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Ayear or so ago, the journalist Nick Cohen, reviewing a book by the English Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, made the mistake of guessing what Hobsbawm's obituaries would look like. Those who shared Hobsbawm's political commitments would laud his work, Mr Cohen predicted. Those who did not would say "his loyalty to totalitarianism disfigured his writing". There would be little agreement between the two camps.
大約一年前，在點評英國馬克思主義史學家埃里克•霍布斯鮑姆(Eric Hobsbawm)寫的一本書時，記者尼克•科恩(Nick Cohen)曾猜測霍布斯鮑姆的訃告會是什么樣子?？贫黝A言道，政治信仰與霍布斯鮑姆相同的人士會在訃告中贊美他的工作，而與霍布斯鮑姆持不同政見的人士可能會說，"他對極權主義的忠誠使他的作品變得丑陋"——這兩個陣營對他的評價會非常不同。
Hobsbawm died last week at the age of 95 and Mr Cohen turns out to have been wrong. Whatever the view in recent years, there is today a remarkable consensus about Hobsbawm. Almost no one makes big claims for the communism that he professed, but almost no one dissents, either, from the view that places him among the great historians of his time.
上周，95歲的霍布斯鮑姆去世了，而事實也證明，科恩的預言是錯誤的。不管近些年來的思潮如何，今天人們對霍布斯鮑姆的評價卻是驚人的一致。盡管幾乎沒什么人極力主張他所信仰的共產主義，但與此同時，也幾乎沒什么人反對將他列為他所處的那個時代的偉大史學家。
No matter how loudly Hobsbawm proclaimed the communist dogma, his cast of mind was independent. It was too independent for the Soviet Union, which translated none of his sweeping narratives on nationalism, industrialism, imperialism and globalism. Whether or not Hobsbawm is considered a radical communist, he was an impenitent communist. He clung to his party card through the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and past the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was sometimes biased. He blamed the liberal democracies for Stalin's decision to ally himself with Hitler.
不管霍布斯鮑姆曾經多么大聲地宣揚共產主義教條，他的思想都稱得上獨立。而對蘇聯來說，霍布斯鮑姆的思想顯得過于獨立，因此，雖然他撰寫了許多關于民族主義、工業主義、帝國主義以及全球主義的影響深遠的論述，蘇聯卻一篇也沒有翻譯。不管霍布斯鮑姆算不算得上是激進的共產主義者，他都肯定算得上是頑固的共產主義者。即便在蘇聯入侵捷克斯洛伐克和匈牙利的時候，即便在柏林墻倒塌之后，他也緊握他的黨證不放。他的看法有時會有些偏激。比如斯大林(Stalin)決定與希特勒(Hitler)結盟一事，他就把這件事的責任記在自由民主國家頭上。
That Hobsbawm "whitewashed" the crimes of communism is largely a canard. In The Age of Extremes, he suggested that the deaths due to Stalinist terror are more likely "measured in eight rather than seven digits. In these circumstances it does not much matter whether we opt for a ‘conservative' estimate nearer to 10 than to 20 millions or a larger figure: none can be anything but shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification". Short of abandoning history for autobiography, he could hardly go further.
有人說霍布斯鮑姆試圖掩飾共產主義的罪行，這種說法在很大程度上是謠言。他在《極端的年代》(The Age of Extremes)一書中指出，斯大林主義恐怖導致的死亡人數更有可能"是8位數，而不是7位數。在這種情況下，我們是選擇一個接近于1000萬人、而不是接近于2000萬人的‘保守'估計數字，還是選擇一個更大的數字，實際上并無太大區別：它無論如何都是一個不光彩的數字，不可能讓人感到寬慰、更別說成為誰的辯護理由了。"
People can differ on whether Hobsbawm's Marxism should matter to his reputation. He thought it should. "Without Marx I would not have developed any special interest in history," Hobsbawm wrote in 1997. He refused to apologise for his politics or to couch them in any kind of soft-minded evasion about "good intentions". That he defended a cruel and misguided project did not mean he was misguided about everything.
至于霍布斯鮑姆的馬克思主義信仰對他的聲望有沒有影響，人們有著各種不同的看法?；舨妓辊U姆自己認為是有影響的。1997年他寫道："沒有馬克思的話，我對歷史就不會產生特別的興趣。"霍布斯鮑姆拒絕為自己的政治觀點道歉或以任何形式的關于"善意"的軟性借口來表述它們。不過，他為一個殘酷而受到誤導的事業辯護，并不等于他對所有事情的看法都受到了誤導。
Hobsbawm's assertion in Nations and Nationalism (1990) that traditional nationalism was losing its hold on the loyalty of citizens was much ridiculed when the war in Yugoslavia began months later. But today he looks more right than wrong.
