编者按： 希拉里·曼特尔的都铎王朝系列《狼厅》和《提堂》在世界范围内掀起了克伦威尔热，小说以16世纪亨利八世时期为背景，当时的英国仍非现代意义上的国家，王权贵族争相统治、宗教干政迫害、战事迭起、瘟疫连年爆发，托马斯·克伦威尔在十年伴君生涯中历尽艰险，可以说救国于水深火热。但小说毕竟是小说，不能当史实来看，而最近出版的由英国历史学家迪尔梅德·麦卡洛克（Diarmaid MacCulloch）所著的《托马斯·克伦威尔的一生》（Thomas Cromwell: A Life）则是一部经过多年历史考证的人物传记。当读者们游离于虚构文学与历史真相之间苦于无法捕捉到一个真实的克伦威尔，那么这部“等了四百年”的权威传记或许能让你有新的发现。
（选自《经济学人》2018年10月20日刊）
翻译：孬孬 校译：Sandy、Roy 统稿：Roy
WALTER CROMWELL, father of Henry VIII’s right-hand man Thomas, lurches drunkenly through the early scenes of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”, dealing out kicks, punches and curses to his put-upon son. He bursts a boot on Thomas’s head and then chastises him for vomiting. Walter is a Putney brewer who waters down his beer; he is also a farrier and a blacksmith (although, because of his “sour breath, or his loud voice, or his general way of going on,” the horses are afraid of him). In Ms Mantel’s telling, young Thomas is energised by the pressing need to escape his domineering dad. Played with brutal panache by Christopher Fairbank in the recent television adaptation, Walter is firmly established in the minds of the millions who have encountered him on the page or the screen as one of history’s villains.
沃尔特·克伦威尔--亨利八世的得力助手托马斯的父亲醉步蹒跚，对他受尽凌虐的儿子拳打脚踢，不停咒骂。他把一只靴子暴甩在托马斯的头上，又因其呕吐而责打他。这是希拉里·曼特尔《狼厅》开场中的场景。沃尔特是普特尼的酿酒师，经常往啤酒掺水；他也是一个蹄铁匠（然而因为他“满嘴口臭，嗓门粗大，或者他的日常作风”，连马儿都怕他）。在曼特尔女士的讲述中，年轻的托马斯迫切地想要摆脱他霸道专横的父亲。在最近根据小说改编的同名电视剧中，克里斯托弗·费尔班克所扮演的性情残暴的沃尔特在数以百万计的读者和观众心中牢牢地树立了他作为历史恶棍之一的形象。
In fact, as Diarmaid MacCulloch’s definitive biography of Thomas Cromwell demonstrates, this ferocious image is largely bunkum. Walter was certainly a brewer in Putney, but the rest is either the stuff of Ms Mantel’s imagination, or of what Mr MacCulloch terms the “wildly untrustworthy research” of John Phillips, a sensationalist Victorian historian. In his lucid, forensic style, Mr MacCulloch shows that the 48 charges apparently filed against Walter Cromwell-Smith in the court rolls of the Manor of Wimbledon are not testimony to his infamy, nor to his beer-watering, but rather to the way licences to sell ale were issued. The “Smith” in his surname in the paperwork is, incidentally, the only evidence for his career as a blacksmith.
事实上，正如迪亚梅德·麦卡洛克所著的这部托马斯·克伦威尔权威传记所展示的那样，这种凶残的形象基本上是胡说八道。沃尔特确实是普特尼的酿酒师，但剩下的要么是曼特尔女士的想象，要么是麦卡洛克先生所说的维多利亚感觉主义历史学家约翰·菲利普斯的“极其不可信的研究”。麦卡洛克先生以清晰的法医问案式的方式证明在温布尔顿庄园的庭审卷宗中，对沃尔特·克伦威尔·史密斯所明确提出的48项指控并不是他恶行的证据，也不是他往啤酒掺水的证据，而是他销售啤酒的许可证发放方式的证明。顺便说一句，他的姓氏“史密斯”是他作为铁匠生涯的唯一证据。
Walter’s character is a detail in the sweep of his son’s life, but it illustrates the challenge that MrMacCulloch’s book faces and the calm, quietly impressive manner in which he deals with it. The problem, of course, is Ms Mantel, and the wildfire success of both “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies”; the third novel in her trilogy is due to be published next year. As with the demonic Richard III of Shakespeare’s play, these books have fixed in the contemporary consciousness an image of Thomas Cromwell and his milieu that, like a dominant plant, has displaced all others. It has come to be seen not just as the real story of Cromwell’s life, but the only story.
