是历史”。我对最后一部分并不确定，但他正确地承认了故事的重要性以及故事中所包含的不同种类的真相，这些真相与事实有着微妙的区别。从这个意义上说，Hollway 写了一部新的非虚构萨迦，他也如此告诉我们——甚至在致谢部分，他唤起中世纪斯堪的纳维亚诗人的意象，表达了作者希望成为奥拉夫“最后且最伟大的吟游诗人（skald）”的愿望。Hollway 将如此零散的信息整合进一个不仅连贯而且引人入胜的叙事中，这值得充分肯定。即便散文偶尔显得过于华丽（“这个故事在史前时代的迷雾中传到我们耳中”），它依然易懂、迷人且直接。我承认，我对他在简单地将萨迦视为字面历史时的那种胆量（chutzpah）持有某种勉强的尊重——并非因为我认为这样做是明智的（实际上并非如此），而是因为一些学者倾向于做同样不明智的反面之举，致力于证明这些故事为什么根本不可能是真的。与其说这是一部关于生活的批判性研究，不如说是一种维京人的圣徒传，一本以令人屏息的戏剧性片段刻意印制传奇的“国王与战争”之书。如果你喜欢这类风格，这没问题，但这并非传统的历史书。在关于奥拉夫生活混乱来源的引言中，Hollway 建议“最好先把思考留到以后，现在简单地享受即可”。我忍不住现在就开始思考而非以后，但违背我的理智，我也同样享受这本书。

*尼爾·普萊斯（Neil Price）是《灰燼與榆樹之子：維京人歷史》（The Children of Ash and Elm: A history of the Vikings, 2020）的作者。《海王與女巫：維京時代的生與死》（The Sea King and the Sorceress: Life and death in the Viking Age）將於九月出版。 4 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © ANTHONY MCGILLEN / ALLIANCE ---

每 15 秒，就有一名儿童死于饥饿

治疗方法很简单。挑战在于如何及时地将治疗送到儿童手中。在加沙和其他受危机影响的地区，儿童正艰难地争取获得生存所需的食物和护理。我们的方法能帮助 90% 以上的儿童在短短几周内从营养不良中恢复。但我们需要您的帮助，才能触及那些有需要的儿童。您的捐款可以帮助国际救援委员会（IRC）及其合作伙伴维持救命的营养、医疗护理和清洁水服务的运行。营养不良是可以治疗的。但仍有太多儿童无法获得他们所需的护理。治疗越早触及儿童，他们的康复机会就越大。您愿意帮助一名营养不良的儿童获得他们所需的护理吗？请立即捐款，在为时太晚之前帮助这些儿童。

您的支持能带来的改变 在服用补充剂后，她的健康状况开始改善。她会玩耍，会进食……她现在好多了。—— Alaa，加沙

您的馈赠可以发挥双倍效用

£64 可以支付营养不良儿童在康复期间所需的医疗护理。在有限的时间内，您的捐款将翻倍。

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4 您今天的支持意义重大

寄回至：International Rescue Committee UK, 100 Wood Street, London, EC2V 7AN. 担保有限公司。 如果您想更新或更改您的沟通偏好，可以随时发送电子邮件至 contactus@rescue-uk.org 或拨打电话 020 3983 9000。 国际救援委员会（英国注册慈善机构编号 1065972）（简称“IRC”）致力于保护您的隐私。我们绝不会出售或交换您的数据，并将始终保护您的个人数据。完整的数据隐私政策可在 www.rescue-uk.org / respecting-your-privacy 查阅。 您的馈赠将用于最需要的地方，包括支持加沙的人民。所有馈赠将在 11:59 PM on 31 / 10 / 2020 之前（即 11 点 59 分），或在达到匹配总额之前，由慷慨的捐赠者进行等额匹配。在匹配金额达到后收到的馈赠将不再匹配，但将用于最需要的地方。

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 5

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致编辑的信

教授们的黄昏

在理查德·维嫩（Richard Vinen）对科林·基德（Colin Kidd）所著《教授们的黄昏：从第二次世界大战到撒切尔主义的英国知识分子》（July 24）那篇有趣的评论中，他提到泰勒（A. J. P. Taylor）对战争努力的“唯一直接贡献就是在他参加学院委员会会议时为军队织围巾”，这对他稍微有些不公平。1940, 泰勒加入了当地的防御志愿者组织，该组织后来以一个更著名的名称为人所知——国民自卫军（Home Guard）。他的排由弗兰克·帕肯汉（Frank Pakenham，后来的朗福德勋爵）指挥，成员除了“镇民”外，还包括几位教授，其中就有C. S. 刘易斯。这种学术阵容使得中士能够下达“教授们，解散”的命令。诚然，这可能不是一支足以威慑敌人的力量。他们虽然有步枪，但所有人之间只有一匣弹药，而这匣弹药被一名第一次世界大战的退伍军人意外地用光了——根据一种说法，在此过程中，他还击中了其指挥官的脚。亚当·西斯曼（Adam Sisman） 布里斯托，克利夫顿

理查德·维嫩写道，索尔兹伯里勋爵是全灵魂学院最后一位担任首相的院士（1902），而哈利法克斯勋爵则是最后一位“可能现实地成为首相”的此类院士（1940）。然而，1963 昆廷·海尔舍姆（Quintin Hailsham）距离唐宁街之近与哈利法克斯无异。保守党内的权力操纵者在选择亚历克·道格拉斯-霍姆（Alec Douglas-Home）作为哈罗德·麦克米伦（Harold Macmillan）的继任者时犯了错。海尔舍姆在1959 已经证明，他在大选前动员政党方面表现卓越。他的好斗和气魄本可以将保守党推向1964. 选举活动的胜利。无论是在议会、广播还是在竞选演说中，海尔舍姆犀利的机智和法庭辩论技巧本可以将狡诈的工党领袖哈罗德·威尔逊（Harold Wilson）击溃。此外，如果担任首相，他将会像帕默斯顿勋爵一样令人兴奋。理查德·达文波特-海因斯（Richard Davenport-Hines） 法国，阿尔代什

理查德·维嫩将牛津哲学家A. J. “弗雷迪” 艾耶（A. J. "Freddie" Ayer）描述为因未被拳击手迈克·泰森（Mike Tyson）认出而感到委屈。但正如本·罗杰斯（Ben Rogers）在《A. J. 艾耶：传记》中所报道的那个著名故事，关于“冒犯威严”的指责以及随之而来的身份压制其实源自泰森。科林·麦金（Colin McGinn，《TLS》，June 25, 1999）解释说，在1987 由一位“极时尚的内衣设计师”在纽约举办的一场派对上，艾耶注意到一个“亢奋的”泰森正强行纠缠当时年仅17岁的娜奥米·坎贝尔（Naomi Campbell）。凭借着“等量的勇气与鲁莽（他从未威胁要报警）”，艾耶与泰森对峙。“泰森反驳道：‘你知道我他妈是谁吗？我是世界重量级冠军。’艾耶回答：‘而我是前怀克汉逻辑学教授。我们在各自领域都出类拔萃；我建议我们像理性的人一样谈谈这件事。’”希拉里·斯普林（Hilary Spurling）在《纽约时报》的评论中写道：“于是他们确实这么做了，而坎贝尔趁机溜走了。关于艾耶的魅力、胆量和惊人的即兴发挥能力，有无数这样的故事。”斯科特·拉赫蒂（Scott Lahti） 密歇根州马凯特

读到弗雷迪·艾耶因为迈克·泰森没听说过他而感到不快时，我并不感到惊讶。我在1976, 遇到过他，当时我在维多利亚车站的检票闸机工作。那时我正处于完成学位和开始PGCE课程之间。从他的反应来看，我很清楚他很高兴被认出来——尤其是被一名来自英国铁路（British Rail）的低级体力劳动者认出来。帕特里克·罗素（Patrick Russell） 伦敦 W5

《万物之岸》

在对我的小说《万物之岸》（The Coast of Everything，6月26日）的评论中，汤姆·西摩尔·埃文斯（Tom Seymour Evans）提出了一个问题，即书中的任何嵌套叙事是否“本身值得阅读”。他的结论是，可以说这些故事都没有（尽管我没有发现任何论据）。而被他如此否定的故事之一，最早于2018年出版，并获得了一项国际图书奖。我提及这一点并非为了炫耀，而是因为它用证据而非单纯的断言，回答了埃文斯提出的具体问题。我花费了10年时间精心打造这些关于爱与悲伤的故事，正是为了让它们既能作为独立篇章运作，又能在大整体中占据一席之地。而这个大整体恰好确实很大，这似乎成了评论者关注的问题。他再次在无需论证的情况下强烈暗示，虚构作品中的篇幅长度与形式复杂性的结合是一种“男性扩张行为”（manspreading）。我建议读者参阅C. D. 罗斯（C. D. Rose）的来信（7月24日），其中对此进行了探讨。一部主要针对男性的不足（特别是父亲）且英雄为女性的作品，很难说是一部具有“男性自负”的作品。在一些对其他作家的令人惊讶的比较中，埃文斯似乎误将《万物之岸》识别为一部观念小说，并将“注意力”视为我的表面主题。事实上，这是一部关于家庭伤害、代际痛苦的小说，只不过其中包含了一些观念。评论者对每个故事独立性的关注并不令人意外——他忽略了几乎所有层面上将它们联系在一起的东西，将其轻蔑地称为“几个重复出现的人名和基调”。阐明这本书的策略既不是我的工作，也不在我的职责范围之内——细心的读者会识别出情感的旅程、对讲述者与故事关系的浓厚兴趣、互文性的组织与肌腱，以及每个故事如何成为其他故事的重写本（palimpsest）等等。我的意图与其说是反驳，不如说是邀请。如果《泰晤士文學 supplements》的读者在埃文斯的否定之后仍能读到我的书，他们可以期待两件事：这本书会对他们提出很高要求，并且会对他们表现出比评论中所允许的更多的信任。

吉列尔莫·斯蒂奇（Guillermo Stitch） 西班牙，隆达山脉

J. M. 库切论种族灭绝

关于 J. M. 库切（J. M. Coetzee）的“亲南非激进主义”（见大卫·加拉格尔对克里斯托巴尔·佩雷斯·巴拉所著《西班牙语库切：英语圈之外的世界文学》的评论，7月10日），值得注意的是，在库切最新的书中，他与阿根廷小说家法比安·马丁内斯·西卡尔迪（Fabián Martínez Siccardi）合作，对殖民种族灭绝进行了严厉谴责。西卡尔迪记录了19世纪阿根廷原住民群体的近乎灭绝，而库切则处理南非、纳米比亚和澳大利亚的情况。在极具个人色彩的序言中，作者们描述了类似的“摒弃”经验，即摒弃他们被教导的所有关于当地原住民的知识。两人均用英语写作，但西卡尔迪的西班牙语译本《Un mal salvaje》于今年4月率先出版。在布宜诺斯艾利斯的《Un mal salvaje》发布会上，库切宣布，“种族灭绝不仅是对一个民族的毁灭，更是对共同记忆的抹杀，随之而来的是对他们能在历史中看到自身能力的破坏”。《Evil Savage》或《Savage Evil》的英文合同目前仍在谈判中。

洛娜·斯科特·福克斯（Lorna Scott Fox） 伦敦 E8

杜内拉男孩

M. 悉·罗森（M. Syd Rosen）在评述约翰·沙德（John Schad）的《瓦尔特·本雅明的方舟》（Walter Benjamin's Ark）时（见“简讯”，6月26日）讨论了“杜内拉”号（Dunera）船，该船对澳大利亚的生活产生了深远影响。虽然船上有德国战俘，但对澳大利亚而言，其历史意义在于船上的犹太知识分子的影响，这些人与斯特凡·本雅明（Stefan Benjamin）不同，他们留在澳大利亚。这群乘客后来被称为“杜内拉男孩”，他们为该国的文化、学术和经济生活做出了巨大贡献。其中包括艺术家路德维希·希尔施费尔德-马克（Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack）和海因茨·亨格斯（Heinz Henges）、田径教练弗朗茨·斯坦普夫尔（Franz Stampfl）、作曲家费利克斯·韦尔德（Felix Werder）及其父亲博阿兹·比绍夫韦尔德（Boaz Bischofswerder）、经济学家弗雷德·格鲁恩（Fred Gruen）、工程师保罗·艾森克拉姆（Paul Eisenklam）、家具设计师弗雷德·洛文（Fred Lowen）和恩斯特·罗德克（Ernst Rodeck）、哲学家库尔特·拜尔（Kurt Baier）和格德·布赫达尔（Gerd Buchdahl）、摄影师汉斯·艾克塞尔（Hans Axel）和亨利·塔尔博特（Henry Talbot），以及物理学家汉斯·布赫达尔（Hans Buchdahl）。已有若干关于杜内拉男孩的书籍出版，并有一部基于他们经历的电视剧。20世纪40年代和50年代的澳大利亚是一个宜居之地，拥有稳健的民主制度，但很少被认为是一个知识中心。杜内拉男孩的贡献在改变这一局面中发挥了不小的作用。 诺埃尔·特恩布尔（Noel Turnbull） 墨尔本

布莱克浦的《等待戈多》

大卫·沃伦（David Warren）关于《等待戈多》在英国反响不一的有趣叙述（见“评论”，7月24日），唤起了我们对1965年作为南约克郡一所教师培训学院二年级学生时排演该剧的回忆。在演出似乎获得成功地鼓舞下，且了解到加利福尼亚州圣昆廷州立监狱的囚犯们曾排演过该剧——由一名囚犯里克·丘切（Rick Chuchey）执导，他后来与贝克特成为好友，且显然在剧中看到了监狱生活的本质——我们决定冒险将我们的《等待戈多》搬到附近的韦克菲尔德监狱。当地教育官员负责安排，我们于一个周六下午抵达监狱，被引导至监狱 6 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © HERALD DIAMOND BY MICHAEL HANNAH / HEART grounds 内的一座尼森小屋（Nissen hut），那里有一个小舞台，可容纳约六十名观众。我们此前也收到过预警，告知以往试图给囚犯提供娱乐活动时会受到怎样的对待。我们的演出也不例外。第一幕开始时，埃斯特拉贡的登场伴随着模拟的（也可能是真实的）放屁声，以及其他同样具有干扰性的噪音。然而，一旦演出被允许继续，很明显大多数观众被舞台上离奇的进程所吸引，甚至沉浸其中，且在中场休息后，他们越来越不倾向于进一步干扰演出。我们随后将此归功于该剧无疑借鉴了音乐厅的快节奏对白（music-hall patter），其中回响着戴圆顶礼帽的劳莱与哈代（Laurel and Hardy）二人组之间的对话。但看来，我们的被囚观众也被该剧更严肃的末世论元素，以及对中心人物所处之存在主义僵局的认同所吸引，而这种僵局正映射出在场囚犯的困境。 尼克·沃勒尔（Nick Worrall） 伦敦 N13

我非常欣赏大卫·沃伦关于1956年6月在布莱克浦大剧院上演《等待戈多》的精彩文章。就此而言，或许值得注意的是，贝克特的故乡都柏林（盖尔语原名 Dubh Linn）字面意思就是“黑池”（Black pool）。 约翰·沙德（John Schad） 兰开斯特大学

岛屿

在评论一本关于岛屿的书（《简讯》，7月24日）时，基利安·费思-凯利（Killian Faith-Kelly）提到了“一个非字面意义上的岛屿——一座耸立在格拉斯顿伯里镇之上的山丘”。但格拉斯顿伯里托尔（Glastonbury Tor）难道不是Inyswytrin，即阿尔维拉古斯国王授予亚利马太的约瑟的那个岛屿吗？在萨默塞特平原，陆地并非永恒。彼得·怀斯曼（Peter Wiseman），埃克塞特

纽伦堡

娜塔莉·利文斯通（Natalie Livingstone）的著作《纽伦堡女性》（The Nuremberg Women）不负卡佳·霍耶（Katja Hoyer）在评论中（7月24日）对其的赞誉。我的父亲从1945年10月起直到次年诉讼结束，一直担任国际军事法庭英国助理法官诺曼·比尔基特爵士（Sir Norman Birkett）的私人仆人；在利文斯通的叙述中，我能听到父亲讲述那个非凡时期的故事的回响。他的照片中有一张比尔基特的签名照，一张他们在里克斯多夫（Rickersdorf）驻扎的房屋照片，以及一张极具标志性的照片，拍的是他和另一名私人助手正帮忙将审判文件装入一架美国运输机的机头。。这座城市是阿尔布雷希特·丢勒的出生地，我父亲的照片中有一张是丢勒雕像，雕像几乎完好无损，周围环绕着利文斯通告诉我们的被称为Trümmerlandschaften，即“废墟景观”的破碎石块。当然，它依然屹立在那里，像奈特的画作一样，成为一座纪念碑，见证着艺术家试图在野蛮之中生存并反抗它的努力——如果我们听之任之，这种野蛮将毁灭我们所有人。安德鲁·麦卡洛克（Andrew McCulloch），大曼彻斯特，马普尔桥

法兰克福学派

我很欣赏凯尔·伯克（Kyle Burke）在评论 A. J. A. 伍兹（A. J. A. Woods）的《文化马克思主义阴谋》（The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy）（7月10日）时对法兰克福学派的描述：“[它]从未推进过单一的政治纲领，但其成员确实认为，如果资本主义社会要变得更加人道和民主，知识分子必须帮助改造文化”。当那个知识分子时刻被取代时，失去了多少东西，肯定从未被正确评估过。在我看来，大卫·布鲁克斯（David Brooks）在其《天堂里的波波族》（Bobos in Paradise）（2000年）中，对1968年后的美国如何中和法兰克福学派时刻给出了最好的解释。这些“波希米亚中产阶级”看起来像反叛者，但他们有钱且热爱消费。与美国如此恐惧的“68年一代”不同，他们放弃了攻击资本主义制度，而选择收获其果实。布鲁克斯作为一名保守派作家，觉得他讲述的故事相当滑稽，甚至令人喜爱。你是否同意，可能取决于你相对于法兰克福学派及其更高期待的立场。莱斯利·钱伯林（Lesley Chamberlain），伦敦 N6

LGBT历史

格雷戈里·伍兹（Gregory Woods）出色的评论，尤其是关于《日志：酷儿英国之声与倾听热线》（The Log Books: Voices of queer Britain and the helpline that listened）（7月24日）的评论（该书基于 Switchboard 的档案），将我带回了担任志愿者的时光。我们习惯于记录特别令人困扰的电话（显然是匿名处理的），以便下一班接手的志愿者在对方再次拨入时能掌握一些背景。这本书令人困扰之处在于，作者将当前的“酷儿”身份政治强加于当时简单的“女同性恋与男同性恋热线”（当然，这也涵盖了双性恋），并发现我们全部不合格。对于同性恋历史不断被自称“酷儿活动家”的人劫持来说，这非常令人恼火，这些人的世界观与他们评论的历史毫无关系。希望未来的作者在不被性别认同意识形态蒙蔽的情况下，能够公正地对待这些有趣的历史文献。乔纳森·惠勒（Jonathan Wheeler），雷丁

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 7

历史

外交官与独裁者：外交部如何助力赢得第二次世界大战

T. G. Otte

彼得·里凯茨 (Peter Ricketts) 《和平缔造者》(Peace Makers) 塑造现代世界：第二次世界大战中的外交部男女成员 320页。Quarto出版。£22 (US $28)。

詹姆斯·霍兰德 (James Holland) 《远见者》(The Visionaries) 西方战后秩序的建立 320页。Bantam出版。£20。

1940年5月10日，随着德国装甲师刺穿西欧脆弱的防线，他们同时也扫清了围绕在英国陷入困境的首相周围的最后一道保护屏障。就在同一天晚上，内维尔·张伯伦为他的对手温斯顿·丘吉尔让位。在从白金汉宫返回唐宁街时，这位新任首相后来反思道，他“顺其自然地接受了一切……我意识到一种深刻的解脱感……我觉得自己仿佛正与命运同行，而我过去的所有生活都不过是为了这一时刻和这次考验而做的准备”。他很可能确实如此感受。

丘吉尔对战争的诠释在六卷厚重的著作中大规模展开，给国家神话留下了不可磨灭的印记。1940年和1941年是这个国家“最光辉的时刻”，当时英国及其帝国“孤军奋战”。在那段关键时期，皇家空军和其他军种——“少数人”——为“大多数人”——英国——提供了防御。这段“英国孤军奋战”的时期在1941年6月德国进攻苏联以及同年12月日本袭击珍珠港后宣告结束。这两件事共同开启了“大联盟”时期。

在丘吉尔的版本中缺失的事实是，从1939年到1941年这段时期，就英国战略而言，是战争中最复杂、最紧张且可以说最重要的部分。与人们对战争的普遍认知，以及或许是对第二次世界大战的特定认知相反，当敌对军队在欧洲和亚洲之间来回厮杀时，外交官们并没有淡出舞台。军事力量击败了一个强大的敌人集团，诚然，这得益于轴心国糟糕的战略决策。但单凭武装力量不能，也无法将战场上的胜利转化为持久的安全与繁荣。那是外交官的工作。

然而，正如彼得·里凯茨所指出的，在英国关于第二次世界大战的集体叙事中，外交部仍然扮演着一个像辛德瑞拉一样处于边缘的角色。《和平缔造者》为这种对冲突的神话视角提供了一剂急需的解药。里凯茨勋爵是一位卓越的前外交官，曾担任驻北约和驻法大使，期间曾任外交及联邦事务部常务次官（

英国外交官阿奇博尔德·克拉克·克尔，左起第四位，在1943年德黑兰会议上，后成为英国首任国家安全顾问），他深入挖掘了回忆录以及外交部自身的书面和口头档案。他还参考了访谈，例如采访了安东尼·伊登的一位现已百岁的私人秘书，后者曾在1945年2月陪同外交大臣前往雅尔塔的险途。

《和平缔造者》生动且深刻地讲述了英国的外交官们——无论男女——在确保胜利以及为战后新世界秩序奠定基础方面所发挥的作用。他们通过建立联盟、支持被占领欧洲的抵抗行动，以及帮助逃难的平民和逃脱的战俘来实现这一目标。

里克斯在讲述这个故事时，敏锐地捕捉到了那些耐人寻味且往往荒诞的轶事。未来的大使们在夜晚巡逻外交部大楼，步枪上牢牢装好刺刀，但枪里却没有子弹（人们不禁好奇，他们要射击谁）——这个画面确实令人难以忘怀。他还展示了战争如何彻底地改变了这个部门。物理上的转变——外交部优雅的正面建筑被堆高的沙袋所装饰；窗户上贴着棕色胶纸；周围的道路上拉起铁丝网——与组织内部的变化相呼应。战争的需求扫除了那些将女性排除在外交领域（更不用说高层职位）之外的过时内部障碍。（在上一场战争结束后，该职业已经向来自中产阶级背景的年轻人开放。）直到战后，女性才被正式允许加入外交部，但在非正式身份中，已经出现了像南希·兰姆顿（在德黑兰）、弗雷亚·斯塔克（在整个中东）和伊丽莎白·威斯克曼（在中立的瑞士）这样无畏的先驱。她们的专业知识和严谨的分析能力使她们能够发挥影响力。伊登及其继任者欧内斯特·贝文在此成为了出人意料的英雄。战争还模糊了传统外交、秘密情报与宣传之间的界限。在所有这些领域，外交部及其工作人员都发挥了重要作用。这个故事中出现的人物，与外交部那个无能的卡尔顿-布朗（出自1959年同名伊灵喜剧电影）之间，有着人们能想象到的最遥远的距离。他们是一群多元的组合。其中有那些看似平庸但高效的执行者，他们悄无声息地走在光洁的地板上，在措辞考究的公报中消弭战时盟友之间的分歧，并在服务于政治家时保持谨慎的距离。还有那些才华横溢的怪人，比如斯大林宫廷的大使阿奇·克拉克·克尔，他处理大部分办公事务时只穿短裤，但能饮下大量的伏特加，这有助于润滑英苏关系。或者像弗朗西斯·达西·奥斯本这样略显老处女作风的梵蒂冈代表，他在这个狭小的教会飞地中被困了四年，但组织了战俘的逃生路线，并准备了与穆索里尼倒台后政府的投降谈判。他们是坚韧且有韧性的人，能够应对战争的紧急情况，包括被围困（在日本人宣布战争后，东京大使馆实际上被禁止离开，直到1942年）和被俘（布鲁塞尔大使兰塞洛特·奥利凡特爵士在被遣返回国前，在德国被囚禁了18个月）。但他们在面对权力说真话时同样勇敢。1942年8月在莫斯科会晤期间，当丘吉尔对斯大林的一次尖刻评论感到愤怒并威胁要再次离开时，克拉克·克尔让他服软。

同样的智识与道德韧性也体现在外交部的常任次长亚历克·卡多根爵士（Sir Alec Cadogan）身上。用里凯茨（Ricketts）的话来说，他是这个故事中的“永久固定装置”——富有创造力、不知疲倦且不可或缺。在独裁者们处于不可一世的鼎盛时期，在慕尼黑协议那些紧张的日子里（他是该协议不情愿的支持者），以及从战争初期的挫折直到波茨坦会议，他一直都在。在他身上，实用主义与远见相结合，他强烈地意识到，如果英国想要塑造战后的未来，就必须处于一个密集国际联系网的中心。卡多根知道如何将英国在战争期间的声誉转化为冲突结束时显赫的国际角色。他是《大西洋宪章》的起草者，该宪章将英国和美国紧密联系在一起，并为战后的联合国奠定了基础；而他在幕后的工作则有助于将战时的“大联盟”以及随后初创的 post-1945 西方联盟编织在一起。事实上，如果这本书有一个英雄，那就是作者的前任常任次长（PUS）。但里凯茨在完成这项任务时，也融入了他作为专业内部人士对可行性和可操作性的敏锐感知，这使得本书更加丰富。《和平缔造者》（Peace Makers）还表明，尽管与美国的联盟至关重要，但英美关系从未没有过摩擦，且无论华盛顿追求怎样的开明目标，同样也存在自私的目标。

相比之下，备受赞誉的第二次世界大战历史学家詹姆斯·霍兰（James Holland）在其极具可读性、节奏轻快且启发性的《远见者》（The Visionaries）中，给出了更为积极的评价。在霍兰的解读中，富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福总统及其继任者哈里·S·杜鲁门对战后新秩序有着清晰的认知，并且遵循了一贯的路线。历史学家们可能会对此产生分歧。但很少有人会对霍兰和里凯茨为今天提供的系列反思产生异议。那个为许多国家带来稳定、安全且通常带来繁荣的战后国际秩序正在瓦解，很大程度上是因为当前的美国政府正在抽掉维持其统一的线头。无论是在国际上还是在许多西方国家及其他地区的国内领域，不确定性都比近代史上的任何时期都要大。民主本身似乎正处于衰退之中。现在比以往任何时候都更需要那些能够将强硬的实用主义与稳定且互利的国际秩序远见相结合的、勇敢、开明且在智识上强健的领导者和外交官。

T. G. 奥特（T. G. Otte）是东英吉利大学外交史教授。他的新书《英国外交政策史，1650-2020》（A History of British Foreign Policy, 1650-2020）将于 2027. 8 出版。

8 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © YAGI BLACK / ALLIART ---

全面战士

对将领的不同看法

加里·谢菲尔德（Gary Sheffield） 加里·米德（Gary Mead） 《蒙哥马利：不可战胜，不可忍受——英国二战中最具才华且最令人畏惧的将领的故事》（Montgomery Unbeatable, unbearable - The story of Britain's most talented and feared World War II general）352页。Bloomsbury出版。£25。

彼得·茂奇（Peter Mauch） 《东条：日本二战中最具争议的将领之兴衰》（Tojo The rise and fall of Japan's most controversial World War II general）512页。Belknap Press出版。£27.95（美国 $32.95）。

人类在战争中是否正变得过时？军事思想中最热门的话题之一便是人工智能在战场上的作用。AI能够以远超人类处理能力的速率处理海量数据，这在理论上至少极大地提高了武装部队在战斗中的效率。越南战争期间，美国军事总部被情报（军事术语，指信息）所淹没。收集情报并非问题，困难在于如何去伪存真。这正是AI能够大显身手的情况。但接下来的逻辑步骤——且已有证据表明这正开始发生——是AI将人类从指挥链中取代。这可能会产生这样一种局面：AI审讯情报，决定攻击哪些目标，然后执行打击——这一切都无需人类干预。其伦理和法律影响是直接且显而易见的，对核威慑的影响亦然。一个完全自动化的未来战场似乎并非触手可及，但至少已在视野之中。

与此同时，战争的制造仍然是一项极具人性色彩的活动。伟大的指挥官与伟大的艺术家和作曲家一样，拥有某种使其脱颖而出的“特质”。普鲁士军事思想家卡尔·冯·克劳塞维茨（Carl von Clausewitz）将其称为“天才”，他指的是一种高度发达的战争天赋，是正确气质与心理机制的融合。

伯纳德·劳·蒙哥马利（Bernard Law Montgomery），即阿拉梅因的蒙哥马利子爵，其职业生涯是一个关于个人在战争中如何产生影响（无论好坏，而在本例中两者兼有）的案例研究。1942年8月抵达北非时，“蒙蒂”证明了他具备克劳塞维茨所说的许多天才特质。凭借巨大的自信和意志力储备，他成功地将这些特质传递给了一支在撤退、失败和绝望的防御性胜利中遭受重创的军队。在阿拉梅因（1942年10月和11月），他将意志强加于敌人，证明了他拥有充足的洞察力（coup d'oeil）。同样，在1944年6月至8月的诺曼底，当时指挥着英美加第21集团军的蒙哥马利，迫使敌人按照他的节奏起舞。

但这并非故事的全貌。蒙哥马利虚荣，可能极其缺乏 tact（圆融），且擅长惹恼他人。他对他的美国上司德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔（Dwight D. Eisenhower）将军的行为产生了严重的反作用，几乎导致他被解职。蒙哥马利的自负导致他夸大成功，并坚持认为一切都按计划进行，而事实显然并非如此，这损害了他在上级以及后世历史学家心中的可信度。

指挥官蒙蒂的正反两面都体现在加里·米德传记的副标题中：《蒙哥马利：不可战胜，不可忍受——英国二战中最具才华且最令人畏惧的将领的故事》。这本书面向普通读者，有很多值得称道之处。米德用大胆的色彩描绘了蒙哥马利的个性。虽然某些方面（例如他对南非种族问题的看法）可以归结为当时的社会风气，且他的性取向是一个有争议的话题，但他性格的其他方面给人一种深刻缺陷者的印象。但米德对研究对象明显的厌恶在一段时间后变得令人厌倦。蒙哥马利的性格缺陷并未妨碍他成为一名高效的指挥官。然而，这些缺陷确实意味着他的将领能力受到了限制。他糟糕的人际交往能力意味着他是一个尴尬的联军成员，且不适合领导联军。

米德（Mead）关于蒙哥马利战役的素材薄弱得令人失望。他关于诺曼底战役的章节被包含在关于 1944-45 年整体战役的篇章中，而人们本以为蒙哥马利的杰作理应拥有独立的一章。其分析有时有误：米德声称“蒙哥马利在 1944 年的战役中采用了 1944 年的方法，其结果大致与三十年前相同”，这表明他对两次世界大战中英国的作战行动存在误解。这低估了成功消耗战的重要性，以及蒙哥马利在构建和执行消耗计划方面的技巧（而且，鉴于乌克兰战争，将消耗作为一种蓄意的战争手段正被重新评估）。作者的解读有时则更为敏锐：他为蒙哥马利那个看似无法解释的、发起高风险“市场花园行动”的决定提供了一些背景。尽管存在风险，但该计划有望赢得战争。米德本可以通过指出 1944 年 9 月的情况似乎是二十六年前情景的重演来加强其论点，当时德国军队遭受了重大失败，而大胆的行动收获了丰厚的回报。但 1944 年 9 月的德国军队被证明比 1918 年 9 月的前辈更具韧性。将领的职责不仅限于战场。蒙哥马利是一位伟大的教师，他教会了心理受创的第八集团军重新相信自己。这是一项极高水准的军事成就（米德承认了这一点）。蒙哥马利知道他指挥的是一支本质上由身着制服的平民组成的军队，因此需要严格的训练。在战场上，他的方法强调火力，利用英国在炮兵、空军和坦克方面的优势，以钢铁对抗钢铁，而不是像在第一次世界大战中那样频繁地用钢铁对抗血肉。事实证明，他的军队在战术上比早期的历史记载所认为的要熟练得多，并经历了一个成功的学习过程。但这并不是一本对蒙哥马利作为军事指挥官进行详细分析的书，尽管它为我们对这个人的认知增加了一些有趣的细节，并含蓄地强调了指挥权中人格特质的重要性。

相比之下，彼得·茂赫（Peter Mauch）出色的《东条》（Tojo）则是一部军事传记。该书研究极其严谨，论点虽具挑战性但令人信服，填补了第二次世界大战史学研究中的一个重大空白。这是我们这个时代最伟大的军事传记之一。关于第二次世界大战期间日本关键人物东条英机的最后一项重大英文研究早在 1961. 年就已出版。西悉尼大学的学者茂赫认为，东条是日本的“顶端政治掠食者”，一个在最高政治层面运作的纯熟的士兵-官僚。他理解战争的全面性质，对日本的大战略有清晰的愿景并付诸行动。正如茂赫所明确指出的，承认这一残酷概念的重要性——即为了进行全面冲突而大规模动员日本社会和经济，以及东条在应用这一概念方面的技巧——并不意味着赞同这一战略或这个人。他的愿景是不切实际的，因为他极大地低估了美国一旦同样致力于进行全面战争所拥有的力量。最终，这给日本带来了灾难，并在 1945. 年 8 月广岛和长崎的原子弹轰炸中达到顶峰。难怪东条最终被日本人唾弃，当地人甚至拒绝向他的家人出售食物。

东条英机权力被稀释得相当严重，以至于他的地位与我们想象中的二十世纪中期独裁者相去甚远。大日本帝国陆军与海军之间激烈的竞争意味着真正的统一指挥权遥不可及，因此东条试图通过后门来实现这一目标——即通过兼任多个职位并影响裕仁天皇。他在将天皇塑造得像自己一样方面确实取得了一些成功，包括说服天皇支持袭击珍珠港，从而将一场地区战争转变为全球冲突。裕仁具有足够的自我意识，能够意识到他与东条并不总是志同道合。天皇更倾向于共识，而这并非东条的方式。东条对裕仁的忠诚程度之深，以至于在战败后，他承担了战争的责任，并死在美国执行者的手中。东条的性格类型与蒙哥马利截然不同，且他运作于战略层级，远高于蒙哥马利的战役层级。但这两个人有一个共同点：他们都给各自国家在第二次世界大战中的经历留下了深刻烙印。两人都成为了各自国家战争努力的化身。他们在关键时刻身处相应的职位至关重要。不同的人可能会选择不同的路径。这些书籍及时地提醒人们，指挥中的人为维度具有至关重要的意义。很难想象这种情况何时会不再成立，但鉴于人工智能的发展，我们必须在克劳塞维茨关于军事天才的特质清单中，增加一项“有效利用人工智能”的能力。人们有理由询问，未来的蒙哥马利和东条英机们的行动自由是否会被人工智能所限制；当前的仆人是否会成为未来的主人。加里·谢菲尔德（Gary Sheffield）是伦敦国王学院国防研究系的客座教授。他正在撰写《平民军队：两次世界大战中英国及自治领士兵的经历》（Civilian Armies: The experience of British and Dominion soldiers in the two World Wars）。

为什么我们热爱亨利·詹姆斯 在线课程 主讲人：加斯·格林威尔（GARTH GREENWELL） 2025年 PEN / FAULKNER 奖得主 九月开始 GARTH GREENWELL.COM / CLASSES

2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 9 --- 历史

新花招

欺诈、剥削与理性探究

丽莎·希尔顿 (Lisa Hilton) 评 玛德琳·佩林 (Madeleine Pelling) 著，《骗局：启蒙时代的真相与谎言》(Hoax: Truth and lies in the age of Enlightenment)，368页，Profile出版社，£22。

1762年2月1日深夜，由伦敦市长召集的一个调查委员会小心翼翼地进入了圣约翰·克勒肯韦尔教堂（St John Clerkenwell）的地下室。他们的目标是与弗朗西丝·莱恩斯（Frances Lynes）的鬼魂沟通，这位年轻女性在几年前死于天花。据称，弗朗西丝的灵魂一直出没在她位于考克巷（Cock Lane）的前住所，通过敲击声与房东的女儿贝蒂（Betty）交流。她的信息如此紧迫且具有说服力，以至于“考克巷幽灵”成为了一个主要的旅游景点、媒体轰动事件，而对于她的鳏夫来说则是一场灾难，因为公众舆论已将其谴责为凶手。

在包括索尔兹伯里主教、达特茅斯伯爵、奥克斯夫人（一位受人尊敬的助产士）和塞缪尔·约翰逊在内的见证者面前，鬼魂同意敲击自己的棺材以证明其故事的真实性。但那天晚上没有听到任何敲击声。

在玛德琳·佩林这部节奏快、深思且富有同情心的历史著作中，考克巷案是她探讨的众多案例之一，这些案例考验了18世纪对其自身理性能力的信念。“骗局”（hoax）一词源自集市江湖骗子的“hocus pocus”（胡言乱语），到1822年已出现在罗伯特·内雷斯（Robert Nares）的词汇表中；该词出现于1740年代，与康德在1784年定义的“人类脱离其自我造成的不成熟状态”的时期形成对比。

佩林的研究利用欺诈和诡计来探讨“启蒙”的含义。她认为，该时期对理性探究的强调，反而使“真相”成为了一个更不稳定的概念。在那个“多变、喧嚣、探索性强”的18世纪，繁荣的印刷文化引发了不确定性以及争论。在真相不断被质疑的环境中，骗局大行其道。

“鬼魂同意敲击自己的棺材以证明其故事的真实性”

佩林讨论的许多骗局是为了经济利益而实施的，但她敏锐地将这些骗局成功的环境与更广泛的社会动荡潮流联系起来。玛丽·贝特曼（Mary Bateman）是随着工业革命而出现的疏离、匿名的城市文化的产物，一个手脚轻快的乡村女孩，在约克郡的工厂城镇中，从小偷进化到了算命和“魔法”。她成功地从佩里戈斯夫妇（the Perigos）那里骗走了价值£70的财物，这对受人尊敬的夫妇是陷入困境的织工，他们的贸易被机械化摧毁了；当他们开始怀疑她时，她用砷毒死了妻子。

贝特曼于1809年在约克因谋杀罪被处以绞刑，但她的处决所引发的关注度与其罪行的可悲卑劣程度完全不成比例。她成了“现代时代的怪物”，一个其审判使当代科学与古老民间信仰产生冲突的女巫。在对其尸体进行公开解剖后，玛丽的皮肤被剥下，部分碎片被当作护身符出售。她通过犯罪获得的利润很低——手帕、面粉袋——但佩林指出，她的欺诈也是一种自我实现，是在一个依然等级森严的社会中获得自主权的机会。

这种社会区分的脆弱性被“卡拉布公主”（Princess Caraboo）揭露，其真名为玛丽·威尔考克斯（Mary Willcocks），一名来自德文郡的巡回女仆，1817年被发现徘徊在布里斯托郊外的一座豪宅附近。她出众的外貌、神秘的习俗以及

她显然无法说英语，这让热心于救她的当地治安法官及其妻子得出结论：她是一位来自某个尚未被发现的印度尼西亚岛屿、被绑架的皇室成员。威尔考克斯成功利用了他们的先入之见，为访客提供充满异域风情且被色情化的舞蹈和剑术表演。作为“卡拉布”，她被多位艺术家绘制成画，其“语言”还得到了前爪哇总督斯坦福·莱佛尔爵士的分析。佩林认为，她最终被揭穿的行为“粉碎了原本被认为用来组织世界的分类，揭露了无知、偏见以及种族之间荒诞的界限”。《骗局》（Hoax）是一部灵巧且令人兴奋的社会历史著作，它揭示了令人震惊的当代平行现象。小报对超自然煽情主义的渴望依然贪婪，而数字时代人们的轻信以及对专业知识的不信任可以说在进一步扩大。（佩林引用了一项 2023 年为 BBC 开展的调查，其中 25% 的受访者认为新冠肺炎疫情是一场骗局。）在探讨允许骗子在一个表面上致力于客观性的文化中繁荣的机制时，作者在诡计中发现了“一个让我们窥见更深层紧张关系和不平等的缺口”，在这种关系中，真理既是事实的产物，也是权力的产物。因此，《骗局》对我们时代的揭示程度与它所描述的那个时代一样深刻。丽莎·希尔顿最近的一本书是 2024 年出版的《世纪丑闻》。

两个多世纪以来，皇家文学基金会一直为全英国的专业作家提供资金支持。从困难补助金和教育计划，到庆祝并展示全球大多数群体作家的 WritersMosaic，我们继续履行我们的使命，使作家能够坚持写作并将他们的技能与他人分享。立即了解我们的困难补助金：www.rlf.org.uk

补助金 • 研究员 • 教育 工作场所与社区 • 遗产 • WRITERSMOSAIC

10 《文学 supplement》 2026年8月7日

可否认的污垢

特工机构内部的特工机构

理查德·J·奥尔德里奇（Richard J. Aldrich）评 罗里·科马克（Rory Cormac）著，《伪造者》（Fakers）：关于虚假信息前线幻影与伪造品的绝密故事，368页，牛津大学出版社，£25（美国 $34.99）。

1992年，我见到了罗伯特·康奎斯特（Robert Conquest），他是卓越的苏联研究学者，曾任《旁观者》（Spectator）杂志的文学编辑。在冷战期间，他是阴暗的信息研究部（IRD）的先驱人物之一，与乔治·奥威尔的好友塞莉亚·基尔旺（Celia Kirwan）共用一间办公室。IRD成立于1948年，旨在通过传播反共宣传并利用秘密手段塑造全球叙事，以对抗苏联的虚假信息。康奎斯特解释说，IRD实际上是一个反苏联的情报“洗钱所”。凭借获取军情五处（MI5）、军情六处（MI6）和政府通信总部（GCHQ）传回的所有关于俄罗斯的情报，他们忙于筛选关于莫斯科压迫统治的劲爆故事，并将这些故事分发给全球各地的“友好”记者。康奎斯特向我保证，他们没有撒谎。事实上，他坚持认为他们面临的问题是，共产党人实在太卑劣了，以至于如果IRD讲述完整且不加掩饰的真相，根本没有人会相信。

但康奎斯特在关于欺骗者的描述上并不诚实。正如罗里·科马克这本揭秘之作所展示的，IRD很快陷入了“任务蔓延”，将其最初的反苏联角色扩展到针对任何被认为反英的人员，包括像加马尔·阿卜杜勒·纳赛尔（Gamal Abdel Nasser）、夸梅·恩克鲁玛（Kwame Nkrumah）和苏加诺（Sukarno）这样的后殖民时代领导人。此外，在它的阁楼里还隐藏着一个超绝密的“伪造者”部门，其业务就是伪造文件、编造故事和撒谎。

《伪造者》讲述了一个特工机构内部的特工机构的故事。这是一部经过精心研究的社会史，记录了一群规模小且功能失调的特立独行宣传员，他们运行着英国的冷战伪造部门。他们的任务是利用幻影组织和伪造文件，破坏并抹黑全球范围内的对手。其中许多计划荒诞不经，例如伪装成嬉皮士和幽灵，而另一些则相当令人反感。在此过程中，科马克捕捉到了英国在秘密行动中独特的文学倾向——更倾向于使用笔而非毒药。

汉斯·韦尔瑟（Hans Welser）是英国黑色宣传团队中一个出人意料的领导者。韦尔瑟是一个真正的幸存者——一名奥地利难民，曾因被军情五处怀疑而在一座战时集中营的铁丝网后被拘留。获释后，他在英国政治战争执行局（Political Warfare Executive）工作，在反德宣传方面表现出色。随后，他成为了外交部的关键特种作战顾问。他与妻子阿德莱德（Adelaide）——她经营着一家由军情六处资助的新闻机构——共同策划全球心理战行动，同时领导着一支由前记者、书呆子和东欧流亡者组成的不可思议的团队。

IRD通过冷战的棱镜看待整个世界。他们对加纳总统恩克鲁玛的泛非社会主义及其与中国的关系深感不安。韦尔瑟及其团队发起了宣传攻势以削弱其影响力。通过利用诸如“忠诚非洲兄弟会”之类的虚构组织，他们植入故事，将恩克鲁玛及其盟友描绘成威胁非洲统一的共产主义傀儡。在首相亚历克·道格拉斯-霍姆（Alec Douglas-Home）的积极支持下，这场运动进一步升级。科马克认为，这促成了恩克鲁玛最终的垮台。后来，“忠诚非洲兄弟会”被用来散布将非洲人描绘成猴子的漫画，并将其归咎于阿尔及利亚人，试图在一次国际青年会议上挑起分歧。

“伪造者们”在1965年印尼-马来西亚对抗时期的顶峰阶段，也将目标对准了苏加诺总统。他们的目的是诋毁苏加诺的个人生活并使其政权不稳定。通过被归于伊斯兰团体名下的黑色宣传，他们攻击他在宗教上的不敏感，以及据称的婚外情，以及后来关于他性无能的传闻。东方集团则以涉及英国和美国策划推翻苏加诺的材料进行反击。这场伪造战争带来的后果加剧了反西方情绪，并无意中鼓舞了印度尼西亚共产党。其后记是一段漫长的血腥时期，导致至少50万人死亡。

科马克指出，韦尔瑟及其团队是古怪的技术官僚。他们精通各种阴险的伎俩和新闻机构的运作，但对于他们所干预的复杂社会却缺乏深入理解。他们驻扎在泰特美术馆附近的一栋定制建筑中，被认为与科德·迈耶和詹姆斯·安格尔顿等中央情报局高层关系更为密切，而非与他们自己的政府。1969年，当这些“可否认的肮脏手段”实践者抵达百慕大以破坏一场黑人权力会议时，他们遭到了“正统”英国外交官的冷遇，后者担心其计划会产生回弹效应。

20世纪70年代，信息研究局（IRD）实现了多样化，目标转向北美的爱尔兰共和主义团体，并助力英国加入欧洲经济共同体（EEC）的运动。由于不被其上级外交部喜爱，在预算收紧时，IRD成为了一个显而易见的削减领域。它在1977年消亡的故事经常被框架在它与极右翼及种族隔离支持者的联系之中。然而，主要问题仅仅在于无法证明其任何行动真正起到了作用。

有人主张英国应考虑建立一个现代版本的IRD，以对抗当代的虚假信息和“灰色地带”威胁。但《伪造者们》（Fakers）中那些离奇的故事应当让白厅的政策制定者深思。理查德·J·奥尔德里奇关于冷战期间中央情报局与美国新闻界的著作即将出版。

“一部即时的经典，我从未读过如此的作品。库克重新讲述了阿基里斯的故事，让读者感觉到它存在于现在时。她的文字充满张力：每一刻都至关重要，每个词都不可或缺，仿佛时间正在耗尽。就好像写作本身就是一项英雄事业……一次令人恐惧且充满情欲的杰作。”——《观察者报》

这部对阿基里斯史诗故事强而有力、充满激情且工艺精湛的重述，在一种全新的、生动的现实中重塑了荷马笔下那个命中注定的英雄。伊丽莎白·库克迷人的诗意之声将阿基里斯及其传奇中心人物相互交织的故事，编织成一次关于成就与丧失、选择与不可逃避之命运的多层次探索。阿基里斯由海仙女忒提斯与凡人国王佩琉斯所生，在被奥德修斯发现之前，他以女孩身份隐藏在斯基罗斯岛，随后成为了特洛伊战争中希腊人最伟大的战士。其他人物也进入了他的故事——其中包括赫克托耳、海伦、亚马逊女王彭忒西勒亚和半人马喀戎——最后是约翰·济慈，其著作构成了关于身份本质和共同经验沉思的基础。作为一部令人难忘且深情动人的小说，《阿基里斯》还肯定了该故事跨越世纪与文化、触及我们想象力核心的持久力量。

“对神话的一次大师级重述——对一个短暂而激烈的人生所作的简短而强烈的描述，与其说是一部小说，不如说更像一首诗：即便不是诗歌，至少也是带有血压的散文。”——《伦敦书评》

“它具有如此高亢且诱人的品质，以至于让你好奇人类在业余时间除了围坐在一起讲述伟大的故事之外，还会做些什么……一次闪光的体验，不容忘记。”——《苏格兰人报》

978 0 413 77139 1 / £10.99 / 9780413771391 / B paperback 可在所有优质书店及在线购买：https: / www.waterstones.com / book / achilles / elizabeth-cook / 9780413771391 《阿基里斯》，伊丽莎白·库克著 - Bookshop.org UK

以及直接从 hive.co.uk 购买：

Achilles: Elizabeth Cook: 9780413771391: hive.co.uk

2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 11

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历史

分而治之

奴隶制与启蒙运动如何制造了种族

约翰·塞缪尔·哈法姆（John Samuel Harpham） 安德鲁·S·库兰（Andrew S. Curran） 《种族制造者：启蒙运动最危险遗产的历史》（The Race Makers: A history of the Enlightenment's most dangerous legacy） 512页。Saqi出版社。£25。

约翰·布罗伊希（John Broich） 《白人至上：简史》（White Supremacy: A short history） 280页。剑桥大学出版社。£22（美国 $29.95）。

如今，种族是一种发明，这已成为道德和政治信仰中的公理。它并未被写入自然秩序：它不是人类的一个真实特征。我们这样认为，是因为我们不相信种族。在之前的几个世纪里，种族之所以具有强大的吸引力，是因为它看起来像是真实的。事实上，对于其支持者来说，种族似乎揭示了人类真理的隐藏核心。定义不同的种族并发现其内在原则，就是为了解释世界各民族的历史与命运。今天，我们不再——至少人们希望我们不再——用这些种族术语来思考。我们相信种族是一种发明，是被制造出来的，而非被发现的。这一信念迫使我们面对一系列问题：是谁或什么制造了种族？种族何时何地出现？种族服务于什么目的？

这些问题驱动了本次评论的两本书。约翰·布罗伊希和安德鲁·S·库兰旨在描述种族作为现代世界一个强大且具有破坏性的观念的起源。他们的叙述在关键方面有所不同。库兰的论述更为细腻且博学，他从这样一个前提出发：种族是在一小群有影响力的人的文字文本中被制造出来的，因此他的书呈现为一系列人物研究。每一章探讨一两位作者以及他们致力于发展的种族维度。作为一名卓越的法国启蒙运动学者，库兰选择的作者都围绕着这个核心焦点。他们涵盖了从第一章讨论的路易十四，到最后一章的主角托马斯·杰斐逊。其间是对卡尔·林奈和布丰伯爵、伏尔泰和大卫·休谟，以及伊曼努尔·康德和约翰·弗里德里希·布鲁门巴赫等经典知识分子的生活与思想的生动描绘。这些人就是库兰在书名中提到的“种族制造者”。

《种族制造者》以一种流畅且优雅的叙事展开。即使是人物生活中的细微细节——从林奈花园的规划到康德晚餐派对的时间表——都被吸收到对其深层哲学承诺的叙述之中。但在这种叙事中，库兰包裹了一个论点。他想要确立的是，种族的出现并非是对欧洲大西洋帝国兴起和新世界奴隶制制度的简单或直接反应。正如他所观察到的，18世纪种族的发明发生在跨大西洋奴隶贸易开始两个多世纪之后。相反，他致力于证明，种族的起源在于欧洲高级文化内部的发展。奴隶制和帝国并没有制造种族。最重要的是，种族是启蒙运动的产物。

根据库兰的观点，启蒙运动将一种新型的关注点聚焦于人类。关于人类的旧有圣经叙述——即人类是按照上帝的形象创造的，且源于单一的创世行为——开始显得不足。人类应当作为自然世界的一部分被研究。就像植物和动物一样，他们应当被分类和划分。这项工作需要一种与常规经验相分离的纪律性超脱。它要求人们在一定程度上远离世界各民族当前的社会和政治形式。从这个位置出发，有可能发展出一种关于人类的新颖叙述。这种叙述将不再强调物种的统一性或其显而易见的变异，而是强调人类可以被划分的四到五个大组。这些组——使用在启蒙运动过程中变得越来越普遍的术语——就是“种族”。

Curran 书中的种族构建者们立即响应了启蒙运动的紧迫要求，并致力于塑造和推进启蒙计划。在很大程度上，他们是从未出国亲眼见过那些被他们分类为不同种族之人群的作家和知识分子。他们的许多信息是以书面文本的形式获得的，包括旅行叙事、官方报告、历史记录以及对世界的描述。Curran 指出，这一时期产生最细致、最完整种族分类的作者们大多生活在欧洲大都市中心之外——林奈在乌普萨拉，布丰在蒙巴尔，康德在柯尼斯堡，布鲁门巴赫在哥廷根。他们在远离那些被该概念定义的人群之处，发明了“种族”。对于 Curran 而言，这种距离在一定程度上使得将种族“书写”成现实成为可能。

相比之下，对于 Broich 来说，种族与真实历史世界之间的距离是一种幻象。与 Curran 一样，他将种族的演变追溯到启蒙运动。但他将启蒙运动本身视为奴隶制和帝国主义的产物。启蒙运动由海外剥削的利润资助，反过来又与促成其兴起的残酷制度处于一种互惠关系之中。殖民地中的种族统治形式，为欧洲知识分子作品中出现的种族理论设定了背景。他们的真实目的并非将世界各民族分开，而是将他们组建为一个等级秩序。这种秩序将反映当下的权力关系，但将其掩盖在对自然世界的冷静描绘之中。通常情况下，与 Curran 不同，Broich 想要揭露思想与权力之间的密切联系。这也是他选择“白人至上主义”而非“种族”作为研究对象的部分原因。在他看来，白人至上主义既代表了一种广泛的白人统治模式，也代表了这种统治是正当的信念。

Broich 是一位英国帝国历史学家，这也是他在本书中的核心关注点。他认为，白人至上主义在新世界奴隶制与启蒙运动的剧烈交汇点上爆发而生。由此，他追踪了其无情的扩张。他将帝国视为其近乎必然的延伸。随后，随着世纪的更迭，他追踪了它如何演变为现代种族科学、社会达尔文主义，以及这些思想旨在支持的种族隔离、优生学和种族灭绝政权。随着叙事接近当下，Broich 将目光转向了脱欧和唐纳德·特朗普。

《白人至上主义》（White Supremacy）是一本简短的书。“任何重要的历史都值得被简短地讲述，”作者解释道。它同样值得被谨慎地讲述。Broich 很好地叙述了白人至上主义随时间推移在世界大部分地区的可怕传播与持久存在。然而，在他的大部分叙事中，依然模糊不清的是那些反对它的力量。当他描述其发展——从奴隶制到特朗普——时，好奇的读者会想知道，为什么白人至上主义被迫经历如此剧烈的一系列转型。Broich 将其比作一块补丁布，一团乱麻般的锁链，以及一只被逼入绝境、长着触手的地下怪物。而它的敌人却从未被如此生动地刻画。

例如，思考一下书中对白人至上主义与启蒙运动之间关系的处理。在布罗伊希（Broich）看来，后者是奴隶制和帝国所建立的种族统治在哲学上的表达。其解放的承诺仅面向白人。或许如此。但这一承诺当时是向全人类提出的——而且很快，一场强大的跨种族社会运动兴起，其灵感正是源自启蒙理想。在英国，废奴运动取得了最迅速且决定性的成功：1807年废除奴隶贸易，1833.年废除殖民地奴隶制。在这种情况下，权力与思想之间的契合度似乎并不像布罗伊希倾向于假设的那样严丝合缝。即使是与白人统治紧密相连的思想，也可以被反过来用来对抗这种统治。怪物的触手可以被用来将其自身捕捉。如果情况确实如此，那么或许一个更复杂的过程促成了启蒙思想本身的产生。

与布罗伊希相比，库兰（Curran）更加关注促成启蒙思想产生的复杂过程。他的书将种族概念的发展置于一个由知识分子组成的封闭网络之间的技术性论述之中。但库兰似乎对他关于种族如何产生的基本立场感到不安。新世界奴隶制的平行发展笼罩在他的叙事之中。那些种族构建者用来挖掘世界各民族信息的文本中，充满了关于奴隶制的材料。几份来自美国的最重要报告是由奴隶主撰写的。几乎所有前往非洲的旅行叙事都是奴隶贸易商的作品。这一时期对非洲的详细调查遵循的是奴隶船的基本航线，沿西海岸由北向南移动。种族理论不可避免地吸收了大西洋奴隶制度的模式和假设。即便种族分类方案随着时间的推移变得更加复杂，它们的共同出发点仍然是两种种族之间的极化对立：黑人与白人。

库兰并未忽略这些观点。事实上，他的书并非以种族开始和结束，而是以奴隶制开始和结束。关于路易十四的第一章，并未将这位国王视为种族理论家，而是将其视为法国大西洋奴隶制度的构建者。关于托马斯·杰斐逊的最后一章，将这位政治家散见于各处的关于种族的言论，视为试图利用种族来捍卫美国奴隶制度的一种努力。结语转向了在18世纪末崭露头角的非裔英国作家群体：“反法西斯主义者登场了”，库兰如此宣称。但这些作家致力于推动的真正事业是废奴运动，而他们的反法西斯主义是为实现这一最终目标服务的。

最终，人们感觉到库兰尚未决定如何回答其书中所探讨的最关键问题。如何评价那些种族构建者的生活和职业生涯？启蒙运动究竟是解放的力量还是统治的力量？种族的起源是什么？他的犹豫可以被视为我们自身的犹豫。今天，我们相信种族是一种发明。然而，我们生活在继续被这一概念结构化的社会中。也许我们无法把握种族的起源，是因为我们无法想象它的终结。

约翰·塞缪尔·哈法姆（John Samuel Harpham）是俄克拉荷马大学古典文学与文字系助理教授，以及美国宪政遗产研究所的威克·凯里（Wick Cary）教授。他是《美国奴隶制的知识起源》（The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery, 2025. 12）一书的作者。

Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 ---

一场皇室罪行

作为奴隶贸易商的英国国王与女王

迈尔斯·泰勒 (Miles Taylor) 评 布鲁克·N·纽曼 (Brooke N. Newman) 著，《王室的沉默：奴隶制与英国君主制的隐藏历史》(The Crown's Silence: The hidden history of slavery and the British monarchy)，464页。Mudlark出版。£25。

目前，从奴隶制中获利的英国个人和机构名单已经很长了。其中包括首相、银行、大学、英格兰教会以及许多名门望族。直到最近，这份指控名单中还缺失了一个家庭：君主家庭。

由王室赞助并成立于1660年的皇家非洲公司 (Royal African Company) 领头开展了英国的奴隶贸易；在17世纪末的巅峰时期，该公司负责了近四分之三被贩运跨越大西洋前往美洲种植园经济的非洲奴隶。正如布鲁克·N·纽曼在详尽且深刻的叙述中所揭示的那样，王室实际上为英国作为奴隶强权创造了商业模式，并在前200年里主导了这项贸易。

由于战争和挥霍导致贫困，后期的都铎王朝、斯图亚特王朝和汉诺威王朝的女王与国王转向奴隶贸易以充实国库。伊丽莎白一世提供船只并向受宠的“冒险家”授予垄断权。尽管詹姆斯一世厌恶烟草，但他向弗吉尼亚等种植园殖民地授予了特许状。与西班牙和葡萄牙王国的动态联盟，为其在新世界的港口向英国奴隶船开放铺平了道路。查理二世及其继任者詹姆斯二世被证明是最贪婪的，他们向皇家非洲公司投入了巨资。王室甚至拥有奴隶：那些在主人死而无遗嘱后回归王室财产的人。

虽然王室垄断在1698年结束，但成立于1711年的南海公司 (South Sea Company) 为安妮女王及其继任者带来了丰厚的股息。纽曼指出，乔治三世在年轻时确实对奴隶制表达过顾虑（参见大卫·阿米蒂奇 (David Armitage)，“一种非人的习俗” ['An inhuman custom']，《泰晤士文學 supplements》，2021年12月24 / 31日），但从未在公开场合表达。事实上，他坚持要求无论是获释的还是被奴役的契约劳工，都必须被征召进入参加美国独立战争的皇家军队。而他的三子威廉在1790年代曾在加勒比地区服役，这段经历使他成为了奴隶主可靠且积极的支持者，尤其是在他以克拉伦斯公爵的身份进入上议院之后。

《王室的沉默》在记录王室如何深陷奴隶制产业时没有遗漏任何细节。一些被俘的非洲人被烙上印记，并被戴上刻有约克公爵（后来的詹姆斯二世）首字母的铁镣。另一些人则最终来到伦敦，被当作异域装饰品留在宫廷中。书中复制的一系列王室肖像画将身着制服和服饰的非洲人描绘成王室的伴侣。

并非所有人都以这种方式被商品化。库博纳·奥托巴·库加诺 (Quobna Ottobah Cugano) 曾是一名王室肖像画家的家仆，他在1780年代成为了废奴运动的盟友，尽管他没能活到1807年英国退出奴隶贸易的那一天。

到那时，王室赞助奴隶制的结局已然注定。1760年，议会接管了王室财政，使君主依赖于民事清单 (civil list) 获得收入。诸如格洛斯特公爵（乔治三世的侄子）等王室成员加入了彻底废除奴隶制的呼吁。随着革命思想在1789年后在西印度群岛和西班牙语世界引起共鸣，王室开始与这一不受欢迎的事业保持距离。王室奴隶在1820年代获得了释放。随后，大英帝国的奴隶制终于在1833年终结，而其最后的王室支持者威廉四世（原克拉伦斯公爵）提供了

没有反对意见。维多利亚女王是威廉·威尔伯福斯的忠实拥趸，她终止了取代奴隶制的学徒制。她的丈夫阿尔伯特亲王在废奴主义者的总部埃克塞特大厅首次公开亮相，谴责奴隶制的罪恶，但并未为皇室的共谋道歉。（纽曼可能会注意到，阿尔伯特的表亲，葡萄牙的斐迪南二世，曾主导过一个持久的奴隶经济。）正如作者在强有力的结语中所论述的那样，在没有任何认罪的情况下表达“悲痛与遗憾”，已成为君主制对于英国参与奴隶制问题的官方立场。正如近期对加勒比地区和西非的皇室访问所表明的那样，对许多人而言，这还远远不够。围绕英国皇室在奴隶贸易中扮演的历史角色，存在着太多的质疑。现在，这一切已公开在所有人面前。英联邦能否在这样的指控下生存？而补偿性正义又当如何？1833年，英国政府向西印度群岛的奴隶主及其受益人支付了高达2000 万英镑（按今日价值计算为156亿英镑）的补偿金，这与目前皇室的总财富相差无几。这些都是严肃的问题，而纽曼深入的调查将对未来的讨论至关重要。迈尔斯·泰勒（Miles Taylor）是柏林洪堡大学的英国历史与社会教授。他是《女皇：维多利亚女王与印度》（Empress: Queen Victoria and India，2018）一书的作者。

国王万岁！不再如此

一位西班牙君主的戏剧性陨落

安娜·特姆金（Anna Temkin）评 保罗·普雷斯顿（Paul Preston）著，《一位国王的陨落》（Downfall of a King），讲述西班牙国王胡安·卡洛斯（Juan Carlos of Spain），544页，William Collins出版，£30。

如今，一些西班牙人嘲讽地将他们的前国王胡安·卡洛斯称为“卑下之君”（His Lowness），但情况并非一直如此。考虑到胡安·卡洛斯的继位是由弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥（Francisco Franco）将军决定的，而佛朗哥从小就一直在培养这位流亡的波旁王朝继承人以接掌王位，因此他的继位曾充满争议。佛朗哥主义者（generalismo）期望胡安·卡洛斯在佛朗哥死后继续维持独裁统治，而年轻的国王当时似乎很顺从。然而，在1981年2月23日的政变企图期间，胡安·卡洛斯展现了他的勇气，他以三军统帅的身份出现在电视上，命令武装部队尊重新宪法。政变随即崩溃，叛乱者投降。随后，数百万人走上西班牙城市的街道，高喊着“¡Viva el Rey!”（国王万岁！）。

在佛朗哥去世后的几年里，胡安·卡洛斯为巩固初生的民主制度做了很多工作，帮助平息了波伊主义（poipismo），并与巴斯克恐怖主义作斗争，期间经历了多次暗杀企图。但他执政的最后几年被涉及婚姻不忠和财务不端等丑闻所笼罩，最终在2014年被迫退位。2020年，在儿子费利佩六世（Felipe VI）的要求下，他移居阿布扎比——至今仍住在那里。

保罗·普雷斯顿关于胡安·卡洛斯的最新传记（他的第一本传记《人民的国王》A People's King 出版于2004年）的主要论点是，这位国王失势的种子早在其孤独且痛苦的童年时期就已播下。“小胡安”（Juanito）1938年出生于罗马，自1931年西班牙第二共和国宣布成立以及整个内战期间（1936-39），被废黜的王室一直住在那里。后来，他的父亲唐·胡安·德·波旁（Don Juan de Borbón）将家人迁至洛桑，随后迁往葡萄牙。在10岁时，这位小王子被送往法西斯统治下的西班牙，“这是佛朗哥要求唐·胡安保留作为其最终继任者可能候选人之一所支付的代价”。普雷斯顿认为，胡安的父亲“实际上将他卖入了奴隶之境”，并谴责这种“对他儿子童年的窃取”。他详细描述了这个男孩如何多年地在独裁者（Caudillo）与王位觊觎者（Pretender）的棋局中充当棋子，而前者则以恢复波旁家族西班牙王位的可能性作为诱饵。

普雷斯顿认为，这种早年与家庭的分离在胡安·卡洛斯心中培养了一种被遗弃感和怨恨感。他写道，这个男孩“被剥夺了让孩子感到被爱、被重视且有价值的父母之爱”，甚至暗示缺乏“建立安全依恋关系的必要基础，很可能解释了他成年后对女性和财务获取的渴求”。这看起来似乎过于方便了。

这种童年忽视的影响是普雷斯顿论点的核心。他记录了胡安·卡洛斯从被选中的继承人，到1962年与未来的索菲亚王后结婚，再到1975年继位；从1981年面对军方将领，到33年后统治结束的历程。作为二十世纪西班牙研究的领先学者，作者在每个阶段的分析都极具洞察力。尤其令人动容的是，他讲述了18岁的王子在1956年用手枪意外杀死了弟弟阿尔丰索（Alfonso），以及这场悲剧对他及其与父亲关系产生的影响。我们还了解到，这位英俊的国王在婴儿时期很丑，起初他难以说西班牙语，在学校里他更喜欢同学对他使用非正式称呼“tú”；在萨拉戈萨军事学院，他是一名“维持尽可能广泛社交圈，并小心地避免形成一个仅由自私驱动的谄媚之圈”的学员。但到了2004年，胡安·卡洛斯已经拥有了一系列阴暗的财务支持者和一支由70辆车组成的车队。

尽管普雷斯顿（Preston）研究的严谨性无可指责，但有时这导致其散文显得过于晦涩，其中对汇入瑞士银行账户的款项（包括来自沙特政府的1亿美元）进行了或许是不必要的冗长明细分析。书中还详尽地记录了年迈国王的各种病症、髋关节手术及其他手术。胡安·卡洛斯的女婿伊尼亚基·乌尔丹加宁·利巴尔特（Iñaki Urdanganin Liebaert）贪污数百万欧元公共资金的恶行，使得国王的财务状况受到审查。2012年，在西班牙有600万失业人口之际，他与情妇科琳娜·冯·赛恩-维特根斯坦-赛恩（Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn）在博茨瓦纳进行了一次奢华的狩猎之旅，这成为了压死骆驼的最后一根稻草，导致他发表了如今臭名昭著的声明：“我非常抱歉。我犯了一个错误，这种情况不会再次发生”。普雷斯顿同情式的刻画很难与这位国王的好色（一名评论家估计其性征服对象达4,786人）、他对妻子的糟糕对待以及他的巨额财富相协调。作者提到了“个人牺牲”，并将胡安·卡洛斯称为西班牙一名“非凡的特使贸易大使”，即便他也承认“自我敛财是一个主要的驱动力”。尽管如此，这部传记仍是一部宏伟的作品，细节丰富且论证有力。如果胡安·卡洛斯能对他自己的生活进行同样程度的审视就好了。安娜·特姆金（Anna Temkin）是《泰晤士报》的高级编辑以及《泰晤士报伟大人生》（The Times Great Lives）的编辑，2015年。2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 13 --- 政治

做正确的事

美国外交政策中现实主义的利弊

萨姆·弗里德曼 (Sam Freedman)

詹姆斯·D·博伊斯 (James D. Boys) 《美国大战略与疯子理论：从尼克松到特朗普》(US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory: From Nixon to Trump) 288页。曼彻斯特大学出版社。平装本，£14.99 (US \$21.95)。

艾玛·阿什福德 (Emma Ashford) 《首屈一指：多极世界中的美国外交政策》(First Among Equals: US foreign policy in a multipolar world) 280页。耶鲁大学出版社。£30 (US \$35)。

描写唐纳德·特朗普的问题在于，人们可能会耗费巨大的精力去试图解释那些连他自己都不理解的举动。他对世界有一套潜在的、且大多是错误的信念——主要由这样一种想法组成：美国正被其他所有人利用。除此之外，他极易受到几乎任何愿意提供相应程度谄媚之人的影响，几乎不花时间去了解做出正确决策所需的历史背景，并且会积极惩罚那些告诉他他不愿听到的真相的人。

对于喜欢探讨大战略和世界秩序的外交政策分析师来说，这是一个特殊的挑战。一遍又一遍地说“这家伙显然在认知衰退，缺乏信息，且不知道自己在做什么”并不是很令人满意。一种选择是假设特朗普反复无常的行为是一个狡猾计划的一部分，旨在扰乱对手并达成自己的目的：这正是《交易的艺术》中的战术。詹姆斯·D·博伊斯在《美国大战略与疯子理论》中实际上就是这样论证的。

该书的开篇章节就该理论在历任总统任期内的发展和应用提供了一段引人入胜的知识史。大多数人将这一想法与理查德·尼克松联系在一起，但博伊斯令人信服地指出，尼克松受到了艾森豪威尔总统通过含蓄威胁使用核武器以结束朝鲜战争的影响。将不可预测性作为改善谈判策略的一种手段，是由包括托马斯·谢林 (Thomas Schelling)、丹尼尔·埃尔斯伯格 (Daniel Ellsberg) 以及最重要的、最终与尼克松共事的亨利·基辛格 (Henry Kissinger) 在内的冷战理论家们发展起来的。

极其理性的艾森豪威尔曾利用其国务卿约翰·福斯特·杜勒斯 (John Foster Dulles) 扮演“坏警察”，以制造关于美国将采取多大行动的不确定性，而尼克松和基辛格则交换了角色。白宫录音带记录了他们讨论基辛格在世界各地奔走，通过告诉其他国家他无法控制自己的老板，来鼓励这些国家进行合作。

博伊斯认为，特朗普在那些改变了美国外交政策的行为中，自觉地继承了这一传统，

唐纳德·特朗普 2025 年在卡塔尔的乌代德空军基地向部队发表讲话，从强加关税到威胁购买格陵兰岛，以及在椭圆形办公室里对弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基大吼大叫。毫无疑问，特朗普在不同时期确实认为自己就是在这么做。他显然相信，尽可能地夸夸其气是最好的谈判方式，并且经常说这就是他的计划，其风格就像一个在接受制片人采访谈论战术的真人秀参赛者。

在他第一次总统竞选期间就有一个早期的例子，当时他拒绝排除对伊斯兰国使用战术核武器的可能性：“我永远不会排除任何可能性……我不想告诉你，因为起码我想让他们认为我们可能会使用它们”。在2024年的竞选期间，他告诉《华尔街日报》，他不需要对中国使用武力，因为习主席“尊重我，而且他知道我他妈的疯了”。（这些说法之间存在矛盾，他似乎并未意识到。）他的助手们经常援引“疯子理论”来为其行为辩护。

作者对那些利用讨论“疯子理论”作为切入点来称特朗普为疯子的评论员表示恼火，并指出这种方法的全部要点就在于让自己看起来像个疯子，而实际上却是在采取战略。但问题不在于特朗普是否疯狂，而在于他完全可以被预测。他在 Truth Social 平台上的胡言乱语可能是不连贯的，但他运作的大框架是一致的：他是个欺凌者。只要他认为可以利用美国巨大的军事和经济实力来削弱、贬低并强迫他人效忠，他就会这么做。而当他的行为面临任何形式的严重后果时，他就会退缩。不断强调自己有多强硬，甚至点名提到“疯子理论”，这绝不是一个真正试图在战略上保持不可预测的人会做的事。尼克松从未在公开场合承认过这个想法（尽管最终他对此的使用未能结束越南战争，因为没有人真正相信他疯了）。虽然其他国家发现特朗普难以打交道，但他们已经意识到，对付他的最佳方式是将奉承、伪装顺从以及耐心等待结合起来。由于他既不在乎结果，也无法在任何事情上保持超过几周的注意力，因此可以用这种方式有效地管理他。

为了证明他对“疯子理论”关注的合理性，博伊斯（Boys）刻意给特朗普留了余地，但这极大地损害了他整体论点的说服力。在讨论关税时，他接受了总统决定对加拿大征收关税是“部分为了遏制芬太尼通过北部边境流入”的说法——尽管这显然是胡扯。进入美国的非法芬太尼中，经由加拿大的不足 1%。博伊斯将与乌克兰达成的以获取稀土矿产作为军事支持报酬的协议描述为一项成就，而实际上这显然只是为了让特朗普闭嘴的诡计。同样，去年对伊朗核设施的轰炸被描述为“特朗普愿意履行其威胁”的证据，尽管面对他相反的主张，他实际上并未能摧毁这些核设施。事实上，他最终迫使以色列的本雅明·内塔尼亚胡停止进一步的轰炸行动。

在所有这些问题上，特朗普的策略都没有奏效。美国的贸易逆差没有改变。格陵兰岛没有被卖掉。乌克兰没有被强迫与俄罗斯达成和平协议。伊朗的核能力依然存在。在博伊斯的书完稿后开始的当前与伊朗的冲突，是最清晰的证据，表明其他国家已经看穿了特朗普的虚张声势和伪装的好战。尽管多次威胁要引发世界末日，但伊朗人并未退缩，并且他们识破了特朗普的虚张声势，因为他似乎不愿承担升级局势带来的经济后果。中国在管理贸易战时采取了类似的方法，在迫使芯片出口做出让步的同时，寻找规避关税的方法。

或许唯一能证明特朗普实现了美国长期目标的是，他迫使欧洲国家增加了国防开支，尽管其速度和幅度远未达到他们承诺的程度。博伊斯将此作为“疯子理论”有效的例子，认为威胁抛弃能够促使其他北约成员国顺从。但这其中没有任何不可预测性。特朗普已经明确表示，他对欧洲安全没有实质性的兴趣。这不是虚张声势，而是纯粹的敌意。而这种对前盟友利益之蔑视的代价，就是他们开始将美国排除在外。乌克兰不再依赖美国人，这使得特朗普失去了强迫达成和平协议的任何筹码。

14 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © BRENNAN WELLINGER / SEP 2025 GETTY IMAGES ---

在俄罗斯提出的条件上。日益增多的“中等强国”正就国防与安全事务开展互利合作。，特朗普在几乎没有获得什么利益的情况下，削弱了美国的全球地位。人们很容易将此归结为疯狂，但实际上，这仅仅是一位能力有限的总统所表现出的无能。对于某些人来说，美国足迹的减少是一件好事，即便这种减少是通过非传统且往往令人尴尬的方式实现的。特朗普过去曾获得过“现实主义者”的初步支持，这些人多年来一直抱怨美国的帝国主义过度扩张以及理想主义的世界构建使命。其中最具影响力的人物之一埃尔布里奇·科尔比（Elbridge Colby）在更名后的战争部担任高级职务。其他人，如约翰·米尔斯海默（John Mearsheimer），在赞赏特朗普对自由干涉主义的怀疑以及他愿意批评北约向东欧扩张的同时，也对他逻辑混乱且缺乏执行力表示遗憾。对现实主义者而言不幸的是，在第二任期内，总统发现自己相当享受使用军队，这让那些认为他是盟友的人感到沮丧——尤其是他的副总统J. D. 万斯（J. D. Vance）以及媒体中的“美国优先”支持者，如塔克·卡尔森（Tucker Carlson）。那些尚未幻灭的人发现，伊朗冲突是一次令人清醒的经历——很难想象还有比这更明显的毫无意义的干预案例：其目标模糊且不切实际，且每天都在改变，至今仍在改变。在《同辈之首》（First Among Equals）一书中，艾玛·阿什福德（Emma Ashford）并未试图为特朗普在任期间的行为辩护，而是提出了一套现实主义方案，这与他在2016年竞选期间表达的对美国冒险主义的反对意见更为一致。阿什福德反对“美国优先”的措辞，因为这无法被潜在盟友接受：没有人喜欢霸凌者。但她的建议（她称之为“现实主义国际主义”）正是沿着这个方向，寻求缩减美国的军事目标和成本。随着美国作为唯一全球霸主的短暂时刻走向终结，阿什福德希望“中等强国”能填补空白，以便美国纳税人能看到更多资金被用于国内需求。

近几十年来，由于更具野心的美国战略的失败，所谓的现实主义者得到了增强。俄罗斯、中国和其他专制国家并没有像许多人在冷战后几年所希望的那样，通过资本主义转化为自由民主制。现在几乎所有人都承认，9 / 11之后的阿富汗和伊拉克入侵是历史规模的灾难，在付出巨大的人员和资金代价的同时，削弱了美国的道德和军事权威。美国的人道主义干预记录参差不齐：他们阻止了斯洛博丹·米洛舍维奇（Slobodan Milošević）屠杀科索沃阿尔巴尼亚人，但在索马里和利比亚失败了。现实主义者还认为，乌克兰冲突是20世纪90年代和21世纪初过度扩张的直接结果，因为美国及其西方盟友通过干涉俄罗斯的“利益范围”而对其造成了不必要的挑衅——尽管其他人会指出，弗拉基米尔·普京（Vladimir Putin）自身的帝国幻想可能与此关系更大。在实际操作层面，阿什福德呼吁美国军队在十年内分阶段从欧洲和中东撤出，认为在那里维持如此大规模存在（冷战和石油）的战略基础已不再成立。她主张这将给欧洲人足够的时间来整顿自身并支付自己的国防费用，尤其是考虑到俄罗斯军队在乌克兰战争中已严重损耗。在中东，她希望关闭大多数基地，仅保留一支小型海军力量以保障航道安全。中国现在是美国面临的主要战略风险，因此她说，需要在那里的投入更多关注，但重点应放在遏制以及培养区域盟友，以便在未来承担更多职责。

现实主义在鼓励政策制定者思考世界的真实面貌并设定可行目标方面是一个有用的视角。特朗普在伊朗的惨败再次提醒人们（如果还需要提醒的话），在评估可能结果时缺乏明确目标就动用武力是一个糟糕的主意。我们可能认为帮助伊朗人民推翻一个寄生且残暴的政权是好事，但通过军事手段来实现这一点并没有实际可行的方法。然而，现实主义的问题——尤其是阿什福德所设定的那种僵化表述——在于它假设无论情况如何，对利益进行狭隘的评估始终是正确的做法。乌克兰就是一个明显的例子。尽管作者不愿明确说明，但其立场的逻辑不仅是美国现在不应该支持乌克兰，而且考虑到美国在结果中缺乏直接利益，最初就不应该支持。在名为“没有人爱政治现实主义者”的章节中，阿什福德指出，“关于乌克兰战争——以及美国在该冲突中利益有限——的现实主义论点，在那些崇拜单极时刻自由主义思想的评论界人士中并不受欢迎”。但她没有解释为什么这些人是错的。如果没有拜登政府在最初几年提供的支持，乌克兰很可能已经崩溃，从而导致俄罗斯更加肆无忌惮。避免这种情况毫无疑问是一件好事。抱怨这违反了某种整洁的大战略方法，其本身就是现实主义思考的失败。一个人不需要认为美国能够或应该应对每一次人道主义危机或独裁暴行，就能认为在能够合理提供帮助且目标明确且可实现时，美国应该伸出援手。客观地看待世界既意味着在面对道德愤慨时保持谨慎，也意味着承认理想主义的解决方案有时同样是正确的。比尔·克林顿决定干预科索沃也违反了对美国利益的狭隘理解，但它奏效了，并挽救了无数生命。现实主义者无疑会争辩说，这种短期成功并不值得它所带来的后果，即加强了那种认为美国应该干预所有地方的错误信念。但这恰恰是一个支持根据具体情况具体分析的论点，并承认在一个混乱且不公平的世界中，逻辑一致性并非总能实现。同样的情况也适用于现实主义者看待与盟友关系的观点，这也是与特朗普外交政策重叠最明显的地方。阿什福德认为，自由干预主义者对永久联盟（尤其是北约）的痴迷，导致美国在他人寻求搭便车时承担沉重的成本和责任，同时使其难以从不再具有战略优先地位的地区撤军。作者赞同地引用了格伦·斯奈德的话：“除了作为应对敌方威胁的反应外，联盟没有任何意义”。虽然联盟和伙伴关系可能会在目的消失后依然存在，使无益的信念僵化并构成一种虚假的经济效益——内塔尼亚胡对多任总统的掌控或许是最明显的例子——但斯奈德的观点显然是不正确的。超越交易性质、建立在历史和共同信念之上的联盟，具有超出眼前威胁问题之外的价值。它们建立的关系使得人们能够对可能未被预见的挑战做出快速反应。在 9 / 11 事件之后，北约联盟促使人们对美国产生了真正的支持浪潮（即便这种支持被乔治·W·布什误用了）。此类联盟还有助于为更广泛的非军事目标争取支持。人们只能希望，在某个时刻，一位总统能够承认气候变化的成本以及管理这些成本所需的国际协调水平。

特朗普时期联盟的削减并未使美国变得更强大、更专注，反而使其日益孤立，在军事支出并未减少的同时，也丧失了在阿富汗和伊拉克战争后所剩下的任何道德权威。这既不符合美国的利益，也不符合世界的利益。同样，真正的现实主义要求一种定制化的联盟方法，承认更广泛的因素，并能够根据不同情况采取不同方案。只要特朗普担任总统，美国的外交政策就缺乏连贯性，除了偶尔再次强调他长期以来执着的那些心结。世界将继续尝试绕过他，且很可能会成功。更大的问题是接下来会发生什么。万斯（Vance）的外交政策无疑会比阿什福德（Ashford）所希望的更令人厌恶，尽管它在试图减少美国全球承诺的意义上会更加一致地表现出“现实主义”。但另一方呢？人们希望未来的民主党总统能尝试为美国寻找一个角色，既承认干预的局限性，以更谦卑的态度应对全球挑战，同时理解美国领导力仍有其位置，且该国的非凡力量在适当的情况下仍可用于造福世界。萨姆·弗里德曼（Sam Freedman）是《失败国家：为什么一切都失效以及我们如何修复它》（Failed State: Why nothing works and how we fix it, 2024）一书的作者。他撰写 Comment Is Freed Substack 专栏。IN SIGHT INTERPRETATION COMMENT: PRESERVOICE, ADVANCE

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古典学 # 希腊与罗马课程

古典研究的道德智慧

Barbara Graziosi

《慰藉》（Consolations） 来自古代世界的永恒智慧，适用于每一天 Charlotte Whittle 译 400页。Hodder and Stoughton 出版。£22.

Emily Katz Anhalt 《极化时代的古代智慧》（Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times） 为什么人类需要希罗多突——这位历史之父 320页。耶鲁大学出版社。£25 (US$30).

