So the gods sent a message to an old king. "We will disguise you so that you can enter the enemy camp, find your son's killer and then you can try and ransom your dead son's body back off him." When the king tells his queen, she is terrified. "Don't go! Man-slaying Achilles will kill you too." But then the old man, King Priam of Troy, says something strange and wonderful but difficult for our generation to fully comprehend. "I don't care if the Greeks kill me, just as long as I first have the heart-comforting embrace of my dead son in my arms."
众神给年迈的国王送去了一条消息: “我们把你伪装起来, 这样你就可以进入敌军的营帐, 找到杀死你儿子的凶手, 协商赎回你儿子的遗体。“ 当国王将此事告知王后, 她很害怕。 “别去! 杀人的阿基里斯也会杀了你。” 但是,这位老者, 特洛伊国王普里阿姆(Priam), 说了些奇怪但精彩 同时令我们这一代人费解的话。 “我不在乎希腊人是否会杀了我, 只要我能先将我死去的儿子 安心地抱在怀里”。
"My dead son in my arms?" Doesn't the old man know that the bodies of the dead are worthless? His quest pointless. Who would risk their life for a corpse? The story comes from Book 24 of "The Iliad," a foundation work of Western civilization written by Homer in 700 BC about a war that took place in 1300 BC. The siege of Troy. A bardic poem that was memorized, recited and performed for thousands of years.
“死去的儿子依偎在我怀里”? 难道这位老者不明白死者的尸体 是毫无价值的吗? 他的诉求毫无意义。 谁会为了一具尸体而铤而走险? 这则故事出自《伊利亚特》, 24 卷, 是荷马在公元前 700 年写下的 一部西方文明的奠基之作, 讲述了一场发生于 公元前 1300 年的战争, 特洛伊之围。 一部吟游诗,拿来背诵、 吟咏,以及表演了数千年。
You heard the sound of the Iliad cascade through your ears and in that retelling you rediscover the ancient life and death wisdom of our ancestors. How to be brave in sorrow, how to face your own death with courage, how to teach your children how to die, how to be a better mortal, a better human. (In Greek) "Hṑs hoí g’ amphíepon táphon Héktoros hippodámoio." The very last line in Ancient Greek of "The Iliad" itself. A wisdom that we have willfully forgotten and lost in our newish self-centered fear of death.
你听到《伊利亚特》之声 如瀑布般倾泻入耳, 当它被再次讲述时, 你会重新发现古代的生活 和我们祖先关于死亡的智慧。 如何无畏地面对悲伤, 如何勇敢地面对你自己的死亡, 如何教会孩子们怎样面对死亡, 如何成为一个更好的凡人, 一个更好的人。 (希腊语)“Hṑs hoí g’ amphíepon táphon Héktoros hippodámoio.” 这是《伊利亚特》古希腊文中的最后一行。 这种智慧已经被我们遗忘和丢失, 遗忘在新兴的自我为中心的死亡恐惧中。
In contrast, we have subcontracted our mortality out. Modern death absurdly has become a medical specialism. Palliative care a foreign country we never visit. Or only at the end of our own lives. The ultimate form of death denial. Just as we have forbidden ourselves not only the embrace but the very sight of our own dead.
相反,我们把生命的有限性转包了出去, 现代的死亡已经荒谬地成为了医学专业, 临终护理是一个幽密之境, 或只在生命的尽头才会造访。 一种否认死亡的终极形式。 正如我们不仅禁止接触 而且禁止正视我们自己的死亡。
Forbidden. Shall we take a test? Can you take the fingers of your right hand? Yeah, you, everyone, and count off the number of corpses that you have seen, touched, kissed and embraced in your entire life? One? Or two? Or none? Will your corpse count make it to the fingers of your left hand? And how could that be, in a world where everyone is mortal?
完全禁忌。 我们要不来做一个测试? 你们能伸出右手的手指吗? 不错,大家,每个人, 数一下一生中你所见到、触摸、 亲吻和拥抱过的尸体的数目? 一具? 两具? 或者是没有? 计算时,你能用到第二只手的手指吗? 在一个人人皆是 凡人的世界里,这怎么可能呢?