沃尔特的性格只是托马斯·克伦威尔人生当中呈现的一个细节，但它清晰地说明了麦卡洛克先生这本书所面临的挑战，以及他应对挑战所表现出的冷静的、令人暗生钦佩的态度。问题当然是在于曼特尔女士以及《狼厅》和《提堂》（死尸示众）两部作品的爆火；据说她的三部曲中的最后一部小说将于明年出版。就像莎士比亚戏剧中的恶魔理查德三世一样，这些书在当代人的脑海中固化了对托马斯·克伦威尔及其背景的印象，这就好比优势植物一样，取代了其他一切。它不仅被看作是克伦威尔人生的真实故事，而且是唯一的故事。
McCullough writes of the “mounting weariness” with which Ms Mantel, a friend of his, responds to those seeking in her portrayal of Cromwell a representation of historical fact rather than an act of imagination. He says his book is different, in that it “invites you, the reader, to find the true Thomas Cromwell of history, by guiding you through the maze of his surviving papers.” Considering the two exemplary authors alongside one another extends a further invitation to readers: to assess the strengths and limitations of their crafts, and compare the kinds of insights at which the novelist and the historian aim.
麦卡洛克先生写道，他的朋友曼特尔女士对那些从她对克伦威尔形象的描述中寻求历史事实的再现而不是作品想象力的读者感到“越来越厌倦”。而他的书却是不同的，因为它“邀请作为读者的你，指引着你穿越托马斯·克伦威尔幸存文卷的迷宫，找到历史上真正的托马斯·克伦威尔。”通过把两位著名作家放到一起比较，可以引发读者更深层次的思考：去评价他们各自作品的长处与不足，并比较小说家和历史学家不同的洞察力。
Cromwell is the right man for this job. His has always been a shifting, multi-faceted reputation. In the centuries since his rise and grisly fall, he has been regarded as a pragmatic arch-bureaucrat; a Machiavellian eminence whose machinations enabled Henry’s break with the church of Rome and the king’s despotism; a jumped-up thug bent on self-advancement; or the principled architect of the parliamentary system. Quite possibly he was all of these things and more, a complex political man keen to nurture the legend of himself as an enigma. He lived in an era when record-keeping was expanding exponentially, partly because of his own mania for documentation. Yet as MrMacCulloch points out, any effort to reconstruct his life must contend with a “vast absence.”
克伦威尔是国王幕僚工作的合适人选。人们对他的评价无法保持一致，但诡谲多变是对他评价之一。在亨利崛起和惨败后的几个世纪里，他被认为是一个务实的大官僚；一个通过阴谋使得亨利与罗马教会和国王的专制政体决裂的马基雅维利式的显赫人物；一个不断地向上爬的暴徒；或者是议会制度的总体设计师。综上，很可能他更是一个复杂的政治人物，热衷于把自己的传奇塑造成一个谜。他生活在一个档案保存呈指数增长的时代，部分原因是他自己对史实文献资料的狂热。然而，正如麦卡洛克所指出的，任何试图重构他的一生的努力都必须要应对史料的“大量缺失”。
When Cromwell was arrested in 1540, his papers were seized. Owing either to the alacrity of his staff or an oversight by his enemies, only the correspondence he received was taken; the copies he kept of his own letters may have been burnt. Unlike Thomas More, his canonised rival who preceded him to the scaffold, little in Cromwell’s own hand survives.
1540年克伦威尔被捕时，他的文件落入别人手中。幸而他手下人员行动敏捷，或因敌人一时疏忽，只有来信被抄走，而他自己所写的信件副本可能已被烧毁。与比他先行上了绞刑架，被追封为圣徒的他的对手托马斯·莫尔不同的是，克伦威尔的亲笔信几乎没有什么幸存下来。
This accounts for some of the lacunae in Mr MacCulloch’s book, and the sometimes dazzling feats of historical sleuthery he employs to fill them. At one point he goes in search of the “one letter” that will reveal “the obscure end of a little Augustinian priory in north Wales” during the violent dissolution of the monasteries, which Cromwell oversaw. The gap may partly explain the manner in which Ms Mantel ventriloquises her protagonist. She fashions an eerie third-person voice for him, neither antiquated nor gratingly modern, rather than using the first person, so that her Cromwell is above all an observer.