两本新书顺应了将古代智慧应用于解决当代问题的日益增长的趋势。在《慰藉》中，拥有古典学博士学位的记者 Irene Vallejo 收集了她最初发表在西班牙《国家报》（El País）上的近 200 篇随笔，并由 Charlotte Whittle 精美地翻译成英文。“被忽视的幸福”、“异国女性”、“脆弱的民主”和“有条件的自由”仅是其中的部分主题，这些主题与同样多样化的古代文献相结合地展开讨论。在《极化时代的古代智慧》中，纽约莎拉劳伦斯学院的古典学教授 Emily Katz Anhalt 翻译并解读了希罗多突关于希波战争历史（《历史》，约公元前 430 年写成）中的关键片段，并从中挖掘出道德启示：“论幸福”、“论异域习俗”、“论政治平等”和“论自由”是她的部分章节标题。

两位作者有着共同的兴趣，尽管她们在对待古代和当下时刻的方法上有所不同。她们分别作为记者和教授的专业训练在一定程度上解释了这一点，但她们在取向方面也呈现出明显的欧洲和北美特征。Vallejo 将自己定位为塞内卡和西塞罗等哲学家的古代传统的继承者，这些人“撰写被称为‘慰藉’的短文，旨在为面对丧失和悲痛的读者提供安慰”。并非她所有的随笔都探讨存在主义焦虑或提供哲学洞见，但它们都兑现了简洁的承诺。凭借记者的纪律，每篇作品的长度仅略超过一页——且每一篇都提供了一定程度的慰藉，或者至少是惊喜、智慧与幽默的结合。

对于 Vallejo 而言，丧失并不总是关乎生死，或者至少不是直接相关。在其中一篇随笔中，她担心头发稀疏，并建议了几种古代疗法。在另一篇中，她从孔子对一位老妇人的描述中获得灵感，特别是“她优雅的微笑所产生的可爱皱纹”。在另一篇名为《最好的酱汁》的文章中，她根本没有提供任何慰藉，除非你恰好来自西班牙城市卡塔赫纳，在这种情况下，你可能会感到地方自豪，因为最昂贵的鱼酱（garum，一种基于发酵鱼的古代调味品）是在那里制造的：“罗马帝国里有东西闻起来腐烂了，但奇怪的是，对于其制造商和分销商来说，生意却异常红火”。

在轻松的随笔之间，几篇作品证明了 Vallejo 目标的严肃性。在《充满希望的人》中，埃斯库罗斯和阿尔贝·加缪帮助她得出结论，“悲剧性的悲观主义必须等待更好的时代”。在《边境地带》中，她观察到“漫画起源于边缘——字面意义上的边缘”，随后描述了古代莎草纸边缘的各种绘画。在《尤利西斯综合征》中，她坚持认为“恐吓移民会粉碎我们自己的安全感”。

《慰藉》就像一场悠闲的咖啡谈话，以修养良好的才智、幽默感和一种整体的自在感处理各种主题。平凡之事与重大之事被给予同等的空间；金钱被反复提及为无关紧要；幸福包括希望成为我们本身；而我们是谁，则源于处于平衡状态的多样化关系。序言建议这些随笔可以按任何顺序阅读，但 Vallejo 在书的开头敏锐地引入了希腊语中的 schole 概念，该词演变为英语中的“school”（学校），但最初的意思是“闲暇”。

卡茨·安哈尔特（Katz Anhalt）则不那么悠闲，她的方法更具驱动力。她认为当代文化中存在一个问题——极化——并且她计划解决它。她选择的盟友起初可能显得令人费解：希罗多德在《历史》的开篇就将“希腊人”与“蛮族”置于极端的对立之中。尽管如此，她的使命是通过翻译和解释希罗多德的部分篇章，从而拯救世界。最后一章《维护人性》总结了所学到的教训：简化且极化的思维将我们彼此对立——而恰恰在此时，我们的生存取决于我们共同面对事实、合作并创新的能力。威权主义的虚假承诺吸引了那些没有真正深思熟虑的人。我非常赞同卡茨·安哈尔特得出的结论，而且在她推导这些结论的过程中，她与希罗多德的互动有许多值得学习之处。然而，极化问题证明难以逃避。她反复将希腊式的“基于证据的、理性的调查与评估”与埃及、波斯、巴比伦以及更广泛意义上的蛮族的“闭塞”相对立，并坚持认为这种闭塞源于对权威盲目的服从。问题在于，这种对立在多大程度上反映了她自己的世界观，又在多大程度上代表了希罗多德的思想。换句话说：利用古代智慧来解决现代问题，可能会抹除古代文献与现代阐释者之间的距离。卡茨·安哈尔特确实指出，希罗多德有时发现外国的方式比希腊人的方式更“理性”，她赞赏他的立场，认为这在“道德绝对主义”和“道德相对主义”之间开辟了一条路径。然而，她自己从未从非希腊的古代文明中汲取灵感或教益。事实上，她认为仅通过研究希罗多德就能教授多元主义。她将他呈现为希腊精神的化身，尽管他经常与同胞希腊人的主流观点保持距离，并为他声称从蛮族线人那里学到的立场辩护。他是否真的从外国人那里学到了什么，或者仅仅是将他们刻画为“他者”——即希腊人的极对立面，这一点更难确定。针对这一问题的“基于证据”的方法必然涉及研究波斯、埃及和巴比伦的文献，并在这些文献的照亮下评估希罗多德。近期的学术研究通过正是这样做而取得了很大进展。但卡茨·安哈尔特几乎没有采用这种方法。甚至像伊恩·莫耶（Ian Moyer）的《埃及与希腊主义的极限》（Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism，2011年）或约翰内斯·豪博尔德（Johannes Haubold）的《希腊与美索不达米亚：文学对话》（Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in literature，2013年）这类获奖书籍，也没有出现在她的参考文献中。也许她写作的体裁又在一定程度上负有责任：解决全球问题被置于跨学科协作之上，尽管后者可能在克服极化方面有所帮助。瓦列霍（Vallejo）同样会从更强的学术支撑中获益：如果在她的书末添加对古代文献的精确引用，将增加《慰藉》（Consolations）的价值。她偶尔会提供足够的细节让读者识别古代文本，但有时我发现没有任何线索能帮我追踪到她心中所指的古代资料。一个关于国王让两名大臣竞争的故事（“你知道你的同僚将获得双倍奖励，那么你希望我给你什么？”“刺瞎我的一只眼睛”）被呈现为一个“东方故事”，没有进一步的细节。我知道一个类似的拉丁语故事，这让我好奇，是一个关于两个邻居向朱庇特祈祷的古代轶事向东传播，在给国王和大臣的警告中找到了新用途，还是一个东方故事传到了拉丁西方。

无论情况如何，优秀的故事确实倾向于传播，并跨越意识形态上的东西方分歧。由此可见，正如卡茨·安哈尔特（Katz Anhalt）所暗示的，古代和外国的故事不仅仅是训练我们区分真伪的有用练习。它们还能触及我们的好奇心、惊叹、古怪甚至是不确定性。瓦列霍（Vallejo）充分展现了这些特质，尽管在我看来，她的观点偶尔显得过于安逸，且或许具体到过于欧洲化。例如，她假设了罗马血统（“我们，他们的后裔”），并以一个邀请结束，即“反思我们征服成果的脆弱性：水、空气、和平、权利和民主”。在美国，承认“脆弱性”可能会招致嘲笑，尤其是如果你具有欧洲血统。毕竟，白人生活在被征服者的土地上，他们对此的控制似乎并不脆弱。卡茨·安哈尔特为自己和读者主张的古代血统并不像瓦列乔的那样广泛。它更狭隘地聚焦于政治，并以关于进步的思考而非关于维持特权的思考作为结尾。“古代雅典人，”她写道，“从未意识到民主政府巨大的平等主义和人道主义潜力。希罗多图使我们能够做得更好。”芭芭拉·格拉齐奥西（Barbara Graziosi）是普林斯顿大学的尤因希腊语教授（Ewing Professor of Greek）以及爱丁堡大学的访问利文蒂斯讲席教授（Visiting Leventis Chair）。她最近的一本书是《古典、爱、革命：路易吉·塞滕布里尼的遗产》（Classics, Love, Revolution: The legacies of Luigi Settembrini），2024年出版。

乔尔乔内（Giorgione）的作品《三位哲学家》，约1508-09 16 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © G. ARTHUR GALLERY ---

英语化的荷马

古典史诗的持久影响

彼得·麦克唐纳 (Peter McDonald)

艾米莉·威尔逊 (Emily Wilson) 《穿越古代文学之旅》(Journeys through ancient literature) 280页。Profile出版社。平装本，£12.99。

亨利·鲍尔 (Henry Power) 《被荷马萦绕》(Homer-Haunted) 一位古代诗人的诸多后世生命 352页。Bloomsbury出版社。£25。

“很有可能，”亚历山大·波普在翻译《伊利亚特》（1715-20年）时写道，“作者在当时使用这些词语时，其含义绝没有我们在翻译成现代语言时赋予它们的那么多。”对于那些追求“字面”翻译的人来说，这可能是令人恐惧的；而对于诗人来说，这则具有潜在的解放意义。受众则是另一回事。正如波普所言，有志于翻译的人“必须希望能取悦少数人，即那些既有诗意品味又具备足够学识的人”。然而，“学识”和“诗意品味”各有其陷阱，因为“纯粹的现代才子除了现代之物外什么都不喜欢，而书呆子除了希腊之物外什么都不喜欢”。三个世纪以来，才子和书呆子发生了很大变化，但他们并未消失。古典文本永远是古老的，而其译本注定永远是现代的，因此，陌生与熟悉必须以某种方式相遇；但它们未必能和谐相处。

一种特殊的尴尬在于“忠实度”的问题。文献学和文本批评在该主题上有很多论述，但它们从未擅长于理解：在处理古代作品的“诗意”时，此类学识为何不能拥有最终决定权。

艾米莉·威尔逊翻译了两部荷马史诗，是当代最著名的荷马翻译家。这实至名归，因为她简洁的英语风格实现了任何翻译中最重要的一点：它没有妨碍荷马地表达。她对文学翻译中的关键问题有深刻思考，她的论文集《跨越酒色之海》(Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea) 包含了关于埃斯库罗斯、德摩斯梯尼和阿里斯托芬，以及普劳图斯、特伦提乌斯和卡图卢斯的文章。威尔逊能可靠地敏锐捕捉文化上的细微差别和复杂性——尤其是我们自身的文化——并且出色地将古典学者的知识转化为优秀评论写作的生动性与不傲慢的智慧。书中有很多值得商榷之处，但这恰恰表明其中蕴含着丰富的探讨：这部启发性的合集倾向于开启课题而非将其终结。

核心问题在于荷马。威尔逊希望就她的翻译澄清一些事情，并将其置于语境之中。考虑到社交媒体上对其荷马译本的猛烈攻击——指责其为所谓的“觉醒”主义（woke）对文化奠基文本的背叛，且言论极其愚蠢——这种做法似乎是合理的。这些攻击几乎没有任何价值，除非偶尔有人坚持探讨希腊语的“含义”，声称威尔逊出于自身的意识形态利益而将其译错或忽略。当然，这种试图扮演书呆子的行为纯属无稽之谈，而波普（无论怎么衡量，他都是比威尔逊“自由”得多的翻译家）定会觉得这种行为拙劣得令人发笑。

威尔逊并不总是能看到事情宽容的一面。她最近在《伦敦书评》(LRB) 中对克里斯托弗·诺兰电影的抨击，或许能揭示这部备受赞誉的大众娱乐作品的一些缺陷，但其激烈的情绪掩盖了这种洞察力，而且这样做可能并不明智（此类行为会引发即时的争吵且无人获胜——这并非批判性思考和讨论的运作方式）。至于她的键盘敌人，她可能过于认真了：当她说“《奧德賽》现在已成为超正典，且经常被视为‘西方文明’的源头，无论那是指什么”时，她让步太多了。这部诗作是许多比这更重要之物的“源头”，而她的最后一句话纯粹是出于愤慨，尽管这可能会激起对手进一步的愤怒。这本书表明，就文学遗产和价值而言，她非常清楚什么是“西方文明”；而且，她能将其专业地应用于评论实践之中。

更令人担忧的是她对（里士蒙·拉蒂莫尔译本的）荷马的评论，称“他并未声称自己在‘写诗’，无论那究竟是指什么”。在这种情况下，愤怒是没有理由的：威尔逊将她的译作作为诗歌呈现，因此她确实应该能够说明诗歌是什么。她的荷马译本虽然在许多方面都很出色，但作为诗歌则逊色一些。像许多诗歌译者一样，威尔逊（或许受到了对其学术领域至关重要的韵律分析的影响）陷入了这样一个谬误，即认为格律造就了诗歌。她平铺直叙地使用无韵诗，将其视为一种载体而非媒介；它仅用于承载她的翻译，而非塑造翻译。诗歌与学术虽然有时相互吸引，但其关系历史一直充满波折。威尔逊关于伊迪丝·汉密尔顿（二十世纪美国古典文化推广的畅销书作者）的论文敏锐地关注了此类问题，但仍无法摆脱一种不安，即“最成功的古典文学普及作品是由那些本身并非古典学家的作者所创作的”。更广泛的文化政治背景众所周知。德里克·沃尔科特在诗作《奥美罗斯》（Omeros，1990）中对荷马进行了精彩的重塑，他指出“英国人认为荷马属于他们……是一首被翻译成希腊语的英国诗”。沃尔科特是亨利·鲍尔那部大胆且灵动的《荷马之魂》（Homer-Haunted）中的优秀案例研究之一，书中通过十六位英语诗人与荷马在创作亲密度上的不同程度来探讨他们。有些人，如波普，通过大规模的翻译与伟大的原著不可分割地结合在一起（他与乔治·查普曼分别拥有独立章节），而另一些人则是受荷马影响的诗人，而非严格意义上的译者。在这个群体中，约翰·济慈是过去所谓的“不识希腊语的读者”的杰出代表，荷马为他点燃了诗意的导火索。鲍尔很好地传达了济慈十四行诗《初读查普曼译荷马》的创作背景，以及这位年轻诗人通过查普曼的荷马诗句之镜发现自我时那种艺术重生的感觉。伊顿公学旧生珀西·比希·雪莱想接触济慈并教他希腊语；但他没抓到重点，因为济慈已经拥有了他所需的所有希腊语。然而，为十九世纪提供最持久的荷马诗歌版本（或至少是《伊利亚特》版本）的是波普而非查普曼。虽然波普的其他诗作在很大程度上失去了对当代口味的吸引力，但他的荷马译本却难以撼动。这并非因为缺乏尝试：威廉·考珀的《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》——采用无韵诗而非波普式的英雄双行体——曾产生过自己的影响，但被马修·阿诺德致命地抨击为伪米尔顿风格，从此再未完全恢复。鲍尔本可以在此处提供见解，但并未这样做：他对考珀译本中“矫揉造作、伪米尔顿式无韵诗”的概括性谴责，是这部原本可靠的书中的唯一一次严重的批评误判。《任务》（The Task，1785）的作者是米尔顿与华兹华斯之间最重要的一位无韵诗实践者，在面对古希腊语时，他并未丧失这种特殊的才华。

Power著作的一个优点在于，它能够观察到荷马在许多其他诗人身上产生的生成力量，无论这些诗人是否将自己的作品视为“翻译”。当Power探讨接近现代的时期时，这一点变得有些草率，而且人们怀疑在少数情况下，对荷马相对随意的使用在评论中被过度推崇了。但Power取得的显而易见成就是很多，他对伊丽莎白·巴雷特·勃朗宁、希尔达·杜利特尔（H.D.）以及克里斯托弗·洛格（Wilson对此也评价得很好）的论述具有启发性。Power关于阿诺德的章节深刻且透彻，但奇怪的是，对于阿诺德关于翻译荷马的讲座却几乎没有提及。像任何伟大的评论家一样，阿诺德也可能大错特错：他规定英语六步格（hexameter）是完整荷马翻译的合适格律，这仍然是一个严重的错误。然而，在讲座过程中，他能够运用这种格律，将荷马的作品创作出美丽的片段，作为某人某天可能会做到的“样本”（尽管不是今天，也不是由他来做）。这些片段实际上本身就是诗歌，并且是他写过的最好的作品之列。阿诺德可能完全没有意识到自己已经开启了一场革命，即将叙事诗浓缩为更短的抒情瞬间。Power在书中对爱丽丝·奥斯瓦尔德在《纪念》（Memorial，2011）一书中对《伊利亚特》进行“挖掘”的野心印象深刻，他注意到叙事内容如何像幽灵一样消失了。这是一种创造性的突破，还是一种崩溃？Power没有深入探讨这个问题。现代爱尔兰诗人迈克尔·隆利为Power的这本书提供了标题；但作为将荷马作品从史诗般的宏大转向抒情强度的关键人物，他实际上应该拥有一个独立的实质性章节。毕竟，短诗绝非轻浅；如果我们是在寻找诗歌（“无论那是什么”），那么隆利许多片段式的翻译，是近几十年来荷马最接近那种或许无法定义但却至关重要的东西的作品。彼得·麦克唐纳对《荷马赞歌》（The Homeric Hymns, 2016,）的翻译是诗歌图书协会推荐的译本，并入围了伦敦希腊奖（London Hellenic prize）的短名单。

“荷马弹琴歌唱”，费利克斯·博伊塞利埃，19世纪早期 © CAROL PHILLIPS / GETTY PHOTOS 2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文学 supplement》 17 --- 评论

威尔斯先生与布坎南先生

这位小说家是如何与他的出版商闹翻的

凯特·麦克唐纳（Kate Macdonald）

在二十世纪初，H. G. 威尔斯（H. G. Wells）为了赚钱而不断地工作。对他而言，在撰写一部小说的同时，与多家出版商协商前一部作品的出售以及早期作品的再版权，并非罕见之举。虽然他使用了文学经纪人的服务，但他能够独立处理复杂的合同事宜，并利用其强势的个性及其名气来敲定交易。

1908年春夏季，威尔斯正在写一部非常私人化的小说——《安·维罗妮卡》（Ann Veronica）。情节取材于他与安伯·里夫斯（Amber Reeves）的私情，后者是一名二十一岁的本科生，也是他的第二任妻子凯瑟琳（Catherine）的好友。根据大多数威尔斯传记作者的说法，里夫斯决心为威尔斯生孩子，而他承诺将《安·维罗妮卡》献给他们尚未受孕的女儿，他们已经将其称作安娜-简（Anna-Jane）。

一段已经如此地在空中楼阁般构思的私情需要财务规划。威尔斯知道，凯瑟琳和他们的两个儿子仍需要抚养，而如果安伯的家人拒绝出钱，安伯和孩子则需要一个独立的住所。1908年6月，威尔斯接触了苏格兰出版公司托马斯·尼尔森（Thomas Nelson's），以£950的高价向其提供《基普斯》（Kipps，1905年）的再版权。

对于威尔斯来说，尼尔森公司是一个奇怪的选择。该公司最著名的是教育和基督教出版物，以及对圣经版本的垄断。而威尔斯由于部分作品的恶名，成为了一个难以出版的作者：当时已经有循环图书馆拒绝存放他的书，这反过来影响了出版商的利润。

1907年，尼尔森公司雇佣了一名新员工来管理其伦敦办公室，他就是约翰·布坎（John Buchan）。当时三十出头的布坎已经出版了十七本书——包括小说、短篇小说集和非虚构作品——而《三十九级阶梯》（The Thirty-Nine Steps）以及其他让他成名的小说尚未面世。1896年他在牛津大学的第一年曾担任前卫出版商约翰·莱恩（John Lane）的审稿人，在这一角色中，他以著名的敏锐眼光极力推荐了阿诺德·本内特（Arnold Bennett）的第一部小说《来自北方的人》（A Man From the North，1898年）。

离开牛津后，布坎学习法律，并在南非担任过一段时间负责土地重新分配的帝国公务员。在他通过与合伙人之一汤米·尼尔森（Tommy Nelson）的友谊获得尼尔森公司的这份工作时——《安·维罗妮卡》的扉页，1909年——布坎是一个积极进取、充满想法且擅长结交高层朋友的人。他潜心于在作家、政治家和贵族之间建立网络。例如，关于拟议出版的维多利亚女王书信集，他准确地知道该接触谁。在进入尼尔森公司八个月后的蜜月期间，他给办公室写信保证，如果需要他去美国出差，他可以随时返回——这相当于爱德华时代那个无论何时都不能关机的科技男。

布坎是一个极其高效的多任务处理者，但或许也有一点天真。我们之所以知道这一切，是因为爱丁堡大学图书馆遗产收藏馆中的尼尔森公司档案，构成了一份卓越的爱德华时代内部出版记录。我花了很多年研究这些信件，揭示布坎实际所做的工作。他是尼尔森公司的营销经理、版权经理、法律顾问、编辑和文案、翻译顾问以及图片研究员；他对系列丛书的设计持有强烈的观点。他协商

与作者及其代理人进行交涉。他构思新方案，捕捉良好的商业机会。他开发了最早的廉价再版系列之一——“尼尔森七便士系列”（Nelson's Sevenpennies）。近二十年前（2007年8月10日），我在《泰晤士文學 supplements》中写过关于发现布坎在尼尔森被完全遗忘的一战杂志《战争》（The War）中所扮演角色的文章：是他策划了该杂志，并且在近两年的时间里负责编辑并承担了大部分撰稿工作。去年年底，爱丁堡大学图书馆现代文学收藏馆馆长保罗·巴纳比（Paul Barnaby）与我联系，告知他发现了一盒未编目的布坎给尼尔森的信件。这508封信的日期从1906年年底到1908年底，比我之前见过的布坎出版生涯中任何信件都要早。乍一看，它们似乎大同小异：打字机打印的抄本以及他那糟糕手写体的原件，证明了他多任务处理的热情以及对不同项目的自发建议。布坎与他在爱丁堡的同行乔治·布朗（George Brown）之间的信件往来频繁得像电子邮件，因为两人每天会就共同工作的内容互写数封信，布坎负责处理作者、代理人和报社，而布朗则担任出版商的生产经理和印刷监督。重新发现的信件还为布坎在扩展尼尔森业务方面的才智提供了新证据。他热衷于现代广告，并考虑摆脱传统的展示广告。“书摊上大量的红色和黄色比每周两页的《每日邮报》更能吸引公众”（1907年5月24日）。他设计书脊布局，设计传单和插页，并在“七便士系列”的广告中推广了一张伯明翰书店陈列的照片。他与名流权贵交往：“昨晚晚餐时我坐在巴里夫人旁边，她告诉我，她丈夫前几天回家时带回了我们[七便士系列]全部六本书，对此感到非常高兴”（1907年5月30日）。当时的巴里夫人正深陷与吉尔伯特·坎南（Gilbert Cannan）的私情，并与J. M. 巴里分居，所以这或许是一种表演性的妻子身份展示。1908年，布坎敦促布朗考虑与博利尤的蒙塔古勋爵（Lord Montagu of Beaulieu， “他是我的妻表兄”）合作，印刷其先驱性的汽车指南书，并让尼尔森的图书在蒙塔古的杂志《汽车》（The Car）的皮卡迪利商店销售。布坎热衷于填补市场空白，敦促布朗考虑出版乔治·道格拉斯·布朗（George Douglas Brown）的激进小说《绿窗户之屋》（The House with the Green Shutters，1901年）的新版本，因为该书已绝版但仍有需求。当布朗反对在“七便士系列”中接纳此类“令人不快”的故事时，布坎反驳道：“我认为，如果试图让该系列仅服务于那些除了女学生故事外读不进任何小说的人，那将是一个巨大的错误。[但]我会严格排除任何真正令人不快的书，而且我认为，还要排除那些以愚蠢方式装作令人不快的书”（1907年11月5日）。到1908年中期，布坎建议选用演员兼活动家伊丽莎白·罗宾斯（Elizabeth Robins）的作品（“全国有数十万名女权主义者，其中大多数人很穷，买不起一本6先令的书，但《皈依者》（The Convert）很容易成为她们事业的圣经”；1908年7月29日）；历史冒险小说女王奥尔齐男爵夫人（Baroness Orczy）；傲慢的维多利亚时代畅销书作家玛丽·伊丽莎白·布拉顿（Mary Elizabeth Braddon）；感伤现实主义者弗朗西斯·霍奇森·伯内特（Frances Hodgson Burnett）；以及古灵精怪的伊丽莎白·冯·阿尼姆（Elizabeth von Arnim）。他为“七便士系列”推介的许多作家在19世纪就已大获成功：即便在布坎开发“新小说”书单时，维多利亚时代的文化在英国出版业中依然占据主导地位。正是在这种背景下，威尔斯和布坎首次取得了联系。布坎正在寻找适合在“七便士系列”中再版的书目，并希望在1910年推出尼尔森的“新小说”系列。他拒绝了

18 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © 2026 by FRED WINSER WISCONSIN COMPANY --- 韋爾斯為《基普斯》（Kipps）的再版權開出了£950的報價（其首任出版商麥米倫公司曾拒絕重新出版該書）。談判持續進行，直到6月底，韋爾斯與布坎南就價格達成一致，定為£750, 其中還包括《愛與紐萊舍姆先生》（Love and Mr Lewisham，1900年）和《彗星之日》（In the Days of the Comet，1906年）的再版權。或許是受到對方對其小說顯而易見的熱情的鼓舞，1908年11月下旬，韋爾斯將他的新小說寄給了布坎南。這使得布坎南成為《安·維羅妮卡》（Ann Veronica）的首批讀者之一。1908年12月1, 1908, 他寫信給布朗（Brown）道：「我今天凌晨一直熬夜閱讀韋爾斯的新小說《安·維羅妮卡》。我覺得非常好，而且因為故事講述的是一個女孩逃離郊區家庭，成為一名女性參政論者和費邊社成員，其趣味性極具時效性。我傾向於認為我們能讓這本書大獲成功。結尾起初很荒謬，但現在他已經修改了」。考慮到我們已知韋爾斯推銷《安·維羅妮卡》的嘗試，這封信為他的談判策略以及布坎南的易受騙程度提供了新的視角。10月，弗雷德里克·麥米倫曾寫信給韋爾斯，表示他喜歡這部小說，但不會出版，因為這會冒犯麥米倫公司的公眾。韋爾斯的傳記作者邁克爾·舍本（Michael Sherborne）寫道：「對韋爾斯來說幸運的是，另一家出版商T·費舍爾·安溫（T Fisher Unwin）最近作為招募知名作者活動的一部分與他取得了聯繫。在麥米倫公司最終拒絕他的兩天前，他已經在與這位競爭對手進行談判了」。1908年11月，韋爾斯寫信給T·費舍爾·安溫，恢復關於一部未具名小說的討論，他希望出版商能以分三次支付共£1,470的价格接手：這幾乎可以肯定就是《安·維羅妮卡》。11月10, 他還提到哈欽森（Hutchinson）也是一個可能的出版商。在麥米倫公司出人意料地拒絕《安·維羅妮卡》之後，韋爾斯採取了廣撒網的策略；在第一次閱讀該書後，布坎南的興奮程度超過了理智。他在12月1 給愛丁堡同行（counterparts）的信中請求許可，在他們尚未看到原稿的情況下就先拿下這部小說。布朗同意了。第二天，布坎南再次寫信：「我不滿意韋爾斯的《安·維羅妮卡》的結尾。有一段我覺得完全沒有必要且愚蠢地不妥，所以我把它寄回給他修改了」。他沒有具體說明他認為令人反感的「段落」是哪一段，但很可能就是那段令小說評論家們感到震驚的內容：一名年輕女性坦率地要求與一名已婚男子建立性關係的描寫。「……你確定你想要我做什麼嗎？」 「我想要你。我想要你成為我的情人。我想把自己交給你。我想成為對你而言任何我能成為的角色。」她停頓了一會兒。「這夠清楚嗎？」她問道。儘管布坎南對「令人不快」的主題並不反感，但他相當

维特根斯坦对日光之恨 耶稣穿过开襟羊毛衫吗？谁在乎？德约科维奇是史上最伟大球员吗？你在开玩笑吗？那个D是怎么回事？你爱我吗？回答是或否。所有地狱之火都将被释放，这是真的吗？我有没有跟你说过那个保姆的事？关于俄罗斯冷冻治疗舱的事？为什么毒贩住在母亲家里？我有什资格评判？黄昏算夜晚吗？蚊子是蚋吗？为什么要抱怨？你独处时会哭吗？你会如何定义完美的吹风造型？是的，但卡夫卡死在谁的怀里？最近的骆驼在哪里？它快乐吗？你难道从来不说话吗？“身体润滑剂”是什么？话说在天堂他们说的是什么语言？你喜欢那个巧克力酱香肠吗？他为什么讨厌日光？谁说过“宽恕像头发一样掉进汤里”？（或者最好不要提到维特根斯坦？）你害怕什么？美甲店？（我问的问题是不是太多了？）保姆？我们需要宇航员吗？还有，请告诉我，我怎么知道该选哪个口味？我太喜欢它们所有口味了，简直无法忍受！

塞利玛·希尔 (SELIMA HILL)

塞利玛·希尔的下一部诗集《如果你想尖叫，请尖叫》(If You Want to Scream Please Scream) 将于 2027. 出版。她最近获得了国王金质诗歌奖。

意识到 Nelson's 出版社能出版什么以及不能出版什么，以及什么可能会破坏他们的销售额和声誉。他轻率地声称威尔斯会按照他的要求对文本进行修改；但威尔斯根本没有同意任何此类要求。在布坎南给布朗写了一封热情洋溢的信两周后，威尔斯写信给负责连载的经纪人菲利普·卡泽诺夫 (Philip Cazenove)，称 T Fisher Unwin 出版社已经“屈服”了，并且在“没看到书的情况下”就买下了《安·维罗妮卡》(Ann Veronica)，且“我没有收到任何出版商或编辑 的批评或类似的东西”。他所反感的那些来自出版商和编辑的批评，实际上来自那些真正读过这部小说的的人：弗雷德里克·麦克米伦 (Frederick Macmillan) 和约翰·布坎南 (John Buchan)。十个月后，在 1909, 10 月，T Fisher Unwin 按照威尔斯想要的形式出版了《安·维罗妮卡》。其中最刻薄的评论之一来自《旁观者》(Spectator) 杂志，由其编辑圣洛·斯特拉奇 (St Loe Strachey) 撰写。布坎南也是《旁观者》的撰稿人，仅在 1909 就在该杂志发表了 60 篇评论。他是否参与了其中？《安·维罗妮卡》题献给“A J”。在出版两个月后，安伯·里夫斯 (Amber Reeves) ——此时已成为布兰科·怀特夫人 (Mrs Blanco White) ——生下了威尔斯的女儿安娜-简 (Anna-Jane)。

Nelson's 出版社不久后确实出版了一部威尔斯的新小说：在 1910. 出版了《波利先生的故事》(The History of Mr Polly)。尽管大多数评论是正面的，《田野》(Field) 杂志将其谴责为“一个最令人厌恶的、无可救药的庸俗且肮脏不安的故事”。威尔斯愤怒不已，想要对该杂志提起诽谤诉讼，并请求 's 支持他。布坎南担心这一计划中的行动会玷污 's 的品牌，他认为《安·维罗妮卡》“肯定会被提起”（25, 1910）。到那时，这本书对他来说已成了“那本无法辩护的书”。最终，布朗裁定 's 不会在诽谤案中支持威尔斯，以保护其商业信息。

在 1910, 11 月，威尔斯向布坎南抱怨他卖给 's 的短篇小说仍未出版。布坎南建议布朗，威尔斯在法律上没有理由坚持要求出版，而且，对于 's 来说，最好将威尔斯的故事作为一部“七便士”系列丛书，这样该版本能尽可能地与围绕《新马基雅维利》(The New Machiavelli)（1910 首次在《英国评论》连载）的骚动——又一场骚动——区分开来，而麦克米伦和海涅曼 (Heinemann) 曾拒绝出版该书。（博德利出版社 (The Bodley Head) 在 1911 出版了它。）到那时，布坎南和布朗都充分意识到了与威尔斯谈判以及就其问题进行协商的困难。十年后，布坎南与威尔斯之间的积怨已深。正如布坎南在 20, 1920, 2 月的一封信中告诉布朗的那样，威尔斯是“我们接触过的、我见过的最令人厌恶的人，尽管我很了解他，但我一点也不喜欢他”。

凯特·麦克唐纳 (Kate Macdonald) 是牛津布鲁克斯大学牛津国际出版研究中心的访问研究员，曾任 Handheld Press 的出版人。

约翰·布坎南学会 (The John Buchan Society)

政治家、历史学家、律师、政治人物、记者、编辑，但主要以 100 部虚构和非虚构作品的作者身份而闻名，约翰·布坎南是一位至今仍被广泛阅读和尊敬的作家。由厄苏拉·布坎南 (Ursula Buchan) 撰写的备受赞誉的传记《三十九级台阶之外》(Beyond The Thirty Nine Steps) 的出版，以及今年出版的关于他的启发性论文周年合集《重新审视约翰·布坎南》(John Buchan Reconsidered)，让布坎南接触到了新的读者群。约翰·布坎南学会通过其期刊、时事通讯和会议，向全球的普通读者和学者会员推广这位人物及其作品，已有 45 年 以上的历史。请通过以下方式联系我们加入：www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk

7, 2026 8 月 《泰晤士文学 supplement》 19

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评论 # 被判刑 (Sentenced)

囚犯最喜爱的读物，过去与现在

珍妮·哈特利（Jenny Hartley）

温斯顿·丘吉尔一个较少为人知的成就，是在1910年任命了一个监狱图书馆委员会。当时担任内政大臣的他，要求该委员会考虑并报告“应指导陛下监狱（H. M. Prisons）囚犯以及陛下少年管教所（H. M. Borstal Institutions）收容人员书籍供应的原则”。在要求其铭记“监狱待遇的改造目的”的指令下，委员会开始工作。他们走访了全国各地的少年管教所（青少年罪犯机构的前身）和监狱，与负责书籍筛选和分发的监狱牧师进行了交流。为了提交次年的报告，他们还与囚犯交谈并“检查了他们正在阅读的书籍”。

一个多世纪后的今天，在这个国家阅读年，他们的发现和判断讲述了一个迷人的故事，尤其是与2026年进行的一项类似调研相比。

监狱图书馆委员会还编了一份囚犯最喜爱的作者名单。总体而言，他们对此表示认可。“监狱中对虚构类书籍的需求应当像现在一样，以宽容的精神予以满足。”不过，这份纯虚构类名单也有几点注意事项。“在除最伟大作家之外的小说中，应优先选择具有健康、振奋、户外性质的故事，尤其是对于年轻囚犯。”而在数量方面：“在我们看来，无论在监狱内外，一个人每周读两本小说就足够了”。

这份名单上的许多作者需要一定的阅读耐力，但委员会很高兴地报告说识字率良好。“大多数囚犯完全无知且不识字的时代已经过去了……真正的文盲现在很少。”

相比之下，如今关于英国监狱识字水平的哀叹过于频繁。司法部希望在基础识字能力和鼓励阅读方面都能有所改善。今年早些时候，陛下首席监狱监察官查理·泰勒（Charlie Taylor）赞扬了富有想象力的新阅读计划所取得的进展。他的《阅读以康复》报告“强调了一些非常积极的发现，在这些监狱中，尽职的监狱长和其他领导者共同努力，营造了一种强大的阅读文化”。

泰勒意识到图书馆在此发挥的核心作用。他赞赏在“监舍翼楼、车间、会客区和其他公共空间设立微型图书馆”。在他访问的监狱中，由“囚犯工作人员积极策划”且资源丰富的展示区，“不仅限于书籍，还包括杂志、拼图和文字游戏……明显鼓励了参与度”。

其他有效的项目包括 HMP Rye Hill 的“放下一切阅读”（Drop Everything and Read）环节，“每周三次，为所有人——包括工作人员和囚犯——预留短时间（15分钟）的休息时间进行阅读。

一张 1925 年的《东林》（East Lynne）电影海报。这种简单但强大的常规活动引发了关于阅读的对话，并证明了阅读得到了整个监狱的重视”。

在这样的时间里人们在读什么书，而这些书与1911年的选书相比又如何？我非常感谢英国五十多家监狱中参与此次调查的图书馆员，以及慈善机构 Give a Book 在分发调查问卷方面提供的帮助。

1911年和2026年的名单之间比我预想的有更多相似之处。在这两份名单中，虚构类作品占据主导地位，女性作者很受欢迎。这一点令人惊讶，因为男监狱的数量远多于女监狱，且男性读者通常表示他们更喜欢非虚构类作品而非虚构类，更喜欢男性作家而非女性作家。

两份名单的形态也相同：顶端有一个绝对的赢家，而另一端则是一个长尾。如果图书馆员前六名中的每位作者都列入其中，2026年的名单将会长得多。我没有列出那100多位仅出现一两次的作者。

1911年的领跑者是亨利·伍德夫人（Mrs Henry Wood），如今人们对她的记忆（如果还记得的话）主要集中在1861年出版的《东林》（East Lynne）上，该书出版于监狱图书馆委员会调查的五十年前。这部作品在舞台剧和电影改编中拥有长久的生命力。“死而未曾唤我为母亲”是其中最著名的台词，尽管这句话出自舞台剧版本而非小说本身。李·查尔德（Lee Child）是2026年一个名副其实的赢家：他刚刚被司法部任命为首任监狱阅读桂冠诗人。伍德和查尔德都拥有卓越的文学崇拜者。当列夫·托尔斯泰被问及哪些书籍对他影响最大时，伍德夫人出现在他的五十位作家名单中。她与安东尼·特罗洛普（Anthony Trollope）和乔治·艾略特（George Eliot）一样，被归类为“伟大”级别。《东林》至今仍可在他在亚斯纳亚波利亚纳（Yasnaya Polyana）的图书馆中找到。与此同时，在2019年，罗伯特·欧文（Robert Irwin）将查尔德的最新作品选为年度最佳书籍之一：“与其众多前作一样，李·查尔德的惊悚小说《蓝月》（Blue Moon）……自成一格，其研究之详尽、情节之新颖（且相当暴力），以及最重要的是，其非凡的叙事悬念。这种紧张感令人心惊，人们既希望又深知它将一直持续”（《泰晤士文學 supplements》，2019年11月29日）。《东林》是最早被称作“煽情小说”的作品之一——伍德夫人将其描述为“秘密骨架”流派——读者们对此趋之若鹜，尽管也有少数例外。小说家玛格丽特·奥利凡特（Margaret Oliphant）反对女主角的行为：伊莎贝尔·范夫人（Lady Isabel Vane）被诱惑、被抛弃并在一次火车事故中毁容，她戴上围巾和墨镜，像“道布法尔夫人”一样伪装自己，以家庭教师的身份回到孩子身边。奥利凡特在对该小说的评论中写道：“除了她的邪恶和痛苦，她绝不可能如此强烈地赢得我们的同情。这是危险且愚蠢的作品。”尽管如此，这部作品也非常受欢迎，但据其子称，艾伦·伍德（Ellen Wood）从未从无数次的改编中获得一分钱。在2026年的名单中，与她最契合的是美国作家弗里达·麦克法登（Freida McFadden），她在男性和女性监狱的名单中均名列前茅。麦克法登的畅销书《女管家》（The Housemaid，2022）的开篇第一句——“如果我离开这栋房子，那一定是被戴上手铐”——正是典型的伍德式风格。麦克法登与伍德一样高产，在去年的《星期日泰晤士报》前五十名畅销书名单中占据了八部作品；《女管家》的电影版在票房上也取得了成功。在第一线的发行台前，监狱图书馆员们对当前的阅读需求了如指掌。真实犯罪类“始终是最受欢迎的类型”，但“都市小说”则是“这里正在衰落的一种趋势”：“查尔德和[马蒂娜]·科尔（[Martina] Cole）的热度在下降”，而“杰弗里·阿彻（Jeffrey Archer）开始卷土重来”。“奇幻是目前最受欢迎的类型，以前是历史小说，但现在已经掉队了。”在整个监狱体系中，奇幻类作品似乎正处于高峰，尤其是“任何系列作品”。图形小说和漫画在年轻读者中表现尤为出色。一名青少年犯管教机构的图书馆员承认，这些书“可能相当昂贵，但我们有每月的图书预算，并尝试涵盖能吸引年轻人的各种类型。男孩们总体上很爱护书籍，所以如果图形小说和漫画能让他们开始阅读，并在他们待在房间时让他们专心，那么这就是一项很好的投资”。

不少图书管理员注意到的一种现象是，“不同的书籍似乎会轮流受到青睐。人们会抢购像罗伯特·马查莫尔（Robert Muchamore）的《切鲁布》（Cherub）系列，或者加斯·尼克斯（Garth Nix）或达伦·山（Darren Shan）的系列等青少年小说，然后这种兴趣会突然消失”。1911年的报告作者们也会认同这一点。他们观察到“监狱中偶尔会出现一种奇特的书籍时尚，并迅速传遍整个监狱”。然而，他们对达特穆尔监狱（Dartmoor）兴起的莎士比亚热潮相当愤世嫉俗。在他们看来，这是囚犯们想要“表现出极高的教养”。不久之后，在同一所监狱里，狄更斯又成了风靡之作。我对监狱阅读现状的看法则没那么愤世嫉俗，反而更乐观。这些趋势向我揭示了一种“书籍闲谈”的文化。人们在讨论书籍，传递推荐，享受共同的乐趣。在这里，口碑至上，即便是在囚犯大部分时间都被锁在门后的地方。否则，迈克尔·奥克斯（Michael Ochs）的《1000 Record Covers》怎么会在某所特定监狱的最常借阅书籍名单中出现——或者在另一所监狱里出现马基雅维利？与1911, 的名单不同，今年的名单并非全是小说。“只要我们进货[澳大利亚电视名人兼灵性作家]朗达·拜恩（Rhonda Byrne）的书，它们立刻就会被抢光”。流行心理学、身心健康和自助类书籍（如安特·米德尔顿 Ant Middleton、大卫·戈金斯 David Goggins）拥有大量追随者，L. J. 弗兰德斯（L. J. Flanders）的《Cell Workout》和罗伯特·清崎（Robert Kiyosaki）的《富爸爸穷爸爸：富人教孩子关于金钱的知识，而穷人和中产阶级没有！》也是如此。这类书在1911年时囚犯无法获得，尽管当时他们每个人的牢房里都会有一本弗洛伦斯·斯塔克普尔（Florence Stacpoole）写的《健康之家及其维护方法》（1905），报告将其描述为“一本关于卫生、卫计和家政事务的实用通用信息手册”。如今，许多监狱都设有读书会，我询问了小组引导员最近哪些书反响良好。同样，出现了一系列多样化的选择，从奇努阿·阿切贝（Chinua Achebe）的《瓦解》（Things Fall Apart）到加布里埃尔·泽文（Gabrielle Zevin）的《明天，明天，再明天》（Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow）。选择权由小组自行决定——在监狱里，你没法选择太多东西。他们喜欢在地理和体裁上都进行广泛涉猎，涵盖传记、自传、历史、诗歌和当代政治以及小说。经典作品占据重要地位：荷马、玛丽·雪莱、H. G. 威尔斯、约翰·斯坦贝克。还有托马斯·哈代，他是1911年和2026年之间唯一的重合点（当时一个小组选择了《远离喧嚣的离群之地》）。反乌托邦作品正处于流行期：《使女的故事》、《动物庄园》、《1984》、《路》、《翠夫之日》、《克拉拉与太阳》、《美丽新世界》、《祖国》。对于我们中的许多人来说，阅读什么的灵感来自多种渠道。必须得有某种联系，哪怕是极其间接的，来引导我们：一篇评论、一个私人推荐、一份获奖名单、一份礼物，或者在地铁上看到某人正全神贯注地阅读。阅读似乎是一项“接触性运动”。你永远不知道下一个灵感会来自哪里。一家青少年犯管教机构的小组在一名成员的建议下选择了《局外人》，该成员在电视剧《权力》（Power）中看到某个角色的大学阅读清单上有阿尔贝·加缪的小说。讨论往往是投入的、活泼的且气氛融洽的。你可以在《Inside Time》（囚犯全国性月刊，网址 insidetime.org）的“监狱阅读小组”专栏中感受到这种氛围。而且，这种交流并不局限于小组活动的一小时左右。一名成员描述了这种影响：“以前在操场上的话语是‘你因为什么进来？’现在变成了‘你读到哪儿了？’”。珍妮·哈特利（Jenny Hartley）OBE，罗汉普顿大学名誉教授，于1959. 共同创立了监狱阅读小组。她最近的一本书是《查尔斯·狄更斯：极简导论》，2019年出版。

20 《文学补刊》（Literary Supplement） 8月 7, 2026 © EVERETT COLLECTION PHOTOS ---

来自……的信

雅典

Norma Clarke

就在 200 多年前的 1825 年 5 月 22 日，希腊独立战争的一位著名女英雄拉斯卡里娜·布布利娜（Laskarina Bouboulina）在斯佩策斯岛（Spetses）的家中被枪杀。这次事件并非布布利娜率领其私人军队参与的众多战役之一，也不是那幅展现她挺立在波涛之巅的船头、气势雄伟的宏大绘画中所纪念的纳夫普利翁（Nafplio）封锁战。更不那么光彩的是，她是在走到阳台上，与一个当地家庭争执时被枪击的，那个家庭的女儿尤金妮亚·库齐（Eugenia Koutsi）爱上了她的儿子。这对年轻情侣私奔了，库齐家族的荣誉要求复仇。对我而言，家族世仇、包办婚姻、对荣誉的激烈捍卫以及轻易诉诸暴力，这些希腊文化元素比布布利娜的生活经历更为熟悉。她在雅典国家历史博物馆的肖像画显示，她的腰带上插着一把手枪，表情严肃，胸部丰满——毕竟她生育了七个孩子——并且被授予了“海军少将”的荣誉称号。该称号是在 2018 年授予的。而俄罗斯人则更为迅速，在布布利娜去世几天后就称她为“海军上将”，以认可她对 1821 年始于伯罗奔尼撒半岛、反抗 400 年奥斯曼统治起义的卓越参与。尽管希腊大部分地区长期处于欠发达和贫困状态，但斯佩策斯岛和伊德拉岛（Hydra）曾是繁忙且盈利的海运中心。两次丧夫的布布利娜继承了第二任丈夫留下的巨额财产，这笔财富帮助资助了起义。她建造了船只，尤其是配备 18 门大炮的战舰“阿伽门农号”（Agamemnon）。但正是她像现代版的“圣女贞德”一样亲率部队参与战斗，使她享誉国际。

在雅典战争博物馆观看萨莉亚·弗洛拉-卡拉维亚（Thalia Flora-Karavia）的战场速写时，我思考起了布布利娜。这些速写描绘了后来一场冲突——1912-13 年巴尔干战争的场景。弗洛拉-卡拉维亚曾请愿请求允许担任战争艺术家。她与同时代的朋友索菲亚·拉斯卡里杜（Sofia Laskaridou）一起，成为了希腊第一代成功的职业女性艺术家，举办展览并出售作品。或者说，并不完全是第一代。因为除了布布利娜，拥有富裕船东阶层的斯佩策斯岛还可以自豪地宣称，它孕育了已知第一位接受训练并执业的职业女性艺术家：埃莱妮·布库拉（Eleni Boukoura）

埃莱妮·布库拉的自画像，1855 年。在她进入青少年时期时，土耳其人已被驱逐，希腊民族国家诞生。新国家的首都从附近的纳夫普利翁迁至雅典。

这次将我带到雅典的是画家而非战士。这座城市让我感觉有一半像家，尽管我对它几乎不了解。我的英国父亲于 1945 年在雅典与我的希腊母亲结婚。像许多经历了残酷的战争、饥荒和占领岁月的希腊人一样，她很高兴能离开那里。她对现代希腊历史的了解很浅，但她知道一些关于拜伦勋爵以及支持这个新民族国家的英国亲希腊主义的事。很长一段时间里，我也仅限于此。但通过在凉爽的月份阅读和访问，从雅典的朋友那里学习，我以一种迂回的方式产生了对希腊艺术家的兴趣；而正是雷亚·加拉纳基（Rhea Galanaki）那部畅销且被广泛翻译的小说《埃莱妮，或无人》（Eleni, or Nobody）（1994）向我介绍了布库拉。对于像弗洛拉-卡拉维亚和拉斯卡里杜这样的艺术家来说，她就是那位开创先河的祖母。

她的父母是受过教育的艺术爱好者。注意到女儿在绘画方面早慧，她的父亲为她寻找了最好的老师。到二十多岁时，她渴望前往意大利观看并研究大师之作。在她的导师拉斐尔·切科利（Raffaello Ceccoli）的推荐信下，她在父亲的陪同下乘船前往那不勒斯。为了这次旅程，人们认为最好让她男装打扮，并使用她哥哥的名字。她在1848-50年期间在罗马学习，师从约翰·弗里德里希·欧弗贝克（Johann Friedrich Overbeck），后者是纳匝肋画派（Nazarenes）的创始成员，该画派曾占据圣伊西多罗（Sant'Isidoro）的废弃修道院。纳匝肋画派的人穿着僧袍并留长发。一幅自画像显示布库拉（Boukoura）在画架前，侧脸面对观众，像一个性别不明、穿着长袍的漂亮青年。后来，在佛罗伦萨，她爱上了一位半希腊半意大利的画家弗朗切斯科·阿尔塔穆拉（Francesco Altamura），并接连生了两个孩子，两个孩子都被送回家由她的父母抚养。目前尚不清楚她在多大程度上刻意隐瞒自己的女性身份。她在1840年代选择男装打扮以追求职业生涯，这使她与著名的法国例子乔治·桑（George Sand）和罗莎·博纳尔（Rosa Bonheur）产生了共鸣。1853年，她皈依天主教并与阿尔塔穆拉结婚。但男装显然对她具有强大的意义。在1855年的一幅自画像中，她穿着一套男式西装并留着胡须。她再次在画架前摆好姿势，但目光看向观众，一只女性化的手拿着一支蘸了调色盘颜料的画笔。画布上完成的人物也同样看向观众，那是一个穿着晚礼服、露肩的女性胸像，比画家本人小，但刻画得同样清晰，因此两者之间似乎存在某种等价关系。她们可能是一对。模特是一位英国女性，也是一名画家，简·本汉·海（Jane Benham Hay）。她随后与阿尔塔穆拉私奔。《男装自画像，绘制简·本汉·海》被一名雅典收藏家迪米特里斯·帕帕乔治普洛斯（Dimitris Papageorgopoulos）收购。我这次旅行的高潮是访问他的公寓，那里存放着他收藏的部分19世纪出生的希腊女性艺术家的绘画、照片、手稿和纪念品。（“新希腊艺术档案：索菲亚·拉斯卡里杜”的大部分目前没有存放地，处于存储状态。）感谢促成这次联系的朋友们的善意，我由特普西科雷·安格洛普鲁（Terpsichore Angelopoulou）带领参观，她是邦瀚斯（Bonham's）雅典拍卖行的负责人，是一位对现代希腊艺术拥有无与伦比知识的爱好者。我们被迎入的房间里，墙壁拥挤，展品摆放整齐（艺术品、报纸、目录、一把左轮手枪、一支步枪），证明了一种痴迷的追求，这种追求始于帕帕乔治普洛斯15岁时第一次听说拉斯卡里杜。在20世纪初，她在希腊艺术圈是一个熟悉的名字。她出生在雅典南郊的卡利佩亚（Kallipea）——巧合的是，我的母亲也出生在那里——她在美术学院学习（1903-07年），此前她亲自说服国王应该允许女性入学。在康斯坦丁诺斯·沃拉纳基斯（Konstantinos Volanakis）、乔治奥斯·罗伊洛斯（Georgios Roilos）、尼基福罗斯·利塔斯（Nikephoros Lytas）和乔治奥斯·伊亚科维迪斯（Georgios Iakovidis）的指导下，她的创作力极其旺盛，在还是学生时就开始展出作品：风俗场景、风景画、肖像画。她举办过个人展，也与在慕尼黑学习过的弗洛拉-卡拉维亚（Flora-Karavia）共同参展。或许正是弗洛拉-卡拉维亚的榜样引导拉斯卡里杜去

1907年的慕尼黑，随后是巴黎；或者，对于一个自称自由灵魂且在许多照片中可见与女性友人嬉戏打闹的女性来说，佩里克利斯·吉安诺普洛斯（Pericles Giannopoulos）的关注或许已变得过于紧迫。吉安诺普洛斯既是一位艺术家也是一名作家，是一位主张通过精神革命来实现希腊文艺复兴的浪漫主义希腊主义者。他举止夸张，并坦承自己既热爱死亡，也热爱美丽的索菲亚（Sofia）。1910年，他头戴野花冠，口袋里装满配重，骑马冲入大海，随后开枪自杀。（那匹马回到了岸边。）心碎的拉斯卡里杜（Laskaridou）短暂地回到了雅典；自那时起，神话编造者们便将吉安诺普洛斯的死归咎于她。除了《男装自画像，绘制简·本汉·海（Jane Benham Hay）》，帕帕乔治普洛普洛斯（Papageorgopoulos）还拥有拉斯卡里杜和弗洛拉-卡拉维亚（Flora-Karavia）的肖像画，两人曾互为模特。弗洛拉-卡拉维亚的《索菲亚·拉斯卡里杜肖像》（1903）描绘了她拿着一支巨大的画笔和调色板，直视观者的样子；而拉斯卡里杜的《塔利亚·弗洛拉肖像》（1906）——当时她尚未结婚——则是一幅细腻的侧面炭笔习作。这三幅画作最近被借给拉里萨市立美术馆，用于一场名为《女性事务》（Women's Matters）的当代女性艺术家展览。拉斯卡里杜渴望描绘希腊的风景；为了实现“完全自由”的决心，她独自前往偏远地区。这就是她携带武器的原因。或许她穿男装也是为了方便，就像博努尔（Bonheur）那样，或者像布库拉（Boukoura）那样将其作为伪装。在希腊并没有像在法国那样对此制定实际的法律：博努尔必须获得当地警察的许可，并携带一份授权她穿裤子的证明，才能去集市写生马匹。拉斯卡里杜秉承布布利娜（Bouboulina）的精神，携带枪支武装自己。诺玛·克拉克（Norma Clarke）是金斯顿大学英语文学荣休教授。她最近的一本书是家庭回忆录《不言》（Not Speaking），2019年出版。

一对情侣寻求伦敦租房，预算为作家水平

二十多岁的剧本编辑和艺术记者，寻找一间或两居室公寓，希望能入住并悉心维护。希望能避开房产中介那个令人作呕且悲哀的世界。您能帮帮我们吗？ 请发送电子邮件至 phineasjennings@gmail.com August 7, 2026 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 21 ©2026 LASKARIDOU 照片，2026年。印刷 JANE BENHAM HAY。作者 ELENI BOULOUILA。GLENDORA G. WALKER。建筑师，2026年。

艺术 # 对决与枪战

旋律依旧：克里斯托弗·诺兰版的《奥德赛》

A. E. 斯塔林斯（A. E. Stallings） 《奥德赛》（The Odyssey） 多间电影院

在过去的一周里，我在雅典的户外夏季电影院欣赏了两部电影（这是我最喜爱的夏季活动：罗勒与茉莉的香气，蝙蝠的阴影，今年夏天一群活泼的小猫，背景则是月亮或帕特农神庙）。其中一部是清晰度与节奏的杰作，在巨大的银幕上，讲述了一位聪明的陌生人 / 船长从东方抵达一座农庄，摆脱了一个操纵人心且金发闪耀的女神的纠缠，与一位独立聪明的继承人在一起，而后者正被阴险的当地人和一个觊觎其财产且不受欢迎的追求者所困扰。在人数劣势且身处险境的情况下，这对天作之合的伴侣通过眼神交流传递想法，而最终的枪战——本可能导致家族间数十年的血亲复仇暴力——通过一个反转，奇迹般地带来了和平与新的开始。另一部电影则是克里斯托弗·诺兰的《奥德赛》。

第一部是1958年的杰作，威廉·怀勒（William Wyler）的《大乡村》（The Big Country）。我的对比可能显得轻率，但我长期以来一直主张，《奥德赛》是第一部西部片，因为它讲述了一个男人从战争中返回，回到一个被贪婪的牧牛人围攻的牧场，这些人执意要娶他的“草根寡妇”，所有的紧张局势最终升级为一场史诗般的对决。换句话说，《奥德赛》注定属于好莱坞。

我认为，诺兰的《奥德赛》之所以成功，是因为它将两种看似相反的倾向进行了惊人的结合：对文本某些方面的极细致解读，以及为了适应诺兰自身神话创造式的电影拍摄而进行的大胆想象性背离。古典文学爱好者会在这里看到暗示与呼应，对原著的巧妙改编，以及围绕《奥德赛》和青铜时代的更广泛思考；而普通观众则会发现一个足以媲美其他好莱坞史诗的精彩故事。例如，其中既有早期《星球大战》电影的元素，也有《指环王》系列电影的元素。阿伽门农穿着斗篷、戴着黑色头盔，散发出强烈的达斯·维达气息。马特·达蒙饰演的奥德修斯伪装成一名年迈的乞丐回到伊萨卡，披着粗布斗篷，结果像欧比旺·克诺比一样，证明自己是一名懂得如何使用武器的资深老兵（追求者的头目安提诺俄斯可以说出原话：“你太弱了，老头子”）。这里还有看似中世纪的骑士 / 巨人，一支亡灵军队，以及一场类似《指环王》的向西的神话之旅。

当我提到另一个影响——罗杰·米歇尔（Roger Michell）改编的简·奥斯汀作品《劝导》（1995）时，我只是在开玩笑，但我半怀疑它影响了结局（警告：接下来的内容包含电影和诗歌的剧透）。

可以说，这部电影的优势之一在于它在时间背景（我们被告知是青铜时代晚期）上缺乏迂腐的写实主义。时代错置其实符合荷马的风格：后铁器时代的细节在英雄主义的青铜时代背景中若隐若现。因此，尽管奥德修斯的船是一艘维京长船，而珀涅罗珀坐在织机前的样子像一位前拉斐尔派的夏洛特夫人（荷马时代的织机是立式的），但诺兰给予我们的是一个具有内部一致性的想象世界，一种现实主义的逼真感。这包括他对希腊场景的运用，例如靠近沙质皮洛斯（Pylos）的沃伊多基利亚湾（Voidokilia Bay）（通过近期令人震惊的考古发现，我们才刚刚开始理解其在迈锡尼时期的重要性），以及正如古典学者西奥·纳什（Theo Nash）在社交媒体上指出的，利用巨大的拜占庭和法兰克防御工事来传达迈锡尼城市的军事实力。那些厌倦了AI流畅但毫无灵魂的视觉效果的观众，会被诺兰电影的质感所吸引，其中包含了真实的海豚（在拍摄期间偶然出现）和真实的独眼巨人相关洞穴，而非摄影棚。

尽管荷马的《奧德賽》核心在于回归，且那些离奇的故事出自终极不可靠叙述者奧德修斯之口，但古代观众肯定仍然希望“看到”所有著名的冒险：特洛伊木马、前传人物的客串（海伦、阿伽门农）、怪物、女巫、塞壬、漩涡和海难。诺兰很乐意满足这一点。可以说，诺兰在开篇安排了一位吟游诗人（由说唱歌手兼词曲作者特拉维斯·斯科特饰演）用手杖打拍子并吟诵道：“一张脸；一支舰队；一场战争；一个人；一个念头；一个诡计”，这提供了一个框架结构，即故事中的故事。在诺兰的世界里，神灵在很大程度上是缺席的，但怪物、女巫和僵尸化的亡灵阴影却是切实存在的。（由赞达亚饰演的雅典娜出现在奧德修斯面前，更像是他的良知而非神启。）“宙斯”等同于抽象的“正义”，因此有了宙斯的法律，即 xenia（好客之礼）的概念，根据这一概念，客人 / 陌生人与主人受款待规则的约束——在询问对方身份之前先提供食物和饮料，以及交换奢华的礼物。在一个没有边界、护照（或酒店）的世界里，人们必须相信陌生人自称不是海盗的话，主人也必须被信任不会在床上谋杀客人，否则社会的结构将会崩溃。荷马作品中关于违反 xenia 最著名的警戒故事就是奧德修斯与独眼巨人，其中奧德修斯的船员在未经邀请的情况下粗鲁地吃掉了独眼巨人的奶酪，而独眼巨人则反过来将他们当作食物。诺兰省略了言语上的交锋（这里没有出现那个著名的双关语），但给了我们一些更令人不寒而栗的东西。奧德修斯没有意识到独眼巨人足够人性化，以至于适用宙斯的法律：他将这个生物称为“它”。在这里，成了“没人”的是独眼巨人。直到奧德修斯的船员刺瞎了他的眼睛，听到这个像咕噜一样、受戈雅启发而创作的生物痛苦地向其父亲波塞冬哀号时，他们才意识到这个生物拥有语言，意识到他们本可以尝试直接沟通。在开始时，奧德修斯并非宙斯法律的严谨遵守者。与荷马笔下一样，他离开特洛伊后的首个停靠港是基科内斯城。在电影中，登陆的表面目的是寻找补给，但奧德修斯的手下却在抢劫和纵火。一名年老的幸存者（由亚尼斯·科基亚梅诺斯饰演）呆呆地坐在海滩上。在通过翻译与奧德修斯的大副欧律洛库斯（希梅什·帕特尔饰演）的对话中，他被问到为什么他的族人选择逃跑而不是表示欢迎。当蒂塞翁电影院里的希腊语观众意识到这个老人说的是现代希腊语时，现场产生了一种电击般的震撼：“我们把你们当成了海之民。”“不，我们是希腊人，来自伊萨卡，”欧律洛库斯用英语大声喊道，以便对方理解。希腊语是电影中唯一的“外语”，且奧德修斯的手下无法理解，这似乎强调了未能将他人视为完整人类的失败。对我而言，帕特尔的表现非常出众，他像斯塔巴克一样，成为了奧德修斯之亚哈式傲慢的陪衬。透过他那充满灵气的眼睛，我们看着奧德修斯在蜡封的白噪音和若隐若现的歌声背景中，听着塞壬的歌声而痛苦地扭动。

Jimmy Gonzales 饰演 塞斐俄斯，马特·达蒙 饰演 奧德修斯，希梅什·帕特尔 饰演 欧律洛库斯 22 Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © UNIVERSAL STORM WIRELESS, 2026 GARDEN. 保留所有权利 ---

洗劫城市当然是荷马史诗中的英雄所为，但这并不意味着诗人（或诗作）认同这些价值观。在荷马的第八卷中，当奥德修斯听到一名吟游诗人歌唱特洛伊木马时，他崩溃了。一个明喻将他的哭泣明确地比作一名女子在面对被杀丈夫尸体时的哭泣（该男子此前一直在战斗以保卫妻子、孩子和家园），随后该女子被持矛者带走，陷入悲惨的奴役生活。这个将他比作那些被他夺走丈夫并使其沦为奴隶的受害者的明喻，敲响了一记不和谐的共情之弦。电影中的闪回起到了类似的作用，特别是关于特洛伊木马的“诡计”——一份献给希腊人和特洛伊人共同崇拜的神灵的虚假礼物（在此是对宙斯法律的严重违背），从而引发了一场暴行狂欢。荷马笔下的奥德修斯是一个为了生存不择手段的幸存者，包括与性感女神调情。诺兰笔下的奥德修斯则是一位更现代的英雄——一个“虔诚”的奥德修斯，在忠诚方面坚定不移。但诺兰并没有刻意去诱惑他。喀耳刻（由令人愉悦的萨曼莎·莫顿饰演）被塑造得像个中年“猫女”——如果我们把那些可疑地温顺的狮子、老虎和豹子也算作猫的话——她对男人及其猪一样的胃口心存戒备。（这或许是对麦德琳·米勒 2018 年小说《喀耳刻》的致敬。）她作为女巫的形象令人信服——她将船员转化的过程极其直接且令人震惊——但她并非诱惑者。与此同时，查理兹·塞隆饰演的卡吕普索则像是直接从夏季号的《Vogue》杂志中走出来的。她与其说是情人，不如说更像心理治疗师，她用莲花这种失忆药物和谈话疗法来治疗奥德修斯的创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）。我们被告知，卡吕普索与像鲁滨逊·克鲁索一样被困孤岛的奥德修斯已经幸福地生活了七年，并且推测他们有过性行为（既然他不记得珀涅罗珀，从技术上讲或许不算出轨），但两人之间没有化学反应。诺兰省略了诗作中最亮眼和最阴暗的片段。没有那个色彩鲜明的场景：奥德修斯赤裸地被冲到法基亚岛的海滩上，被无畏的公主瑙西卡在与其他少女野餐和打排球时发现。这一幕的轻快感与诺兰阴郁的视觉风格不符。而且，或许对于由罗伯特·帕丁森饰演的安提诺俄斯来说，不遇到一位像珀涅罗珀一样聪明且年轻一代的火辣公主会更安全。至于最阴暗的场景，诺兰并非第一个跳过它的人（西蒙·阿米蒂奇在其 2004 年的 BBC 广播剧中显然认为这对观众来说太过沉重）——即在伊萨卡岛上，那些被奴役的妇女在被强迫清理被杀求婚者（她们的诱惑者）的血迹后被杀害。在诗作中，奥德修斯下令用剑处决；令人不安的是，特勒马科斯却用私刑处决了她们，将她们吊在船的升旗索上。但为了诺兰的叙事目的，汤姆·霍兰德饰演的特勒马科斯必须保持双手干净。导演在性与性暴力方面的明显忌讳延伸到了战争场面（女性大多是被杀而非被强奸和奴役）以及特洛伊的陷落。当然，特洛伊的陷落并未在《奧德賽》中描述——诺兰的大部分细节，包括西农（艾略特·佩吉 饰）这个角色，都来自维吉尔的《埃涅阿斯纪》。根据传统，当处女祭司兼特洛伊公主卡珊德拉在雅典娜神庙中寻求庇护，紧紧抱住雅典娜的神圣雕像时，她依然被强奸，随后被拖走成为阿伽门农的妾室。诺兰似乎展示了神庙中的这一时刻，但针对神像和年轻的特洛伊祭司（此处由饰演雅典娜的同一位演员赞达亚饰演）的暴力行为，表现为一次无血的斩首。这令人不安，但可能也被净化了。

电影开头提到的神秘“海上民族”，被维多利亚时代的埃及学家认为是在迈锡尼宫殿崩溃时期，在爱琴海一带游荡并进行袭击的一组部落。也许他们徘徊在荷马史诗的边缘，大多是对海盗持有合理的恐惧，而奥德修斯按理说也应被算作海盗之列。诺兰那琐碎现实的第四面墙幻象，偶尔会被角色们的自我意识所打破。当特勒马库斯第一次宣称类似“我们的文明是世界上已知最伟大的文明！”之类的话时，我忍不住大笑起来。那些求婚者简直可以戴上“让伊萨卡再次伟大”的帽子。然而，这种姿态虽然令人分心，但随着电影的推进，不知为何变得没那么愚蠢了。诺兰的高潮部分采用了大胆的离经叛道，但同时也向原诗及其评论致以微小的致意。电影开头向我们展示，奥德修斯在射击前总是会拨动一下弓弦——这给了猎物一个公平竞争的机会，并导致他在一次猎野猪行动中留下了一道关键的伤疤。但在清算之景中，当他拉开弓弦准备杀死第一个求婚者时，那声拨弦声化作了里拉琴被击响的和弦。这是对荷马比喻的一次精彩演绎（此处采用艾米莉·威尔逊的版本）：在仔细地、一寸一寸地检查那把强弓之后——就像一名经验丰富的音乐家将羊肠弦绕在里拉琴的弦轴上并将其固定一样轻松——奥德修斯毫不费力地拉开了那把大弓。他用右手持弓，拨动琴弦，弦声如燕之鸣，清脆甜美。 (我也在想，诺兰是否读过塞缪尔·巴特勒 1897 年的《奥德赛的女作者》，该书声称这部史诗是由一名年轻的、未婚的西西里女性撰写的，部分证据是诗中出现了一些少女式的失误，比如诗人忘记了在屠杀过程中房间里有十二把斧头。诺兰没有忘记——他绝非女作者。) 古代的注释学者曾争论《奥德赛》的结尾，有些人认为它在潘妮洛普和奥德修斯上床睡觉时就停止了。目前的结局解决了所有遗留问题，通过一次“机械之神”式的干预防止了无休止的内战。诺兰在摒弃了神灵作为代理人的设定后，必须想出另一个解决方案。他设计了一个结局，其中特勒马库斯是清白的，只有邪恶的求婚者被杀，只有一名女仆（背叛者梅兰托）被杀——而且那是由于潘妮洛普本人的复仇——而潘妮洛普和奥德修斯的幸福结局则采取了不同的方向。除了作为第一部西方文学作品，《奥德赛》还是斯坦利·卡维尔所谓的“再婚情节”的原型——一对分离的夫妇（处于永远分开的边缘）在经历了一定程度的机智交锋后，必须克服障碍重新在一起。聪明的潘妮洛普在荷马笔下总是蒙着面纱；她的动机难以捉摸。安妮·海瑟薇经常在屏风后若隐若现。她显得凶猛且热情而非内敛，但她确实与戴蒙饰演的奥德修斯相得益彰。她测试他以及他向她证明身份的种种迹象被浓缩成了一个单一的信物——她在他在出发前往特洛伊之前送给他的一枚胸针。（文本中确实有关于胸针的依据。）如果诺兰的结局背离了原著，我们或许可以记得，诗歌本身就预示了另一个结局：一个预言称奥德修斯最终将旅行到如此深远的内陆，以至于没有人能认出一把船桨。此外还有但丁的版本，其中尤利西斯（奥德修斯）一直向西行，寻求新的发现——这一设定被丁尼生在其经常被引用的一首诗中采用了。甚至还有一个来自古希腊的版本，在奥德修斯死后，他与瑟曦的孩子特勒戈诺斯娶了潘妮洛普，而瑟曦嫁给了特勒马库斯，每个人都从此幸福地生活在一起。随意发挥和背离原著并非新鲜事。

在诺兰的电影中，当奥德修斯最终向珀涅罗珀讲述他的故事时，诸如“我们的青铜时代正在崩溃”之类的台词不知为何显得不那么荒诞。奥德修斯意识到，对于他们的受害者而言，他及其船员就是传闻中令人恐惧的“海上民族”。他们开启了一个连文字都失传、仅剩歌谣的黑暗时代。一旦基本的体面、人类纽带和社会规范被瓦解，就很难重新编织：“焚毁特洛伊的城墙就是焚毁整个世界”，奥德修斯说道，这句罕见的抒情台词或许在向《塔木德》致意。诺兰笔下那片酒红色的海洋是一面镜子，向我们展示了我们自身的自我毁灭冲动。在电影结尾，男女主角终于团聚，向着日落走去，而日落不知为何也代表着未来，或许将一个黑暗与暴力的时代留在身后。我们心想：也许终究还是有些希望的。是的，我是在谈论《大乡村》中的格里高利·派克和珍·西蒙斯，但这同样适用于诺兰的《奧德賽》。A. E. Stallings 是牛津大学诗歌教授。其选集《This Afterlife》出版于 2022。她最新的著作是《Frieze Frame: How poets, painters, and their friends framed the debate around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon》，2025。2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 23 --- 艺术

斧头将落下

一部契诃夫经典剧作的新作——无论那意味着什么 迈克尔·凯恩斯（Michael Caines） 安東·契訶夫（Anton Chekhov） 《櫻桃園》（The Cherry Orchard） 斯特拉特福-upon-Avon，天鹅剧院，展出至8月29日

事实证明，《櫻桃園》这部关于失衡世界的剧作，容易引发分歧。对于熟悉该剧首次演出故事的人来说，这早已是陈年旧事：1904年在莫斯科艺术剧院的首演中，安東·契訶夫主张将其定调为轻喜剧，而导演康斯坦丁·斯坦尼斯拉夫斯基（Konstantin Stanislavski）则倾向于更严肃的戏剧氛围。如果说，关于诠释和目的的分歧在近年来再次被有力地确立，那要归功于凯蒂·米切尔（Katie Mitchell）2022年在汉堡推出的激进生态意识版本（在她早前尝试的现代背景及西蒙·斯蒂芬斯改编版本之后），以及多玛仓库剧院（Dommar Warehouse）2024年由妮娜·霍斯（Nina Hoss）和阿迪尔·阿赫塔尔（Adeel Akhtar）主演的充满活力且身着现代服装的版本。

皇家莎士比亚公司在斯特拉特福的新排演无疑被拿来与后者进行不利的比较，且在评论界获得了褒贬不一的评价。毕竟，评论家们现在知道，存在着一个由多种可能的《櫻桃園》组成的“多元宇宙”——另一个版本将于秋季在西区上演，由克里斯汀·斯科特·托马斯（Kristin Scott Thomas）和斯蒂芬·曼根（Stephen Mangan）主演——而且有些版本比其他版本更具“契诃夫色彩”，无论那意味着什么。

受这部新作启发，《观察家报》（Observer）的一位评论员将洛帕欣定义为“代表着即将到来的俄罗斯革命，将地主阶级横扫而过”的人。谁能想到俄罗斯革命在将搭建别墅作为赚钱计划方面如此热衷？在由塔玛拉·哈维（Tamara Harvey）导演、劳拉·韦德（Laura Wade）重新改编的《櫻桃園》中，“契诃夫色彩”这个形容词似乎更多是指轻喜剧风格。它还意味着种族和口音的混杂：两名北爱尔兰人，两名美国人，以及其他各种各样的人。（而表演魔术的家庭教师夏洛塔由聋哑演员索菲·斯通饰演。）

至少在第一幕中，当拉涅夫斯卡娅（海伦·亨特 饰）及其随行人员匆匆回到旧宅时，给人留下了这样的印象。肯尼斯·布拉纳（Kenneth Branagh）饰演的洛帕欣——一个出人头地的农民男孩，拉涅夫斯卡娅曾在房子的育儿室里为他止过由父亲殴打引起的鼻血，而这正是她现在回到房间的地方——现在小心翼翼地侍候在侧，不断试图引起这位女士的注意并给她留下深刻印象。他笨拙地进入了侍从模式；而她则悄然离去。

同样以不同方式显得失衡的，还有拉涅夫斯卡娅的职员、事故多发者叶皮霍多夫（安迪·鲁什 饰），他的靴子在舞台上发出令人尴尬的吱吱声，以及债台高筑的地主皮什奇克。

比尔·普尔曼在《櫻桃園》中饰演加耶（摄影：盖伊·亨利）。

从一开始，哈维就熟练地利用了天鹅剧院深邃的舞台及其各种出入口。观众的视线不断被安娜·弗莱希勒（Anna Fleischle）那优雅且近乎挽歌般的舞台上的出入人员所吸引，随后又被拉回到围绕拉涅夫斯卡娅的中心对话中。她的哥哥加耶（比尔·普尔曼 饰）身上有一种迷路小男孩的气质。他带着微笑地讲述故事——并在被鼓励停止讲述时表现得十分温顺。他就像个长不大的孩子，惆怅地承认道：“我的财产都花在买糖吃上了”。

从此时起，目睹剧中各种关系的演变一如既往地令人着迷，其中最关键的或许是洛帕欣与那位最终将被他取代的庄园女主人之间的关系。（在韦德的版本中，他曾宣称“庄园不会被出售，只要我在，绝不可能”，这为他随后的反转，甚至可以说是坠落，埋下了伏笔。）他是更感愤恨还是痴迷，是困惑还是精明？布拉纳格捕捉到了这些心态的某种复合体；而亨特则似乎冻结在无法给予回应的无能之中。然而，两人之间确实存在着某种东西，一种心照不宣的博弈。在多玛剧院的本尼迪克特·安德鲁斯选择将一切挑明，而哈维及其团队对这段“非关系”采取了更为细腻的处理方式。亨特对其溺亡儿子格里沙的哀悼亦是如此——当然，育儿室既属于这位失踪的继承人，也属于他的先辈。但细腻并非全部。例如，第二幕出现了口交戏，仅仅是为了确保观众知道，这地方的一些仆人——即亚沙（朱利安·摩尔-库克）和杜尼亚莎（安伯·加德）——懂得如何享乐。看来，这一定也符合契訶夫的风格。为了增加效果，尽管有较高语调的宣言（“多么残缺的平庸！”），韦德仍让角色们使用粗鄙之语（“shitface”、“pisshead”），不时给观众带来一点冲击。这种手段似乎依然奏效，因为这些话是从穿着绅士淑女服装的演员口中说出的。与此同时，洛帕欣讽刺地谈到通过“神奇的卢布树”来充实拉涅夫斯卡娅的资金。

第二幕（唯一一幕设定在开阔乡村）还对一名“旅人”（康斯坦斯·加内特得体地如此称呼他）穿过舞台的时刻进行了有趣的扩充。在一百年前加内特的译本中，这个可怜的家伙“略带醉意”，询问去车站的路，然后不祥地或困惑地说道：“我的兄弟，我受苦的兄弟！”，随后乞讨钱财。轻喜剧风格绝对被排除了：罗布·亚历山大-亚当斯饰演的粗鲁路人并非少言，而是突然挺直身躯，引用了艾玛·拉扎勒斯的自由女神像十四行诗《新巨像》（“给我你们的疲惫，你们的贫穷”）以及《哈姆雷特》（“主啊，我们知道自己是谁，但不知道自己可能成为什么”）。随后发生了一点暴力冲突。这并非是不受欢迎的不协调，但它带有一点《迷魂记》中“陷入疯狂”序列的味道，像是一个来自竞争剧组的插曲。无论如何，中场休息后，正常的演出在充满狂欢色彩且编排极佳的第三幕中恢复。此时，随着每个人等待庄园拍卖的消息，局势真正的疯狂开始显现。洛帕欣从拍卖会归来，布拉纳格贡献了一场精彩的表演：他处于一种烂醉如泥的精疲力竭状态，声音中带着迷糊的惊讶，而当他凝视第四面墙之外时，眼神突然变得坚毅。（有时，普尔曼和亨利也必须表现出如此明显的醉态，这与埃丝特·史密斯饰演的可爱且受委屈的瓦莉亚用肢体语言传达出的清醒的恼怒形成了对比。）就是这样：斧头已经落下，正如它很快将开始砍伐拉涅夫斯卡娅童年记忆中珍贵果园里的树木，以及特罗菲莫夫如此急于将其推入遗忘的整个旧俄罗斯场景。与亨特的克制相比，布拉纳格传达出了这一切带来的眩晕快感。

《櫻桃園》的樂趣之一在於它對傳統戲劇概念的去中心化：英雄與反派，主線與副線。這裡的一切都只是暫時的。難怪角色們無法建立聯繫。洛帕興確實試圖拯救他的朋友們免於被迫變賣財產，隨後他自己買下了這裡，將他們送入流亡。這一切意味著什麼？或許僅僅是一場巨大的混亂。菲爾斯在最後時刻很好地總結了這種情況。由邁克爾·埃爾溫堅實地演繹，他 throughout 全劇步履蹣跚，一心只想確保蓋耶那個傻孩子穿上暖和的大衣或準時上床睡覺。韋德的版本給了這位被遺棄的僕人孤獨的困惑與自我矛盾時刻（同時跳過了那種將結尾與第二幕中預兆般的對應部分聯繫起來的奇怪共鳴音效）。這既可怕又滑稽，而這或許正是契訶夫希望呈現的效果。邁克爾·凱恩斯為《泰晤士文學 supplements》撰稿。 24 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © JASUN TIBSON ---

微型压缩剧作

托芙·揚松深受喜愛的跨代故事登上銀幕

亞當·馬斯-瓊斯 (Adam Mars-Jones) 《夏日之書》 多間電影院

查理·麥克道爾 (Charlie McDowell) 的《夏日之書》將托芙·揚松 1972 年的小說搬上了銀幕。這部作品在芬蘭被奉為經典，而在其他地方則受到較為溫和的推崇。它并非一部傳統的虛構作品，也沒有連續的敘事，而是一系列劇集，將兩代人——孩子索菲亞與她的祖母——之間不尋常的親密關係戲劇化。電影受益於芬蘭灣的取景地，這些地方與揚松家人度假的島嶼周邊環境高度吻合，但“忠實”有不同的形式。攝影機可以拍到祖母視野中一根被勾住的羽毛，但無法拍出賦予這一時刻意義的心理聚焦，正如書中所傳達的那樣：“她仔细观察这片绒毛的结构——中间是紧绷的白色肋骨，周围环绕着绒毛本身，绒毛呈淡褐色，比空气更轻，而向尖端方向则变得更深且发亮，最后以一个微小但灵动的弧度结束”。祖母为了观察它而付出的努力，至少与物体本身一样重要。我们能最接近成为自然一部分的方式，就是去关注。

格倫·克洛絲 (Glenn Close) 饰演的祖母非常出色，她在一个患病八十五岁老人应有的受限肢体语言中，表达了这个复杂人物的矛盾之处：一个自足的爱管闲事者，一个严厉的享乐主义者，一个爱讲夸张故事的人，同时又对现实原则有着强烈的依附。艾米莉·馬修斯 (Emily Matthews) 饰演的索菲亞與她配合得很好，面相开朗，但带着一丝倔强，这使她们不仅是亲人，更是志同道合的人。在索菲亞眼中，祖母可能像一种自然力量，但这只是孩子的视角——即便导演不止一次地认同这种观点，通过剪辑让祖母打盹时的呼吸与海浪的节奏同步。这使她变成了景观的一种延伸，而非景观最敏锐的观察者。

反对在自然纪录片中加入音乐配乐的理由是，它在观众与图像之间插入了一层情感上过于直白的覆盖，破坏了原本旨在创造的直接感。在一部以自然为背景的虚构电影中，这一论点更为有力，因为我们听到了一些角色听不到的声音。当远处传来单簧管，更不用说钢琴和小管弦乐团（这两者都是哈尼亞·拉尼 (Hania Rani) 配樂的特点）时，我们已经远离了大自然。琶音，无论它是凄美还是抚慰，都不属于斯堪的纳维亚或任何其他地方。

揚松書中的片段是關於風險與安慰的微型劇作，被精湛地壓縮。有時看起來就像她在使用一台強大的廚房機器，將經驗的果實擠壓成智慧的果汁，而留下的果渣極少。這並不完全是祖母的視角，因為對她來說，生活不是用來學習的東西，而是本身就值得品味的東西。無論如何，羅伯特·瓊斯 (Robert Jones) 的劇本將許多微型劇作扁平化了。例如，在名為《貓》的章節中，索菲亞得到了一隻貓，她很愛它。但貓無視她的關注，令她感到惱怒甚至憤怒。她得到了將其換成另一隻貓的機會，後者完全被動且接受愛。起初她很開心，但這種性格也讓她心煩意亂，最終她撤銷了交換。她的依戀是對那個沒有回應的動物。“如果它很糟糕，”她承認，“但我愛它，它很開心。”在電影中，索菲亞得到了一隻貓。她愛它。就這樣。

这家人是季节性的访客——度假者——无论他们对周围环境多么适应，就像该类人群中的许多人一样，他们乐于俯视那些在尊重脆弱环境方面不够谨慎的后来者。在原著和电影中，祖母和孙女一起访问了另一个岛屿，那里的新来者建了一栋房子，并竖起一块告示牌，宣布该岛为私人财产。从建筑角度看，这栋新房子似乎一点也不突兀——观众应该对此表示不满吗？当地的习俗是不锁门，通常在主人不在时没有人会闯入，但那块缺乏气概的告示牌让擅闯并四处窥探变成了一种神圣的职责。索菲亚和祖母听到主人的船抵达了，但没有地方可以躲藏，而她们自己的船暴露了她们的存在。这一切都相当尴尬。新来者很热情，提供了白兰地、柠檬水和马芬蛋糕。他们甚至知道苔藓的脆弱性——踩一次，它会弹回来；踩两次，它会伏在地上；踩三次，它就死了。在书中，赌注要高得多，因为祖母用她的折叠刀拧开了该财产上的挂锁，所以她们是在真正的非法闯入。当主人到达时，她被描述为“极度恐惧”。陌生人的礼貌让情况变得更糟——他们假装那些被拆卸并整齐摆放、螺丝在旁的挂锁和搭扣，不知怎么地成了潜入者或当地人的手笔。这让她感到羞愧，因为这正像她纠正孩子时的风格：让对方吸取教训，而不施加羞辱。她被对方在“祖母”的角色上胜过了。结果，她对新来者的态度变得温和了。让他们犯自己的错误吧。没错，他们把门装在了房子的错误一侧——在风暴中他们将无法打开它。但他们终究会像她当年那样学会。很快，她将以一种不带评判的眼光看待这栋新房子，就像看待一个航道标志一样。

当然，改编素材是编剧的特权。琼斯（Jones）在改编《夏日之书》时奇怪之处在于，他的做法违背了几乎所有改编剧本的惯例：他没有增强戏剧冲突，反而将其弱化，削减了那些原本就刻意保持低调的事件质感。素材被夷平，以便安装一个新的上层结构。在书的第二页，索菲亚问祖母什么时候会死，祖母平静地回答：“很快。但这绝不是你最需要担心的事。”第二部分是对四月一次岛屿之行的闪回，索菲亚记得她有一张自己的床，因为她的母亲去世了。这个话题之后不再被提及。导演和编剧利用这些稀疏的线索，编织了一个关于创伤与康复的故事。为了实现这一点，某些元素必须被重新定义——例如，索菲亚担心蚯蚓被切成两半时的感受，在小说中这是一个喜剧高光时刻（当时她口述关于此主题的想法，让祖母将其写成书），现在却变成了无脊椎动物痛苦的自画像。她也被切成了两半。

在电影中，对素材的“重新种植”几乎是字面意义上的，比如那棵杨树幼苗。它再次成为了索菲亚所谓创伤的意象：这株脆弱的植物需要大量浇水，用绳子在框架上支撑，直到它能长出几片叶子并开始茁壮成长。在书中，这是爸爸引入非本土物种的一个宏大计划的一部分，当它到达时已经有12英尺高了。同样，基调是喜剧性的。最终，这棵杨树的生长得到了从拉普兰进口的天鹅粪便的助力。

坚持将这变成一个关于悲伤的故事，不仅是对原著的误读，更是对书中之美的拒绝。祖母绝非为了等到索菲亚痊愈且不再需要她而强撑着活下去。她对责任的漠不关心，以及活在当下的能力，实际上才是她能给孙女最好的教诲。电影中并不缺乏这样的情节：一个失去母亲的孤儿在等待，而父亲不喜欢她，随后心碎的父亲告诉孩子“这不是你的错——这一切都不是你的错”，就像这里的父亲所做的那样；但缺乏的是这样一种电影：被代际分隔的家庭成员将彼此视为平等的人。书中的祖母和索菲亚经常争吵，但这只有在她们以“错误的方式”争吵时才会成为问题。在某个时刻，索菲亚将一张纸条从祖母的门缝下塞进去：“我恨你。带着温暖的个人祝愿，索菲亚。”祖母很高兴地发现拼写非常出色。这不是那种错误的争吵。索菲亚的母亲在揚松的书中缺席，可能反映了一个传记事实，但也是一种形式上的选择。索菲亚的父亲是一个边缘人物，而揚松则将自己完全从画面中移除了。从书和电影来看，你会认为祖母拥有这座岛上的房子，但实际上它是由揚松建造的，部分原因是为了让她能与同性伴侣共度时光而不至于惹恼那位老太太。（后来，为了获得更多隐私，她在更远的地方买了一座更小的岛。）祖母在那里是客人而非主人。即便如此，如果说书中有一种死亡在萦绕，那就是她的死亡。《夏日之書》通过重建或幻想一段绕过作者本人的丰富家庭关系，在不流于感伤的情况下纪念了她。作为导演和编剧，麦克道尔和琼斯似乎对揚松的文学能力评价较低。他们难道看不出，如果她想聚焦于丧偶父亲与孤女之间的关系，她一定会给父亲安排一些台词吗？我们听到了很多关于父亲所做之事的描述，甚至有一段很长的关于他浴袍的描写，但从书的开头到结尾，他连口都没开过。亚当·马斯-琼斯最近的小说是《Caret》，2023。