On our TV screens, we would pixel it out, that final act of Homeric love, the dead Hector in his father's arms, on the grounds of taste and public decency, and the advertizing revenue. But our existential flight has not made us stronger, wiser, more death-courageous, just more fearful. We're far too sad, too frightened of our own death. Our conception of death has narrowed to an I-thing, never an our-thing. The terminally ill are often ashamed of their sickening and hide from sight. We are embarrassed about what to say to a colleague who's lost someone they love. Embarrassed by our mortality. Worried that if we say anything, we will make them more sad. And sad, of course, is bad.
我们会虚化电影屏幕中 荷马之爱的最后一幕, 死去的赫克托耳被拥在父亲的怀里, 是基于品味和公众的体面, 以及广告收入而如此处理。 但是我们存在性的逃离 并没有让我们变得更强大、智慧 更勇于直面死亡, 而只是变得更加畏惧。 对于自己的死亡, 我们过于悲哀,过于惊恐。 我们的观念把死亡缩小 成了一件只关乎我的事件, 而从未将其视为 一件关乎我们的事件。 绝症患者常常为自己的疾病感到羞耻, 因而躲藏起来。 与失去所爱的同事交谈, 无从谈起让我们感到尴尬, 生命的有限性令我们尴尬。 担心如果我们说了些什么, 会令他们更伤心, 而伤心当然是件坏事。
The pleasures of sorrow, grieving openly together, are unrecognizable to us. Though they are often cited in "The Iliad" along with motherly advice to have more sex as a form of grief therapy. Advice, which speaking from personal experience, can do a grieving soul a world of good.
痛苦的快乐, 在于一同悲伤, 而我们无法辨识。 但是它们却常常作为 一种治愈悲伤的方法 连同母亲增加性生活的建议, 在《伊利亚特》中被引证。 这种出自个人经验的建议, 对悲伤的灵魂十分有益。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
We are more afraid of dying than those warriors on the plains of Troy. More conquered by death. And of course, you always would be more sad and more afraid if you believe that you will only ever face death alone and in terror. A once in a death time experience. A me-death, never a we-death.
我们比特洛伊平原上的 那些武士更加畏惧死亡, 越发被死亡所威胁, 如果你相信自己只能在惊恐中 独自面对死亡,当然你会更加悲伤 和害怕。 仅此一次的经历,
But what about if you train for death the same way that we all train to drive a car? Taking lessons off an instructor. Going on little laps around your local neighborhood, sitting a whole series of tests, which even if you failed, you'd get to resit again. A common social experience, a rite of passage. It doesn't sound hard, does it? Now if you've never been to a Trojan wake or an Irish version of the same thing, and only seen the movie, you're probably thinking it's just another Irish piss-up. A few drunks in some dank bar, lamenting their dead uncle Johnny who they buried that morning. But you would be dead wrong. Wakes are the oldest rites of humanity.
永远只是我之死,而非我们之死。 但是,如果你以训练驾驶的方式 训练死亡,那又会怎样? 跟教练上路学习, 在你家附近转上几小圈, 参加一系列考试, 即使你没有通过考试, 你还可以重考。 一次普通的社会经历, 一场过渡仪式。 它听起来并不难,是吗? 如果你从未参加过特洛伊的守灵 或者爱尔兰式的同类场合, 而只在电影里看到过, 你也许会想,那 不过是爱尔兰人的另一场狂饮, 几个醉鬼在一间黑暗的酒吧, 哀悼他们死去的强尼叔叔。 他在上午下了葬。 那你就大错、特错了, 守灵是人类最古老的仪式。
When I was seven, my mother took me to meet my first corpse. A wake on the island of our ancestors. An old man with hairy nostrils lying in a box, who I instinctively knew wasn't sleeping. Even then in her maternal care she was teaching her boy to overcome the fear of death, just as her community had overcome their fear together for thousands of years. My family have lived in the same village on an island off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland for the last 250 years. A real wake has got a real dead body. A dead one of us.
