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Books and Arts; Book Review; New fiction; Petals of blood;
David Grossman may have written his most important novel yet;
To the End of the Land. By David Grossman.
It is no accident that the prologue to David Grossman's new novel, “To the End of the Land”, takes place in a fever ward. As the stories unfold, the reader discovers that fever is not just a symptom of physical illness. It becomes a description of the existential state of Israel. Mr Grossman's characters are not so much in possession of their experiences as possessed by them. They are gripped by a deep uncertainty about what will happen next: a terrorist bomb, the violent death of someone close, the overwhelming of their country by the enemies that surround it. It is next to impossible to rest or be at peace. Some seek to withdraw from this situation, others to resist it. It pervades existence in ways that make a distinction between the personal and the political something that is longed for and quite impossible to achieve.
大衛·格羅斯曼的新小說《走向天盡頭》以發燒病房作為開頭并非偶然。隨著小說情節的展開，讀者發現發燒不只是身體病狀。發燒成為了以色列生存狀態的特征。大衛先生作品的人物與其說是具有了經驗，不如說被經驗纏住不得脫身。他們被不斷要發生的種種深度不確定性事件引發了發燒癥：恐怖分子的炸彈、至愛親朋的死于非命、祖國四面受敵的嚴峻態勢。 歸于安定和平幾無可能。一些人尋求躲之避之，另一些人則要斗之抗之。這個不確定性彌漫于存在狀態的方方面面，其彌漫的方式卻有截然不同的兩種，各自代表了個人的或政治上極不可能實現的愿景。
Published first in Hebrew in April 2008, “To the End of the Land” is Mr Grossman's eighth novel to be translated into English. His first translated book was not a novel, but a documentary work that came out in 1987. “The Yellow Wind” engaged with the lives of Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation. It showed Mr Grossman's scrupulous attention to the feelings and thoughts of a group of people who have often been met with suspicion and contempt. It was also unequivocal that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories as much for the sake of Israeli Jews as for their Arab neighbours.
《行至天盡頭》是大衛先生的譯成英語的第八部小說，它首次出版是在2008年4月，用的是現代以色列語。他的首部翻譯作品不是小說，而是1987年出版的紀實性作品《黃風》。《黃風》描述的是那些在以色列管制下、住在加沙和約旦河西岸的巴基斯坦人的生活。《黃風》表現了大衛對時常遭受懷疑和蔑視的巴基斯坦人的情感和思想細致而審慎的關注。為了猶太人，也為了其鄰居阿拉伯人，以色列應當從占領區撤離，這是毫無疑問的。
The book made Mr Grossman, now 56, a contentious figure in Israel, and the controversy has not gone away. He is a vocal opponent of the extension of Jewish settlements. At the same time he has emerged in the last two decades as one of the most significant voices in Israeli and world literature. “To the End of the Land” is his most ambitious work to date. He began writing it in 2003 and, as a poignant endnote to the novel discloses, discussed it with his son, Uri, while he was on military service. In 2006 Uri was killed by an anti-tank missile during the second Israeli-Lebanon war. The event does not explicitly surface in the novel, but it adds a grave sadness to Mr Grossman's searching account of the psychological and physical costs of a seemingly endless state of war.
該書使現年56歲的大衛成為以色列的一位爭議人物，且爭議至今未消。他是猶太人定居點擴張主義者的旗幟鮮明的反對者；同時，也是近20年來蜚聲以色列和世界文壇的重要作家之一。《行至天盡頭》是大衛最具雄心的作品。他于2003年開始創作該小說，而且據該小說的一個令人傷感的尾注披露，他當時還與在軍中服役的兒子尤利一同為該小說的謀篇布局討論過。2006年，尤利在第二次以黎戰爭中被一顆反坦克導彈奪去生命。雖然喪子之痛在他的小說中未予特別披露，但是，就大衛對似無止息的戰爭帶給人們的身心創傷所作的探索性敘述而言，喪子之痛增添了作品沉重的悲傷氣氛。
“To the End of the Land” follows the course of the feverish state of Israel in the lives of its three main characters. The prologue, set in 1967, tells of their first meeting as teenagers in a hospital ward. There are two boys and a girl. Ora cries out in her sleep, haunted by the accidental death of her best friend. Avram is witty, talkative, consoling. Ilan seems the sickest of the three. As their individual temperatures scale up and down, they form a trinity, each becoming an aspect of the other's identity. Without knowing it, the three enter into a relationship that will determine the rest of their lives.
《走向天盡頭》以三個主人公的人生經歷來追蹤以色列的發燒進程。小說的開篇場景設定在1967年，描述的是三個少男少女在醫院病房的初遇，其中有兩個是男孩。奧拉因閨友意外死亡，備受傷悲，常在夢中驚叫；埃弗拉姆機智健談、善撫他人；依藍似乎病得最重。隨著各自體溫的升升降降，他們的性格彼此同化，形成了三位一體。他們尚不知道，他們之間形成的是一種將會影響其余生命運的關系。
The novel then moves forward to 2000. The setting is a long walk that Ora and Avram take through northern Israel. The stories told in the course of it piece together what has happened in the intervening years. There has been a lot of damage. The fever has taken its toll. Avram has never recovered from imprisonment and torture in the Yom Kippur war. Ilan's and Ora's marriage has broken up. Ora can no longer bear the burden of living in a country that requires all its citizens to be soldiers. She feels that a military state has destroyed the family she has so lovingly and painfully brought to life.
隨后，小說情節推進到了2000年。背景是奧拉和埃弗拉姆徒步穿越以色列北部。在穿越途中，小說講述了他們仨人數十年間經歷的零零種種。途中艱難險阻不斷。發熱癥也逐漸產生。埃弗拉姆在贖罪日戰爭中受到關押和折磨，癥狀再不能消除了。依藍和奧拉的婚姻破裂。奧拉再不能忍受生活之重——生活在要求人人皆兵的國家。她感到，這個好戰之國毀了她的家，毀了她如此熱愛且艱辛付出的家。
Their walk is a pilgrimage of sorts. Ora tells Avram the story of her life. She wants to bring him to a state where he can acknowledge that one of her two sons is his and not Ilan's—and he can come to love the boy, now a serving soldier. Their capacity to listen to each other might be a form of therapy; or it might not. Nothing is made explicit.
他們的徒步穿越是某種朝圣之旅。奧拉向埃弗拉姆述說了她的生活經歷。她想把他引入一種氛圍，在此氛圍下他能承認她的兩個兒子之一就是他的兒子，不是依藍的；她也希望他能夠愛這個在服兵役的兒子。他們能夠互相聽得進對方的話，這就可能是一種療傷止痛的方法； 但也可能不是。沒有什么是清楚確定的。
The question of a cure for their lives, of some kind of forgiveness, hovers around their words. The novel alludes to the hopes for redemption in the stories of the Jewish tradition: the journey into the promised land, the coming of the Messiah, the renewal of the covenant between God and his chosen people. But these allusions are not endorsements. Mr Grossman's imagination is secular, worldly, self-questioning and ironic. The Israel he imagines, beautifully and sorrowfully, is not going to be saved by any divine intervention.
用幾許寬恕來醫治他們人生中的發熱癥，是他們朝圣之旅中揮之不去的話題。該小說提示了幾種希望——幾種用猶太歷史故事來實施救贖的希望：踏上希望的朝圣之旅，以期救世主的降臨，進而重履救世主和其子民間的契約。不過，這些提示不是大衛的本意。大衛的的內心是世俗而非宗教的、具有自省及冷諷精神。他以凄美情懷思慮著的以色列沒有打算靠神的力量救贖自己。