艾米莉·马修斯和格伦·克洛斯在《夏日之書》中 August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 25 © LONEL THUMB COUNCIL --- Fiction

从虚构中写作

一个漫游者在巴黎与自我之间的旅程

迈克尔·凯恩斯（Michael Caines）评 阿米特·喬杜里（Amit Chaudhuri）

《不完整性：新选集，1999-2023》（Incompleteness: New and selected essays, 1999-2023） 376页。纽约评论书店（New York Review Books）。平装本，£21（美国 $22.95）。 《红城堡》（Château Rouge） 208页。费伯出版社（Faber）。£14.99。

“这就是你的该死的备忘录！”卡尔·米勒（Karl Miller）曾这样对阿米特·喬杜里说，而那部所谓的“该死的备忘录”是喬杜里第一部小说《奇异而崇高的地址》（A Strange and Sublime Address, 1991）中的一个章节。对于某些作家来说，这种指责并不新鲜；而这些作家将继续引导读者去推测其作品的真实性质。

如果继续关注这位特定的读者与作家，米勒会对《我年轻时的朋友》（Friend of My Youth）怎么评价？喬杜里的第七部小说出版于2017年（在米勒去世三年后），由一个名叫“阿米特·喬杜里”的男人讲述，他出生在加尔各答，正如他的同名创造者一样。真实的喬杜里还写过一部名为《不朽者》（The Immortals, 2000）的小说。“巧合的是，”他在一次名为“我为何写小说”的演讲中说道，“《不朽者》也是我的第五部小说。”

这次演讲——其中包含了米勒那声批判性的呐喊——于2020年12月在牛津大學貝利歐學院通过网络举行，喬杜里曾在该学院攻读研究生。随后，该演讲发表在一家期刊上，并再次出现在《不完整性：新选集，1999-2023》的末尾。与本卷收录的所有文章一样，它值得再次面世。

这是一组关于艺术、音乐和文学的极具洞察力的反思，不仅展现了知识的深度，更展现了精湛的广度。探讨从拉宾德拉纳特·泰戈尔开始（“他的孟加拉抒情诗与不确定性、犹豫和瞬间息息相关……为什么是一位抒情诗人而非史诗诗人成为了孟加拉的国民诗人？”），到尼尔·戴蒙德结束（“《Cracklin' Rosie》和《Sweet Caroline》对我来说过于乐观和欢快，但即便在我不再承认听这些歌的时候，我依然在听其他一些歌曲”）。

其中也包含大量“该死的备忘录”。“曾经在1973年，我与父母乘坐的一列开往瑞士的火车在波恩停靠了几分钟”（《德国序列》，首次发表于2003年的《加尔各答电讯报》）；“我在孟买的一所新教学校就读，但我们在课堂上学到的创世神话与亚当和夏娃无关”（《历史的候诊室》，《伦敦评论周刊》，2004）；“1985年我在伦敦大学学院（University College London）读最后一年，当时我的导师，南非小说家丹·雅各布森（Dan Jacobson）告诉我，我读了很多诗，但散文读得不够”（《作为后人类论文的〈情人们〉》，该小说企鹅经典版的序言，2006）。

在这些文章中，在用一个为了最大化修辞效果而紧凑构建的、如绞索般紧扣的句子击中读者之前，喬杜里先用一个个人轶事或场景来为我们做铺垫——这是一种框架装置，或者更进一步说，是一种将原本可能被视为抽象论证或分析的内容，赋予一种生活化沉思感的装置，其中充满了随笔作者的亲密感与机巧。

除此之外，“我为何写小说”表明，喬杜里在虚构作品中“设计了一些……没有戏剧冲突的情境，但对我而言，这些情境试图传达一种巨大的、尽管是被克制的兴奋感”。自传性的问题是一个红鲱鱼（误导项）：对于喬杜里来说，小说与其说是“根据生活写作”，不如说是“从虚构中写作”，或者至少不仅仅关乎手头的主题，而关乎处理该主题的手段。与其说是自动虚构（autofiction），不如说是比自动虚构更进一步的自动虚构。

那种“克制”的兴奋感源于小说式的“结构与句法”。就此，喬杜里指的是那种“如果没有这类句子，叙事的语法——即理解叙事的规则——就会崩溃的句子”。在诸如“我看向窗外”或“她似乎正要开口说话”这样的陈述中，或许无法察觉诗意语言，但小说往往需要这样的“衔接”——这类句子不一定是小说家因此而获得赞誉或关注的句子，但它们正是弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫所称的“现实主义者那可怕的任务：从午餐过渡到晚餐”之精髓。这个解释令人惊讶：无论如何，喬杜里经常被认为是一位并不太在意如何从午餐过渡到晚餐的作家。例如，在《泰晤士文學 supplements》的页面中，他被（罗伯特·麦克法兰）描述为试图夺回平庸；被（比尔·布朗）描述为使情节变得难以捉摸；又被（麦克法兰）描述为撰写毫无波澜的散文（使他成为了喧闹的同胞萨曼·鲁什迪的反面）。一些读者发现自己偏好这种优雅的迷醉之举。毫无疑问，他们在喬杜里新小说《紅城堡》（Château Rouge）中将发现这种偏好得到了证实。无需在意从午餐过渡到晚餐：《紅城堡》只想在巴黎寻找方向。它更像是一个地点而非情节——一个漫游者的故事，或者是在玩弄这个概念，其中大部分内容像是漫步巴黎街道时记录的简短且半相关的小注。这座城市之于本书，或许就像该作者的《逗留》（Sojourn, 2022）之于柏林。在这里，整整一页可能只有两句被设为单行且下方留有空白深渊的句子：“她回会议去了。我要去见奥古斯丁。”（“她”是叙述者的妻子；奥古斯丁是一位熟人。）而其他页面则会有整整两三个段落。这种效果简洁而诱人，与例如劳伦·埃尔金的《No. 91 / 92：巴黎通勤笔记》（No. 91 / 92: Notes on a Parisian commute, 2021）非常相似，只不过没有了巴士。有时，喬杜里早期的一位读者在《不完整性》（Incompleteness）中被引用的一句话会浮现在脑海中：“段落并不一定要按照你排列的顺序彼此衔接，对吧？”看来确实如此，尽管《紅城堡》中段落遵循的顺序确实有一个开始：一次抵达。小说的叙述者——与《我青春之友》（Friend of My Youth）中的对应人物不同，他没有名字，尽管他的行为和语气非常像阿米特·喬杜里以及“阿米特·喬杜里”——为了工作来到了巴黎。（事实上，作者在2018年是哥伦比亚大学思想与想象研究所的首批研究员之一，该研究所位于蒙帕纳斯的里德大厅。）他已经在紅城堡（Château Rouge）——蒙馬特东侧的一个“小非洲”——找到了住处，但他在文中详述了新来者迷茫的状态：困惑地在手机上查阅谷歌地图，被语言障碍所阻。当然，这不是浪漫神话中的巴黎，而是那些在北站附近寻找廉价住宿的游客可能会遇到的巴黎。一些指南会将这个街区称为“热闹”或“国际化”。另一些则会警告有扒手。

当叙述者最终找到那套公寓时，他认为这里不太合适。他再次出门，沿着普莱街（Rue Poulet）走，“经过一片令人眩晕的农产品”。他的妻子和女儿到了，后者抱怨浴室很脏（“我发现自己在为这套公寓辩护”）。妻子和女儿来来往往，将她们的名字这个秘密一同带走。随后是对伍迪·艾伦的独白，以及艾伦的电影《午夜在巴黎》所传达的一种信念：“人们去巴黎是为了寻找奇迹”。现实偶尔会通过台外的警报声来重新主张自己的存在——“黄背心”运动正处于战争状态——但叙述者更关心他自己针对公寓里蚊子的战役。他买了一些“防蚊乳液”（Lotion Anti-Moustique），但实际上那是喷雾。“我挥舞着气雾剂，毫无节制地涂抹空间。”故事就这样继续。接着是更多的国际人员往来；哲学家雅克·朗西埃（Jacques Rancière）或他的片段，以及几位孟加拉店主的客串；一场死亡。在一次会议上，“许多人将谈论人文科学的危机，而人文科学本身却在崩溃 ”。所有这些都像《午后拉格》（Afternoon Raag, 1993）——作者讲述的一名在牛津大学学习的孟加拉年轻人的故事——一样迷人，只要你恰好能调到喬杜里的波段。《红城堡》（Château Rouge）可能不是浪漫刻板印象或文学怀旧中的巴黎——在某些方面，它更像“东伦敦某个多种族聚居的省份”——但那种既有的印象在某种程度上仍然产生着影响。“我对普鲁斯特的故居和鲍德温的寓所所在的那个巴黎有一种隐隐的渴望，”叙述者承认，尽管他知道巴黎必然伴随着某种程度的“破败”（“身处此处……就像被一种被忽视的感觉所淹没”）。他的妻子热爱《流动的盛宴》，但多年来——数十年间——他一直无法让自己沉溺于他认为的欧内斯特·海明威那种“简洁的感伤主义”。他在当地阅读了前三页。“它们令人愉悦。”

26 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © FAHIR BALAKOPS VOL. 2026 WIRELESS ---

突破浪潮

爱尔兰乡村的悲剧与疗愈

基思·霍珀（Keith Hopper）评多纳尔·赖恩（Donal Ryan）著《国王在哪里》（Where Are the Kings），224页，道布莱出版社（Doubleday），£16.99。

多纳尔·赖恩的第一部小说《旋转的心》（The Spinning Heart，见《泰晤士文學 supplements》，2013年9月27日）在被莉莉普特出版社（Lilliput Press）接纳之前被拒绝了四十七次。随后，该书入围了布克奖长名单，从此赖恩成为了爱尔兰文学界的常客，大约每两年创作一部小说。《旋转的心》设定在一个具有象征意义的“鬼屋社区”——即2008年住房崩溃后被遗弃的住宅开发区。这部小说很容易被看作是一部互相关联的短篇小说集，因为在全部二十一个章节中，赖恩为每一章都引入了一位新的叙述者。然而，每一章都通过前一章中的某个事件相连，因此每一个新声音都接过了叙事的接力棒。这是一种非常有效且看似简单的现代主义手法，它掩盖了情节本身的匮乏；正如赖恩在小说首次出版时承认的那样：“情节不多，但人们似乎很喜欢这些角色。这是一个非常本土的故事，但你可以说它是普世的，因为这场经济危机和所有的紧缩政策不仅在爱尔兰，而且在整个欧洲的小镇上都在伤害人们”。

赖恩的第七部小说《国王在哪里》（Where Are the Kings）——标题中没有问号——延续了这种风格，塑造了来自农村工人阶级社区的活泼且讨喜的角色；其叙事结构依赖于场景构建而非情节；并且不露声色地致力于发展一个能有机契合整体主题的共情视角。在本书中，故事是通过一个十二岁男孩杰克（Jack）的视角讲述的。在开篇页中，杰克的母亲格蕾丝（Grace）自杀了，而杰克徒劳地试图救她，这一切都以一种令人屏息的自由间接风格捕捉到：

他离开了赛车，跑完最后一段路到达湖岸，沿着狭窄的停车场，除了一个车位外空无一人，他感觉不到自己的腿或手臂，嘴里发不出任何声音，尽管他试图大声喊叫。回来，求你了，等等我，求你了，朝着那辆生锈的菲亚特车停放的地方跑去，但车里没有人，到处都没有人，森林小径上没有，秋千旁没有，水边也没有，但水里有东西，距离岸边大约有一块石头的投掷距离，浮上来然后消失，再次出现，又消失，海滩的砾石上波浪在交替，水在他腿上很冷，在他身上很冷，在他母亲的身体上，水很冷。

在这次剧烈且创伤性的开篇之后，叙事节奏慢了下来，杰克与大家庭在一起的新生活被细致地描绘出来。杰克的父亲托米德（Tomid）是一名捷克移民，正在精神病院中从妻子的死中恢复，因此杰克现在与母亲的家人一起生活：他善良但悲痛欲绝的祖父母；他粗鲁但警觉的叔叔西奥（Theo）和豪尔（Hauile）；十四岁的JJ，其家庭身份并不明确（理论上他是杰克的叔叔，但有迹象表明他可能是表亲）；以及性感且善良的罗斯姨妈（Aunt Rose），杰克对她产生了严重的青春期迷恋，而她自己也有麻烦：“罗斯，妈妈多年前因为一些复杂且不可见的事情与她闹翻了，那是些在他出生之前的陈年纠葛”。

正如在赖恩的其他小说中一样，这是一个处理着自身秘密与谎言的复杂家庭，但其根基是基本的体面感和同情心。再一次，最精彩的场景涉及那些表面强悍的男人——一名讲究的警察，一名台球厅的恶霸——他们出人意料地展现出情感智能和敏感。接近结尾时，情节（如果能称之为情节的话）陷入了情节剧式的剧烈波动，尽管目前尚不清楚这些转折是真实的，还是出自这个男孩高度活跃的想象。（这种刻意封闭的视角使其呈现出一种恰到好处的模棱两可。）

其他谜团似乎依然存在，包括从一开始就令人耿耿于怀的一点：为什么标题里没有问号？这个短语出自瑞安（Ryan）引用自W. B. 叶茨（W. B. Yeats）1903年剧作《在贝利海滩》（On Baile's Strand）的一段冗长题词。在剧中，英雄库丘林（Cichulainn）在杀死儿子后因悲痛而发疯，他砍掉波浪的头颅，而一名心碎的目击者大喊：“国王们在哪里？国王们在做什么？”直到接近结尾时，人们才明白这个标题是陈述性的而非疑问性的：国王们一直都在，他们化身为那些沉默而坚强、体面的男人，在密切关注这个男孩的同时，也绝望地应对着自己悲剧性的丧亲之痛。基思·霍珀（Keith Hopper）在斯莱戈的大西洋技术大学任教。他目前正在编辑一部名为《斯莱戈与地方感》（Sligo and the Sense of Place）的文集，预计将于今年出版。

終結感

在一个陷入变革的英格兰村庄度过的六个月

迪娜·比尔奇（Dinah Birch）评

梅丽莎·哈里森（Melissa Harrison），《给予的世界》（The Given World），272页，Hutchinson Heinemann出版，£18.99。

这是一部关于终结的小说——生命的终结、历史的终结、自然世界的律动，或许甚至是世界本身的终结。“然而，事物并非一下子全部结束，而是分阶段地结束”——在英格兰乡村深处的一个小村庄下埃奥德姆（Lower Eodham），那些交织在一起的故事具有一种启示录般的共鸣，部分源于对那些如今正不可避免地离开我们的美景的唤起。

梅丽莎·哈里森是一位造诣深厚的自然作家，她对与村庄人类居民共用土地的动植物——如鹪鹩的鸣唱、春日里繁茂的山楂花——的了解，为原本可能显得阴郁的叙事增添了一层抒情的色彩。哈里森坚持要求我们理解那些正在消亡之物的价值。

《给予的世界》追踪了这个社区在六个月期间的生活，跨越了春天的最初迹象直到秋天的到来。一些当地人来自在村里生活和工作了数代人的家庭；另一些则是近期迁入者。富裕的中产阶级专业人士与那些在低收入中挣扎的人共同生活。哈里森经常关注下埃奥德姆的女性，但她也向男性的劳动致敬，从邮递员到当地的建筑工。现代农业面临的挑战并未被掩饰。如果这部小说有一个英雄，那就是艾伦，一个被当地地主欺骗的坚毅的奶农。

将这个多样群体团结在一起的是他们的不安。气候变化是一个持久的主题（从未被直接提及），天气在暴雨和干旱之间剧烈波动。野生动物在退缩。最后一只獾逃离了；在河中出没多年的巨型梭鱼消失了；庄稼神秘地歉收。克莱尔听到了一些意味着她必须面对自己终结的消息。年迈的希尔达摔倒后无法移动。罗伊在屋顶工作时失去了勇气，并意识到他熟悉的职业生活已经结束。“所以，也许这就是结局了。”年轻且充满希望的康纳，却依然被一种对丧失的意识所笼罩。“有时他认为根本不存在所谓的怀旧，而是过去的事情确实更好。”他也离开了村庄。

哈里森对村庄生活中具有质感的特殊性的唤起具有说服力，而那种某些确定性“现在正走向终结”的感觉，赋予了她的小说一种忧郁的连贯性。但故事的严肃分量被贯穿于那些令人不安的事件中的准神秘主义所削弱。古老的器物——其中一件暗示着古老的诅咒——被挖掘出来。书中反复暗示有一个既邪恶又具有保护性的女性灵体在驱动着这条河。艾伦救起了一个溺水的男孩，男孩当时正“与河里的某种东西搏斗”。“你为什么进水里？”“我——我不知道，我不是故意的，她——”罗伊在椽子间的危机似乎是由他发现一只隐藏在木材中、缝制精巧的小孩鞋引起的。当博学的威廉·韦兰（William Welland）——他似乎能与祖先的智慧共鸣——将鞋子放回原处后，罗伊发现自己可以回到屋顶完成工作。

古老灵体的不安存在于小说之中是有其位置的，但在这里它成了一种干扰。哈里森对根植于土地的肥沃循环消逝的哀悼，被赋予了真实知识的权威感。召唤民俗，并暗示超自然力量参与了旧有生活模式的崩溃，是一种不必要的放纵。如果读者不相信河神的存在，他们可能会倾向于认为，哈里森告诉我们的关于英格兰乡村现状的许多其他内容也不过是幻想。而那将是一个遗憾。

迪娜·比尔奇是利物浦大学英语系荣休教授。她最近的一本书是《安东尼·特罗洛普：极简导论》，2025年出版。

2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文学 supplement》 27

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小说

弗朗西斯科與迪亞娜·羅薩里奧·魏斯：學生、門徒，還是女兒？馬丁·比格爾斯（Martin Beagles）評

塞爾希奧·德爾·莫利諾（Sergio la Molino）著，《女兒》（La hija），643頁。Alfaguara出版社。平裝本，€23.90。

這部長篇小說的標題本身就宣告了其修正主義的意圖。塞爾希奧·德爾·莫利諾將畫家羅薩里奧·魏斯（Rosario Weiss，1814–43）呈現為弗朗西斯科·德·戈亞（Francisco de Goya，1746–1828）的“女兒”，從一開始就挑戰了關於魏斯的標準看法。在魏斯與母親萊奧卡迪亞·索里亞（Leocadia Zorrilla）在戈亞家中生活的十一年期間，她一直是這位伟大艺术家的學生和門徒。傳記作者們普遍認為，羅薩里奧的父親是定居馬德里的德國珠寶商伊西多爾·魏斯（Isidore Weiss），他是萊奧卡迪亞分居的丈夫；而萊奧卡迪亞在戈亞晚年僅僅是他的管家。

德爾·莫利諾正面地对抗了這一正統觀點。他最大限度地挖掘紀錄證據並結合自身直覺，提出了一個關於魏斯生活與作品的版本，其基礎是這樣一個推測：戈亞與萊奧卡迪亞曾以夫妻身份共同生活，而羅薩里奧是他們的孩子。《女兒》是一部由兩個镜像的第一人稱叙述组成的“套盒”结构（mise en abyme），每篇叙述都被描述为一份“被发现”的手稿。

第一篇是（真實存在的）西班牙自由派貴族胡安·安東尼奧·拉斯孔（Juan Antonio Rascón）的一部350頁虛構回憶錄彙編，在此他被刻畫成年輕時對羅薩里奧痴迷的仰慕者。他的回顧錄包含三十二章，其中許多章节是对羅薩里奧在1820年代至二十八歲去世之间处境的独立追忆

羅薩里奧·魏斯 1841 年作品《注意力》（The Attention）細節。回憶錄以全知且詳盡的筆觸描述了19世紀初西班牙幾起複雜的公共事件——戰爭、饑荒、恐怖統治、相對平靜的階段——以及這些事件對羅薩里奧的接連影響，而羅薩里奧往往在歷史解釋的廢墟之下被掩埋。拉斯孔敘事的核心可以概括如下：羅薩里奧在孩童時期被戈亞帶往波爾多安全地流亡，但在戈亞去世後，她回到馬德里，成為初創時期的普拉多博物館的臨摹員，隨後成為一名獨立的藝術家。

書中的第二份“手稿”被歸於“塞爾希奧·德爾·莫利諾”名下，他是一位來自薩拉戈薩的作家，似乎與本書作者本人無異，其寫作風格犀利且富有個性，這正是這位小說家兼文化歷史學家在西班牙成名的風格。德爾·莫利諾的文本既是一次傳記探索的記錄，也是一篇關於魏斯的長篇論文，其基礎是對作者關於她父母及成長背景理論的激烈辯護。與拉斯孔一樣，他宣稱自己“迷戀”魏斯並熱衷於提升她的作品地位；但與拉斯孔不同的是，他讀過瓦爾特·本雅明、西奧多·阿多諾和韓炳哲，並熱情地引用他們來支持自己的論點。他還捕捉倖存信件中的蛛絲馬跡，以創造一個比拉斯孔回憶錄中更為寬廣的魏斯形象。

德爾·莫利諾那種誘人的散文風格的仰慕者，可能會在面對第一份手稿時感到吃力，因為其中角色多達数十人，且充斥著大量繁瑣的“背景交代”。而具有歷史傾向的讀者則更有可能對缺乏情節的後半部分感到困惑，因為那裡對第一部分已經引入的事件和主題進行了循環往復的重述。德爾·莫利諾是一位極具吸引力且諷刺的作家，擅長有效的自嘲，但他在這次創作中似乎对读者提出了过高的要求。至關重要的是，有一個問題幾乎未被觸及：生物學關係究竟有多重要？如果戈亞像他所表現出的那樣全心全意地教導魏斯，那麼他或是其他人才是她的“親生”父親，這在多大程度上真的重要？

德·莫利诺在这本原汁原味但略显令人抓狂的书中，直到第 614 页才给出这个故事的完整版本，而大多数作者肯定会将其作为开篇。2024, 普拉多博物馆宣布，已从一名私人所有者手中确认并购得韦斯的自画像——她化身为半裸的狩猎女神狄安娜，这是一件名为《关注》（La atención）的寓言作品，此前已失踪 180 年。随后，馆方决定将这幅画展在普拉多博物馆的 62A 展厅，位于比森特·洛佩斯·波塔尼亚所绘的戈雅晚年肖像画之上。德·莫利诺将 62A 展厅描述为一个基本无人问津的房间，非常适合进行非法指派或达成阴暗的商业交易。在他看来，大多数游客在寻找更著名的景点时都会走过其入口；除了作者本人，几乎没有人进去过。现在，有些人可能会进去了。马丁·比格尔斯在马德里的科米亚斯教皇大学任教。

莱昂纳多与伊亚克（Leonardo and Iac）

爱、艺术与权力在文艺复兴时期的佛罗伦萨 克里斯托弗·什林普顿（Christopher Shrimpton）评 菲尔·梅兰森（Phil Melanson）著 Florenzer 出版社，368页，第一卷，平装本，£14.99。

“去阿尔卑斯山的哈布斯堡宫廷，问问那里的人‘sodomite’（鸡奸者）怎么说。他们会告诉你：Florenzer。”这部野心勃勃的小说在故事中段如此解释其书名。“不难理解这个名字的由来，”我们被进一步告知，“只需要仔细观察，倾听即可。”

我们身处十五世纪的佛罗伦萨，全神贯注。这是一个奇妙的地方，“惊人、富饶且粗鲁”，是后来被称为文艺复兴时期的中心，拥有那个时代最伟大的艺术家——波提切利、佩鲁吉诺，以及最著名的莱昂纳多·达·芬奇——以及该国最强大的银行，美第奇银行。根据你的口味，这里要么是天堂，要么是所多玛。在这里，每个人都在忙碌：创作艺术，赚钱，以及亲热。

菲尔·梅兰森的处女作由三个男人的交织故事构成，他们都在追求上述一项或全部消遣：才华横溢但穷困潦倒的艺术家莱昂纳多；佛罗伦萨最有权势的人洛伦佐·德·美第奇；以及一名野心勃勃且心怀愤恨的祭司弗朗切斯科·萨尔维亚蒂。故事在他们的视角之间交替，讲述他们如何努力达成目标，从而为这座由艺术与诡计定义的城市提供了全景视角。

出于显而易见的原因，莱昂纳多是故事的核心与灵魂，故事以他的坠入爱河开始。莱昂纳多非婚生且被父亲唾弃，是一个局外人，“太古怪，太容易白日做梦”，且“一直知道自己与众不同”。他是大师艺术家安德烈亚·德尔·韦罗基奥工作室的学徒，偏好穿着淡色调的束腰外衣，这引起了其他学徒的窃笑。他倾慕的对象是伊亚克，一名金匠学徒兼兼职男妓，这可能会带来麻烦，因为尽管佛罗伦萨以宽容著称，但仍受到“夜晚官员”（Officers of the Night）的严厉监管，其职责就是根除鸡奸行为。

当莱昂纳多在创作壁画并与伊亚克关系日益亲密时，洛伦佐和萨尔维亚蒂（以及罗马的新教皇）正陷入一场长达数年的权力斗争——这是叙事的引擎——而这场斗争最终将以血腥收场。两人都极具野心，洛伦佐希望不惜一切代价变得“宏伟”，而萨尔维亚蒂则燃烧着一种扭曲的虔诚感（“圣洁，圣洁，圣洁，他想歌唱。他终于在崛起”）。

小说编织了一张令人愉悦且黏稠的阴谋之网，充斥着八卦、贿赂和背叛，以及在半岛各大权力中心之间频繁的立场转换：“佛罗伦萨、罗马、米兰、那不勒斯和威尼斯。他们永无止境且令人精疲力竭的舞蹈”。虽然这场舞蹈编排得不错，并很好地展现了金箔辉煌之下的血腥政治，但它确实感觉像是一场侧翼表演。

考虑到叙事以莱昂纳多开始并结束，他显然是三个角色中最有趣的一个，且他的艺术与性成长是梅兰森关注的核心，因此将他降格为三人组中的一个组成部分显得很奇怪。简而言之，莱昂纳多的戏份太少，或许因此，现有的描写往往显得单薄。他那据称足以撼动世界的与伊亚克的关系所占篇幅极少，而他的想象产物——那些革命性的发明——所获关注则更少。相反，梅兰森选择了生硬的总结：“他知道如何在地下挖掘秘密隧道。他能制造坚不可摧的战车、大炮和投石机。他还拥有海战的设计图”。

本书采用了轻松且口语化的风格（例如“萨尔维亚蒂在想什么鬼东西”），并包含许多友好的内部笑话（关于比萨人：“他们甚至连一座钟楼都建不好”）以及偶尔出现的双关语（关于绘制裸体雅各：“列奥纳多的画笔在颤抖，笔尖湿润”），因此《Florenzer》读起来通常很有趣。但作为对西方文明最具定义性的天才之一的刻画，它不过是一幅速写而已。克里斯托弗·什林普顿（Christopher Shrimpton）是一位常驻伦敦的作家。 28 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 August 7, 2026 © 2026 by PERDORFISCH WISSENSCHEN ---

对自己而言亦是异乡人：对艺术家与弑父者理查德·达德的重新想象

戴安娜·达克（Diana Darke）评

詹妮弗·希金斯（Jennifer Higgins），《贝德拉姆》（Bedlam），240页。Verso出版。平装本，£10.99。

理查德·达德（Richard Dadd）长期以来一直是个谜。他最广为人知的身份是一位维多利亚时代的艺术家，他杀死了自己的父亲，随后在贝德拉姆（Bedlam）和布罗德穆尔（Broadmoor）精神病院被囚禁了四十年，期间一直绘制仙女图。詹妮弗·希金斯在她那部令人不安且才华横溢的小说《贝德拉姆》中，通过解密线索还原了他的早年生活——该书在2006年曾小规模印刷，现首次重新发行——揭示了达德在1842年至43.年游历中东期间，如何在25,岁时丧失理智。

《贝德拉姆》以意识流的形式写就，追踪了达德在其中年赞助人托马斯·菲利普斯爵士（Sir Thomas Phillips）的邀请下，作为伦敦艺术界一颗冉冉升起的新星，在欧洲、土耳其、叙利亚、巴勒斯坦和埃及进行的“大旅行”。当然，达德本人并未写过这样的记录。他在那个关键时期留下的唯一记录是他的中东写生本（现藏于V&A博物馆），其中包含了他标志性的极高精度风格的细致铅笔画，画的不是仙女，而是神庙、圆柱和城市景观，以及穿着传统服饰当地人的东方主义肖像。（理查德·达德的作品新展刚刚在皇家艺术学院开幕，将在未来的《泰晤士文學 supplements》中进行评论。）

理查德·达德作品《艺术家的沙漠之停》，约1845年，细节图。

希金斯将叙事起点设在布罗德穆尔，达德在其中疑惑自己是如何来到这里的，并对他记忆的不断变化感到困惑。“我生命的支点发生在25岁那年，那一年我变老了，而他人所认识的我死去了。”他描述了离开英格兰的情景，与父亲和姐妹们漫长的告别耗尽了他所有的精力，而母亲的离世则令他无法理解。“我现在就是你的母亲，”他的父亲说。“父亲，你不是我的母亲，”他回答。威尼斯令他震撼（“这不可能是凡人设计的”），随后，我们突然来到了亚历山大港，“与哈米德（一名被托马斯爵士雇佣来向我们展示‘阿拉伯真实世界’的努比亚人）在一起”，哈米德安排了一次访问妓院之行：这是达德的第一次性经验。“我想触摸一个女人，如果可能的话，暂时忘记我自己，”达德说。托马斯爵士假装他的兴趣“纯粹是人类学上的”，第二天早晨吃早餐时，他们对此只字不提；事实上，这件事从未被提及过。“那是，”叙述者反思道，“另一个时代的另外两个男人。”

埃及令达德感到困惑。他发现斯芬克斯“像已婚处女一样罕见……像我见过的任何幻象一样令人不安”。从此时起，他的精神开始崩溃，他失去了对身在何处以及对自己身上发生之事的掌控。希金斯以极强的力量和真实感记录了他的疯狂坠落。“我们来到这里是为了观察其他文化，尝试理解它们，”达德反思道，“……完全不顾我们无法理解任何人对我们说过的话，也完全不顾我们对这些民族的神灵毫无感知。”他感到极度的孤独，并开始看到“永恒符号中最明亮的色彩”。

一本由托马斯爵士借给他的关于埃及神话的书，注定了他的命运。很快，他痴迷于冥界之神奥西里斯（Osiris）——奥西里斯被自己的兄弟杀害，而这位神灵似乎在敦促达德实施弑父。但儿子为何要杀死父亲？……这一切中的对错又在何处？……在这里，即使对我自己而言，我也太像个异乡人了……这里不是我们英国上帝的地方。他会被如此强烈的光芒刺瞎。

当达德回到家时，希金斯已让我们进入了他的内心并产生共情：这位流浪者曾漂泊在毫无支撑的异域之地，如今回到家中却被同样的无法理解所包围，他的精神病发作已不可避免。“如果只有，”他哀叹道，“一个能紧紧抱住我的朋友。”

或许，那些仙女就是他的朋友。

戴安娜·達克（Diana Darke）的最新著作是《伊斯蘭風格：建造歐洲中世紀古蹟的被遺忘的工匠》（Islamesque: The forgotten craftsmen who built Europe's medieval monuments），2024年出版。

尘归尘：青年英国艺术家中的享乐主义与死亡驱动

亚历山大·莱斯尔（Alexander Leissle）评 《展览》（Exhibition），亚历克斯·海德（Alex Hyde）著，256页。Granta出版。平装本，£9.99。

亚历克斯·海德的第二部小说《展览》将我们抛入20世纪90年代伦敦的艺术世界，那是一个被高度神话化的时代，正 Riding 在富裕的消费资本主义繁荣浪潮之上。在这里，我们可以看到青年英国艺术家（YBAs）、白立方（White Cube）派对上覆盖着白色粉末的表面、小报上的名声以及甲醛。这里正是当代“名人艺术家”模式被磨砺并定型的地方，文艺复兴晚期将艺术家视为知识分子远见者的理想，被画廊主和从业者共同商品化了。

于是，拉布尔（或称“拉布”）·斯通（Rabble / Rab Stone）登场了，她是一名来自曼彻斯特、出身卑微且充满困扰的年轻摄影师。她搬到伦敦，随后与一位富有的艺术家同居。小说开篇写道：“你。当你穿着睡袍，叼着烟打开布里克斯顿房子的门时”。这实际上是一部反向的“艺术家成长小说”（Künstlerroman）：小说以第二人称呈现，“艺术家”既是小说的焦点，也是其主导的空白。

很快，拉布与这位艺术家的关系得到了发展：起初，拉布透过门缝窥视艺术家工作，“大腿张开，赤裸地在地板上，俯身在纸上，镜子被撑在旁边”；随后艺术家要求拉布为她拍照，拉布照做了，“我的膝盖仍在颤抖，仍在等待快门按下。与此同时在想，你真是可怜，软弱”。两人都享受着拉布的窥视欲；而事实证明，艺术家随后也将利用这一点，以牺牲拉布为代价来获利。于是，一场“双人舞”随之展开，拉布围绕着艺术家放荡的生活及其“一连串的性交”、无法解释的黑眼圈以及酒精和药物的狂欢打转。拉布问，艺术家是否在填补某种空虚。“是的，确实有空虚需要填补，你说。我的阴道。”至此，这部作品为一场穿梭于艺术界陈词滥调的原型与幻想中的艰苦旅程奠定了基调。

《展览》的第二幕将艺术家转移到了21世纪10年代的纽约，在那里她获得了成功与名声——并逃离了拉布的视线。拉布回到了家，照顾患有认知障碍症的母亲，这种距离感在叙事上形成了一种维持状态，预示着两人不可避免的重逢。在书中最出色的段落中，拉布坐下来为她那毫无兴趣的母亲写生，“只有厨房时钟的声音和铅笔在纸上的干涩声，偶尔传来隔壁的罐头笑声”。拉布的母亲疑惑地审视着作品，“就像人们在发现自己的肖像被捕捉到但总觉得有些不对劲时那样”。拉布决定，也许“那天晚上她洗碗时，会以不同的眼光看待自己”。这是海德最接近于阐明创作《展览》动机的时刻：将艺术描绘成发生在人与人之间的事情，将作品视为一层薄膜。

但这部小说的很大一部分在单薄程度上就像薄膜一样。海德的散文大量使用分段，将故事切碎，变换时态，在没有明显文学效果的情况下进行中断和碎片化。她有一种特殊的习惯，喜欢使用简短、随意的反应，一种类似表情符号的语言：“轻笑”，“假装悲伤的脸”。拉布和艺术家的那个像“醋坛子”一样的室友邓肯（Duncan）也同样缺乏血肉：出身名门，迷人，挥霍，同性恋，完全在预料之中。当拉布注意到他前臂上“绽放的淤青”和针孔时，我们已经可以猜到他的结局。

然后是文中提到的那位艺术家，正如小说末尾的注释所承认的那样，是以特蕾西·艾敏（Tracey Emin）为原型的。普通艺术爱好者也不需要太多线索就能推断出这一点：这里有她的巨幅具象绘画；有她那张扬且脆弱的性感；有视频作品阶段；还有那张特定的床。海德（Hyde）并没有过多地讨论艾敏本人，而是通过拉布（Rab）——那个记录者、支持者，以及痛苦艺术家的平衡砝码——来审视她。作者试图批判艺术界的运作机制——简短地分析了价值投机或市场的死亡欲（thanatophilia）——但与此同时又沉溺于这种光环之中，这表明其客观性并不比拉布更高。在缺乏深刻洞察的情况下，我们面对的是对核心关系的性格研究。但起初看似是性张力的东西，到最后感觉像是浪漫主义的空虚：一段通过一系列人为凝视构建的关系。虽然对于两个似乎不知道自己的创造力来自何处，或除了服务于自身之外还应服务于什么的个体来说，这或许显得恰当，但结果令读者感到疲惫。失望脸。亚历山大·莱斯尔（Alexander Leissle）是 ArtReview 的数字编辑。 2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 29 © ARTWORKS / LAMY --- 法语文学

黑人精神的使徒

一位非洲政治家兼法兰西学术院院士的著作

Alexandra Reza

《利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾：政治著作》（Léopold Sédar Senghor, Writings on Politics），Yohann C. Ripert 编辑并翻译，224页。杜克大学出版社。£21.99 (US $28.95)。

《桑戈爾精選》（The Essential Senghor）：非洲哲学与黑色美学，Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall, Cheikh Thiam 编辑并翻译，406页。杜克大学出版社。£26.99 (US $34.95)。

在乌斯曼·塞姆本（Ousmane Sembène）执导的塞内加尔电影《哈拉》（Xala, 1975）中，一个新独立国家的总统正主持首次内阁会议，他身着燕尾服和礼服衬衫。他用宏大的语调宣布：“我们选择社会主义，唯一真正的社会主义，非洲社会主义……我们的独立已经完成。”在聚集的同事们的掌声中，他揭开了自己的肖像画。随后，他的两名法国顾问走进来，默默地向每位内阁部长分发装有现金的公文包。

这位总统是对利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾的讽刺，后者是塞内加尔的第一任国家元首，在电影上映时已执政十五年。当然，这是一个刻薄的素描，为了喜剧效果而夸大，但塞姆本触及了对桑戈爾最常见的批评核心：他傲慢自大，与法国人过于亲近，且言行不一。桑戈爾政府随后禁掉了塞姆本的下一部电影。

桑戈爾这个人物及其思想经常成为漫画化的对象。在1960年以五十三岁之龄成为塞内加尔总统之前，桑戈爾是一位活跃在知识分子圈子中的诗人兼教师。作为一名才华横溢的学生，他是第一位通过 agrégation（在法国教授法国文学所需的资格考试）的非洲学生，并随后从事教学工作。根据经典说法，他与马提尼克诗人艾梅·塞泽尔（Aimé Césaire）和法属圭亚那诗人莱昂-贡特兰·达马斯（Léon-Gontran Damas）共同成为了 20 世纪 30 年代和 40 年代“黑人精神”（Négritude）运动的三位建筑师。

值得注意的是，桑戈爾在 1948 年编辑了一部具有开创意义的黑人精神诗集——《法语新黑人及马达加斯加诗集》（Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française）。事实确实如此，他在担任总统期间以及一生之中，一直担任艺术家和作家的赞助人和捍卫者——尤其是那些符合他心中黑人精神定义的人。在谈到塞姆本时，他曾说：“我们只希望他的电影能少一些肤浅，少一些政治，从而更多地体现黑色，更多地体现文化……一种忠实于黑人精神价值的电影。”

那么，黑人精神究竟是什么？达马斯、塞泽尔和桑戈爾对这个问题的答案各不相同。对于塞泽尔来说，这是一种意识的觉醒，是对色盲马克思主义的一种参与式修正。而对于桑戈爾来说，它似乎更具神秘色彩，与他反复提到的 l’essence nègre（“黑色本质”：如何翻译这个令人困扰且具有特定历史含义的词汇 nègre 是一个复杂的问题，Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall 和 Cheikh Thiam 对此提供了有益的反思）相关。或许正如尼日利亚评论家阿比奥拉·伊雷莱（Abiola Irele）所建议的，将其从历史角度理解为一场“与非洲民族主义密切相关的社会和文化运动”最为恰当。

利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾，1983

这一概念在不同语言和世界不同地区获得了如此广泛的认可，以至于其含义已经脱离了那些创造该术语的人，尽管桑戈尔对他持有相当强的所有权意识，并且终其一生都在不断地——有时似乎是无止境地——阐述其定义。由于“黑人本质”（essence nègre）这一观点以及其他以格言形式流传的评论，作为哲学家的桑戈尔经常被批评为将特质本质化。他在左翼以及在塞内加尔也并不受欢迎，这是因为他的亲法倾向及其在政府中的记录，而这些记录与其著作是不可分割的。到1966年，塞内加尔成为了一个一党制国家；1976年，桑戈尔谨慎地允许其他政党成立，但条件受到限制。正如加纳小说家艾伊·奎伊·阿尔玛（Ayi Kwei Armah）在1967年所言，桑戈尔在政府中的行为似乎存在着“理论与实践之间的巨大鸿沟”：在所有这些文字争端进行的同时，桑戈尔在实际政治中采用了直接源自威权殖民过去的手段：军队、警察、与旧权力集团操纵性的结盟，以及一大批法国顾问、专家和行政人员的支持。桑戈尔对法语圈（la Francophonie，一个法国后帝国时代但绝对是新殖民主义的软实力网络，在20世纪80年代和90年代规模庞大，如今因其裙带关系和干涉非洲国家国内政治体制而很大程度上失去了信誉）的拥护，对于许多致力于非洲解放的人来说难以接受。甚至塞泽尔也试图在他的黑人意识（Négritude）愿景与桑戈尔的愿景之间划清界限（在谈到桑戈尔时，他说：“黑人意识，是的，但伴随着总统府、爱丽舍宫的礼宾等”）。

两部新的桑戈尔作品英译本试图通过关注其大量的散文写作来为其思想正名。《政治著作》（Writings on Politics）强调他关于人道主义、联邦主义和法语圈的文本，而《桑戈尔精选》（The Essential Senghor）则侧重于黑人意识、黑人写作与艺术，以及文化混血（métissage）。这两卷书都从桑戈尔法文版的五卷本全集《自由》（Liberté，现已绝版）中选取了论文，该全集将不同形式的散文按主题分组：演说、序言、评论、论文、报告等。这两部译本必然地（或许是仁慈地？）进行了筛选，剔除了在今天难以辩护的论文，例如对比利时在刚果的活动持有令人不安的同情之情的《比利时人在刚果》（Les Belges au Congo），以及他关于塞内加尔独立后经济和政策规划的作品，以及一些相当技术性的对马克思主义的批判。在《政治著作》中，约汉·C·里佩尔（Yohann C. Ripert）试图将桑戈尔塑造为一名联邦主义者和人道主义思想家，并将他对比法语圈的拥护描述为“在后殖民世界中搭建桥梁的工具”。里佩尔以远见卓识的措辞将他呈现为一个柏拉图式的人物：桑戈尔几乎逐字地遵循了《理想国》中发展的论点，他认同这样一个观点，即没有任何哲学或诗歌作品能为政治问题找到解决方案，然而，哲学和诗歌实践对于任何旨在维持政体可持续性的政治工作的成功都是必要的——这是一个我们经常遗忘的永恒教训。

这部肖像画虽然研究深入且写作细致，但有时显得过于激进：里佩尔（Ripert）写道，当桑戈尔在执政二十年后于 1981 年辞去总统职务时，“摆脱了国家治理的直接需求，桑戈尔充分展现了他的‘哲学家国王’光环”。“哲学家国王光环”这个说法有些过头，但这些论文确实展示了桑戈尔关于治理和民族主义的思想。特别是，它们将他呈现为民族主义的批评者——在《为了联邦主义的解决方案》（1955）中，他将民族国家界定为一种“殖民理想 ”，并主张建立一个法兰西联邦共和国。桑戈尔将自己定义为一名法国人，声称“法国从未种族主义；在殖民强权中，她是最不‘殖民’的一个”。在《巴尔干化还是联邦化》（1956）中，他构想了一个愿景，即“法属西非的八个领土合并为一个拥有单一政府和单一立法机构的统一国家，而这个国家在国家法律下被整合进共和国”。在《为了联邦主义的解决方案》中，桑戈尔主张留在法国联邦的论点基于他所认为的非洲领土与法国的联系以及对法国的需求（“海外领土如果脱离，将像被砍断的树枝一样枯萎”）。《巴尔干化还是联邦化》则更具对抗性，且在时间考验下显得更为深刻。其核心论点是，塞内加尔或科特迪瓦相对较少的人口在与人口 4000 万 的法国打交道时分量很轻，而一个人口约 2500 万 的法属西非联邦将拥有更大的筹码。这种对民族国家的警惕在更广泛的非洲反殖民主义者中十分典型，他们在争取民族独立的同时，其论述和实践也在批判民族国家并提供替代方案。对于他们中的许多人来说，在即将建立的民族国家与更广泛的人类联系之间并没有非此即彼的抉择：强调哪一方是基于战略和时间偶然性的，而非互斥的。他们认为民族主义是必要的，但对于实现更广泛自由的宏大目标而言是不充分的。对比 1959 年法兰西语区的精神病学家、激进分子及反殖民理论家弗朗茨·法农（Frantz Fanon）的观点：“民族国家的建设必然伴随着普世价值的发现与鼓励……国际意识正是在民族意识的核心中生存并成长的”。或者比绍领导人阿米尔卡尔·卡布拉尔（Amilcar Cabral），他对抗的不是法兰西帝国而是葡萄牙，他提出了一个同样在波动中演进的政治共同体概念。对于卡布拉尔而言，当下的核心任务是锻造一个“充分意识到其民族、大陆和国际权利与义务的‘新人’”。1955 年，W. E. B. 杜波依斯（W. E. B. Du Bois）希望在“同一个世界”的意识中获得“自治”；1958 年，夸梅·恩克鲁玛（Kwame Nkrumah）希望“现在独立。明天，建立非洲合众国”。统一是主旋律。正如音乐家 E. T. 门萨（E. T. Mensah）在他那首关于曾被讨论过的加纳-几内亚-马里联盟的经典曲目中所唱道，“非洲现已觉醒 / 唯有统一能拯救她”。“巴尔干化”同样是描述民族主义危险的常用隐喻。恩克鲁玛在阐述他的泛非主义思想时喜欢谈论这一点。1958 年，在几内亚和加纳独立后，法国评论杂志《非洲存在》（Présence Africaine）发表了一篇题为《巴尔干化与统一》的社论，其中认为欧洲在推动非洲大陆走向民族主义的未来，是因为欧洲希望维持那些至今仍使其获益匪浅的分裂状态。

桑戈爾的帝國聯邦主義計畫在法語學術界已十分成熟，但將這些論文譯成英文的價值在於，讓英語圈能夠將他的聯邦主義與非洲大陸上其他超越民族國家的計畫進行比較。這不僅揭示了桑戈爾的特殊性，還揭示了對民族國家的警惕，如何在革命派和保守派的去殖民化鬥爭者中，共同成為非洲民族主義的核心悖論與動力。例如，左翼國際主義者傾向於將糾纏不清且具有榨取性的全球經濟，視為其超越民族國家的獨立願景之基礎；而桑戈爾則往往沉溺於過去與現在的文化糾葛之中。在《精選桑戈爾》（The Essential Senghor）中，卡爾霍恩（Calhoun）、法爾（Fall）和蒂亞姆（Thiam）避開了關於聯邦主義和“法語世界”（Francophonie）的問題，轉而追溯桑戈爾關於人文主義、語言和文化的思想演變。對於那些可能僅憑桑戈爾最臭名昭著的評論——“情感是黑人的，而理性是希臘的”——來看待他的英語讀者來說，這些論文提供了一個更為細膩的視角。桑戈爾對希臘歷史和情感地位發展了其他見解，並提供了一套理性的分類法（論述式、共情式、直覺式、參與式等等）。儘管如此，他仍然傾向於對歐洲和非洲進行概括和過度簡化，並提供一些扶手椅式的文化社會學碎片，例如“歐洲理性通過使用而具有分析性，而黑人理性通過參與而具有直覺性”。或許這種分類和總結的欲望反映了他的殖民民族誌訓練。當他摒棄文化純潔性的觀念，轉而擁抱“文化混血”（cultural métissage）的美德，並將“黑人性”（Négritude）想像成一種能讓“黑非洲為普世文明做出貢獻”的人文主義形式時，他所處的基礎顯得更有前景且較少本質主義。然而，正如塞澤爾（Césaire）在 1956, 年所指出的，值得注意的是，關於文化融合的觀念本身並不必然具有對立性；這同樣也是歐洲殖民社會的詞彙，其中許多社會慶祝著一個顯而易見的“混血文明”[une civilisation métisse] 的誕生。（事實上，桑戈爾將“法語世界”定義為一種“混血”形式。）桑戈爾的思想最好被視為對當時更廣泛文化時刻之主題的特定變體：關於建立一種新的人文主義、在歐洲的“普世”價值被揭露為偽裝後如何建立新的普世價值，以及歐洲“理性”之種族化基礎的討論，在戰後的國際主義和反殖民圈子中十分普遍。桑戈爾也不是唯一將“黑人性”闡述為人文主義的人。在葡萄牙語世界，這種觀念在 20 世紀 50 年代和 60 年代十分普遍。在將“黑人性”諷刺為一種身份認同肯定形式的刻板印象中，這一關鍵元素經常被遺忘。桑戈爾的文本難以翻譯：稠密、易於離題、典故極多，且汲取了從語言學、詩歌、歷史到哲學的廣泛來源，涉及多種語言。兩本書的譯者為英語讀者提供了極其卓越的服務。這段歷史能被更多人接觸到是件好事。即便如此，對於這兩個版本如何界定桑戈爾，我仍感到有些顧慮。里佩爾（Ripert）將他描述為一種蘇格拉底式的“哲學思考者”，這種定性古怪地誇大了，且脫離了桑戈爾的治理可能具有任何我們想要分析和解釋的實際影響。卡爾霍恩、法爾和蒂亞姆對桑戈爾作品的界定較為克制，但其基礎是認為他作為一名思想家被“邊緣化”了，尤其是因為他的“知識貢獻”一直被“透過其政治行動的視角來解讀”。

30 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 August 7, 2026 © MICHELINE PELLETTER / GANNA RAYM / VALLI GITT / DRAGON

我对“边缘化”这个词是否适用于这位可能是二十世纪最著名的非洲诗人兼政治家、且身为法兰西学术院成员的人表示质疑，但对我而言，这里真正的问题在于一种策略：即试图通过将其写作与其在世上的其他实践（尤其是作为塞内加尔总统的经历）相分离，从而提供一个关于桑戈尔的修正主义叙述。这里存在一种危险的理想主义和非历史主义，即认为一个作家的作品应当在撇开其其他行为的情况下被阅读，仿佛其思想超越了产生它们的那个世界。卡尔霍恩、法尔和蒂亚姆认为，桑戈尔散文作品被边缘化的原因，还因为“塞内加尔第一代大学教授出自于在桑戈尔政府统治下经历过暴力镇压的学生群体”。这里的暗示是这些教授对他持有不公正的敌意？还是他们误解了他的知识贡献之“深度、细微之处及其广阔规模”？这两者都被暗示了。但如果事实恰恰相反——即对桑戈尔政策的实践体验，反而可能阐明了他的思想及其含义与后果——那又如何？我并不是在争论我们不应该阅读桑戈尔：我是说，阅读他时不应是撇开他的政治记录，而应将其政治记录与之并置。这可能需要对其记录在完整的结构语境中进行比其批评者通常提供的更详细的分析，但我认为，如果将他的写作与其其他工作隔绝开来，那么他的写作是无法被理解的。这些都是关于方法论的问题——或许是陈词滥调——但如果我们只关注页面上的文字，尤其是在非洲独立的历史中，我们很快就会陷入绝路。正如女性主义者反复证明的那样，通过那些由男性写就的大部头著作来理解思想史是有局限性的。这些新译本证明了人们希望为桑戈尔正名的愿望，部分原因是由于他产出了大量的作品，“作为二十世纪在非洲语言、文学、艺术、哲学和历史方面写作最广泛、出版最全面的非洲学者之一”。女性主义者致力于在去殖民化的知识史中，在那些被认定的领导者和知识分子领袖之外重新找回人们，这要求我们超越出版物，将不同形式的社会、政治和文化实践视为对那个时代“知识史”的贡献。但要认真对待这种努力，我们必须接受这样一个事实：你说了什么固然重要，但你做了什么同样重要。

亚历山德拉·雷扎（Alexandra Reza）是《反殖民形式：帝国末期的文学期刊》（Anticolonial Form: Literary journals at the end of empire, 2024）的作者。她在布里斯托大学任教。

烈焰音节之岛

马达加斯加诗歌

Franck H. Andrianarivo Dominique Ranaivoson 编，《马达加斯加诗歌》（La Poésie de Madagascar） 368页。Éditions Seghers 出版。€23。

在“大岛”（Grande Île）之外，人们很少将马达加斯加想象成一片文学之地，更不用说一个法语文学自20世纪初以来便悄然扎根、演变并繁荣的地方。事实上，正如诗人兼政治家雅克·拉贝马南贾拉（Jacques Rabemananjara）曾写道，马达加斯加是“火焰音节之岛！”（"Ile aux syllabes de flamme!"），在这里，马达加斯加语和法语诗歌共同构成了该岛身份认同不可或缺的一部分。在 hainteny 和 kahary（传统的雄辩艺术）之乡，无论教育背景如何，不同世代的人们都在实践诗歌艺术。尤其是在马达加斯加语中，它依然是一种共同的感性。

正如多米尼克·拉奈沃松（Dominique Ranaivoson）在《马达加斯加诗歌》那篇极具帮助的序言中所提醒我们的，在今天的马达加斯加，诗歌是一种活生生的存在，编织在岛屿的文化肌理之中，陪伴着日常生活，并标记着从婚礼到葬礼以及 famadihana（翻尸礼）等关键时刻。它在广播中被朗诵，在公共场合被阅读，在社交媒体上被分享，并通过传统诗体以及说唱和 slam 表演来表达。

利奧波德·塞達·桑戈爾（Léopold Sédar Senghor）是最早在国际上认可马达加斯加之声价值的人之一。在他极具影响力的《法语黑人与马达加斯加诗歌选集》（Anthologie de la poésie nègre et malgache de langue française，1948）中，这位塞内加尔政治家和“黑人性”（Négritude）诗人宣称：“Je n'ai pas cru bon d'écarter Madagascar.”（“我认为不应将马达加斯加排除在外。”）桑戈尔的这部作品将该岛置于法语黑人文学版图之上，并介绍了其诗歌遗产的三大支柱：让-约瑟夫·拉贝里韦洛（Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo）、拉贝马南贾拉和弗拉维安·拉奈沃（Flavien Ranaivo）。

拉奈沃松的这部作品汇集了不同世代、感性和风格的30位马达加斯加诗人，使该岛的文学对法语读者而言重新变得可读。正如诗人埃斯特·尼里纳（Esther Nirina）所写，诗歌的揭示力可以通过赋予读者对这座岛屿及其人民更真实的感知，使这个对外界而言往往难以捉摸的国家变得更加具体：“Elle répand / l'odeur et l'image / de l'autre rive”（“它散播 / 另一岸的 / 气味与影像”）。

这部选集收录了出生于 1892 年至 1995 年之间的诗人，提供了迄今为止最全面的法语马达加斯加诗歌全景。一个词汇表和两首用马达加斯加语创作的诗歌（分别由拉贝里韦洛和尼里纳创作）提醒读者，该岛的文学身份建立在双语遗产之上。虽然大多数当代诗歌是用马达加斯加语写成的，但拉奈沃松认为，关于语言的争论在今天看来已经尘埃落定；对许多人来说，法语不再仅仅是殖民残余，而是一座通往更广阔世界的桥梁。在她看来，现在是时候绘制一份诗歌谱系，并向读者呈现更完整的马达加斯加之声了，无论他们是桑戈尔选集中“三位火枪手”的后继者，还是塑造当代场景的新锐才俊。

全集分为五个部分：“先驱者”（Les pionniers）聚焦于拉贝里韦洛等早期的开拓者；“继承者”（Les héritiers）包括拉贝马南贾拉，他常被称为被遗忘的“黑人性”诗人，拉贝里韦洛在去世前曾敦促他“接棒”；“来自他方的书写”（Écrire d'ailleurs）汇集了离散之声，尤其是尼里纳，她的作品表达了身在远方对故土的深情眷恋；“战斗诗歌”（La poésie militante）捕捉了从20世纪70年代中期到90年代初“马达加斯加化”（malgachisation） era 的热忱，当时诗人与歌手们宣扬民族自豪感并抵制法国的新殖民主义；以及“当代诗歌”（La poésie contemporaine），该部分以15位充满活力且多元的现代之声为全书收尾，其中包括拉哈里马纳纳（Raharimanana）——当代最受关注的人物之一

马达加斯加文学——还包括大卫·若马诺罗（David Jaomanoro）、哈尼特·奥尼（Hanit Ony）和埃利·拉马纳卡瓦纳（Elie Ramanakavana）等诗人，以及 D. D. 索拉贾瓦纳（D. D. Sorajavana）和亨利·拉齐姆巴扎菲（Henri Ratsimbazafy）等音乐家（尽管缺少像凯拉（Caylah）这样具有开创性的声音——她是一位 slam 艺术家和活动家，其双语表演的影响力已远超马达加斯加，这种缺失让人觉得错失了全面捕捉新一代活力的机会）。在其中一首诗中，拉哈里马纳纳（Raharimanana）写道：“Je suis encore debout. Des paroles figées dans la décrépitude magnifique. Cette simple conscience que la vie est encore érigée dans l'instant, qu'importent les poussières qui tombent de mes ruines, vivre est toujours laisser une part de soi à la mort.”（“我依然屹立。言语凝固在壮丽的颓败之中。这种简单的意识，即生命依然在瞬间中构建，无论我的废墟中落下多少尘埃，生存始终是将一部分自我留给死亡。”）这些诗行在诗人接受历史留给他的废墟并依然坚持的同时，肯定了他的尊严。这部重要的选集向我们展示了马达加斯加文学同样充满活力且具有韧性：其声音、形式和感知的融合，挑战了那些经常被贴在这座岛屿上的简化陈词滥调。稀有文本和此前未发表文本的纳入，使得这部合集不仅在范围和美感上十分丰富，而且成为一次珍贵的文学揭示、传承与保存之举。弗兰克·H·安德里亚纳里沃（Franck H. Andrianarivo）是巴黎美国大学法语及法语区研究的助理教授。 2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 31 --- 法国饮食与文学

烹饪革命：巨大的盘子、微小的分量与沙文主义

费利西蒂·克洛克（Felicity Cloake）评 卢克·巴尔（Luke Barr）著，《法国烹饪的秘密历史》（The Secret History of French Cooking）：让食物现代化的法外厨师们，352页，Dutton出版，£28.99（美国 $32）。

在我童年的厨房里，在德莉亚（Delia）和马杜尔·贾弗里（Madhur Jaffrey）的食谱之间，夹着一本从未有人照着做过菜的食谱书，尽管我被其中光亮的照片所吸引，而那些照片与我当时所认知的食物几乎毫无关系。这本书的主题是“新料理”（nouvelle cuisine），这一运动在鼎盛时期过去半个世纪后的今天，依然是高级餐饮中最矫揉造作的过激行为的代名词。在当时，它被视为第二次法国革命，因为它拉开了米其林星级世界沉重的天鹅绒窗帘，以拥抱轻盈与现代；而如今，至少在行业之外，人们主要记得的是它巨大的盘子和微小的分量。

尽管这可能不公平，但由于“新料理”的辉煌时刻如此短暂，且其准则在如今盛行黄油板（butter boards）和分享拼盘的氛围中显得如此格格不入，因此我很惊讶卢克·巴尔（他此前已写过两部关于法国美食史的作品，同时也是美国美食作家 M. F. K. 费舍尔的曾侄孙——费舍尔是一位胃口极佳的女性，人们怀疑她对那些点缀的浓汁几乎没有耐心）竟然能写出如此厚实的一部记录。

尽管书名如此，本书探讨的时间跨度仅为17年：从 1965 年米歇尔·格拉尔（Michel Guérard）开设第一家餐厅，到 1982 年“新料理”的三位巨头在佛罗里达州迪士尼世界参与一个拥有 4,000 个座位的经营项目。这段故事在任何意义上都不是秘密；“新料理”之名源自一个杂志标题，且正如巴尔所详述的，其倡导者在两岸都受到了无休止的媒体报道。

虽然书中的表面焦点是食物，但它讲述了一个更广泛的故事：一个在很大程度上仍生活在战前价值观和禁锢中的文化，被揪着浆洗得笔挺的衣领，强行拖入了“摇摆六十年代”。早在18世纪就有人尝试建立“新料理”，但在巴尔笔下的这些“法外厨师”闯入舞台之前，食材的准备依然遵循奥古斯特·埃斯科菲耶（Auguste Escoffier）在20世纪之交制定的“经典料理”（cuisine classique）原则。正如记者克雷格·克莱本（Craig Claiborne）在为“新料理”辩护时回忆道，他在20世纪50年代于瑞士培训期间，“如果埃斯科菲耶说安娜土豆（pommes de terre Anna）应该以某种方式制作，你就不能改变那个配方。如果他的俄国沙拉（salade russe）配方中没有新鲜罗勒，你绝不敢通过添加一两片叶子来展示什么冒险且富有灵感的才华”。

尽管这看起来不可思议，但在直到相对较近的时期，创造力在专业烹饪中几乎没有发挥作用。无论人们对结果有何看法，将螃蟹与菠萝搭配，或将小牛肉与奇异果搭配，将黑松露放入冰淇淋或将鸡肉放入真空低温烹调锅（sous vide），都代表了与现状的决裂，这在如今这个渴望新奇的时代是难以想象的。保罗·博古斯（Paul Bocuse）及其同僚改变了世界看待烹饪职业的方式。现代厨师不再仅仅是“法国烹饪传统的熟练从业者……而是一位艺术家，一位作者”，他们从阴暗厨房中无名的劳作中被挖掘出来，被推向了杂志封面、电视节目甚至全球巡演的聚光灯下。

如果巴尔（Barr）仅仅选择探讨20世纪下半叶西方烹饪的演变，那么这本书可能只有最资深的餐厅发烧友才会感兴趣。而本书真正的核心——即便对于那些太年轻而无法对“覆盆子浓缩汁”的回忆感到战栗的读者来说——在于他将菜单上的演变与更广泛的社会变迁联系起来，尤其是关于那个时代猖獗的沙文主义。这包括在认为自身美食文化具有优越性意义上的沙文主义——人们可能会公正地认为，这种信念在法国从未消失。但它也包含更普遍意义上的沙文主义。在讲述“新料理”（nouvelle cuisine）故事的同时，巴尔记录了一场更重要的革命：女厨师争取职业认可的斗争，事实证明，这对业内许多人来说比“恰到好处（al dente）的绿豆”这一概念更令人不安。正是这一点，加上一段涉及清算战争时期过去的副线情节，构成了这里真正的秘密历史，且其内容令人震惊。法国名厨协会（Maîtres Cuisiniers de France）这一享有盛誉的厨师行业团体直到1997年才接纳女性会员，且女性此前不被允许申请实习（stages），而实习通常是进入烹饪培训的常规途径。事实上，被米其林指南评为“世纪厨师”的博库斯（Bocuse）曾公开声称，“女性在专业厨房中没有位置，她们发育不全，且缺乏想象力和天赋”。那些敢于挑战他并与法国烹饪权势集团抗衡的人们的故事，本身就值得写成一本书，并且为“不再仅仅是法国烹饪传统的从业者，现代厨师是一位艺术家，一位作者”这种带有戏谑自夸意味的“博库斯帮”（bande à Bocuse，即后来迅速出名的新料理帮）论调提供了一个冷静的对照。巴尔描绘了这样一群才华横溢的厨师：她们在安静地经营餐厅、抚养家庭的同时，为争取与男性同行相同的认可而奋斗，但却没有男性那样运转良好的公关机器（这种运作方式对于如今任何从事食品媒体工作的人来说依然非常熟悉）。这场事业一个出人意料的盟友是《世界报》的保守派评论家罗贝尔·库尔廷（Robert Courtine），他将新料理斥为“宣传噱头”，并推崇像奥林匹亚·纳米亚斯（Olympe Nahmias）和安妮·德斯维涅（Annie Desvignes）这样厨师所展现的、在他看来是不受教条束缚且凭直觉的烹饪，而非博库斯门徒们端上的“生鱼和没煮熟的鱼”。这种支持对于他的门生来说并非没有复杂之处：认为女性的天职是在厨房里准备由男性提供的食物，这并不是库尔廷所持的唯一过时观点。他被揭露不仅是战争时期的协作主义者，而且是一个恶毒的反犹主义者，曾呼吁采取“必要的暴力……清理、扫荡、制裁和处决”，尽管这与新料理的关系较为边缘，但仍是本书最令人震惊的章节之一。然而，法国社会对其痛苦过去的清算并非在寥寥几页中就能舒适地处理完的事，而且就像最后一个章节整体一样，感觉略显仓促。我尤其希望作者能更多地探讨新料理深远的烹饪遗产，并让读者更多地了解食物本身——除了对特鲁瓦格罗兄弟（Troisgros brothers）的酸模草三文鱼（saumon à l'oseille）等少数详细描述外，烹饪本身有时在新闻宴会和跨大西洋飞行的光鲜之中被掩盖了。但或许这只是我个人的贪心。

这是一本关于丰富主题且令人愉悦的书，但偶尔涉足非虚构作品中更具创意、推测性的领域反而对其不利。当库尔廷（Courtine）在几个街区外的拉塞尔餐厅（Restaurant Lasserre）感受到法国“在骨子里”时，盖拉尔（Guérard）是否真的正穿过香榭丽舍大街，感受到“一座变革之城所有积压的能量”？谁知道未来的公关巨头雅努·科拉尔（Yanou Collart）在保罗·博古斯餐厅（Restaurant Paul Bocuse）签署访客簿时，是否真的在思考“名人的力量，以及厨师的名气”？相关人物本身已提供了足够的真实色彩：一些真正精彩的细节——比如像小丑一样的博古斯将一罐鹅肝重新包装成狗粮来捉弄朋友——已经足以抵消进一步润色的需要，而此类段落仅仅是以一种威胁到作者令人印象深刻的广泛研究的方式，模糊了历史记录与艺术虚构之间的界限。然而，最好的书应该是那些能激发你进一步阅读欲望的书，而这部特定的“秘密历史”就像博古斯之友（bande à Bocuse）……或者事实上，像他们的女性同行一样，提供了一道同样令人愉悦的开胃小点（amuse-bouche）。费利西蒂·克洛克（Felicity Cloake）最近的一本书是今年早些时候出版的《弱者》（The Underdog）。

一个叛逆者的回忆录：作为辍学者与殖民地士兵的生活

丹尼尔·库尔潘（Daniel Culpan）著，皮埃尔·吉约塔（Pierre Guyotat）著，《白痴》（Idiocy），彼得·贝尔曼·德·西内蒂（Peter Behrman de Sinéty）译，208页。纽约评论书局（New York Review Books）。平装本，£16.99 (US $17.95)。

在皮埃尔·吉约塔的回忆录终卷《白痴》读到一半时，这位前卫作家提醒我们“没有什么纯粹之物”。这句话或许可以作为他所有作品的信条，在他的作品中，残酷是万物的本质。本书最初于2018年以法文出版，距作者去世仅两年，现由彼得·贝尔曼·德·西内蒂首次译成英文。这本书确认了吉约塔作为乔治·巴塔耶（Georges Bataille）和让·热内（Jean Genet）违禁传统的继承者，其叛逆者的地位。

吉约塔是一名乡村医生的孩子，十八岁时离家出走。他在巴黎街头生活了两年，随后于1960年被征召参加阿尔及利亚战争。他母亲的去世（1958年）促使他写出了第一部小说《在马上》（Sur un Cheval，1961年），讲述了一个失去母亲的流浪者；在军营中被发现第二部小说的笔记后，他被指控“共谋逃兵”，被审讯并监禁了三个月。

回到法国后，吉约塔加入了法国共产党，其思想与《Tel Quel》杂志的毛主义倾向趋同，该杂志的撰稿人包括莫里斯·布朗肖（Maurice Blanchot）和罗兰·巴特（Roland Barthes）。吉约塔曾担任记者，并将他的战争经历作为文学探索的基础。《五十万名士兵之墓》（Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats，1967年；Tomb for 50万,000 Soldiers，2003年）对战争和性堕落的坦率描述，彻底撼动了建制派，但真正奠定他挑衅者名声的是他的第四部小说《伊甸，伊甸》（Eden, Eden, 1970年； , , , 1995年）。该书由一个单一的迷宫般长句组成，追踪了瓦扎格（Wazzag）的经历，他在撒哈拉沙漠的一家法国士兵和游牧民经常光顾的妓院中出卖身体。在200页的篇幅中，读者见证了各种形式的性异常。在出版时——尽管得到了包括米歇爾·福柯和雅克·德里达在内的知识分子的支持—— , , 被法国政府谴责为“色情”，其销售受到严重限制。

《白痴》描述了吉约塔在1958年至1962年之间的成年经历。就像 32 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 --- 之前的自传卷——《昏迷》（Coma，2006年；2010年）、《形成》（Formation，2007年）和《背景》（Arrière-fond，2010年；In the deep，2014年）一样，它的形式比他的实验性写作更常规，尽管仍带有早期那种粗鄙风格的痕迹。在对作者在巴黎辍学时期的描述中，他睡在一个“覆盖在两股尿流之间鹅卵石上”的帐篷里。吉约塔说，别无选择，只能“将自己投身于污秽，接近它，触摸它，处理它；最终通过这种对苦难的参与，像一个人一样生活”。随后，塞纳河变得溃烂且如噩梦一般：“船灯照在拱桥黑色的底部；河水拍打着被石头压溺的尸体，以及被殴打致死的狗尸”。

吉约塔所有的关注点都集中于此，尤其是他对身体过程的痴迷，这些被捕捉在某种程度上能够自我净化并溢出页面的句子中。我们追随年轻的吉约塔在违规行为中的足迹：从……偷窃钞票

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家庭存钱盒，在全知全能的天主教上帝眼中感到被谴责。我们窥见了他在双性恋意识觉醒时的状态（“她是否只在有他在场时才想要我，因为他想要我，所以她希望我也想要她？”），并见证了他通过艺术寻求转型的精神饥渴：“我……面前有未来，我必须用行为、行动、新作品去填满它；一个用于实践的躯体”。书中的每个短章节都遵循着各自如受惊般紊乱的节奏。Guyotat 召唤出统治军队生活的“愚蠢咒语”，在那里，反抗最终只能以暴力和羞辱告终：“军官撤走了；他的助手用皮带抽打我；我的眼睑在流血；裂开的嘴唇流出鲜血；我想把它喝掉，但当我伸出舌头时，皮带勒住了我”。高潮出现在一名上校发现了 Guyotat 第一本书的副本，以及他为下一本书所做的笔记——这些笔记描述了“士兵们的肉体苦难：破烂的军装，肮脏的身体，害虫，腐烂的食物”。为了在随后的审讯中生存下来，Guyotat 将自己抽离，遁入艺术的记忆之中：“我潜入卢浮宫中大大小小的画作里，将手放在维罗内塞画作中的帷幔和桌布上”。被判处禁闭，听着沙漠中的胡狼，他只对那些他本应征服的人感到同情：这一切都证实了我对阿尔及利亚独立的信念：阿尔及利亚人民的宽宏大量，将其折磨者与它所爱的法国及法国人区分开来——我们，法国人，连其四分之一的宽宏都做不到。但他避免自我开脱。《白痴》（Idiocy）中的“我”栖居在模棱两可之中。每一个“固定观念”，包括关于自我的观念，都被视为是对“现实的粉碎”而遭到拒绝。他的战争经历教会他去“理解政治怪物，集中营的怪物（文化并未能阻止[最卑劣的]非人化）”。每一个道德和文化上的信条都被狂乱的逻辑飞行所击落，直到最后只剩下赤裸的事实。《白痴》的最后一部分追溯了战争的结束和作者回家的旅程，在那里，“自由”被烙上了暴力的记忆：“我，还有我的战友，我们从喷气式飞机下方走出来，我们曾清理那些战争机器；二十个月的集体生活，奴役，在‘肉袋’中度过的夜晚”。他最终来到一家妓院，在那里，捕食性的意象——狗在吃肉屑，一只猫抓到了一只燕子——成为了世界的缩影。战争和殖民主义的机器吞噬了所有关于“文明”的主张，然而 Guyotat 抢救下了事物可以有所不同的希望。“我仍然相信，虽然只有一点点，”他写道，“相信那个仅属于人类的神。”Daniel Culpan 是一位常驻伦敦的作家。

不是新的德雷福斯事件：一名极端的反犹协作主义者精心构建其平反之路

卢克·沃德（Luke Warde）评 路易-费迪南·塞林（Louis-Ferdinand Céline）《致法国律师信集，1947-1953》（Lettres à ses avocats français, 1947-1953）

路易-费迪南·塞林的政治倾向最初很难确定。尽管充满了毒液，但他影响巨大的处女作小说《黑夜尽头之旅》（Voyage au bout de la nuit，1932）中的仇恨基本上是不分对象的——这是一场不针对任何特定群体的厌世之嚎。让-保罗·萨特和列夫·托洛茨基被其反战信息和明显的反资本主义立场所吸引，成为了塞林早期的支持者。然而，在纳粹占领法国的前夕及初期，塞林写了一系列恶毒的反犹小册子：《屠杀琐事》（Bagatelles pour un massacre，1937）、《尸体学校》（L’École des cadavres，1938）和《糟糕的局面》（Les Beaux Draps，1941）。在这些作品出版后，人们几乎可以肯定，塞林对一个特定群体怀有极其深重的厌恶：犹太人。他对他对犹太人的仇恨之剧烈，远远超出了20世纪初法国常见的、较为文雅但令人沮丧且普遍存在的“沙龙式反犹主义”。事实上，这些小册子中肆无忌惮的敌意大量使用了纳粹宣传的标志性生物学隐喻，似乎与德国占领者那种带有杀戮倾向的种族主义世界观更为接近。塞林是否一直持有这些观点——如果确实如此，他的早期小说并未透露任何反犹倾向——目前尚不清楚。安德烈·纪德甚至暗示，塞林要么是精神崩溃，要么这一切只是一种病态的玩笑。

令人震惊的是，考虑到这些小册子出版到战争结束之间所发生的恐怖事件，

路易-费迪南·塞林与妻子吕塞特，法国默东，约1955年，塞林竟然将自己视为严重不公正的受害者，将针对他叛国罪的法律诉讼视为一场更广泛的人格暗杀行动的一部分。《致法国律师信集，1947-1953》为这一片段提供了至关重要的洞察。这部书是与他的法律代表阿尔贝·诺（Albert Naud）和让-路易·蒂克谢-维尼昂库尔（Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour）往来的通信选集，时而具有启发性，时而显得疯狂；书中显示，作者反复将针对他的案件比作“猎巫”，并且令人作呕地将其比作“新的德雷福斯事件”。在好几次场合，他推测如果希特勒赢了，他可能会成为元首唯一真正的敌人。他，这位“作家、身有残疾且获得勋章的退伍军人、和平主义者”，才是法国“唯一真正的爱国者”。

尽管此类荒谬的主张在通信中屡见不鲜，反映了作者在战后立即展开的协作主义者清洗（épuration）过程中可以理解的偏执，但这些信件有时仅仅是乏味。他对诺和蒂克谢-维尼昂库尔的大量责难围绕着版税纠纷以及他声称受到法国税务机关的虐待。这个作为爱抱怨、琐碎的诉讼当事人，且从未完全脱离小资产阶级狭隘精神禁锢的塞林形象，与那个痴迷于文学遗产、自我神话化的艺术家形象难以共存。

人们很难抵御在任何小说家的通信中寻找文学价值的诱惑。对于塞林来说，这种诱惑可能尤为强烈，因为他的信件中散布着他小说的风格特征：频繁的省略号；大量且斜体的拟声词；粗鄙的新造词。事实上，这里一些最出色的信件生动地捕捉了他的晚期风格，这种风格变得愈发不和谐且碎片化。基于此，它们代表了一件重要的文学人工制品。

然而，这次选集的真正意义与其说在于档案的新颖性，不如说在于它帮助我们勾勒出的塞林战后人格的画像。该卷由让-保罗·路易（Jean Paul Louis）精心策划，其中仅包含此前已出现在弗雷德里克·莫尼耶（Frédéric Monnier）1984和1985.年选集（尽管现已绝版）中的信件。然而，这个伽利玛出版社（Gallimard）的版本赋予了这些此前分散的材料一种新的连贯性：将其作为一个整体阅读，可以发现塞林构建的与其说是法律辩护，不如说是一种狡黠的自我洗白策略。1950年，他被缺席判决为“从事损害国防的行为”，次年他从丹麦的流亡地返回法国，得益于其在第一次世界大战中服役而获得的特赦。但塞林并没有像许多人那样公开忏悔，相反，他试图将自己的耻辱转化为某种炼金术般的产物，在记者和文学朝圣者（包括艾伦·金斯堡和威廉·S·巴罗斯）面前扮演一个小丑。从本质上讲，塞林从事的是一种我们今天可能会描述为“trolling”（网络挑衅 / 钓鱼）的行为，通过夸大自己的怪物形象，试图营造一种惊悚的吸引力。正如阿尔贝·诺（Albert Naud）在其回忆录（摘录于该通信集的附录）中提醒我们的那样，塞林一直意识到自己的喜剧天赋如何能对他有所帮助。这种直觉并未落空：据报道，当法官大声宣读他针对检察官的各种侮辱之词时，陪审团哄堂大笑。卢克·沃德（Luke Warde）在圣奥尔本斯的尼古拉斯·布雷克斯皮尔天主教学校教授法语。 August 7, 2026 《泰晤士文学 supplement》 33 © LIPTON / BROCKER VIVILLET VIA GETTY IMAGES --- 德国研究

反对诠释

一个缺乏安全感的文化理论家的自传

本·哈钦森（Ben Hutchinson）评 汉斯·乌尔里希·古姆布雷希特（Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht）著，《我的半距离生活》（Sepp Mein Leben auf Halbdistanz），492页，Suhrkamp出版社，€30。

出生于德国的美国比较文学研究者汉斯·乌尔里希·古姆布雷希特在斯坦福大学任教三十年。在德语世界中，他或许最以其关于欧洲文化的跨大西洋评论而闻名。他在回忆录的开头给出了一系列警告：他从未是一个热情的读者；他一直“病态地雄心勃勃”；他是一个不可靠的叙述者。事实上，他似乎将自己认同为君特·格拉斯（Günter Grass）那部定义时代的史诗《铁皮鼓》（1959）中不可靠的叙述者奥斯卡·马策拉特（Oskar Matzerath），且格拉斯那种流浪汉式、夸张的语调在一定程度上影响了他。仅在序言中，古姆布雷希特就设法告诉我们，他能熟练运用四种语言，且其履历中包含 2,535 篇独立作者出版物。书上印着他的名字——朋友们称他为“塞普”（Sepp）——封面则是他的面孔。他绝非谦逊之人。

然而，很快人们就会发现，汉斯·乌尔里希·古姆布雷希特实践的与其说是虚伪的谦卑，不如说是虚伪的傲慢。他一次又一次地告诉我们，他那过分的野心实际上是缺乏安全感，是一种持久的尝试，旨在弥补他认为自己缺乏任何真正才华的缺陷。因此，他的自传必须模仿这种机制。

古姆布雷希特将他的回忆录构建为一座由“思想之岛”组成的群岛。从他在维尔茨堡的战后童年开始，他记录了自己在生命各个阶段演进的意识。他出生于 1948 年，在 20 世纪 60 年代成年，是一个典型的——尽管是早熟的——战后德国一代的产物，这一代人的特点是试图逃离动荡的过去。他发现自己几乎不可避免地被巴黎吸引，在那里他与米歇爾·福柯共进午餐（他回忆起自己当时对女性主义缺乏兴趣），并聆听雅克·拉康的讲演。较不可预测的是，多年后在法兰西学院的一段时间里，在他的朋友、时任巴黎圣日耳曼（PSG）教练（现任英格兰队主帅）托马斯·图赫尔（Thomas Tuchel）的引荐下，他见到了足球运动员内马尔和基利安·姆巴佩。这次会面的平庸并未削弱他终身对体育的热爱。

在慕尼黑和萨拉曼卡学习期间——在那里他遇到了第一任妻子伊莎贝尔，并发现了自己作为西班牙研究者的天职——古姆布雷希特随后前往新成立的康斯坦茨大学，在汉斯·罗伯特·姚斯（Hans Robert Jauss）的指导下攻读博士学位。姚斯（与沃尔夫冈·伊瑟一起）是接受美学兴起的魅力十足的推手，他主持了名为“诗学与诠释学”的小组，将汉斯-格奥尔格·伽达默尔的哲学应用于文学，并在 20 世纪 70 年代主导了西德的理论界。古姆布雷希特对他们当时显赫地位的回忆，证明了当时人们对人文科学核心地位的一种信心，而这种信心在今天几乎难以想象。姚斯随后被揭露曾是一名党卫军军官——且可能参与了严重的战争罪行——这在一定程度上解释了为什么古姆布雷希特后来反对他。但作者自己也承认，这种转变同样源于一种想要摆脱其“博士导师”（Doktorvater）的俄狄浦斯情结。对于古姆布雷希特来说，这意味着发展出一种对诠释学的终身抵制，而这成为了他作品中反复出现的执念。

在实践中，反对诠释意味着什么？在他的所有作品中——在他关于 1926 年的那本书中，在他关于现象学的著作中，在他关于体育的论文中——他一直试图将意义理解为并非通过批评而构建的智力产物，而是通过经验而体现的身体化存在。在他看来，心与身的笛卡尔式分裂是现代思想的“原罪”。

Gumbrecht 在一系列机构中践行这一直觉。在波鸿，他获得了他的第一个教授席位，期间还曾在里约热内卢和伯克利等异域地点担任客座教授。在锡根，他建立了一所研究生院，一批令人印象深刻的演讲者曾在此出没：弗里德里希·基特勒、尤尔根·哈贝马斯、尼克拉斯·卢曼、让-弗朗索瓦·利奥塔和雅克·德里达等，他们共同见证了 1980 年代的后现代精神。Gumbrecht 热衷于讲述轶事，用生动的笔触勾勒出各种人物形象，这些画像并不总是讨好对方，但确实真实可信。冷战时期的文化战争为 Gumbrecht 故事中一些最有趣的片段提供了背景。在整个 1980 年代，他在当时属于南斯拉夫的杜布罗夫尼克组织年度会议；其中心位置为东西方提供了一个会面点。在关于“话语”或“风格”等主题的充满理论色彩的讨论中，马克思主义和黑格尔主义的辩证法相互碰撞——正如在东柏林那样，这一点通过 Gumbrecht 与各种社会主义知识分子的接触得以回溯。当其中一些人被发现曾是史塔西（Stasi）的线人时，这并不令人惊讶。

当他在 1989 年秋季移居斯坦福时，基调发生了变化。Gumbrecht 渴望将自己塑造为一个真正的美国人——这是本书后半部分的一个重复主题，因为他放弃了德国国籍，并试图超越关于罪责的国家叙事——于是他开始忙于促成各项事务。他邀请名流在西海岸发表演讲（其中令人难忘的是哈罗德·布鲁姆，他要求四倍于通常的报酬，并在面对一个“平庸”的问题时，夸张地消失在洗手间里，且在众目睽睽之下开着门）。斯坦福的同事包括在进入布什政府工作之前的康多莉扎·赖斯，发明避孕药后的卡尔·杰拉西，以及处于哲学名声顶峰的理查德·罗蒂。Gumbrecht 不可避免地在努力跟上他们所有人的步伐。

自从从斯坦福退休后，Gumbrecht 在圣地亚哥、京都、莫斯科和耶路撒冷又担任了客座教授。他对这些地方的学术文化有着深刻的见解，并且清晰地认识到这种“喷气式学术生活”的局限性：飞往某地以增加可信度，但并不总能实现与他者（alterity）的真正邂逅。然而，他的自传令人沮丧之处在于，他对自己的实际写作保持沉默。尽管他的出版物数量惊人且文化涉猎广泛，但关于让他成名的那些知识性工作的描述却少之又少。他似乎不仅反对对他人的作品进行解读，也反对对他自己的作品进行解读。

本·哈钦森（Ben Hutchinson）是《泰晤士文學 supplements》的德语编辑，以及伦敦大学巴黎学院院长。他的著作包括《迟到》（Lateness）和 2016 年出版的《现代欧洲文学》（Modern European Literature）。

温战

昨天很温和。今天，梳好头发的人们在沙尘风中理智地挥舞着手臂，观察着一种我们无法认同的尺度；静谧的音乐之光将一切排列在相同的距离。有一个数字，我们每年背诵并写下两次。我们经过的咖啡馆半暗着，关闭是为了举行下班后的会议，伴随着狂野的手势和打印的议程。在楼上的窗户里，同样的两种颜色，由塑料袋和旧衣服临时凑成。任何白色之物都找到了用途：床单、薄雾，平整的建筑在交通流与花簇的深红中分开。到处都是新的标志：悬挂在研究所侧翼的黑色横幅，人造滑雪场在山坡上留下的卢恩文字，或是绝望地刻在砖墙上的痕迹，在对意义的狂热中涂抹在火车门上。城市地图基于一块腐烂的蕾丝。我们的文化就像这样——它可以像叶脉、一层死皮一样被揭起，其印迹被采集给一个外国收藏馆。在那里，馆长将双手举向画作，仿佛在为它们取暖。

萨姆·里维埃（SAM RIVIERE） 萨姆·里维埃最近的诗集是《冲突的副本》（Conflicted Copy），2024年出版。他的新小说《分身》（Doppelgänger）将于10月出版。

34 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © LAURA TERESA GUMBRECHT / SUPERLAMP 1926 / 6

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对真理的承诺

一位具有高度道德严肃性的德国学者的论文集

查理·劳斯（Charlie Louth）

杰里米·阿德勒（Jeremy Adler） 《从文艺复兴到现代主义：歌德与德国诗歌》（选集，第1卷） 334页。Legenda出版社。£95 (US $120)。 《尊严之指南：迫害、文学与法律》（选集，第2卷） 386页。Legenda出版社。£95 (US $120)。

很难想到还有哪位德国文学学者能像杰里米·阿德勒那样拥有如此广泛的关注领域。这两卷选集在试图为如此丰富的素材寻找一种合理的编排方式时显得颇为吃力。《从文艺复兴到现代主义：歌德与德国诗歌》实际上关于歌德的内容反而少于《尊严之指南：迫害、文学与法律》——后者以三篇关于歌德与科学的重量级论文开篇，并以一个论点结尾：德国《基本法》中对人类尊严和“人格自由发展权”的关注，在潜意识中欠歌德一份情，尤其是欠其第一部教养小说《威廉·迈斯特的学习时代》一份情。