我七岁那年, 我母亲带我去见 我有生以来的第一具尸体, 一场在我们祖先的岛上举办的守灵。 一个鼻孔多毛的老人躺在一个箱中, 直觉告诉我他不是在睡觉。 即使那时,出于母性的呵护, 她在教她的孩子克服对死亡的恐惧, 就如同几千年来她的群体, 共同克服了他们的恐惧那样。 我的家族住在爱尔兰马约县 沿海的一个岛上 的同一个村子里, 长达 250 年。 一个真正的守灵仪式 要有一具真正的尸体, 其中有同族中死去的人。 他们并不讲太多话,
Now they don't say much, but you sure can learn a lot in their company. Every human being who you have ever touched before, in love or anger, is a warm-blooded mammal. But the dead are so cold they could be carved from marble.
但是,你一定可以在 他们的陪伴中学到很多。 每一位你曾经触碰过的人, 不论是心生爱意还是产生愤怒, 都是一个热血沸腾的人类。 而死去的人却是如此冰凉, 像是用大理石雕刻出来的。 在以后的生活中,
Later in life, when I took my own dead brother Bernard in my arms, and kissed and embraced him, I could not at first believe that this stone-cold mannequin had ever been human.
当我把死去的兄弟伯纳德 抱在怀里, 亲吻、拥抱他的时候, 我起初不敢相信, 这个冷若岩石的人体模型曾是一个活人。 这是另一个存在的顿悟,
And here's another existential epiphany. As you are sitting here listening to me, your heart is pumping blood. But when you cut that pump, the pressure disappears, the blood flows to the lower limbs, your cheeks sag, your face turns gray, your bloodless fingers a yellow ivory. And the great animating kern of personality, like the ignition on your car, is just gone.
当你坐在这里听我演讲的时候, 你的心脏在运送血液, 但是,当你切断那个血泵, 血压就会消失, 血液流入下肢, 你的脸颊下陷, 你的脸变得灰白, 你毫无血色的手指 变成了类似象牙的黄色。 人的个性,那个伟大的 令人充满活力的内核, 就像汽车的点火器, 已不复存在。 之后会发生些什么?
So what happens then, yeah? What we shouldn't do and what our ancestors didn't do, is then say something stupid. Like, "That's just a shell, forget about it," you know? The being that you loved in life never existed outside that body and if you loved that person in life, how should you not revere and respect their body in death? The Romans, the Kelts, the Greeks revered their dead. Like a newborn child, the dead were never to be left alone, and always had someone to watch over them until they were laid to rest.
我们不该做的, 也是我们祖先不会做的事, 就说一些愚蠢的话。 比如,“那不过是一具躯壳, 忘了它吧,” 你明白? 那个活着时你曾爱过的生命 从来不存在于那个躯体之外, 而如果你爱过活着的那个人, 你怎么能不尊重敬仰 他们死后的躯体呢? 罗马人、凯尔特人、 希腊人 敬仰他们的逝者, 如同新生的孩子, 逝者从不会被独自留下, 总有人在关照着他们, 直到他们安息。 悲伤也可以是好的。
Sad was good too. There was no shame in sorrow at the gates of Troy. Even man-slaying Achilles wept until his breastplate was wet with tears, and women cried and grieved openly at funerals. The bodies of the dead were of worth. Together, our ancestors enacted a whole raft of rituals to bind up the wound of mortality, comfort the afflicted, bury their dead and get on with the rest of their lives. They gave of themselves freely. And they had a great time too, feasting, drinking, and having sex at funerals.
在特洛伊的城门前,悲哀并不可耻, 甚至是杀人如麻的 阿基里斯也会哭泣, 直到他的胸甲被泪水打湿, 妇女在葬礼上公开地痛哭哀悼。 死者的尸体是有价值的, 我们的祖先共同制定了一整套仪式 用来包扎生命必将终结的创伤, 安慰被折磨的人, 埋葬他们中的死者, 然后,继续他们的余生。 他们自由地投入, 并且渡过一段美好的时光, 在葬礼上赴宴、畅饮、交欢。 死亡——这确实是一件大事——
Death -- and here is a really big idea -- was and is an every-other-day sort of event. Just as it is in Ireland today, where people still go in great numbers to wakes and funerals, and an ordinary person might see dozens, maybe hundreds of dead bodies in the course of their lifetime. Now funerals can be sad. But there is nothing abstract or sentimental about an Irish wake. The old woman in the box, that red-haired child wrapped up in a shroud is another dead human. Another one of us. Wrapped up, though, in these corpse encountering rituals are a lot of profound protocols.
