编者按： 最近一次被圣彼得堡刷屏，我想是三个月前俄罗斯世界杯的时候，这座位于波罗的海沿岸、依涅瓦河而建的庞大城市，在镜头前呈现的姿态，仅用美丽、壮观、悠久这些单薄的词语远不足以描述其真实的面貌和厚重的底蕴。为向世人展现这座城市独特的风情和人文，许多作家长期亲历其中试图“从城市之叶探掘城市之根”，英国作家乔纳森·迈尔斯（Jonathan Miles）的著作《圣彼得堡——涅瓦河畔的疯狂、谋杀与艺术》（ST. PETERSBURG Madness, Murder, and Art on the Banks of the Neva）就是一本圣彼得堡的“传记”，或能让读者感受一场恍若亲身走进这座沙俄帝都的印象盛宴。
翻译：一宁 校译：杨立娟 统稿：一宁
FEN MONTAIGNE is a former Moscow correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of “Reeling in Russia.”
芬·蒙田，《费城问询者报》前驻莫斯科记者，小说《蹒行俄罗斯》的作者。
TO WALK THE STREETS of St. Petersburg, Russia, on a clear evening during the white nights of June is one of the world’s more sublime urban experiences. The sun will not set in this former imperial capital until 10:25, and before it drops you can wander a city suffused with radiant light and take in a density of landmarks whose beauty and historical significance rival those of Paris: The czars’ Winter Palace, now part of the vast Hermitage Museum. The Summer Garden on the Neva River, where, in 1811, America’s first ambassador to Russia, John Quincy Adams, strolled with Czar Alexander I. And across the Neva, the imposing walls and 400-foot, golden cathedral spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first major structure planned by Peter the Great when he established the city in 1703.
▲冬宫
夜色清澄，行走在六月白夜的俄罗斯圣彼得堡的街头，可谓世间美妙绝伦的都市体验。在这座旧时的帝国首都，太阳直到10点25分才会迟迟落下，而日薄西山之前，你可以在缀满璀璨灯光的城市中穿行，领略那些密密麻麻的地标建筑，其壮丽和历史意义并不亚于巴黎的建筑：沙皇的冬宫，如今成了宏大的艾尔米塔什博物馆的一部分。夏花园则坐落在涅瓦河畔（花园建在涅瓦河南侧的一座独立的小岛上，由四条不同的河环绕——译者注），1811年，美国驻俄罗斯的第一任大使约翰·昆西·亚当斯（即美国第六任总统），曾与当时的沙皇亚历山大一世闲庭漫步于此。跨过涅瓦河，映入眼帘的是彼得保罗要塞壮观的外墙和高约122米、泛着金光的教堂塔尖，此要塞是彼得大帝在1703年建城时最先计划建设的主体结构。
A city of this stature deserves a book to match, and so the Paris-based cultural historian Jonathan Miles has set out to write a sweeping account of a metropolis whose tumultuous, bloody past and dazzling cultural heritage mirror that of Russia as a whole. Miles, whose previous books include “The Nine Lives of Otto Katz” and “The Wreck of the Medusa,” has conducted extensive research and has gotten some things right, most notably the rich architectural and artistic legacy of a city that was home to such luminaries as Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich and Nureyev.
▲夏花园
如此声望的一座城市理应有一本与之相匹配的书籍来映衬，巴黎文化历史学家乔纳森·迈尔斯就着手对这座大都市做了一次全面彻底的刻画，圣彼得堡纷乱、血腥的过去以及耀眼的文化遗产可以映射出俄罗斯的整体面貌。迈尔斯的前几部著作，包括写《奥托卡茨的九条命》和《美杜莎号沉船事件》时就曾开展过大量的调查工作，也的确证实了一些事情，而在描叙这座蕴含着丰厚的建筑和艺术财富、涌现过诸如果戈里、陀思妥耶夫斯基、肖斯塔科维奇和努里耶夫等大师巨匠的城市过程中，他尤其倾注了心血。
Miles dishes up the A-to-Z of St. Petersburg’s history: The brutal, westward-looking Peter the Great commanding his subjects to drain and fill the swamp to give Russia a great city on the Baltic. (“Sooner or later,” a 19th-century French visitor wrote, “the water here will get the better of human pride.”) The succession of rulers — including the empire-building Catherine the Great and the ineffectual last czar, Nicholas II — whose stable of European architects created St. Petersburg’s handsome neo-Classical facade. The sorrows of a city that spawned the Russian Revolution and endured the 900-day German siege during World War II. And the trials of Soviet-era Leningrad, which gave us its native son, Vladimir Putin, now dragging St. Petersburg and Russia halfway back to their authoritarian past.