在这两者之间，涵盖了关于大屠杀、在伦敦的德裔犹太流亡者、世界主义、国际法与世界文学的关系、捷克斯洛伐克的天鹅绒革命的论文；而在第一卷中，则涉及巴洛克视觉诗、保罗·克利（Paul Klee）、具体诗、实验表现主义者奥古斯特·斯特拉姆（August Stramm）、歌德的剧作《托夸托·塔索》（Torquato Tasso）、被视为“基于歌德成就”的亨利·詹姆斯小说，以及荷尔德林。令人惊叹且独一无二的不仅是这种时间跨度和体裁范围，还有阿德勒在探讨课题时所采用的多元方法，以及其引用的广度与深度。

他的方法论在根本上是比较性的，在倾向上是普适性的，涵盖了语言学、社会学、社会人类学、法律哲学、历史、政治和科学。他深刻地意识到万物是如何相互关联的，以及文学和艺术如何既依赖于整个社会又影响着整个社会。正是这种洞察力和坚定的非狭隘主义使他作为一名作家脱颖而出：他从未忘记文化是多么脆弱且得来不易。或者换句话说，我们多么依赖于逝者。

这里收录的最早的作品（主要在第一卷中）是关于斯特拉姆的——尽管他是第一次世界大战期间最优秀的德国诗人，但至今仍被忽视——以及关于17世纪的“图形”或视觉诗。阿德勒将斯特拉姆视为具体诗的先驱。他的诗被视为设计，关注对读者的“生理影响”——在讨论德国尤为丰富的巴洛克图案诗，或乔治·赫伯特（George Herbert）的《复活节之翼》及其他诗作时，他也注意到了这一点。

保罗·克利 1918 年作品《一旦从黑夜的灰色中浮现》的细节

阿德勒在处理这些作品时带有一种实践者的眼光：自20世纪70年代中期以来，他本人一直在创作实验诗和具体诗。这些通常极具美感作品的跨度可见于近期的目录集《杰里米·阿德勒：言语-视觉世界》（Jeremy Adler: Verbo-visual worlds, 2026），以及他在《作为图形的文本》（Text als Figur, 1987）中展现的对该传统的深厚知识，后者是一部涵盖从古代到现代视觉诗的权威目录。

其中一篇关于斯特拉姆（Stramm）的论文是本书中唯一用德语撰写的，它采取了不同的方法，利用书信和团级历史记录来追溯他在前线的生活，以及他在普里皮亚特沼泽（Pripet Marshes）被杀前所创作的诗歌。这种紧密的传记式追踪在阿德勒（Adler）的写作中并不常见，但常见的是对作品来源和环境的彻底回归。我们在对歌德关于文艺复兴诗人塔索（Tasso）的剧作的深入探究中再次发现了这一点（通过发现该剧与塔索自身作品之间被忽视的联系，揭示了该剧如何“在当代问题与历史问题之间进行调解，并挖掘现代性的起源”），以及在揭示詹姆斯（James）作品中的“歌德式基调”时也是如此。“挖掘”是这些篇章中经常出现的一个隐喻，但这是合理的，因为阿德勒习惯于追溯到非常遥远的过去，以阐明眼前的现象。他的方法或许在某种程度上得益于尼采，后者将谱系学（通过起源来解释事物）作为一种关键工具。另一种形式的追溯可见于他对赫尔德林（Hölderlin）关于悲剧的论文的翻译，包括著名的关于索福克勒斯《俄狄浦斯王》和《安提戈涅》的“笔记”。这些翻译具有开创性，是赫尔德林任何论文首次被译成英文，并配有深刻的评论。书中还包括了阿德勒翻译的《品达碎片》（Pindar Fragments），即由其他作者传述的品达残篇，赫尔德林先对其进行翻译，然后在评论中将其延续，这些评论“在美学上深邃且清晰，在意义上则难以捉摸”。这些混合文本似乎激发了，或者至少影响了阿德勒的实验性系列作品《在世界的边缘》（At the Edge of the World, 1994）。第二卷的基调有所不同。最重要的是，尽管歌德主导了这两卷，但 H. G. 阿德勒——杰里米（Jeremy）的父亲以及“对我研究影响最大的人”——也加入了进来。H. G. 阿德勒于 1947 年（其子出生之年）从布拉格来到伦敦，他不仅在特雷津（Theresienstadt）幸存，还经历了奥斯威辛和其他集中营。他的第一任妻子和大部分家人在犹太人大屠杀中被谋杀。在伦敦，他娶了同样来自布拉格的雕塑家贝蒂娜·格罗斯（Bettina Gross），并与汉普斯特德（Hampstead）的其他犹太移民聚集在一起，特别是他的布拉格好友、人类学家且（非常优秀的）诗人弗朗茨·巴尔曼·斯坦纳（Franz Baermann Steiner），以及后来的诺贝尔奖得主埃利亚斯·卡内蒂（Elias Canetti），他们形成了有时被称为“布拉格-维也纳圈”的团体。与这些朋友一样，H. G. 阿德勒将理解德国和犹太人所遭遇的一切作为他一生的事业。他写过诗歌、小说和许多其他书籍，但最著名的是一项关于特雷津的大规模文献研究，该研究于 1955 年首次发表，至今仍是对副标题所述的“一个被强迫社区的面貌”最完整的记录。用 H. G. 阿德勒的话说，它试图对“一个典范性地描述了大社会时代人类生存状况的集中营进行全景式的描绘”。杰里米·阿德勒的大量工作致力于让其父亲的遗产延续下去。这一遗产也奠定了他写作的基调和方向，包括其道德上的严肃性、“对真理的承诺”以及一种“本质上的犹太式的人文肯定”，以对抗例如由西奥多·阿多诺（Theodor Adorno）所代表的“否定主义的谬误”。尽管阿德勒在伦敦出生并长大，但在许多方面他是一个时代错位的人，一个拥有战后价值观的中欧知识分子本能。正如第二卷所示，他是一个在不再拥有此类人物的文化环境中的公共知识分子，尽管在德语世界——那里这个物种尚未完全灭绝——他经常通过《南德意志报》（Süddeutsche Zeitung）、《法兰克福汇报》（Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung）和《新苏黎世报》（Neue Zürcher Zeitung）等报纸接触读者。（四十多年来，他还为本报撰写了重要的评论和信函。）

较短的文章没有被收录进这些卷册中，除非是关于“捷克斯洛伐克天鹅绒革命中剧院角色”的扩充叙述。在众多长篇论文中，最长的一篇足以构成一本书，它将大屠杀置于迫害的历史之中，延续了 H. G. Adler 的社会学和结构主义方法——其目的在于帮助我们意识到，虽然大屠杀作为一个历史事件是“独特的，[...] 但其中涉及的社会行为并非如此”。在许多地方，人们会不由自主地想到现在，例如当我们被提醒希特勒“将自己的意志注入每一个机构，并将国家视为服务于其个人目的的工具”时。但长远的视角也告诉我们，迫害“对迫害者的道德伤害比对受害者的伤害更大”。尽管 Adler 的言辞可能尖刻，且不惧于摒弃那些仅仅是时髦或当前的观点，但他的作品中有一种本质上的希望感。这种 eirene（和平）特质体现在他对诠释学的精妙定义中，将其称为“和平探究的艺术”。在精准表述的激烈交锋之中，闪耀而出的是这一点：尽管经历了这一切，依然相信文化能够丰富世界，使其成为一个更好的地方。查理·劳斯（Charlie Louth）在牛津大学皇后学院教授德语。他是《弗里德里希·荷尔德林全集书信》（The Complete Correspondence of Friedrich Hölderlin, 2025）的译者。August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 35 © ARTHUR ALLART --- 回忆录

故事创作者

通过创意写作学习

米兰达·弗朗斯 (Miranda France) 《行间之意：写作工作坊的人生课》(Between the Lines: Life lessons from the writing workshop) 320页。西蒙与舒斯特出版社 (Simon and Schuster)。£18.99。

人文学科的申请人数大幅下降，部分大学系所甚至在关闭，但创意写作似乎在逆势增长，这或许是因为与其他艺术学位相比，它似乎能提供一个更切实可见的最终成果——理想情况下是一份出版合同。我的学生（在伦敦大学金史密斯学院以及各种短期课程中）经常会拨出一段时间，专注于一个他们可能已经构思多年的项目。他们享受成为写作社群的一员，以及截止日期带来的自律。在注意力如此难以集中以至于专注本身几乎成了一种反抗行为的时代，他们希望关注故事。

朱莉娅·贝尔 (Julia Bell) 将创意写作工作坊（大多数课程的核心组成部分）视为一个既学习文字也学习人生的场所。作为伯克贝克学院 (Birkbeck) 的讲师，她观察到“一种默认发生的感性教育过程，因为工作坊要求学生深入思考他们所说的话以及原因”。这一观点也得到了中情局 (CIA) 的认同，该机构资助了最早的一些课程，尤其是爱荷华大学的作家工作坊，约翰·奇弗 (John Cheever)、菲利普·罗斯 (Philip Roth)、罗伯特·洛威尔 (Robert Lowell) 和约翰·贝里曼 (John Berryman) 曾任教于此。贝尔写道，这类讨论场所被视为维护民主的一种手段：中情局“在工作坊的结构中看到了一种强化公民价值、对抗威权主义并促进文学个人主义的方法”。

也许他们是对的，尽管对公民身份有益的事并不总是对写作有益。一群讨论如何用文字捕捉人类经验的人，其行为是不可预测的，且往往充满喜悦。在 Arvon 举办的驻留课程中，参与者经常建立深厚的联系，并声称这是他们人生中最美好的经历之一。但虽然工作坊提供了支持与团结，它也可能倾向于压制作家的自由。一个长期定期会面的群体可能会在无意识或有意识地将成员推向基于当前社会习俗的共识。我有时不得不为那些想要塑造一个被组内其他人不认可的角色或使用某种语言的学生辩护。令人惊讶的是，人们经常需要提醒学生，作者可以创造令人厌恶的角色，而无需认同这些观点。

人们在没有关于身份、诊断和需求之预设的情况下聚集在一起，似乎变得越来越困难。幸运的是，他们的顾虑

奥古斯特·马尔克 (August Macke) 1910 年作品《写作的女人》(Woman Writing) 的细节 通常很快就能被克服。工作坊可能会引发强烈的情绪（且经常伴随泪水），因此谨慎引导进程至关重要，但过度的谨慎可能会彻底扼杀这项事业。

贝尔利用综合案例和真实学生的代理人，重构了一系列工作坊场景。（我在 2023 年出版的《写作学校》(The Writing School) 一书中也做了类似的事情。）在她的指导下，学生们学习到了关于技巧的宝贵课程。她给出了一些极佳的示例，包括一段来自《爱玛》(Emma) 的文字，展示了简·奥斯汀如何将间接引语和直接引语混合，以增强场景中的紧张感和幽默感。另一篇来自凯瑟琳·曼斯菲尔德 (Katherine Mansfield) 的《花园聚会》(The Garden Party) 的文本，演示了展现时间流逝的不同方式。贝尔写道：“如果没有与时间建立有意义的关系，故事将永远难以起飞。”在关于时态的章节中，她引用了菲利普·普尔曼 (Philip Pullman) 的一段话，有助于阐明为什么现在时叙述经常让人感到不适：“我觉得有幽闭恐惧感，总是被紧紧地压在眼前之物上”。

除了成熟作家的文本，参与者还分析了自己以及彼此作品中的得失。在其中一篇文本中，贝尔察觉到“有很多情境，但没有多少故事，缺乏叙事驱动力”。在其他地方，学生们则在努力塑造圆满的人物，或者必须被提醒不要追求某种议程（这总是会导致写作变得枯燥）。弗兰纳里·奥康纳的一段话在此处非常有用：“当你能陈述一个故事的主题，当你能将其与故事本身分开时，那么你可以肯定这个故事写得并不好。故事的意义必须体现在其中，必须在其中具体化。”在贝尔的重构中，几乎总有一个挑衅者，通常是一个白人男性，他粗鲁地指责另一位参与者。这些仅以首字母标识的人物，方便地（或许过于方便地）让贝尔能够描述在工作坊环境下可能引发的冲突点。其中一人是种族主义者；另一人想通过写作来应对“#MeToo”运动，描写一段他觉得自己被一名指控他骚扰的年轻女性误解的时光。还有一人承认曾实施过一起恐同袭击，而他现在对此深感后悔。一名被贝尔推定为“依赖于晚宴社交常识”的女性，对一名同学的非二元性别身份不屑一顾。贝尔感觉到全班同学集体地“卷起袖子”应对。其他人物则或自命不凡，或好为人师。从贝尔将他们的插话描述为“嗤之以鼻”或“冷笑”的方式中，你可以看出她并不喜欢他们。一名致力于一个“旨在攀登欧洲文学崇高顶峰的相当冗长的项目”的男子，对没有人读过托马斯·曼感到“厌恶”。我对这个男人，以及另一个因将萨莉·鲁尼比作芭芭拉·卡特兰而令全班惊呼的男人感到遗憾。人们并不总是能很好地表达自己——而且不喜欢鲁尼应该是被允许的。在二十五年的教学生涯中，我很幸运地只遇到过一名严重干扰课堂的学生。在一次驻校课程的第一晚，这个男人通过一场令人瞠目结舌的性别歧视、种族主义、反犹主义、能力歧视和宗派主义表演，冒犯了我们几乎所有人（他还带了一个口哨，用来吹奏进行曲）。第二天早上，他温顺地同意离开，仿佛被他自身如此广泛的冒犯性给搞得精疲力竭。对于工作坊的成员来说，尽管存在分歧，但建立深厚友谊的情况要普遍得多（在驻校课程中，这经常发生在洗碗时）。在过去的二十年里，创意写作课程在种族和社会多样性方面变得丰富得多，但男性仍然是最显著的少数群体，通常在小组中占比不足三分之一。贝尔警惕群体思维的危险，“这可能对作品有害，并使作者感到迷茫”。其中一章包含了一场有趣的对话，讨论在得知爱丽丝·门罗对其女儿被继父性侵的揭露反应如此懦弱之后，现在该如何阅读她的作品。门罗并没有谴责或与丈夫分离，而是告诉女儿，不应期望她（门罗）否认自己的需求。贝尔工作坊的一位参与者震惊地发现，这位二十世纪最伟大的作家之一，终究不是一位“可爱的加拿大老太太”。贝尔极具说服力地论证道，门罗复杂的故事仍然可以被阅读和分析，以寻找她困境和动机的迹象。“我认为，在此时此刻作为一名作家去阅读，必须尝试采取这样一种观点：每个人都是有缺陷的。当我们阅读时，我们是在与那些混乱、困难、甚至可能是残暴的人类作品进行接触。”认为人们可以在不考虑其道德失败的情况下享受门罗天才之作的建议可能走得太远了，但至少她还没有被“取消”。

然而，还存在其他与文化战争相关的沉闷词汇：“微侵犯”（micro-aggressions）、“挪用”（appropriation）、“代际创伤”（inter-generational trauma）、“生活经验”（lived experience），以及提醒人们要“审视你的特权”（check your privilege）。虽然所有这些概念都值得探讨，但这些标签读起来像是一种认输，尤其是在创意写作的语境下。它们助长了一种观念，即生活是一系列“议题”而非体验——爱、死亡、绝望、流亡、背叛、迷恋——这些对当今作家来说，与对莎士比亚或索福克勒斯来说一样迷人且神秘。在这一切之中，工作坊成为了一个充满活力的论坛，有时也是一个战场，用于讨论生命、死亡以及两者之间的一切。但正如贝尔所指出的，它应该被视为一个“试验场”，而非最终的裁决者。如果你想自由地、颠覆性地、甚至冒犯性地写作，那么弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫是对的：你还需要一个属于自己的房间——或者至少一副降噪耳机。米兰达·弗朗斯（Miranda France）是《泰晤士文學 supplements》的顾问编辑。 36 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © ARTHUR FRANKEL / ALLIANT --- 科幻小说

女王与游戏大师

两部乌托邦女性主义小说：艾米莉·A·伯恩哈德·杰克逊（Emily A. Bernhard Jackson）与艾琳·克莱德（Irene Clyde）著，《第十六任比阿特丽斯》（Beatrice the Sixteenth），342页。麻省理工学院出版社（MIT Press）。平装本，£17.99（美国 $19.95）。苏珊·厄茨（Susan Ertz）著，《活着》（Woman Alive），144页。曼德利出版社（Manderley）。£19.99。

科幻小说通常仍不与女性联系在一起，但第一位西方科幻小说家是女性：玛格丽特·卡文迪什（Margaret Cavendish），她的科幻小说《灿烂的世界》（The Blazing World）出版于 1666。同样，虽然“乌托邦”这个词可能会让人想起创造该词的托马斯·莫尔（Thomas More），但第一部西方文学乌托邦作品出自女性之手：克里斯蒂娜·德·皮赞（Christine de Pizan）在莫尔写书的一个多世纪前就写了《女性城之书》（The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405）。随着时间的推移，男性成功地将科幻小说和乌托邦小说据为己有。虽然也有例外——夏洛特·珀金斯·吉尔曼（Charlotte Perkins Gilman）的《她的土地》（Herland, 1915）最为知名——但直到最近，这些例外似乎寥寥无几。现在，麻省理工学院出版社和较新的曼德利出版社正在挑战这一印象，前者推出了艾琳·克莱德的《第十六任比阿特丽斯》，后者推出了苏珊·厄茨的《活着》——这两部是二十世纪两部截然不同的女性主义乌托邦小说，且均采用了精心编辑的版本。

《第十六任比阿特丽斯》是其中较早的一本，首次出版于 1909，且更为不寻常。其非典型性始于作者。艾琳·克莱德（1869-1954）实际上是一个（生物学意义上的男性）性别流动者的一个侧面，而其另一半则是托马斯·巴蒂（Thomas Baty）。在职业生涯中，克莱德变成了巴蒂，一名国际法专家，最终成为日本政府的高级顾问；在私人生活中，巴蒂则是克莱德，她创立了致力于挑战二元性别的“族群联盟”（Aethnic Union），并创办、编辑并为《乌拉尼亚》（Urania）杂志撰稿，该杂志探索并支持我们现在所称的“酷儿”及其所有层面的特质。在分发给朋友的一份死后声明中，巴蒂解释说，从很小的时候起，“我发现女士们虽然确实比男性更优雅、更甜美，但她们同样坚定且高贵”。这段同时带有阶级主义、性别歧视和女性主义色彩的陈述，其每一个方面都体现在《第十六任比阿特丽斯》中。

小说讲述了探险家玛丽·哈瑟利博士（Dr Mary Hatherley）的故事。她在被骆驼踢中头部后，发现自己从二十世纪初的阿拉伯地区被传送到了亚美尼亚——一个处于不同“存在平面”（正如一名当地占星师最终所暗示的）、且完全由女性居住的国家。这个世界的闲暇阶层绝对是“女士”，她们受过教育，沉浸在优美的闲暇生活中。事实上，这本书花费了极大量的时间

详细描述室内装饰，沉溺于对镀金、优雅石工和精美雕刻的描写，清晰地展现了其根植于颓废主义的特质。在亚美尼亚精致的空间里，这里的女士们建立情感联系，对玛丽描述的英国法律和习俗感到困惑，并且像各地的人一样进行权谋和八卦。她们唯一没有做的是脱离保守的结构。这个社会由一位女王（即书名中的比阿特丽斯）统治；女性组成伴侣并结婚（这里不存在伦理上的非单配偶制）。至于她们通过与“野蛮人”以“最普通种类的地毯和织物”交换来获得孩子，这一点虽然被短暂地认为是不妥的，但随后就被忽略了。

同样，亚美尼亚依赖奴隶劳动的这一事实被提及了，但仅此而已。奴隶们似乎认为自己的奴隶身份是公正的。当玛丽询问其中一人是否有获得自由的可能性时，该奴隶回答道：“如果我们像她们 [她们的女主人] 一样优秀——一样精致……一样端庄——我们就拥有权利……但我们怎么才能变得那样呢？”这个答案并未完全让玛丽满意，但她并未对此采取任何行动。或许在一部小说中处理奴隶制这个课题过于庞大，露西·桑特（Lucy Sante）在极佳的导言中将这部作品描述为“一个未知社会的物质文化清单与轻盈的维多利亚时代风俗喜剧”的结合体；但既然如此，为何要将其加入其中？克莱德（Clyde）本可以轻易地将奴隶改为有偿雇员。她没有这样做，从而营造出一种不安感，仿佛她认为即使在乌托邦中，“女士们”也应当处于顶端，而那些不够精致和端庄的人则是她们天然的奴隶。至于这本书的封面，则表明麻省理工学院出版社（MIT Press）本身有一些古怪的想法：无论谁决定了一部女性主义小说最合适的封面艺术是一尊拥有硕大裸露乳房的雕像画，可能都需要重新考虑。幸运的是，苏珊·厄茨（Susan Ertz）的《Woman Alive》，在《Beatrice the Sixteenth》出版二十七年后首次出版，完全不屑于任何艺术或社会上的胡闹。就这位相当高产的英美作家（1887-1985）的小说而言，世界应当由一位理智的、中产阶级的、“非常英国……非常撒克逊”的体育教师来管理。很快，事实的确如此。《Woman Alive》以一名塞尔温博士（Dr Selwyn）在20世纪30年代中期通过一种心灵感应的意识融合，从伦敦被传输到1985年而开始。在这个未来的伦敦，女性正死于一种由男性发起的战争所产生的副产品疾病。只有女性易感，而在我们读到这部薄小说四分之一处之前，她们就全部死去了。或者真的死光了吗？结果发现有一名女性秘密地生存了下来，她被一名庸医用染料覆盖，在通过“强力射线”吸收后，使她对所有疾病免疫（她之所以自愿接受这种治疗，是因为在被抛弃后，她不再关心实验是否会杀死她）。这名女性斯特拉·莫罗（Stella Morrow）出身于健康的农家血统，曾是一名体育教师，现在成为了英格兰女王。这个前提在用几段话陈述时听起来很荒谬，但在小说中却行得通。部分原因是厄茨笔下的未来英格兰听起来相当棒：这里有性自由和宽容；老年人可以服用一种减轻许多与年龄相关的疼痛的药剂；无声的气动汽车消除了污染；而那些因技术进步而失业的人被重新雇佣于美化城市和乡村，从而使之变得绿意盎然且洁净。（未来的政府们请注意。）这部小说之所以成功，还在于它在许多方面具有心理洞察力。一旦被留下的男性意识到没有未来，他们便生活得“沉闷且心不在焉，仅仅是生存”——这种意识到人类为了快乐地运作必须对未来有所感知（即使是他们可能无法活到见证的未来）的观点是非常敏锐的。斯特拉本人对于社会如何构建一个糟糕的世界以及如何构建一个更好的世界有着令人耳目一新的清醒认识——“看看你们的历史书。是否曾经有一本是以这样开始的……这里是悲哀、疯狂、糟糕的旧过去……从中学习唯一的一件事——变得不同”。

如果这一切让《Woman Alive》听起来阴郁或好为人师，那便产生了误解。透露这部小说的情节包含任何成功小说所必需的阴谋（一次被挫败的绑架）、浪漫（心碎的斯特拉获得了第二次恋爱机会）以及圆满结局，并不会破坏阅读体验。如果这本书给那种“如果由女性统治世界，就不会有战争”的陈词滥调留了空间，那么为了重新发现一部曾被历史遗忘的小说，这不过是微小的代价；而这部小说的重新出版证明了，正如格雷厄姆·诺顿在他那迷人且敏锐的序言中所言，历史“是个老糊涂”。艾米莉·A·伯恩哈德·杰克逊（Emily A. Bernhard Jackson）是一位学者，并以 E. A. 杰克逊（E. A. Jackson）之名撰写小说。她的悬疑惊悚小说《Missing》将于明年出版。

2026年阅读之乐奖（The Pleasure of Reading Prize 2026）已授予威廉·博伊德（William Boyd）

“威廉·博伊德的小说因其叙事活力、机智和历史跨度而受到赞赏。……在其小说的可读性之下，隐藏着关于记忆、自我塑造以及真理与虚构之间脆弱边界的严肃主题……阅读威廉·博伊德的作品始终是一种享受。”——摘自评委评语

BLOOMSBURY www.giveabook.org.uk 2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 37 © BLAVATNIK FAMILY SCENARIO --- 自然历史 # 荒野之深

我们与英国景观的关系

苏菲·叶欧 (Sophie Yeo) 《荒野之地：英国荒野的人类历史》(Wilderlands: The human history of wild Britain) 埃洛伊丝·凯恩 (Eloise Kane) 著，304页，Faber 出版，£20。

《荒野之地》的故事始于英国景观尚且相对荒野的时期。之所以说“相对”，是因为埃洛伊丝·凯恩是从大约 1.2万,000 年前开始讲述的，那时上一次冰期的冰川被如今已成为童话素材的原始森林所取代。到那时为止，景观已经成为了人类的产物，大多数塑造早期生态系统的巨型动物群已经灭绝，极有可能是因为狩猎。然而，正是从那时起，人们在英国建立了永久的定居点，我们直接影响环境的时代真正开始了。

原始森林持续的时间并不长。大约 6,000 年前，不列颠人意识到他们不需要依赖野生食物维持生计：他们可以改为种植作物和管理畜群。从那时起，景观发生了剧变。凯恩概述了始于新石器时代并一直持续到现代的居住演变，期间在早中世纪前后曾有过短暂的缓解。其他作家也讲述过这个故事，其中最著名的是景观历史学家奥利弗·拉克汉姆 (Oliver Rackham)。在过去的十五年里，有两本书都名为《英国景观的形成》(The Making of the British Landscape)，分别由弗朗西斯·普赖尔 (Francis Pryor, 2010) 和尼古拉斯·克雷恩 (Nicholas Crane, 2016) 撰写。

但《荒野之地》在书架上占据了一席之地。凯恩致力于快速发展的古生态学领域，该学科利用花粉分析和古代 DNA 的进步，为审视过去提供了一个更精密且局部化的窗口；她通过整理最新的科学成果并概述最相关的争论，提供了一项有益的服务。结合她自己的实地考察记录——包括一次对威尔特郡西尔伯里山 (Silbury Hill) 深处的探索——这给人一种由一名能干的向导陪同前行的感觉。

或许正是因为凯恩的学术背景，使她免于陷入许多探索远古过去的自然文学作家常掉入的浪漫化陷阱。她写道，在水域中发现的文物可能是古代祭祀的证据，但话又说回来，也可能是史前版本的“回收站”证据。同样，卡利多尼亚森林 (Caledonian Forest) 不过是罗马作家散布的神话。

但凯恩真正超越以往文献的地方，在于她对人类与荒野关系的处理。从祖先的心理中提取有意义的见解是很困难的。例如，对于在原始埋葬 1,000 年后与人类一同安葬的鹰，该如何解读？它们是筑巢在悬崖上，还是被刻意放置在那里的？面对此类谜团，存在一种“内在危险……即我们目前对荒野的看法，导致我们相信这些鸟类在后史前时期具有特殊地位”。这些鹰实际上意味着什么，我们可能永远不会知道。

同样神秘的是海亨奇 (Seahenge)，一座由树干构成的青铜时代纪念碑。凯恩认为，它可能代表了因农业和气候转变而迅速消失的林地——她假设，这是“生态悲痛”的一个早期案例。凯恩从这些碎片中编织出了一幅可信的祖先画像，并以一种罕见且真实的方式赋予了祖先生命。考虑到“再野化”在自然保护中的主导地位，这种做法也显得十分必要。如今的英国人对

凯恩写道，人们与荒野之间存在着一种痛苦的关系，其特点是羞耻、渴望、好奇以及一种特权感。与此同时，“荒野”的概念已成为一种强大的营销工具，被用来描述那些实际上完全并非荒野的物种和景观：例如，将爱尔兰沿海的一系列乡村小路重新品牌化为“野性大西洋之路”（Wild Atlantic Way），在 2019. 就吸引了约 840 万 名游客。在讨论我们应如何设计未来的荒野景观时，考古学往往被边缘化，但为了确保这些地方并非建立在“怀旧、愧疚以及对美的想象”之上，深化我们对过去生物世界的理解至关重要。索菲·叶（Sophie Yeo）是一位作家和记者，著有《自然的幽灵：我们失去的世界以及如何将其找回》（Nature's Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back），2024。

恶魔鸭子

鸟类生命的祖先与多样性

Andrew H. Knoll 评 Steve Brusatte 著 《鸟类的故事：生活在我们身边的恐龙进化史》（The Story of Birds: An evolutionary history of the dinosaurs that live among us） 448页。Picador出版。£25。

鸟类起源于恐龙的观点并不新鲜。达尔文的同辈且其坚定的捍卫者托马斯·赫胥黎（Thomas Huxley）在1868年就提出了这一观点，理由是这两类生物在骨骼结构上具有相似性。赫胥黎知道并非所有恐龙都是像霸王龙（Tyrannosaurus rex）或长颈蜥脚类恐龙那样的巨兽，他也注意到了当时新发现的始祖鸟（Archaeopteryx）化石——一种覆盖着羽毛的生物，其骨骼像恐龙。在美国，古生物学家爱德华·德林克·科普（Edward Drinker Cope）也提出了类似的论点。然而，此类想法不可避免地引发了反对者的质疑，尽管赫胥黎和科普都知道存在小型恐龙（有些仅有鸡那么大），但讨论通常仍集中在公众想象中那些笨重的巨兽身上。

恐龙-鸟类假说在随后的近一个世纪里基本消失了，直到20世纪60年代才重新出现。许多来自中国的重大新发现表明，不仅在中生代森林中普遍存在骨骼特征与鸟类相当的小型恐龙，而且其中许多恐龙还长有羽毛。（看来羽毛的进化主要是为了保暖，而一些恐龙进化出了带有更大羽毛的宽大前肢，最初并非为了飞行，而更有可能是为了求偶展示。）此外，对鸟类胚胎的仔细研究也表明，在发育早期，鸟类的骨骼看起来与恐龙极其相似。化石研究与比较生物学的见解共同阐明了从“雷龙”到鸟类的进化路径，而当时已名声大噪的始祖鸟被理解为中间环节。鸟类确实是生命之树上恐龙分支中唯一的幸存者。

38 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © TRAVELING / ARTISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES

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鸟类的起源故事令人兴奋，史蒂夫·布鲁萨特（Steve Brusatte）在他引人入胜的新书中讲述了这个故事。这是几个故事中的第一个，带领我们从早期的原鸟，走向点缀在现代地球上的数以千计的鸣禽、猛禽、水禽等。在将鸟类置于恐龙范畴之后，布鲁萨特阐明了关键特征的转变：从鳞片到羽毛，从求偶展示到飞行，从有齿的颌骨到喙。这些讨论同等程度地依赖于对现存鸟类的创新研究和关键化石，内容详尽，但对于读者来说非常值得花精力阅读，因为其回报是丰厚的。它们不仅展示了鸟类的诊断性特征是如何形成的，还例证了一个关于进化变革的更广泛真理，生物学家、诺贝尔奖得主弗朗索瓦·雅各布（François Jacob）在1977年曾提出一个著名的论点：进化不像一名工程师从零开始打造新功能，而更像一名修补匠，利用现有材料并将其修改以适应新功能。

一只史前恐怖鸟的模型

六千六百万年前，一次陨石撞击灭绝了所有恐龙，仅剩少数几只鸟类幸存，它们成为了如今分布在现代地球上的1万,000多种鸟类的共同祖先。在探讨现代鸟类起源的过程中，布鲁萨特将重心从统一鸟类的特征，转移到了将现存鸟类主要类群彼此区分开来的特征上，

在此过程中，他记录了一些未能生存至今的卓越群体，包括被恰如其分地命名为“恐怖鸟”的古代顶级掠食者——这些体重达350公斤的巨兽拥有如弯刀般的喙，曾在当时处于孤立状态的南美大陆上出没；同样令人畏惧的、分布于北美和欧洲的巨鸟（Gastornis）；以及——信不信由你——掠食性的“恶魔鸭”。在现代性兴起的叙事中，鸣禽得到了特殊对待。如今，它们在鸟类多样性中占据主导地位，其快速发育的大脑支持着复杂的沟通能力和令人印象深刻的学习能力。布鲁萨特在这些讨论中所展现的众多技巧之一，便是将参与研究的科学家和古生物学家的故事编织进他的叙事之中的能力。《鸟类故事》（The Story of Birds）提供了丰富的内容。它是自然历史写作的巅峰之作。安德鲁·H·诺尔（Andrew H. Knoll）是哈佛大学的荣休教授。他的著作包括《地球简史》（A Brief History of Earth, 2021）以及《地球与生命：一场四十亿年的对话》（Earth and Life: A four billion year conversation, 2026）。

魔鬼之鸟

我们是如何虐待鸬鹚的

杰里米·迈诺特（Jeremy Mynott）

戈登·麦库伦（Gordon McMullan） 《鸬鹚：贪婪与偏见的文化史》 450页。剑桥大学出版社。£35（美国 £45）。

“cormorant”（鸬鹚）这个名字是对拉丁语 corvus marinus 的改编，意为“海鸦”。诚然，这种鸟羽毛黑色，但它所属的科与鸦科完全不同，而这一错误在其现代属名 Phalacrocorax 中再次出现，该词源自希腊语，意为“秃鸦”。在许多文化中，乌鸦被视为不祥之鸟，且以贪婪著称（因此有了“ravenous”一词）——而这正是鸬鹚的名声被“抹黑”的主要道德缺陷之一，戈登·麦库伦在这部关于该鸟类不幸文化史的全面且引人入胜的研究中对此进行了详细阐述。他讲述了一个关于偏见与厌恶的故事，这些误传的形式不可避免地让我们对自己，而非我们学会憎恨的生物物种，有了更多的了解。

敌意的根源主要在于该鸟卓越的捕鱼技巧，这使其作为竞争捕食者，与人类钓鱼者和渔民陷入了激烈的竞争。而人们对其抱怨的掩护则来自于它其他一些身体和行为特征。在诋毁者看来，这种鸟本质上只是在进食、排泄和繁殖，并且所有这些自然功能都表现得过分。它以贪得无厌的贪婪耗尽鱼类资源；它用大量的排泄物污染并破坏其在树上的筑巢地；而且其种群目前的扩张速度如此之快，以至于它被认为是一种入侵外来物种。

它的外貌也毫无帮助。大多数人对鸬鹚的印象是一只硕大、黑色且相当笨拙的鸟，有着像爬行动物一样弯曲的脖子，坐在岩石或类似的栖息处，双翼像十字架一样展开晾干——像某种令人畏惧的史前生物，让我们无法产生直觉上的同情。这种观念有着深厚的文化根源。在《失乐园》中，约翰·弥尔顿将撒旦描绘成“像一只鸬鹚一样坐在”伊甸园生命之树的顶端，作为邪恶的化身，威胁着生命本身。

这只是麦库伦在其讨论的极广范围内所运用的西方文学、艺术和流行文化中众多意象之一，这些讨论还包括：19世纪秘鲁的鸟粪贸易、反鸬鹚网站、利物浦足球俱乐部的标志、詹姆斯一世和查理一世的鸬鹚饲养员、詹姆斯·邦德小说、基督教神话中对“白色”且“虔诚”的鹈鹕的对比刻画、莎士比亚笔下夏洛克（Shylock）中探讨的反犹太主义诽谤，以及科学分类学的历史。

关于最后一点，大鸬鹚（Phalacrocorax carbo）的一个亚种在18世纪被赋予了亚种名 sinensis，错误地暗示它是由中国引入欧洲的，而实际上它是本土物种，从而助长了关于入侵“黄祸”的叙事。事实上，中国与日本在文化民俗中对鸬鹚的描绘截然不同。中国渔民将鸬鹚视为宝贵的伙伴，并通过传统的佩戴捕鱼项圈的方式利用其捕鱼技巧，使鸬鹚能够捕捉但不能吞下较大的鱼，随后由人类操作者回收。在西方，鸬鹚同样带来了益处，特别是通过对古亚纳鸬鹚（guanay cormorant）产出的极高利润贸易，这让像维多利亚时代的富豪威廉·吉布斯（William Gibbs）这样的人物大发横财，以至于他在当时的一首音乐厅打油诗中被讽刺道：“威廉·吉布斯发了财 / 全靠贩卖外国鸟的屎”。

全球分布着近 39 种鸬鹚，其体型和羽色各异，其中一些体型较小（且几乎一样可爱），就像另一种伟大的捕鱼者——企鹅。然而，这本书并非一部动物学调查。最令麦克马伦（McMullan）感兴趣且带有文化包袱的是两种大型黑色品种：北美的双冠鸬鹚，以及在不列颠、欧洲及世界大部分地区广泛分布的大鸬鹚。它们构成了书名中泛指的“鸬鹚”，也是渔业利益与保护利益之间根深蒂固争端的焦点。它们也是我们经常投射人类偏见的对象，被多样地象征为窃贼、污染者、入侵者、外国人、恐怖分子，甚至是恶魔本身。这种现象与更广泛的不受欢迎的野生动物物种，以及被视为“他者”且具有威胁性的人类群体之间的平行关系，值得深思。杰里米·迈诺特（Jeremy Mynott）的著作包括《自然的故事：一部人类历史》（The Story of Nature: A human history, 2024）和《鸟景：我们想象与经验中的鸟类》（Birdscapes: Birds in our imagination and experience, 2009）。© EDUCATION IMAGES / UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES, © CREATIVE / NATURE, INC / STOCK / GETTY IMAGES 2026年8月7日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 39 --- 犹太研究

盟约之间

德国犹太人的困境

加布里埃尔·莫茨金（Gabriel Motzkin） 保罗·门德斯-弗洛尔（Paul Mendes-Flohr） 《爱如死亡般强力：弗朗茨·罗森茨威格传》 192页。芝加哥大学出版社。£20 (US $25)。

尽管有这个副标题，这部关于弗朗茨·罗森茨威格（Franz Rosenzweig, 1886-1929）的传记其实并不完全是一部传记。它也没有真正阐述他的哲学究竟在哪些方面具有创新性。但它极其出色地提供了一次引导，让读者了解德国犹太人在第一次世界大战前后所面临的困境，以及他们那个世界的总体基调。

保罗·门德斯-弗洛尔追踪了一组德国犹太知识分子的生活——从战前他们的青年和早年成熟时期，到他们在魏玛时期试图整合其多种身份的尝试，再到他们在第二次世界大战中的经历及战后的反思——将我们带到了那个“连字符”的核心。成为“德国-犹太人”意味着什么？

我们今天看待德国犹太文化的视角不可避免地充满了怀旧与丧失感——当我们考虑到其在1919年至1933年魏玛时期的活力时，这种感觉会进一步增强。第一次世界大战以及德国的失败，激发了许多德国犹太知识分子肯定其身份中这两个部分的欲望，尤其是因为在19世纪同化进入德国文化的进程中，犹太这一部分往往已经丢失。他们对犹太教的重新发现，往往发生在他们深植于德国文化的背景之下。

看待这一环境的通常方式是通过现代世俗身份的视角。门德斯-弗洛尔令人信服地证明，这一框架既不能捕捉这些知识分子的目标，也不能反映他们认为自己是谁。像罗森茨威格这样的人物不仅遵守犹太仪式法，还致力于研究传统的犹太文本。虽然对托拉（Torah）的研究对他们至关重要，但他们也研究塔木德（Talmud）及其后世的注释。

使他们与被称为“新正统派”的犹太运动追随者不同的是，他们拥有一个由德国哲学和文学文化塑造的视野，其中包含了与基督教的对话——而这种对话在犹太思想的大部分发展轨迹中一直是缺失的。罗森茨威格及其同僚认为，犹太哲学的一个关键组成部分应该是对基督教弥赛亚主义挑战的回应。他们接触基督教的经历，强化了他们肯定犹太人对普世上帝之见证的需求。

门德斯-弗洛尔将罗森茨威格描绘成对同化结果持有矛盾心态的人。他暗示，经济繁荣无法掩盖随传统丧失而来的精神贫乏。究竟应该复兴传统的哪些部分，成为了定义性的问题。如果用来理解传统的方法是外部的，那么传统的实质能否得以保留？将现代分析方法应用于传统内容，是否会威胁到传统的消解？罗森茨威格拒绝了尤利乌斯·韦尔豪森（Julius Wellhausen）的“文献假说”，该假说认为托拉是由不同作者编写的。他主张，即便这在经验上是真实的，一个有信仰的犹太人必须将文本视为上帝的话语，而不管它是如何传递的。

对于罗森茨威格而言，核心关切在于现代犹太人如何能在现代性的基础上回归传统。尽管罗森茨威格尊重其好友马丁·布伯的犹太复国主义，但他并不认同，因为他认为犹太复国主义截断了犹太教的本质——犹太教并非关于与土地的关系或对世俗国家的幻想，而是关于犹太人与上帝在历史发展中所建立的关系。像格肖姆·肖勒姆这样的犹太复国主义者理所当然地将德裔犹太人的文化共生视为一种失败，但门德斯-弗洛尔保留了这样一种可能性：在不同的历史环境下，罗森茨威格将德国文化与犹太教相结合的方式，或许能为现代犹太教提供一种不同于改革犹太教的模型（与改革犹太教不同，罗森茨威格主张研究《塔木德》）。对罗森茨威格来说，问题不在于两种迥异文化之间的文化对话，而在于如何在现代性语境下为犹太教开辟一条道路。这些年轻知识分子所持的现代性观念强调德国唯心主义的遗产。罗森茨威格的博士导师是著名历史学家弗里德里希·迈内克。从迈内克的著作《世界主义与民族国家》（1908）中，他吸收了这样一种观点，即世界主义与民族主义无需被视为对立；一个人既可以是德国爱国者，也可以是世界公民。对于许多德国知识分子来说，德国唯心主义传统发挥的作用与英国的自由主义或法国的世俗民主相同。不幸的是，事实证明其遗产既非自由主义也非民主主义。这种根植于德国唯心主义的特质，对他情感和智识的发展起到了决定性作用。在这种传统的语境下，他试图定义一种新型的主体性，用“灵魂”取代“自我”。他将这种新型主体性定位在一种内在的犹太体验中，这种体验肯定了一位既超越又具有人格特质的上帝，这与启蒙运动中的自然神论上帝截然相反。他的许多情感立场借鉴自基督教，而他对基督教始终持有矛盾心态。他最终的立场是，犹太教和基督教作为两种互补的盟约，彼此需要。这种黑格尔式的辩证法也影响了罗森茨威格的感情生活。他爱上了朋友欧根·罗森斯托克-休西的妻子玛格丽特（被称为“格里特利”），这段婚外情中的双方都认为他们的关系增强了各自的婚姻——在不断给格里特利写信的同时，罗森茨威格在1920年决定与伊迪丝·哈恩结婚。哈恩如何看待这种安排，可以从她在丈夫去世后烧毁格里特利写给丈夫的信件中推断出来，因此这些通信仅存单方面记录。门德斯-弗洛尔极好地利用了罗森茨威格写给格里特利的信件，来追踪其研究对象的智识与情感发展。他还曾在20世纪80年代采访了许多罗森茨威格的同辈，并引用他们经常未发表的信件和著作，以阐明这位哲学家与同僚的互动，并展示其情爱关系如何影响他对犹太教的解读。在门德斯-弗洛尔的叙述中，罗森茨威格的哲学呈现为一种试图调和个人与情感的尝试。

正如他在其主要著作《救赎之星》（The Star of Redemption，1921）中所阐述的那样，罗森茨威格的思想描绘了一条从创造经由启示走向救赎的路径。他认为，救赎是通过爱而成为可能的，而爱反过来又引发了创造——这里的创造不被理解为遥远过去的一次单一事件，而是生命中一个持续发生的事件。然而，创造具有偶然性：世界并非必须是这个样子。这种偶然感标志着罗森茨威格与黑格尔的分道扬镳。如果创造是通过爱而发生的，那么人类之爱与神圣之爱之间就存在一种同构关系。在这种观点中，人类的爱欲（eros）与神圣的爱欲并不存在于不同的现实之中；自我不能脱离个人特质而被抽象化。因此，我们的传记体现了人类情爱与神圣灵爱共同存在的恒久可能性。奇妙的是，罗森茨威格在犹太教中发现了这种关于个人的本体论。这引导他深入研究《塔木德》，并创建了一所创新的犹太教育机构——自由犹太学习之家（Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus），该机构在魏玛共和国时期服务了数千名学生。尽管两次世界大战之间德国犹太生活与文化的复兴注定走向灾难，但罗森茨威格在其毁灭之前就已去世。他患有肌萎缩侧索硬化症，遭受着日益严重的瘫痪，依赖妻子来记录他的思想；在最后的几个月里，他只能通过移动大拇指和眨眼来交流。他于1929年12月去世。罗森茨威格的遗产在一定程度上被其好友布伯的名声所掩盖。（两人曾共同承担希伯来圣经的德语译本工作，旨在用于朗读。）《爱强如死》（Love Is Strong as Death）向我们表明，他值得重新关注。一方面，他预见了存在主义将取代德国唯心主义；另一方面，他提供了一个进入20世纪初德国犹太文化那个转瞬即逝、纯真无暇的世界的入口。在那个连字符背后，仍有许多等待被发掘的东西。加布里埃尔·莫茨金（Gabriel Motzkin）是耶路撒冷希伯来大学的 Ahad Ha'am 荣誉讲席教授。他曾任范利尔耶路撒冷研究所（Van Leer Jerusalem Institute）执行主任。

以弗拉伊姆·摩西·利利恩（Ephraim Moses Lilien）作品《寓言婚礼》的细节，1906 40 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © FRITZMAN AND ART COLLECTION / SLAUT ---

凡事皆适度

迈蒙尼德与现代世界

卡洛斯·弗兰克尔（Carlos Fraenkel）、史蒂文·纳德勒（Steven Nadler） 《今日为何阅读迈蒙尼德？》（Why Read Maimonides Today?） 144页。剑桥大学出版社。平装本，£14.99（美国 $19.99）。

摩西·迈蒙尼德（Moses Maimonides） 《迷途指津》（The Guide of the Perplexed） 单卷全集 什洛莫·派恩斯（Shlomo Pines）译 768页。芝加哥大学出版社。平装本，$40.

我们应当如何生活？苏格拉底曾有名言，称这是我们必须比任何其他问题都“更严肃地”对待的问题。我们都希望过上成功、快乐且繁荣的生活——一种当我们回顾时可以说：它是值得的的生活。但这意味着什么？我们又该去哪里寻求指导？

在《今日为何阅读迈蒙尼德？》一书中，史蒂文·纳德勒认为，我们应当转向一位12世纪的犹太哲学家、拉比、社区领袖兼医生。迈蒙尼德为我们提供了一份通往“智慧生活，美好生活”的指南。纳德勒主张，他的哲学并非中世纪经院哲学的一件遗物，而是一个活生生的资源，适用于任何致力于遵循理性来塑造人生的人。

这种解读的核心在于迈蒙尼德毫不妥协的理性主义。智慧的生活是由理性主导的生活。与此同时，纳德勒笔下的迈蒙尼德将犹太教——其法律与叙事、信仰与实践——呈现为通往这种生活的路径。将信仰理性化并非迈蒙尼德计划中的边缘特征，而是其核心。这里没有神话、迷信或不可捉摸的神圣意志的生存空间。犹太教由此成为了理性的典范宗教。

在这个意义上，迈蒙尼德成为了连接中世纪与现代世界的桥梁：他向所有接受理性权威的人（“无论是犹太人还是外邦人；是虔诚的信徒、不可知论者还是无神论者”）发声。

这是一个极具吸引力的论点。纳德勒的文字清晰、优雅且克制得令人钦佩。他抵制了将迈蒙尼德征召进当代政治辩论（如“民主、平等、气候变化、社会正义”）的诱惑，而是专注于三个持久的哲学和宗教关切：对圣经的诠释、恶与天意的问题，以及犹太法的基础。他令人信服地论证道，将这三者统一起来的是迈蒙尼德的理性主义理想。

以诠释学为例。对于迈蒙尼德而言，诠释成为了一种理性疗法，旨在帮助那些在亚里士多德哲学与圣经生动意象之间挣扎的、在知识上严肃对待信仰的犹太人。亚里士多德的神是纯粹的理智：非物质的，没有情感，沉浸在永恒的自我沉思之中。而圣经中的神在花园中行走，与先知交谈，坐在宝座上，乘坐战车，并因愤怒而燃烧

“哥本哈根迈蒙尼德”细节，1348。他的愤怒被形象地描述为鼻子着火。

理性与启示之间显而易见的冲突，恰恰产生了迈蒙尼德在其哲学-神学杰作《迷途指津》中试图解决的“迷途”（perplexity）。书中章复一章地将拟人化的段落重新诠释为隐喻。神并非字面意义上坐在宝座上；这一意象象征着至高无上的本体论等级。正如国王在政治秩序中占据最高位置，神处于存在秩序的顶峰。圣经如果被正确阅读，并不与理性相矛盾——它编码了理性。

在纳德勒（Nadler）的解读中，理性主义还为迈蒙尼德（Maimonides）应对苦难与邪恶提供了策略。我们通常看重的大多数事物——财富、名声、权力、健康，甚至挚爱之人——在命运面前都是脆弱的。这些财富可能被窃贼夺走，被大火摧毁，或被公众舆论的反复无常所瓦解。相比之下，智识上的成就则是安全的。科学和哲学真理无法被没收或焚毁。此外，科学认知使我们能够更审慎地在世间行走：例如，对自然的了解教会我们不要在飓风季节登船。纳德勒认为，这就是迈蒙尼德所指的“神圣天意”——并非奇迹般的干预，而是一种彻底自然化的解释，即上帝在“看顾”那些培养自身理智的人。

最后，在迈蒙尼德看来，613 条诫命从始至终都是理性的。其规定旨在促进人类的完善。为什么在菜单中剔除龙虾和芝士汉堡？为什么在特定时间限制性活动？因为饮食自律和性克制可以磨练性格。它们对抗贪食与色欲，培养节制。而节制使我们能够追求迈蒙尼德认为的最高人类活动：对科学和哲学真理的沉思。节制的人不会被过度导致的疾病所削弱，也不会被放纵的欲望所分心。因此，法律成为了理性的教学工具。

纳德勒的努力结果是一份易于理解的邀请，引导人们去阅读一位一流的哲学家以及犹太教激进重新诠释的构建者——这种诠释如此激进，以至于当传统主义者和卡巴拉学者抵制“犹太教核心即哲学”这一主张时，几乎导致了犹太世界的分裂。因此，什洛莫·派恩斯（Shlomo Pines）对《迷途指津》（1963年）那部无可匹敌的英文译本近期以单卷本形式重新发行，使得希望深入响应这份邀请的读者能更便捷地接触到迈蒙尼德的这部杰作，这显得尤为及时。

但迈蒙尼德真的能引导我们吗？如果我们认真对待纳德勒的提议，就必须面对一个他很大程度上含糊处理的问题：我们所说的“理性主义”究竟是指什么？迈蒙尼德所指的“理性”与我们所指的相同吗？纳德勒极具说服力地描述了迈蒙尼德的理性主义，但并未充分面对其目的论的理性概念与我们如今更单薄、通常是程序性或工具性的理解之间的历史距离。他的理性主义根植于一种实质性的形而上学、一种等级制的宇宙论以及一种强有力的人性观——而许多现代读者已不再认同这些承诺。他对犹太教的诠释亦然。如果迈蒙尼德要充当一座桥梁，我们必须阐明，在不接受其背景假设的现代语境下，如何重新思考他的理性主义。

纳德勒引用了法国哲学史学家皮埃尔·阿多（Pierre Hadot）的话，后者将古代哲学著名地描述为一种“生活方式”：从苏格拉底到怀疑论者，古人并不将哲学视为局限于学院的技术学科，而是将其践行于生活——这一描述同样适用于迈蒙尼德。阿多建议，我们今天明智生活的最大希望，在于将古代思想从过时的形而上学和宇宙论理论中剥离，并将其适配于现代理论。但阿多和纳德勒都没有告诉我们这种剥离应当如何运作。目前尚不清楚的是，一旦形而上学的脚手架被拆除，还剩下什么——以及让迈蒙尼德具有吸引力的那种理性主义能否在这次手术后完好无损地生存下来。

考虑一下最高善——我们应当追求的目标。对于迈蒙尼德来说，生活的每一个方面都应为了实现这一目标而组织。他详细到了近乎滑稽的程度——比如在厕所里花多少时间，洗澡的频率如何——以帮助我们优化生活。他主张，每一条犹太诫命都服务于这个目的。

那么，最高之善是什么？是对自然的科学研究，这也是最高形式的崇拜。对于摩西·迈蒙尼德而言，这构成了对上帝最崇高的爱——一种理智之爱。在纳德勒引用的一段文字中，摩西·迈蒙尼德写道：“当一个人沉思祂奇妙而伟大的……创造，并看到祂无限的智慧……他将立即爱祂”。在这种观点看来，科学是对自然理性秩序中上帝智慧的领悟。通过研究自然的设计，我们从而爱上其设计者。如今大多数自然科学家不会这样描述他们进入实验室的原因。正如马克斯·韦伯在《作为志业的科学》（1917）中所述：“科学作为通往上帝的路径？考虑到其明显的无神论本质？如今没有人会质疑这就是它的本质。从科学的理性主义……中解脱出来，是与神圣共存的基本条件”。人们可能会抵制韦伯的诊断，但有一点很难否认：我们不能简单地接续摩西·迈蒙尼德未竟之处，通过优化我们的如厕习惯，从而将自己奉献给对上帝的理智之爱。这让当今渴望成为摩西·迈蒙尼德的人处于何种境地？他们面临着一个残酷的选择。要么放弃那个使其理性主义具有连贯性的框架，要么尝试恢复某种类似的东西：一种与现代感官格格不入的关于自然、上帝和人类完美的观念。在整本书中，纳德勒多次回到巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎与摩西·迈蒙尼德之间的对话。两人都将对上帝的理智之爱置于其伦理愿景的中心，这并非偶然。然而，尽管摩西·迈蒙尼德的上帝已经是非人格化的（是一个理智而非一个人），斯宾诺莎则走得更远，他以将上帝等同于自然而闻名。当有传闻称阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦是一个无神论者时，他回答道：“我信仰斯宾诺莎的上帝，祂在既有之物的有序和谐中揭示自身”。将这种立场在某种意义上描述为迈蒙尼德式的，并不牵强。这样一个斯宾诺莎式的框架是否能沿着迈蒙尼德的路线，为一种作为生活方式的更新哲学奠定基础，仍然是一个开放的问题。无论如何，这是一个值得追求的项目——或许会在纳德勒的下一本书中探讨。卡洛斯·弗兰克尔（Carlos Fraenkel）是蒙特利尔麦吉尔大学的詹姆斯·麦吉尔哲学与宗教教授。他的著作包括《从摩西·迈蒙尼德到萨穆埃尔·伊本·蒂本》（From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon），2007. August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 41 © THE PICTURE ART COLLECTION / ALGARY --- 文学

金色的愚行

乔治·查普曼新版

安德鲁·哈德菲尔德（Andrew Hadfield）评 乔治·查普曼（George Chapman）《夜晚之影》（The Shadow of Night）与《奥维德的感官盛宴》（Ovid's Banquet of Sense），由 Zenón Luis-Martínez 编辑，432页。MHRA 出版。平装本，£28.99（美国 $39.99）。

乔治·查普曼（约 c.1559-1634）在某种程度上是一个谜。他严肃、博学且多产，最著名的作品是荷马史诗的译本，但他也创作了大量的诗歌和几部戏剧。他在吸引的一些赞助人方面运气不佳，经常陷入贫困，曾在低地国家任职，并曾因债务入狱。但查普曼也曾获得成功并受到同行的尊重，他的悲剧将近期法国历史上令人恐惧的戏剧冲突搬上舞台，而他的喜剧——尤其是与本·琼森（Ben Jonson）和约翰·马斯顿（John Marston）合著的《向东看！》（Eastward Ho!）——因其尖刻的讽刺而引起关注。

查普曼的诗歌以晦涩难懂和极具挑战性而著称，这就是为什么他有时被认为是莎士比亚十四行诗中的竞争对手诗人；而他对秘传哲学和新柏拉图主义思想的兴趣，则引发了关于他是以沃尔特·罗利（Walter Raleigh）为中心的无神论“夜晚学校”（School of Night）成员的推测。（除了查普曼为罗利讲述其圭亚那航行经历的著作所写的献诗外，没有太多证据表明他们彼此相识。）

很难判断查普曼的哲学推测究竟有多严肃。正如他细致且尽职的编辑 Zenón Luis-Martínez 所主张的，他的诗歌是否通过他对诗歌狂热（poetic fury）和“生动表现力”（enargia）的信仰，引导我们感知神圣的启示？或者，他的作品是对诗歌语言精心且巧妙的探索，充满了讽刺，使他成为一名“形而上学”诗人？

《夜晚之影》是查普曼第一部出版的诗集。就像弥尔顿的《快乐的人》（L'Allegro）和《沉思的人》（Il Penseroso）一样，它平衡了两种截然不同的状态：“夜之赞歌”（Hymnus in Noctem）中忧郁之夜女神的思想与信仰；以及“辛西亚赞歌”（Hymnus in Cynthiam）中月亮的力量，后者同时也是一首献给伊丽莎白一世的精心构思的颂歌。正如引言所暗示的，这些诗作可以被视为旨在迎合查普曼的赞助人——斯特兰奇勋爵费迪南多·斯坦利（Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange）对神秘学兴趣的作品，与克里斯托弗·马洛的《浮士德博士》（Dr Faustus）和托马斯·纳什的《夜晚的恐怖》（The Terrors of the Night）相类。

与这些作品一样，查普曼的诗中包含着不少幽默成分：毕竟，斯特兰奇勋爵是纳什那部荒诞的色情诗《情人之选》（The Choice of Valentines）的献词对象，而该诗中包含大量关于身体的笑话。查普曼召唤“活着的灵魂”避开光亮，与“幽灵、恶魔、怪物”一同生活在黑暗中，并要求他们“唤醒死者，使生者死去 / 在你们折磨的怜悯与恐怖之中”，然后请求他们：

“那么与我一同下跪，像劳作般伏在地上， 从这圆球的传染性粪堆中， 从人们的铜质才智与金色愚蠢中， 哭泣，将你们的灵魂哭入极乐。”

查普曼始终意识到创作诗歌的重要性，此处显然是在开玩笑。认为伟大的、神启的艺术能从一堆排泄物中升起（正如许多社会历史学家所声称的，这是伊丽莎白时代英格兰的常见景象），并将平庸的诗歌转化为天堂之乐的体现，这种观点很难被字面接受。他确实对惊人的荒诞之举有着敏锐的洞察力。他在《奥维德的感官盛宴》前言中对同行诗人马修·罗伊登（Matthew Roydon）的致辞中，将判断力低下比作徘徊的“无护照之人”，他们不够自律，无法理解“诗歌的神圣纪律”。这 The

这部长诗叙述了奥维德与朱莉娅的私情，以及随后引发的《爱之艺术》及其被放逐的经历。在最后一节中，我们被告知“奥维德深知其中另有深意， / 略去部分亦不应使人心生不快”。因此，这首诗引导读者思考，奥维德的色欲体验是指向了更高形式的爱，还是说真正重要的是实际的体验，而非为其精心构建的辩护。这是一场感官的盛宴，还是这场盛宴将我们引向一种更真实的欲望形式？奥维德在此沉思道：“她是感官之甜美的极乐世界， / 自然赋予感官之礼， / 旨在使其在感官中得以运用”。我们应当依赖感官体验，还是奥维德正处于一场通往启蒙的旅程之中？查普曼或许对秘传知识和神秘学感兴趣，但我怀疑这些东西无法禁锢并定义他的想象力。这是一个极其详尽且有益的版本，配有长篇导言、对诗歌各章节恰到好处的总结以及完整的注释。路易斯-马丁内斯在书中始终主张，查普曼是一个坚定的新柏拉图主义者，其作品旨在提供一扇通往上天的窗户。人们不必认同这种对查普曼诗歌的解读，也能发现该版本的辅助资料极具启发性，并对如此勤勉的编辑心存感激。安德鲁·哈德菲尔德近期的著作包括《约翰·多恩：在宗教的阴影下》和《文学与阶级》，两书均出版于 2021 年。

Malone lives

两部十七世纪剧作

乔治娜·威尔逊（Georgina Wilson） 约翰·戴（John Day）《蜜蜂议会》（The Parliament of Bees） 艾米·利希（Amy Leahy）编辑，182页。马隆学会（Malone Society）。£50 (US $74.95)。

巴纳比·巴恩斯（Barnabe Barnes）《恶魔的契约》（The Devil's Charter） G. R. 普劳德富特（G. R. Proudfoot）与 H. R. 伍登海森（H. R. Woudhuysen）编辑，182页。马隆学会（Malone Society）。£50 (US $74.95)。

如果你在1906年身处伦敦，你将会见证女性参政运动（议会中响起的“女性投票权”呐喊）、皮卡迪利线的开通，以及在温布尔登举行的国际草地网球挑战赛。如果你的雷达足够灵敏，你可能还会注意到马隆学会的成立：这是一个以伦敦大学学院为基地的书迷团体，旨在制作“早期剧作最佳版本的准确副本”。马隆学会——就像性别平等的投票权、皮卡迪利线和温布尔登一样——至今仍在运行。其网站告知我们，该学会制作“印刷文本的照相摹本，或是与1642年之前英格兰戏剧相关的手稿剧本及其他文件的外交转录本”。

马隆学会最新的出版物是巴纳比·巴恩斯的《恶魔的契约》（1607）和约翰·戴的《蜜蜂议会》（印于1641年，但写于1620年至1634年之间）的新版本。这些版本是摹本而非现代化文本：《恶魔的契约》是一系列针对该剧一部印刷本的高质量照片（该副本现藏于汉堡国家与大学图书馆，卡尔·冯·奥西茨基分馆）。没有脚注，没有对艰深词汇或文化参考点的注释，只有九十四张文本页的等大照片（另附三张来自其他副本的奖励照片）。由 H. R. 伍登海森和 G. R. 普劳德富特完成的大部分编辑干预出现在八十五页的导言中，该导言宣布本卷是 R. B. 麦克罗（R. B. McKerrow）1904年马隆学会成立前版本的配套作品。伍登海森和普劳德富特的导言中有一部分被用于对早期版本成就的热情总结。

但两者之间既有延续，也有缺失。麦克罗的第一页告诉我们，“根据扉页，该剧在出版前被‘更新、修正并扩充’——弗利先生说，‘真是太遗憾了’”。这段引用了具有影响力的维多利亚时代评论家弗雷德里克·加德·弗利（Frederick Gard Fleay）的俏皮话，在伍登海森和普劳德富特中立的语调中消失了。

《蜜蜂议会》并非任何作品的配套之作，尽管它继 1881, 1888 和 1979 年的版本之后出版，并且与奥利维亚·史密斯（Olivia Smith）作为詹妮弗·理查兹（Jennifer Richards）“成为人类之蜂”（Bee-ing Human）项目一部分而编辑的《女性君主制》（The Feminine Monarchie）一起，预示着早期现代蜜蜂书籍的小规模复兴。约翰·戴的剧作在1641年印刷之前曾以手稿形式流传（大英图书馆 Lansdowne 725号手稿）。本版本提供了手稿的忠实转录（包括空白页），随后是普林斯顿大学图书馆副本的照相摹本。这个摹本将“版本”的概念提升到了新高度。它包含了书封及其大理石纹纸衬里的图像，在第 137-151 页，我们翻阅了十五张并非完全相同的空白页图像，这些空白页填充了从印刷文本结束到卷末的空间。其效果介于漫画与对书籍本质的哲学反思之间。

将这两个马隆学会版本并排阅读，使我们能够对比照片与转录本。在《蜜蜂议会》中，转录本用 [>] 标记不可辨认的字母，保留原始拼写，并复制了抄写员缩写角色名称以及将多段对话合并为一行的习惯：“Ser; Hee's come, Poet: To you my love presents this book”。在没有照片的情况下，这是我们能接近原貌的极限，而在照片中，清晰的现代字体与早期现代抄写员不确定的拼写、空间限制和上标插入融为一体。马隆学会的指南规定，“导言应侧重于事实

以及文本的文献学方面”，因此，对《恶魔契约》（Devil's Charter）导言的第一印象是令人望而生畏的文献清单：二十三本副本的停版变体校勘、所有以逗号结尾的台词行号，以及一段由三十九个因字母混淆而拼错的单词组成的段落。我们得到了一篇关于演出的有益注释，以及巴恩斯在其他早期现代剧作家中所处地位的快照（包括他对“寄生虫、舞台演员和其他轻率的模仿者”的厌恶），但这两本书的导言都更侧重于来源和印刷历史而非其他内容。艾米·利希（Amy Leahy）为《蜜蜂议会》（The Parliament of Bees）撰写的导言在探讨这部剧（或假面剧）的体裁方面也表现出色，而该剧已无任何演出证据留存。在导言和转录文本之间，我们发现了“《高贵的西班牙士兵》（The Noble Spanish Soldier）和《王国的奇迹》（The Wonder of a Kingdom）中与 1641 年四开本《蜜蜂议会》重叠的段落”。这些摘自托马斯·德克尔（Thomas Dekker）作品的片段为同时代文本之间的比较阅读提供了空间，而伍德豪森（Woudhuysen）和普劳德富特（Proudfoot）在汇编一份包含示例的舞台指示布局方式清单时，也提供了类似的内容。这种非线性的、大规模的阅读模式是三位编辑细致且高度聚焦的审视结果。乔治娜·威尔逊（Georgina Wilson）是牛津大学曼斯菲尔德学院的英语特聘讲师。她是《纸张与早期现代文学的塑造》（Paper and the Making of Early Modern Literature, 2025. 42）的作者。Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 --- 艺术史

光环不曾滑落：迈尼的雕塑作为晚期巴洛克古典主义的典范

布鲁斯·布彻 (Bruce Boucher)

詹妮弗·蒙塔古 (Jennifer Montagu) 著，《乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·迈尼（1690-1752）及其时代的罗马雕塑》，302页。耶鲁大学出版社。£100 (US $125)。

詹妮弗·蒙塔古最新一本书的书名，概括了在撰写关于一位在当时名声显赫，但留下的作品寥寥且没有追随门派的雕塑家时所面临的挑战。乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·迈尼 (Giovanni Battista Maini) 是从16世纪起从伦巴第来到罗马的大批雕塑家和建筑师之一，这一群体包括弗朗切斯科·波罗米尼 (Francesco Borromini) 以及迈尼的老师卡米洛·鲁斯科尼 (Camillo Rusconi)。迈尼的职业生涯具有复杂性，部分原因是他的作品有时难以接触到，偶尔又遭到破坏，而且他的模型或图纸很少被公共收藏馆收藏。尽管如此，他的作品质量极高，代表了鲁道夫·维特科尔 (Rudolf Wittkower) 曾称之为的“英雄式晚期巴洛克古典主义”。

蒙塔古的这本书标志着她对罗马巴洛克雕塑四十多年研究的顶峰。这一切始于她1985年获得奖项的关于博洛尼亚雕塑家亚历山德罗·阿尔加尔迪 (Alessandro Algardi) 的专著，该书考察了这位在17世纪上半叶与吉安·洛伦佐·贝尼尼 (Gian Lorenzo Bernini) 竞争的伟大对手的职业生涯。在许多方面，无论是艺术气质还是在浮雕雕刻方面的天赋，迈尼都可以被描述为阿尔加尔迪的精神之孙。迈尼也是一位异常多产的绘图员，留下了大量仍由私人收藏的图纸。

他现存的雕塑作品极具美感，蒙塔古通过将迈尼的作品与他在罗马的竞争对手的作品并列，为读者提供了一堂欣赏晚期巴洛克雕塑的大师课。他作为雕刻师之细腻的一个显著例子，可见于他为锡耶纳大教堂的一系列圣母生平作品而创作的《圣母之死》浮雕。该叙事周期于1748年受托创作，被分配给了迈尼及其主要竞争对手，特别是皮埃特罗·布拉奇 (Pietro Bracci) 和菲利波·德拉·瓦莱 (Filippo della Valle)。《圣母之死》展示了对浮雕层次的精湛掌控，以及从粗糙原石到耀眼表面抛光的对比。因此，迈尼能够赋予圣母头部周围一个灿烂的光环幻象，这种效果是他的竞争对手无法企及的。

尽管他在1710年就来到了罗马，但迈尼的事业直到1730年代才开始腾飞。在当时圣彼得大教堂的一个重大雕塑项目中，他获得了两尊雕像的创作机会，这些雕像是装饰教堂中殿和耳堂的宗教团体创始人像。令人惊讶的是，这些雕像大多是由画家而非雕塑家设计的，这反映了这一时期缺乏像贝尼尼那样量级的人物。迈尼的第一尊雕像是小修会创始人圣保拉的圣方济各 (St Francis of Paola)，虽然其整体外观是由热那亚画家皮埃特罗·比安基 (Pietro Bianchi) 建议的，但完成的大理石像在同类作品中脱颖而出，成为虔诚冥想的杰作，集中体现在双手富有表现力的姿态和上扬的面孔中。它赋予了这位隐修圣徒一种 devoid of rhetoric（毫无辞藻堆砌）的内在生命，这与圣彼得大教堂中的许多其他雕像截然不同。在圣保拉的圣方济各之后，他获得了诸如坐姿

教皇英诺森十世（Innocent X）和本笃十四世（Benedict XIV）的坐像，其中他对大理石的本能感触传达出了祭袍的触感，使这些平淡的人物被权威所笼罩。他还赢得了当时一项重要教皇工程中最令人向往的委任，即圣若望拉特朗大殿（St John Lateran）的科尔西尼礼拜堂（Corsini Chapel）。这是对佛罗伦萨贵族科尔西尼家族以及在1730 to 1740.年间执政的教皇克勉十二世（Pope Clement XII）的颂扬。该工程由佛罗伦萨建筑师亚历山德罗·伽利略（Alessandro Galilei）指导，他严格监督着一组雕塑家的工作。其结果是一件回顾盛期文艺复兴而非盛期巴洛克的综合艺术作品。同样，迈尼（Maini）的贡献与伽利略创作的基调相契合，其主要任务是创作教皇的青铜像及其叔叔内里·科尔西尼长辈（Neri Corsini the Elder）的大理石像。科尔西尼枢机主教摆出庄严的姿态，迈尼展现了他惯用的能力，通过突出衣褶的柔软感来转移人们对概括性面部表情的注意力。教皇的青铜像同样被其披肩斗篷沉重的褶皱和灿烂的鎏金所主导，但其头部唤起了一种权威感，被蒙塔古（Montagu）恰如其分地称为“罗马教皇最高贵且最真实的形象之一”。通过超过300幅插图和详细的对比，蒙塔古论证了迈尼的天赋，这本书也可以被视为罗马巴洛克雕塑最后几十年的历史。迈尼并非伟大的创新者，也没有像贝尼尼（Bernini）那样发展出戏剧性的“晚期风格”；然而，他是一位最高水准的艺术家。合上这本制作精美的书，人们会对迈尼及其时代产生更深的欣赏，但同时也会迫切期待安东尼奥·卡诺瓦（Antonio Canova）开启雕塑的新时代。布鲁斯·鲍彻（Bruce Boucher）的著作包括《约翰·索恩的好奇心之柜：关于一位建筑师及其收藏的反思》（John Soane's Cabinet of Curiosities: Reflections on an architect and his collection），2024。

乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·德·罗西（Giovanni Battista De'Rossi）的作品《耐心》（Patience），科尔西尼礼拜堂；摘自评述书籍

面向小团体的多奖项专家引领考古与文化之旅 WWW.PETERSOMMER.COM August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 43

简讯

典故

安德鲁·加利克斯 (Andrew Gallix) 《洛伦·伊普森》(Loren Ipsum) 300页。Dodo Ink 出版。平装本，£9.99。

安德鲁·加利克斯的处女作小说《洛伦·伊普森》具有一种吞噬一切的力量。它吞噬了现代主义、后现代主义、朋克和巴黎，然后将这一切在一次令人困惑且引人入胜的讽刺中呕吐出来，而讽刺的对象则是当代的英法文学界。作家们正被谋杀，有的死在街头，有的死在密室里，在枪抵头颅的情况下，他们必须解释自己为何写作。凶手想要什么在很大程度上并不明确：他们的口号和观点构建自亚当·万德尔 (Adam Wandle) 的语言神秘主义，万德尔是一位行踪诡秘的作者，英国记者洛伦·伊普森正为了写书而对其进行研究。万德尔是否与这些恐怖分子勾结并不重要，坦白说，整个情节也不重要。

这部小说的设定只是加利克斯的一个借口，让他能用充斥着双关语的散文，快步轻盈地穿梭在一系列讽刺文学人物群像的片段之中。第十三章《当我们谈论谈论时我们在谈论什么》是其中的高峰之一，充满了文学派对上人们各说各话的对话：“你是作者吗？我应该听说过你吗？”；“当一部小说被描述为‘深具人性’时，我会去拿我的枪”；“在某个时间点，安妮·卡森 (Anne Carson) 和莉迪亚·戴维斯 (Lydia Davis) 一定融合了。这是唯一的解释”；“我只读译本”；“你知道的，我是第一个图书博主”；“在《泰晤士文學 supplements》中，这个词总是拼作‘premiss’。总是如此”。这简直是精准的捕捉。

在接受《3AM杂志》(3AM Magazine)（加利克斯担任该杂志主编）记者盖里·菲希利 (Gerry Feehily) 采访时，作者提到他发现自己在派对上要么在厨房，要么坐在不起眼的角落，观察一切，但难以加入对话。尽管这可能很困难，但这种观察习惯使他能够敏锐地捕捉到我们大多数人都可能产生的那种令人尴尬的废话。对于任何哪怕只有一点点文学虚荣心的人，加利克斯都能看穿你的底细。《洛伦·伊普森》是那种能让你感到自己既更聪明又更愚蠢的振奋人心的小说。每当你认出一个典故，就有十个典故在不经意间飞快掠过。

为了向 T. S. 艾略特在《荒原》中那些俏皮的尾注致敬，加利克斯的“致谢”部分是一份参考清单，涵盖了从詹姆斯·乔伊斯、艾略特和萨缪尔·贝克特，到当代作者托比·利特 (Toby Litt) 以及加利克斯的出版商萨姆·米尔斯 (Sam Mills)（他也出现在小说中），此外还包括文学新闻、评论文章等。就像《洛伦·伊普森》中的一切一样，这份清单充满了空白。甚至连洛伦也不总是完整地存在，因为她的名字就取自占位符文本。“她全身都是模糊的特征和无线电静电。”她是誰，以及她真正想要什麼，既是小說的核心謎團之一，也完全不重要。如果這個前提聽起來令人煩躁，那麼這部小說將對你有好處。

W. J. 戴維斯 (W. J. Davies)

額外推薦

亞歷山大·沃洛申 (Alexander Voloshin) 《分道揚鑣：好萊塢的流亡》(Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood) 波里斯·德拉柳克 (Boris Dralyuk) 譯 98頁。Paul Dry 出版。平裝本，£18.99 (美國 $17.95)。

在布爾什維克革命和第一次世界大戰後的那些年裡，一位較不為人知的俄羅斯詩人曾擔任過演員、服務生、士兵和軍官。亞歷山大·沃洛申 (1884-1960) 是前往自由奔放的美國的天然人選，在那裡，每個人都來自他處，每個人都在努力尋找立足之地。沃洛申本應更出名，而隨著其 1953 年的押韻擬史詩傑作《分道揚鑣：好萊塢的流亡》英文版的出版，或許他將會出名。即便俄羅斯讀者對他也並不熟悉。他漂泊不定的生活軌跡使他遠離了聖彼得堡的同僚，而那座城市才是建立文學名聲之地。從那時起，他便一直處於陰影之中。這種情況即將改變。

在由才華橫溢的烏克蘭裔美國詩人、作家兼譯者波里斯·德拉柳克精彩翻譯的《分道揚鑣》中，沃洛申試圖把握二十世紀的宏大進程，從革命一直到珍珠港事件。如同亞歷山大·普希金一樣，沃洛申正在创作一部格律小說，而《歐根·歐涅金》就在隔壁。他出生於第聶伯河畔的基輔。德拉柳克則出生在一個世紀後的敖德薩，距離基輔不到 300 英里。他們在《分道揚鑣》中联手（其中一人是以死後之姿）。兩人均移民美國，因此我們也將他們視為美國人。

數百萬人逃離崩潰的俄羅斯帝國，定居在歐洲大陸、亞洲、紐約和舊金山。只有約 5,000 人移民到了洛杉磯——這片破碎夢想之地。沃洛申就是其中之一。他在好萊塢（德拉柳克也在此成長）擔任電影「臨時演員」，每隔十五分鐘就給中央選角公司 (Central Casting) 打電話，確認是否有工作。

《分道揚鑣》中充斥著對當時時代的當代引用：「看，『林德伯格已飞向天空』 / 而『辛普森夫人露出了微笑……』」。正如德拉柳克所寫，這些「出賣了影子」的落魄移民，將自己獻給南加州的電影製片廠，或者開設名為「伏爾加河之船」、「俄羅斯熊」和「雙頭鷹」的餐廳。歐洲落魄難民與富人高雅文化的並置，是美國電影的常客。沃洛申在洛杉磯的黃色出租車公司 (Yellow Cab Co.) 擔任出租車司機直到生命盡頭，但直到最後仍保持著幽默感。無論目光看向何處——總有值得諷刺之事。這本書將在西方建立他的名聲。

辛西婭·L·海文 (Cynthia L. Haven)

末日 查尔斯·费迪南·拉穆兹 (Charles Ferdinand Ramuz) 《向太阳》(Into the Sun) Olivia Baes 与 Emma Ramadan 译，144页。New Directions 出版。平装本，£14.75 (美国 $15.95)。在查尔斯·费迪南·拉穆兹的小说《死亡之在》(Presence de la mort)（1922年；在 Olivia Baes 和 Emma Ramadan 的这次新译本中更名为《向太阳》）中，地轴发生了偏移，地球正向太阳疾速冲去。这是一部具有时效性的小说：关于我们即将毁灭的消息被否认，而瑞士一个湖边小镇的当地人则对此嗤之以鼻：“报纸已经卖不动了，你还期待什么？”但《向太阳》不仅仅是预言；它还充满了对自然、日常生活以及应对真实灾难之徒劳的睿智反思。气候的微妙变化被观察到：人们更频繁地擦拭额头，小规模的干旱开始出现。拉穆兹的叙述者——时而卷入动荡，时而超然如神——宣称世界末日是因为另一个原因；他暗示，人们一直以来都错误地在“不看地看”。现在，遮眼罩被摘掉了，一种本体论本能被激发，“向你讲述，为你列举，为你计数……就在我面前的那些亲切之物”。人们开始弥补失去的时间，观察的质量也随之增强——此前未被注意到的蒸汽船在水面上驶过，“烟囱里冒出的烟像绗缝工手中解开的马鬃一样”。渐渐地，正在发生的事情变成了现实，地球的命运被接受，随后出现了大规模的歇斯底里。理性的集体行动尝试化为泡影，取而代之的是随机的暴力行为。Baes 和 Ramadan 很好地捕捉到了这些对比，尤其是他们所起标题中那种明亮的毁灭感。他们摒弃了原名（“死亡之在”：过于沉重），而选择了一个能捕捉到人类面对不可避免之物时选择视而不见之本能的标题。一种充满肾上腺素的熟悉感贯穿全书，巧妙地潜入在最听起来平淡无奇的短语中：“突然间，就像每个夜晚一样”。拉穆兹的叙述者认为，歇斯底里的背后是想象力的匮乏。即将到来的灾难规模对于大多数人来说太大了，他们无法“想象出超越自身之上的东西”。这并非智力问题。相反，世界的“动脉中有什么东西停止了跳动”，而结果是不可想象的：“当我试图想象除此之外的东西时，我想象到的依然是这个世界。当我试图超越它时，在那里我又发现了它”。在对不可理解之命运的困惑与恐惧的交织下，《向太阳》将世界的终结构架为一场温柔的坍塌。科尔姆·麦肯纳 (Colm McKenna)

断联 (Disconnections) 安朱·加斯顿 (Anju Gaston) 《粉色肥皂》(Pink Soap) 110页。Weatherglass 出版社。平装本，£10.99。

《粉色肥皂》 就像一个塔迪斯（Tardis）。初读时，它似乎很单薄，但实际上比看上去更厚实、更丰富。与作者一样，我们这位匿名的第一人称叙述者是日裔混血，她对这一身份感到矛盾。她的内心独白始于一次双相情感障碍的躁狂发作和精神病发作，期间她向朋友和家人发送了大量充满毒性的信息，包括威胁、指责和侮辱。由于感到羞愧，她担心自己可能永远无法重建这些关系。安朱·加斯顿作为牛津大学互联网研究所的博士生，其专业方向是“在无处不在的连接背景下的自愿数字断联”，这一主题贯穿了这部处女作。“你的研究太触及痛处了，”44 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026 © HELLEN BEARINGS BY WORKS: HELLEN BEARINGS, PICTURE CREDIT © HELLEN BEARINGS, PICTURE CREDIT © HELLEN BEARINGS —— 叙述者的精神科医生告诉她。

书名是指她每天素描的那块肥皂，记录其缩小的过程。缩小的速度取决于“天气和我大脑中化学物质的平衡”。各种细节被仔细记录下来：“我走进厨房，吃了三个苹果和四个砂糖橘……我想知道有多少人是以这个顺序吃它们的”。她用精准且毫无感情的散文承认，她无法信任自己的思考，因此克制地不去描述感受、给出观点，甚至不使用隐喻。这种效果可能会产生疏离感：这与那种让人欲罢不能的畅销书截然相反。然而，我们确实想更多地了解这位古怪的叙述者。

在某个时刻，她把肥皂带到了课堂上。“它被误认为成了它不是的东西，”一名学生评论道，“你会期待……某种甜美的东西，但它却是故障且复杂的”。叙述者从未提及她众多熟人的姓名：“我的医生朋友”；“我的瑞典熟人”。她前往日本看望父亲，父亲依然疏离且神秘，他们的对话通过一种并非完全共享的语言进行。全书弥漫着一种错位感和丧失感。

在后面的章节中，随着叙述者的躁狂再次发作，她转向技术以寻找其滔滔不绝的倾诉欲和连接欲望的出口。她开始“在互联网上给所有我认识的人写信……我盯着经过的每一个闭路电视摄像头”。随着她的内部逻辑和自我意识崩溃，她上网询问“我名字的含义……是勒死一条鱼更好，还是射杀一个天才更好”。她是否通过这种方式成功地释放了自己，或让自己安定下来，这一点始终不明确。然而，希望来自于一种接纳，即日语中的 Shogana 概念：“没办法”。

亲近 (Proximities)

安德鲁·索瑟姆 (Andrew Southam) 《1974年的塞浦路斯》(Cyprus 1974) 地中海冲突：无控制，无阴谋 336页。Pen and Sword出版。£29.99。近年来关于塞浦路斯的意象仍停留在劳伦斯·达雷尔 (Lawrence Durrell) 和科林·图布隆 (Colin Thubron) 的著作中，这些作品至今在平装书市场中依然活跃。关于从20世纪50年代初到1974年土耳其入侵期间危机的历史写作，已成为东地中海专家的研究领域。由殖民地部值得尊敬的哈里·卢克爵士 (Sir Harry Luke) 撰写的普及读物在70年代中期前曾被定期重印，但如今已消失在慈善商店中。最后一位英国总督卡拉登勋爵 (Lord Caradon) 被研究得更多是作为大英帝国历史的一部分，而非这座岛屿的历史。然而，冻结的冲突依然存在，尽管是以一种可控的形式：联合国的“绿线”对游客开放，暴力事件极少，且位于阿克罗蒂里 (Akrotiri) 监听站的英国军事存在正在减少。该经济在2009年后的金融危机中幸存下来，部分归功于俄罗斯资金的涌入、旅游业和航运业。地理事实不会改变，且与黎巴嫩（以及在较小程度上的以色列）难民问题的邻近性，强调了这座岛屿的战略重要性。。安德鲁·索瑟姆深入挖掘了1974年的动荡，并在弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿的外交研究与培训协会以及剑桥大学丘吉尔学院的英国外交口述历史计划中进行了广泛研究。他的叙述基于顶层决策者之下的官员的回忆，并且在探讨与当代困境的关系方面表现强劲。读者在某些问题上几乎无法了解到关键人物亨利·基辛格 (Henry Kissinger) 的观点，而他最具影响力的批评者克里斯托弗·希钦斯 (Christopher Hitchens) 甚至没有出现在参考文献中。这一缺失反映了一个更深层的问题。尽管部分历史是以客观方式呈现的，且索瑟姆擅长讲述轶事，但希腊方面在分析层面经常缺席，取而代之的是对人物性格的生动刻画。他模糊了中央情报局 (CIA) 在雅典军政府独裁政权产生过程中的作用。对1974年前土耳其政治的描述较为单薄，伦敦外交及联邦事务部 (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) 那些迷宫般的困境亦然。同样缺席的是一位重要的伦敦“合并论” (enosis，即塞浦路斯与希腊统一) 倡导者——前特别行动执行处 (SOE) 知名人物兼保守党议员克里斯托弗·“蒙蒂”·伍德豪斯 (Christopher "Monty" Woodhouse)，无论如何想象，他都不能被视为反美分子或希腊左翼的走狗。英国的政策被呈现为伦敦塞浦路斯群体在工党中影响力的产物，而随后的外交大臣罗宾·库克 (Robin Cook) 则被视为种族利益的代表，而非对法律和人权的承诺。塞浦路斯需要一部最新的普及历史著作，但这本书未能达标。詹姆斯·佩蒂弗 (James Pettifer)

硬连线

尼古拉斯·赖特 (Nicholas Wright) 《弹头》(Warhead) 探讨大脑如何塑造战争，以及战争如何塑造大脑 400页。Pan出版社。平装本，£10.99。当神经科学家在士兵部署到战区前后对其进行评估时，他们观察到了其大脑结构的改变。大脑的一些区域在物理上会萎缩，尤其是那些与记忆、动力和威胁感知相关的区域。而其他区域则会扩大或变得连接更紧密，例如涉及创伤处理的区域。多项研究发现，在士兵离开战区很久之后，许多这类无意识的神经变化依然存在。同样看来，冲突中幸存的平民的大脑也会受到类似影响，而且某些变化甚至会在一代人之后，在战争幸存者的子女身上在心理层面显现出来。与此同时，在过去十年中，神经科学家发现，具有不同大脑结构的人在加入暴力团体时的脆弱程度也不同。在日常情境中认知更为僵化且冲动的人，最有可能将任何意识形态推向极端。那些前额叶皮层（位于前额后方，负责复杂推理的大脑区域）较小或连接较少的人，倾向于拥护更激进和威权主义的意识形态。战争改变了我们的心理学和神经生物学，而我们的神经生物学在煽动战争中也发挥了作用。令人惊讶的是，尽管尼古拉斯·赖特拥有为五角大楼提供咨询的经验，但《弹头》中没有探讨任何这些科学进展。相反，这是一本为战争爱好者而写的书，其基调显著地乐观。书中描写了在华盛顿举行的晚餐场景，充满了相互吹捧。“睿智的领导者”（温斯顿·丘吉尔、霍雷肖·纳尔逊、德怀特·D·艾森豪威尔）得到了长篇累牍的赞美。甚至阿道夫·希特勒也被谨慎地赞扬为“勇敢、有才华、聪明”。本书在基础神经科学与战争史之间交替论述，旨在弄清楚民主社会应如何“勤勉地利用”并杠杆化我们的“生存级神经机制”，以便民主社会能赢得更多战争并“拯救文明”。我们经常被告知，正如赖特所言，战争是人类生存状态中固有且古老的一部分，是我们体内“硬接线” (hard-wired) 的东西，因此我们被鼓励忘记个体，优先考虑集体。脑科学反驳了这种叙事。它们揭示了大脑是灵活且可塑的，而非固定不变的；我们的心智并非在冲突中繁荣，相反，我们许多最强的创造能力会因此减弱；而且战争给个体带来的代价至关重要，它改变了我们身体的组织结构。

淘金者 (Golddiggers)

杰里米·哈特 (Jeremy Harte) 《地球上的宝藏》(Treasures on Earth)

景观与传说中埋藏的财富 296页。Reaktion出版。£15.99。

在苏格兰的默西（Murthy）村，一块立石在数千年的时间里一直未被触动，直到——根据传说——当地校长的儿子们带着火药来到这里。男孩们移开了这块古老的石头，发现一只黑狗正坐在一个宝箱之上，正如古老传说中所说的那样。他们看了一眼那只阴森恐怖的动物，决定最好把石头放回去，彻底忘掉那些黄金。

正如杰里米·哈特在《地球上的宝藏》中所探讨的，对隐藏财富的痴迷曾深深植根于不列颠群岛的集体心理之中，并催生了无数民间故事。关于神话宝藏、注定失败的探索和未被发现的财富的故事比比皆是，寻宝者们审问灵魂或与野兽搏斗，却极少找到他们寻找的东西。在这些故事中，宝藏的位置既可能在梦中揭晓，也可能由某人偶然发现。

民间故事与现代性，以及在某种程度上与现代学术是背道而驰的。它们难以定位、断代、量化和引用。虽然从17世纪起就有记录的版本，但许多故事保留了更为古老的口头传统。以默西的黑狗为例，这个故事来自一名村民，由其传给牧师，牧师又在20世纪70年代告诉了一位收集者——但在更古老的故事中，狗就以宝藏守护者的身份出现。

哈特和其他民俗研究者的天才之处在于，他们能够识别出模式和地方性主题，从而使这类难以捉摸的文学体裁能够得到一定的组织。民俗在地域上的差异程度令人着迷。在宝藏故事中，某些特定的比喻在特定地区反复出现。或许并不令人意外，威尔士故事中的寻宝者经常被恶劣天气打断，风暴挫败了他们寻找宝藏的尝试。更神秘的是，在英格兰南部，出现了大量以金棺材为特征的故事，这一比喻几乎是该地区特有的。

哈特称民俗为“顽固且地方性的”，将其比作树木的生长：一种民俗传统在某处被砍掉，很快又在另一处萌发，得意地生长。宝藏民俗的根源在于人们内心深处的恐惧与欲望——对改变命运之财富的渴望，以及对预期损失的焦虑。哈特深谙此道，在关于财富的故事中，他始终将人性故事放在首位：“人比黄金更有趣”。

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 45

简讯：诗歌

此在与彼在 Phoebe Giannisi Goatsong Brian Sneeden 译 300页. Fitzcarraldo. 平装本, £14.99.

