罕見的暢銷文學(xué)評論家哈羅德·布魯姆逝世,享年89歲
Harold Bloom was a rarity: a best-selling and widely known literary critic. Affectionately dubbed the "King Kong" of criticism, Bloom died Monday at the age of 89, at a hospital in New Haven, Conn., according to his wife.
哈羅德·布魯姆是罕見的:他是一位暢銷書作家和廣為人知的文學(xué)評論家。布魯姆被親切地稱為批評界的“金剛”。據(jù)他的妻子說,布魯姆周一在康涅狄格州紐黑文的一家醫(yī)院去世,享年89歲。
Over a redoubtable career, Bloom wrote scores of books, edited hundreds more and irritated innumerable intellectuals by arguing, for example, for the superiority of Western literary traditions.
在其令人敬畏的職業(yè)生涯中,布魯姆寫了幾十本書,編輯了數(shù)百本書,并因爭辯西方文學(xué)傳統(tǒng)的優(yōu)越性而激怒了無數(shù)知識分子。
Bloom was born in the Bronx, N.Y., to a Yiddish-speaking family that had emigrated from Eastern Europe. His father was a garment worker, and Bloom did not hear English spoken until the age of 6.
布魯姆出生在紐約州的布朗克斯,他們是一個說依地語的家庭,這個家庭是從東歐移民過來的。他的父親是一名服裝工人,布魯姆直到6歲才聽到有人說英語。
Educated first at Cornell University and then at Yale University — which at the time still maintained an informal Jewish quota — Bloom quickly established himself as a brilliant student. Yale would become Bloom's intellectual home for more than five decades.
布魯姆先后在康奈爾大學(xué)和耶魯大學(xué)接受教育——當(dāng)時耶魯大學(xué)仍保留著非正式的猶太人配額——他很快成為一名出色的學(xué)生。50多年來,耶魯一直是布魯姆的學(xué)術(shù)中心。
He taught classes there up until the week before his death, and his lectures on William Shakespeare drew throngs of enthusiastic undergraduates and a not-insubstantial following online.
直到去世前一周,他都在那里授課。他關(guān)于威廉·莎士比亞的講座吸引了大批熱情的本科生,網(wǎng)上也有不少追隨者。
Bloom had a photographic memory, and claimed he could recite all of Shakespeare, all of John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and copious swaths of British Romantic poetry.
布魯姆有過目不忘的能力,他聲稱自己能背誦莎士比亞全集、彌爾頓的《失樂園》全集以及大量英國浪漫主義詩歌。
"To a rather considerable extent," Bloom told The Atlantic magazine in 2003, "literary studies have been replaced by that incredible absurdity called cultural studies which, as far as I can tell, are neither cultural nor are they studies."
布魯姆在2003年接受《大西洋月刊》采訪時說:“在相當(dāng)大的程度上,文學(xué)研究已經(jīng)被一種叫文化研究的荒謬絕倫的東西所取代。就我所知,這種東西既不是文化,也不是研究。”
But Bloom also championed various minority and female scholars, authors and theater directors. He once proclaimed Ursula K. Le Guin a greater writer than J.R.R. Tolkien and suggested, in his 1990 bestseller, The Book of J, that much of the Hebrew Bible may have been written by a woman.
但布魯姆也支持各種少數(shù)族裔和女性學(xué)者、作家和戲劇導(dǎo)演。他曾宣稱厄休拉·k·勒奎恩是一位比J.R.R.托爾金更偉大的作家,并在其1990年的暢銷書《J書》中指出,《希伯來圣》的大部分內(nèi)容可能是由一個女人寫的。
In 2004, writer Naomi Wolf accused Bloom of putting his hand on her thigh when she was a student of his. He vigorously denied her accusation.
2004年,作家娜奧米·沃爾夫指責(zé)布魯姆在她還是他學(xué)生時把手放在她的大腿上。他極力否認(rèn)她的指控。
In spite of a lifetime of laurels and unusually lucrative book contracts for an academic, Bloom seemed resigned to his reputation as past his prime.
盡管一生都享有榮譽,并與一位學(xué)者簽下了異常豐厚的出書合同,但布魯姆似乎對自己已過盛年的名聲無可非議。