迈尔斯详细记述了圣彼得堡的历史：残暴又亲西方的彼得大帝命令他的臣民们排干并填满沼泽地，在波罗的海沿岸给俄罗斯建造一座伟大的城市。（一位19世纪的法国旅人曾写道：‘这里的水迟早会覆灭人类的骄傲。’）随着统治者换代继任——包括壮大帝国的凯瑟琳大帝（即叶卡捷琳娜二世）和无能的末代沙皇尼古拉斯二世——他们手中的一群欧洲建筑师为圣彼得堡打造了美观气派的新古典式外观。而这座城市的不幸，在于点起了俄国革命的火苗，以及在二战时经受了被德军围困900多天的残酷洗礼。苏联时期列宁格勒（即圣彼得堡）的审判给我们带来了这个国家土生土长的儿子，弗拉基米尔·普京（“列宁格勒事件”审讯一直持续到1952年，同年普京出生——译者注），如今他正牵着圣彼得堡和俄罗斯走在回到过去独裁统治的半路上。
▲伊萨基辅大教堂
The problem with Miles’s book is that it so often skims along the surface of St. Petersburg’s —and Russia’s — history, looking from the outside at a culture and a people the author doesn’t seem to genuinely understand. The book lacks the depth, narrative drama and feel for the past that are hallmarks of Robert K. Massie’s first-rate imperial biographies, including, to name just two, “Nicholas and Alexandra” and “Catherine the Great”; Harrison Salisbury’s magnificent account of the siege, “The 900 Days”; and, more recently, Douglas Smith’s “Rasputin.”
迈尔斯这本书的问题，是它对圣彼得堡和俄罗斯的历史经常只是走马观花式地大略带过，读者只能了解到一种文化和一个民族的表层皮毛，因为作者自己也并未真正理解。这本书对过去的叙述缺乏深度、戏剧性和感受, 而这些正是罗伯特·K·马西优秀的帝王传记中呈现出来的显著特征，就比如他的两部著作《俄宫秘史》和《凯瑟琳大帝》；索尔兹伯里·哈里森以德军围困为题材所著的鸿篇巨制《900天》也有这些特征；还有更近一些的，道格拉斯·史密斯的《拉斯普廷》亦是如此。
One reason Miles’s book falls short is his near-total reliance on English-language sources. His bibliography, which runs to almost 20 pages, doesn’t contain a single Russian-language book, and his eyewitness historical accounts tend to rely on the impressions of foreign visitors to the city, not Russians. He makes rudimentary linguistic mistakes, like misspelling the Russian word for Saturday and repeatedly referring to Prince Grigory Potemkin — and the famed battleship named after him — as Potempkin.
造成迈尔斯这本书有缺憾的一个原因是他近乎完全依赖于英语这一种语言资源。他将近20页的参考书目中竟没有包括一本俄语书籍，而他的目击者历史记录也更倾向于外国访问者对这座城市的印象而非俄罗斯人本身。此外，他还犯了一些低级的语言错误，比如拼错了俄语中的“星期六”一词，还三番五次地把格里高利·波将金王子以及以他名字命名的著名战舰“波将金”号写成了“Potempkin”。
▲彼得保罗要塞
Imagine a Russian setting out to write a history of New York City using only Russian-language material, and you have the inherent conceit that undermines this ambitious project.
试想一下，如果一个俄国人正着手写一部关于纽约的城市历史，却仅仅参考俄语材料，那么你自然而然地会认为这部著作没那么有说服力。
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