《Goatsong》的书名是对希腊语中“悲剧”（tragodia）一词的字面翻译，该书汇集了希腊诗人 Phoebe Giannisi 的三部诗集：《Homerica》（2009）、《Cicada》（2012）和《Chimera》（2019）。这些作品最初分别于 2017, 2022 和 2024 年以对照文本形式出版，译者均为本书的译者 Brian Sneeden。Giannisi 是塞萨利大学的建筑学与文化研究教授，但她的学术生涯始于古典学。在她的论文《道路叙事：古风时期希腊的咏唱与行进》（"Récits des voies. Chant et cheminement en Grèce archaïque"，2008）中，她提出建筑可能是她写作的前驱。她的作品经常消解不同艺术形式与学科之间的边界。针对《Cicada》，她创作了一个包含录音、朗诵和音乐的装置艺术。针对《Homerica》，她在游历与诗歌内容相关的神话地点时录制了一张 CD。她在一次采访中表示：“我想在我的诗句中加入由声音传达的特定时刻的氛围。这是我纳入诗意‘此在性’（haecceity）的方式，即通过地点所感知到的那一刻完美的个体性。”“此在性”（haecceity，即“thisness”）是由哲学家邓斯·司各都（Duns Scotus）创造的一个术语。对于 Giannisi 而言，诗歌与哲学是“触碰世界的首把斧头”，她的作品深受两者的影响。在描述《Homerica》CD 的设计初衷时，她解释了“我”（“ego”）是如何源自印欧语名词“eghom”（“此在”），并且“如果‘我’不过是一个‘这里’，那么诗歌中的声音所表达的除了这个‘这里’，以及在那个时刻同样栖居于‘这里’的其他主体之外，别无他物”。但在散文诗《词》（"Word"）中，她坦承：“当我不复存在，我便不再拥有位置，他们说‘我’和‘这里’来自同一个词根，然而记忆之所依然存在。”她的立场最终坍塌为古典诗人对“比青铜更永恒的纪念碑”（monumentum aere perennius）的渴望。在《Archilochus》中——这是一篇针对公元前 7 世纪同名抒情诗人的一段碎片（“告别帕罗斯，告别那些无花果，告别海上生活”）而作的精彩诗意沉思——Giannisi 写道：不仅是无花果，而是那里的那些无花果，而非此处，亦非以后：那些你并不想要、令你痛苦的，那些永远在那里的该死的无花果。事实证明，“此在性”是难以捉摸的。Giannisi 的诗歌含义丰富且充满典故，拒绝被定格，在有机的清新感中生长。其趣味不断更新。Sneeden 简洁、准确的译文镜像地反映了她那些精致的原诗中清晰且不矫揉造作的希腊语。

Mark Glanville

《哈雷·阿拉图斯》（Harley Aratus）中天狼星星座的插图，约 820-40

微型之物 Michael Symmons Roberts Dog Star 80页. Cape. 平装本, £13. 虽然其书名听起来像是弗兰克·比达特（Frank Bidart）两部不同诗集《形而上之犬》（Metaphysical Dog）与《星尘》（Star Dust）的后代，但迈克尔·西蒙斯·罗伯茨（Michael Symmons Roberts）的最新作品过于像个人日记，且过于沉思，不适合像“人格诗”（persona poem）这种比达特的强项之噱头。这些诗作似乎在说，取决于你的神学观点，人类要么是尘埃，要么是一种宇宙粘液，“物质的短暂凝聚”，正赶着去乘车。天狼星——《犬星》（Dog Star）标题中的那颗星——在作者清醒的白日梦中徘徊，而其他人——一个蜷缩在垃圾堆上的女人，被记忆唤回家吃晚餐，以及支持她的花店店员——则过着他们如犬般卑微的生活。在高清画面的捕捉下，泰德·休斯（Ted Hughes）笔下的“思想之狐”在这里仅仅是一只狐狸，“并非信使或象征， / 而是真实的呈现，被拆解 / 又由数字重新构建”，出现在昨晚的门铃监控录像中；罗伯茨在一次现代式的无聊时刻，步行等待穿过一个繁忙路口时审视这段录像。在运用隐喻时，罗伯茨进行着搜寻，将爱转化为“一把能自行开启的锁”，将 salitter（一个由科马克·麦卡锡出人意料地复活的诺斯底主义术语）转化为冬雪下的路盐，它“将牛年雀的尾巴 / 盐渍”，在融化时悄然令人惊叹。春天的开始，其中破旧的死亡“像旧外套一样落在他们的肩上”，再次褶皱成神话，这是无限着迷与感伤的源头：花朵呈星形绽放，或提前开花，结果却像彗星掠过地球大气层般带着冰冷的脆弱而瓦解。一只欧亚黑鸫的瞳孔是一个倒置的句号。罗伯茨的注意力调频至大多数诗人——或大多数人，甚至大多数事物——无法听到的频率：从生命短暂得被描述为标志性的蜉蝣，到一瓶被遗忘的烈酒；从研发青霉素的实验室小白鼠，到垂死亲人天花板上的瓷砖。他在我们日益极繁主义的世界中倾听隐藏的微型主义。如果这部精简的诗集（罗伯茨的第九部作品）中那“狂野、狂野的电压”只能以皮瓦（picowatts）来衡量，那么他那唯我论式的黄昏驾驶和令人疲惫的悲伤依然能带来不少局促的震撼：自去年的叶落以来，首次出现了一些流通的货币，一种电荷的滋滋声。[...] 每年我都在想，这失去的一小时会包含什么，但它在深夜到来，而我一直在沉睡。通过将文学祈祷——为了目的性，或为了对抗气候变化那必然的炼狱（“森林在衰败，收缩成矮林， / 灌木丛”）——与希望的清醒相结合，《犬星》是一次清算。Erick Verran

检索 (Retrievals) Graeme Richardson Dirt Rich 80页。Carcanet出版。平装本，£12.99。自传模式在当代诗歌中如此根深蒂固，以至于读者对其感到有些不耐烦也是可以原谅的。但格雷姆·理查森（Graeme Richardson）期待已久的处女作充分证明，最好的诗歌是由生活的素材构成的：你只需要知道它价值几何。Dirt Rich 中的诗篇令人振奋且往往极其优美，它们异常地触及核心，尤其是关于爱与为人父母的悲欢。泥土般质朴的主题构成了本书的基调，从诗人曾在诺丁汉郡煤矿区的童年（“杜克里斯人不会为了 / 一个他们不相信的未来而罢工”），到他作为圣公会牧师承担的葬礼职责，以及他近期从事的考古科学工作。在《曼斯菲尔德，诺丁汉郡》（Mansfield Notts）中，神学与遗产在这样一个意象中结合：“血迹斑斑的人坠入地狱 / 再次升起时焕然一新”。泥土是生命的终点，在那里雨水变成了“令蠕虫欣喜的倾盆大雨”（这种幽默极具代表性），但也是一个转化的场所。处于地下即是处于压力之下，而这些诗中的能量经常通过消解的惊人意象被释放出来：烟雾“翻滚且扭曲”；扁平的货币“涌动且溶解”；诗人早晨站在镜前，看到“皮肤下的 / 阴影，烟雾在内部鼓起”。理查森挖掘时间以进行一系列的检索：一匹矿坑马通过夹克的线头“轻嗅 / 血肉与汁液”，以触及内部“被掩埋的生活”；冬日的苹果透过“岁月的黑色裂缝”呼吸；孩子们在深夜寻找父亲。如果说他的恢复行为一次又一次地获得了回报（事实确实如此），那是因为他选择了艰难的路径：敢于审视镜中的自己，从底层构建每一首诗，并多样地汲取这些岛屿上二十世纪诗歌的丰富传统。这些影响被彻底消化了（偶尔，过多的希尼风格会产生干扰），有时效果令人惊讶。像《亚里士多德主义者的死亡》（Death of an Aristotelian）这样的民谣唤起了一个精通世故的贝杰曼（Betjeman）形象：但即使对于哲学家来说，一个失去控制的时代即将到来，届时我们将被灵魂的幽灵所困扰。但正是那些较短的抒情诗，最能展示理查森的简洁能力以及他对那些令人难忘、残酷真相的敏锐捕捉——例如在《历史教学》（History Teaching）中，那句令人心碎的重复句：“如果我不忘记你，请你不要忘记我。”这是一个值得珍藏的处女作。Jeremy Wikeley 46 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © HERTFACK ART / HERTFACK IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES --- # 后记 (Afterthoughts) ## 在莱奥帕尔迪的家中

蒂姆·帕克斯（Tim Parks）

当一名作家对读者群体失去信心时，会发生什么？上周，我趁着去安科纳（Ancona）之便，访问了位于南边二十英里山城雷卡纳蒂（Recanati）的贾科莫·莱奥帕尔迪（Giacomo Leopardi）故居。莱奥帕尔迪出生于1798年，在古怪的父亲莫纳尔多（Monaldo）的图书馆中成长，是个神童。“这里有2万,000卷书，”导游一边说着，一边向我们挥手示意三个小房间里的古董书架。莫纳尔多决心从事慈善，于1812年宣布图书馆向公众开放。而第一位读者在四十年后才出现。这并非一个好兆头。

在父亲基督教理性主义的激励下，且已能阅读拉丁语、希腊语、德语、法语、英语和希伯来语的少年莱奥帕尔迪，着手撰写了宏大的《论古人的普遍错误》（Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients，1815年）。但他利用现代科学来解构古代信条的做法，仅是引发了这样一种思考：基督教同样存在缺陷。他得出结论，存在就是“一个坚实的虚无”。由于深感追求真理仅仅让生活变得更加艰难，他转向诗歌，并迅速成为意大利最崇高的噩耗传递者。

“在那边，”导游指着广场对面一个被酒馆占据的立面说，“就是西尔维亚（Silvia）住的地方。贾科莫在图书馆阅读时，能听到她在织机旁唱歌。她在他的最著名诗篇中是希望的象征。”事实上，西尔维亚死得太年轻，未能意识到“自然如何用它不会兑现的承诺来欺骗我们”，她正是莱奥帕尔迪失去希望的象征。而我们的导游恰恰表现出了诗人如此熟悉的倾向：回避残酷的现实。

他后来写的一则寓言讲述了一个拒绝认同社区共同幻想的人，开头写道：“菲利波·奥托涅里（Filippo Ottonieri）……在努比亚纳（Nubiana）度过了大部分人生……在那里，没有任何关于他曾在言语或行为上伤害过任何人的记忆。他通常被同胞所憎恨……”。但莱奥帕尔迪认为，没有人能完全脱离某种幻想而生活。诀窍在于培养这些幻想，同时深知它们不过如此。

而贾科莫最追求的幻想是文学名声。他感到在每个阶段都遭到了拒绝。在罗马，他遇到的作家们只让他“失去了结识他人的任何欲望。他们都以为自己能开着马车驶向永恒”。他的诗作几乎没有给他带来收入，而他那极具奇思妙想的《道德寓言》（Moral Fables，1827年）带来的收入更少。在一段对一名开启文学生涯的年轻人的讽刺寄语中，他警告说，只有“极少数人”能够识别出真正具有原创性的文学作品，而且即便如此，也仅在状态良好的一天才能做到。对于大众而言，这取决于时尚和名气。人们将希望寄托在后世——“伟大思想家的最终避难所和慰藉”——但无法保证后代能领悟其真意。而且无论如何，到那时你已经死了。

列举那些感到文学界让他们失望的作者并不难。“我再也不写小说了，”托马斯·哈代（Thomas Hardy）在面对刻薄的评论后如此发誓。“一个人必须是个傻瓜才会故意站出来被枪击。”D. H. 劳伦斯（D. H. Lawrence）抱怨读者基于意识形态进行评判，豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯（Jorge Luis Borges）同样认为他们将政治置于美学之上。“即便我在这个世纪写下了福音书，我也将死在阴沟里，”赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）在对《白鲸》（Moby-Dick）的反响感到绝望时如此宣称。司汤达（Stendhal）预期自己只能被“幸运的少数人”赏识。

尽管如此，少数人并不意味着没有人。我知道一些写得相当不错但完全无法出版的人。意大利评论家贾科莫·德贝内代蒂（Giacomo Debenedetti）在20世纪60年代主张，集体共享的现实愿景的崩溃，导致了作家与读者之间日益增长的疏离感。

在萊奧帕爾迪故居的入口處，有一個“自拍角”，你可以站在他的胸像旁擺姿勢。周圍的街道和廣場都以他或他的詩作命名，許多商店的櫥窗裡也出現了诗中的句子。然而，與我們一同參觀故居的人中，似乎沒有誰對他的記憶超出課堂所學。我們的導遊怯生生地說：“有些人甚至認為他是無神論者。”在1833年，完全不信神的萊奧帕爾迪放棄了打入文學界的嘗試，與一位朋友退隱到那不勒斯過著默默無聞的生活，在那裡他最大的樂趣就是當地的冰淇淋。早些時候，在《道德寓言》中一個具有預言性的時刻，他曾假設會發明一種超智能機器人，它將成為人類完美的朋友，永不背叛或反駁。他反思道，認為我們“不能教會機器說話”似乎是不可能的。在最糟糕的情況下，幻滅的作家們可能會轉向AI，好讓自己的作品能被欣賞地閱讀。《蒂姆·帕克斯的最新著作是《與加里波第的一千勇士橫跨西西里：一場關於風景與意大利記憶的冒險》，2026年》。

TLS 填字遊戲 1616，由 Broteas 設計

横向

• 1 英国流浪者略微偏离，关于黑色角色，美国民俗中的名人 (4, 6)
• 6 一个除了狗以外一无所有的孩子 (4)
• 10 再次结婚真的很好——并且被纸屑覆盖？ (9)
• 11 小说家的早晨的一点性爱是不恰当的 (5)
• 12 阴森的房子类型，由一位——时尚设计师创建？那大概是对的 (7)
• 13 许多年后的一个行为，他被一位女神惩罚 (7)
• 14 悲剧小说的作者？他是个骗子 (7, 6)
• 17 ABBA 通常重复这首歌的一部分 (7, 6)
• 21 英国律师的工作是接纳美国法官 (7)
• 22 宗教社区的故事，最初尝试在极其困难的环境中生存 (3, 4)
• 24 英语从中借用了许多词汇的部分法语方言 (5)
• 25 没有领导者的部落主义，我组织起来是奇妙的 (9)
• 26 至高无上的或被拒绝的圣徒 (4)
• 27 《Inferno》是一部具有六个主要部分的著名作品 (10)

纵向

• 1 一个男爵之子朋友，拥有金钱，土地…… (3, 5)
• 2 ……幻想的想法和时尚首饰 (7, 8)
• 3 一点文学，鲁尼翁风格的，重新出版？ (5)
• 4 德比市审查剧本的部门 (7)
• 5 用于写乔治·桑小说的一种墨水 (7)
• 7 奥斯卡，令臭名昭著的内阁部长不安，是一个显著的激进分子 (5, 10)
• 8 莎士比亚笔下的公爵在威尼斯穿着金色的错误 (6)
• 9 在季节性喜剧中经常看到的鹿——由莎士比亚创作 (8)
• 15 春季作物的替代容器，翻转——出现在古希腊某处 (8)
• 16 左侧受损的大型白色住宅，以特定方式塑造 (8)
• 18 一些有创造力的美国人旨在产生提升后的新英语 (4, 3)
• 19 一个在对公主的吸引力中成长的人？ (3, 4)
• 20 莱戈拉斯是一个更有心计的人 (6)
• 23 莎士比亚笔下在城镇可疑区域运作的关节 (5)

填字游戏 1615 的获胜者是来自邓迪的 Dan McDaid。在 8 月 17 日之后开启的第一份正确答案发送者将获得 £40 的奖金。参赛作品应寄至 TLS Crossword 1616, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF 或发送电子邮件至 crosswords@the-tls.co.uk

2026 年 8 月 7 日 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 47

序幕

撰写导言是一项棘手的工作。例如，在为好友莉莉安·鲍斯-莱昂（Lilian Bowes Lyon）的《诗集》（Collected Poems）揭开序幕时，塞西尔·戴·刘易斯（Cecil Day Lewis）毫无帮助地对杰拉德·曼利·霍普金斯（Gerard Manley Hopkins）对她的深远影响表示保留。（戴·刘易斯一定是不喜欢像“逻辑的犁沟，随之而来的则是蜿蜒与精简”这样的诗句。）而杰里米·诺埃尔-托德（Jeremy Noel-Tod）在为同一部《诗集》撰写的导读选集《雪蜂》（Snow Bees，Headless Poet 出版，£7.50）中，则采取了一种不那么吝啬的态度。关于鲍斯-莱昂——一位偶尔被编入选集但通常被遗忘的诗人——有一个传记事实，这个事实往往在任何选集作品之前被提及，仿佛这是关于她最重要的事情。（另见：NB，2016年4月29日。）诺埃尔-托德先生在他的导言中很难忽略这一点，但他刻意将其放在最后。如果你知道，那就知道了；如果你不知道，那么故事中为你准备了一个小小的反转。与此同时，这里还有那些被这位新拥护者评价为“谦逊、温柔、狂喜、坚韧”的诗作。在选择时，他也走自己的路，决定省略《战场》（Battlefield），这是鲍斯-莱昂关于其兄长在第一次世界大战中阵亡的一首广为人知的短诗。

本周出版的《雪蜂》是一家新诗歌出版社推出的一系列设计精巧的小册子中的第三本，该出版社旨在专门从事此类导读：以及偶尔出版当代诗人的作品。“我们为诗人及作家提供空间，让他们（重新）向读者介绍过去的诗人，”Headless Poet 在其网站上解释道，“尤其是那些作品被时间掩埋的人。”该系列的第一本小册子于今年早些时候出版，是维多利亚·穆尔（Victoria Moul）的《美丽且有用的诗：早期现代流行诗选》（Poems Beautiful & Useful: A choice of popular early modern verse）；第二本是亚历克斯·王（Alex Wong）的《托马斯·胡德部分诗作》（Some Poems by Thomas Hood）。顺便一提，这家出版社的名字源于当地的一个名人：位于伦敦南部水晶宫公园内的一座据说是但丁的无头雕像。艾米莉·狄金森（Emily Dickinson）的一句诗在这里也十分贴切：“如果我身体上感觉像是头顶被拿掉了，我知道那就是诗歌。”Headless Poet 计划每年出版五本小册子；年度订阅费用 £38 起。更多详情请参阅 headlesspoet.com。

一些在 BBC 等媒体报道的新闻：艾伦·圖靈在电影《模仿遊戲》（2014）中由本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇饰演的形象并不完全准确。剑桥大学的莎拉·迪伦（Sarah Dillon）认为，那是一个“二维的刻板印象”。圖靈“被视为社交迟钝，完全关注逻辑和数字，且相当孤立”；但这个男人还有另一面：“爱玩、幽默、厚脸皮、有文学气息……一个真正热爱性爱的人”。这是新闻吗？如果你对圖靈尝试创作小说的经历一无所知，那么这就是新闻。该小说上个月在《英语研究评论》（Review of English Studies）上发表，题为《普赖斯的浮标》（Pryce's Buoy）。这篇保存在剑桥大学国王学院的不完整短篇小说讲述了一个工人阶级男妓与一个代表圖靈本人的“家伙”之间的邂逅。“罗恩捕捉到了亚历克（Alec）的目光，给了他一个勉强的微笑。”你大概能想象。迪伦女士认为，圖靈在写作关于自己因严重猥亵罪被捕的经历时，从他在布莱切利园的同事安格斯·威尔逊（Angus Wilson）的小说《毒参和之后》（Hemlock and After, 1952）中汲取了灵感。我们将这一切告诉了一位路过的圖靈专家，对方将我们引导至那部“典范级”的传记《艾伦·圖靈：谜团》（Alan Turing: The enigma, 1983），在书中，安德鲁·霍奇斯（Andrew Hodges）分析了这篇短篇小说，并以一种——怎么说呢——“预示了迪伦教授发现”的方式解码了相关段落。至于《模仿遊戲》，它是基于霍奇斯的传记改编的（该传记记录了与威尔逊的联系，但未指明圖靈的确切来源）。看来，对于那些想要看到圖靈另一面的人来说，这一面长期以来一直清晰可见。

昆廷·布萊克插畫中心於今年6月在倫敦開幕；您可以在克萊肯韋爾（Clerkenwell）找到它，就在安吉爾（Angel）地鐵站以南不遠處（請提前查看網站了解開放時間）。它是該國“首個且唯一的插畫慈善機構——旨在傳達故事與思想的藝術”，由其命名所指的插畫家創立。《酷兒漫畫》（Queer as Comics）是該中心開幕展之一。此次展覽將持續至10月4, 探索了一片廣闊的領域：“自20世紀40年代以來代表性少數群體（LGBTQIA+）視角的漫畫、條漫、圖形小說和同人誌”。態度的轉變在此得到了體現，包括湯姆·芬蘭（Tom of Finland）在20世紀40年代的大膽出櫃、羅伯塔·格雷戈里（Roberta Gregory）自出版的漫畫《炸藥名媛》（Dynamite Damsels，1976）以及湯姆·羅賓遜（Tom Robinson）的押韻政論詩《與大A共處》（Living with the Big A，1987）。上圖所示：托芙·揚松的一幅嚕嚕米條漫，於1954. 發表在《倫敦晚報》上。

讀者來信。在我們提到《流氓莎士比亞十四行詩：詩中的真理》（7月10）時，該書作者瑞安·J-W·史密斯（Ryan J-W Smith）已寫了3,391首十四行詩。當我們再次查看史密斯先生的網站時，累計總數已增加到3,418首。然而，史密斯先生若想如愿地真正地稱自己為“歷史上最高產的十四行詩作者”，仍有很長一段路要走。馬克·埃瑟頓（Mark Etherton）從倫敦西部來信提醒我們注意雷蒙·克諾及其作品《一千億億首詩》（Cent mille milliards de poèmes），其中十首十四行詩“全部具有相同的押韻方案和格律，因此任何一首詩的行都可以與其他任何一首詩的對應行互換”。這項奠基性的潜在文學工作室（Oulipean）實驗在1961, 首次出版時被切割成行，因此只需翻轉一行即可創造出一首不同的十四行詩——事實上，可能產生 10 種不同的組合。埃瑟頓先生寫道：“克諾計算出，如果每天全天候以每分鐘一首的速度閱讀，大約需要1.90259亿,258,751年才能全部讀完。”

M. C.

谱系学的谱系：尼采、福柯与批判历史的盘旋

JASON ANANDA JOSEPHSON STORM “Storm 的迷宫在精神上具有福柯色彩，在批判力量上令人着迷，且具有颠覆道德化批判的特质。” ——Niki Kasumi Clements，莱斯大学 平装本 £26.00 ISBN: 9780226847313 芝加哥大學出版社

贸易查询请联系 Yale Representation Ltd. yalerep@yaleup.co.uk 020 7079 4900 © The Times Literary Supplement Limited, 2020. 由 The Times Literary Supplement Limited 出版（印刷版及所有其他衍生格式），地址：11 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9QJ England. 电话：020 7782 5000 电子邮件：letter@the-tls.co.uk 未经明确许可，不得转载任何部分。 美国副本由 Stellar Printing Inc. 印刷，地址：38-38 9th Street, Long Island City, NY 10011. 英国及世界其他地区副本由 Newspapers Holdings Ltd 印刷，地址：Great Cambridge Rd, Waltham Cross, EN8 8DY, England. 如需申请出于内部信息目的复制文章或标题的许可，请联系 Newspaper Licensing Agency，地址：PO Box 88, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 9EX，电话 (0483) 525274，电子邮件 copu@la.co.uk. 所有其他转载和许可查询请联系 Licensing Department，地址：4 London Bridge St, London, SE1 9QJ，电话 020 7787 7896，电子邮件 sales@newlicensing.co.uk. 《泰晤士文學 supplements》是独立新闻标准组织（IPSO）的成员，并遵守《编辑实践准则》中规定的新闻标准。如果您认为我们未达到这些标准，请拨打 0300 522 2220 联系 IP60 或访问 www.ipes.co.uk. Facebook Times Literary Supplement Instagram @the-tls X @TheTLS 48 《泰晤士文學 supplements》 2026年8月7日 © HEAVIER DRAWINGS BY MICHAEL HARMONSKIAT, PICTURE CREDIT & WARNER-CHARLOTTE

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ACCOUNT 7, ALBINO, 1984-16-90, 2000-2007 THE TLS.COM

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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August 7, 2026

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

3 History	Michael Wood Neil Price T. G. Otte Gary Sheffield Lisa Hilton Richard J. Aldrich John Samuel Harpham Miles Taylor Anna Temkin	How England Began Nicholas J. Higham. The Material Fall of Roman Britain Robin Fleming Hammer of the Gods Don Hollway Peace Makers Peter Ricketts. The Visionaries James Holland Montgomery Gary Mead. Tojo Peter Mauch Hoax Madeleine Pelling Fakers Rory Cormac The Race Makers Andrew S. Curran. White Supremacy John Broich The Crown's Silence Brooke N. Newman Downfall of a King Paul Preston
6 Letters to the Editor		Twilight of the Dons, J. M. Coetzee on genocide, Waiting for Godot in Blackpool, etc
14 Politics	Sam Freedman	US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory James D. Boys. First Among Equals Emma Ashford
16 Classics	Barbara Graziosi Peter McDonald	Consolations Irene Vallejo. Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times Emily Katz Anhalt Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea Emily Wilson. Homer-Haunted Henry Power
18 Commentary	Kate Macdonald Jenny Hartley Norma Clarke	Mr Wells and Mr Buchan - How the novelist fell out with his publisher Sentenced - Prisoners' favourite reading, then and now Letter from ... Athens
19 Poem	Selima Hill	Wittgenstein's Hatred of Daylight
22 Arts	A. E. Stallings Michael Caines Adam Mars-Jones	The Odyssey (Various cinemas) The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov (Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon) The Summer Book (Various cinemas)
26 Fiction	Michael Caines Keith Hopper Dinah Birch Martin Beagles Christopher Shrimpton Diana Darke Alexander Leissle	Incompleteness Amit Chaudhuri. Château Rouge Amit Chaudhuri Where Are the Kings Donal Ryan The Given World Melissa Harrison La hija Sergio del Molino Florenzer Phil Melanson Bedlam Jennifer Higgie Exhibition Alex Hyde
30 Francophone Literature	Alexandra Reza Franck H. Andrianarivo	Writings on Politics Léopold Sédar Senghor; Edited and translated by Yohann C. Ripert. The Essential Senghor Léopold Sédar Senghor; Edited and translated by Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall and Cheikh Thiam La Poésie de Madagascar Dominique Ranaivoson, editor
32 French Food & Literature	Felicity Cloake Daniel Culpan Luke Warde	The Secret History of French Cooking Luke Barr Idiocy Pierre Guyotat; Translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty Lettres à ses avocats français, 1947-1953 Louis-Ferdinand Céline
34 German Studies	Ben Hutchinson Charlie Louth	Sepp - Mein Leben auf Halbdistanz Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht From the Renaissance to Modernism Jeremy Adler. The Compass of Dignity Jeremy Adler
34 Poem	Sam Riviere	Warm War
36 Memoirs	Miranda France	Between the Lines Julia Bell
37 Science Fiction	Emily A. Bernhard Jackson	Beatrice the Sixteenth Irene Clyde. Woman Alive Susan Ertz
38 Natural History	Sophie Yeo Andrew H. Knoll Jeremy Mynott	Wilderlands Eloise Kane The Story of Birds Steve Brusatte Cormorant Gordon McMullan
40 Jewish Studies	Gabriel Motzkin Carlos Fraenkel	Love Is Strong as Death Paul Mendes-Flohr Why Read Maimonides Today? Steven Nadler. The Guide of the Perplexed Moses Maimonides
42 Literature	Andrew Hadfield Georgina Wilson	"The Shadow of Night" and "Ovid's Banquet of Sense" George Chapman The Parliament of Bees John Day. The Devil's Charter Barnabe Barnes
43 Art History	Bruce Boucher	Giovanni Battista Maini (1690-1752) and Roman Sculpture of His Time Jennifer Montagu
44 In Brief		Loren Ipsum Andrew Gallix, etc
47 Afterthoughts	Tim Parks	At Leopardi's House - Writers betrayed by readers
48 NB	M. C.	Headless introductions, Alan Turing's story, Queerly illustrated, Correspondence

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2 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

A DETAIL FROM "THE USE OF HISTORY" BY FRANKLIN GOLDS SCHMIDT, C. DORF & HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVES/CORRESPONDENT/GA GETTY IMAGES

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History

The ruin of Britain?

What happened when the Romans left

Michael Wood

Nicholas J. Higham

How England Began

From Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxons 368pp. Yale University Press. £25 (US $35).

Robin Fleming

The Material Fall of Roman Britain

300-525 CE

320pp. University of Pennsylvania Press. Paperback, £22.99 (US $29.95).

The Adventus Saxonum, the Coming of the English, is perhaps the biggest enigma in the historiography of the British Isles. How, between the fifth century and the seventh, did the eastern and southeastern lowlands of the late Roman province of Britannia, with their Latin and British dialects, become the many little kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, chiefly speaking dialects of Old English? Was there mass migration from the Low Countries, Denmark and Saxony, or simply an elite takeover? What kind of records survive? And how does the growing body of evidence from archaeology fit in? In the first great modern account in 1849, John Kemble wrote with regret that it would never be possible to retrieve the story of these events, and that "genuine details of the Germanic Conquest [are] irrevocably lost to us".

That there was a conquest, though, Kemble did not doubt, and on that has hung a huge literature since his time.

Under review are two books by veterans in the field who have thought long and hard about historical change in the late Roman and early medieval British Isles. Nicholas J. Higham's How England Began is a fresh look at this fascinating period, which he first tackled in print more than thirty years ago. A wide-ranging and deeply considered narrative of fourth- and fifth- century history, it has detailed discussions on many key issues. (The English don't enter the tale until page 166.) Amid the technicalities of pottery dating and sediment analysis, however, Higham never loses sight of the fact that the people of the fifth century were real men and women who lived real lives amid the storms of history - war, plague, migrations, civil struggle and social breakdown. Robin Fleming, too, in The Material Fall of Roman Britain, is concerned with people and cultural change, but her focus shifts away from narrative history and towards the material remains found in the ground: the things people actually used.

The traditional story of the Adventus given by the historian Bede in 731 is that migrants from the continent - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians - conquered much of lowland Britain in the fifth century, settling the eastern parts and eventually leaving British (that is to say

Stained glass depicting Pope Gregory the Great encountering enslaved Angli in a Roman market, Church of St Mary the Virgin, Docking, Norfolk

Celtic) speakers only in the uplands of the southwest, Wales and the north. Bede's story was followed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, compiled from earlier materials in the 890s, and mirrored in native accounts. Welsh historical and poetic texts speak of Saxon invasions that left a lasting hatred of the "pale-faced" immigrants, variously described as "dogs", "incendiaries" and even "shit-shovellers". (In native tradition, the newcomers, often recruited as mercenaries, also served as guest workers and menial labourers.)

Bede's chief written source was the enigmatic Gildas, to whom Higham devotes two illuminating chapters. A Briton of uncertain origin, perhaps born in the Kingdom of Strathclyde, Gildas received an excellent education in Latin grammar and rhetoric somewhere in western Britain at the start of the sixth century. His famous On the Ruin of Britain, written c.540, is a scathing attack on British rulers of his time, addressed to an informed and highly literate Christian audience, intended, he says, to "hold up a mirror" to his contemporaries' sins. At the core of Gildas's fascinating and allusive narrative is the dispossession of the Britons by invading Saxons after a desperate last request for military aid to Aetius, the Roman consul of Gaul, in 446.

Sources from the Continent are tantalizingly scanty. The Byzantine diplomat Zosimus appears to say that in 410, the Emperor Honorius, beset by internal conflicts, wrote a letter to the British authorities telling them to look after their own defence. The fifth-century Life of St Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius of Lyon tells of a visit by the saint to the island nineteen years later. At that point, despite decades of barbarian raids, Britain was still "very rich", with civic life, town councils, an affluent middle class and even a large-scale pilgrimage (to the shrine of St Alban). But then, the Gallic Chronicle of 452 cryptically states that

"following various calamities, Britannia fell under Saxon rule".

After that, news of events on the island evidently became increasingly hard to come by. The Byzantine historian Procopius, a rough contemporary of Gildas,

had nuggets of information, perhaps from Anglian attachés to a Frankish embassy to Constantinople. He speaks of three "nations" on the British mainland - of Britons, Frisians and Angles - each with their own kings. But it is not until Gregory the Great's famous encounter with enslaved Angli - a name that through Bede would come to be applied to all Germanic speakers in Britain - and his conversion mission to the Kentish king Æthelberht in 597, that writing returned to lowland Britain (though Latin literacy was never lost in Wales and Ireland).

The Adventus in one sense, then, is the story of the emergence of new forms of political power, successor kingdoms and states in the old Roman province of Britain. The Anglo-Saxons turned that tale into a national origin myth, with heroic founding figures such as Hengist and Horsa landing in Kent in their three ships, as a later poet put it, "coming from across the wide seas, seeking Britain, to overcome the Welsh and win themselves the land". But behind it, or so it was long accepted, were real events.

The modern picture of the Anglo-Saxon migrations has emerged out of these textual sources combined with archaeology, particularly the excavation of migration-age cemeteries dating from around the 420s onwards in eastern and southern Britain, and their characteristic Germanic grave goods, pottery and weapons. On the face of it, the lack of mixing between Germanic and Celtic material culture at these sites seems to

AUGUST WILSON'S AMERICAN CENTURY

LIFE AS ART

Laurence A. Glasco

"August Wilson's American Century is a beautiful and moving portrait of the life and legacy of one of the most talented American playwrights of the twentieth century."

—Keisha N. Blain, author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights

Hardback

ISBN: 9780822948544

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 3

© HOLMES GARDEN PHOTOS/SLAV

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History

support the idea of invasion, and even ethnic cleansing, rather than gradual migration and assimilation.

In the last 40 years, an enormous increase in archaeological data has both complicated and enriched the picture, and the story is now subject to fresh scrutiny. The Origins of Wessex project at the University of Oxford, for example, has shown that the West Saxons began not, as the myth has it, with a landing on the banks of the Solent by Cerdic and his son Cynric, but in post-Roman federates (mercenaries) of mixed British and Saxon ancestry, settled around the small Roman town of Dorchester-on-Thames. The name Cerdic, it has been pointed out, is probably Welsh. Recently, a bracingly iconoclastic study by Susan Oosthuizen has gone further, suggesting that Germanic-speaking peoples had settled the southeastern seaboard even before the barbarian attacks of the fourth century, and arguing that we should do away with the myth of the Adventus altogether.

As Higham explains, the basic picture that has emerged is one of settling Germanic warrior bands, some of them invited (Gildas tells us) by regional powers in internecine struggles. These were accompanied (as the archaeology shows) by a gradual migration into eastern Britain, especially in the crucial half-century between 420 and 470. It is possible that some of the tribal kingdoms formed by the migrants, which emerged in the sixth century, were led by kings who traced their ancestry back to the Continent, as an earlier generation of scholars, such as Rupert Bruce-Mitford, the excavator of

Sutton Hoo, thought. Take the East Anglian dynasty, the Wuffingas (named after their founder, Wuffa), who were buried in the Sutton Hoo cemetery, starting perhaps in the 520s. Their later written pedigree purports to go back to Sweden, and indeed their material culture has direct links with that of the Vendel cemetery in Sweden - as, incidentally, does the Old English poem Beowulf, which is partly set in southern Sweden. The contents of the main burial at Sutton Hoo include a helmet closely modelled on examples from eastern Sweden.

These are exciting times in the study of late antique Britain, in which the still-contested tale told by textual sources is being brought together with archaeology and science, and Higham gives the reader a sense of the sheer thrill of the search. Robin Fleming's book offers a rather different but complementary approach. Like Higham's, it is a follow-up to an earlier work, Britain After Rome (2010). It is granular in focus, considering ceramics and metalwork, plants and animals, and what they tell of human lives. With a hundred pages of endnotes, it is not aimed at the general reader, but it is full of acute observation from the flood of recent archaeological data.

Fleming's subject is material history: how change took place below the world of kings and their elites. What happened in the two centuries between the late Roman and the early English world, when urban life, a money economy and a functioning state declined and collapsed? What did it mean at the grassroots when, in the words of the Gallic Chronicle, Britain

"fell under Saxon rule"? And how did native Britons and newcomers come together in the southeast and forge the new identity that came to be thought of as English?

At this time, many elements of Roman material culture vanished. Iron and copper smelting, wooden board and plank making, stone quarrying, commercial butchery, horticulture and tanning largely disappeared, as did the knowledge needed for the production of wheel-thrown, kiln-fired pottery. Building in stone disappeared too - it is no accident that the Old English for "to build" is getimbran. No other period in Britain's (pre-)history saw such a rapid loss of skills. The reasons for this breakdown remain unclear, but it is the foundation of the world we characterize as early medieval.

It was a far cry from the old provinces of the eastern Mediterranean, such as Syria or Egypt. Whereas, after the Anglo-Saxon migrations, Romanites seems to fade away quickly in Britain, the early Islamic world appears not as a rupture but as a continuation of Roman ways. Urban civilization in the Middle East was deeply rooted, and in the early Islamic period, its ancient cities were still powerhouses of economy and culture. Though Arabic was introduced at the top level of society, change was slow. In Egypt, tax documents were written in Greek until the end of the eighth century. Christians remained the majority in Egypt and Iraq until the tenth century.

In faraway Britain, "at the edge of the world", with an extractive economy in which Romanites had been imposed from

above, it is perhaps no surprise that things went so quickly. Most cities were abandoned and people reverted to Iron Age ways of organizing society. A return to hill forts is described by Gildas and has been amply confirmed by archaeology. Only after they adopted Latin Christianity in the seventh century did the rulers of the early Germanic kingdoms in Britain begin to recover - or perhaps to retrospectively create? - their sense of Romanness. In all this, Higham rightly insists on Britain's singularity within the Roman Empire "as an island in the Ocean which otherwise bounded the world, lending its inhabitants greater 'Otherness' than elsewhere".

Putting down these books with their very different perspectives, one is left with the impression that, despite important revisions, the framing given by the early medieval literary sources still has value. The evidence that has come down to us is fragmentary, but with advances in archaeology, it starts to be possible to construct the convincing story that Kemble had hoped for. Perhaps we can even look forward, in the not too distant future, to a professional scholar attempting a grand-sweep narrative in the style of Fernand Braudel, continent-wide in perspective, integrating archaeology, texts, placenames, DNA, climate and landscape. If so, I daresay that the resulting picture would be one that Bede - and even Gildas - would have recognized.

Michael Wood's books include In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China's greatest poet, 2023. His biography of Æthelstan is due next year.

A hagiography of Olaf, King of Norway

Neil Price

Don Hollway

Hammer of the Gods King Olaf's Viking conquest 392pp. Osprey. £20.

The Viking age has its own (mostly male) celebrities: Ragnar Lothbrok, latter-day star of streaming television; Erik the Red, volatile founder of the Greenland colony; Harald Hardrada, who died leading the charge at Stamford Bridge. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, is not among them, but his latest biographer is firmly of the belief that he should be. In his new book, Don Hollway brings Olaf back into the spotlight, and rightly claims him as one of the more interesting figures of the period.

If even a fraction of what the sagas claim about him is true, Olaf led an extraordinary life. Hyperbole aside, one could make a genuine case for him as a sort of "ultimate Viking". Born in the 960s to a mother fleeing the carnage of dynastic conflicts in Norway, he spent his early years on the run - first to Orkney (or Sweden, depending on whom you believe), and

Olaf Tryggvason statue, Trondheim, Norway

eventually to Novgorod and Kyiv, following a horrific six-year interlude of childhood enslavement in Estonia. He became a leading man in the lands of the Slavs, raided across half of northwestern Europe

(in 991, he led the Vikings to victory at the Battle of Maldon in Essex, subject of the famous Old English poem) and fought the Danes to a standstill. After accepting Christianity, Olaf became a champion of the faith, leveraged his noble parentage to seize the throne of Norway and began to forcibly convert the country. His violent methods as the "Hammer of God" proved understandably unpopular with adherents to the old religion of the North, and his political rivals multiplied. Olaf is usually said to have died at the Battle of Svalder in 1000, his flagship, Long Serpent, surrounded by enemies, when he leapt into the sea in full armour rather than be captured. There are suggestions that he may have swum ashore and survived, but to all intents and purposes, he disappeared from history in the waters of the Baltic.

Little of the above is truly secure, as what we know of Olaf's life is related in a palimpsest of sources from many places and times, the most comprehensive written two or more centuries after his death. Hollway is clear, early on, about their considerable limitations and contradictions, but also bracingly honest that he doesn't much care: his book is "part compilation, part critique, part adventure, and yes, a little bit of fantasy ... but all history". I'm not sure about that last part, but he is right to acknowledge the importance of stories and the different kinds of truths that they contain, subtly distinct from fact. In this sense, Hollway has written a

new nonfiction saga, and he tells us so - even the dedication, evoking the poets of medieval Scandinavia, expresses the author's wish to be Olaf's "last and greatest skald".

Hollway deserves full credit for marshalling such disparate information into a narrative that is not just coherent, but compelling. Even if the prose occasionally shades purple ("this story comes to us out of the mists of prehistory"), it's accessible, engaging and immediate. I admit to a grudging respect for his chutzpah in simply taking the sagas as literal history - not because I think that is wise (it really isn't), but because there has been a tendency among some scholars to do the equally unwise opposite, and set out to prove why they simply can't be true. This is less a critical study of a life than a sort of Viking hagiography, a kings-and-battles book that knowingly prints the legend in breathlessly dramatic episodes. This is fine if that's what you like, but conventional history it is not. In his introduction on the tangled sources for Olaf's life, Hollway suggests that it is "best just to leave the thinking until later and for now simply enjoy". I couldn't help doing the thinking now rather than later, but against my better judgement, I also enjoyed the book.

Neil Price is the author of The Children of Ash and Elm: A history of the Vikings, 2020. The Sea King and the Sorceress: Life and death in the Viking Age is published in September.

4 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 5

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Letters to the Editor

Twilight of the Dons

In his entertaining review of Colin Kidd's Twilight of the Dons: British intellectuals from World War II to Thatcherism (July 24), Richard Vinen is slightly unfair to A. J. P. Taylor when he states that Taylor's "only direct contribution to the war effort involved knitting scarves for the forces as he sat through college committee meetings". In 1940, Taylor joined the local Defence Volunteers, better known by a later name - the Home Guard. His platoon was commanded by Frank Pakenham (later Lord Longford), and included, as well as "townees", several dons, among them C. S. Lewis. This academic line-up made it possible for the sergeant to issue the order "Dons, fall out".

Admittedly this may not have been a force strong enough to deter the enemy. They had rifles, but only one clip of ammunition between them, which was accidentally expended by a veteran of the First World War - in the process

(according to one account) injuring his commanding officer in the foot.

Adam Sisman Clifton, Bristol

Richard Vinen writes that Lord Salisbury was the last fellow of All Souls to be prime minister (in 1902), and that Lord Halifax was the last such fellow "who might realistically have become prime minister" (in 1940). Yet in 1963 Quintin Hailsham came as close to Downing Street as Halifax. The kingmakers in the Conservative Party blundered in preferring Alec Douglas-Home as Harold Macmillan's successor. Hailsham had proven in 1959 that he was superb at rallying the party before a general election. His pugnacity and brio would have propelled the Conservatives to victory in the election campaign of 1964. In parliament, in broadcasts and on the stump, Hailsham's fighting wit and courtroom skills would have annihilated the devious Labour leader Harold

Wilson. Moreover, as prime minister, he would have been as exciting as Lord Palmerston.

Richard Davenport-Hines Ardèche, France

Richard Vinen describes the Oxford philosopher A. J. "Freddie" Ayer as having felt aggrieved not to have been recognized by the boxer Mike Tyson. But as the famous story was reported in A. J. Ayer: A Life by Ben Rogers, the cry of lèse-majesté and attendant pulling of rank originated with Tyson. Colin McGinn (TLS, June 25, 1999) explains that at a New York party thrown in 1987 by "an ultra-fashionable underwear designer", Ayer was alerted to an "aroused" Tyson forcing himself on Naomi Campbell, then aged seventeen. With "a mixture of guts and folly in equal measure (the never threatened to call the police)", Ayer confronted Tyson. "Tyson retorted: 'Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight

champion of the world'. Ayer replied: "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest we talk about this like rational men".

"So they did", wrote Hilary Spurling in her review in the New York Times, "while Campbell slipped away. There are endless stories like this about Ayer's charm, nerve and dazzling powers of improvisation."

Scott Lahti Marquette MI

I was not surprised to read that Freddie Ayer was put out that Mike Tyson had never heard of him. I met him in 1976, when I was working on the ticket barrier at Victoria station. I was between finishing my degree and starting a PGCE. From his reaction, it was clear to me that he was delighted to be recognized - especially by a lowly manual worker from British Rail.

Patrick Russell London W5

The Coast of Everything

In his review of my novel The Coast of Everything (June 26), Tom Seymour Evans raises the question of whether any of the book's nested narratives would be "worth reading in its own right". He concludes that it is "not hard to say" that none would (though I did not detect an argument). One of the tales thus dismissed was first published in 2018 and won an international book prize. I offer this not to crow, but because it answers the specific question Evans asks - with evidence rather than mere assertion.

A decade went into crafting these stories of love and grief precisely so that they could function as standalone pieces, as well as taking up their place in a larger whole. That the larger whole happens to be large indeed seems an issue for the reviewer. He heavily implies, once again unimpeded by the need to argue a point, that the combination of length and formal complexity in a work of fiction is a species of manspreading. I refer the reader to C. D. Rose's letter (July 24), which addresses this. It is a rare work of "masculine pretentiousness" that takes primary aim at the inadequacies of men, and specifically fathers, and whose heroes are women.

In some surprising comparisons to other writers, Evans seems to have misidentified The Coast of Everything as a novel of ideas, alighting on "attention" as my apparent subject. In fact it is a novel of familial hurt, of generational pain, that happens to have ideas in it.

The reviewer's concern with the autonomy of each tale is less surprising - he overlooks what connects them on almost every level, with the derisory "a few recurring names and motifs". It is neither my job nor my place to spell the book's strategies out - the attentive reader will identify the emotional journey, the keen interest in the teller/tale relationship, the intertextual tissues and tendons, how each tale is a palimpsest of the others, and so on.

My intention is not so much rebuttal as invitation. Should TLS readers, despite Evans's dismissal, find their way to my book, they can count on two things: it will ask a great deal of them, and it will demonstrate more faith in them than was allowed for in the review.

Guillermo Stitch Sierra de Ronda, Spain

J. M. Coetzee on genocide

Apropos J. M. Coetzee's "pro-South activism" (David Gallagher's review of Hispanic Coetzee: World literature beyond the anglophere by Cristóbal Pérez Barra, July 10), it is worth noting that for his latest book Coetzee teamed up with the Argentine novelist Fabián Martínez Siccardi in a scathing denunciation of colonial genocides. Siccardi chronicles the near-extermination of indigenous groups in nineteenth-century Argentina, while Coetzee deals with South Africa, Namibia and Australia. In highly personal introductions, the authors

describe similar experiences of "unlearning" everything they had been taught about their local first nations. Both wrote in English, but Siccardi's Spanish translation was published first, in April this year. At the Buenos Aires launch of Un mal salvaje, Coetzee declared that "genocide is not only the destruction of a people, but the annihilation of a common memory and with it, the destruction of the ability to see themselves in history". English-language contracts for Evil Savage, Savage Evil are still under negotiation.

Lorna Scott Fox London E8

Dunera Boys

The ship Dunera, discussed in M. Syd Rosen's review of Walter Benjamin's Ark by John Schad (In Brief, June 26), had a profound impact on Australian life. While there were German PoWs aboard, the historical significance to Australia was the influence of the Jewish intellectuals who were on the ship and who, unlike Stefan Benjamin, stayed on in Australia. A group of these passengers came to be called the "Dunera Boys", and made huge contributions to the cultural, academic and economic life of the country. They included the artists Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack and Heinz Henges, the athletics coach Franz Stampfl, the composers Felix Werder and his father Boaz Bischofswerder, the economist Fred Gruen, the engineer Paul Eisenklam, the furniture designers Fred Lowen and Ernst Rodeck, the philosophers Kurt Baier and Gerd

Buchdahl, the photographers Hans Axel and Henry Talbot, and the physicist Hans Buchdahl. A number of books have been written about the Dunera Boys and there is a television series based on their experiences. Australia in the 1940s and 1950s was a great place to live, and had a robust democratic system, but it was rarely considered an intellectual powerhouse. The contribution of the Dunera Boys played no small part in changing that.

Noel Turnbull Melbourne

Waiting for Godot in Blackpool

David Warren's entertaining account of Waiting for Godot's uneven British reception (Commentary, July 24) served to revive memories of a production of the play that we staged in 1965 as second-year students at a teacher training college in South Yorkshire. Buoyed by what seemed to have been successful performances, and aware of a production that had been staged by prisoners in San Quentin State Prison, California - directed by one of the inmates, Rick Chuchey, who later befriended Beckett, and who apparently saw the essence of prison life reflected in the play - we decided to risk taking our production of Waiting for Godot to the nearby prison in Wakefield.

The local education officer made the arrangements and we arrived at the prison one Saturday afternoon to be escorted to a Nissen hut in the prison

6 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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grounds, which housed a small stage and seating for an audience of about sixty. We had also received advance warning of the kind of reception previous attempts to entertain the prisoners had been given. Ours was no exception.

Estragon's entry at the beginning of Act I was greeted with simulated (possibly actual) sounds of breaking wind, together with other equally disruptive noises. However, once the performance was allowed to continue, it became clear that most members of the audience were intrigued, even absorbed, by the bizarre proceedings on stage and were increasingly disinclined to interrupt matters further, even after the interval. We subsequently attributed this to the play's undoubted debt to music-hall patter, with its echoes of exchanges between the bowler-hatted duo of Laurel and Hardy. But our captive audience was also engaged, it would seem, by the play's more serious, eschatological elements, as well as by a recognition of the existential impasse in which the central characters find themselves, and which mirrored the plight of the incarcerated onlookers.

Nick Worrall London N13

I very much enjoyed David Warren's excellent essay on the staging of Waiting for Godot at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool in June 1956. In this connection, it is perhaps interesting to note that Beckett's home city, Dublin (in Gaelic origin, Dubh Linn), literally means "Black pool".

John Schad University of Lancaster

Islands

Reviewing a book on islands (In Brief, July 24), Killian Faith-Kelly refers to "a non-literal island - a hill that looms above the town of Glastonbury". But isn't Glastonbury Tor Inyswytrin, the island that King Arviragus granted to Joseph of Arimathea? Dry land isn't for ever in the Somerset Levels.

Peter Wiseman Exeter

Nuremberg

Natalie Livingstone's book The Nuremberg Women lives up to the praise bestowed on it in Katja Hoyer's review (July 24). My father served as personal servant to Sir Norman Birkett, the assistant British judge on the International Military Tribunal, from October 1945 until the end of the proceedings the following year, and in Livingstone's account I could hear echoes of his stories of that remarkable time. Among his photographs are a signed picture of Birkett, the house at Rickersdorf where they were billeted, and one particularly iconic shot of him and another private helping to load trial documents into the nose of an American transport aircraft. But the chapter of the book that really moved me was about the British artist Laura Knight and the picture she painted in which the courtroom melts into the ruins of Nuremberg. The city was the

birthplace of Albrecht Dürer, and one of my father's photographs is of the Dürer statue, virtually untouched, surrounded by the shattered masonry of what Livingstone tells us were known as Trümmerlandschaften, or "rubble landscapes". It still stands, of course, a monument, like Knight's painting, to the artist's effort to outlive and defy the barbarity that will destroy us all if we let it.

Andrew McCulloch Marple Bridge, Greater Manchester

The Frankfurt School

I did admire Kyle Burke's description of the Frankfurt School in his review of A. J. A. Woods's The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy (July 10): "[It] never advanced a single political programme, but its members did believe that intellectuals had to help to transform culture if capitalist society was to become more humane and democratic". How much was lost when that intellectual moment was displaced has surely never been properly assessed.

In my view, David Brooks produced the best explanation of how the US after 1968 neutralized the Frankfurt School moment in his Bobos in Paradise (2000). These "Bohemian Bourgeois" looked like rebels, but they had money and loved spending it. Unlike the 68ers, whom the US so feared, they gave up attacking the capitalist system, choosing rather to harvest its fruits. Brooks, a conservative writer, found the story he told rather comic and even endearing. Whether you agree probably depends where you stand vis-à-vis the Frankfurt School and its higher expectations.

Lesley Chamberlain London N6

LGBT history

Gregory Woods's excellent review, particularly of The Log Books: Voices of queer Britain and the helpline that listened (July 24), based on the archives of Switchboard, took me back to my time as a volunteer. We used to keep a note of particularly troubling calls (anonymized, obviously), so that other volunteers coming on the next shift had some background in case the person called back.

What seems troubling about this book is the imposition of current "queer" identity politics by the authors on what was then simply Lesbian and Gay Switchboard (which covered Bisexual, of course), and finding us all wanting. It's very annoying for gay history to be constantly hijacked by self-proclaimed "queer activists" whose world-view bears no relation to the history they are reviewing. Hopefully future writers, not blinded by gender identity ideology, will be able to do these interesting historical documents justice.

Jonathan Wheeler Reading

Contact 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF letters@the-tls.co.uk

HOTEL OF THE MONTH

Villa La Massa *** Deluxe, Florence

On the banks of the River Arno, Villa La Massa is set within 25 acres of gardens, and offers a relaxing and refreshing haven just 15 minutes' drive from the heart of Florence - for those who still wish to explore Florence itself however, the hotel offers a complimentary shuttle service to the Ponte Vecchio. This former palazzo dates back to the 13th century, and had a succession of illustrious residents before the villa was converted into a hotel in 1953. Since then it has hosted guests from Gregory Peck, Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Taylor to David Bowie, who was married here in 1992.

Recently renovated, restoring the grand Florentine interiors with local fabrics and antiques, the property now offers 54 rooms and apartments, spread across the main house and several other villas. The excellent restaurant, Il Verrocchio, offers a delicious breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Arno and is the perfect setting for an al fresco dinner. There is also a new Tuscan butro, L'Oliveto, for informal lunches by the large, heated swimming pool, as well as the Arno spa and bicycles for guests to explore the surroundings. Villa La Massa is highly recommended and Kirker clients are assured of a very warm welcome from general manager Elisa Peroli and her team.

Special offer: 4 nights for the price of 3 all year, price from £2,198 per person in September, saving £352, or from £1,498 per person, during August and from 18 October - 14 November 2026, saving £336.

Price per person based on two sharing including flights, private transfers, accommodation with breakfast, entrance to the Uffizi Gallery, Kirker Guide Notes to restaurants and sightseeing, and the services of the Kirker Concierge. €16 (approx. £14) per person city tax will be payable upon checkout.

During your stay we highly recommend a Kirker walking tour with one of our expert local guides, perhaps to the Uffizi's Botticelli galleries, or the Bargello, home to one of the world's greatest sculpture collections with masterpieces by Michelangelo, Donatello and Cellini. As well as the great museums, the Kirker Concierge would be delighted to recommend the best local restaurants and trattoria, or perhaps a wine-tasting at a Chianti vineyard.

Speak to an expert or request a brochure: 020 7593 2283 www.kirkerholidays.com

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 7

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History

Diplomats and dictators

How the Foreign Office helped to win the Second World War

T. G. Otte

Peter Ricketts

Peace Makers

Shaping the modern world: The men and women of the Foreign Office in WWII 320pp. Quarto. £22 (US $28).

James Holland

The Visionaries

The making of the post-World War II order in the West 320pp. Bantam. £20.

As German Panzers pierced western Europe's flimsy defences on May 10, 1940, they also swept aside the last protective ramparts around Britain's beleaguered prime minister. That same evening, Neville Chamberlain made way for his rival Winston Churchill. Returning to Downing Street from Buckingham Palace, the new premier later reflected that he "took it all as it came ... I was conscious of a profound sense of relief ... I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial". And very likely he really did feel it.

Churchill's version of the war, developed on a grand scale in six stout volumes, left an indelible imprint on national mythology. The years 1940 and 1941 were the nation's "finest hour", when Britain and her empire "stood alone". During that crucial time, the RAF and the other services - "the few" - provided for the defence of Britain - "the many". This period of "Britain alone" ended with the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor that December. Together, they ushered in the period of the "Grand Alliance".

Missing from the Churchillian version is the fact that the period from 1939 to 1941 was the most complicated, fraught and arguably important portion of the war with respect to British strategy. Contrary to popular notions of war in general and, perhaps, of the Second World War in particular, diplomats did not fade away while the opposing armies fought their way back and forth across Europe and Asia. Military force defeated a formidable enemy grouping, admittedly aided by the Axis powers' poor strategic decision-making. But armed force alone did not, nor could it, turn victory on the battlefield into lasting security and prosperity. That is the job of diplomats. And yet, as Peter Ricketts notes, the Foreign Office still occupies a Cinderella-like role on the margins of this country's collective story of the Second World War.

Peace Makers offers a much-needed antidote to this mythological view of the conflict. Lord Ricketts, a distinguished former diplomat the served as ambassador to Nato and to France, and in between was the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then

The British diplomat Archibald Clark Kerr, fourth from left, at the Tehran Conference, 1943

the UK's first national security adviser), has dug deep into memoirs and the Foreign Office's own archives, written and oral. He also draws on interviews, for instance with one of Anthony Eden's now centenarian private secretaries, who accompanied the foreign secretary on a perilous journey to Yalta in February 1945. Peace Makers offers a lively, incisive account of the role Britain's diplomats - men and women - played in securing victory and preparing the basis for a new world order at the end of the war. They did so by forging alliances, supporting resistance operations in occupied Europe and helping fleeing civilians and escaped prisoners of war.

Ricketts tells this story with an eye for the telling and, indeed, oftentimes absurd anecdote. The image of future ambassadors patrolling the Foreign Office building at night, bayonets firmly fixed to their rifles, but without bullets to fire from them (at whom, one wonders), is certainly difficult to shake off. He also shows how thoroughly the war transformed the department. The physical transformation - the Foreign Office's elegant façade adorned with sandbags piled high; gummed brown paper taped across its windows; barbed concertina wire slung across the roads around it - was matched by changes inside the organization. The demands of war swept away outdated internal barriers that kept women out of diplomacy, let alone its top jobs. (The profession had already opened to young men from more middle-class backgrounds in the aftermath of the previous war.) Only after the war were women formally permitted to join the Foreign Office, but in unofficial capacities, there were intrepid pioneers such as Nancy Lambton (in Tehran), Freya Stark (across the Middle East) and Elizabeth Wiskemann (in neutral Switzerland). Their expertise and forensic skills allowed them to play

influential roles. Eden and his successor, Ernest Bevin, emerge as unexpected heroes here.

The war also blurred the lines between traditional diplomacy, secret intelligence and propaganda. In all of these fields, the Foreign Office and its staff played significant roles. The figures who emerge from this story are as far removed from the inept Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (of the eponymous Ealing film comedy of 1959) as one could possibly imagine. They were an eclectic mix. There were the seemingly bland but effective operators who gilded noiselessly across polished floors, whittled away differences between wartime allies in polished communiques and otherwise observed a discreet distance from the statesmen whom they served. There were the brilliant eccentrics, men like Archie Clark Kerr, the ambassador at Stalin's court, who did much of his office work wearing nothing but shorts, but could consume copious amounts of vodka, which helped to lubricate Anglo-Soviet relations. Or someone like Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the slightly old-maidenish representative at the Vatican, who remained cooped up in this tiny ecclesiastical enclave for four years, but organized escape routes for PoWs and prepared surrender talks with the post-Mussolini government.

They were tough and resilient people who coped with the exigencies of war, including siege (the embassy in Tokyo was effectively prevented from leaving after the Japanese declaration of war until 1942) and capture (Sir Lancelot Oliphant, the ambassador at Brussels, spent eighteen months in German captivity before being repatriated). But they were courageous also in speaking truth to power. Clark Kerr brought Churchill to heel when the prime minister took umbrage at one of Stalin's caustic remarks during their Moscow meeting in August 1942 and threatened to leave again.

The same intellectual and moral toughness marked out Sir Alec Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. He was, in Ricketts's words, "the permanent fixture" in this story - inventive, untiring and indispensable. He was there when the dictators were in their strutting prime, through the tense days of Munich (he was a reluctant supporter of the agreement) and from the setbacks of the early phase of the war through to the Potsdam conference. With him, pragmatism was blended with vision, a strong sense that Britain ought to be at the centre of a dense web of international connections if she was to shape the post-war future. Cadogan knew how to leverage Britain's wartime reputation into a prominent international role at the end of the conflict. He was the author of the Atlantic Charter, which tied the UK and the US together and laid the foundations for the postwar United Nations; and his work behind the scenes helped to knit together the wartime "Grand Alliance", then the nascent post-1945 western alliance. Indeed, if this book has a hero, it is the author's predecessor as PUS. But Ricketts also brings to his task his professional insider's feel for what is practicable and doable, and the book is all the richer for that.

Peace Makers also shows that, necessary as the alliance with the US was, Anglo-American relations were never free of friction, and whatever enlightened aims Washington pursued, there were also selfish ones. By contrast, James Holland, an acclaimed historian of the Second World War, comes to a more positive assessment in his highly readable, briskly paced and stimulating The Visionaries. In Holland's reading, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman, had a clear sense of a postwar new order, and they followed a consistent course.

Historians may well quibble over this. But few will quibble with the series of reflections that Holland and Ricketts offer for today. The postwar international order that brought stability, security and often prosperity to many is in the process of unravelling, not least because the current US administration is picking at the threads that have held it together. There is greater uncertainty than at any time in recent history, both internationally and in the domestic sphere, in many countries in the western world and elsewhere. Democracy itself seems to be in recession. The need for courageous, enlightened and intellectually robust leaders and diplomats who combine tough-minded pragmatism with a vision of a stable and mutually beneficial international order has never been greater.

T. G. Otte is Professor of Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia. His new book, A History of British Foreign Policy, 1650-2020, will appear in 2027.

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Total warriors

Contrasting views of generalship

Gary Sheffield

Gary Mead

Montgomery

Unbeatable, unbearable - The story of Britain's most talented and feared World War II general 352pp. Bloomsbury. £25.

Peter Mauch

Tojo

The rise and fall of Japan's most controversial World War II general 512pp. Belknap Press. £27.95 (US $32.95).

Are humans becoming obsolescent in warfare? One of the hottest topics in military thought is the role of artificial intelligence in the battlespace. AI enables the processing of huge amounts of data at rates far greater than humans could manage, which, in theory at least, greatly enhances the efficiency of armed forces in battle. US military headquarters in the Vietnam War were swamped with intelligence (military speak for information). Gathering it was not the problem. The difficulty lay in sorting the wheat from the chaff. This is exactly the sort of situation in which AI could come into its own. But the next logical step, and there is some evidence that this is beginning to happen, is for AI to displace human beings from the chain of command. This could produce a situation in which AI interrogates intelligence, decides which targets are to be attacked, then executes the strike - all without human intervention. The ethical and legal implications are immediate and obvious. So are the implications for nuclear deterrence. A fully automated future battlefield appears to be, if not just around the corner, at least in sight.

In the meantime, the making of war remains an intensely human activity. Great commanders, like great artists and composers, have that "something" that sets them apart from their peers. The Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz referred to it as "genius", by which he meant a highly developed aptitude for war, a fusion of the right temperament and mental apparatus. The career of Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, is a case study in how individuals matter in war, for good or ill - or, in this case, both. Arriving in North Africa in August 1942, "Monty" demonstrated that he had many of Clausewitz's attributes of genius. Possessed of vast reserves of self-confidence and willpower, he managed to transmit them to an army that was battered by retreat, defeat and a desperate defensive victory. At El Alamein (October and November 1942), he imposed his will on the enemy, showing that he had ample coup d'oeil. Similarly, in Normandy in June-August 1944, by now commanding the British-US-Canadian 21st Army Group, Montgomery forced the enemy to dance to his tune.

But that is not the whole story. Montgomery was vain, could be monumentally tactless and had a talent for getting up people's noses. His behaviour towards his American boss, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was highly counterproductive and almost brought about his dismissal. Montgomery's ego led to him overclaiming success and insisting that everything had gone according to plan, when clearly it had not, which undermined his credibility with his superiors and with subsequent historians. Both the positive and negative facets of Monty the commander are reflected in the subtitle of Gary Mead's biography, Montgomery: Unbeatable, unbearable - the story of Britain's most talented and feared World War II general.

There is much to like in this book, which is aimed at a general audience. Mead depicts Montgomery's personality in bold colours. While some aspects, such as his views on race in South Africa, can be ascribed to the mores of the time, and his sexuality is a controversial subject, other facets of his character give the impression of a deeply flawed man. But Mead's obvious dislike of his subject becomes tedious after a while. Montgomery's character flaws did not prevent him from being a highly effective commander. However, they did mean that his generalship was limited. His poor interpersonal skills meant that he was an awkward member of a coalition force and unsuited to lead one.

Mead's material on Montgomery's campaigns is disappointingly thin. His section on the Normandy campaign is part of a chapter on the 1944-45 campaign as a whole, when one might have thought that Monty's masterpiece deserved a chapter to itself. The analysis is sometimes awry: Mead's claim that "Montgomery fought a 1944 campaign using 1944 methods, generally with the same results as thirty years before", shows misunderstanding of British operations in both world wars. It underplays the significance of successful attrition and Montgomery's skill in constructing and delivering an attritional plan (and, in light of the Ukraine war, attrition as a deliberate method of making war is undergoing reappraisal). The author's interpretations are sometimes more astute: he gives some context to Montgomery's apparently inexplicable decision to launch the highly risky Operation Market Garden. Despite the risk, the plan promised to be a war-winner. Mead could have strengthened his case by pointing out that September 1944 appeared to be a repeat of the situation exactly twenty-six years earlier, when the German army had suffered a major defeat and bold action reaped rich rewards. But the German army of September 1944 proved more resilient than its predecessor of September 1918.

Generalship is about more than the battlefield. Montgomery, a great teacher, taught the psychologically bruised Eighth Army to believe in itself. This was

a military achievement of a very high order (Mead acknowledges this). Montgomery knew that he commanded an army essentially of civilians in uniform, which needed rigorous training. On the battlefield, his approach emphasized firepower, utilizing the British advantage in artillery and air power and tanks to fight steel with steel rather than, as all too frequently occurred in the Great War, steel with flesh. His armies proved rather more tactically adept than an older historiography allowed, and underwent a successful learning process. But this is not the book for detailed analysis of Montgomery as a military commander, though it adds some interesting detail to our picture of the man and implicitly underlines the importance of personalities in command.

By contrast, Peter Mauch's excellent Tojo is a military biography. Impeccably researched, with a challenging but persuasive thesis, it fills a significant gap in the historiography of the Second World War. This is one of the great military biographies of our time. The last major study in English of Tojo Hideki, the key figure in Japan during the Second World War, appeared as long ago as 1961. Mauch, a scholar at Western Sydney University, argues that Tojo was Japan's "apex political predator", a consummate soldier-bureaucrat who operated at the highest political level. He understood the total character of the war, had a clear vision of Japanese grand strategy and acted on it. As Mauch makes clear, to recognize the significance of this ruthless concept - of the mass mobilization of Japanese society and economy to wage an all-out conflict, and of Tojo's skill in applying it - is not to approve of the strategy or the man. His vision was unrealistic, as it hugely underestimated the power of the US once it also committed to fighting a total war. Ultimately, it led to disaster for Japan, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. No wonder Tojo was ultimately reviled by

the Japanese, with local people refusing to sell food to members of his family.

Tojo's power was sufficiently diluted so that his position fell some way short of what we imagine a mid-twentieth-century dictator to be. The fierce rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy meant that true unity of command was beyond reach, so Tojo attempted to achieve it by the back door - by acquiring multiple posts and by influencing Emperor Hirohito. He certainly had some success in moulding the emperor in his image, including persuading him to support the attack at Pearl Harbor, which transformed a regional war into a global conflict. Hirohito was sufficiently self-aware to recognize that Tojo and he were not always on the same page. The emperor preferred consensus, which was not Tojo's approach. His loyalty to Hirohito was such that in the aftermath of defeat, Tojo assumed the burden of responsibility for the war, and paid with his life at the hands of an American executioner.

Tojo had a very different type of character from Montgomery, and he operated in the strategic stratosphere, far above Monty's campaign level. But the two men have this in common: they both stamped their mark on their states' experience of the Second World War. Both came to embody their respective national war efforts. It mattered that they were in the jobs they were in at critical times. Different people would probably have taken alternative paths.

These books are a timely reminder of the critical significance of the human dimension in command. It is difficult to see a situation in which that ceases to be true, but, given developments in AI, we must add to Clausewitz's list of attributes of military genius the ability to use it effectively. It is legitimate to ask whether the future Montgomery and Tojos will have their freedom of action constrained by AI; whether the current servant will become the future master.

Gary Sheffield is a Visiting Professor in the Defence Studies Department of King's College London. He is writing Civilian Armies: The experience of British and Dominion soldiers in the two World Wars.

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 9

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History

New tricks

Fraud, exploitation and rational enquiry

Lisa Hilton

Madeleine Pelling

Hoax

Truth and lies in the age of Enlightenment 368pp. Profile. £22.

Late on the night of February 1, 1762, a committee of investigators convened by the Lord Mayor of London gingerly made their way into the crypt of St John Clerkenwell. Their objective was to communicate with the ghost of Frances Lynes, a young woman who had died of smallpox several years earlier. Frances's spirit had purportedly been haunting her former lodgings on Cock Lane, communicating through knocks with the landlord's daughter Betty. So urgent and convincing had her messages been that the "Cock Lane Ghost" became a major tourist attraction, a press sensation and a disaster for her widower, whom public opinion had condemned as her murderer.

The ghost had agreed to knock on her own coffin to prove her story before the assembled witnesses, including the Bishop of Salisbury, the Earl of Dartmouth, Mrs Oakes (a respectable midwife) and Samuel Johnson. No knocking was heard that

night. The Cock Lane case is one of many explored by Madeleine Pelling, in this pacy, thoughtful, compassionate history, that tested the eighteenth century's belief in its own rationality.

The term "hoax", derived from the "hocus pocus" of fairground mounte-banks, was in Robert Nares's Glossary by 1822, having emerged from the 1740s in counterpoint to what Kant defined in 1784 as the period of "man's emergence from self-imposed immaturity". Pelling's study employs fraud and trickery to investigate the meaning of Enlightenment. The period's emphasis on rational enquiry, she suggests, rendered truth a more unstable concept. The flourishing print culture of the "shifting, riotous, explorative" eighteenth century provoked uncertainty as well as debate. In a climate where truth was constantly being questioned, hoaxing thrived.

"The ghost had agreed to knock on her own coffin to prove her story"

Many of the hoaxes Pelling discusses were carried out for financial gain, but she astutely correlates the circumstances in which they succeeded with broader currents of social unrest. Mary Bateman was a product of the alienating, anonymous urban culture that emerged with the Industrial Revolution, a light-fingered country girl who progressed from petty theft to fortune telling and "magic" in the mill towns of Yorkshire. She successfully conned goods worth £70 from the Perigos, a respectable couple of hard-up weavers whose trade had been destroyed by mechanization; when they began to suspect her, she poisoned the wife with arsenic. Bateman was hanged for murder at York in 1809, but the publicity that her execution attracted was entirely disproportionate to the sorry squalor of her crime. She became "a monster for the modern age", a witch whose trial set contemporary science at odds with ancient folk beliefs. After a public dissection of her body, Mary's skin was flayed and portions were sold as talismans. Her profits from her crimes were humble - handkerchiefs, bags of flour - but Pelling notes that her fraud was also a form of self-realization, an opportunity for autonomy in what remained a strictly hierarchical society.

The fragility of such social distinctions was exposed by "Princess Caraboo", real name Mary Willcocks, an itinerant servant from Devon found wandering near a grand house outside Bristol in 1817. Her striking looks, mysterious customs and

apparent inability to speak English led her eager saviours, a local magistrate and his wife, to conclude that she was a kidnapped royal from an undiscovered Indonesian island. Willcocks successfully exploited their preconceptions, providing exotic, eroticized performances of dancing and swordplay for visitors. As Caraboo, she was painted by several artists and had her "language" analysed by Sir Stamford Raffles, former governor of Java. Pelling argues that her eventual exposure "smashed the categories by which the world was supposed to be organized, exposing ignorance, prejudice and the fantastical boundaries of race".

Hoax is a deft, thrilling work of social history that draws striking contemporary parallels. Tabloid hunger for supernatural sensationalism remains voracious, while credulity and mistrust of expertise have arguably expanded in the digital age. (Pelling quotes a survey conducted for the BBC in 2023, in which 25 per cent of the respondents believed that the Covid-19 pandemic was a hoax.) In her examination of the mechanisms that permitted hoaxers to prosper in a culture ostensibly committed to objectivity, the author discerns in trickery "the gap through which we glimpse deeper tensions and inequalities", in which truth is a product of power as much as of fact. Hoax is thus as revealing about our own times as those it describes.

Lisa Hilton's most recent book is The Scandal of the Century, 2024.

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Deniable dirt

A secret service within a secret service

Richard J. Aldrich

Rory Cormac

Fakers

A top-secret tale of phantoms and forgeries on the disinformation front line 368pp. Oxford University Press. £25 (US $34.99).

In 1992, I met Robert Conquest, pre-eminent scholar of the Soviet Union and former literary editor of the Spectator. During the Cold War, he had been one of the pioneering figures in the shadowy Information Research Department (IRD), sharing an office with Celia Kirwan, a close friend of George Orwell. The IRD was established in 1948 to combat Soviet disinformation by disseminating anti-communist propaganda and shaping global narratives through covert means.

Conquest explained that IRD was effectively an anti-Soviet intelligence laundromat. With access to everything traveled up on Russia by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, they busied themselves selecting juicy stories about Moscow's oppressive rule and distributing them to "helpful" journalists around the world. Conquest assured me that they did not tell lies. Indeed, he insisted their problem was that the communists were so extraordinarily nasty that if IRD had told the full, unvarnished truth, no one would have believed them.

But Conquest was being deceitful about the deceivers. As Rory Cormac's revelatory book shows, IRD soon engaged in mission creep, expanding from its original anti-Soviet role to target anyone perceived as anti-British, including postcolonial leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah and Sukarno. Moreover, hidden in its attic was a super-secret department of "Fakers", whose business was to forge documents, fabricate stories and tell lies.

Fakers is the story of a secret service within a secret service. It is a carefully researched social history of a small and dysfunctional band of maverick propagandists running Britain's Cold War forgery unit. Their mission was to disrupt and discredit adversaries around the world using phantom groups and counterfeit documents. Many of these schemes were absurd, such as pretending to be hippies and ghosts, while others were quite distasteful. Along the way, Cormac captures Britain's uniquely literary approach to covert action, preferring the pen to poison.

Hans Welser was the unlikely leader of Britain's black propaganda team. Welser was a true survivor - an Austrian refugee who had been interned behind the wire of a wartime concentration camp as an MI5 suspect. Once released, he had excelled at anti-German propaganda, working for Britain's Political Warfare Executive. Subsequently, he became a key special operations adviser to the Foreign Office. With his wife, Adelaide, who ran an MI6-funded news agency, he orchestrated global psywar campaigns while running an

improbable team of ex-journalists, bookish misfits and exiles from Eastern Europe.

IRD viewed the whole world through a Cold War prism. They were deeply alarmed by President Nkrumah of Ghana's pan-African socialism and ties to China. Welser and his team launched propaganda efforts to undermine his influence. Using fabricated groups such as the "Loyal African Brothers", they planted stories portraying Nkrumah and his allies as communist puppets threatening African unity. Eager support from the prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home, enabled the campaign to intensify. Cormac argues that this contributed to Nkrumah's eventual downfall. The "Loyal African Brothers" were later used to circulate cartoons of Africans depicted as monkeys, attributed to the Algerians, seeking to sow dissension at an international youth conference.

The "Fakers" also targeted President Sukarno at the height of the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation in 1965. They aimed to discredit Sukarno's personal life and destabilize his regime. Through black propaganda attributed to Islamist groups, they targeted his religious insensitivity, but also his alleged affairs and later his sexual impotence. The Eastern Bloc fought back with material implicating the UK and US in a plot to overthrow Sukarno. The fallout from this war of forgeries intensified anti-western sentiment and inadvertently emboldened the Indonesian Communist Party. The postscript was a prolonged period of bloodshed in which at least half a million people died.

Cormac shows that Welser and his team were eccentric technocrats. They knew a lot about nefarious tricks and news agencies, but had a limited understanding of the complex societies in which they were meddling. Based in a bespoke building near the Tate Gallery, they were considered closer to senior CIA figures such as Cord Meyer and James Angleton than to their own government. In 1969, when these practitioners of "deniable dirt" arrived in Bermuda to disrupt a Black Power conference, they were cold-shouldered by "straight" British diplomats, who feared the boomerang effect of their schemes.

In the 1970s, IRD diversified, targeting Irish Republican groups in North America and boosting Britain's campaign to join the EEC. Unloved by its parent Foreign Office, IRD was an obvious area to cut as budgets became tighter. The story of its demise in 1977 is often framed by its links to the extreme right and supporters of apartheid. The main problem, however, was simply proving that any of its operations had really worked. Some have argued that the UK should consider a modern version of IRD to combat contemporary disinformation and "grey zone" threats. But the peculiar stories in Fakers should give Whitehall policymakers pause for thought.

Richard J. Aldrich's book on the CIA and the American press during the Cold War is forthcoming.

'An instant classic, I have never read anything like it. Cook retells Achilles' story, making the reader feel that it exists in a present tense. Her writing is charged: every moment matters, each word counts, as if time were running out. It is as if the writing itself were an heroic enterprise ... a terrifying, erotic tour de force'

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 11

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History

Divide and rule

How slavery and the Enlightenment made race

John Samuel Harpham

Andrew S. Curran

The Race Makers

A history of the Enlightenment's most dangerous legacy 512pp. Saqi. £25.

John Broich

White Supremacy

A short history

280pp. Cambridge University Press. £22 (US $29.95).

Today, it is an axiom of moral and political belief that race is an invention. It is not written into the natural order: it is not a real feature of humankind. We believe this because we do not believe in race. In previous centuries, the powerful attraction of race was that it seemed to be real. Indeed, to its proponents, it seemed to present the hidden core of human truth. To define the various races and discover their inner principles was to explain the histories and destinies of the peoples of the world.

Today, we do not think - at least one must hope we do not think - in these racial terms. We believe race was an invention, not discovered but made. This belief forces us to confront a series of questions: who or what was it that made race? When and where did race arise? And what purposes did race serve? These questions animate both books under review. John Broich and Andrew S. Curran aim to describe the origins of race as a powerful and destructive idea in the modern world.

Their accounts differ in crucial respects. Curran's is the more subtle and learned, the starts from the premise that race was made in the written texts of a small set of influential individuals, and his book takes shape as a series of character studies. Each chapter examines one or two authors and the facet of race that they worked to develop. A distinguished scholar of the French Enlightenment, Curran chooses authors who are clustered around this central focus. They run from Louis XIV, who is treated in the first chapter, to Thomas Jefferson, the main character in the final chapter. In between are vivid depictions of the lives and ideas of such canonical intellectuals as Carl Linnaeus and the Comte de Buffon, Voltaire and David Hume, and Immanuel Kant and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. These are the "race makers" to whom Curran's title refers.

The Race Makers unfolds as a fluid and elegant narrative. Even minor details from the lives of its characters - from the plan of Linnaeus's garden to the schedule at Kant's dinner parties - are absorbed into accounts of their deep philosophical commitments. But within this narrative, Curran has enclosed an argument. What he wants to establish is that race did not come about as a simple or direct response

to the rise of the European Atlantic empires and the institution of New World slavery. As he observes, the invention of race in the eighteenth century came more than two centuries after the start of the transatlantic slave trade. Rather, he works to demonstrate that race had its origins in developments internal to European high culture. Slavery and empire did not make race. Above all, race was a product of the Enlightenment.

According to Curran, the Enlightenment focused a new kind of attention on the human. The old Biblical account of humankind - as made in God's image and descended from the single act of Creation - came to seem insufficient. Humans were to be studied as part of the natural world. Like plants and animals, they were to be classified and divided. This work required a certain disciplined detachment from normal experience. It required one to stand back to some extent from the current social and political forms of the peoples of the world. From this position, it was possible to develop a novel account of humankind. That account would place emphasis less on the unity of the species or its manifest variation than on the four or five broad sets into which humans could be divided. These were - to use the term that became more and more common over the course of the Enlightenment - the races.