这解释了麦卡洛克先生书中的缺漏，以及他为填补这些缺失而采取的令人赞叹的历史侦探技巧。他曾一度寻找“一封信”，这封信将揭示在修道院暴力解体期间“北威尔士一座小奥古斯丁修道院的鲜为人知的结局”，当时这座修道院由克伦威尔监管。这一缺失也许可以部分地解释曼特尔女士为什么要用主人公内心独白的方式来讲述她的故事。她用一个古怪的第三人称的声音，而不是第一人称塑造了克伦威尔，既不老套，也不是太现代，这使得她笔下的克伦威尔首先是一个观察者。
The absence also opens up the question of moral judgment, and of sympathy. Naturally, novels are often expansive in their sympathies, and call upon the reader’s imagination as well as the author’s. At the same time, partiality is inherent in traditional storytelling, which pins down one account of events to the exclusion of others. As Ms Mantel said in a lecture in 2017, readers of historical fiction are “actively requesting a subjective interpretation” of the evidence. It was her job to settle on a single narrative strand and follow it to its conclusion. Conversely, as the tangents and entertaining footnotes that Mr MacCulloch provides for almost every detail and anecdote attest, non-fiction allows for multiple versions of the past. Where the novelist’s first loyalty is to the story, and then to her perception of human nature, historians must privilege the truth.
史料的缺失也引发了道德判断和同情心的问题。不用说，小说往往具有丰富的同情心，并力求唤起作者和读者的想象。同时，偏袒性是传统故事叙述所固有的特质，要确定对事件的一种叙述就要建立在排除其他叙述的基础之上。正如曼特尔女士在2017年的一次演讲中所说，历史小说的读者“积极要求对证据进行主观解释”。她的任务是选定一条单一的叙事链并一贯到底直达结局。相反，麦卡洛克先生却为书中几乎所有的细节和轶事插入了一些题外话和有趣的注脚，这也证明了，非小说类作品也允许多种版本的过去。小说家首先忠于故事，然后忠于她对人性的感知，而历史学家则必须“优待”历史真相。
All seasons and none
四季无痕
Both authors share a common source in the work of G.R. Elton, who recognised in “The Tudor Revolution in Government” that Cromwell was the key player of his political age (Mr MacCulloch disagrees with Elton on the extent to which Cromwell modernised the bureaucracy of government). It is easy to forget that the admiring portrait of Cromwell offered by both Mr MacCulloch and Ms Mantel is itself a revisionist view. The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 claimed Cromwell’s “power has been overrated”; pro-More partisans long contrasted their saintly hero with the base, avaricious Cromwell, most memorably in Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons”. “Thomas Cromwell: a Life” conducts an extended dialogue both with Ms Mantel’s novels and Elton’s scholarship.
两位作者都借鉴了G.R.埃尔顿的作品，埃尔顿在《都铎王朝政府革命》中承认克伦威尔是他所处政治时代的关键人物（在克伦威尔将政府官僚制度现代化到具体何种程度方面，麦克卡洛克先生不是很赞同埃尔顿的观点）。人们很容易忘记，麦克卡洛克先生和曼特尔女士对克伦威尔的赞美本身就是一种修正主义观点。1911年的《大英百科全书》声称克伦威尔的“权力被高估了”；最令人难忘的是在罗伯特·博尔特的戏剧《四季之人》中，长久以来亲卫队把他们的圣徒般的英雄与卑劣贪婪的克伦威尔形成了鲜明的对比。《托马斯·克伦威尔的一生》与曼特尔女士的小说和埃尔顿的学术思想进行了广泛的对话。
An enthusiastic cover blurb by Ms Mantel declares that this is “the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years.” She herself takes most of the credit for the Cromwell vogue. Still, it says something about both the inscrutability of the man and the ultimate opacity of history that even with Mr MacCulloch’s exhaustive research—to add to more than a thousand pages that Ms Mantel has penned so far—Cromwell, ever-slippery, feels just out of reach.
曼特尔女士热情洋溢的封面语宣称，这是“我们等待了400年的传记”，克伦威尔热的大部分功劳都归功于她自己。尽管如此，这仍然说明这个男人的不可思议和历史的终极不透明，即使曼特尔女士已经写了一千多页，麦卡洛克先生也进行了详尽的研究——克伦威尔，总是难以捉摸，让人感觉遥不可及。
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