在1990年出版的《民族與民族主義》(Nations and Nationalism)一書中，霍布斯鮑姆斷言傳統的民族主義對公民忠誠度的掌控力正在減弱。幾個月后南斯拉夫內戰爆發時，他的這一觀點受到了很多人的嘲笑。但今天看來，他的觀點更有可能是對的而不是錯的。
His scepticism about democracy was not to most official tastes, but only by ignoring the data could one dispute his contention that both Colombia and the US were countries with well-functioning democracies and high murder rates. "Even as an alternative to other systems," he wrote of democracy, "it can be defended only with a sigh." That elegant, 19th-century-style sentence gives us a clue to why Hobsbawm is beloved even of those who do not share his politics.
霍布斯鮑姆對民主的懷疑態度不合大多數政府的胃口，但對于他提出的一個論點——即哥倫比亞和美國都是民主制度運行良好而謀殺率都很高的國家——只有對數據視而不見的人才會質疑。關于民主制度他曾寫道："即使是作為其他制度的替代品，若想為民主制度辯護，也只能報以一聲長嘆。"這些19世紀風格的優雅語句也許可以告訴我們，為什么就連那些與他政見不同的人士也對他鐘愛有加。
That a historian subscribes to a political ideology does not make him a politician, any more than a historian who professes a religion is necessarily a priest. If there is a mystery here it is why so many artists and writers should have been drawn to the materialistic, mechanistic doctrines of Marxism rather than to more individualistic creeds. How did Victor Jara or Gabriel García Márquez wind up thinking it worthwhile to fight for collectivism? Hobsbawm himself was interested in such questions. He wondered, for instance, about his own enthusiasm for detective stories, for instance, which he considered a "deeply conservative genre". More than most historians, Hobsbawm cared about culture. He wrote excellent jazz criticism, never stopped reading novels and made occasional observations in print about high fashion. Hobsbawm had a clear idea of where his appeal lay. "I try out my books first as student lecture courses," he wrote in 2003, "because lecturing is a good way of testing whether a historian holds his audience."
正如信仰宗教的史學家未必就是一名神職人員，認同某種政治意識形態的史學家也不一定會成為政客。如果說這里有什么令人奇怪的地方，那就是為什么會有如此之多的藝術家與作家會被馬克思主義唯物、機械的教條吸引，而不是被個人主義色彩更濃的信仰吸引。為什么維克多•哈拉(Victor Jara)與加布里埃爾•加西亞•馬爾克斯(Gabriel García Márquez)最終會認為為集體主義斗爭是值得的？霍布斯鮑姆本人對這類問題也很感興趣。比如，他很想知道自己為什么會癡迷于偵探小說這類他認為屬于"極端保守體裁"的作品。他對文化的關注也強于多數史學家。他寫過極好的爵士樂評論，而且從未中斷過小說閱讀，偶爾還會寫些高級時裝評論。霍布斯鮑姆清楚自己的吸引力在哪里。2003年他曾寫道："我會把我寫的書首先拿到課堂上講給學生聽，因為講課是測試一位史學家能否吸引住聽眾的好辦法。"
History is a branch of literature, not of science, although, like all literature, it draws much of its strength from the "scientific" ability to perceive patterns, discard falsehoods and draw conclusions. The Marxist historian may believe devoutly in what Marx said of philosophy: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." But in practice history is often more like poetry as W.H. Auden describes it, a discipline that "makes nothing happen". Both world views characterise Hobsbawm, who wrote in the preface to his 1997 essay collection On History that facts provide "the point from which historians must start, however far from it they may end".
歷史學是文學的一個分支，而不是科學的分支——盡管像各種文學一樣，歷史學也從感知模式、去偽存真和作出結論等"科學"能力中獲得生命力。馬克思主義史學家也許篤信馬克思說的關于哲學的那句話："哲學家們只是用不同的方式解釋世界，而問題在于改變世界。"但實際上，正如W•H•奧登(W.H. Auden)所描述的那樣，歷史學可能更像詩歌，是一種"什么都做不了"的學科?；舨妓辊U姆的獨特之處在于他同時擁有這兩種世界觀。他在自己1997年的文集《論歷史》(On History)的序言中寫道，"史學家必須以（事實）為起點，無論他們最終會走多遠"。