The race makers of Curran's book at once responded to the imperatives of the Enlightenment, and worked to shape and advance the Enlightenment project. For the most part, they were writers and intellectuals who never travelled abroad to see the peoples they sorted into races. Much of their information came to them in the form of written texts, in travel narratives and official reports and histories and descriptions of the world. Curran notes that the authors who produced the most careful and complete racial classifications from this period lived well outside the European metropolitan centres - Linnaeus in Uppsala, Buffon in Montbard, Kant in Königsberg, Blumenbach in Göttingen. They invented race at a remove from the peoples whom the idea was intended to define. For Curran, that distance was in part what made it possible to write race into existence.

For Broich, in contrast, the distance between race and the real historical world was an illusion. Like Curran, he traces the development of race to the Enlightenment. But he sees the Enlightenment itself as the product of slavery and empire. Funded with the profit from overseas exploitation, the Enlightenment in turn advanced in reciprocal relation to the brutal institutions that enabled its rise. The forms of racial domination in the colonies set the context for the racial theories that appeared in the works of European intellectuals. Their real aim was not to divide the peoples of the world,

but rather to assemble them into a hierarchical order. This order would reflect relations of power in the present, but conceal them within a dispassionate depiction of the natural world.

As a rule, unlike Curran, Broich wants to expose the intimate connection between ideas and power. This is in part the reason that he has chosen "white supremacy" rather than race as his object of examination. For white supremacy, on his account, denotes both a vast pattern of white dominance and the belief that this dominance is legitimate. Broich is a historian of the British Empire, and that is his central focus in this book. He holds that white supremacy burst into existence at the explosive intersection between new-world slavery and the Enlightenment. From here, he tracks its relentless advance. He treats empire as its almost inevitable extension. Then, as the centuries pass, he follows its development and adaptation into modern racial science, social Darwinism and the regimes of segregation, eugenics and genocide that these ideas worked to support. As his narrative approaches the present, Broich turns to Brexit and Donald Trump.

White Supremacy is a brief book. "Any important history deserves to be told briefly", the author explains. It also deserves to be told with care. Broich has done well to narrate the terrible spread and persistence of white supremacy over time and around much of the world. What remain out of focus for much of his narrative, however, are the forces that have opposed it. As he describes its development - from slavery to Trump - a curious reader will want to know why white supremacy was forced into such a dramatic series of transformations. Broich compares it to a patchwork fabric and a tangled mass of chains and a cornered subterranean monster with tentacles. Its foes are never rendered with such vividness.

Consider, for example, the book's treatment of the relation between white supremacy and the Enlightenment. The latter represents, for Broich, the philosophical expression of the racial domination that slavery and empire had established. Its promise of liberation was meant for whites alone. Perhaps so. But this was stated as a promise held out to all humankind - and soon a powerful interracial social movement arose that traced its inspiration to Enlightenment ideals. In Britain, the antislavery movement marked its most rapid and decisive successes: the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery in the colonies in 1833. It would appear that, in this instance, the fit between power and ideas was not so neat as Broich tends to suppose. Even ideas framed in close connection with white dominance could be turned back upon it. The monster's tentacles could be used to ensnare it. And if this was the case, then perhaps a

more complex process had worked to produce the ideas of the Enlightenment themselves.

Much more than Broich, Curran attends to the complex process that worked to produce the ideas of the Enlightenment. His book situates the development of race within a technical discourse between an insular network of intellectuals. But Curran also seems ill at ease with his basic position on how race arose. The parallel development of new-world slavery shadows his narrative.

The texts that his race makers mined for information about the peoples of the world were filled with material about slavery. Several of the most important reports from America were written by the masters of slaves. Almost all the narratives of travel to Africa were the work of the slave traders. The detailed surveys of Africa from this period followed the basic route of the slave ships, moving north to south along the western coast. Theories of race could not fail to absorb the patterns and assumptions of the Atlantic slave system. Even as the schemes of racial classification became more elaborate over time, their common point of departure remained the polar opposition between two races: black and white.

None of these points is lost on Curran. As a matter of fact, his book starts and ends not with race, but with slavery. The first chapter, on Louis XIV, treats the king not as a theorist of race, but as an architect of the French Atlantic slave system. The final chapter, on Thomas Jefferson, considers the statesman's scattered remarks on race as an effort to use race in order to defend the institution of American slavery. The epilogue turns to the cohort of Afro-British authors who rose to prominence toward the end of the eighteenth century: "Enter the Antifascists", Curran declares. But the real cause that these authors worked to promote was the antislavery movement, and their antifascism was in service of that ultimate end.

In the end, one senses that Curran has not made up his mind how to answer the most vital questions his book has addressed. How to assess the lives and careers of the race makers? Was the Enlightenment a force for liberation or domination? What were the origins of race? His hesitation could be seen as our own. Today, we believe that race is an invention. Yet we live in societies that continue to be structured by the concept. It could be that we cannot grasp race's origins because we are unable to imagine its end.

John Samuel Harpham is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics and Letters and Wick Cary Professor in the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery, 2025.

12 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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A royal crime

British kings and queens as slave traders

Miles Taylor

Brooke N. Newman

The Crown's Silence

The hidden history of slavery and the British monarchy 464pp. Mudlark. £25.

The list of British individuals and institutions benefiting from slavery is now a long one. It includes prime ministers, banks, universities, the Church of England and many famous families. Until recently, one family was missing from the charge sheet: the monarch's. The Royal African Company, established in 1660 and sponsored by the crown, spearheaded the British slave trade, accounting at its peak in the late seventeenth century for almost three-quarters of enslaved Africans trafficked across the Atlantic to the plantation economies of the Americas. As Brooke N. Newman's comprehensive and penetrating account reveals, the royal family effectively invented the business model for Britain as a slave power, dominating the trade for the first 200 years.

Impoverished by war and extravagance, the later Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian

queens and kings turned to the slave trade to replenish their treasuries. Elizabeth I provided ships and granted monopolies to favoured 'adventurers'. Although averse to tobacco, James I gave charters to plantation colonies such as Virginia. Dynamic alliances with the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms opened up their ports in the new world to English slave ships. Charles II and his successor, James II, proved the greediest of all, investing heavily in the Royal African Company. The crown even owned slaves: those who reverted to royal possession after their owners died intestate. Although the royal monopoly ended in 1698, the South Sea Company, created in 1711, generated handsome dividends for Queen Anne and her successors. George III, Newman points out, did express qualms about slavery as a young man (see David Armitage, 'An inhuman custom', TLS, December 24/31, 2021), but never in public. Indeed, he insisted that bondsmen, both freed and enslaved, be drafted into the royal forces fighting in the American Revolutionary War. And his third son, William, saw active service in the Caribbean in the 1790s, an experience that left him a reliable and vocal supporter of the slaveowners, especially

once he entered the House of Lords as the Duke of Clarence.

The Crown's Silence spares no detail in documenting how embedded the royal family became in the industry of slavery. Some captured Africans were branded with marks and shackled in irons bearing the initials of the Duke of York (later James II). Others ended up in London, adopted as exotic ornaments at court. A series of royal portraits that are reproduced in the volume depicts liveried and costumed Africans as royal companions. Not all of them were commodified in this way. Quobna Ottobah Cugano, part of the household of a royal portrait painter, became an ally of the abolitionist movement in the 1780s, although he didn't live long enough to witness the end of British involvement in the slave trade in 1807.

By then, the writing was on the wall for royal patronage of slavery. In 1760, parliament took control of the crown's finances, leaving the monarch to rely on the civil list for its income. Royal figures such as the Duke of Gloucester (George III's nephew) joined the call to end slavery altogether. As revolutionary ideas reverberated across the West Indies and the Hispanic world after 1789, the royal family distanced itself from the unpopular cause. Crown slaves received manumission in the 1820s. Then slavery in the British Empire finally went in 1833, with its last royal supporter, William IV (formerly the Duke of Clarence), offering

no opposition. Queen Victoria, an avid fan of William Wilberforce, called time on the apprenticeship system that replaced slavery. Her husband, Prince Albert, made his public debut at Exeter Hall, the abolitionists' headquarters, denouncing the evils of slavery, without apologizing for royal complicity. (Albert's cousin, Ferdinand II of Portugal, Newman might have noted, presided over an enduring slave economy.)

Today, as the author argues in a powerful epilogue, 'sorrow and regret' without any admission of guilt have become the monarchy's official position on Britain's involvement in slavery. As recent royal visits to the Caribbean and West Africa have demonstrated, this doesn't go far enough for many people. Too much suspicion surrounds the historic role of British royalty in the slave trade. Now it is out in the open for all to see. Can the Commonwealth survive such an indictment? And what of reparatory justice? In 1833, the British government compensated West Indian slaveowners and their beneficiaries to the tune of £20m (£15.6bn in today's value), not far off the current total wealth of the crown. These are serious questions, and Newman's probing investigation will prove essential to future discussion.

Miles Taylor is Professor of British History and Society at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is the author of Empress: Queen Victoria and India, 2018.

¡Viva el Rey! no longer

The dramatic fall of a Spanish monarch

Anna Temkin

Paul Preston

Downfall of a King

Juan Carlos of Spain

544pp. William Collins. £30.

Some Spaniards today mockingly refer to Juan Carlos, their former king, as 'His Lowness', but it was not always thus. The king's accession was controversial, given that it was ordained by General Francisco Franco, who had been grooming the exiled Borbón heir for the throne since his childhood. The generalismo expected Juan Carlos to continue the dictatorship after his death, and the young king seemed compliant. Juan Carlos showed his mettle, however, during the attempted coup on February 23, 1981, when he appeared on television in his capacity as commander-in-chief and ordered the armed forces to respect the new constitution. The coup collapsed and the insurgents surrendered. Afterwards, millions marched through the streets of Spain's cities, chanting '¡Viva el Rey!'.

In the years after Franco's death, Juan Carlos did much to consolidate the infant democracy, helped to quell poipismo and grappled with Basque terrorism, prompting several assassination attempts.

But his final years on the throne were engulfed with scandals involving marital infidelities and financial impropriety, and he was essentially forced to abdicate in 2014. In 2020, he moved to Abu Dhabi - where he still lives - at the behest of his son, Felipe VI. The main thesis of Paul Preston's latest biography of Juan Carlos (his first, A People's King, was published in 2004) is that the seeds of the king's fall from grace were sown in his lonely and tortured childhood.

'Juanito' was born in 1938 in Rome, where the deposed royal family had lived since the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, and throughout the civil war (1936-39). Later, his father, Don Juan de Borbón, moved the family to Lausanne, then Portugal. At the age of 10, the young prince was dispatched to fascist Spain, 'the price demanded by Franco for Don Juan to remain as one of the possible candidates to be his eventual successor'. Juanito's father 'effectively sold him into slavery', argues Preston, condemning 'this theft of his son's childhood'. He details how the boy spent years as a pawn in a chess game between the Caudillo and the Pretender, as the former dangled the possibility of the Borbón family being restored to the Spanish throne.

Preston sees this early separation from his family as fostering a sense of

abandonment and resentment in Juan Carlos. The boy 'was deprived of the parental affection that makes a child feel loved and valued and worthy', he writes, even suggesting that the lack of a 'necessary basis for the establishment of secure attachment relationships may well account for his hunger in later life for female and financial acquisitions'. That seems rather convenient.

The effect of this childhood neglect is at the heart of Preston's argument as he chronicles Juan Carlos's journey from hand-picked heir, and marriage to the future Queen Sofia in 1962, to his accession in 1975; from facing down the military generals in 1981 to his reign's end 33 years later. As a leading scholar of twentieth-century Spain, the author is insightful at every stage. Especially compelling is his account of the eighteen-year-old prince's accidental killing of his younger brother, Alfonso, with a pistol in 1956, and the impact of that tragedy on him and on his relations with his father.

We also learn that the handsome king was an ugly baby, that at first he struggled to speak Spanish, and that at school he preferred classmates to use tú; at the Zaragoza Military Academy, he was a cadet who 'maintained the widest possible friendship group, carefully avoiding the creation of a circle of sycophants motivated

only by self-interest'. But by 2004, Juan Carlos had acquired a series of murky financial backers and a fleet of 70 cars.

Though the rigour of Preston's research cannot be faulted, at times it results in uncomfortably dense prose, with perhaps unnecessarily lengthy breakdowns of sums (including $100 million from the Saudi government) paid into a Swiss bank account. There is also painstaking coverage of the ageing king's various ailments, hip surgeries and other operations.

The misdeeds of Juan Carlos's son-in-law Iñaki Urdanganin Liebaert, who embezzled millions of euros in public funds, brought the king's finances under scrutiny. In 2012, a lavish safari in Botswana with his lover, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, when there were six million unemployed in Spain, was the final straw, leading to his now infamous statement: 'I am very sorry. I have made a mistake, and it will not happen again'.

Preston's sympathetic portrayal is hard to square with the king's womanizing (one critic estimates 4,786 sexual conquests), his appalling treatment of his wife and his vast wealth. The author mentions 'personal sacrifices' and refers to Juan Carlos as 'an extraordinary trade ambassador-at-large' for Spain, even as he concedes that 'self-enrichment was a major motivating force'. This biography is nevertheless a majestic work, rich in detail and cogent in its argument. If only Juan Carlos had applied a similar degree of scrutiny to his own life.

Anna Temkin is a senior editor for The Times and the editor of The Times Great Lives, 2015.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 13

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Politics

Do the right thing

The case for and against realism in US foreign policy

Sam Freedman

James D. Boys

US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory From Nixon to Trump 288pp. Manchester University Press. Paperback, £14.99 (US \$21.95).

Emma Ashford

First Among Equals US foreign policy in a multipolar world 280pp. Yale University Press. £30 (US \$35).

The problem with writing about Donald Trump is that one can expend an enormous amount of energy trying to explain moves he doesn't understand himself. He has a set of underlying, and mostly wrong, beliefs about the world - mainly consisting of the idea that the US is being taken advantage of by everyone else. Beyond that, he's susceptible to influence from almost anyone willing to apply the requisite level of flattery, takes almost no time to understand the historical context required for good decisions, and actively punishes those who tell him truths he doesn't want to hear.

This is a particular challenge for foreign policy analysts, who like to write about grand strategies and world orders. Saying 'this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed and doesn't know what he's doing' over and over is not very satisfying.

One option is to assume that Trump's erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way: a tactic straight out of The Art of the Deal. This is effectively what James D. Boys argues in US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory. The book's opening chapters offer an engaging intellectual history of the theory's development and use under previous presidents. Most people associate the idea with Richard Nixon, but Boys convincingly argues that Nixon was influenced by President Eisenhower's veiled threats to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War.

The use of unpredictability as a way to improve negotiating strategy was developed by Cold War theorists including Thomas Schelling, Daniel Ellsberg and, most important, Henry Kissinger, who ended up working with Nixon. Whereas the eminently reasonable Eisenhower had used his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, as his 'bad cop' to create some uncertainty about how far the US would go, Nixon and Kissinger swapped roles. White House tapes captured them discussing Kissinger going around the world, encouraging co-operation from other states by telling them he couldn't control his boss.

Boys sees Trump as consciously taking up this tradition in actions that have

Donald Trump addressing troops at the Al Udeid airbase, Qatar, 2025

transformed US foreign policy, from the imposition of tariffs to threatening Greenland and yelling at Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. There is no doubt that Trump has, at various times, thought this was what he was doing. He clearly believes that being as bombastic as possible is the best way to negotiate, and often says that's his plan, in the style of a reality TV contestant being interviewed about their tactics by the producers.

There was an early example during his first presidential campaign when he refused to rule out using tactical nuclear weapons against Islamic State: 'I'm never going to rule anything out ... I wouldn't want to tell you that because at a minimum, I want them to think that maybe we would use them'. During the 2024 campaign, he told the Wall Street Journal that he wouldn't need to use force against China because President Xi 'respects me and he knows I'm fucking crazy'. (That these things are contradictory seems to have escaped him.) His aides regularly invoke Madman Theory as a justification for his behaviour.

The author expresses irritation with commentators who use discussion of Madman Theory as a hook to call Trump mad, noting that the whole point of the approach is to appear as if you're a lunatic while actually being strategic. But the problem is not that Trump is mad, but that he's utterly predictable. His ramblings on his Truth Social platform may be incoherent, but the broad framework in which he operates is consistent: he is a bully. Where he thinks he can take advantage of the US's immense military and economic strength to undermine,

belittle and force fealty, he does. When he faces any kind of serious consequences for his actions, he backs down. Constantly asserting how tough you are, to the extent of namechecking Madman Theory, is not what someone who was actually trying to be strategically unpredictable would do. Nixon never once acknowledged the idea in public (though ultimately his use of it failed to end the Vietnam War, because no one really believed that he was mad).

While other states find Trump hard to deal with, they have figured out that the best way to deal with him is through a combination of flattery, pretend compliance and waiting him out. As he neither cares about outcomes nor can pay attention to anything for more than a few weeks, he can be effectively managed this way. To justify his focus on Madman Theory, Boys goes out of his way to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, at great cost to his broader argument. In the discussion of tariffs, he accepts that the president's decision to impose them on Canada was 'in part, to stem the flow of fentanyl across the northern border' - even though this is an obvious nonsense. Less than 1 per cent of illicit fentanyl arriving in the US comes via Canada.

Boys describes the deal done with Ukraine to secure access to rare earth minerals as payment for military support, as if it were an actual achievement rather than an obvious ruse to keep Trump quiet. Likewise, the bombing of Iran's nuclear sites last year is described as evidence of 'Trump's willingness to follow through on his threats', despite his failure to actually destroy the nuclear sites, in the face of his

claim to the contrary. Indeed, he ultimately forced Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to back off from further bombing runs.

On none of these matters have Trump's tactics worked. The US trade deficit is unchanged. Greenland has not been sold. Ukraine has not been forced to agree a peace deal with Russia. Iran's nuclear capability remains. The current conflict with Iran, which began after Boys's book was completed, is the clearest evidence yet that other states have seen through Trump's bluster and faux belligerence. Despite numerous threats of armageddon, the Iranians have not backed down, and they called Trump's bluff because he appeared unwilling to accept the economic consequences of escalation. China has taken a similar approach to managing trade wars, forcing concessions on the export of chips while finding ways to circumvent tariffs.

Perhaps the only way one could argue that Trump has achieved a long-term American ambition is in forcing European countries to up their defence spending, albeit nowhere near as far as fast as they have promised to do so. Boys claims this as an example of Madman Theory's efficacy, with threats of abandonment encouraging compliance by other Nato members. But there is no unpredictability here. Trump has made it clear that he has no meaningful interest in European security. It's not a bluff, just hostility. And the cost of such disdain for the interests of former allies is that they are starting to exclude the US.

Ukraine no longer depends on the Americans, which has removed any leverage Trump had to force a peace deal

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© BRENNAN WELLINGER/SEP 2025 GETTY IMAGES

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on Russian terms. Increasingly, "middle powers" are profitably co-operating on matters of defence and security. While the US remains the strongest nation in the world due to its military spending and the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, Trump has diminished its global standing for very little benefit. It is tempting to ascribe this to madness, but really it's just incompetence from a president with limited capabilities.

For some, a reduction in the US's footprint is a positive, even if it is through unconventional and often embarrassing means. Trump has found tentative backing in the past from "realists" who have spent years complaining about US imperial overreach and idealistic world-building missions. One of the most influential, Elbridge Colby, occupies a senior role in the renamed Department of War. Others, such as John Mearsheimer, have bemoaned Trump's incoherence and inability to execute while praising his scepticism of liberal interventionism and willingness to criticize Nato's expansion into eastern Europe.

Unfortunately for the realists, in his second term the president has found that he quite enjoys using the military, causing some dismay to those who thought he was an ally - not least to his vice president, J. D. Vance, and America Firsters in the media, such as Tucker Carlson. Those who weren't already disillusioned have found the Iran conflict a chastening experience - it is hard to imagine a more obvious example of a pointless intervention, with unclear and unrealistic objectives that changed, and still change, day to day.

In First Among Equals, Emma Ashford does not try to defend Trump's behaviour in office, instead setting out a realist programme more consistent with the objections to American adventurism that he expressed during the 2016 campaign. Ashford objects to the rhetoric of America First because it doesn't sit well with potential allies: no one likes a bully. But her proposals, which she calls "realist internationalism", are in that vein, seeking to scale back US military objectives and costs. As the US's brief moment as the sole global hegemon comes to an end, Ashford wants "middle powers" to pick up the slack so that US taxpayers see more of their money spent on their domestic needs.

The so-called realists have been bolstered in recent decades by the failure of more ambitious American strategies. Russia, China and other autocracies have not been converted to liberal democracy via capitalism, as many hoped in the years following the Cold War. The post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are now acknowledged by almost everyone to have been disasters on a historic scale, undermining the US's moral and military authority at enormous expense in terms of lives and cash. The US's humanitarian interventions have a chequered record: they stopped Slobodan Milošević from massacring Kosovar Albanians, but failed in Somalia and Libya. The realists also argue that the conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of overreach in the 1990s and 2000s, as the US and western allies unnecessarily provoked Russia by interfering in its "sphere of interest" - though

others would note that Vladimir Putin's own imperial fantasies might have more to do with it.

In practical terms, Ashford calls for a phased withdrawal of the US military from Europe and the Middle East over ten years, arguing that the strategic basis for such a large presence there (the Cold War and oil) no longer holds. She contends that this will give the Europeans plenty of time to get their act together and pay for their own defence, especially as Russian forces have been so heavily depleted by the war in Ukraine. In the Middle East, she wants most bases closed, with just a small naval force left to safeguard shipping lanes. China is now the main strategic risk to the US and so, she says, more focus is needed there, but with the emphasis on containment and building up regional allies to take up more of the slack in the future.

Realism is a useful lens insofar as it encourages policymakers to think about the world as it really is and to set viable objectives. Trump's Iran fiasco is another reminder, if one were needed, of why it is a bad idea to use military force when there's a lack of clarity of purpose in assessing likely outcomes. We might think that it would be good to help the Iranian people to remove a parasitical and brutal regime, but there is no practical way to do so via military means.

The problem with realism, though, especially in the rigid formulation set out by Ashford, is that it assumes that a narrow assessment of interests is always the right course, regardless of circumstances. Ukraine is an obvious example. Though the author is reluctant to say so explicitly, the logic of her position is not only that the US shouldn't be supporting Ukraine now, but also that it shouldn't have in the first place, given the lack of direct American interest in the outcome.

In a section entitled "No one loves a political realist", Ashford notes that "realist arguments about the war in Ukraine - and about the limited interests that the United States has in that conflict - have not sat well with a commentariat populated by those who idolize the liberal ideas of the unipolar moment". But she doesn't explain why they are wrong. Without the support provided by the Biden administration in the first few years, Ukraine may well have collapsed, leading to an emboldened Russia. Avoiding that was unquestionably a good thing. To complain that it violated a neat approach to grand strategy is itself a failure of realistic thinking.

One doesn't need to think that the US can or should respond to every humanitarian crisis or autocratic horror to think that it should help out when it reasonably can and when the objectives are clear and achievable. Seeing the world as it is can mean asserting caution in the face of moral outrage; it can also mean acknowledging that the idealistic solution is sometimes the right one too. Bill Clinton's decision to intervene in Kosovo also violated a narrow understanding of US interests, but it worked and it saved countless lives. Realists would no doubt argue that the short-term success was not worth the effect it had in bolstering the misplaced belief that the US should intervene everywhere. But that's just an argument for taking every situation on its merits and accepting that

logical consistency isn't always achievable in a messy and unfair world.

The same applies to the realist view of relations with allies, which is where there is the clearest overlap with Trump's foreign policy. Ashford argues that the liberal interventionist obsession with permanent alliances, particularly Nato, leads to the US being landed with heavy costs and responsibility as others seek to freeload, while making it difficult to withdraw troops from regions that are no longer a strategic priority. The author approvingly quotes Glenn Snyder: "Alliances have no meaning apart from the adversary threat to which they are a response". But while it is true enough that alliances and partnerships can outlive their purpose, calcify unhelpful beliefs and constitute a false economy - Netanyahu's hold over multiple presidents is perhaps the most obvious example - Snyder's line is manifestly untrue. Alliances that go beyond the transactional, built on history and shared beliefs, have a value beyond the question of immediate threat. They create relationships that allow for a rapid response to new challenges that may not have been predicted. In the aftermath of 9/11, Nato alliances led to a genuine outpouring of support for the US (even if that support was misused by George W. Bush). Such alliances also help to build backing for broader non-military goals. One has to hope that, at some point, a president is going to acknowledge the costs of climate change and the level of international co-ordination required to manage them.

The diminution of alliances under Trump has led not to a stronger and more focused US, but to an increasingly isolated one that is spending no less on its military and simultaneously forfeiting any moral authority that remained after Afghanistan and Iraq. This is in the interests of neither the US nor the world. Again, genuine realism requires a bespoke approach to alliances that acknowledges a wider range of factors and is open to taking different approaches in different circumstances.

While Trump is president, there won't be coherence in US foreign policy, beyond the occasional reassertion of his long-standing bugbears. The world will keep trying to work around him, probably successfully. The bigger question is what happens next. A Vance foreign policy would no doubt be more obnoxious than Ashford would like, though it would be more consistently "realist" in the sense of trying to reduce the US's global commitments. But what about the other side? One hopes that a prospective Democrat president would try to find a role for the US that acknowledges the limitations of intervention and approaches global challenges with a greater level of humility, while understanding that there is a place for US leadership, and that the country's extraordinary power can still be used for good in the right circumstances.

Sam Freedman is the author of Failed State: Why nothing works and how we fix it, 2024. He writes the Comment Is Freed Substack.

IN SIGHT INTERPRETATION

COMMENT: PRESERVOICE, ADVANCE

THE HAKLUYT ESSAY PRIZE

2026

PERSONING: JUDGEMENT

DEBATE: CLARITY

A new essay competition, inviting young writers to offer an original perspective on contemporary global affairs.

Submissions are open now

In collaboration with the Times Literary Supplement

Open to adults 50 and under worldwide. Prize fund: £5,000

Find out more at: hakluytandco.com/essay-prize

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 15

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Classics

Greek and Roman lessons

The moral wisdom of the classics

Barbara Graziosi

Irene Vallejo

Consolations

Timeless wisdom from the ancient world for every day

Translated by Charlotte Whittle 400pp. Hodder and Stoughton. £22.

Emily Katz Anhalt

Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times

Why humanity needs Herodotus, the man who invented history

320pp. Yale University Press. £25 (US$30).

Two new books contribute to the growing trend of bringing ancient wisdom to bear on contemporary problems. In Consolations, Irene Vallejo, a journalist with a doctorate in classics, collects almost 200 of her essays originally published in the Spanish newspaper El País and beautifully translated into English by Charlotte Whittle. "Happiness Ignored", "The Foreign Woman", "Fragile Democracy" and "Conditional Freedom" are just some of the topics, discussed in relation to equally varied ancient sources. In Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times, Emily Katz Anhalt, a professor of classics at Sarah Lawrence College, New York, translates and interprets key episodes from Herodotus' history of the wars between Greece and Persia (The Histories, written c.430 BCE), finding a moral in each: "On Happiness", "On Foreign Ways", "On Political Equality" and "On Freedom" are some of her chapter titles.

The two authors share some interests, though they offer different approaches to both antiquity and the present moment. Their professional training, as a journalist and a professor respectively, partly accounts for this, but they also seem recognizably European and North American in their orientations. Vallejo casts herself as continuing the ancient tradition of philosophers such as Seneca and Cicero, who "wrote short texts known as 'consolations' that would offer comfort to readers in the face of loss and grief". Not all of her essays tackle existential angst or afford philosophical insight, though they all deliver on the promise of brevity. With journalistic discipline, each piece extends just over one page - and each offers a degree of consolation, or at least a combination of surprise, wisdom and humour.

Loss, for Vallejo, is not always a matter of life and death, or at least not directly. In one essay, she worries about thinning hair and suggests a few ancient remedies. In another, she takes inspiration from Confucius' description of an ageing lady and, specifically, the "lovely wrinkles produced by her elegant smile". In yet another, "The Best Sauce", she offers no consolation at all, except if you happen to come from the Spanish city of Cartagena, in which case you may find cause for local pride because the most expensive

garum, an ancient condiment based on fermented fish, was made there: "something smelled rotten in the Roman Empire, and curiously, for its manufacturers and distributors, business was booming".

Mixed in with lighter essays, several contributions testify to Vallejo's seriousness of purpose. In "Hopeful People", Aeschylus and Albert Camus help her conclude that "tragic pessimism will have to wait for better times". In "Borderlands" she observes that "comics originate in the margins - quite literally", then describes various drawings in the borders of ancient papyri. In "Ulysses Syndrome", she insists that "terrorizing the immigrant shatters our own security".

Like a leisurely conversation over coffee, Consolations tackles all manner of subjects with cultivated intelligence, good humour and a general sense of ease. The mundane is given as much space as the momentous; money is repeatedly said to matter little; happiness involves wishing to be who we are; and who we are emerges from multifarious relationships held in balance. The preface suggests that the essays can be read in any order, but Vallejo makes a pointed start to her book with the Greek notion of schole, yielding English "school", but originally meaning "leisure".

Katz Anhalt is less leisurely, more driven in her approach. We have a problem in contemporary culture - polarization - and she plans to fix it. Her choice of ally may seem perplexing at first: Herodotus begins his Histories with a polar opposition between "Greeks" and "barbarians". Nevertheless, her mission is to translate and explain select passages from Herodotus, and thereby save the world. The last chapter, "Preserving Humanity", summarizes the lessons learnt:

redactive, polarized thinking pits us against one another - at the precise moment when our very survival depends

on our ability to face facts, cooperate, and innovate together. The false promise of authoritarianism appeals to people who have not really thought it through.

I could not agree more with Katz Anhalt's conclusions, and there is much to learn from her engagement with Herodotus as she moves towards them. The problem of polarization, however, proves hard to escape. She repeatedly opposes Hellenic "evidence-based, rational investigation and assessment" to Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian and more generally barbarian "closemindedness", which is born, she insists, of unthinking obedience to authority. The question is to what degree this opposition reflects her own world-view and to what extent it represents Herodotus' thinking. To put it differently: harnessing ancient wisdom to solve modern problems can erase the distance between ancient source and modern interpreter. Katz Anhalt does point out that Herodotus sometimes finds foreign ways more "rational" than those of the Greeks, and she praises his stance, arguing that it traces a course between "moral absolutism" and "moral relativism". She herself, however, never once draws inspiration or instruction from non-Greek antiquity. In fact, she thinks that pluralism can be taught by focusing on Herodotus alone.

She presents him as embodying the spirit of Hellenism, even though he often distances himself from the prevailing views of his fellow Greeks, arguing for positions he claims to have learnt from barbarian informants. Whether he really did learn anything from foreigners, or simply characterized them as "the other", the polar opposite of the Greeks, is harder to pin down. An "evidence-based" approach to that question necessarily involves engaging with Persian, Egyptian and Babylonian sources - and evaluating Herodotus in their light. Recent scholarship

has made much progress by doing precisely that. But Katz Anhalt hardly engages with this method. Not even award-winning books such as Ian Moyer's Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism (2011) or Johannes Haubold's Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in literature (2013), make it into her bibliography. Perhaps the genre in which she writes is again partly to blame: addressing world problems takes priority over interdisciplinary collaboration, even though that might prove helpful in overcoming polarization.

Vallejo, too, would benefit from greater academic scaffolding: precise references to ancient sources at the back of her book would have added value to Consolations. She occasionally gives enough detail to allow the reader to identify ancient texts, but sometimes I found nothing could help me track down the ancient materials she had in mind. The story of two ministers set in competition by their king ("What would you like me to give you, knowing your fellow minister will get double the reward?", "Blind me in one eye") is presented as an "Eastern tale", without further detail. I know of a similar story in Latin, and am left wondering whether an ancient anecdote about two neighbours and their prayers to Jupiter travelled east, finding new purpose among warnings to kings and viziers, or whether an eastern tale made it to the Latin West.

Whatever the case, good tales do tend to travel, bypassing ideological east-west divides. It follows that ancient and foreign tales are not just useful exercises in training ourselves to discriminate between truth and falsehood, as Katz Anhalt suggests. They can also speak to our curiosity, wonder, eccentricity and even uncertainty. Vallejo displays those qualities in abundance, even if she occasionally seems to me too comfortable, and perhaps specifically too European, in her viewpoint. For example, she assumes Roman lineage ("we, their descendants") and ends with an invitation "to reflect on the fragility of our conquests: water, air, peace, rights, and democracy". In the US, admitting "fragility" can lead to mockery, especially if you are of European extraction. After all, white people live in the land of the conquered and their control of it hardly seems fragile. The ancient lineage that Katz Anhalt claims for herself and her readers is not as broad as that of Vallejo. It focuses more narrowly on politics and concludes with a thought on progress, rather than on preserving privilege. "The ancient Athenians", she writes, "never realized the great egalitarian, humane potential of democratic government. Herodotus equips us to do better."

Barbara Graziosi is Ewing Professor of Greek at Princeton University and Visiting Leventis Chair at the University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book is Classics, Love, Revolution: The legacies of Luigi Settembrini, 2024.

"The Three Philosophers" by Giorgione, c.1508-09

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© G. ARTHUR GALLERY

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Englished Homer

The enduring influence of the classical epics

Peter McDonald

Emily Wilson

Journeys through ancient literature 280pp. Profile. Paperback, £12.99.

Henry Power

Homer-Haunted The many afterlives of an ancient poet 352pp. Bloomsbury. £25.

“It is probable”, Alexander Pope wrote in his translation of the Iliad (1715-20), “the author’s own words, at the time he used them, never meant half so many things as we translate them into.” For the would-be “literal” translator, this may be terrifying, while for a poet, it is potentially liberating. Audiences are another matter. Here, as Pope put it, the aspirant translator “must hope to please but a few, those only who have at once a taste of poetry, and competent learning”. Yet “learning” and “a taste of poetry” are each treacherous, since “a mere modern wit can like nothing that is not modern, and a pedant nothing that is not Greek”.

Wits and pedants have changed a lot over three centuries, but they have not gone away. Classical texts are forever ancient, while their translations are fated to be always modern, so the strange and the familiar have to meet, somehow; but they may not get along easily. A particular awkwardness turns on questions of “fidelity”. Philology and textual criticism have had plenty to say on that subject, but they have never been good at understanding how, in dealing with the “poetry” of ancient works, such learning cannot have the last word.

Emily Wilson, who has translated both Homeric epics, is the best-known contemporary Homeric translator. Deservedly so, for her uncluttered English style achieves that most important of things for any translation: it does not get in Homer’s way. She thinks well about what is at stake in literary translation, and her collection of essays, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, includes pieces on Aeschylus, Demosthenes and Aristophanes, as well as Plautus, Terence and Catullus. Wilson is reliably alert to cultural nuance and complexity – not least our own – and does an impressive job of transusing a classical scholar’s knowledge into the liveliness and uncondescending intelligence of good critical writing. There is plenty to disagree with here, but that is a sign that plenty is going on: this stimulating collection has a way of opening subjects up rather than closing them down.

The crux comes with Homer. Wilson wants to get some things straight about her translations, and to set them in context. That seems reasonable, given the screeching idiocy of social media onslaughts on her Homer as a supposedly “woke” betrayal of culturally foundational texts. There is next to nothing of interest about these attacks, except perhaps their occasional insistence on the “meaning” of the Greek, which

Wilson has supposedly got wrong or ignored in her own ideological interests. That attempted pedantry is nonsense, of course, and Pope (by any reckoning, a far “freer” translator than Wilson) would have found it hilariously inept.

Wilson does not always see the more generous side of things. Her recent attack on Christopher Nolan’s film in the LRB may have a certain amount of light to shed on the failings of his much-praised piece of mass entertainment, but its heat makes that light harder to see, and it was probably unwise anyway (such things generate instant rows and nobody wins – this is not how critical thinking and discussion work). As for her keyboard enemies, she may be taking them too seriously: a lot is conceded when she says, “The Odyssey is now ultra-canonical, and often viewed as the well-spring of ‘Western civilisation’, whatever that may be”. The poem is the “wellspring” of many more important things than this, and her last phrase is pure exasperation, though it will probably excite her opponents to further indignation. This book shows that she knows perfectly well what “Western civilisation” is, in terms of literary heritage and value; and, what is more, she can put it expertly into critical practice.

More worrying is her remark (on Richmond Lattimore’s Homer) that “he made no claim to be ‘writing poetry’, whatever that may be”. There is no excuse for exasperation here: Wilson offers her translations as poetry, so she really ought to be able to say what that is. Her Homer, though good in so many ways, is less good as poetry. Like many verse translators, Wilson (influenced, perhaps, by the prosodic analyses so essential to her academic discipline) falls victim to the fallacy that metre makes poetry. She uses blank verse flatly, as a vehicle rather than a medium;

it serves to carry her translation rather than to shape it.

Poetry and scholarship, though sometimes mutually attracted, have a history of troubled relationships. Wilson’s essay on Edith Hamilton, a bestselling twentieth-century American agent for classical culture, pays acute attention to such problems, but cannot shake off unease about the ways in which “the most successful popularisations of the classics have been created by those who are not themselves classicists”. The broader cultural politics are well known. Derek Walcott, whose poem Omeros (1990) is a brilliant reanimation of Homer, noted that “the English think Homer belongs to them... an English poem that has been translated into Greek”.

Walcott is one of the fine case studies in Henry Power’s adventurous and nimble Homer-Haunted, in which sixteen English-language poets are approached by way of their various degrees of Homeric creative intimacy. Some, like Pope, are indissolubly married to their great original by way of full-scale translation (he and George Chapman have chapters to themselves), while others are poets under Homer’s influence, rather than translators as such. In this group, John Keats is the pre-eminent example of what used to be called a “Greekless reader”, for whom Homer lit the poetic touchpaper. Power conveys well the circumstances of Keats’s sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, and the sense of artistic rebirth as this young poet discovered himself in the mirror of Chapman’s Homeric verse. Old Etonian Percy Bysshe Shelley wanted to get hold of Keats and teach him Greek; but he was missing the point, for Keats already had all the Greek he needed.

Yet it was Pope, not Chapman, who gave the nineteenth century its most enduring poetic version of Homer (or, at least, of the

Iliad). While the rest of his poetry was losing much of its purchase on contemporary tastes, Pope’s Homer was difficult to budge. This wasn’t for want of trying: William Cowper’s Iliad and Odyssey – in blank verse rather than Popeian couplets – had their own impact, but were fatally set upon by Matthew Arnold as ersatz Milton, and have never quite recovered. Power might have shed light here, but doesn’t: his summary condemnation of “overwrought, cod-Miltonic blank verse” in Cowper’s Homer is the one serious critical misjudgement in an otherwise reliable book. The author of The Task (1785) was the most significant practitioner of blank verse between Milton and Wordsworth, and forfeited none of this particular genius when confronted by ancient Greek.

A merit of Power’s book is its ability to observe the generative strength of Homer in many other poets, whether or not they see their work as “translation”. This becomes a little slapdash as Power approaches the present day, and there is a suspicion that relatively casual uses of Homer are in a few cases being critically oversold. But the palpable successes for Power are many, and his treatments of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and Christopher Logue (on whom Wilson also comments well) are revelatory. Power’s chapter on Arnold is penetrating, yet has oddly little to say about his lectures on translating Homer. Like any great critic, Arnold can be greatly wrong: his prescription of the English hexameter as the fitting metre for full Homeric translations remains a grievous mistake. Yet in the course of the lectures, he was able to employ that metre to create beautiful excerpts from Homer as “specimens” of what might be done some day by someone (though not today, and not by him). These were in effect poems in themselves, and among the best he ever wrote.

The revolution Arnold probably had no idea he had begun was a distillation of narrative verse into shorter lyric moments. Impressed by Alice Oswald’s ambitions for the “excavation” of the Iliad in her book Memorial (2011), Power notices how narrative content has vanished like a ghost. Is this a creative breakthrough or a kind of collapse? Power does not pursue the question. The modern Irish poet Michael Longley gives Power’s book its title; but he ought really to have a substantial chapter to himself, as the key figure in the transformation of the Homeric from epic sweep to lyrical intensity. Short poems, after all, can be far from insubstantial; and if we are looking for poetry (“whatever that may be”), Longley’s many snatches of translation are the closest Homer has come in recent decades to that perhaps undefinable but nevertheless essential thing.

Peter McDonald’s translation of The Homeric Hymns, 2016, was a Poetry Book Society recommended translation and was shortlisted for the London Hellenic prize.

“Homer singing with his lyre” by Félix Boisselier, early nineteenth century

© CAROL PHILLIPS/GETTY PHOTOS

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 17

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Commentary

Mr Wells and Mr Buchan

How the novelist fell out with his publisher

Kate Macdonald

Early in the twentieth century, H. G. Wells was constantly at work, driven by the need for money. It was not unusual for him to be writing a novel while simultaneously negotiating the sale of the previous book and the reprint rights for earlier work with a number of publishers. While he did use the services of literary agents, he was capable of handling the complex contract side himself, as well as using his forceful personality and celebrity value to clinch a deal.

In the spring and summer of 1908, Wells was writing a very personal novel, Ann Veronica. The plot drew from his affair with Amber Reeves, a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate and a great friend of his second wife, Catherine. According to most of Wells's biographers, Reeves was determined to have Wells's child, and he promised to dedicate Ann Veronica to their as yet unconceived daughter, whom they were already calling Anna-Jane.

An affair that was already building such castles in the air would require financial planning. Wells knew that Catherine and their two sons would still need to be supported, and Amber and a baby would need a separate establishment, should Amber's family refuse to pay for one. In June 1908, Wells approached the Scottish publishing house Thomas Nelson's, offering them the reprint rights for Kipps (1905) at the high price of £950.

Nelson's was an odd choice for Wells. The firm was best known for educational and Christian publications, and for its monopoly on editions of the Bible. Wells, for his part, was a difficult author to publish due to the notoriety of some of his works: there were already circulating libraries that refused to stock his books, in turn affecting publishers' profits.

In 1907, Nelson's employed a new man to run their London office, John Buchan. Then in his early thirties, Buchan had published seventeen books - a mixture of novels, collections of short stories and non-fiction - while The Thirty-Nine Steps and the other novels that would make him famous had yet to appear. He had been a reader for the avant-garde publisher John Lane in his first year at Oxford in 1896, in which role, with celebrated acuity, he had urged the merits of Arnold Bennett's first novel, A Man From the North (1898).

After Oxford, Buchan read for the Bar and did a stint in South Africa as an imperial civil servant in land reallocation. By the time he landed the job at Nelson's -

The frontispiece to Ann Veronica, 1909

through his friendship with one of the partners, Tommy Nelson - Buchan was go-getting, full of ideas and a great collector of friends in high places. He plunged into networking among authors, politicians and the aristocracy. He knew exactly who to approach, for example, about a proposed edition of Queen Victoria's letters. While on honeymoon, eight months after starting at Nelson's, he wrote to the office with an assurance that he could return if he was needed for a business trip to the US - the Edwardian equivalent of the tech bro who never turns off his phone for anything. Buchan was a supremely competent multitasker, but also, perhaps, a little naive.

We know all this because the Nelson's archives in the University of Edinburgh Library's Heritage Collections constitute a remarkable record of Edwardian publishing from the inside. I spent years working on these letters, unpacking what Buchan actually did. He was Nelson's marketing manager, rights manager, legal adviser, editor and copywriter, translation adviser and picture researcher; he had strong views on its series designs. He negotiated

with authors and their agents. He dreamt up new schemes and spotted good business opportunities. He developed one of the first cheap reprint series, the Nelson's Sevenpennies. I wrote in the TLS almost twenty years ago (August 10, 2007) about discovering Buchan's part in Nelson's completely forgotten First World War magazine, The War: he devised it and, for the best part of two years, edited it and largely wrote it.

Late last year, Paul Barnaby, curator of the University of Edinburgh Library's Modern Literary Collections, got in touch with me to say that he had found an uncatalogued box of Buchan's Nelson's letters. These 508 letters date from late 1906 to the end of 1908, and are earlier than any I had seen before from Buchan's publishing career. At first sight, they seemed to be more of the same: typed carbon copies and originals in his appalling handwriting, evidence of his multi-tasking enthusiasm and spontaneous suggestions for different projects. The letters between Buchan and George Brown, his Edinburgh counterpart, are as frequent as emails, since the two men

wrote to each other several times every day about what they were working on together, Buchan dealing with authors, agents and newspapers, while Brown acted as the publisher's production manager and printing supervisor.

The rediscovered letters also provide new evidence of Buchan's ingenuity in expanding Nelson's business. He was keen on modern advertising and considered moving away from traditional display ads. "Masses of red and yellow on the book-stalls are a far better inducement to the public than a page twice a week in the Daily Mail" (May 24, 1907). He devised spine layouts, designed leaflets and inserts, and boosted a photograph of a Birmingham bookshop display in advertising for the Sevenpennies. He mingled with the great and the good: "Last night at dinner I sat next to Mrs Barrie, and she told me that her husband had come home the other night with the whole six of our [Sevenpennies] and was greatly delighted with them" (May 30, 1907). Mrs Barrie was then deep in her affair with Gilbert Cannan and separated from J. M. Barrie, so perhaps this was a performative demonstration of wifehood. In 1908, Buchan urged Brown to consider collaborating with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu ("He is my wife's cousin"), to print his pioneering motoring guidebooks and have Nelson's titles sold from the Piccadilly shop of Montagu's magazine, The Car.

Buchan was keen to fill gaps in the market, urging Brown to consider publishing a new edition of George Douglas Brown's radical novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901), as it was out of print, but still in demand. When Brown objected to taking "unpleasant" stories like this for the Sevenpennies, Buchan rejoined: "It would be an immense mistake I think to attempt to make the Library cater only for people who can read no fiction save stories for school-girls. [But] I should rigidly exclude any really unpleasant book and also, I think, books which play at being unpleasant in a silly way" (November 5, 1907).

By mid-1908, Buchan was suggesting titles by the actress and activist Elizabeth Robins ("There are many hundreds of thousands of suffragists in the country, most of them poor, who cannot afford to buy a 6s. book, but The Convert might easily become the bible of their cause"; July 29, 1908); the queen of the historical romp, Baroness Orczy; the imperious Victorian bestseller Mary Elizabeth Braddon; the sentimental realist Frances Hodgson Burnett; and the quirky Elizabeth von Arnim. Many of the writers he was pitching for the Sevenpennies had had their big hits in the nineteenth century: even as Buchan was developing a New Novels list, Victorian culture continued to dominate in British publishing.

It was in this context that Wells and Buchan first came into contact. Buchan was looking for suitable titles for reprinting in the Sevenpennies, and hoping to launch Nelson's New Novels in 1910. He rejected

18 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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Wells's £950 offer for the reprint rights for Kipps (which its first publisher, Macmillan, had declined to reissue). The negotiations continued, and at the end of June Wells and Buchan had settled on a price of £750, including, too, the reprint rights for Love and Mr Lewisham (1900) and In the Days of the Comet (1906). Perhaps encouraged by this evident enthusiasm for his fiction, in late November 1908, Wells sent Buchan his new novel.

This makes Buchan one of Ann Veronica's first readers. On December 1, 1908, he wrote to Brown: "I sat up till the small hours this morning reading Wells' new novel, Ann Veronica. I think it very good, and as it is about a girl who runs away from a suburban home and becomes a Suffragist and a Fabian its interest is exceedingly topical. I am inclined to think we might make a great success of it. The ending was absurd at first, but he has altered that now".

Given what we already know about Wells's attempts to sell Ann Veronica, this letter throws new light on his negotiating tactics, as well as on Buchan's gullibility. In October, Frederick Macmillan had written to Wells to say that he liked the novel, but would not publish it because it would offend Macmillan's public. Michael Sherborne, Wells's biographer, writes that, "Fortunately for Wells, another publisher, T Fisher Unwin, had recently contacted him as part of a recruiting drive for well-known authors. Two days before

Macmillan's final rejection he was already negotiating with this rival". In November 1908, Wells wrote to T Fisher Unwin to resume a discussion about an unnamed novel that he hoped the publisher would take for £1,470 in three payments: this was almost certainly Ann Veronica. On November 10, he mentioned Hutchinson as a possible publisher as well.

Following Macmillan's unexpected rejection of Ann Veronica, Wells was casting his nets wide; after reading the book for the first time, Buchan was more excited than was sensible. His letter of December 1 to his Edinburgh counterparts asked permission to secure the novel without them seeing the manuscript first. Brown agreed. The next day, Buchan wrote again: "I was not satisfied with the end of Wells' Ann Veronica. There was one passage which I thought quite unnecessary and stupidly improper, so I have sent it back to him to amend".

He does not specify which "passage" he found objectionable, but it is likely to have been the same one that scandalized the novel's reviewers: a frank depiction of a young woman asking for a sexual relationship with a married man.

"... Are you sure what it is you want of me?"

"I want you. I want you to be my lover.

I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you." She paused for a moment. "Is that plain?" she asked.

Despite his lack of discomfort about "unpleasant" subjects, Buchan was quite

Wittgenstein's Hatred of Daylight

Did Jesus wear a cardigan? Who cares?

Is Djokovic the Greatest Of All Time?

Are you joking? What's with the D?

Do you love me? Answer yes or no.

Is it true all Hell will be let loose?

Did I ever tell you about the nanny?

About the Russian cryotherapy chambers?

Why do dealers live with their mothers?

Who am I to judge? Is dusk night?

Are mosquitoes gnats? And why whine?

Do you ever cry when you're alone?

How would you define the perfect blow-out?

Yes, but in whose arms did Kafka die?

Where's the nearest camel? Is it happy?

Don't you ever speak? What's "body-glide"?

What language do they speak in Heaven anyway?

And did you enjoy the sausage with chocolate sauce?

And why did he hate daylight? And who said

Forgiveness falls like hair into a soup?

(Or is it best not to mention Wittgenstein?)

What are you afraid of? Nail salons?

(Do I ask too many questions?) Nannies?

Do we need astronauts? And, please,

how do I know which flavour I should go for?

I love them all so much I can't stand it!

SELIMA HILL

Selima Hill's next collection of poems, If You Want to Scream Please Scream, will be published in 2027. She recently received the King's Gold Medal for poetry.

aware of what Nelson's could and could not publish, and what might wreck their sales and reputation. He had airily claimed that Wells would make the changes to the text that he had requested; Wells did not agree to anything of the sort. A fortnight after Buchan's enthusiastic letter to Brown, Wells wrote to Philip Cazenove, an agent he used for serializations, to say that T Fisher Unwin had "crumpled up", and had bought Ann Veronica "without seeing it & I've had none of the publishers & editors [sic] criticisms or anything of that sort". The criticisms from publishers and editors that he resented had been from those who had actually read the novel: Frederick Macmillan and John Buchan.

Ten months later, in October 1909, T Fisher Unwin published Ann Veronica in the form that Wells had wanted. One of its most vicious reviews was from the Spectator, by its editor, St Loe Strachey. Buchan was also a Spectator writer, publishing sixty reviews in the magazine in 1909 alone. Had he had a word?

Ann Veronica was dedicated to "A J". Two months after its publication, Amber Reeves - by now Mrs Blanco White - gave birth to Wells's daughter, Anna-Jane.

Nelson's did publish a new Wells novel before long: it brought out The History of Mr Polly in 1910. Although the majority of reviews were positive, the Field condemned it as "the most repulsive story of unredeemed vulgarity and sordid discomfort". Furious, Wells wanted to launch a legal action against the magazine for defamation, and asked Nelson's to

support him. Worrying that this projected action would sully the Nelson's brand, Buchan reckoned that Ann Veronica was "sure to be brought up" (May 25, 1910). It had, by then, become for him "that indefensible book".

In the event, Brown ruled that Nelson's would not support Wells in the libel case, to protect its business information. In November 1910, Wells complained to Buchan that the short stories he had sold to Nelson's had still not been published. Buchan advised Brown that Wells had no legal case to insist on publication, and that, in addition, it would be better for Nelson's to keep Wells's stories as a Sevenpenny title, so that edition would be as separate as possible from the furore - another furore - surrounding The New Machiavelli (first serialized in the English Review in 1910), which Macmillan and Heinemann had refused to publish. (The Bodley Head did so in 1911.) Both Buchan and Brown were, by then, thoroughly aware of the difficulties of negotiating with and about Wells. Ten years later, the bad blood between Buchan and Wells had clotted. As Buchan told Brown in a letter of February 20, 1920, Wells was "quite the most disgusting person we have had to do with I have ever met, and, though I know him pretty well, I do not at all like him".

Kate Macdonald is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University and was the publisher at Handheld Press.

The John Buchan Society

Statesman, historian, lawyer, politician, journalist, editor but known primarily as the author of 100 works of fiction and non-fiction, John Buchan is a writer still widely read and respected today.

The publication of the acclaimed biography 'Beyond The Thirty Nine Steps' by Ursula Buchan and this year's anniversary collection of enlightening essays about him, 'John Buchan Reconsidered', have brought Buchan to a new audience.

The John Buchan Society has promoted the man and his works for over 45 years to a membership of general readers and academics around the world through its journal, newsletters and meetings.

Join today by contacting: www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 19

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Commentary

Sentenced

Prisoners' favourite reading, then and now

Jenny Hartley

One of Winston Churchill's less well-known achievements was the appointment of a Prison Libraries Committee in 1910. As home secretary, he asked this committee to consider and report on 'the principles which should govern the supply of books to the prisoners in H. M. Prisons and to the inmates of H. M. Borstal Institutions'. With his injunction to bear in mind 'the reformative purposes of prison treatment', the committee set to work. Visiting borstals (the precursors to young offender institutions) and jails across the country, they talked to prison chaplains, who were responsible for the selection and distribution of books. They also talked to prisoners and 'examined the books they were reading', for the report that they presented the following year. More than a century later, in this National Year of Reading, their findings and their judgements tell a fascinating story, especially when compared with a similar exercise carried out in 2026.

The Prison Libraries Committee also compiled a list of prisoners' favourite authors. On the whole, they approved. 'The desire for books of fiction in prisons should be met, as now, in a liberal spirit.' There were a few caveats about this all-fiction list. 'Among novels other than those of the greatest writers, stories of a healthy, bracing, outdoor nature are to be preferred, especially for young prisoners.' And in terms of quantity: 'Two novels a week appear to us to be enough for any man, in or out of prison'. Many of the authors on this list would require some reading stamina, but the committee was pleased to report good literacy rates. 'The days when the bulk of prisoners were quite ignorant and illiterate are past ... actual illiterates are now few.'

Today, by contrast, lamentations regarding levels of literacy in UK prisons are all too frequent. The Ministry of Justice wants to improve on this, with regard to basic literacy and encouraging reading alike. Earlier this year, Charlie Taylor, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, commended the progress made by imaginative new reading initiatives. His 'Reading for rehabilitation' report 'highlights some very positive findings from jails in which committed governors and other leaders had worked together to create a strong reading culture'. Taylor recognizes the library's central role here. He applauds the establishment of 'mini-libraries on wings, in workshops, visits areas and other communal spaces'. Throughout the prisons he visited, well-resourced displays, 'actively curated by staff of prisoners', going 'beyond books to include magazines, puzzles and word games... visibly encouraged engagement'. Other effective projects include Drop Everything and Read sessions at HMP Rye Hill, 'short (15 minute) breaks set aside

A film poster for East Lynne, 1925

three times a week for everyone - staff and prisoners - to read. This simple but powerful routine created conversations about reading and demonstrated that it was valued by the whole prison'.

What books are being read at such times, and how do they compare to the selections of 1911? I am grateful to the librarians in more than fifty prisons across the UK who contributed to a survey, and to the charity Give a Book for its help in circulating it. The lists of 1911 and 2026 share more similarities than I expected. On both, fiction predominates and women authors are popular. This is striking, given that there are far more men's prisons than women's prisons, and that male readers more generally say they prefer nonfiction to fiction and male writers to female writers. The two lists also share the same shape: a runaway winner at the top and a long tail at the other end. The list from 2026 would be much longer if every author on the librarians' top six were on it. I haven't listed 100 or so authors who appeared once or twice.

The leader of the pack in 1911 was Mrs Henry Wood, who is best remembered now (if at all) for East Lynne, published in 1861, fifty years before the Prison Libraries Committee's survey. It enjoyed a long afterlife in stage and screen adaptations. 'Dead and never called me mother' was its most famous line, though that came from a stage version rather than the novel itself. Lee Child is a worthy winner for 2026: he has just been appointed by the Ministry of Justice as the first Prison Reading Laureate. Both Wood and Child have distinguished literary admirers. When Leo Tolstoy was asked which books had most influenced him, Mrs Wood featured on his list of fifty writers. She is categorized as 'Great', alongside Anthony Trollope and George Eliot. East Lynne is still to be found in his library at Yasnaya Polyana. In 2019, meanwhile, Robert Irwin chose the latest Child as one of his books of the year: 'Like its numerous predecessors, the thriller Blue Moon by Lee Child ... is in a class of its own, for the thoroughness of its research, its inventive and (somewhat violent) plotting and, above all, for its extraordinary narrative suspense. The tension is horrible and one hopes and knows it will last' (TLS, November 29, 2019).

East Lynne was one of the first novels to be called sensational - the 'secret skeleton' school, as Mrs Wood described it - and readers lapped it up, with certain exceptions. The novelist Margaret Oliphant objected to the heroine's activities: seduced, abandoned and disfigured in a train crash, Lady Isabel Vane puts on scarves and dark glasses, and does a Mrs Doubtfire to return as her children's governess. 'Nohow', Oliphant wrote in her review of the novel, 'except by her wickedness and sufferings, could she have gained so strong a hold on our sympathies. This is dangerous and foolish work.' It was also very popular, although, according to her son, Ellen Wood never received a penny from the countless adaptations. The best fit with her from 2026 is the American author Freida McFadden, high on the lists at both men's and women's prisons. The opening sentence of McFadden's bestseller The Housemaid (2022) - 'If I leave this house, it will be in handcuffs' - is perfect Wood terrain. As prolific as Wood, McFadden had eight titles in last year's Sunday Times top fifty bestsellers; the film of The Housemaid has been a box-office success.

From their issue desks on the front line, prison librarians are well informed about current demand. True crime is 'always the most popular genre', but 'urban fiction' is 'a trend falling off here': 'Child and [Martina] Cole going off the boil', but 'Jeffrey Archer starting to make a comeback.' 'Fantasy is the favourite genre at the moment, it used to be historical fiction but that's dropped out.' Throughout the prison estate, fantasy seems to be riding high, especially 'anything in a series'. Graphic novels and manga titles do particularly well with younger readers. A librarian at a young offender institution acknowledged that these books 'can be quite expensive but we have a monthly book budget to spend on books and try to aim for a range of genres that will engage the young people. The boys do look after the books in general so it is a good investment if the graphic novels and manga get them reading and keep them occupied when they are in their rooms'.

A phenomenon noticed by quite a few librarians is that 'different books seem to go in and out of favour. There'll be a rush on YA series like the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore or series by Garth Nix or Darren Shan, then that interest will suddenly disappear'. The authors of the report of 1911 would have recognized this. They observed 'a curious fashion in books which occasionally springs up and runs through a prison'. They were, however, rather cynical about the Shakespeare craze at Dartmoor. In their opinion, it was prisoners wanting to make 'a show of great cultivation. Shortly afterwards at the same prison Dickens became the rage'. I am less cynical, more hopeful for what this says concerning the state of reading in prison. These trends suggest to me a

culture of book chat. People are talking about books, passing on recommendations, enjoying a shared pleasure. Word of mouth rules here, even in places where prisoners might be spending most of their time behind a locked door. How else would Michael Ochs's 1000 Record Covers have made it onto the list of the most borrowed books in one particular prison - or Machiavelli in another?

Unlike the list of 1911, this year's list isn't all fiction. 'Books by [the Australian television personality and spiritual writer] Rhonda Byrne, as soon as we stock copies they disappear'. Popular psychology, wellbeing and self-help books (Ant Middleton, David Goggins) have a strong following, as do L. J. Flanders's Cell Workout and Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not! Such titles were not available to prisoners in 1911, although they would all have found in their cells a copy of A Healthy Home and How to Keep It (1905), a guide by Florence Stacpoole, described in the report as 'a useful manual of general information on hygienic, sanitary and domestic matters'.

These days, many prisons run book clubs, and I asked group facilitators what books had gone well recently. Again, a diverse selection emerged, from Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) to Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow). Choice is for the groups themselves to make - you don't get to choose much in prison. They like to range both geographically and generically, covering biography, autobiography, history, poetry and contemporary politics as well as fiction. Classics are well represented: Homer, Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, John Steinbeck. Also Thomas Hardy, the only overlap between 1911 and 2026 (when a group chose Far from the Madding Crowd). Dystopias are having a moment: The Handmaid's Tale, Animal Farm, 1984, The Road, The Day of the Triffish, Klara and the Sun, Brave New World, Fatherland.

As for many of us, ideas about what to read are come from many sources. There has to be some sort of connection, however tangential, to help us on our way: a review, a personal recommendation, a prize list, a present, someone engrossed on the Tube. Reading is, it seems, a contact sport. You never know where the next madge is going to come from. A group at a young offender institution chose The Outsider at the suggestion of a member who had seen Albert Camus's novel on a character's college reading list in the television series Power.

Discussions tend to be engaged, lively, good-humoured. You can catch a flavour of them in the Prison Reading Groups column in Inside Time, the national monthly newspaper for prisoners (at insidetime.org). And they don't confine themselves to the hour or so of the group. One member described the effect: 'Word on the yard used to be, what're you in for? Now it's where are you up to?'

Jenny Hartley OBE, Emeritus Professor at the University of Roehampton, co-founded Prison Reading Groups in 1959. Her most recent book is Charles Dickens: A very short introduction, 2019.

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Letter from ...

Athens

Norma Clarke

Just over 200 years ago, on May 22, 1825, a famous heroine of the Greek War of Independence, Laskarina Bouboulina, was shot and killed at her house on the island of Spetses. The occasion was not one of the many battles into which Bouboulina had led her private army, nor the blockade of Nafplio commemorated in a grand painting showing her standing tall and stalwart as her ship crests the waves. Less glamorously, she was shot when she went out onto her balcony to remonstrate with a local family whose daughter, Eugenia Koutsi, was in love with her son. The young couple had run away. The Koutsi family's honour cried out for revenge.

Feuding families, arranged marriages, bristling defence of honour and a ready resort to violence are more familiar elements of Greek culture to me than the events of Bouboulina's life. Her portrait in the National Historical Museum in Athens shows her with a pistol in her belt, a stern expression and a matronly bosom - she had, after all, given birth to seven children - and credits her with the honorary title "Rear Admiral". The title was awarded in 2018. The Russians, rather more promptly, dubbed Bouboulina "Admiral" a few days after her death, acknowledging her extraordinary participation in the uprising against 400 years of Ottoman rule that began in 1821 in the Peloponnese.

Although most of Greece was chronically underdeveloped and poor, the islands of Spetses and Hydra were busy, profitable maritime centres. Bouboulina, twice widowed, had been left a vast fortune by her second husband, and this wealth helped fund the insurrection. She built ships, particularly the warship Agamemnon, with its eighteen cannons. But it was her personal involvement at the head of her troops, like a latter-day Joan of Arc, that made her internationally renowned.

I pondered Bouboulina as I looked at battlefield sketches in the War Museum of Athens by Thalia Flora-Karavia, depicting scenes from a later conflict, the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. Flora-Karavia had petitioned to be allowed to be a war artist. Along with her contemporary and friend Sofia Laskaridou, she was one of the first generation of successful professional women artists in Greece, holding exhibitions and selling their work. Or not quite the first. Because, as well as Bouboulina, Spetses, with its wealthy ship-owning class, could boast that it produced the first Greek woman known to have trained and practised as

A self-portrait by Eleni Boukoura, 1855

a professional artist: Eleni Boukoura. By the time she reached her teens, the Turks had been ousted and the Greek nation born. The capital of the new state moved from nearby Nafplio to Athens.

It was painters rather than warriors who brought me to Athens this time, a city that half feels like home, though I barely know it. My English father married my Greek mother in Athens in 1945. Like many Greeks who had endured brutal years of war, famine and occupation, she was glad to leave. Her knowledge of modern Greek history was rudimentary, but she knew something of Lord Byron and the British Philhellenism that supported the new nation state. For a long time, that was about as much as I knew, too. But bit by bit, reading and visiting in the cooler months, learning from Athenian friends, I came in a roundabout way to an interest in Greek artists; and it was a bestselling, widely translated novel, Rhea Galanaki's Eleni, or Nobody (1994), that introduced me to Boukoura. For artists such as Flora-Karavia and Laskaridou, she was the trail-blazing grandmother.

Her parents were cultured art lovers. Noting his daughter's precocious abilities as a painter, her father sought out the best teachers. By her mid-twenties, she was restless to go to Italy to see and study the masters. With a letter of recommendation from her tutor, Raffaello Ceccoli, she sailed for Naples, accompanied by her father. For this journey, it was deemed best that she went dressed as a man and used her brother's name. She studied in Rome from 1848-50, taking lessons from Johann Friedrich Overbeck, a founding member of the Nazarenes who had occupied the abandoned monastery of Sant'Isidoro. The Nazarenes adopted monkish robes and wore their hair long. A self-portrait shows Boukoura at her easel, in profile,

a pretty youth of indeterminate sex in a long robe. Later, in Florence, she fell in love with a half-Greek, half-Italian painter, Francesco Altamura, and had two babies in quick succession, both sent home for her parents to raise.

It's not clear how strenuously she concealed her female self. Her choice to dress as a man in order to pursue her vocation in the 1840s aligned her with the well-known French examples of George Sand and Rosa Bonheur. In 1853, she converted to Catholicism and married Altamura. But male dress evidently carried powerful meanings for her. In a self-portrait from 1855, she's wearing a man's suit and has a moustache. Again, she's posed at her easel, but looking out at the viewer, one womanly hand holding a brush dipped into colours on a palette. Also looking out is the finished figure on the canvas, the bust of a woman wearing evening dress, bare-shouldered, smaller than the painter but rendered no less clearly, so that there seems to be some equivalence between the two. They might be a couple. The sitter is an English woman, a fellow painter, Jane Benham Hay. She subsequently eloped with Altamura.

"Self-portrait Dressed as a Man, Painting Jane Benham Hay" was acquired by a collector in Athens, Dimitris Papageorgopoulos. The highlight of my trip was a visit to his apartment, where some of his collection of paintings, photographs, manuscripts and memorabilia of Greek women artists born in the nineteenth century is housed. (The bulk of the "Archive of Neo-Hellenic Art: Sofia Laskaridou" is currently homeless and in storage.) Thanks to the kindness of friends who made the connection, I was taken by Terpsichore Angelopoulou, who heads up Bonham's auction house in Athens, an enthusiast with an unrivalled knowledge of modern Greek art.

The rooms we were welcomed into, with their crowded walls and neatly laid-out displays (objets d'art, newspapers, catalogues, a revolver, a rifle), testified to an obsessive pursuit that began when Papageorgopoulos, aged fifteen, first heard about Laskaridou. In the early twentieth century, hers was a familiar name in Greek art circles. Born in Kallipea, a suburb to the south of Athens - where, as it happens, my mother was born - she studied at the School of Fine Arts (1903-07), having personally persuaded the king that women should be admitted. Taught by Konstantinos Volanakis, Georgios Roilos, Nikephoros Lytas and Georgios Iakovidis, she was immensely productive and began exhibiting while still a student: genre scenes, landscapes, portraits. She had solo exhibitions and also exhibited alongside Flora-Karavia, who had studied in Munich.

It was perhaps the example of Flora-Karavia that led Laskaridou to

Munich in 1907, then Paris; or perhaps the attentions of Pericles Giannopoulos had become too pressing for a woman who declared herself a free spirit and who can be seen in the many photos larking about with her women friends. Giannopoulos, a writer as well as an artist, was a romantic Hellenist urging a spiritual revolution for a Greek renaissance. He was histrionic and confessedly in love with death as well as with the beautiful Sofia. In 1910, he galloped into the sea, a crown of wild flowers on his head and weights in his pockets, and shot himself. (The horse returned to shore.) Laskaridou briefly came home to Athens, distraught; and myth-makers have blamed her for Giannopoulos's death ever since.

As well as "Self-portrait Dressed as a Man, Painting Jane Benham Hay", Papageorgopoulos owns portraits of Laskaridou and Flora-Karavia, each of whom painted the other. Flora-Karavia's "Portrait of Sofia Laskaridou" (1903) depicts her holding a very large brush and palette, and gazing directly at the viewer; Laskaridou's "Portrait of Thalia Flora" (1906) she wasn't yet married is a sensitive charcoal study in profile. All three paintings were recently loaned to the Municipal Gallery of Larissa for an exhibition of contemporary women artists, Women's Matters.

Laskaridou was ambitious to paint the Greek landscape; determined to be "completely free", she travelled alone into remote parts. Hence the weaponry. Perhaps she also wore men's clothes for convenience, as Bonheur had done, or as a disguise, like Boukoura. There was no actual law against it in Greece, as there was in France: Bonheur had to get permission from the local police and carry a certificate authorizing her to wear trousers when she went to sketch horses at the fair. Laskaridou, in the spirit of Bouboulina, went armed with her guns.

Norma Clarke is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Kingston University. Her most recent book is a family memoir, Not Speaking, 2019.

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 21

©2026 PHOTOS OF THE LASKARIDOU, 2026. PRINTING JANE BENHAM HAY. BY ELENI BOULOUILA. GLENDORA G. WALKER. ARCHITECTS, 2026.

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Arts

Showdowns and shootouts

The song remains: Christopher Nolan's version of Homer

A. E. Stallings

The Odyssey Various cinemas

In the past week, I enjoyed two movies at Athens's outdoor summer cinemas (my favourite summer activity: the scent of basil and jasmine, the shadows of bats, this summer's crop of frisky kittens, the moon or Parthenon in the background). One, a masterpiece of clarity and pacing, on a huge screen, featured a clever stranger/sea captain arriving from the east at a farmstead, shrugging off the coils of a manipulative blonde goddess to be with an independent and clever heiress who is beset by sinister locals and an unwelcome suitor after her property. Outnumbered and in peril, the perfectly matched pair communicate their thoughts by flashing glances, and the culminating shootout, which could result in decades of vendetta violence between families, through a twist, miraculously results in peace and a new beginning. The other film was Christopher Nolan's Odyssey.

The first is a masterpiece from 1958, William Wyler's The Big Country. My comparison might seem glib, but I have long argued that the Odyssey is the first western, involving as it does a man returning from a war to a ranch beset by rapacious cattlemen bent on marrying his grass widow, all the tensions ratcheting up to an epic showdown. In other words, the Odyssey has always been destined for Hollywood.

Nolan's Odyssey works, I think, as a thrilling combination of seemingly opposite tendencies: a very close reading of some aspects of the text, and bold imaginative departures from it to suit Nolan's own mythopoeic film-making. The classics buff will see winks and nods here, clever twists on the original, as well as wider thoughts around the Odyssey and the Bronze Age, and the regular moviegoer will find an exciting tale that rises to other Hollywood epics. There are elements, for instance, both of the early Star Wars films and of the Lord of the Rings franchise. Agamemnon gives off strong Darth Vader vibes in his cape and dark helmet. Returned home to Ithaca disguised as an aged beggar, hooded in homespun, Matt Damon's Odysseus turns out, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, to be a hardened veteran who knows how to wield a weapon. ("You are weak, old man", could be spoken verbatim by the ringleader suitor, Antinous.) There are medieval-seeming knights/giants, an army of the dead, and a mythical journey

west, à la LOTR. I'm only somewhat joking when I mention another influence - the Roger Michell adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion (1995), which I half suspect informs the ending. (Warning: spoilers to film and poem follow.)

Arguably one of the strengths of the film is a lack of pedantic literalism around the time period, which we are given to understand is the late Bronze Age. Anachronism is true to Homer: later Iron Age details peek through the heroic Bronze Age setting. So, although Odysseus' ship is a Viking longboat, and Penelope is seated at her loom like a pre-Raphaelite Lady of Shalott (Homeric looms were standing affairs), what Nolan gives us is an imaginary world with an internal consistency, a verisimilitude of realism. This includes his use of the Greek settings, such as Voidokilia Bay, near sandy Pylos (whose Mycenaean importance we are just beginning to understand through recent stunning archaeological discoveries), and, as the classicist Theo Nash has pointed out on social media, massive Byzantine and Frankish fortifications to convey the military might of Mycenaean cities. An audience sick of Al's slick, soulless visuals will gravitate to the texture of Nolan's film, which includes real dolphins (which serendipitously appeared during shooting) and

an actual Cyclops-associated cave instead of a sound stage.

For all that Homer's Odyssey centres on the homecoming, with the tall tales in the mouth of the ultimate unreliable narrator, Odysseus, ancient audiences nonetheless surely wanted to "see" all the famous adventures: the Trojan Horse, cameos for characters from the prequel (Helen, Agamemnon), monsters, witches, Sirens, whirlpools and shipwrecks. Nolan is happy to oblige. Arguably, Nolan's opening with a bard (played by Travis Scott, a rapper and songwriter) beating time with a staff and intoning: "A face; a fleet; a war; a man; a thought; a trick" provides the framing device, stories within stories.

Nolan's is a world in which the gods are largely absent, but where monsters, witches and the zombified shades of the dead are tangibly real. (Athena, played by Zendaya, appears to Odysseus almost as his conscience rather than a divine visitation.) "Zeus" is equivalent to an abstract "Justice," hence Zeus's law, the concept of xenia, whereby guest/stranger and host are bound by rules of hospitality - the offer of food and drink before asking who someone is, the exchange of lavish gifts. In a world without borders or passports (or hotels), strangers must be taken at their word that they're not pirates, and hosts

trusted not to murder guests in their beds, else the fabric of society comes undone.

The most famous cautionary tale of violated xenia in Homer is Odysseus and the Cyclops, where Odysseus' crew rudely eat the Cyclops' cheese uninvited, and the Cyclops makes a meal of instead of for them. Nolan omits the verbal exchanges (no famous pun here), but gives us something more chilling. It doesn't occur to Odysseus that the Cyclops is human enough to fall under the law of Zeus: he refers to the creature as an "it". Here, it is the Cyclops who is nobody. Only when Odysseus' crew have stabbed out his eye and hear the Gollum-like, Goya-inspired creature crying out in agony to his father, Poseidon, does it dawn on them that the creature possesses language, that they might have tried to communicate directly.

Odysseus is no close observer of Zeus' law at the start. As in Homer, his first port of call after Troy is the city of the Cicones. In the film, the ostensible purpose of the landing is to find provisions, but Odysseus' men loot and burn. An old survivor (played by Yannis Kokiasmenos) sits dazed on the beach. In an exchange through an interpreter with Odysseus' first mate, Eurylochus (Himesh Patel), he is asked why his people ran away instead of offering welcome. There was an electric

Jimmy Gonzales as Cepheus, Matt Damon as Odysseus and Himesh Patel as Eurylochus

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shock among the Greek-speaking audience in the Thiseion cinema when we realized that the old man is speaking modern Greek: "We took you for the people of the sea." "No, we're Greeks, from Ithaca", Eurylochus shouts to be understood, in English. Greek being the only "foreign language" in the film, and unintelligible to Odysseus' men, seemed to underline a failure to see others as fully human. Patel was a standout for me, a Starbuck foil to Odysseus' Ahab hubris. Through his eloquent eyes, we watch Odysseus writhe, listening to the Sirens, over a background of waxmuffled white noise and hinted song.

Sacking cities is, of course, what Homeric heroes do, but that doesn't mean the poet (or poem) aligns with those values. In Homer, in Book Eight, when Odysseus hears a bard sing of the Trojan Horse, he breaks down. A simile explicitly compares his weeping to the weeping of a woman over the corpse of her slain husband (a man who has been fighting to defend his wife, children and home), before being led by spearmen into a life of misery and servitude. The simile, comparing him to one of the very victims he has widowed and enslaved, strikes a dissonant chord of empathy. Flashbacks serve a similar purpose in the film, in particular to the Trojan Horse "trick", a false gift to the gods worshipped in common by Greeks and Trojans (here a profound violation of Zeus' law) that unleashes an orgy of violence.

Homer's Odysseus is a survivor who will do what it takes, including dalliances with sexy goddesses. Nolan's Odysseus is a more modern kind of hero - a "pious" Odysseus, unwavering in fidelity. But Nolan doesn't go out of his way to tempt him. Circe (the delightful Samantha Morton) is portrayed as something of a middle-aged cat lady - if we count suspiciously tame lions and tigers and leopards as cats - who is wary of men and their swinish appetites. (Perhaps a nod to Madeline Miller's novel Circe, from 2018.) She's convincing as a witch - her transformation of the crew is shockingly hands-on - but she's no seductress.

Charlize Theron's Calypso, meanwhile, has sashayed straight out of summer Vogue. More therapist than lover, she treats Odysseus' PTSD with the amnesiac drug of the lotus and a talking cure. We're told that Calypso and a marooned, Robinson Crusoe-like Odysseus have been happy together for seven years, and presume that they've had sex (as he doesn't remember Penelope, it isn't technically cheating, perhaps), but there's no chemistry.

Nolan omits both the brightest and darkest episodes of the poem. There is no colourful scene where Odysseus washes up naked on the beach of the island of the Phaeacians, to be discovered by the fearless princess Nausicaa while she is out having a picnic and playing volleyball with other maidens. The summiness of this scene wouldn't have fitted Nolan's sombre vision. And perhaps his Odysseus

Robert Pattinson as Antinous

is safer not meeting a hot princess who is just as clever as Penelope and a generation younger.

As for the darkest scene, Nolan isn't the first to skip it (Simon Armitage evidently thought it too much for the audience in his 2004 BBC radio play) - the killing of the enslaved women in Ithaca, after they have been made to mop up the gore of the slain suitors (their seducers). In the poem, Odysseus orders execution by the sword; disturbingly, Telemachus lynches them instead, hanging them from a ship's halyard. But for Nolan's purposes, Tom Holland's Telemachus must keep his hands clean.

The director's apparent squeamishness regarding sex and sexual violence extends to war scenes (where women are mostly killed rather than raped and enslaved) and to the fall of Troy. The fall is not, of course, described in the Odyssey - Nolan gets most of his details, including the character Sinon (Elliot Page), from Virgil's Aeneid. When, according to tradition, the virgin priestess and Trojan princess Cassandra takes refuge in the temple of Athena, clinging to Athena's sacred statue, she is still raped, then dragged away to be Agamemnon's concubine. Nolan appears to show this moment in the temple, but the violence, to both the cult statue and to the young Trojan priestess (here the same actress, Zendaya, who plays Athena), involves a bloodless beheading. It is disturbing, but potentially also sanitized.

The mysterious sea people mentioned early in the film were posited by Victorian Egyptologists to be a group of tribes who roved and raided in the Aegean around the time when the Mycenean palaces were collapsing. Perhaps they hover about the edges of Homer's poem, mostly in a well-founded fear of pirates, in whose number Odysseus should arguably be included. The fourth-wall illusion of Nolan's petty reality is occasionally broken by the self-awareness of the characters. I burst out

laughing when Telemachus first declares something along the lines of "Our civilization is the greatest the world has ever known!" The suitors might as well wear Make Ithaca Great Again hats. Yet this sort of gesture, though distracting, somehow becomes less silly as the film goes on.

Nolan's climax deploys bold departures from the original, but also micro-nods to the poem and commentaries. We are shown at the start of the film that Odysseus always gives his bowstring a twang before he shoots - this gives game a sporting chance, leading to a critical scar at a boar hunt. But in the scene of reckoning when he strings the bow and is about to kill the first suitor, the twang rings out in a lyre's struck chord. It's a brilliant performance of Homer's simile (here in Emily Wilson's version):

After examining the mighty bow carefully, inch by inch - as easily as an experienced musician stretches a sheep-gut string around a lyre's peg and makes it fast - Odysseus, without effort, strung the great bow. He held it in his right hand and plucked the string, which sang like swallow-song,

a clear sweet note. (I also wonder if perhaps Nolan has been reading Samuel Butler's The Authoress of the Odyssey, 1897, which claims that the poem was penned by a young, unmarried Sicilian woman, partly on the evidence of girlish gaffes such as the poet's forgetting the presence of twelve axes in the room during the slaughter. Nolan doesn't forget - no authoress he.)

Ancient scholiasis argued about the end of Homer's Odyssey, some claiming that it stopped when Penelope and Odysseus go to bed. The current ending ties up all the loose ends, preventing endless civil war by a stroke of deus ex machina. Nolan, having dispensed with gods as agents, has

to come up with another solution. He has engineered an ending in which Telemachus is blameless, only wicked suitors are slain, only one maid (the treacherous Melantho) is killed - and that owing to the vengeance of Penelope herself - and Penelope and Odysseus' happy ending takes a different tack.

Besides being the first western, the Odyssey is the ur-example of Stanley Cavell's "remarriage plot" - a separated couple (on the verge of being divided for ever) must overcome obstacles to get back together, after a certain amount of witty sparring. Brainy Penelope is always veiled in Homer; her motives are inscrutable. Anne Hathaway is often glimpsed behind a screen. She's fierce and passionate rather than reserved, but she does seem well matched to Damon's Odysseus. The signs whereby she tests him and he convinces her of who he is are collapsed into a single token - a brooch she gave him before he set out for Troy. (There's a basis for the brooch in the text.)

If Nolan's ending departs from the original, we might remember that the poem itself foreshadows another ending: a prophecy involving Odysseus eventually travelling so far inland that no one recognizes an oar. There is also Dante's version, where Ulysses (Odysseus) goes ever west, seeking new discoveries - adopted by Tennyson in his oft-quoted poem. There's even a version from ancient Greece in which, on Odysseus' death, Circe's child by Odysseus, Telegonus, marries Penelope and Circe marries Telemachus, everyone living happily ever after. Liberties and departures are nothing new.

As Odysseus finally relates his story to Penelope in Nolan's film, somehow lines such as "Our age of bronze is collapsing" are less absurd. Odysseus has understood that he and his crew are, for their victims, the dreaded sea people of rumour. They have ushered in a dark age where even writing is lost, and only song remains. Once common decency, human bonds, societal norms, are unravelled, they are hard to reweave: "To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire", Odysseus says, a rare lyrical line that might nod to the Talmud. Nolan's wine-dark sea is a mirror, showing us our own self-destructive drive.

At the end of the film, the hero and heroine, together at last, head out into the sunset, which is also somehow the future, perhaps putting an era of darkness and violence behind them. We think: maybe there is some hope after all. Yes, I'm talking about Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons in The Big Country, but it also works for Nolan's Odyssey.

A. E. Stallings is Oxford Professor of Poetry. A selected poems, This Afterlife, was published in 2022. Her most recent book is Frieze Frame: How poets, painters, and their friends framed the debate around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon, 2025.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 23

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Arts

The axe is falling

A new production of a Chekhovian classic - whatever that means

Michael Caines

Anton Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until August 29

It turns out that The Cherry Orchard, a play about a world out of kilter, attracts divergences of opinion. This will be old news to anyone familiar with the story of the play's first production, at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1904, which Anton Chekhov had argued ought to constitute a light comedy. The director, Konstantin Stanislavski, had a more serious dramatic mood in mind. If anything, the point about disagreements of interpretation and purpose has re-established itself quite firmly in recent years, thanks to Katie Mitchell's radical eco-minded production in Hamburg in 2022 (after her earlier stab at the play, in a contemporary setting and a version by Simon Stephens) and the Dommar Warehouse's energetic, modern-dress production of 2024, starring Nina Hoss and Adeel Akhtar.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's new staging in Stratford has certainly been unfavourably compared to the latter, and has received a mixed reception from the critics. After all, they now know that there is a multiverse of possible Cherry Orchards - another comes to the West End in the autumn, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Stephen Mangan - and some are more "Chekhovian" than others, whatever that means. Prompted by this new production, one reviewer in the Observer identifies Lopakhin as someone "who represents the oncoming Russian revolution sweeping their landed gentry aside". Who knew the Russian revolution had such enthusiasm for erecting dachas as a money-making scheme?

In The Cherry Orchard, as directed by Tamara Harvey, and reworked by Laura Wade, that adjective "Chekhovian" would seem to mean lightly comic more than anything else. It also means a mêlée of ethnicities and accents: two Northern Irish, two American, a mixed bag of others. (And Sharlotta, the magic-trick-performing governess, is played by a deaf actor, Sophie Stone.) That's the impression created by the first act, at least, as Ranyevskaya (Helen Hunt) and her entourage bustle back into their old house. Kenneth Branagh's Lopakhin - the peasant boy made good, whose paternally inflicted nosebleed Ranyevskaya had once stemmed in the house's nursery, the very room to which she has returned - now dances nervous attendance, continually trying to catch the lady's eye and impress her. He slips into courtier mode, quite awkwardly; and she slips away.

Just as off-balance in their different ways are the accident-addict Yepikhodov (Andy Rush), Ranyevskaya's clerk, his boots squeaking embarrassingly across stage, and the debt-addled landowner Pishchik

Bill Pullman as Gaev in The Cherry Orchard

(Guy Henry). From the start, Harvey expertly uses the Swan's deep stage and its various points of entrance and exit. The eye is continually being distracted by comings and goings on Anna Fleischle's elegant, all but elegiac stage, then drawn back towards the central conversations around Ranyevskaya. Her brother Gaev (Bill Pullman) has something of the little boy lost about him. He draws out his stories with a smile - and reacts good-naturedly when he is encouraged to desist. He is just the overgrown lad to confess wistfully that "I've eaten through my fortune in sweets".

Fascinating as ever to witness is the development of the play's various relationships from this point on, perhaps the key one being that between Lopakhin and the lady he will eventually displace as the estate's owner. ("The estate will not be sold, not on my watch", is how he sets himself up for a U-turn, if not a fall, in Wade's version.) Is he more resentful or besotted, bemused or canny? Branagh hits on some compound of these attitudes; Hunt seems frozen in her inability to reciprocate. Yet there is something between them, an unspoken negotiation. Where Benedict Andrews, at the Dommar, chose to spell things out, Harvey and company take a more delicate approach to this non-relationship. The same goes for Hunt's mourning for her drowned son, Grisha - the nursery belonged to the lost heir too, of course, as well as his forebears.

Delicacy isn't everything. The second act, for example, features oral sex, just to be sure the audience knows that some servants around these parts - namely Yasha (Julian Moore-Cook) and Dunyasha (Amber Gadd) - know how to have a good

time. This must also be Chekhovian, it seems. For good measure, and despite pronouncements in a higher register ("How cripplely bana!"), Wade has characters deploy the verbals ("shitface", "pisshead") to give the audience a little jolt from time to time. This device still seems to work, coming as it does from actors dressed as gentle-folk. Lopakhin, meanwhile, speaks sardonically of refreshing Ranyevskaya's funds via the "magic rouble tree".

The second act (the only one set in the open countryside) also offers an interesting elaboration on the moment when a "wayfarer", as Constance Garnett decorously calls him, crosses the stage. In Garnett's translation of a century ago, this poor fellow, "slightly drunk", asks the way to the station, then speaks ominously, or confusedly, of "My brother, my suffering brother!", before begging for money. Light comedy is most definitely out: rather than saying little, Rob Alexander-Adams's rough passer-by suddenly straightens up and quotes "The New Colossus", Emma Lazarus's Statue of Liberty sonnet ("Give me your tired, your poor"), and Hamlet ("Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be"). A little violence ensues.

This is not an unwelcome incongruity, but it has a touch of Vertigo's "descent into madness" sequence about it, like an interjection from a rival production. In any case, after the interval, normal service resumes with a carnivalesque, tremendously well-choreographed third act. This is when the real madness of the situation starts to show, as everybody waits for news of the estate auction. Lopakhin's return from that event at last is a bravura turn from Branagh, flopping around in a

state of sozzled exhaustion, befuddled amazement in his voice, his eye suddenly steely as he stares out beyond the fourth wall. (At times, Pullman and Henry have to put on such displays of conspicuous tipsiness as well, a contrast to the sober exasperation that Esther Smith, as a lovely, put-upon Varya, conveys in her body language.) This is it: the axe has fallen, just as it will soon start to fell the trees in the precious orchard of Ranyevskaya's childhood, and the whole old Russian scene Trofimov is so anxious to rush into oblivion. Branagh communicates the giddy rush of it all, in contrast to Hunt's restraint.

One of the pleasures of The Cherry Orchard is its decentring of conventional dramatic notions: hero and villain, plot and subplot. Everything is awhile here. No wonder characters fail to connect. Lopakhin really does try to save his friends from having to sell up, before himself buying up and sending them into exile. What does it all mean? Nothing more than a grand muddle, maybe. The case is well summed up by Firs, in his last moments. As sturdily played by Michael Elwyn, he has doddered through the play, hellbent on making sure that Gaev, that silly boy, has his warm coat on or gets to bed on time. Wade's version gives the discarded servant his lonely moment of confusion and self-contradiction (while skipping the strange resounding sound effect that ties this conclusion to its foreboding counterpart in the second act). It is terrible and funny at the same time, which is perhaps just as Chekhov would have liked it to be.

Michael Caines works for the TLS.

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Tiny compressed dramas

Tove Jansson's much-loved intergenerational story on screen

Adam Mars-Jones

The Summer Book Various cinemas

Charlie McDowell's The Summer Book adapts for the screen Tove Jansson's novel of 1972, venerated in Finland and more temperately relished elsewhere. It isn't a conventional work of fiction, not a continuous narrative, but a series of episodes dramatizing an unusual intimacy across two generations, between the child Sophia and her grandmother. The film benefits from locations in the Gulf of Finland closely corresponding to the surroundings of the island where Jansson's family spent holidays, but faithfulness comes in different forms. The camera can show a snagged feather in Grandmother's field of vision, but not the mental focus that gives the moment meaning, as conveyed in the book: "She carefully observed the construction of this piece of down - the taut white rib in the middle, surrounded by the down itself, which was pale brown and lighter than the air, and then darker and shiny towards the tip, which ended in a tiny but spirited curve". The effort Grandmother makes to examine it is at least as important as the object. The closest we can come to being part of nature is to pay attention.

Glenn Close is very fine as Grandmother, expressing within the restricted body language appropriate to an ailing eighty-five-year-old the contradictions of this complex character, self-contained busybody and stern hedonist, teller of tall tales, with a strong attachment to the reality principle. Emily Matthews partners her well as Sophia, open-faced, but with a streak of stubbornness that makes them kindred spirits as well as kin. It may be that Grandmother seems like a force of nature to Sophia, but that's a child's point of view - even if the director subscribes to it more than once by editing Grandmother's breathing as she dozes to coincide with the rhythm of the waves. This turns her into an emanation of the landscape rather than its sharpest observer.

The argument against adding a musical soundtrack to a nature documentary is that it inserts an emotionally explicit layer between viewer and image, destroying the immediacy it was meant to create. The argument is even stronger in a fiction film with a natural backdrop, since we're hearing something the characters don't. When there's a clarinet in the offing, let alone a piano and a small orchestra (both features of Hania Rani's score), we're very far from the great outdoors. Arpeggios, whether poignant or soothing, are not native to Scandinavia or anywhere else.

The episodes in Jansson's book are tiny dramas of risk and reassurance, masterfully compressed. Sometimes it can seem as if she is operating a powerful piece of kitchen machinery, squeezing the fruits of experience into wisdom juice and leaving

remarkably little pulp behind. This isn't quite Grandmother's perspective, since life for her is not something to be learnt from, but to be savoured in itself. In any case, Robert Jones's screenplay flattens out many of the miniature dramas. In the chapter called "The Cat", for instance, Sophia is given a cat, which she loves. It ignores her attentions, driving her to exasperation and even fury. She is given the opportunity to swap it for another cat, utterly passive and receptive to love. At first she is happy, but this temperament too drives her to distraction, and finally she reverses the exchange. Her attachment is to the animal that doesn't respond. "If the awful", she admits. "But it's happy I love." In the film, Sophia gets a cat. She loves it. And that's all.

The family are seasonal visitors - holidaymakers - however well attuned to their surroundings, and like many in that category, they enjoy looking down on later arrivals less scrupulous about respecting a fragile environment. In both book and film, grandmother and granddaughter pay a visit to another island where newcomers have built a house and put up a sign declaring the island to be private property. The new house seems anything but intrusive architecturally - are viewers meant to disapprove of it?

The local custom is to leave doors unlocked, and normally no one would intrude in the absence of the owners, but that unmanly sign makes it a sacred duty to trespass and nose around. Sophia and Grandmother hear the owners' boat arriving, but there's nowhere to hide, and their own boat gives their presence away. It's all rather awkward. The newcomers are welcoming, offering brandy, lemonade and muffins. They even know about the vulnerability of moss - tread on it once and it bounces

back, twice and it lies down, three times and it dies.

In the book, the stakes are much higher, since Grandmother has unscrewed the padlock on the property with her penknife, so they are properly breaking and entering. When the owners arrive, she is described as being "beside herself with terror". The strangers' good manners make it worse - the way they pretend that the disassembled padlock and hasp so neatly laid out, with the screws alongside, are somehow the handiwork of prowlers or locals. This is mortifyingly like her own style when correcting children, letting the lesson be learnt without inflicting humiliation. She's been out-Grandmothered. As a consequence, she mellows towards the newcomers. Let them make their own mistakes. Yes, they've put the door on the wrong side of the house - they won't be able to open it against a storm. But they'll learn in time, as she did. She will soon be seeing the new house with an unjudging an eye as if it was a channel marker.

Naturally, it's a screenwriter's privilege to transform source material. What is curious about Jones's work on The Summer Book is that it goes against the grain of almost every adapted screenplay, not ramping up the drama, but muting it, thinning the texture of incidents that were consciously modest to begin with. The material has been levelled off to allow for the installation of a new superstructure.

On the second page of the book, Sophia asks her grandmother when she will die, and Grandmother says calmly, "Soon. But that is not the least concern of yours." The second section is a flashback to an island visit in April, with Sophia remembering that she has a bed to herself because her mother is dead. The subject is not returned to. From these scant threads, director and screenwriter have woven a

narrative about trauma and recovery. To make this possible, elements have to be repurposed - so that Sophia's concern about what earthworms feel when they are cut in half, a comic highlight of the novel when she dictates her thoughts on the subject for Grandmother to turn into a book, becomes a self-portrait of invertebrate agony. She too has been cut in half.

The replanting of material is almost literal in the case of the poplar sapling in the film. It becomes, again, an image of Sophia's supposed trauma, this frail plant that needs to be lavishly watered, supported with strings on a frame until it can push out a few leaves and start to thrive. In the book, it is part of an ambitious scheme of Papa's to introduce non-native species, and when it arrives it is already 12ft tall. Again the tone is comic. Eventually, the poplar's growth gets a boost from swan droppings imported from Lapland.

The insistence on making this a story about grief isn't just a misreading of the book, but a refusal of its beauties. Grandmother certainly isn't making herself stay alive until Sophia has healed and can do without her. Her indifference to responsibility, her ability to live in the moment, is actually the best lesson she could teach her granddaughter. There's no shortage of films in which an orphaned child waits that Daddy doesn't like her since her mother died, and the bereaved father tells his child "it's not your fault - none of it is your fault", as Daddy does here, but there is a shortage of films in which family members separated by a generation treat each other as equals. The book's Grandmother and Sophia often quarrel, but that's only a problem when they quarrel in "the wrong way". At one point, Sophia pushes a note under Grandmother's door: "I hate you. With warm personal wishes, Sophia". Grandmother is pleased to see that the spelling is excellent. This isn't the wrong sort of quarrel.

The absence of Sophia's mother from Jansson's book may reflect a biographical fact, but is also a formal choice. Sophia's Papa is a peripheral figure, and Jansson has removed herself from the picture entirely. From both book and film, you would think that Grandmother owned the island house, but it was built by Jansson, partly so she could spend time with her same-sex partner without upsetting the old lady. (Later, for more privacy, she bought an even smaller island further out.) Grandmother was a guest there and not the host. Even so, if there is a death haunting the book, it is hers. The Summer Book memorializes her without sentiment by reconstructing, or fantasizing, a rich family relationship that bypasses the writer herself.

As director and screenwriter, McDowell and Jones seem to have a low opinion of Jansson's literary competence. Surely they can see that if she had wanted to focus on the relationship between widowed father and orphaned daughter, she would have given the father something to say? We hear a lot about Papa's doings, there's even a long passage about his bathrobe, but from one end of the book to the other, he doesn't so much as open his mouth.

Adam Mars-Jones's most recent novel is Caret, 2023.

Emily Matthews and Glenn Close in The Summer Book

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 25

© LONEL THUMB COUNCIL

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Fiction

Writing from fiction

A flâneur's journey through Paris and the self

Michael Caines

Amit Chaudhuri

Incompleteness

New and selected essays, 1999-2023

376pp. New York Review Books.

Paperback, £21 (US $22.95).

Château Rouge

208pp. Faber. £14.99.

"It's your bloody memoir!" So Karl Miller once told Amit Chaudhuri, the alleged "bloody memoir" being a chapter from Chaudhuri's first novel, A Strange and Sublime Address (1991). Against certain writers, the accusation is hardly new; and such writers will go on inviting readers to speculate about the true nature of their work. What would Miller, to stick with this particular reader and writer, have said about Friend of My Youth? Published in 2017 (three years after Miller's death), Chaudhuri's seventh novel is narrated by a man called "Amit Chaudhuri", who was born in Calcutta, as his namesake and creator was. The real Chaudhuri has also written a novel called The Immortals (2000). "By coincidence", he has said, in a talk called "Why I Write Novels", "The Immortals was my fifth novel too."

That talk - which incorporates Miller's critical cry - was given online in December 2020 for Balliol College, Oxford, where Chaudhuri undertook his postgraduate studies. It was then published in a journal and appears again towards the end of Incompleteness: New and selected essays, 1999-2023. Like all the pieces gathered in this volume, it merits its reappearance.

Here is a bundle of splendidly canny reflections on art, music and literature that certainly exhibits, as well as depth of knowledge, masterly range. The lesson begins with Rabindranath Tagore ("his Bengali lyrics have everything to do with uncertainty, with hesitation, with the momentary ... How did a lyric, rather than an epic, poet come to be Bengal's national poet?") and ends with Neil Diamond ("Cracklin' Rosie" and "Sweet Caroline" were too optimistic and upbeat for me, but there were other songs I listened to even when I no longer owned up to doing so"). There is plenty of "bloody memoir", too. "Once, in 1973, a Switzerland-bound train I was in with my parents stopped for a few minutes at Bonn" ("German Sequence", first published in the Calcutta Telegraph in 2003); "I went to a Protestant school in Bombay, but the creation myth we were taught in the classroom didn't have to do with Adam and Eve" ("In the Waiting-Room

Rue Dejean, Château Rouge, Paris, 2015

of History", London Review of Books, 2004); "I was in my final year at University College London in 1985, when my tutor, the South African novelist Dan Jacobson, told me that I'd read a great deal of poetry but not enough prose" ("Women in Love as Post-Human Essay", an introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of that novel, 2006). These are pieces in which, before hitting the reader with a constrictor-knot sentence, tightly constructed for maximal rhetorical efficacy, Chaudhuri warms us up with a personal anecdote or scenario - a framing device or, more than that, a device for imbuing what might otherwise be taken as abstract argument or analysis with a sense of lived-in meditation, quick with the essayist's intimacy and guile.

Among other things, "Why I Write Novels" suggests that Chaudhuri has, in his works of fiction, "devised situations ... in which there's no drama, but which, for me, try to convey great, if contained excitement". The autobiographical question is a red herring: for Chaudhuri, novels are less a matter of "writing from life" than "writing from fiction", or at least not just about the matter in hand, but the means by which it is handled. Less autofiction than autofiction.

That "contained" excitement derives from novelistic "structure and syntax". By this, Chaudhuri means the "kind of sentence without which the narrative's grammar - that is, the rules by which it is comprehended - falls apart". Poetic language might not be discerned in statements such as "I looked out of the window" or "It seemed as if she was about to say something", but novels tend to require such "joins" - not necessarily the kind of sentence for which a novelist will be praised or noticed, but sentences that are the essence of what Virginia Woolf called

"the appalling business of the realist: getting from lunch to dinner".

The explanation is an eyebrow-raiser: apart from anything else, Chaudhuri has often been received as a writer who isn't conspicuously fussed about getting from lunch to dinner. In the pages of the TLS, for example, he has been described (by Robert Macfarlane) as trying to reclaim the banal; (by Bill Broun) as rendering a plot intangible; and (by Macfarlane again) as writing unexcitable prose (making him the antithesis of his noisy countryman Salman Rushdie). Some readers have discovered a preference for such elegant acts of entrancement. They will find their preference confirmed, no doubt, in Chaudhuri's new novel, Château Rouge.

Never mind getting from lunch to dinner: Château Rouge just wants to find its way around Paris. It is more place than plot - a flâneur's tale, or a play on that idea, much of it being given over to what feel like brief, semi-connected jottings from wanderings through the streets of Paris. It is perhaps so that city what the same author's Sojourn (2022) is to Berlin. Here, a whole page may go on two sentences set as a single line, above a blank gulf: "She's returning to the conference. I'm going to meet Augustin". ("She" is the narrator's wife; Augustin is an acquaintance.) Other pages will run to a whole two or three paragraphs. The effect is spare yet enticing, not entirely unlike that of, say, Lauren Elkin's No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian commute (2021), without the bus.

At times, a question from one of Chaudhuri's early readers, quoted in Incompleteness, comes to mind: "The paragraphs don't really have to follow each other in the sequence you've put them, right?" It seems not, though the sequence the paragraphs follow in Château Rouge certainly begins

with a beginning: an arrival. The novel's narrator - unnamed, unlike his counterpart in Friend of My Youth, though he acts and sounds a lot like both Amit Chaudhuri and "Amit Chaudhuri" - has come to Paris for work. (Indeed, the author was one of the first fellows of Columbia University's Institute for Ideas and Imagination, based at Reid Hall in Montparnasse, in 2018.) He has already found a place to stay in Château Rouge - a "petite Afrique" to the east of Montmartre - but dwells on the disorientated state of the newcomer, consulting Google Maps on his phone, bemused, stymied by the language barrier. This is not the Paris of romantic myth, of course, but one the visitor in search of affordable accommodation not far from the Gare du Nord might encounter. Some guides will call the neighbourhood "lively" or "cosmopolitan". Others will warn of pickpockets.

When the narrator eventually finds the flat, he thinks it won't quite do. He goes out again, along Rue Poulet, "past a daze of produce". His wife and daughter arrive, the latter complaining that the bathroom is dirty ("I found myself defending the flat"). The wife and daughter come and go, taking the secret of their names with them. There follow solo musings on Woody Allen and a certain conviction conveyed by Allen's film Midnight in Paris: "people go to Paris to look for wonders". Reality is occasionally bothered to reassert itself with alarums off stage - the gilets jaunes are on a war footing - but the narrator is more concerned with his own campaign against the flat's mosquitoes. He invests in some "Lotion Anti-Moustique", which is actually a spray. "I brandish the aerosol, anointing space unrestrictedly."

And on it goes. There are further international comings and goings; cameos from the philosopher Jacques Rancière, or a piece of him, and a couple of Bengali shopkeepers; a death. At a conference, "many people will speak about the crisis in the humanities while the humanities implodes [sic]". All of this is entrancing as is, say, Afternoon Raag (1993) - the author's account of a young Bengali man studying at Oxford - if you happen to be able to tune into Chaudhuri's wavelength. Château Rouge may not be the Paris of romantic stereotype or literary nostalgia - in some ways, it more closely resembles "some multiracial province of East London" - but that received impression remains an influence, somehow. "I had a niggling craving for the Paris of Proust's house and Baldwin's digs", the narrator admits, even while knowing that Paris would come with a certain degree of "run-downness" ("To be here ... was to be flooded by a sort of neglect"). His wife loves A Moveable Feast, but for years - decades - he hasn't been able to bring himself to indulge in what he sees as Ernest Hemingway's "terse sentimentality". He reads the first three pages in situ. "They were a delight."

26 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

© FAHIR BALAKOPS VOL. 2026 WIRELESS

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Breaking the waves

Tragedy and healing in rural Ireland

Keith Hopper

Donal Ryan

Where Are the Kings

224pp. Doubleday. £16.99.

Donal Ryan's first novel, The Spinning Heart (TLS, September 27, 2013), was rejected forty-seven times before being picked up by the Lilliput Press. It was subsequently longlisted for the Booker prize, and Ryan has been a fixture on the Irish literary scene ever since, producing a novel every two years or so.

The Spinning Heart, which is set on an emblematic "ghost estate" - those residential developments left abandoned after the post-2008 housing collapse - could easily have become an interlinked collection of short stories; for each of its twenty-one chapters, Ryan introduces a new narrator. However, each chapter is connected by an incident from the previous one, so every new voice picks up the narrative baton. It's a very effective - and deceptively simple - modernist device, and it disguises an inherent absence of plot; as Ryan acknowledged when the novel first came out: "There's not much plot, but people seem to like the

characters. It's a very local story but you could say it's universal because this economic crisis and all the austerity is damaging people in small towns not just in Ireland but across Europe".

Ryan's seventh novel, Where Are the Kings - the title has no question mark - continues in this stylistic vein, with its vivacious, likeable characters from a rural, working-class community; its narrative structure, dependent on set pieces rather than plot; and its unshowy commitment to developing an empathetic point of view that organically fits the overall theme. In this case, the story is told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old boy, Jack, whose mother, Grace, takes her life in the opening pages as Jack tries vainly to save her, all captured in a breathless free indirect style:

And he left the racer and ran the last stretch to the lakeshore, along the narrow car park, empty save for one car, not able to feel his legs or his arms or to get from his mouth any sound though he was trying to shout out. Come back, please, wait for me, please, towards the place where the rusty Fiat was parked, but there was no one inside it, there was no one anywhere, on the forest path or by the swings or at the edge of the water, but there was something in the water, out a good stone's

throw from shore, bobbing up then disappearing, reappearing, disappearing, and the waves were swapping places on the shingle beach, and the water was cold on his legs and on his body and on his mother's body the water was cold.

After this intense, traumatic opening, the narrative tempo slows down, and Jack's new life with his extended family is carefully delineated. Jack's father, Tomid, a Czech migrant, is recovering from his wife's death in a psychiatric hospital, so Jack now lives with his mother's family; his kind but grief-stricken grandparents; his gruff but watchful uncles, Theo and Hauile; the fourteen-year-old JJ, whose familial status is uncertain (in theory, he's Jack's uncle, but there are hints that he may be a cousin); and the sexy, good-natured Aunt Rose, on whom Jack develops a serious adolescent crush, and who has troubles of her own: "Rose who Mam fell out with years ago over something complicated and invisible, some ancient strife from the time before he existed".

As in Ryan's other novels, this is a complicated family dealing with its own secrets and lies, but grounded by a basic sense of decency and compassion. Yet again, the best set pieces involve apparently tough men - a fastidious policeman; a pool-hall

bully - who unexpectedly reveal themselves to be emotionally intelligent and sensitive. Towards the end, the plot - such as it is - lurches into melodrama, though it is unclear whether these twists are real or in the boy's heightened imagination. (The deliberately enclosed point of view makes it nicely ambiguous.)

Other mysteries seem to remain, including the one that niggles from the start: why is there no question mark in the title? The phrase comes from a lengthy epigraph Ryan has taken from W. B. Yeats's play On Baile's Strand (1903), in which the hero, Cichulainn, mad with grief after killing his son, cuts the heads off the waves, while a distraught eyewitness shouts: "Where are the Kings? What are the Kings doing?" Only towards the end does it become clear that the title is declarative rather than questioning: the kings are there all the time, personified by those quietly strong, decent men who keep a close eye on the boy, all the while desperately coping with their own tragic loss.

Keith Hopper teaches at Atlantic Technological University, Sligo. He is currently editing an anthology of writings entitled Sligo and the Sense of Place, due out this year.

A sense of endings

Six months in an English village beset by change

Dinah Birch

Melissa Harrison

The Given World

272pp. Hutchinson Heinemann. £18.99.

This is a novel about endings - lives, histories, the rhythms of the natural world, perhaps the world itself. "Things don't end all at once, though, but in stages" - and the apocalyptic resonance of the interwoven stories of Lower Eodham, a small village deep in the English countryside, partly emanates from the evocations of the beauty of what is now, inexorably, leaving us. Melissa Harrison is an accomplished nature writer, and her knowledge of the plants and animals that share the land with the village's human inhabitants - the chiffchaff's song, the burgeoning hawthorn blossom in spring - adds a lyrical overlay to what would otherwise be a bleak narrative. Harrison insists

that we understand the value of what is dying.

The Given World follows the life of the community over a period of six months, spanning the first signs of spring and the arrival of autumn. Some of the locals come from families that have lived and worked in the village for generations; others are recent arrivals. Prosperous middle-class professionals live alongside those who struggle on low incomes. Harrison often focuses on the women of Lower Eodham, but she also pays tribute to the labour of men, from the postman to the local builder. The challenges that confront modern agriculture are not glossed over. If the novel has a hero, it is Alan, a stoical dairy farmer who has been cheated by local landowners.

What unites this diverse group is their uneasiness. Climate change is a persistent theme (never directly addressed), as the weather veers from torrential rain to drought. Wildlife is on the retreat. The last badger flees; the outsized pike that

has haunted the river for years has disappeared; crops mysteriously fail. Clare hears news that means she is confronted by her own ending. The elderly Hilda falls and cannot move. Roy loses his nerve while working on a roof, and realizes that his familiar working life is over. "So maybe this is it, then." Connor, young and hopeful, is nevertheless shadowed by an awareness of loss. "Sometimes he thinks there's no such thing as nostalgia, that things were genuinely just better in the past." He, too, leaves the village.

Harrison's evocation of a textured particularity in the life of the village is persuasive, and the sense of certainties "now drawing to an end" gives her novel a sombre coherence. But the serious heft of the story is undermined by the quasi-mysticism that runs through its unsettling events. Old artefacts - one suggestive of an ancient curse - are uncovered. There are repeated hints of a female spirit, both malign and protective, that animates the river. Alan rescues a

boy who is drowning, "fighting with something in the river".

"Why did you go into the water?"

"I - I don't know, I didn't mean to, she -"

Roy's crisis among the rafters seems to have been caused by his discovery of a small, carefully stitched child's shoe, hidden in the timbers. When the all-knowing William Welland, who seems tuned into ancestral wisdom, replaces the shoe, Roy finds that he can return to the roof and finish the job.

The disturbing presence of ancient spirits has its place in fiction, but here it becomes a distraction. Harrison's lament for the passing of fertile cycles rooted in the land is invested with the authority of genuine knowledge. To summon folklore, and hint that otherworldly powers are involved in the downfall of older patterns of life, is an unnecessary indulgence. If her readers don't believe in the reality of river goddesses, they might be tempted to think that much else that Harrison has to tell us about what is happening to the English countryside is nothing more than fantasy. And that would be a pity.

Dinah Birch is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Liverpool. Her most recent book is Anthony Trollope: A very short introduction, 2025.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 27

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Fiction

Francisco and Diana

Rosario Weiss: pupil, protégée, daughter?

Martin Beagles

Sergio del Molino

La hija

643pp. Alfaguara. Paperback, €23.90.

The title of this lengthy novel is a statement of revisionist intent. By presenting the painter Rosario Weiss (1814–43) as “The Daughter” of Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), Sergio del Molino challenges from the outset standard views about Weiss, a pupil and protégée of the great artist during the eleven years when she lived in the Goya household with her mother, Leocadia Zorrilla. Biographers have generally agreed that Rosario’s father was the Madrid-based German jeweller Isidore Weiss, Leocadia’s estranged husband, and Leocadia no more than a housekeeper to the ageing Goya during his final years. Del Molino confronts this orthodoxy head on. Squeezing the utmost from the documentary evidence and his own intuitions, he proposes a version of Weiss’s life and work based on the conjecture that Goya and Leocadia lived together as man and wife, and that Rosario was their child.

La hija is a mise en abyme composed of two mirroring first-person accounts, each described as a “found” manuscript. The first of these is a 350-page compendium of fictional memoirs by the (real) Spanish liberal aristocrat Juan Antonio Rascón, here characterized as a besotted admirer of Rosario in his youth. His retrospective contains thirty-two chapters, many of

A detail from “The Attention” by Rosario Weiss, 1841

them self-contained evocations of Rosario’s circumstances between the 1820s and her death at the age of twenty-eight. The memoirs cover in omniscient detail several of the convoluted public events of early-nineteenth-century Spain – wars, famines, reigns of terror, phases of relative calm – and their successive impacts on Rosario, who tends to get somewhat buried beneath the rubble of historical explanation. The core of Rascón’s narrative might be summarized as follows: as a child, Rosario was whisked away by Goya to the safety of exile in Bordeaux, but after his death she returned to Madrid, becoming a copyist at the nascent Prado Museum, then an artist in her own right.

The second of the book’s “manuscripts” is attributed to “Sergio del Molino”, a writer from Zaragoza who seems indistinguishable from the book’s author and writes in the sharp, personable style for which the novelist-cum-cultural historian is known in Spain. Del Molino’s text is both the record of a biographical quest and an extended essay about Weiss grounded in a spirited defence of the author’s theory about her parents and upbringing. Like Rascón, he declares himself “enamoured” of Weiss and is keen to boost her work; unlike Rascón, he has read Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Byung-Chul Han, and cites them enthusiastically in support of his case. He

also pounces on hints in surviving letters to create a vision of Weiss that expands that provided by Rascón’s memoirs.

Admirers of del Molino’s seductive prose will be tested by the dense first manuscript, with its cast of dozens and mass of fussy “contextualization”. Those of a historical bent are more likely to be puzzled by the plot-free second half, with its circular reiterations of events and themes already introduced in the first. Del Molino is an attractively sardonic writer with an effective line in self-deprecation, but he seems to be asking a lot of his readers on this occasion. Crucially, one issue is left almost unaddressed: how important is biology anyway? If Goya taught Weiss as devotedly as he seems to have done, to what extent does it matter whether he or somebody else was her “real” father?

Del Molino waits until page 614 of this original but slightly maddening book before giving a full version of the story that most authors would surely have used as a starting point. In 2024, the Prado announced the identification and acquisition from a private owner of Weiss’s self-portrait as Diana the huntress en déshabillé – an allegorical work entitled “La atención” that had been missing for the previous 180 years. A decision was subsequently made to display the painting in room 62A of the Prado, above the portrait of an elderly Goya by Vicente López Portaña. Sala 62A is described by del Molino as a largely unfrequented room, ideal for illicit assignments or the sealing of shady business deals. According to him, most visitors walk past its entrance in search of more famous sights; apart from the author, few people ever go inside. Some might do now.

Martin Beagles teaches at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid.

Leonardo and Iac

Love, art and power in Renaissance Florence

Christopher Shrimpton

Phil Melanson

Florenzer

368pp. ONE. Paperback, £14.99.

“Go to the Hapsburg court up in the Alps and ask someone how to say sodomite. Florenzer, they’ll tell you.” Thus is the title of this impressively ambitious novel glossed midway through. “It’s not difficult to understand where this name originates”, we are further informed. “All it takes is a close look, an open ear.”

We are in Florence in the fifteenth century, all eyes and ears. It is a fantastic place, “startling, rich and rude”, the centre of what will come to be known as the Renaissance, boasting the greatest artists of the age – Botticelli, Perugino and, most notably, Leonardo da Vinci – and the most powerful bank in the land, the Medici Bank. Depending on your taste, it is either

heaven or Sodom. Here, everyone is at it: making art, making money, making out.

Pursuing some or all of these pastimes are the three men whose interwoven stories constitute the narrative of Phil Melanson’s debut novel: Leonardo, the brilliant, impecunious artist; Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence’s most powerful man; and Francesco Salviati, an ambitious and embittered priest. The story alternates between their viewpoints as they strive to attain their ends, offering a panoramic view of a city defined by art and artifice.

For obvious reasons, Leonardo is the heart and soul of the story, which begins with him falling in love. Born out of wedlock and spurned by his father, Leonardo is an outsider, “too peculiar, too prone to daydream”, who “always knew he was different”. He is an apprentice in the workshop of the master artist Andrea del Verrocchio and has a fondness for pastel-coloured tunics that cause his fellow apprentices to snigger. The object of his affections is Iac, a goldsmith’s apprentice

and part-time prostitute, which could spell trouble, given that Florence, despite its reputation for tolerance, is aggressively policed by the Officers of the Night, charged with rooting out sodomy.

While Leonardo is working on his frescoes and growing closer to Iac, Lorenzo and Salviati (and the new pope in Rome) are engaged in a years-long power struggle – the engine of the narrative – that will end in bloodshed. Both men are tremendously ambitious, with Lorenzo wishing to be “magnificent” at all costs and Salviati burning with a flawed sense of piety (“Holy, holy, holy, he wants to sing. He, at last, is rising”). An enjoyably sticky web of intrigue is spun, with much gossiping, bribing and backstabbing, and much shifting of allegiance between the great centres of power on the peninsula: “Florence, Rome, Milan, Naples, and Venice. Their constant, exhausting dance”.

But while this dance is nicely choreographed, and provides a good sense of the bloodstained politics beneath the

gold-leafed splendour, it does feel like something of a sideshow. Given that the narrative begins and ends with Leonardo, that he is obviously the most interesting of the three characters, and that his artistic and sexual growth are Melanson’s central concerns, it seems odd to relegate him to one component of a trio. In short, there is too little Leonardo, and, perhaps as a consequence, what there is of him often feels thin. His supposedly earth-shattering relationship with Iac takes up little space, and even less is accorded to the products of his imagination, his revolutionary inventions. Instead, Melanson elects to bluntly summarize: “He knows how to carve secret tunnels into the earth. He can make impenetrable chariots and cannons and catapults. He has designs for naval battles too”.

Written in a relaxed, colloquial style (“What bollocks, Salviati thinks”), and featuring many an amiable in-joice (on Pisans: “They can’t even build a bell tower properly”) and the occasional double entendre (on painting the nude Iac: “Leonardo’s brush quivers, its tip wet”), Florenzer is often a good deal of fun. But as a depiction of one of the defining geniuses of western civilization, it is little more than a sketch.

Christopher Shrimpton is a writer based in London.

28 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

© 2026 by PERDORFISCH WISSENSCHEN

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Foreign even to himself

A reimagining of the artist and patricide Richard Dadd

Diana Darke

Jennifer Higgins

Bedlam

240pp. Verso. Paperback, £10.99.

Best known as the Victorian artist who killed his father, then spent forty years locked up in Bedlam and Broadmoor painting fairies, Richard Dadd has long been a puzzle. Jennifer Higgins deciphers the clues to his early life through her disturbing, brilliant novel Bedlam—which appeared in a tiny print run in 2006 and is now reissued for the first time—showing how Dadd lost his mind, aged twenty-five, while travelling around the Middle East in 1842–43. Written as a stream of consciousness, Bedlam tracks Dadd's Grand Tour of Europe, Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, undertaken as a rising star of the London art scene at the invitation of his middle-aged patron, Sir Thomas Phillips. Of course, Dadd himself wrote no such account. The only record he left from that critical period was his Middle Eastern sketchbook, now held at the V&A, consisting of minutely detailed pencil drawings in his trademark highly precise style, not of fairies, but of temples, columns and cityscapes, along with orientalist portraits of local people in traditional clothing. (A new exhibition of Dadd's works has just opened at the Royal Academy and will be reviewed in a future edition of the TLS.)

A detail from "The Artist's Halt in the Desert" by Richard Dadd, c.1845

Higgins begins her narrative in Broadmoor, with Dadd wondering how he got there, perplexed at how his recollection keeps changing. "The fulcrum of my life took place when I was 25, the year I grew old and died as others knew me." He describes his departure from England, the lengthy farewells to his father and sisters that absorb all his energy, the loss of his mother, incomprehensible. "I am your mother now", his father says. "Father, you are not my mother", he replies.

Venice blows his mind ("it could not have been designed by a mortal"), then, suddenly, we are in Alexandria "with Hamid (a Nubian Sir Thomas has employed to show us the Real World of the Arab)", who arranges a visit to a brothel: Dadd's first experience of sex. "I would like to touch a woman, and, if possible, to forget myself for a while", says Dadd. Sir Thomas pretends that his interest is "purely anthropological", and the next morning at breakfast, they do

not speak of it; indeed, it is never once mentioned. "It was", the narrator reflects, "two other men in a different time."

Egypt baffles Dadd. He finds the sphinx "as rare as married virginity ... as unsettling an apparition as any I have witnessed". From this point on, his mind begins to fracture, as he loses any grip on where he is and what is happening to him. Higgins documents his descent into madness with great power and authenticity. "We are here to see other cultures, to try to understand them", Dadd reflects, "... quite despite the fact that we cannot understand anything that anyone has said to us, and quite despite the fact that we are insensitive to these peoples' gods." He feels intensely lonely and starts to see "the brightest colours of the symbols of eternity". His fate is sealed by a book on Egyptian mythology, lent to him by Sir Thomas. Soon, he becomes obsessed with Osiris, the god of the afterlife, slain by his own brother, who seems to be urging Dadd to commit patricide.

But why should a son stay a father? ... Where is the right and wrong in all of this? ... I am too foreign here even for myself ... This is not a place for our English God. He would be blinded by such brightness. By the time Dadd returns home, Higgins has enabled us to enter his mind and to empathize with him, this wanderer once adrift in an alien land with no support, now surrounded at home by equal incomprehension, his psychosis inevitable. "If only", he bemoans, "I had a friend who could hold me tight." Perhaps the fairies were his friends.

Diana Darke's latest book is Islamesque: The forgotten craftsmen who built Europe's medieval monuments, 2024.

Dust to dust

Hedonism and the death drive among the Young British Artists

Alexander Leissle

Alex Hyde

Exhibition

256pp. Granta. Paperback, £9.99.

Alex Hyde's second novel, Exhibition, drops us into the art world of 1990s London, a much-mythologized era riding the wave of an affluent consumer-capitalist boom. Here we can find the Young British Artists (YBAs), white-dusted surfaces at White Cube parties, tabloid fame, formaldehyde. This is where the contemporary schema of the celebrity artist was honed and set, the late-Renaissance ideal of the artist as intellectual visionary commodified by gallerists and practitioners alike.

Enter Rabble (or "Rab") Stone, a young photographer from humble, troubled origins in Manchester. She moves to London, then in with an affluent artist: "You. When you answered the door of the Brixton house, dressing gown and cigarette", the novel opens. This, effectively, is

a Künstlerroman in negative: appearing in the second person, "the artist" is both the novel's focal point and its presiding lacuna.

Quickly, Rab's relationship with the artist develops: first, Rab is peering through the crack in the door while the artist works "wide-legged and naked on the floor, leaning over the paper, the mirror propped up"; then she asks Rab to photograph her, and Rab does, "my knee still bouncing, still waiting for the shutter to click. Thinking, at the same time, that you were pathetic, weak". Both are enjoying Rab's voyeurism; the artist, it transpires, will also later profit from it at Rab's expense. And so a pas des deux ensues, with Rab circling the artist's debauched life and its "parade of fucks", unexplained black eyes, alcohol and drug binges. Is the artist filling a void, Rab asks. "Yes, there was a void to fill, you said. My cunt." Thus the tone is set for a gruelling sojourn through the archetypes and fantasies of art-world cliché.

Exhibition's second act moves the artist on to New York in the 2010s, where she has achieved success and fame—and escaped Rab's view. Rab has returned home to care

for her mother, who has dementia, and this distance serves as a narrative holding pattern anticipating the pair's inevitable reunion. In the book's pre-eminent passage, Rab sits to sketch her uninterested mother, "only the sound of the kitchen clock and the pencil dry on the paper, occasional canned laughter from next door". Rab's mother inspects the work quizzically, "like people do when their likeness has been caught but there's something a bit off". Maybe, Rab resolves, "that night when she did the washing-up she'd see herself in a different light". It's the closest Hyde gets to articulating her motive for Exhibition: to depict art as a thing that happens between people, the work as membrane.

But much of the novel is membrane-like in its thinness. Hyde's prose is liberally paragraphed, chopping up stories, changing tenses, interrupting and fragmenting with no discernible literary effect. She has a particular tic for short, throwaway reactions, the language of enojo: "Slight laugh", "Mock-sad face". Rab and the artist's gooseberryish housemate, Duncan, is no fleshier: old money, charming, lavish,

gay, entirely predictable. When Rab notices the "bloom of bruises" and punctures on his forearm, we can already guess his fate.

Then there is the artist in question, modelled, as the novel's endnotes acknowledge, on Tracey Emin. The common artgoer won't need much to work out that one, either: there are her large-scale figurative paintings; there is her brash, vulnerable sexuality; the phase in video work; a certain bed. In lieu of anything much to say about Emin herself, Hyde looks at her through Rab, the documenter and enabler, the counterweight to the tortured artist. That the author attempts to critique the mechanics of the art world—briefly parsing value speculation, or the market's thanatophilia—while simultaneously luxuriating in such auras betrays an objectivity no more acute than that of Rab.

In the absence of insight, we are left with a character study of the core relationship. But what at first seems like sexual tension in the end feels like romantic vacuity: a relationship constructed through a series of artificial gazes. While this may seem apt for two people who don't seem to know where their creativity comes from, or what it should serve—other than themselves—the result is wearying on the reader. Disappointed face.

Alexander Leissle is digital editor at ArtReview.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 29

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Francophone Literature

Apostle of Négritude

The writings of an African statesman and French Academician

Alexandra Reza

Léopold Sédar Senghor

Writings on Politics

Edited and translated by Yohann C. Ripert 224pp. Duke University Press. £21.99 (US $28.95).

The Essential Senghor

African philosophy and Black aesthetics Edited and translated by Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall, Cheikh Thiam 406pp. Duke University Press. £26.99 (US $34.95).

In the Senegalese film Xala (1975), directed by Ousmane Sembène, the president of a newly independent country is hosting an inaugural cabinet meeting, dressed in a tux and a dress shirt. He declares in grandiose tones that “We choose socialism, the only true socialism, African socialism ... our independence is complete”. He unwraps a portrait of himself as his assembled colleagues applaud. Then his two French advisers come in and silently distribute a briefcase of cash to each cabinet minister.

This president is a satire of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal’s first head of state, who had been in power for fifteen years by the time the film came out. Of course, it’s an ungenerous sketch, exaggerated for comic effect, but Sembène gets to the heart of the most well-rehearsed critiques of Senghor: that he was pompous, too close to the French, and said one thing and did another. Senghor’s government banned Sembène’s next film.

Senghor the person and his ideas have often been subject to caricature. Before he became president of Senegal in 1960 at the age of fifty-three, Senghor was a poet and teacher who moved in intellectual circles. A brilliant student, he was the first African student to pass the agrégation, the qualification required to teach French literature in France, which he did, and – so the classic story goes – he was one of the three architects of the Négritude movement in the 1930s and 1940s, along with the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire and the Guyanees poet Léon-Gontran Damas. Notably, Senghor edited a seminal volume of Négritude poetry in 1948, the Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (“Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy Poetry in French Language”), and it is true that he continued to act as patron and champion of artists and writers as president and throughout his life – especially those who corresponded to his idea of what Négritude should be. “We just wish his films could be less superficial, less political, so more black, more cultural ... a cinema faithful to the values of Négritude”, he said of Sembène.

What was Négritude? Damas, Césaire and Senghor had different answers to that question. For Césaire, it was a coming-to-consciousness, an engaged corrective to a colour-blind Marxism. For Senghor, it

Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1983

seemed to be something more mystical, connected to what he repeatedly called l’essence nègre (“black essence”: the question of how to translate the vexed and historically specific term nègre is complex and Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall and Cheikh Thiam offer useful reflections on the topic). It is perhaps best understood, as suggested by the Nigerian critic Abiola Irele, in historical terms, as a “social and cultural movement closely related to African nationalism”.

The concept gained so much traction in different languages and different parts of the world that its meaning ran away from those who coined the term, even if Senghor maintained a rather proprietary attitude towards it, and continued to expound – endlessly, it sometimes seems – definitions all his life. Because of the “essence nègre” idea, and other comments that circulated in aphorism, Senghor the philosopher was frequently criticized as essentializing. He was also disliked on the left, and in Senegal, because of his francophilia and his record in government, which could not be separated from his writings. By 1966, Senegal was a one-party state; in 1976, Senghor cautiously allowed other parties to establish themselves, but on constrained terms. As the Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah put it in 1967, there seemed to be a “tremendous gulf between theory and practice” in Senghor’s behaviour in government:

while all this logomachy goes on, Senghor uses in his practical politics techniques taken directly from the authoritarian colonial past: army, police, manipulative alliances with old power constellations, and the support of a huge detachment of French advisers, experts, administrators.

Senghor’s embrace of la Francophonie (the French post-imperial but certainly neocolonial soft power network, big in the 1980s and 1990s, now largely discredited for its cronyism and interference in the domestic political systems of African states) was hard to swallow for many committed to African liberation. Even Césaire tried to put water between his own vision of Négritude and Senghor’s

(“Négritude, yes, but with the presidential palace, the protocol of the Elysée, etc”, he said of Senghor).

Two new English translations of Senghor’s work seek to rehabilitate his ideas through a focus on his extensive prose writing. Writings on Politics emphasizes his texts on humanism, federalism and Francophonie, while The Essential Senghor focuses on Négritude, black writing and art, and cultural métissage. Both volumes offer essays selected from Senghor’s five-volume collected writings, Liberté, available in French (though now out of print), which gather themed groups of different forms of prose: speeches, introductions, reviews, essays, reports and so on. Both translations are necessarily (mercifully?) selective, leaving out essays that are hard to defend today, such as “Les Belges au Congo” – uncomfortably sympathetic to Belgian undertakings in the Congo – and his work on Senegalese post-independence economic and policy planning, and rather technical critiques of Marxism.

In Writings on Politics, Yohann C. Ripert seeks to frame Senghor as a federalist and humanist thinker, and characterizes his embrace of Francophonie as an “instrument for building bridges in a postcolonial world”. Ripert presents him in visionary terms as a Platonic figure:

following almost to the letter the argument developed in the Republic, Senghor had made his own the idea that no philosophical or poetic work could find a solution for political issues, yet philosophical and poetic practices were necessary for the success of any political work aimed at the sustainability of the polity – a timeless lesson we have often forgotten.

This portrait, though highly researched and carefully written, is sometimes breathless: when Senghor resigned from the presidency after two decades, in 1981, Ripert writes, “liberated from the immediate demands of state governance, Senghor fully embraced his philosopher-king aura”. “Philosopher-king aura” is a bit much, but certainly the essays show Senghor’s ideas about governance and nationalism. In particular, they present him as a critic of nationalism – “For a Federalist Solution” (1955) frames the nation as a “colonial ideal [original emphasis]” and argues instead for a French Federal Republic. Characterizing himself as a Frenchman, Senghor claims that “France was never racist; she is the least ‘colonial’ of the colonial powers”. In “Balkanization or Federation” (1956), he develops a vision in which the “eight territories of French West Africa merge into a unitary state with one government and one legislative assembly and this state, under national law, is integrated into the republic”. In “For a Federalist Solution”, Senghor’s argument for remaining in a French federation is based in what he sees as the African territories’ connection to, and need for, France (“Should the overseas territories secede, they would

wither like branches severed from a tree”). “Balkanization or Federation” is more oppositional and has aged better. Its main argument is that the relatively small populations of Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire would weigh lightly in their relations with France, with its population of 40 million, and that a Federation of French West Africa, with a demography of about 25 million, would have more leverage.

Such wariness of the nation-state was typical of African anticolonialists more generally, whose discourses and practices critiqued it and offered alternatives even as they fought for national independence. For many of them, there was no stark choice to be made between their nation-to-be and wider human connections: the choice of which to emphasize was strategic and temporally contingent, rather than mutually exclusive. They saw nationalism as necessary, but insufficient for the greater goal of a wider freedom. Compare the francophone psychiatrist, militant and anticolonial theorist Frantz Fanon in 1959: “the building of a nation is of necessity accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universalizing values ... it is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness lives and grows”. Or the Bissauan leader Amilcar Cabral, struggling not against the French Empire but the Portuguese, who proffered a similarly oscillating conception of political community. For Cabral, the central task in hand involved forging a “New Man, fully conscious of his national, continental and international rights and duties”. In 1955, W. E. B. Du Bois wanted “autonomy” within a sense of “One World”; in 1958, Kwame Nkrumah wanted “independence now. Tomorrow, the United States of Africa”. Unity was the refrain. As the musician E. T. Mensah put it in his classic track about the once-mooted Ghana-Gainea-Mali union, “Africa is now awakened / That unity can save her”.

“Balkanization”, too, was a common metaphor for the perils of nationalism. Nkrumah liked to talk about it when delineating his ideas of pan-Africanism. In 1958, following independence in Guinea and Ghana, the French review Présence Africaine ran a leader entitled “Balkanization and Unity”, in which it argued that Europe was pushing for a nationalist future for the African continent because it wanted to maintain divisions that had served it so well up to now.

Senghor’s project of imperial federalism is well established in French-language scholarship, but the value of having these essays in English is in allowing the anglosphere to compare his federalism with the more-than-national projects across the continent. This brings into view not only Senghor’s particularity, but also the extent to which wariness of the nation was a central paradox and dynamic of African nationalism among both revolutionary and conservative campaigners for decolonization. For example, left-wing internationalists tended to emphasize the entangled and extractive global economy as the basis for their more-than-national visions of independence, where Senghor is often preoccupied by cultural entanglements past and present.

In The Essential Senghor, Calhoun, Fall and Thiam sidestep the questions of

30 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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federalism and Francophonie, tracking instead the development of Senghor's ideas about humanism, language and culture. These essays give a more nuanced picture to an anglophone audience who may think of Senghor in light of his most infamous comment, "Emotion is negro, as reason Hellenic". Senghor develops other ideas about Greek history and the place of emotion, and offers a typology of reason (discourse, sympathetic, intuitive, participative and so on). Nevertheless, he is still prone to generalization and oversimplification about Europe as well as Africa, and offers titbits of armchair cultural sociology such as "European reason is analytical through use, whereas negro reason is intuitive through participation". Perhaps this desire to categorize and summarize reflects his training in colonial ethnography.

He is on somewhat more promising and less essentializing ground as he eschews ideas of cultural purity to embrace the virtues of "cultural métissage" and imagines Négritude as a form of humanism that can allow "Black Africa to contribute to the Civilization of the Universal". Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out, as Césaire did in 1956, that ideas about cultural mixing were not inherently oppositional; this was also the vocabulary of European colonizing societies, many of which celebrated the apparent birth of "a mixed civilization [une civilisation métisse]". (Indeed, Senghor characterizes Francophonie as a form of métissage.)

Senghor's ideas are best read as particular variations on themes that typified the wider cultural moment: discussions about building a new humanism, about building new universals now that European "universal" values had been exposed as bogus, and about the racialized underpinnings of European "rationality", were widespread in postwar cosmopolitan and anticolonial circles. Nor was Senghor alone in elaborating the idea of Négritude as humanism. In Portuguese, this idea was commonplace in the 1950s and 1960s. This crucial element is often forgotten in caricatures of Négritude as a form of identitarian affirmation.

Senghor's texts are hard to translate: dense, prone to asides, highly allusive, drawing on a wide range of sources from linguistics to poetry to history to philosophy, drawing in many languages. The translators of both books have done an excellent service to the anglophone. It is good that this history is accessible to more people.

That said, I am left feeling somewhat circumspect about how Senghor is framed in both editions. Ripert's characterization of him as a type of Socratic "philosophering" is bizarrely overstated and divorced from any sense that Senghor's governance had any practical implications that we might want to analyse and interpret. Calhoun, Fall and Thiam's framing of Senghor's work is more measured, but is underpinned by the claim that he has been "marginalized" as a thinker, not least

because his "intellectual contributions" have been "interpreted through the lens of his political actions".

I quibble over whether "marginalized" is the appropriate term for perhaps the most famous African poet-statesman of the twentieth century, and a member of the Académie française, but the real question here for me here is about the strategy of offering a revisionist account of Senghor based on a separation of his writing from his other practices in the world, not least as Senegalese president. There is a dangerous idealism and ahistoricism here, that a writer should be read despite their other actions, as though their ideas transcend the world that produced them. Calhoun, Fall and Thiam argue that the marginalization of Senghor's prose has been compounded by the fact that "the first generation of Senegalese university professors emerged from the cohort of students who experienced violent repression under Senghor's administration". Is the suggestion here that these professors were unfairly set against him? Or that they misunderstood the "depth, nuance and sheer scope" of his intellectual contributions? Both are implied. But what if the opposite is true—that practical experience of Senghor's policies might have illuminated his ideas, and their implications and consequences? I am not arguing that we shouldn't read Senghor: I am saying that he should be read not despite, but alongside, his political record. This might require a more

detailed analysis of that record in its full structural context than is typically offered by his detractors, but I find it untenable that his writing can be understood sealed off from his other work.

These are all questions about method—old chestnuts, perhaps—but if we only look at the words on the page, especially in histories of African independence, we will run quickly out of road. As feminists have endlessly shown, there are limits to understanding the history of ideas through big books of things that men have written down. These new translations testify to a desire to rehabilitate Senghor partly because of the large body of work he produced "as one of the African scholars who wrote most extensively and published most widely on African languages, literature, art, philosophy, and history throughout the twentieth century". Feminist work to repeople the intellectual histories of decolonization beyond their perceived leaders and intellectual figureheads requires us to look beyond publishing to understand different forms of social, political and cultural praxis as contributions to the "intellectual history" of that time. But to take that effort seriously, we have to accept that it doesn't just matter what you say, it matters what you do.

Alexandra Reza is the author of Anticolonial Form: Literary journals at the end of empire (2024). She teaches at the University of Bristol.

Island of flaming syllables

Poetry from Madagascar

Franck H. Andrianarivo

Dominique Ranaivoson, editor

La Poésie de Madagascar 368pp. Éditions Seghers. €23.

Rarely outside the Grande Île is Madagascar imagined as a land of letters, let alone a place where literature in French has quietly taken root, evolved and flourished since the early twentieth century. Madagascar is in fact, as the poet and politician Jacques Rabemananjara once wrote, the "Ile aux syllabes de flamme!" ("island of flaming syllables"), a place where poetry both in Malagasy and in French forms an integral part of the island's identity.

In the land of hainteny and kahary (the traditional arts of eloquent speech), poetic art is practised by people of all educational backgrounds and across generations. It remains, especially in the Malagasy language, a shared sensibility. As Dominique Ranaivoson reminds us in her helpful preface to La Poésie de Madagascar, in Madagascar today, poetry is a living presence woven into the island's cultural fabric, accompanying daily life and marking key moments from weddings to funerals and famadihana (turning of the bones ceremonies). It is read on the radio

and in public, shared on social media and expressed through traditional verse, as well as in rap and slam performances.

Léopold Sédar Senghor was among the first to recognize the value of Malagasy voices internationally. In his influential Anthologie de la poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (1948), the Senegalese statesman and poet of Négritude declared: "Je n'ai pas cru bon d'écarter Madagascar." ("I did not deem it fit to leave Madagascar out.") Senghor's volume placed the island on the map of Black francophone literatures and introduced three pillars of its poetic heritage: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Rabemananjara and Flavien Ranaivo.

Ranaivoson's volume gathers thirty Malagasy poets of different generations, sensibilities and styles, and renders the island's literature newly legible to readers of French. As the poet Esther Nirina wrote, the revealing power of poetry can make the country—often elusive to outsiders—more tangible by giving them a truer sense of the island and its people: "Elle répand / l'odeur et l'image / de l'autre rive" ("It spreads / the smell and the image / of the other shore").

Featuring poets born between 1892 and 1995, this anthology offers the most comprehensive panorama of Malagasy poetry in French to date. A glossary and two poems in the Malagasy language—by

Rabearivelo and Nirina—remind readers that the island's literary identity rests on a dual linguistic heritage. While most contemporary poetry is written in Malagasy, Ranaivoson argues that the debate over language feels settled today; for many, French is no longer merely a colonial remnant, but a bridge to the wider world. For her, the time has come to map a poetic genealogy and present readers with a fuller range of Malagasy voices, whether descendants of the "trois mousquetaires" of Senghor's anthology or fresh talents shaping the contemporary scene.

The collection is divided into five sections: "Les pionniers" spotlights early trailblazers such as Rabearivelo; "Les héritiers" includes Rabemananjara, often called the forgotten poet of Négritude, whom Rabearivelo urged to "carry the torch" after his death; "Écrire d'ailleurs" gathers diasporic voices, notably Nirina, whose writings express deep attachment to the homeland from afar; "La poésie militante" captures the fervour of the malgachisation era, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, when poets and singers asserted national pride and resisted French neocolonialism; and "La poésie contemporaine", which closes the volume with fifteen vibrant and diverse modern voices including Raharimanana—one of the most read figures in contemporary

Malagasy literature—further poets such as David Jaomanoro, Hanit Ony and Elie Ramanakavana, and musicians such as D. D. Sorajavana and Henri Ratsimbazafy (although the absence of groundbreaking voices such as Caylah, a slam artist and activist whose bilingual performances have reached audiences well beyond Madagascar, feels like a missed opportunity to fully capture the vitality of the newer generation).

In one poem, Raharimanana writes: "Je suis encore debout. Des paroles figées dans la décrépitude magnifique. Cette simple conscience que la vie est encore érigée dans l'instant, qu'importent les poussières qui tombent de mes ruines, vivre est toujours laisser une part de soi à la mort." ("I am still standing. Words fixed in the magnificent decrepitude. This simple awareness that life is still constructed in the moment, whatever dust may fall from my ruins, to live is always to leave a part of oneself to death.") These lines assert the poet's dignity as he accepts the ruins that history has left him and persists nonetheless. This important anthology shows us that Malagasy literature, too, is alive and resilient: its mix of voices, forms and sensibilities defies the reductive clichés so often attached to the island. The inclusion of texts both rare and previously unpublished makes this collection not only rich in scope and beauty, but also a precious act of literary revelation, transmission and preservation.

Franck H. Andrianarivo is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the American University of Paris.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 31

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French Food & Literature

Cooking revolution

Huge plates, tiny portions and chauvinism

Felicity Cloake

Luke Barr

The Secret History of French Cooking The outlaw chefs who made food modern 352pp. Dutton. £28.99 (US $32).

There was a recipe book sandwiched between Delia and Madhur Jaffrey in my childhood kitchen that no one ever cooked from, though I was fascinated by its glossy photographs, which bore little resemblance to food as I then knew it. Its subject was nouvelle cuisine, a movement that, some half a century after its heyday, remains synonymous with the fussiest excesses of fine dining. Fitted at the time as a second French revolution, for throwing open the heavy velvet curtains of the Michelin-starred world to embrace lightness and modernity, it's chiefly remembered today, outside the industry at least, for its huge plates and tiny portions.

Unfair though this may be, so fleeting was nouvelle cuisine's moment in the sun, and so alien do its precepts seem in the current climate of butter boards and sharing platters, I was surprised that Luke Barr, the author of two previous works on French gastronomic history (as well as being the great-nephew of the American food writer M. F. K. Fisher, a woman of lusty appetites who, one suspects, had scant patience for commas of coulis), has managed to produce such a chunky account. Despite its title, the book deals with a period of just seventeen years, from 1965, when Michel Guérard opened his first restaurant, to 1982, when three of the big beasts of nouvelle cuisine put their names to a 4,000-cover operation at Disney World Florida. (This aspect of the tale is in no way secret; nouvelle cuisine takes its name from a magazine headline and, as Barr details, its proponents were the subject of endless media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic.)

Though its ostensible focus is the food, the book tells a much wider story, of a culture still to a large extent living by prewar values and strictures, being forcibly dragged by its starched collar into the Swinging Sixties. There had been previous attempts at establishing a 'nouvelle cuisine' as far back as the eighteenth century, but until Barr's 'outlaw chefs' burst onto the scene, ingredients were still prepared according to the principles of cuisine classique laid down by Auguste Escoffier at the turn of the twentieth. As the journalist Craig Claiborne recalled in his defence of nouvelle cuisine, during his training in Switzerland in the 1950s, 'If Escoffier said that pommes de terre Anna were created in this or that fashion, then you didn't vary that formula. If his formula for salade russe did not include fresh basil, you didn't dare demonstrate an

adventurous and inspired genius by adding a leaf or two'.

Extraordinary as it may seem, until relatively recently, creativity played little part in professional cookery. Whatever one's opinion of the results, pairing crab with pineapple or veal with kiwi fruit, putting black truffle in ice cream or chicken in a sous vide represented a rupture with the status quo that is difficult to imagine in our novelty-hungry age. Paul Bocuse and friends changed the way the world saw the culinary profession. No longer just a 'well-trained practitioner of French culinary tradition ... the modern chef was an artist, an auteur', plucked from anonymous toil in dark kitchens and thrust into the limelight on magazine covers, television shows and even global tours.

Had Barr simply chosen to explore the evolution of western cuisine in the second half of the twentieth century, this book would be of interest to only the most dedicated restaurant nerds. The real meat here, even for readers too young to shudder at the memory of a raspberry reduction, is his linking of developments on menus to wider social shifts, especially with regard to the rampant chauvinism of the period. That includes chauvinism in the sense of believing in the superiority of one's gastronomic culture - a belief that one might fairly argue has never gone away in France. But it's also chauvinism in the more common sense. In parallel to the tale of nouvelle cuisine, Barr charts a more important revolution: the battle of female chefs for professional recognition, which proved more upsetting to many in the industry than the idea of al dente green beans.

It is this, along with a subplot involving a reckoning with the wartime past, that constitutes the real secret history here, and it's jaw-dropping stuff. The Maîtres Cuisiniers de France, a prestigious trade body for chefs, did not admit women as members until 1997, and they were not permitted to apply for stages, the usual route into culinary training. Indeed, Bocuse, the Michelin Guide's 'cook of the century', was vocal in his claim that 'women have no place in the professional kitchen, they're underdeveloped and lack both imagination and talent'. The story of those who dared to challenge him, and take on the might of the French culinary establishment, deserves a book in its own right, and makes for a sobering counterpoint to the

'No longer just a practitioner of French culinary tradition, the modern chef was an artist, an auteur'

jokey braggadocio of the bande à Bocuse, as the nouvelle cuisine gang quickly became known. Barr paints a picture of a group of gifted chefs quietly getting on with running restaurants and raising families while fighting for the same recognition as their male counterparts, but without the benefit of the men's well-oiled PR machine (an operation still recognizable to anyone working in the food media today).

An unlikely ally to the cause was Le Monde's conservative critic Robert Courtine, who dismissed nouvelle cuisine as a 'publicity gimmick' and championed what he saw as the untutored, instinctive cooking of chefs such as Olympe Nahmias and Annie Desvignes over the 'raw and undercooked fish' served up by disciples of Bocuse. This support was not uncomplicated for his protégées: a belief that a woman's natural place was in the kitchen, preparing food that had been provided by men, was not the only dated view Courtine espoused. His unmasking as not just a wartime collaborator, but a virulent antisemite who had called for 'necessary violence ... clean-ups, sweeps, sanctions and executions' is, despite its tangential relationship to nouvelle cuisine, one of the most astonishing sections of the book. French society's reckoning with its painful past is not something that can be comfortably addressed in a few pages, however, and, like the last section as a whole, it feels slightly rushed. I would have liked, in particular, more consideration of nouvelle cuisine's considerable culinary legacy, and to have learnt more about the food itself - apart from a handful of more detailed descriptions of things like the Troisgros brothers' saumon à l'oseille, the cooking sometimes gets lost amid the glitz of press banquets and transatlantic flights. But perhaps that's my own greed.

This is an enjoyable book on a rich topic, but it is not helped by occasional forays into the more creative, speculative reaches of nonfiction. Was Guérard really crossing the Champs-Élysées, feeling 'all the pent-up energy of a changing city', at the same time that Courtine was feeling France 'in his bones' a few blocks away at the Restaurant Lasserre? Who knows whether the future PR supremo Yanou Collart was really considering 'the power of celebrity, and the celebrity of the chef' when she signed the guest book at Restaurant Paul Bocuse? The personalities involved provide enough genuine colour: there are some truly glorious details, like the clownish Bocuse repackaging a tin of foie gras as dog food to prank friends, to negate the need for further embellishment, and such passages merely blur the line between matters of historical record and artistic licence in a way that threatens to undermine the author's impressively extensive research.

Yet the best books what your appetite for further reading, and this particular Secret History is as enjoyable an amuse-bouche as any served up by the bande à Bocuse ... or, indeed, by their female colleagues.

Felicity Cloake's most recent book is The Underdog, which appeared earlier this year.

Memoirs of a renegade

Life as a dropout and colonial soldier

Daniel Culpan

Pierre Guyotat

Idiocy

Translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty 208pp. New York Review Books. Paperback, £16.99 (US $17.95).

Halfway through Idiocy, the final volume of memoir by Pierre Guyotat, the avant-garde writer reminds us that 'nothing is pure'. These words might serve as a credo for all his work, in which brutality is the essence of all things. First published in French in 2018, two years before the author's death, and now translated for the first time by Peter Behrman de Sinéty, the book confirms Guyotat's renegade status as heir to the transgressions of Georges Bataille and Jean Genet.

The child of a country doctor, Guyotat ran away from home when he was eighteen. He spent two years on the streets of Paris before being conscripted into the Algerian War in 1960. The death of his mother (in 1958) prompted his first novel, Sur un Cheval (1961), about a motherless wanderer, and, after notes for the second were discovered in his barracks, he found himself accused of 'complicity in desertion', interrogated and imprisoned for three months.

On his return to France, Guyotat joined the French Communist Party and his thinking became aligned with the Maoist leanings of Tel Quel magazine, whose contributors included Maurice Blanchot and Roland Barthes. Guyotat worked as a journalist and used his wartime experiences as a basis for literary exploration. Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats (1967; Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers, 2003), with its frank descriptions of war and sexual depravity, thoroughly unmoved the establishment, but it was Guyotat's fourth novel, Eden, Eden, Eden (1970; Eden, Eden, Eden, 1995), that cemented his reputation as a provocateur. Written as a single labyrinthine sentence, it tracked the exploits of Wazzag, who sells his body in a Saharan brothel frequented by French soldiers and nomads. For 200 pages, the reader bears witness to every kind of sexual aberration. On publication - and despite support from intellectuals including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida - Eden, Eden, Eden was condemned as 'pornographic' by the French government and its sales were severely restricted.

Idiocy describes Guyotat's coming of age between 1958 and 1962. Like the

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previous volumes of autobiography – Coma (2006; 2010), Formation (2007) and Arrière-fond (2010; In the deep, 2014) – it is more conventional in form than his experimental writing, though it still bears traces of that scurrilous early style. A description of the author’s dropout years in Paris has him sleeping in a tent that “covers the cobblestones between two flows of piss”. There is no option, Guyotat says, but to “fling yourself into filth, approach it, touch it, handle it; to live at last as a man [through] this partaking of misery”. Later, the Seine becomes festering and nightmarish: “Boat lights shine against the black undersides of the arches; the water slaps at stone-drowned corpses, carcasses of beaten dogs”. All of Guyotat’s preoccupations are here, but in particular his fascination with the processes of the body, captured insentences that somehow purge themselves and overflow the page.

We pursue the young Guyotat in his delinquency: stealing banknotes from the

family money box, feeling condemned in the eyes of an all-seeing Catholic God. We glimpse the growing awareness of his bisexuality (“Does she only want me with him as well, wanting me to want her since he wants me?”) and witness his spiritual hunger for transformation through art: “I ... have the future before me, which I have to fill with deeds, acts, new works; a body for doing”. Each of the book’s short chapters moves to its own shellshocked rhythm. Guyotat summons the “spell of stupidity” that reigns over life in the army, where rebellion ends only in violence and humiliation: “The officer withdraws; his aides strike me with their belts; my eyelid bleeds; blood runs from my split lip; I want to drink it but as I stick out my tongue the strap chokes me”.

The climax arrives when a colonel finds a copy of Guyotat’s first book, as well as the notes he has been taking for the next one – notes that describe the “physical misery of the troops: fatigues

in tatters, filthy bodies, vermin, rotten food”. To survive the interrogation that follows, Guyotat disassociates himself into the memory of art: “I slip into large and less large paintings in the Louvre, lay my hand on the draperies, the cloths that hang from Veronese’s tables”. Condemned to solitary confinement, and listening to the jackals in the desert, he feels only sympathy for the people he’s supposed to be subjugating:

all of this confirms my faith in Algerian independence: the magnanimity of the Algerian people that distinguishes its torturers from the France and the French that it loves – we, the French, wouldn’t be capable of a quarter of it.

But he avoids self-exoneration. The “I” of Idiocy dwells in ambiguity. Every “fixed idea”, including that of the self, is rejected as a “shattering apart of the real”. His wartime experiences have taught him to “comprehend the political monster, the monster of the camps (culture didn’t

prevent the [vilest] dehumanization)”. And every moral and cultural shibboleth is shot down by flights of delirious logic, until only the bare facts remain.

Idiocy’s last section traces the end of the war and the writer’s journey back home, where “freedom” is imprinted with the memory of violence: “Me, my army mate too, we’ve emerged from underneath the jets whose war machinery we clean; twenty-months of communal life, servitude, nights in ‘meatsacks’”. He ends up in a brothel, where predatory images – dogs eating scraps of meat, a cat that catches a swallow – become a microcosm of the world. The machinery of war and colonialism devours every claim to “civilisation”, yet Guyotat salvages the hope that things can be otherwise. “I still believe, a little,” he writes, “in that God of humanity alone.”

Daniel Culpan is a writer based in London.

Not a new Dreyfus

A virulently antisemitic collaborator crafts his rehabilitation

Luke Warde

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Lettres à ses avocats français, 1947-1953

Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s political sympathies were initially hard to determine. Though full of venom, his immensely influential debut novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), was essentially indiscriminate in its hate – a misanthropic howl aimed at no group in particular. Jean-Paul Sartre and Leon Trotsky, attracted by its anti-war message and apparent anti-capitalism, were among Céline’s early champions. Yet in the run-up to and the early stages of the Nazi occupation of France, Céline wrote a series of viciously antisemitic pamphlets, Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937), L’École des cadavres (1938) and Les Beaux Draps (1941). After their publication, there could be little doubt that Céline harboured an especially deep loathing for a particular figure: the Jew.

The sheer violence of his Jew hatred went far beyond the more genteel but depressingly pervasive “antisémitisme de salon” common in early twentieth-century France. Indeed, the animus given free rein in the pamphlets, which made extensive use of the biological metaphors that were a hallmark of Nazi propaganda, seemed much closer to the murderously racist world-view of the German occupiers. Whether Céline had held these views all along – if he did, his early novels betray nothing of his antisemitism – remains unclear. André Gide went so far as to suggest either that Céline was suffering from a mental breakdown or that the whole thing was a kind of sick joke.

Astonishingly, given the horror of what transpired between the publication of

Louis-Ferdinand Céline with his wife, Lucette, Meudon, France, c.1955

his pamphlets and the end of the war, Céline would come to regard himself as a victim of grave injustice, seeing the legal proceedings brought against him for treason as part of a wider campaign of character assassination. Lettres à ses avocats français, 1947-1953 provides essential insight into this episode. A by turns illuminating and deranged anthology of correspondence with his legal representatives Albert Naud and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, the book shows the author repeatedly comparing the case against him to a “witch hunt” and, nauseatingly, a “new Dreyfus Affair”. On several occasions, he speculates that if Hitler had won, he would have turned out to be the only true enemy of the Führer. He, “the writer, the disabled and decorated ancien combattant, the pacifist”, was France’s “only true patriot”.

Although absurd claims such as these are plentiful across the correspondence,

reflecting the author’s understandable paranoia as the épuration of collaborators played out in the war’s immediate wake, the letters are sometimes merely tedious. Much of his haranguing of Naud and Tixier-Vignancour revolves around disputes over royalties and his alleged mistreatment by the French tax authorities. This version of Céline as the querulous, petty litigant who never fully left the narrow mental confines of the petite bourgeoisie sits uneasily alongside the self-mythologizing artist obsessed with his literary legacy.

The temptation to read any novelist’s correspondence in search of literary merit is hard to resist. With Céline, this can be especially powerful, littered as his letters are with the stylistic trappings of his novels: the frequent ellipses; the abundant and italicized onomatopoeic terms; the scabrous neologisms. Indeed, some of the finest letters here provide a

vivid snapshot of his late style, which became ever more dissonant and fragmented. On this basis, they represent an important literary artefact.

The real significance of this selection, however, lies less in archival novelty than in the portrait it helps us to trace of Céline’s postwar persona. Expertly curated by Jean Paul Louis, the volume contains only letters that had already appeared in Frédéric Monnier’s (albeit now out-of-print) anthologies of 1984 and 1985. Yet this Gallimard edition gives these previously scattered materials a new coherence: read as a whole, they reveal Céline crafting not so much a legal argument as a cunning self-rehabilitation strategy.

Convicted in absentia in 1950 of having “committed acts detrimental to national defence”, he returned to France from exile in Denmark the following year, benefiting from an amnesty on account of his service in the Great War. Only rather than repent publicly, as many might have, he instead sought to alchemize his own disgrace, playing the buffoon to now journalists and literary pilgrims alike, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs among them. Essentially, Céline engaged in a form of what we might today describe as “trolling”, playing up his own monstrosity in an attempt to cultivate a lurid appeal.

As Albert Naud reminds us in his memoir, which is excerpted in the correspondence’s appendix, Céline was ever aware of how his comic gifts might aid him. That instinct was not misplaced: when the judge read aloud the various insults he had directed at the prosecutor, the jury reportedly burst into laughter.

Luke Warde teaches French at Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School in St Albans.

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German Studies

Against interpretation

The autobiography of an insecure cultural theorist

Ben Hutchinson

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Sepp Mein Leben auf Halbdistanz 492pp. Suhrkamp. €30.

The German-born American comparatist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, who taught at Stanford University for three decades and is perhaps best known, in the German-speaking world, for his transatlantic commentaries on European culture, begins his memoir with a series of warnings. He has never been a passionate reader; he has always been “pathologically ambitious”; he is an unreliable narrator. He seems to identify, in fact, with Oskar Matzerath, the unreliable narrator of Günter Grass’s epoch-defining epic The Tin Drum (1959), and something of Grass’s picaresque, larger-than-life tone has rubbed off on him.

In his preface alone, Gumbrecht contrives to tell us that he is equally at home in four languages, and that his CV includes 2,535 single-authored publications. The book bears his name – Gumbrecht is “Sepp” to his friends – and his face is on the front cover. Self-effacing he is not. It quickly becomes clear, however, that he

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

practises not so much false humility as false hubris. Time and again, he tells us that his overweening ambition is actually insecurity, an enduring attempt to compensate for what he sees as his lack of any real talent. His autobiography, it follows, must mimic this mechanism.

Gumbrecht structures his memoir as an archipelago of “islands of thought”.

Beginning with his postwar childhood in Würzburg, he chronicles his consciousness as it evolves across the stations of his life. Born in 1948, he comes of age in the 1960s, a typical, if precocious product, of a postwar German generation defined by its attempts to escape the troubled past. He finds himself drawn, almost inevitably, to Paris, where he lunches with Michel Foucault – he recalls his lack of interest in feminism – and listens to Jacques Lacan. Less predictably, a period at the Collège de France many years later sees him meet the footballers Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, facilitated by his friend, the then PSG coach (now England manager) Thomas Tuchel. The banality of the encounter does nothing to diminish his lifelong enthusiasm for sport.

After periods of study in Munich and Salamanca – where he meets his first wife, Isabel, and discovers his calling as a hispanist – Gumbrecht moves to the newly founded university of Konstanz to do his doctorate under the supervision of Hans Robert Jauss. The charismatic impresario (alongside Wolfgang Iser) behind the emergence of reception theory, Jauss presided over the group known as “Poetik und Hermeneutik”, which applied the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer to literature and dominated West German theory in the 1970s. Gumbrecht’s recollections of their prominence attest to a confidence in the central position of the humanities that is scarcely conceivable now.

That Jauss was subsequently revealed to have been an officer in the SS – and that he was probably involved in serious war crimes – partly explains why Gumbrecht turned against him. But this shift was also, by the author’s own admission, motivated by the oedipal desire to break free from his Doktorvater. For Gumbrecht, this meant developing the lifelong rejection of hermeneutics that would become the recurring obsession of his work. What might it mean, in practice, to be against interpretation? Throughout his work – in his book on the year 1926, in his writings

on phenomenology, in his essays on sport – he has sought to understand meaning not as intellectually constructed through criticism, but as physically embodied through experience. In his view, the Cartesian split between mind and body was the Original Sin of modern thought.

Gumbrecht pursues this intuition across a series of institutions. In Bochum, he receives his first chair, punctuated by visiting professorships in exotic locations such as Rio de Janeiro and Berkeley. In Siegen, he establishes a graduate school through which pass a series of impressive speakers: Friedrich Kittler, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida, among others, all attest to the postmodern spirit of the 1980s. Ever eager with an anecdote, Gumbrecht captures the various personalities with vivid pen portraits that do not always flatter, but certainly ring true.

The culture wars of the Cold War provide the background to some of the most interesting passages in Gumbrecht’s story. Throughout the 1980s, he organized an annual conference in Dubrovnik, then part of Yugoslavia; its central position provided a meeting point for East and West. In theoretically charged discussions of topics such as “discourse” or “style”, dialectics both Marxist and Hegelian confront each other – as they do in East Berlin, recalled through Gumbrecht’s encounters with various socialist intellectuals. It is hardly a surprise when some of them turn out to have been Stasi informers.

As he moves to Stanford in the autumn of 1989, the tone changes. Keen to establish himself as a true American – a recurring theme of the second half of the book, as he renounces his German citizenship and tries to move beyond the national narrative of guilt – Gumbrecht gets busy making things happen. He invites luminaries to give talks on the West Coast (including, memorably, Harold Bloom, who demands four times the usual payment and responds to a “banal” question by disappearing ostentatiously to the bathroom and leaving the door open in full view). Stanford colleagues include Condoleezza Rice before she worked in the Bush administration, Carl Djerassi after he invented the pill and Richard Rorty at the height of his philosophical fame. Gumbrecht, inevitably, is at pains to keep pace with them all.

Since his retirement from Stanford, Gumbrecht has enjoyed further visiting professorships in Santiago, Kyoto, Moscow and Jerusalem. He is enlightening about their academic cultures and lucid about the limitations of the jet-setting academic, flying in to lend credibility, but not always achieving a genuine encounter with alterity. Where his autobiography remains frustrating, however, is in its reticence about his actual writing. Despite his prolific body of publications and impressive cultural range, we hear remarkably little about the intellectual work with which he made his name. He seems to be against interpretation not only of others’ work, but also of his own.

Ben Hutchinson is German editor at the TLS and Director of the University of London Institute in Paris. His books include Lateness and Modern European Literature, 2016.

Warm War

Yesterday was mild. Today combed men flail sensibly in gritty winds, observant to a scale we can’t accord with; the muted musical light arranges everything at the same distance.

There’s a number that we memorise and write out twice a year. The cafés that we pass are half darkened, closed to host after-hours meetings, wild gestures, printed agenda.

In upstairs windows, the same two colours, improvised from plastic bags, old garments. Anything white has discovered a usage: bedsheets, mist, the smoothed buildings part on crimsons of traffic and blossom.

New signs are everywhere: black banners floating on the flanks of institutes, the hillside rune of an artificial ski slope, or scratched in desperation into brick, daubed over train doors in a mania for significance.

The city map is based on a piece of decaying lace. Our culture is like this – it could be lifted away as leaf veins, a layer of dead skin, its imprint taken for a foreign collection. There, the curator lifts her hands to the paintings, as if to warm them.

SAM RIVIERE

Sam Riviere’s most recent collection of poems is Conflicted Copy, 2024. His new novel, Doppelgänger, will be published in October.

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A commitment to truth

The essays of a German scholar of high moral seriousness

Charlie Louth

Jeremy Adler

From the Renaissance to Modernism Goethe and German poetry (Selected essays, Vol. 1) 334pp. Legenda. £95 (US $120).

The Compass of Dignity Persecution, literature, and the law (Selected essays, Vol. 2) 386pp. Legenda. £95 (US $120).

It is hard to think of another scholar of German literature with preoccupations as broad as Jeremy Adler's. These two volumes of selected essays struggle to find a sensible way of ordering the wealth of material. From the Renaissance to Modernism: Goethe and German poetry in fact contains rather less on Goethe than The Compass of Dignity: Persecution, literature, and the law, which begins with three substantial essays on Goethe and science, and ends by arguing that German Basic Law, with its focus on human dignity and 'the right to free development of one's personality', owes an unsuspected debt to Goethe, particularly his Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the first Bildungsroman. In between are essays on the Holocaust, German-Jewish exiles in London, cosmopolitanism, the relationship between international law and world literature, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia; and, in the first volume, on baroque visual poetry, Paul Klee, concrete poetry, the experimental expressionist August Stramm, Goethe's play Torquato Tasso, Henry James's novels as 'predicated on Goethe's achievement', and Hölderlin.

It's not just this chronological and generic range that is striking - and unique - but the diversity of approaches, the breadth and depth of reference that Adler brings to bear on his topics. His method is fundamentally comparative and in inclination universal, encompassing philology, sociology, social anthropology, legal philosophy, history, politics and science. He is profoundly aware of how everything touches on everything else, and of how literature and art both depend on and influence society as a whole. It is this clear-sightedness and determined non-parochialism that mark him out as a writer: he never forgets how vulnerable and hard-won culture is. Or, to put it another way, how much we depend on the dead.

The earliest pieces gathered here (mostly in the first volume) are on Stramm - still neglected, despite being the best German poet of the First World War - and on 'figured' or visual poetry from the seventeenth century. Adler sees Stramm as a precursor to concrete poetry. His poems are read as designs, with attention to the 'physiological effect' on the reader - something he also notes when discussing the baroque pattern poems in which German is particularly rich, or 'Easter Wings' and other poems by George

A detail from 'Once Emerged from the Gray of Night' by Paul Klee, 1918

Herbert. Adler brings to these pieces the eye of a practitioner: since the mid-1970s, he has made experimental and concrete poetry himself. The span of this often beautiful work can be seen in the recent catalogue Jeremy Adler: Verbo-visual worlds (2026), and his extensive knowledge of the tradition in Text als Figur (1987), a definitive catalogue covering visual poetry from antiquity to the modern day.

One of the Stramm essays, the only piece here in German, takes a different approach, using letters and regimental histories to retrace both his life at the front and the poetry he wrote until he was killed in the Pripet Marshes. Such close biographical tracking is rare in Adler's writing, but what is not rare is the thorough return to the sources and circumstances of a work. We find it again in the long inquiry into Goethe's play about the Renaissance poet Tasso (which, by discovering overlooked connections between the play and Tasso's own works, shows how it 'mediates between contemporary and historical issues, and excavates the origins of modernity'), as well as in the uncovering of the 'Goethean tenor' of James's work. Excavation is a frequent metaphor in these pages, but it is justified, as Adler habitually reaches very far back to elucidate the phenomenon at hand. His method perhaps

owes something to Nietzsche, who used genealogy (explaining something by its origins) as a key tool.

A reaching back of another kind can be seen in the translations of Hölderlin's essays on tragedy, including the famous 'Notes' on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Antigone. These were pioneering, the first translations of any of Hölderlin's essays into English, and come with incisive commentary. Also included are Adler's versions of the 'Pindar Fragments', remnants of Pindar transmitted in other authors that Hölderlin translates, then continues in commentaries 'as deep and clear in beauty as they are elusive in meaning'. These hybrid texts seem to have provoked, or at least coloured, Adler's experimental cycle At the Edge of the World (1994).

The second volume has a different tenor. Above all, though Goethe presides over both volumes, he is joined by H. G. Adler, Jeremy's father and 'probably the greatest influence on my studies'. H. G. Adler came to London from Prague in 1947, the year of his son's birth, having survived not just Theresienstadt, but Auschwitz and other camps. His first wife and much of his family were murdered in the Holocaust. In London, he married Bettina Gross, a sculptor also from Prague, and joined other Jewish émigrés in Hampstead, notably his Prague friend Franz

Baermann Steiner, an anthropologist and (very good) poet, and the later Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, forming what is sometimes known as the Prague-Vienna Circle. Like these friends, H. G. Adler made understanding what had happened to Germany and the Jews his life's work. He wrote poems, novels and many other books, but is chiefly known for a vast documentary study of Theresienstadt that first appeared in 1955 and is still by far the most complete account of 'the face of a coerced community', as the subtitle has it. It attempts, in H. G. Adler's words, 'a pan-synoptic depiction of a camp that paradigmatically describes the condition of humankind in the era of mass society'.

A significant portion of Jeremy Adler's work has been devoted to keeping his father's legacy alive. That legacy has also set the tone and direction of his writing, its moral seriousness, the 'commitment to truth' and 'an essentially Jewish affirmation of humanity', against the 'fallacy of negativism' represented, for example, by Theodor Adorno. Though London-born and bred, Adler is in many ways an anachronism, a Central European intellectual instinct with postwar values. As this second volume shows, he is a public intellectual in a culture that no longer has them, though in the German-speaking world, where the species is not quite dead, he regularly reaches an audience via newspapers such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. (For more than forty years, he has also contributed important reviews and letters to this paper.)

The shorter pieces don't find their way into these volumes, except in the case of the expanded account of 'the role of theatre in Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution'. The longest of many long essays, the makings of a book, situates the Holocaust in the history of persecution, continuing H. G. Adler's sociological and structural approach - the point being to help us see that while the Holocaust was 'unique, as a historical event, [...] the social behaviours involved were not'. There are many places where one unwillingly thinks of the present, as when we are reminded that Hitler 'infused every organ with his own will, and treated the State as an instrument to serve his own ends'. But the long view also tells us that persecution 'does more moral harm to the persecutor than to the victim'. Though Adler can be acerbic and is not afraid to dismiss the merely fashionable or current, there is an essential hopefulness about his work. This eirene quality is reflected in his fine definition of hermeneutics as 'the art of peaceful inquiry'. Amid the cut-and-thrust of precise formulation, this is what shines through: a faith in culture, despite everything, to enrich the world and make it a better place.

Charlie Louth teaches German at The Queen's College, Oxford. He is the translator of The Complete Correspondence of Friedrich Hölderlin, 2025.

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Memoirs

Storymakers

Learning through creative writing

Miranda France

Julia Bell

Between the Lines

Life lessons from the writing workshop 320pp. Simon and Schuster. £18.99.

Humanities courses have seen a sharp drop in the number of applicants, and some university departments are even closing, yet creative writing seems to be bucking that trend, perhaps because it appears to offer a more tangible end product - ideally a book deal - when compared with other arts degrees. My students (at Goldsmiths, University of London and on various one-off courses) have often set aside a period of time to concentrate on a project they may have had in mind for years. They enjoy being part of a writing community, and the discipline of deadlines. They want to pay attention to stories at a time when paying attention feels so difficult it's almost an act of defiance.

Julia Bell sees the creative writing workshop, an intrinsic element in most courses, as a place to learn about life as well as words. As a lecturer at Birkbeck, she observes "a process of emotional education that happens by default, because the workshop requires the student to think deeply about what they are saying and why". This was a view shared by the CIA, which funded some of the first courses, notably the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where John Cheever, Philip Roth, Robert Lowell and John Berryman were on the faculty. Such talking shops were seen as a means to safeguard democracy, writes Bell: the CIA "saw in the structure of the workshop a method which fortified the values of citizenship, combated authoritarianism and promoted literary individualism".

Perhaps they were right, although what's good for citizenship isn't always good for writing. The behaviour of a group of people discussing how to capture human experience in words is unpredictable, often joyously so. On the residential courses run by Arvon, participants often bond deeply and claim to have had one of the best experiences of their lives. But while a workshop offers support and solidarity, it can also tend to suppress writerly freedom. A group that meets regularly over a long period of time may, unconsciously or otherwise, nudge its members towards a consensus based on current mores. I've sometimes had to defend students who wanted to create a character or use language that was disapproved of by others in the group. Surprisingly often, one has to remind students that authors can create obnoxious characters without sharing those views themselves. It seems to be getting harder for people to come together without provision concerning their identities, diagnoses and needs. Fortunately, their qualms are

A detail from "Woman Writing" by August Macke, 1910

often quickly overcome. A workshop can provoke intense feelings (and often tears) and it's important to guide the proceedings with care, but too much care could kill the enterprise altogether.

Bell has reconstructed a series of workshop scenarios using composites and proxies for her real students. (I did something similar in my book The Writing School, 2023.) Under her tutelage, the students learn invaluable lessons on technique. She gives some excellent examples, including a paragraph from Emma that shows Jane Austen mixing reported and spoken speech to heighten the tension and humour in a scene. Another text, from Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party, demonstrates different ways in which time can be shown to pass. "Without a meaningful relationship with time," Bell writes, "a story will always struggle to take flight." In a section on tenses, she uses a quotation from Philip Pullman that helps to elucidate why a present-tense narrative often grates: "I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate".

Alongside texts from established writers, the participants analyse what works or doesn't in their own and each other's writing. In one text, Bell discerns "lots of situation but not much story, not much narrative drive". Elsewhere, students struggle to create rounded characters or have to be reminded not to pursue an agenda. (It always makes for dull writing.) A quotation from Flannery O'Connor comes in useful here: "When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a

very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it".

In Bell's reconstructions, there is nearly always an agent provocateur, usually a white man, who rudely takes another participant to task. These characters, identified only by an initial, handily (perhaps too handily) allow Bell to describe flashpoints that may ignite in a workshop setting. One man is racist; another wants to take on MeToo by writing about a time when he felt misunderstood by a younger woman who accused him of harassment. One admits to having carried out a homophobic assault he now deeply regrets. A woman who, Bell presumes, "relies on the received wisdom of dinner parties", is dismissive of a classmate's non-binary identity. Bell feels the class collectively "rolling up its sleeves".

Other characters are variously pompous or moralizing. You can tell Bell doesn't like them from the way she styles their interjections as "scoffing" or "sneering". One man, working on a "rather turgid project aimed at the lofty heights of European literature", is "disgusted" that nobody has read Thomas Mann. I felt sorry for this man and for another who made the class gasp by comparing Sally Rooney to Barbara Cartland. People don't always express themselves well - and it should be permissible not to like Rooney.

In twenty-five years of teaching, I've been lucky to encounter only one seriously disruptive student. On the first night of a residential course, this man offended almost all of us through a breathtaking display of sexism, racism, antisemitism,

ableism and sectarianism (he'd brought along a penny whistle on which to play marching tunes). The next morning, he meekly agreed to leave, as if exhausted by the sheer range of his offensiveness.

It's much more usual for the members of a workshop to make firm friends, despite their differences. (On residential courses, this often happens over the washing-up.) In the past twenty years, creative writing courses have become much more ethnically and socially diverse, but men are still the most notable minority, usually making up less than a third of the group.

Bell is alert to the dangers of group-think, "which can be detrimental to the work and disorienting for the writer". One chapter contains an interesting conversation about how to read Alice Munro now that we know about her craven response to the revelation that one of her daughters had been sexually abused by their stepfather. Rather than denouncing or separating from her husband, she told her daughter that she (Munro) shouldn't be expected to deny her own needs. A participant in Bell's workshop is shocked to discover that one of the twentieth century's greatest writers was not, after all, a "cute old Canadian lady". Bell argues persuasively that Munro's intricate stories can still be read and analysed for signs of her quandary and motivations. "To read as a writer in this moment must be, I think, to try to take the view that everyone is compromised. That when we read, we are engaging with the work of messy, difficult, possibly atrocious humans." The suggestion that one might enjoy Munro's genius without factoring in her moral failure would be a step too far, but at least she isn't "cancelled".

There are, though, other instances of the dreary lexicon associated with the culture wars: "micro-aggressions", "appropriation", "inter-generational trauma", "lived experience" and reminders to "check your privilege". While all these concepts are worth exploring, the labels read like an admission of defeat, especially in the context of creative writing. They encourage an idea that life is a series of "issues" rather than experiences - love, death, despair, exile, betrayal, infatuation - as fascinating and mysterious to writers now as they were to Shakespeare or Sophocles.

Through it all, the workshop emerges as an invigorating forum, sometimes a battleground, in which to talk about life, death and everything in between. But, as Bell points out, it should be treated as "a proving ground", not a final arbiter. If you want to write freely, subversively, even offensively, then Virginia Woolf was right: you also need a room of your own - or at least noise-cancelling headphones.

Miranda France is a consultant editor at the TLS.

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Science Fiction

Queen and games mistress

Two utopian feminist novels

Emily A. Bernhard Jackson

Irene Clyde

Beatrice the Sixteenth

342pp. MIT Press. Paperback, £17.99 (US $19.95).

Susan Ertz

Woman Alive

144pp. Manderley. £19.99.

Science fiction is still not usually associated with women, but the first western science fiction novelist was female: Margaret Cavendish, whose SF novel The Blazing World was published in 1666. Similarly, while the word "utopia" may bring to mind Thomas More, who coined the term, the first western literary utopia is by a woman: Christine de Pizan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) more than a century before More wrote his book.

As time passed, men managed to claim both SF and utopian fiction for themselves. There were exceptions - Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) is the best-known - but until recently they seemed to be few. Now MIT Press and the newer Manderley Press are challenging this impression, the former offering Irene Clyde's Beatrice the Sixteenth, the latter Susan Ertz's Woman Alive - two very different feminist utopian novels of the twentieth century - in thoughtfully edited editions.

Beatrice the Sixteenth is the earlier of the books, first published in 1909, and much the more unusual. Its atypicality begins with its author. Irene Clyde (1869-1954) was, in fact, one side of the (biologically male) gender-fluid person whose other half was Thomas Baty. In professional life, Clyde became Baty, a specialist in international law and eventual senior adviser to the Japanese government; in private life, Baty was Clyde, who founded the Aethnic Union, devoted to challenging binary gender, and founded, edited and wrote for Urania, a journal that explored and supported what we would now call "queerness" in all its facets.

In a posthumous declaration distributed to friends, Baty explained that, from an early age, "I saw that ladies, while admittedly more graceful and sweet than men, were also just as determined and noble". Every aspect of this simultaneously classist, sexist and feminist statement is reflected in Beatrice the Sixteenth. The novel tells the story of the explorer Dr Mary Hatherley, who, after being kicked in the head from a camel, finds herself transported from early-twentieth-century Arabia to Armenia, a country on a different "plane of existence" (as a resident astrologer eventually suggests), inhabited exclusively by women. The leisured class of this world are absolutely "ladies", cultured and immersed in an existence of beautiful leisure. Indeed, the book spends an inordinate amount of time

detailing interior decor, lingering over descriptions of gilding, graceful stonework and richly wrought carvings that make plain its roots in decadence.

In Armenia's exquisite spaces, its ladies form attachments, puzzle over Mary's descriptions of English law and mores, and intrigue and gossip, just like people everywhere. What they do not do is stray far from conservative structures. The society is ruled by a queen (the titular Beatrice); the women form couples and marry (no ethical non-monogamy here). That they also acquire children by bartering for them with "the barbarians", who receive "carpets and woven tissues of the commonest kind" in exchange, is briefly frowned over, then brushed away.

Similarly, the fact that Armenia runs on slave labour is confronted, but no more than that. The slaves seem to find their enslavement just. When Mary asks one of them if they have the possibility of freedom, the slave responds: "If we are as good as them [their mistresses] - as fine ... and as dignified - we have a right ... But how are we to get to be like that?" This answer doesn't quite satisfy Mary, but she doesn't do anything about the situation. Perhaps slavery is too large a problem to tackle in a novel that Lucy Sante, in the excellent introduction, describes as a combination of an "inventory of the material culture of an unknown society, and fluttering Victorian comedy of manners"; but then why put it in? Clyde could easily have made the slaves paid servants. That she didn't create the uneasy sense that she believes that, even in a utopia, "ladies" belong at the top, with the less fine and dignified their natural slaves. The book's cover, for its part, suggests that MIT Press has some odd ideas of its own: whoever decided that the best cover art for a feminist novel is a drawing of a statue with massive naked breasts may want to reconsider.

Fortunately, Susan Ertz's Woman Alive, first published twenty-seven years after Beatrice the Sixteenth, has no truck with any artistic or social nonsense. As far as this novel by a fairly prolific Anglo-American author (1887-1985) is concerned, the world ought to be run by a sensible, middle-class, "Very English ... Very Saxon" games mistress. Soon enough, it is. Woman Alive begins with one Dr Selwyn being

transported from London in the mid-1930s to 1985, by means of a telepathic mind meld. In this future London, women are dying from a disease that is the byproduct of a war started by men. Only women are susceptible, and before we are even a quarter of the way through this slim novel, they are all dead.

Or are they? It transpires that one woman has secretly remained alive, rendered impervious by a quack who covered her in dye that, when absorbed by means of "a powerful ray", made her immune to all diseases. (She volunteered for this treatment because, having been jilted, she no longer cared if the experiment would kill her or not.) This woman, Stella Morrow, a former games mistress of sound farming stock, now becomes Queen of England.

This premiss sounds ridiculous when laid out in a couple of paragraphs, but in the novel, it works. In part, this is because

Ertz's future England sounds pretty great: there's sexual freedom and tolerance; the elderly can take a potion that eases many age-related aches and pains; soundless air-powered cars have done away with pollution; and those who have lost their jobs to technological advancement have been re-employed in beautifying the cities and countryside, which are, as a result, green and clean. (Take note, future governments.)

The novel also works because it is in many ways psychologically shrewd. Once the men left behind realize that there is no future, they live "dully and half-heartedly, merely existing" - the realization that in order to function happily, humans must have some sense that there is a future, even a future they may not live to see, is an acute one. Stella herself is refreshingly clear-eyed about how society builds a bad world and how it might build a better one - "Look at your history books. Has there ever been one that began ... Here is the sad, mad, bad old past ... Learn from it but one thing - to be different".

If this all makes Woman Alive sound gloomy or didactic, that gives the wrong impression. It doesn't spoil anything to reveal that the plot involves the intrigue (a foiled kidnapping), romance (broken-hearted Stella gets a second chance at love) and happy ending required of any successful novel. If the book gives space to the old canard that, if women ran the world, there'd be no war, it's a small price to pay for the rediscovery of a novel once lost to history that, with its republication, proves that history, as Graham Norton puts it in his charmingly perspicacious introduction, "was an old fool".

Emily A. Bernhard Jackson is an academic and a novelist writing under the name E. A. Jackson. Her suspense thriller Missing will be published next year.

The Pleasure of Reading Prize 2026

has been awarded to

William Boyd

'William Boyd's fiction is admired for its narrative energy, wit, and historical range. ...Beneath the readability of his novels lie serious themes of memory, self-invention and the fragile border between truth and fiction...Reading William Boyd is always a pleasure.'

from the judges' citation

BLOOMSBURY

www.giveabook.org.uk

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 37

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Natural History

The depths of the wild

Our relationship to the British landscape

Sophie Yeo

Eloise Kane

Wilderlands

The human history of wild Britain 304pp. Faber. £20.

Wilderlands begins when Britain's landscape was still relatively wild. Relatively, because Eloise Kane begins about 12,000 years ago, when the glaciers of the last Ice Age were succeeded by the wildwood that is now the stuff of fairy tales. By that point, the landscape was already a human product, most of the megafauna that had shaped earlier ecosystems having become extinct, quite possibly through hunting. This is, however, when people established a permanent presence in Britain and our era of direct influence truly began.

The wildwood didn't last long. About 6,000 years ago, Britons realized that they didn't need to rely on wild food for sustenance: they could raise crops and manage herds instead. From thereon, the landscape changed radically. Kane outlines the dwelling that began in the Neolithic period and continued, with a temporary reprieve around the early Middle Ages, into modern times.

Other writers have told this story, most notably the landscape historian Oliver Rackham. There have been two books published in the past fifteen years called The Making of the British Landscape, by Francis Pryor (2010) and Nicholas Crane (2016). But Wilderlands earns its place on the shelf. Kane works within the rapidly developing discipline of palaeoecology, which uses advances in pollen analysis and ancient DNA to provide a more sophisticated and localized window into the past, and she provides a useful service in collating the most recent science and outlining the most pertinent debates. Combined with accounts of her own fieldwork

Silbury Hill, Wiltshire

• including a foray into the depths of Silbury Hill - this gives the feeling of being accompanied by a capable guide.

It is perhaps Kane's academic background that prevents her falling into the trap of romanticization that has tripped up so many other nature writers who have explored the ancient past. Artefacts found in watery places, she writes, are possibly evidence of ancient ritual, but then again may be evidence of the prehistoric equivalent of a recycling bin. Similarly, the Caledonian Forest was nothing but a myth peddled by Roman writers.

But where Kane really travels beyond the previous literature is in her treatment of the human relationship with the wild. Extracting meaningful insights into the psychology of our ancestors is difficult. What to make, for instance, of the eagles interred alongside humans, 1,000 years

after the original burial? Were they nesting in the cliffs or placed there intentionally? When faced with such mysteries, there is an 'inherent danger ... that our current view of the wild is what leads us to believe that these birds had a special place in later prehistory'. What these eagles actually meant, we will probably never know. Similarly mysterious is Seahenge, a Bronze Age monument made of tree trunks that Kane suggests may have represented the woodlands that were rapidly disappearing due to agriculture and climatic shifts - an early example, she posits, of ecological grief. Kane weaves a credible portrait of our ancestors from such fragments, and breathes life into our ancestors in a way that feels rare and authentic.

It also feels necessary, given the dominance of rewilding in nature conservation. British people today have a somewhat

tortured relationship with the wild, writes Kane, marked out by shame, longing, curiosity and entitlement. At the same time, the notion of the wild has become a powerful marketing tool, used to describe species and landscapes that are really anything but: the rebranding of a network of small country roads along the Irish coast as the Wild Atlantic Way, for example, attracted some 8.4 million tourists in 2019. Archaeology has too often taken a backseat in the discussion of how we should design the wild landscapes of the future, but to make sure they are places not built on 'nostalgia, guilt and ideas of what is beautiful', deepening our understanding of the living world of the past is essential.

Sophie Yeo is a writer and journalist, and the author of Nature's Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back, 2024.

Demon ducks

The ancestry and variety of avian life

Andrew H. Knoll

Steve Brusatte

The Story of Birds

An evolutionary history of the dinosaurs that live among us 448pp. Picador. £25.

The idea that birds are descended from dinosaurs is not new. Thomas Huxley, Darwin's contemporary and ardent defender, proposed it in 1868,

citing similarities in skeletal organization between the two groups. Huxley knew that not all dinosaurs were behemoths such as Tyrannosaurus rex or the long-necked sauropods, and he was aware of the then recently discovered fossil Archaeopteryx, dinosaur-like bones of a creature that was covered by feathers. In America, the palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope put forward a similar argument. Inevitably, however, such thoughts bred contrarians, and despite the fact that Huxley and Cope knew about petite dinosaurs,

some only the size of chickens, discussions generally ran to the lumbering giants of popular imagination.

The dinosaur-bird hypothesis largely disappeared for almost a century before re-emerging in the 1960s. Remarkable new discoveries, many of them from China, showed not only that small dinosaurs with skeletal features comparable to those of birds were common in Mesozoic forests, but also that many of them had feathers. (It appears that feathers evolved largely for insulation, and that some

dinosaurs evolved expanded arms with larger feathers, not initially for flight, but more likely for sexual display.) Moreover, careful study of bird embryos also showed that, during early development, bird skeletons look remarkably like those of dinosaurs. Together, insights from fossils and comparative biology clarified the evolutionary path from thunder lizard to bird, with the by then famed Archaeopteryx understood as an intermediate. Birds are indeed the sole survivors of the dinosaur branch on the tree of life.

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The origin story of birds is exciting, and Steve Brusatte tells it in his engaging new book, as the first of several tales that take us from early proto-birds to the thousands of songbirds, raptors, waterfowl and more that grace the modern Earth. Having situated birds within the dinosaurs, Brusatte illuminates transitions in key features: from scales to feathers, sexual displays to flight, toothed jaws to beaks. Relying in equal parts on innovative studies of living birds and critical fossils, these discussions are detailed, but well worth the effort on the part of readers, as the rewards are substantial. Not only do they show how the diagnostic features of birds came to be, they exemplify a broader truth about evolutionary change, one expressed by the biologist and Nobel laureate François Jacob, who in 1977 famously argued that evolution is not like an engineer, who fashions novel features from scratch, but more akin to a tinkerer, who takes existing materials and modifies them for new functions.

A model of a prehistoric terror bird

Sixty-six million years ago, a single meteorite impact exterminated all of the dinosaurs, save for a few birds that served as the common ancestors to the more than 10,000 bird species that populate the

modern Earth. As Brusatte explores the origins of modern birds, he shifts from a focus on the traits that unite birds to the features that differentiate the major groups of extant avians from one another,

taking in along the way some remarkable groups that didn't survive to the present, including ancient apex predators such as the aptly named terror birds, 350kg titans with scimitar-like beaks that prowled the then isolated continent of South America; the similarly formidable Gastornis, found in North America and Europe; and, believe it or not, predatory "demon ducks". Songbirds get special treatment in the story of emerging modernity. Today, they dominate bird diversity, their rapidly developing brains supporting complex communications and an impressive ability to learn. One of Brusatte's many skills in these discussions is his ability to weave the stories of the contributing scientists and palaeontologists into his narrative. The Story of Birds has much to offer. It is natural history writing at its best.

Andrew H. Knoll is an Emeritus Professor at Harvard University. His books include A Brief History of Earth, 2021, and Earth and Life: A four billion year conversation, 2026.

Devil bird

How we have mistreated the cormorant

Jeremy Mynott

Gordon McMullan

Cormorant

A cultural history of greed and prejudice 450pp. Cambridge University Press. £35 (US £45).

The name "cormorant" is an adaptation of the Latin corvus marinus, meaning "sea-crow". True, the bird is black-feathered, but it belongs to a quite different family from that of the corvids, a mistake repeated in its modern generic name Phalacrocorax, which in turn comes from the Greek for "bald raven". Ravens were regarded in many cultures as birds of ill omen, and had a reputation for greed (hence "ravenous") - and this is one of the principal moral failings with which the cormorant's reputation has been "blackened", as Gordon McMullan details in this comprehensive and absorbing study of the bird's unhappy cultural history.

He tells a story of prejudice and loathing, generating forms of misrepresentation that inevitably tell us more about ourselves than about the biological species we have learnt to hate. The source of the hostility is largely the bird's supreme skill as a fisher, which has brought it into fierce competition with human anglers and fishermen as a rival predator. The cloak for their complaints is provided by some of its other physical and behavioural characteristics. This is a bird that essentially just eats, shits and reproduces, performing all these natural functions to excess, according to its detractors. It depletes fish stocks with its insatiable greed; it pollutes and destroys its own nesting sites on trees with its copious excretions; and its population is now expanding so rapidly that it should

A great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) in Lake Csaj, Hungary

be thought of as an invasive alien. Its physical appearance doesn't help. The picture most people have of a cormorant is of a big, black and rather clumsy bird with a curved reptilian neck, sitting on a rock or similar perch, its wings stretched out to dry in a crucifix posture - like some forbidding prehistoric creature with which we can feel no intuitive sympathy.

This conception has deep cultural roots. In Paradise Lost, John Milton portrayed Satan "Sat like a Cormorant" atop the Tree of Life in Eden, the embodiment of evil, threatening life itself. This is just one of a host of images in western literature, art and popular culture that McMullan deploys in the extraordinary range of his discussions, which include also the nineteenth-century Peruvian guano

trade, anti-cormorant websites, the logo of Liverpool Football Club, the keeper of cormorants for James I and Charles I, the James Bond novels, contrasting portrayals of the "white" and "pious" pelican in Christian mythology, antisemitic slurs explored in Shakespeare's Shylock, and the history of scientific taxonomy. As regards the last of these, a subspecies of the great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) was in the eighteenth century accorded the subspecific name sinensis, mistakenly implying that it was introduced to Europe from China, when in fact it was native, thereby encouraging the narrative of an invasive "yellow peril".

China, in fact, along with Japan, portrayed the cormorant very differently in its cultural folklore. Chinese fishermen

enrolled cormorants as valued partners and harnessed their fishing skills through the traditional practice of attaching to them fishing collars that enabled the cormorants to catch, but not to swallow, the larger fish, which were then retrieved by their human handlers. In the West, too, cormorants bestowed their benefits, in particular through the immensely profitable trade from the output of the guanay cormorant, which so enriched figures like the Victorian plutocrat William Gibbs that he was satirized in a contemporary musichall ditty, "William Gibbs made his dibbs / Selling the turds of foreign birds".

There are nearly forty species of cormorant spread across the globe, varying in size and plumage, some of them as small (and almost as cute) as those other great fishers, penguins. This book is not a zoological survey, however. The ones with the cultural baggage that most interest McMullan are the two large black ones: the double-crested cormorant of North America and the great cormorant, widespread in Britain and Europe, and through much of the world. These constitute the generic "cormorant" of the book's title and are the ones at the heart of deep-seated disputes between fishing and conservation interests. They are also the ones onto which we have regularly projected our human prejudices, symbolizing them variously as thieves, polluters, invaders, foreigners, terrorists or the very devil. The parallels with unloved species of wildlife more generally, and with human groups perceived as other and threatening, are there to contemplate.

Jeremy Mynott's books include The Story of Nature: A human history, 2024, and Birdscapes: Birds in our imagination and experience, 2009.

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Jewish Studies

Between covenants

The dilemmas of German Jewry

Gabriel Motzkin

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Love Is Strong as Death

A biography of Franz Rosenzweig 192pp. University of Chicago Press. £20 (US $25).

Despite its subtitle, this biography of Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) is not quite a biography. And it does not really provide an account of what was innovative about his philosophy. What it does provide, supremely well, is an introduction to the dilemmas that German Jews faced before and after the First World War, and to the general tenor of their world. Tracing the lives of a group of German-Jewish intellectuals from their youth and early maturity before the war, via their attempts to integrate their various identities during the Weimar period, to their experience of and reflections after the Second World War, Paul Mendes-Flohr takes us to the heart of the hyphen. What did it mean to be German-Jewish?

Our view of German-Jewish culture today is inevitably infused with nostalgia and loss - a sense augmented when we consider its vitality during the Weimar period, between 1919 and 1933. The First World War, and Germany's defeat, stimulated the desire among many German-Jewish intellectuals to affirm both parts of their identity, especially since the Jewish part had often been lost as they assimilated into German culture over the course of the nineteenth century. Their rediscovery of Judaism tended to take place in the context of their profound rootedness in German culture.

The usual way of viewing this milieu is through the lens of modern secular identity. Mendes-Flohr convincingly shows that this framework neither captures these intellectuals' aims nor reflects who they believed themselves to be. Figures such as Rosenzweig not only observed Jewish ritual law, but also devoted themselves to traditional Jewish texts. While the study of the Torah mattered deeply to them, they also studied the Talmud and later commentaries. What set them apart from adherents of the Jewish movement known as neo-Orthodoxy was an outlook shaped by German philosophical and literary culture, which included dialogue with Christianity - a dialogue that had been absent from much of the trajectory of Jewish thought. Rosenzweig and his associates believed that a key component of Jewish philosophy should be a response to the challenge of Christian messianism. Their exposure to Christianity intensified their need to affirm the Jewish witness to the universal God.

Mendes-Flohr portrays Rosenzweig as being ambivalent about the results of assimilation. Economic prosperity, he suggests, could not conceal the spiritual impoverishment that came with the loss of tradition. Just which parts of this tradition

should be resuscitated became the defining question. Could the substance of a tradition be preserved if the method used to understand that tradition was external to it? Would applying modern analytic methods to the content of a tradition not threaten to dissolve it? Rosenzweig rejected Julius Wellhausen's "documentary hypothesis", according to which the Torah was composed by different authors. Even if that were empirically true, he argued, a believing Jew had to relate to the text as the word of God, regardless of how it had been transmitted.

For Rosenzweig, the central concern was how modern Jews could return to tradition on the basis of their modernity. While Rosenzweig respected the Zionism of his close friend Martin Buber, he did not share it because he believed that Zionism truncated the essence of Judaism, which was not about the relation to the land or the fantasy of a secular state, but rather about the Jew's relation to God as it had developed in history. Zionists such as Gershom Scholem understandably viewed the German-Jewish cultural symbiosis as a failure, but Mendes-Flohr leaves open the possibility that, in different historical circumstances, Rosenzweig's integration of German culture with Judaism might have provided a model for modern Judaism, distinct from Reform Judaism (unlike Reform Judaism, Rosenzweig advocated for the study of the Talmud). The issue for Rosenzweig was not that of a cultural dialogue between two dissimilar cultures, but of how to open a path for Judaism in the context of modernity.

The conception of modernity entertained by these young intellectuals emphasized the heritage of German idealism. Rosenzweig's doctoral adviser was the well-known historian Friedrich Meinecke. From Meinecke's book, Cosmopolitanism and the Nation-State (1908), he absorbed the idea that cosmopolitanism and nationalism do not need to be viewed in opposition; one can be both a German

patriot and a citizen of the world. For many German intellectuals, the tradition of German idealism fulfilled the same function as liberalism in Britain or secular democracy in France. Unfortunately, it would turn out that its legacy was neither liberal nor democratic.

This rootedness in German idealism was to prove decisive for Rosenzweig's emotional and intellectual development. In the context of this tradition, he sought to define a new kind of subjectivity, replacing the self with the soul. He located this new subjectivity in an inner Jewish experience that affirms a God who is both transcendent and personal, the opposite of the Enlightenment's deist God. Much of his emotional stance was borrowed from a Christianity to which he remained ambivalent. His eventual position was that Judaism and Christianity require each other as two complementary covenants.

This kind of Hegelian dialectic also affected Rosenzweig's romantic life. He fell in love with his friend Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's wife, Margrit (known as "Gritli"), and both partners in the affair believed that their relationship strengthened their respective marriages - while Rosenzweig was constantly writing to Gritli, in 1920 he decided to marry Edith Hahn. What Hahn thought of this arrangement can be inferred from her burning of Gritli's letters to her husband after his death, so that only one side of the correspondence has survived. Mendes-Flohr makes excellent use of Rosenzweig's letters to Gritli to track his subject's intellectual and emotional development. He also interviewed many of Rosenzweig's contemporaries in the 1980s, and he cites their often-unpublished letters and writings to cast light on the philosopher's interactions with his peers, as well as to show how his love affairs affected his interpretation of Judaism. Rosenzweig's philosophy emerges, in Mendes-Flohr's telling, as an attempt to reconcile the personal and the emotional.

As articulated in his major work The Star of Redemption (1921), Rosenzweig's thought charts a course from creation via revelation to redemption. He believed that redemption becomes possible through love, and that love in turn causes creation, understood not as a single event in the distant past, but as an ongoing event in life. Yet creation is contingent: the world did not have to be this way. This sense of contingency marks Rosenzweig's break with Hegel. If creation takes place through love, then there is a homology between human love and divine love. In this view, human and divine eros do not exist in separate realities; the self cannot be abstracted from the personal. Our biographies, therefore, embody the constant possibility both of human, erotic love and of divine, spiritual love.

Curiously, Rosenzweig found this ontology of the personal in Judaism. It led him to an intensive study of the Talmud and to the creation of an innovative Jewish educational institution, the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus, which served thousands of students during the Weimar years. While the renaissance of Jewish life and culture in interwar Germany was doomed to catastrophe, Rosenzweig did not live long enough to see its demise. Afflicted by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he suffered ever-increasing paralysis, depending on his wife to transcribe thoughts that, during his final months, he could communicate only by moving his thumb and blinking his eyes. He died in December 1929.

Rosenzweig's legacy has been partly overshadowed by the fame of his close friend Buber. (Together, they undertook a German translation of the Hebrew Bible designed to be read aloud.) Love Is Strong as Death shows us that he deserves renewed attention. On the one hand, he anticipated the replacement of German idealism by existentialism; on the other, he provides a gateway into the evanescent, prelapsarian world of early-twentieth-century German-Jewish culture. There remains much to be discovered hiding behind that hyphen.

Gabriel Motzkin is Ahad Ha'am Chair Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the Executive Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

A detail from "An Allegorical Wedding" by Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1906

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Everything in moderation

Maimonides for the modern world

Carlos Fraenkel

Steven Nadler

Why Read Maimonides Today? 144pp. Cambridge University Press. Paperback, £14.99 (US $19.99).

Moses Maimonides

The Guide of the Perplexed Complete in one volume Translated by Shlomo Pines 768pp. University of Chicago Press. Paperback, $40.

How should we live? Socrates famously claimed that this is the question we must take “more seriously” than any other. We all want to live a successful, happy, flourishing life – a life we can look back on and say: it was worthwhile. But what does that mean? And where should we look for guidance?

In Why Read Maimonides Today?, Steven Nadler argues that we should turn to a twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, rabbi, communal leader and physician. Maimonides offers us a guide to “a life of wisdom, a good life”. His philosophy, Nadler contends, is not a relic of medieval scholasticism, but a living resource for anyone committed to following reason in shaping a human life.

At the heart of this interpretation lies Maimonides’s uncompromising rationalism. A life of wisdom is a life ordered by reason. At the same time, Nadler’s Maimonides presents Judaism – its laws and narratives, beliefs and practices – as the path to such a life. Rationalizing faith is not a marginal feature of Maimonides’s project, but its core. There is no room for myth, superstition or an inscrutable divine will. Judaism emerges as the paradigmatic religion of reason. In this sense, Maimonides appears as a bridge between the medieval and the modern world: he speaks to everyone (“Jew or gentile; religiously faithful, agnostic or atheist”) who accepts the authority of reason.

It is an attractive thesis. Nadler writes with clarity, elegance and admirable restraint. He resists the temptation to conscript Maimonides into contemporary political debates – “democracy, equality, climate change, social justice” – and instead focuses on three enduring philosophical and religious concerns: the interpretation of Scripture, the problem of evil and providence, and the foundations of Jewish law. What unites all three, he convincingly argues, is Maimonides’s rationalist ideal.

Take hermeneutics. For Maimonides, interpretation becomes a form of rational therapy for intellectually serious Jews caught between Aristotelian philosophy and the Bible’s vivid imagery. Aristotle’s God is pure intellect: immaterial, without emotion, absorbed in eternal self-contemplation. The biblical God walks in the garden, speaks to prophets, sits on a throne, rides a chariot and burns with

A detail from the “Copenhagen Maimonides”, 1348

anger. His wrath is graphically depicted as his nose catching fire. The apparent clash between reason and revelation generates precisely the “perplexity” Maimonides seeks to resolve in his philosophical-theological masterpiece, The Guide of the Perplexed. Chapter after chapter reinterprets anthropomorphic passages as metaphor. God does not literally sit on a throne; the image signifies supreme ontological rank. Just as a king occupies the highest position in a political order, God stands at the summit of the order of being. Scripture, properly read, does not contradict reason – it encodes it.

Rationalism also supplies, on Nadler’s reading, Maimonides’s strategy for confronting suffering and evil. Most of what we ordinarily value – wealth, reputation, power, health, even loved ones – is vulnerable to fortune. These goods can be taken by thieves, destroyed by fire or undone by the caprice of public opinion. Intellectual achievement, by contrast, is secure. Scientific and philosophical truths cannot be confiscated or burnt. Moreover, scientific understanding allows us to navigate the world more prudently: knowledge of nature teaches us, for example, not to board a ship during hurricane season. This, Nadler argues, is all Maimonides means by divine providence – not miraculous intervention, but a thoroughly naturalized account of God “watching over” those who cultivate their intellect.

Finally, the 613 commandments are, in Maimonides’s view, rational through and through. Their prescriptions are calibrated to promote human perfection. Why exclude lobster and cheeseburgers from the menu? Why restrict sexual activity at certain times? Because dietary discipline and sexual restraint train character. They combat gluttony and lust, and foster moderation. And moderation frees us to pursue what Maimonides regards as the highest human activity: the contemplation of scientific and philosophical truth. The moderate person is not incapacitated by disease born of excess or distracted by unruly desire. Law thus becomes a pedagogical instrument of reason.

The result of Nadler’s effort is an accessible invitation to read a first-rate

philosopher and the architect of a radical reinterpretation of Judaism – one so radical that it nearly fractured the Jewish world when traditionalists and kabbalists resisted the claim that Judaism, at its core, is philosophy. It is therefore particularly timely that Shlomo Pines’s unsurpassed English translation of The Guide of the Perplexed (1963) has recently been reissued in a single volume, making Maimonides’s masterwork more readily accessible to readers who wish to pursue that invitation in depth.

But can Maimonides truly guide us? If we are to take Nadler’s proposal seriously, we must address a question he largely leaves implicit: what exactly do we mean by “rationalism”? Does Maimonides mean the same thing by reason that we do? Nadler persuasively describes Maimonides’s rationalism, but does not fully confront the historical distance between his teleological conception of reason and our thinner, often procedural or instrumental understandings. His rationalism is embedded in a substantive metaphysics, a hierarchical cosmology and a robust conception of human nature – commitments many modern readers no longer share. The same holds for his interpretation of Judaism. If Maimonides is to serve as a bridge, we must clarify how his rationalism might be rethought for a modern context that does not accept its background assumptions.

Nadler quotes the French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot, who famously described ancient philosophy as a “way of life”: from Socrates to the sceptics, the ancients did not treat philosophy as a technical discipline confined to the academy, but lived it – a description that fits Maimonides as well. Our best hope of living wisely today, Hadot suggests, lies in detaching ancient thought from obsolete metaphysical and cosmological theories, and adapting it to modern ones. But neither Hadot nor Nadler tells us how this detachment is supposed to work. What remains unclear is what survives once the metaphysical scaffolding is removed – and whether the rationalism that made Maimonides compelling can endure that operation intact.

Consider the highest good – the goal at which we ought to aim. For Maimonides, every aspect of life should be organized with a view to achieving it. He goes into almost comical detail – how much time to spend on the toilet, how often to bathe – in order to help us optimize our lives. Every Jewish commandment serves this end, he contends.

And what is the highest good? The scientific study of nature, which is also the highest form of worship. For Maimonides, this constitutes the noblest love of God – an intellectual love. In a passage cited by Nadler, Maimonides writes: “When a person contemplates His wondrous and great ... creations and sees His infinite wisdom ... he will immediately love Him”. Science, on this view, is the apprehension of God’s wisdom in the rational order of nature. By studying nature’s design, we come to love its designer.

This is not how most natural scientists today would describe their reasons for going into the lab. As Max Weber put it in “Science as a Vocation” (1917): “Science as a path to God? Given its distinctly atheistic nature? That this is its nature nobody today will call into doubt. Deliverance from the rationalism ... of science is the basic condition for living in community with the divine”. One may resist Weber’s diagnosis, but one point is hard to deny: we cannot simply pick up where Maimonides left off, optimizing our bathroom habits so as to devote ourselves to the intellectual love of God.

Where does this leave aspiring Maimonides today? They face a stark choice. Either they give up the framework that made his rationalism coherent or they attempt to recover something like it: a conception of nature, God and human perfection that sits uneasily with modern sensibilities.

Throughout the book, Nadler returns to the dialogue that Baruch Spinoza conducted with Maimonides. It is no accident that both place the intellectual love of God at the centre of their ethical visions. Yet while Maimonides’s God is already non-anthropomorphic (an intellect rather than a person), Spinoza goes further, famously identifying God with nature. When rumours spread that Albert Einstein was an atheist, he replied: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists”. It would not be far-fetched to describe this stance as, in a certain sense, Maimonidean.

Whether such a Spinozist framework could ground a renewed philosophy as a way of life, along Maimonidean lines, remains an open question. It is, at any rate, a project worth pursuing – perhaps in Nadler’s next book.

Carlos Fraenkel is James McGill Professor of Philosophy and Religion at McGill University in Montreal. His books include From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, 2007.

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 41

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Literature

Golden foolery

New editions of George Chapman

Andrew Hadfield

George Chapman

"The Shadow of Night" and "Ovid's Banquet of Sense" Edited by Zenón Luis-Martínez 432pp. MHRA. Paperback, £28.99 (US $39.99).

George Chapman (c.1559-1634) is something of an enigma. Serious, learned and prolific, he is best known for his translations of Homer, but he also wrote a considerable body of verse and several plays. Unlucky with some of the patrons he attracted, and frequently impoverished, he served in the Low Countries and spent time in prison for debt. But Chapman was also successful and respected by his peers, his tragedies putting the terrifying drama of recent French history on the stage and his comedies, notably Eastward Ho!, written with Ben Jonson and John Marston, attracting attention for their biting satire. Chapman's poetry is notoriously difficult and challenging, which is why he is sometimes touted as the rival poet in

Shakespeare's sonnets, while his interest in esoteric philosophy and neo-Platonic thinking has led to speculation that he was a member of the atheistic "School of Night", centred on Walter Raleigh. (There is not much evidence that they knew each other, apart from a dedicatory poem that Chapman wrote for Raleigh's account of his voyage to Guiana.) It is hard to work out how serious Chapman's philosophical speculations are. Does his poetry point us towards intimations of the divine through his belief in poetic fury and enargia, as his meticulous and dutiful editor, Zenón Luis-Martínez, argues? Or are his works elaborate and cunning explorations of poetic language, replete with irony, making him a "metaphysical" poet?

The Shadow of the Night was Chapman's first published poem. Like Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, it balances two contrasting states: the thoughts and beliefs of the goddess of the melancholy night in "Hymnus in Noctem"; and the power of the moon in "Hymnus in Cynthiam", which is also an elaborate paean to Elizabeth I. The poems can be read as works that are aimed at the occult interests of Chapman's patron, Ferdinando Stanley,

Lord Strange, alongside Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus and Thomas Nashe's The Terrors of the Night, as the introduction suggests. Like those works, Chapman's poems contain more than a hint of humour: after all, Lord Strange was the dedicatee of Nashe's absurd pornographic poem The Choice of Valentines, which contains its fair share of jokes about the body. Invoking the "living spirits" to shun light and live in the darkness with "ghosts, fiends, monsters", and "Revive the dead, and make the living die / In ruth and terror of your tortury", Chapman asks them to

Kneel then with me, fall work-like on the ground, And from th'infectious dunghill of this

round, From men's brass wits and golden foolery, Weep, weep your souls into felicity.] Chapman, ever alive to the significance of writing poetry, is surely joking here. The notion that great, divinely inspired art rises out of a pile of excrement (as many social historians claim, a common sight in Elizabethan England), and transforms mediocre poetry into a manifestation of heavenly bliss, is hard to take at face value.

He certainly has an eye for striking absurdities. His address to his fellow poet Matthew Roydon that prefaces Ovid's Banquet of Sense compares poor judgement to wandering "passportless men" who are not regulated enough to understand "the divine discipline of poetry". The

long poem narrates Ovid's affair with Julia leading up to the Ars Amatoria, and his subsequent banishment. In the final stanza, we are told that "Ovid well knew there was much more intended, / With whose omission none must be offended". The poem thus asks readers to wonder whether Ovid's erotic experiences point him to higher forms of love or whether it is the actual experiences that matter, rather than the elaborate justification for them. Is this a banquet of the senses or does the feast point us to a truer form of desire? Ovid is here made to muse, "She is a sweet Elysium for the sense, / And nature doth not sensual gifts infuse / But that with sense she still intends their use". Should we rely on our sense experience, or is Ovid on a journey to enlightenment? Chapman may have been interested in the esoteric and the occult, but I suspect that they cannot have bound and defined his imagination.

This is an extraordinarily detailed and helpful edition with a long introduction, well-judged summaries of sections of the poem, and full notes. Luis-Martínez argues throughout that Chapman is a convinced neo-Platonist whose work is designed to provide a window to the heavens. One does not have to share this reading of Chapman's poetry to find the apparatus enlightening and to be grateful to such a diligent editor.

Andrew Hadfield's recent books include John Donne: In the shadow of religion and Literature and Class, both 2021.

Malone lives

Two seventeenth-century plays

Georgina Wilson

John Day

The Parliament of Bees Edited by Amy Leahy 182pp. Malone Society. £50 (US $74.95).

Barnabe Barnes

The Devil's Charter Edited by G. R. Proudfoot and H. R. Woudhuysen 182pp. Malone Society. £50 (US $74.95).

If you had been in London in 1906, you would have witnessed suffragism (cries of "votes for women" in parliament), the opening of the Piccadilly line, and the staging of the International Lawn Tennis Challenge in Wimbledon. With the right radar, you might also have been aware of the founding of the Malone Society: a group of bibliophiles based at University College London who aimed to produce "accurate copies of the best editions of early plays". The Malone Society - like gender-equal voting, the Piccadilly line and Wimbledon - is still going. It produces, the website informs us, "either photofacsimiles of printed texts, or diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript plays and other documents, relating to the drama in England before 1642". The latest Malone publications are new

editions of The Devil's Charter (1607) by Barnabe Barnes and The Parliament of Bees (printed in 1641, but written between 1620 and 1634) by John Day.

These editions are facsimiles rather than modernized texts: The Devil's Charter is a series of high-quality photographs of one printed copy of the play (the copy now kept in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Carl von Ossietzky). No footnotes, no glosses of tricky words or cultural reference points, just ninety-four life-size photographs of the ninety-four pages of the text (plus three bonus photographs from other copies). Most of the editorial interventions, by H. R. Woudhuysen and G. R. Proudfoot, come in the eighty-five-page introduction, which announces this volume as a companion piece to R. B. McKerrow's pre-Malone edition of 1904. Part of Woudhuysen and Proudfoot's introduction is given over to glowing summaries of what that earlier edition achieved. But there are gaps as well as continuities between the two. McKerrow's first page tells us that "According to the title-page, the play was 'renewed, corrected, and augmented' - 'more's the pity', says Mr. Fleay - before publication". The jauntiness of that insert, referencing the influential Victorian critic Frederick Gard Fleay, is missing from the neutral tones of Woudhuysen and Proudfoot.

The Parliament of Bees isn't a companion piece to anything, although it follows editions from 1881, 1888 and 1979, and, together with Olivia Smith's edition of The Feminine Monarchie as part of Jennifer Richards's "Bee-ing Human" project, suggests a mini resurgence for early modern bee books. John Day's play was circulated in manuscript (BL MS Lansdowne 725) before being printed in 1641. This edition provides a faithful transcription of the manuscript (blank pages included) followed by a photo-facsimile of the copy in Princeton University Library. This facsimile takes the concept of an edition to new heights. It contains images of the book boards and their marbled paper linings, and on pages 137-151 we flick through fifteen images of the not-quite-identical blank pages that filled the volume from the end of the printed text. The effect is somewhere between a comic and a philosophical reflection on the nature of a book.

Reading these two Malone Society editions side by side allows us to compare photographs with transcriptions. In The Parliament of Bees, the transcription marks illegible letters [>], retains original spelling and replicates the scribe's habit of shortening character names and running multiple speeches into one line: "Ser; Hee's come, Poet: To you my love presents this book". This is as close as we can get to the real thing without a photograph, where crisp modern type is fused with the uncertain spelling, space constrictions and superscript inserts of the early modern scribe.

Malone Society guidelines state that "introductions should focus on factual

and bibliographical aspects of the text", so it makes sense that first impressions of the introduction of Devil's Charter are of an intimidating number of bibliographical lists: a collation of twenty-three copies' stop-press variants, the line numbers of all speeches that end with a comma, a paragraph of thirty-nine words misspelt through confusion of similar letters. We get a helpful note on performance and a snapshot of Barnes's place among other early modern playwrights (including his dislike of "parasites, stage-players, and other giddiehead Mimickes"), but both books' introductions are more intent on provenance and printing history than anything else.

Amy Leahy's introduction to The Parliament of Bees is also good on the genre of this play (or masque), for which no evidence of performance survives. Sandwiched between the introduction and the transcription, we discover "Passages in The Noble Spanish Soldier and The Wonder of a Kingdom that overlap with The Parliament of Bees 1641 Quarto". These excerpts from works by Thomas Dekker make room for comparative readings across contemporaneous texts, and Woudhuysen and Proudfoot offer something similar when they compile a list of all the ways that stage directions might be laid out, with examples. These non-linear, large-scale modes of reading arise as a result of all three editors' detailed and hyperfocused gaze.

Georgina Wilson is Stipendiary Lecturer in English at Mansfield College, Oxford. She is the author of Paper and the Making of Early Modern Literature, 2025.

42 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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Art History

The halo doesn't slip

Maini's sculpture as an exemplar of late baroque classicism

Bruce Boucher

Jennifer Montagu

Giovanni Battista Maini (1690-1752) and Roman Sculpture of His Time 302pp. Yale University Press. £100 (US $125).

The title of Jennifer Montagu's latest book encapsulates the challenge of writing about a sculptor who was famous in his own time, but left behind a small oeuvre and no school of followers. Giovanni Battista Maini was one of a host of sculptors and architects who came to Rome from Lombardy from the sixteenth century onwards, a group that included

Francesco Borromini and Maini's teacher, Camillo Rusconi. Maini's career is problematic, in part because his works are sometimes inaccessible and occasionally fell victim to destruction, but also because few of his models or drawings are in public collections. Nevertheless, what he did produce was of a high quality and represented what Rudolf Wittkower once called "heroic late Baroque Classicism".

Montagu's book marks the culmination of more than four decades of research into Roman baroque sculpture. It began with her prize-winning monograph of the Bolognese sculptor Alessandro Algardi in 1985, which surveyed the career of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's great rival in the first half of the seventeenth century. In many

ways, Maini could be described as the spiritual grandson of Algardi, in terms of both his artistic temperament and his gift for relief sculpture. Maini was also an unusually prolific draughtsman, leaving behind a large corpus of drawings, still in private hands. What survives of his sculpture is of great beauty, and Montagu gives the reader a masterclass in the appreciation of late baroque sculpture by juxtaposing Maini's work with that of his Roman competitors.

One striking example of his subtlety as a carver can be seen in his relief of the "Death of the Virgin", made for a series on her life in Siena Cathedral. Commissioned in 1748, the narrative cycle was parcelled out to Maini and his main competitors, notably Pietro Bracci and Filippo della Valle. The "Death of the Virgin" demonstrates a bravura command of the layers of relief sculpture, as well as contrasts ranging from raw stone to dazzling surface polish. Maini was thus able to impart the brilliant illusion of an aureole around the Virgin's head, an effect unmatched by his competitors.

Although he came to Rome in 1710, Maini's career only took off in the 1730s. He secured two statues in the one major sculptural project in St Peter's at the time, depictions of the founders of religious orders that decorate the nave and transepts of the church. Surprisingly, most of these statues were designed by painters, not the sculptors, but that reflected the absence of a figure of Bernini's stature in this period. Maini's first statue was of the founder of the Order of the Minims, St Francis of Paola, and while its general appearance was suggested by the Genoese painter Pietro Bianchi, the finished marble stands out among its peers as a masterful statement of prayerful meditation, concentrated in the expressive gesture of the hands and upturned face. It endows the hermit saint with inner life devoid of rhetoric, unlike many other statues in St Peter's.

After St Francis of Paola, he enjoyed prestigious commissions such as seated

statues of Popes Innocent X and Benedict XIV, in which his instinctive feel for marble conveyed the tactile nature of vestments that cloak these bland figures in authority. He also won the most coveted commissions in an important papal project of the period, the Corsini Chapel in St John Lateran. This was a celebration of the noble Florentine family of Corsini and of Pope Clement XII, who reigned from 1730 to 1740. Direction was under the Florentine architect Alessandro Galilei, who rigorously monitored the work of a team of sculptors. The result was a total work of art that looked back to the high Renaissance rather than the high baroque. Again, Maini's contribution matched the tenor of Galilei's creation, with the prime tasks of the bronze figure of the pope and a marble statue of his uncle, Neri Corsini the Elder. Cardinal Corsini strikes a majestic pose, and Maini displays his customary ability to distract attention from a generalized facial expression by highlighting the softness of the drapery. The bronze figure of the pope is likewise dominated by the heavy folds of his cope, with its brilliant gilding, but the head evokes authority and is rightly called by Montagu "one of the noblest and most truthful images of the Roman popes".

With more than 300 illustrations, Montagu has made her case for Maini's gifts through detailed comparisons, and the book can be read as a history of the last decades of Roman baroque sculpture. Maini was not a great innovator or someone who developed a dramatic "late style" like Bernini; yet he was an artist of the highest calibre. One lays down this handsomely produced book with a greater appreciation of Maini and his times, but also with an impatience for Antonio Canova to usher in a new age of sculpture.

Bruce Boucher's books include John Soane's Cabinet of Curiosities: Reflections on an architect and his collection, 2024.

"Patience" by Giovanni Battista De'Rossi, Corsini Chapel; from the book under review

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August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 43

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In Brief

Allusions

Andrew Gallix

Loren Ipsum

300pp. Dodo Ink. Paperback, £9.99.

Andrew Gallix's debut novel, Loren Ipsum, is all-consuming. It has devoured modernism, postmodernism, punk and Paris, and regurgitated it all in a perplexing and compelling send-up of the contemporary Anglo-French literary scene. Writers are being murdered, some in the streets, others in locked rooms where they must explain, gun to their heads, why they write. What the killers want is largely unclear: their slogans and ideas are constructed from the linguistic mysticism of Adam Wandle, an elusive author whom the English journalist Loren Ipsum is researching for a book. Whether or not Wandle is in league with these terrorists is by the by, as is, frankly, the whole plot.

The novel's set-up is an excuse for Gallix to canter merrily through a series of vignettes satirizing a cast of literary types with pun-stuffed prose. Chapter thirteen, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Talk", is one of the peaks, filled with the dialogue of people speaking past each other at a literary party: "Are you an author? Should I have heard of you?"; "When a novel is described as 'deeply humane', I reach for my gun"; "At some point Anne Carson and Lydia Davis must have merged. It's the only explanation"; "I only read books in translation"; "I was the first book blogger, you know"; "It's always spelt 'premiss' in the TLS. Always". It is pitch-perfect. In an interview with Gerry Feehily in 3AM Magazine, of which Gallix is the editor-in-chief, the author remarks that he finds himself in the kitchen or sitting out of the way at parties, taking everything in, but struggling to join conversations. Difficult as that may be, this habit of observation has fine-tuned his ear for the excruciating nonsense most of us are at risk of producing. For anyone with even the merest literary pretensions, Gallix has your number.

Loren Ipsum is one of those invigorating novels that leaves you feeling smarter and more foolish. For every allusion you recognize, ten more have zipped by unnoticed. In a nod to T. S. Eliot's mischievous endnotes in The Waste Land, Gallix's "Acknowledgements" are a list of references running from James Joyce, Eliot and Samuel Beckett to contemporary authors such as Toby Litt and Gallix's publisher, Sam Mills (who also appears in the novel), plus literary journalism, critical essays and more. Like everything in Loren Ipsum, this list is full of gaps. Even Loren is not always fully there, named as she is after placeholder text. "She was all blurred

features and radio static." Who she is, and what she really wants, is both one of the novel's central mysteries and entirely beside the point. If that premiss sounds irksome, this novel will do you good. W. J. Davies

Extras

Alexander Voloshin

Sidetracked

Exile in Hollywood

Translated by Boris Dralyuk

98pp. Paul Dry. Paperback, £18.99 (US $17.95).

One of Russia's lesser-known poets worked as an actor, a waiter, a soldier and a military officer in the years after the Bolshevik Revolution and the First World War. Alexander Voloshin (1884-1960) was a natural candidate for footloose America, where everyone comes from somewhere else and everyone scrambles to find a foothold.

Voloshin should be better known, and perhaps he will be with the publication in English of Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood, the rhyming mock epic from 1953 that is his masterpiece. Even Russian readers are unfamiliar with him. The arc of his peripatetic life placed him far away from his peers in St Petersburg, the city where literary reputations were made. He has been in the shadows ever since.

That's about to change. In Sidetracked, brilliantly translated by the accomplished Ukrainian-American poet, writer and translator Boris Dralyuk, Voloshin attempts to come to grips with the sweep of the twentieth century, from the Revolution to Pearl Harbor. Like Alexander Pushkin, Voloshin is composing a novella in verse, with Eugene Onegin in the next room.

He was born in Kyiv, on the Dnieper River. Dralyuk was born a century later in Odesa, less than 300 miles away. They team together (one posthumously) for Sidetracked. Both emigrated to the US, so we know them as Americans, too.

Millions fled the collapsing Russian Empire and settled in continental Europe, Asia, New York and San Francisco. Only about 5,000 migrated to Los Angeles, the land of broken dreams. Voloshin was one of them. He worked as a movie "extra" in Hollywood (where Dralyuk also grew up), telephoning Central Casting as often as every fifteen minutes to check if there was work for him. Sidetracked abounds with contemporary references to the times: "Look, 'Lindbergh's taken to the air' / and 'Mrs. Simpson cracks a smile ...".

These tumbledown émigrés who had "sold their shadows", as Dralyuk writes, offered themselves up to the movie studios of southern California, or

Untitled, by Shibata Zeshin

opened restaurants with names like the Volga Boat, the Russian Bear and the Double Headed Eagle. The cliché of down-and-out refugees from Europe, juxtaposed with the high culture of the rich, was a staple of American films.

Voloshin ended his days as a taxi driver for the Yellow Cab Co. in Los Angeles, but kept his sense of humour to the end.

No matter where you turn your eyes – things waiting to be satirized. This is the book that will make his reputation in the West. Cynthia L. Haven

End times

Charles Ferdinand Ramuz

Into the Sun

Translated by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan

144pp. New Directions. Paperback, £14.75 (US $15.95).

In Charles Ferdinand Ramuz's novel Presence de la mort (1922; retitled Into the Sun in this new translation by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan), the Earth's axis has shifted and the planet is hurtling towards the sun. This is a timely novel: the news of our impending destruction is met with denial, and the locals in a lakeside town in Switzerland are cynical: "[T]he newspapers weren't selling anymore, so what do you expect?" But Into the Sun isn't merely prophetic; it's also full of wise reflections on nature, the quotidian and the futility of coping with real disaster.

Subtle changes in climate are observed: people wipe their foreheads more often, little droughts take hold. Ramuz's narrator – at times caught up in the turmoil, elsewhere detached and godly – declares that the world is ending for a different reason; because, he suggests, people have always, and

wrongly, looked "without seeing". Now the blinkers are off, and an ontological instinct kicks in "to tell you, list for you, count for you ... dear things that are in front of me".

People start making up for lost time and the quality of their observations strengthens – previously unnoticed steamers pass by on the water, "smoke unspoofing from their chimneys like horse hairs coming unspooled at the quilters". Gradually, the reality of what is happening sinks in, the Earth's fate is accepted and there is mass hysteria. Attempts at rational, collective action fizzle out and are replaced by random acts of violence. Baes and Ramadan capture these contrasts well, not least in the bright doominess of their title. They have rejected the original ("Presence of Death": too heavy-handed) and gone for something that captures the human instinct to turn a blind eye to the inevitable. An air of adrenalized familiarity prevails throughout the book, cleverly finding its way into the most innocuous-sounding phrases: "suddenly, as on every night".

Ramuz's narrator thinks a lack of imagination is behind the hysteria. The scale of the oncoming disaster is too much for most people, who can't "imagine beyond what they are". And it's not a question of intelligence. Rather, "something has stopped beating in the arteries" of the world, and the outcome is inconceivable: "when I sought to imagine something beyond it, it was still the world that I imagined. When I sought to go past it, there I found it again". Punctuated by confusion and fear of an incomprehensible fate, Into the Sun frames the world's end as a gentle collapse. Colm McKenna

Disconnections

Anju Gaston

Pink Soap

110pp. Weatherglass. Paperback, £10.99.

Pink Soap is a Tardis. On first reading, it seems slight, but it is more substantial, and abundant, than it appears. Like the author, our unnamed first-person narrator is half Japanese, an identity about which she feels ambivalent. Her interior monologue begins following an episode of bipolar mania and psychosis, during which she wrote copious poisonous messages to friends and family, including threats, accusations and insults. Ashamed, she fears that she may never rebuild these relationships.

Anju Gaston's specialism as a DPhil student at the Oxford Internet Institute is "voluntary digital disconnect in the context of ubiquitous connectivity", a theme that permeates this debut novel. "Your research is too close to the bone",

44 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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the narrator's psychiatrist tells her. The book's title refers to the bar of soap that she sketches daily, documenting its shrinkage. The rate depends "on the weather and the balance of chemicals in my brain". Various details are carefully recorded: "I enter the kitchen and eat three apples and four satsumas ... I wonder how many people have eaten them in this order". In precise, emotionless prose, she admits that she cannot trust her thinking, and thus refrains from describing feelings, giving opinions, even using metaphor. The effect can be alienating: this is the antithesis of a page-turner.

Yet we do want to know more about this curious narrator. At one point, she brings the soap to her class. "It passed as something it wasn't", comments one student. "You'd expect ... something sweet, but it's glitchy and complex". The narrator never names her many acquaintances: "my Doctor friend"; "my Swedish acquaintance". She travels to Japan to see her father, who remains distant and enigmatic, their conversation mediated by a language not fully shared. There is a sense throughout of dislocation and loss.

In the later chapters, as the narrator's mania again takes hold, she turns to technology to find an outlet for her loquaciousness, her desire for connection. She begins to "writ[e] to everyone I know on the internet ... I stare into every cctv I pass". As her internal logic and sense of self break down, she goes online to ask "the meaning of my name ... whether it's better to strangle a fish or shoot a genius".

It is never clear if she succeeds in freeing, or grounding, herself in this way. Yet hope comes in a kind of acceptance, the Japanese concept of Shogana: "It cannot be helped".

Proximities

Andrew Southam

Cyprus 1974

Conflict in the Mediterranean: No control, no conspiracy 336pp. Pen and Sword. £29.99.

Images of Cyprus in recent years are still those of the writings of Lawrence Durrell and Colin Thubron, which continue in happy paperback life today. Historical writing about the crisis from the early 1950s to the Turkish invasion in 1974 has become the terrain of eastern Mediterranean specialists. Popular books by the Colonial Office worthy Sir Harry Luke were reprinted regularly until the mid-1970s, but have disappeared into charity shops. The last British governor, Lord Caradon, is studied more as part of the history of the British Empire than of the island.

Yet the frozen conflict remains, albeit in a manageable form, with the UN Green Line open for tourists, little violence and a diminishing British military presence at the Akrotiri listening station. The economy survived the post-2009 financial crisis, in part due to an influx of Russian money, tourism and shipping. The facts of geography do not change, and proximity to the refugee issue from Lebanon, and to a lesser extent Israel, has emphasized the island's strategic importance. This has been refocused intensely after the drone attack on the Akrotiri airbase in the early days of the current Iran crisis.

Andrew Southam has delved deep into the turmoil of 1974 and conducted extensive research in the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in Arlington, Virginia, and in the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme at Churchill College, Cambridge. His narrative is based on recollections of officials below the top policymakers, and he is strong on the relationship to contemporary dilemmas.

The reader learns little about the views of the key player, Henry Kissinger, on some issues, and his most influential critic, Christopher Hitchens, does not even make the bibliography. This lacuna reflects a deeper problem. Although some history is presented objectively, and Southam tells a good anecdote, the Greek side is often absent in analytic terms, replaced by racy portraits of personalities. He obfuscates the CIA's role in the genesis of the Athens junta dictatorship. The picture of pre-1974 Turkish politics is thin, as are the labyrinthine Foreign and Commonwealth Office dilemmas in London. Also absent is an important London advocate for emosis, Cypriot unity with Greece - the former SOE luminary and Tory MP Christopher "Monty" Woodhouse, who by no stretch of any imagination could be regarded as anti-American or a stooge of the Greek left.

British policy is presented as a product of the Cypriot presence in London, in the Labour party, and the later foreign minister Robin Cook as a cipher for ethnic interests, rather than a commitment to law and human rights. An up-to-date popular history of Cyprus is needed, but this book does not pass muster.

James Pettifer

Hard-wired

Nicholas Wright

Warhead

How the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain 400pp. Pan. Paperback, £10.99.

When neuroscientists assess soldiers before and after deployment to a war zone,

they observe changes in the architecture of their brains. Some regions of the brain physically shrink, especially those linked to memory, motivation, and threat perception. Other regions get larger or become more interconnected, such as areas involved in trauma processing. Several studies have found that many of these unconscious neural changes persist long after the soldier has left the war zone. It also appears to be true that the brains of civilian survivors of conflict are affected in similar ways, and that some changes can even manifest themselves psychologically a generation later, in the children of war survivors.

At the same time, over the past decade, neuroscientists have discovered that people with different brain architectures have different levels of vulnerability to joining violent groups. Minds that are more cognitively rigid and impulsive in everyday situations are most likely to take any ideology to its extreme. People whose brains have a smaller or less interconnected prefrontal cortex - the brain area behind our foreheads, responsible for sophisticated reasoning - tend to embrace more radical and authoritarian ideologies. War changes our psychology and neurobiology, while our neurobiology plays a part in instigating wars.

Surprisingly, despite Nicholas Wright's experiences advising the Pentagon, none of these scientific developments are explored in Warhead. Instead, this is a book written for war enthusiasts, and its tone is notably cheerful. There are scenes of dinners in Washington, marked by reciprocal flattery. "Wise leaders" (Winston Churchill, Horatio Nelson, Dwight D. Eisenhower) are applauded at length. Even Adolf Hitler is carefully praised as being "brave, talented, clever". The book alternates between basic neuroscience and war history, with the aim of figuring out how democratic societies should "diligently exploit" and leverage our "survival-grade neural machinery" so that democratic societies can win more wars and "save civilization".

We are often told, just as we are by Wright, that war is an inherent, ancient part of the human condition, one that is "hard-wired" within us, and as such we are encouraged to forget the individual and prioritize the collective. The brain sciences counter this narrative. They reveal that the brain is flexible and malleable, not fixed; that our minds do not thrive in conflict, but rather that many of our most creative capacities diminish; and that the costs of war to individual people matter profoundly, altering the fabric of our bodies.

Golddiggers

Jeremy Harte

Treasures on Earth

Buried wealth in landscape and legend 296pp. Reaktion. £15.99.

The standing stone in the Scottish village of Murthy lay undisturbed for thousands of years until, or so the story goes, the local schoolmaster's sons took gunpowder to it. The boys dislodged the ancient stone to find a black dog sitting atop a treasure chest, just as the old tales had said. They took one look at the dark, terrifying animal and decided that they had better put the stone back and forget about the gold altogether.

As Jeremy Harte explores in Treasures on Earth, a preoccupation with hidden riches was once baked into the collective psyche of the British Isles, spawning countless folktales. Stories of mythical hoards, doomed quests and undiscovered riches abound, with treasure-hunters interrogating spirits or fighting beasts, and rarely finding what they are looking for. In these tales, the location of a hoard is as likely to be revealed in a dream as it is by someone stumbling on it by accident.

Folk tales are antithetical to modernity, and to some extent to modern scholarship. They are difficult to locate, date, quantify and reference. Versions have been recorded from the seventeenth century, but many preserve a much older oral tradition. In the case of the black dog of Murthy, the tale came from a village parishioner who passed it along to their reverend, who in turn told a collector in the 1970s - but dogs appear as treasure guardians in older stories. The genius of Harte and other surveyors of folklore is in their identification of patterns and local themes, through which this elusive body of literature can be somewhat organized.

The extent of folklore's regional differentiation is fascinating. In treasure stories, certain tropes crop up repeatedly in certain areas. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, treasure hunters in Welsh tales are often interrupted by bad weather, with storms thwarting their quest for the hoard. More mysteriously, in southern England there is a profusion of stories featuring golden coffins, a trope that is almost exclusive to the area. Harte calls folklore "obstinate and local", comparing it to the growth of trees: no sooner is one folk tradition cut back somewhere than it springs up somewhere else, flourishing smugly.

The roots of treasure folklore are people's deepest fears and desires, the longing for life-changing wealth and the anxiety of anticipated loss. Harte knows this, always prioritizing the human story within tales of riches: "people are more interesting than gold".

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 45

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In Brief: Poetry

Hereness, thereness

Phoebe Giannisi

Goatsong

Translated by Brian Sneeden 300pp. Fitzcarraldo. Paperback, £14.99.

Goatsong, whose title is the literal translation of the Greek word for tragedy ("tragodia"), brings together three of the Greek poet Phoebe Giannisi's collections of poems: Homerica (2009), Cicada (2012) and Chimera (2019). These originally appeared in parallel text editions with translations by Brian Sneeden, the translator of the present volume, in 2017, 2022 and 2024 respectively.

Giannisi is professor of architecture and cultural studies at the University of Thessaly, but began academic life as a classicist. In her thesis, "Récits des voies. Chant et cheminement en Grèce archaïque" (2008), she suggested that architecture might be a precursor for her writing. Her work often dissolves the borders between different art forms and disciplines. For Cicada, she created an installation, including recordings, recitations and music. For Homerica, she recorded a CD while wandering around mythical places related to that poem's content. "I wanted to add to my verses the specific moment's atmosphere conveyed by its sound. That was my way to include the poetic haecceity, the perfect individuality of the moment as sensed through the place", she stated in an interview. Haecceity ("thisness") is a term coined by the philosopher Duns Scotus. For Giannisi, poetry and philosophy are "the first axe that touched the world".

Her work is informed by both. Describing the rationale behind the Homerica CD, she explains how "I" ("ego") derives from the Indo-European noun "eghom" ("hereness"), and "if the 'I' is nothing less than a 'here', then the voice in poetry expresses nothing but this 'here', and through the multiplicity of subjects, those others that dwell 'here' at that very moment". But in the prose poem "Word", she confesses: "when I cease to exist I don't have a place anymore they say the words I and here come from the same root yet the place of memory persists". Her position collapses into the classic poet's yearning for a "monumentum aere perennius".

In "Archilochus", a brilliant poetic meditation on a fragment of the 7th-century BCE lyric poet of that name, ("Goodbye to Paros and those figs and life on the sea"), Giannisi writes:

Not just the figs but those figs there, not here and later: those you didn't want, which afflicted you, those goddamn figs ever there. Haecceity turns out to be evasive. Giannisi's poetry is rich in meaning and allusion, refusing to be fixed, thriving on organic freshness. Its interest is constantly renewed. Sneeden's clean, accurate versions mirror the clear, unpretentious Greek of her sophisticated original poems. Mark Glanville

An illustration of the constellation Sirius from the Harley Aratus, c.820-40

Miniatures

Michael Symmons Roberts

Dog Star

80pp. Cape. Paperback, £13.

Although it sounds like the offspring of two different Frank Bidart collections, Metaphysical Dog and Star Dust, Michael Symmons Roberts's latest volume is too auto-diaristic, and too ruminative, for gimmicks such as the persona poem, Bidart's forte. Depending on your theology, these poems seem to say, the human race is either dust or a kind of cosmological slime, "a brief coalescence of matter" with a train to catch. Sirius, the titular star of Dog Star, haunts the author's lucid daydreaming while others - a woman hunched on a trash heap, called home to dinner by her memories, and the florist who supports her - go about their doggy lives.

Caught in high definition, Ted Hughes's thought-fox is here just a fox, "no messenger or symbol, / but the real presence, disassembled / and reconstituted out of digits" in last night's doorbell footage, which Roberts reviews in a moment of contemporary boredom, on foot, waiting to cross a busy junction. When it comes to metaphor, Roberts scavenges, turning love into "a lock that picks itself" and salitter (a gnostic term revived by, of all people, Cormac McCarthy) into road salt beneath a winter snowfall, which, "salt[ing] the tails / of bullfinches", quietly astonishes as it thaws.

Spring's beginning, wherein threadbare death, "dropped on their shoulders like old coats", wrinkles again into myth, is a source of infinite fascination and pathos: flowers blossom stelliform or else bloom early, only to disintegrate with the icy fragility of a comet skimming Earth's atmosphere. The pupil of a Eurasian blackbird is an inverted full stop. Roberts's attention is attuned to frequencies inaudible to most poets - or most people or even

things, from mayflies, whose brevity is described as iconic, to a bottle of forgotten liquor, or from the lab mice responsible for penicillin to a dying relative's ceiling tiles. He listens for the miniaturism hidden in our increasingly maximalist world.

If the "wild, wild voltage" of this trim collection, Roberts's ninth, can only be measured in picowatts, his solipsistic twilight drives and fatiguing grief still manage more than a few awkward shocks:

There is some currency, fizz of a charge for the first time since last year's leaves let fall. [...] Each year I wonder what this lost hour would have held, but it came in the night and I slept through it Mixing literary prayer - for purposefulness, or against the sure inferno of climate change ("woods are failing, tightening to coppice, / thicket") - with the sobriety of hope, Dog Star is a reckoning. Erick Verran

Retrievals

Graeme Richardson

Dirt Rich

80pp. Carcanet. Paperback, £12.99.

The autobiographical mode is so entrenched in contemporary poetry that readers could be forgiven for getting a little impatient with it. But Graeme Richardson's long-awaited first collection is ample proof that the best poetry is made from the stuff of life: you simply have to know what it's worth. Bracing, and often beautiful, the poems in Dirt Rich are unusually close to the quick, especially the griefs and joys of love and parenthood.

Earthy themes ground the book, from the poet's childhood in the Nottinghamshire coalfields ("the

Dukeries wouldn't strike / for a future they didn't believe in") to burial duties as an Anglican priest and his more recent work with archaeological science. In "Mansfield Notts", theology and heritage combine in the image of "the bloodied man descended into hell / who came up again good as new". Dirt is the end of life, where rain becomes a "worm-delighting downpour" (the humour is typical), but also a place of transformation. To be under the ground is to be under pressure, and the energy in these poems is frequently expelled in striking images of dissolution: smoke "tumbles and writhes"; flat currencies "teem and dissolve"; the poet stands before the mirror in the morning and sees "shadows / under the skin, an inward bellying of smoke".

Richardson digs through time to perform a series of retrievals: a pit pony "nuzzling / flesh and juice" through the threads of a jacket to get the "buried life" inside; winter apples breathing through "the years' black slit"; children finding their father in the night. If his acts of recovery pay off time and time again, and they do, it is because he has gone the hard way: daring to look in the mirror, building each poem from the ground up, and drawing variously on the rich tradition of twentieth-century poetry on these islands. Those influences are thoroughly digested (on occasion, a touch too much Heaney gets in the way), sometimes to surprising effect. Ballads like "Death of an Aristotelian" conjure up a streetwise Betjeman:

But even for philosophers a time of no control is coming, when we're haunted by the spectre of the soul. But it is the briefer lyrics that best demonstrate Richardson's powers of concision and his ear for the memorable, hard truth - as in "History Teaching", with its haunting refrain: "If I don't forget you, don't you forget me." This is a debut to treasure. Jeremy Wikeley

46 Times Literary Supplement August 7, 2026

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Afterthoughts

At Leopardi's house

Tim Parks

What happens when a writer loses faith in a community of readers? Last week, I took advantage of a trip to Ancona to visit the house of Giacomo Leopardi in the hilltop town of Recanati, twenty miles to the south. Born in 1798, Leopardi grew up a child prodigy in the library of his eccentric father, Monaldo. "There are 20,000 volumes", our guide says, waving at the antique shelving in three small rooms. Determined to be philanthropic, Monaldo declared the library open to the public in 1812. The first reader turned up forty years later. Not a good omen.

Spurred by his father's Christian rationalism, and already able to read Latin and Greek, German and French, English and Hebrew, the teenage Leopardi embarked on the huge Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients (1815). But his use of modern science to deconstruct ancient creeds only prompted the consideration that Christianity was equally flawed. Existence, he concluded, was "a solid nothing". Distressed that the pursuit of

truth had merely made life more difficult, he turned to poetry and quickly became Italy's most sublime bearer of ill tidings.

"Over there", says the guide, pointing to a wine-stucceed facade across the piazza, "is where Silvia lived. Giacomo could hear her singing at her loom as he read in the library. She's a symbol of hope in his most famous poem." In fact, Silvia, who died too young to realize how "nature tricks us with promises it will not keep", is emblematic of Leopardi's loss of hope. And our guide exhibits exactly that tendency the poet was so familiar with: to shy away from harsh reality. A later fable he wrote about a man who refused to subscribe to the community's shared illusions begins: "Filippo Ottonieri ... lived most of his life, in Nubiana ... where there is no memory of his ever having injured anyone, in word or deed. He was generally hated by his fellow citizens ...".

But nobody, Leopardi believed, could live without illusions of some kind. The trick was to cultivate them, knowing they were no more than that. And the illusion Giacomo most pursued was literary glory. He felt rebuffed at every stage. In Rome, the writers he met only "took away any

desire to meet others. They all suppose they can drive to immortality in their carriages". His poems brought him little income, and his wonderfully whimsical Moral Fables (1827) even less. In an ironic address to a youngster embarking on a literary career, he warns that only a "tiny minority" are capable of recognizing a genuinely original work of literature, and even then only on a good day. For the multitude, it's a matter of fashion and celebrity. One sets one's hopes on posterity - the "ultimate refuge and comfort of great minds" - but there is no guarantee future generations will get the message. And anyway, you'll be dead.

It's not hard to list authors who felt the literary community let them down. "No more novel writing for me", Thomas Hardy vowed after scathing reviews. "A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up to be shot at." D. H. Lawrence complained that readers judged on ideological grounds, Jorge Luis Borges, too, that they put politics before aesthetics. "Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter", declared Herman Melville, despairing at the reception of Moby-Dick. Stendhal expected to be appreciated only by "a happy few". Still, a few is not none. I know people who write pretty well and can't get published at all. The breakdown

of a collectively shared vision of reality, argued the Italian critic Giacomo Debenedetti in the 1960s, was responsible for a growing alienation between writer and reader.

In the entrance to Leopardi's house, there is a "selfie corner" where you can pose beside his bust. The surrounding streets and piazzas are named after him or his poems, lines of which appear in many shop windows. Yet none of those visiting the house with us seemed to have more than a classroom memory of him. "Some even think he was atheist", says our guide timidly. Utterly godless, in 1833, Leopardi gave up his attempts to penetrate literary society, retreating with a friend to an obscure life in Naples where his greatest pleasure was the local ice-cream. Earlier, in a prophetic moment in the Moral Fables, he had posited the invention of a super-intelligent robot that would be a man's perfect friend, never betraying or contradicting him. "It seems impossible to think", he reflects, that we "cannot teach a machine to speak".

Worst comes to worst, disillusioned writers might turn to AI to have their work appreciatively read.

Tim Parks's latest book is Across Sicily with Garibaldi's Thousand: An adventure in landscape and Italian memory, 2026.

TLS Crossword 1616 by Broteas

Across

• 1 British stray slightly about black character famous in American folklore (4, 6)

• 6 A child with nothing but a dog (4)

• 10 It's really good to get married again – and get covered in confetti? (9)

• 11 Novelist's bit of sex in the morning is inappropriate (5)

• 12 Grim kind of house created by a

• fashion designer? That's about right (7)

• 13 Many years after a deed, he was punished by a goddess (7)
• 14 Writer of tragic novel? He's a liar (7, 6)
• 17 ABBA repeated part of this song usually (7, 6)
• 21 British lawyer's job is accommodating American judge (7)
• 22 Story of religious communities, initially trying to exist in extremely difficult circumstances (3, 4)
• 24 Some French in dialect from which English borrowed many words (5)
• 25 Leaderless tribalism I organised is wondrous (9)
• 26 Supreme or rejected saints (4)
• 27 Inferno is a celebrated work with six main parts (10)

Down

• 1 Friend of a baronet's son with money, land ... (3, 5)
• 2 ... fancy ideas and costume jewellery (7, 8)
• 3 A bit of literature, Runyonesque, to publish again? (5)
• 4 Department in Derby that censored plays (7)
• 5 Type of ink used to write a George Sand novel (7)
• 7 Oscar, upsetting infamous cabinet minister, is someone notably radical (5, 10)
• 8 A Shakespearean duke's wrong to wear gold in Venice (6)
• 9 Deer mostly seen in seasonal comedy - one created by Shakespeare (8)

• 15 Alternative to spring crop container turning

• up somewhere in ancient Greece (8)

• 16 Large white home with damaged left side fashioned in a particular way (8)
• 18 Some inventive Americans aimed to produce elevated new English (4, 3)
• 19 One growing in attraction for an infanta? (3, 4)
• 20 Legolas is one with more guile (6)
• 23 Joint that's operating in a dodgy part of town in Shakespeare (5)

The winner of Crossword 1615 is Dan McDaid, of Dundee.

The sender of the first correct solution opened after August 17 will receive a prize of £40. Entries should be addressed to TLS Crossword 1616, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF or emailed to crosswords@the-tls.co.uk

August 7, 2026 Times Literary Supplement 47

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Curtain raisers

Introduction is a tricky business. Raising the curtain on the Collected Poems of his friend Lilian Bowes Lyon, for instance, Cecil Day Lewis unhelpfully demurred at Gerard Manley Hopkins's becoming such an influence on her. (Day Lewis must have disliked lines like "The logical furrow following lurled and spare".) A less niggardly attitude informs Jeremy Noel-Tod's introductory selection from that same Collected, Snow Bees (Headless Poet, £7.50).

There is a biographical fact about Bowes Lyon - a poet occasionally anthologized, generally forgotten - that tends to precede any anthologized example of her work, as if it's the most important thing about her. (See also: NB, April 29, 2016.) Mr Noel-Tod can hardly ignore it in his own introduction, but he deliberately leaves it until last. If you know it, you know it. If you don't, then there is a little twist in the tale in store for you. And meanwhile, there are the

poems, which their new champion finds "modest, tender, ecstatic, tough". He goes his own way as well in choosing to omit "Battlefield", Bowes Lyon's much-noted short poem about the death of her brother during the First World War.

Published this week, Snow Bees is the third in a series of smartly designed pamphlets from a new poetry publisher that intends to specialize in such introductions: alongside the odd contemporary poet. "We give poets and writers space to (re)introduce readers to poets of the past", Headless Poet explains on its website, "especially those whose work has been buried by time". The first pamphlet in the series, published earlier this year, is Victoria Moul's Poems Beautiful & Useful: A choice of popular early modern verse; the second, Alex Wong's Some Poems by Thomas Hood. The publisher's name, incidentally, derives from a local celebrity:

the decapitated statue, said to be Dante, that stands in Crystal Palace Park in south London. A certain line from Emily Dickinson is also relevant here: "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry". Headless Poet intends to publish five pamphlets a year; annual subscriptions start at £38. For further details, see headlesspoet.com.

Some news reported on the BBC and elsewhere: Alan Turing wasn't exactly the chap portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch on film in The Imitation Game (2014). That was a "two-dimensional stereotype", according to Sarah Dillon of the University of Cambridge. Turing has "come to be seen as socially unaware, entirely concerned with logic and numbers, and pretty isolated"; there was another side to the man: "playful, funny, cheeky, literary ... someone who really liked sex".

Is this news? It is if you know nothing about Turing's attempt to write fiction, which was published last month in the Review of English Studies as "Pryce's Buoy". Preserved at King's College, Cambridge, this incomplete short story tells of an encounter between a working-class rent boy and a "chap" who stands for Turing himself. "Ron caught Alec's eye and gave him a half-hearted smile." You get the idea.

For inspiration, Ms Dillon argues, Turing draws here on a novel by his fellow Bletchley Park man Angus Wilson, Hemlock and After (1952), while writing about his own experience of being arrested for gross indecency. We mentioned all this to a passing Turing expert and were directed to the "exemplary" biography, Alan Turing: The enigma (1983), in which Andrew Hodges considers the short story, decoding the relevant passages "in a manner that - how can one put it - foreshadows Professor Dillon's discovery". The Imitation Game, for its part, is based on Hodges's biography (which notes the Wilson connection without identifying Turing's exact source). The other side of Turing has long been visible, it seems, for those who want to see it.

The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration opened in June this year, in London; you will find it in Clerkenwell, not far south of Angel Underground station (check the website in advance for opening times). It is the country's "first and only charity for illustration - art that communicates stories and ideas", and was founded by the illustrator for whom it is named.

Queer as Comics is one of the centre's opening exhibitions. Running until October 4, it explores a large terrain: "comics, strip cartoons, graphic novels and zines that have represented LGBTQIA+ perspectives since the 1940s". Changing attitudes are represented here by Tom of Finland's brazen outings of the 1940s, Roberta Gregory's self-published comic Dynamite Damsels (1976) and Tom Robinson's rhyming polemic "Living with the Big A" (1987). Pictured above: one of Tove Jansson's Moomin strips, as published in the London Evening News in 1954.

Correspondence. At the time we mentioned Rogue Shakespeare's Sonnets: Truth in verse (July 10), that volume's author, Ryan J-W Smith, had written 3,391 sonnets. When we looked again at Mr Smith's website, the running total had gone up to 3,418 sonnets. Yet Mr Smith has some way to go before he can truly claim the title of "most prolific sonnetter in history", as he wishes. Mark Etherton writes from west London to remind us of Raymond Queneau and his Cent mille milliards de poèmes, in which ten sonnets "all have the same rhyme scheme and scansion so that lines from any sonnet are interchangeable with the corresponding lines of any of the others". As originally published in 1961, this foundational Oulipean experiment is cut into lines so that turning over just one line creates a different sonnet - 10th different combinations are possible, indeed. "Queneau calculated that at a rate of a sonnet a minute all day every day", Mr Etherton writes, "it would take 190,258,751 years (more or less) to read them all."

M. C.

The Genealogy of GENEALOGY

Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History JASON ANANDA JOSEPHSON STORM

"Storm's labyrinth is Foucauldian in ethos, fascinating in critical force, and disruptive of moralizing critique." —Niki Kasumi Clements, Rice University

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ISBN: 9780226847313

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QA Report - The Times Literary Supplement - 07.08.2026.pdf

Pipeline

• Extraction route: mistral-ocr
• extraction_route=mistral-ocr
• Translation chunks: 170
• Extraction warnings:
• [OCR-ROUTE] FORCE-MISTRAL: All PDFs route directly to MistralOCR.

Non-model Checks

• WARNING: missing numeric tokens from source: 101, 11101, 12000, 3000
• WARNING: Missing proper nouns in translation: Abu Dhabi, Across Sicily, Adam Sisman Clifton, Advertising Manager Jonathan Drummond, After Oxford, After St Francis, Afterthoughts

At Leopardi, Al Udeid, Albert Camus, Albert Einstein - WARNING: source dates, money, or percentage tokens may be missing

Model QA

经过严格审核，该翻译件存在多处严重缺陷，特别是数字量级错误、术语误译以及严重的漏译/截断问题。以下是详细审计报告：

═══ 审核报告 ═══

1. 数字与量级错误 (BLOCKING)

• 错误内容：译文中提到“可能产生 10 种不同的组合”以及“大约需要 1.90259亿,258,751 年”。
• 原文核查：原文为 "$10^{14}$ different combinations"（$10$ 的 $14$ 次方）以及 "190,258,751 years"。
• 问题分析：
  • 将数学幂次 $10^{14}$ 误译为数字 $10$，量级错误极其严重。
  • 将 $190,258,751$ 误译为 $1.90259$ 亿（且格式混乱），导致数字失真。
• 级别：[BLOCKING]

2. 完整性与漏译 (BLOCKING)

• 错误内容：译文在“不列颠的毁灭？”章节中，段落截断于“不列颠人在 44...”。
• 原文核查：原文在该处有大量关于吉尔达斯（Gildas）论述的后续内容。
• 问题分析：重要正文段落被直接截断，导致信息严重缺失。
• 级别：[BLOCKING]

3. 术语与翻译质量 (WARNING)

• 错误内容：
  1. 将 "The Race Makers" 译为《赛跑缔造者》。
  2. 将 "Oulipean" 译为“潜在文学工作室”。
  3. 将 "The Summer Book" 译为《夏日之書》（繁体）与《夏日之书》（简体）混用。
• 原文核查：
  1. 根据标题索引，该书讨论的是 "How slavery and the Enlightenment made race"（奴隶制与启蒙运动如何塑造种族），"Race" 此处指“种族”而非“赛跑”。
  2. "Oulipo" 是著名的“潜在文学工作室”，但 "Oulipean" 作为形容词应译为“乌力波式的”。
• 级别：[WARNING]

4. 交付标签与格式 (WARNING)

• 错误内容：译文标题多次出现《泰晤士文學 supplements》。
• 问题分析：未将 "Supplement" 统一翻译为“增刊”或“副刊”，且中英文混杂，不符合报纸翻译的交付标准。
• 级别：[WARNING]

5. 幻觉核查 (FALSE_POSITIVE)

• 核查项：译文中提到的“潜在文学工作室”和“1.90259亿年”。
• 结果：经核查原文 $\text{STRATIFIED TEXT SAMPLES}$，相关内容确实存在（尽管翻译错误），因此不报告为幻觉。

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═══ 最终审计结论 ═══

结论：发现阻塞性问题 (Blocking Issues Found)

核心缺陷总结： 1. 量级崩溃：将 $10^{14}$ 译为 $10$，这是不可接受的数学错误。 2. 内容截断：正文出现大段缺失（截断于“44...”）。 3. 关键术语误译：将关于“种族 (Race)”的学术讨论译为“赛跑”，完全改变了文章原意。

建议：该译文无法交付，必须重新翻译并进行全文本校对。