曾是而且仍然是一件 隔三岔五就会发生的事。 就如今天的爱尔兰, 那里人们仍然大批地 前往守灵仪式或者葬礼, 一个普通人在一生中 也许会见过几十具, 没准上百具尸体。 葬礼可以很悲伤, 但是,爱尔兰的守灵仪式 并没有那么抽象或感性。 那个箱子中的老妇人, 那个裹在缠尸布里,红头发的孩子, 是另一个死去的人。 我们中的另一个, 不过,被包裹了起来。 在这些与尸体相遇的仪式上, 有许多深奥的礼仪。 在守灵时——
You see, at that wake -- You know, this is what death looks like. This is what death is. You can reach into the coffin and touch. And those protocols allow you to do things. So for instance, there is a licensing of grief. Being angry, tearful, grieving, crying. A recognition of irrevocable change in the very public deadness of the deceased. A communal acknowledgment of bereavement and loss. An unflinching mortal solidarity. A we-death, not a me-death.
你知道,这就是死亡的模样。 死亡就是如此。 你可以把手伸到棺材里,触摸它。 那些礼仪允许你这样做。 比如, 哀伤、 愤怒、伤心、哀悼、 痛哭,都是允许的。 一种不可逆转的变化得到了认可, 它就呈现在逝者公开的死亡状态中。 这是一种对丧亲与失去的集体认可。 是凡人之间坚定不移的团结, 一种我们之死,而非我之死。 在守灵和葬礼上分享对死者的陪伴,
Sharing the company of the dead at wakes and funerals was our foremothers' mortality driving lessons. They're "how to live and die" manual, with a list of embedded instructions, like, how being mortal is the one thing in life that you will never get to choose. How thinking that you're immortal is a foolish idea. How the pleasures of sorrow, open public grief can heal up a wounded soul. And how together we can conquer our fear of death. Sounds good, eh?
是我们祖先为生命的有限性 而设计的引导课。 它们是“如何生死”的手册, 有着一系列嵌入其中的教导,比如, 生而必死是人生中 永远无法选择的事。 认为你将永生是非常愚蠢的。 痛苦的快乐, 公开的哀伤如何能够 治愈你受伤的灵魂, 我们怎样才能一起 战胜对死亡的恐惧。 听起来不错,对吗? (观众唏嘘)
(Audience murmurs)
但是我想知道是否有人认为
But I wonder is anyone thinking it will never work in today's America. I don't know who my next door neighbors are, families are scattered, there's no communities left to do these wake things with. But again, you would be dead wrong.
在当今的美国,这将永远行不通。 我不知道我的邻居是谁, 家人分散各地, 可以一起守灵的群体已经不复存在。 但是, 你又大错特错了, 作为个体,我们都有
We all have the power as individuals to reenact the wisdom of our ancestors. Confronted in our mortality, we often feel powerless, death-struck. But all you need to do is rediscover yourself. Be a bit more Irish, if you like.
重现祖先智慧的力量。 直面我们必死的命运, 我们常常在遭受死亡的打击时 感到无能为力。 但是,你所要做的 只是重新发现自我, 如果你愿意,用更像爱尔兰的方式。 (笑声)
(Laughter)
也许,你只是从未意识到自己,
Maybe you just never recognized yourself as part of the same mortal community. But it is easy to reconnect if you want to try. Not because you're being altruistic, but for purely selfish reasons. Free dying lessons. Who else did you expect would teach you how to die apart from another dying human? All you have to do is overcome your fear, using the tools that you already have in your hands. Like your phones. So on the day that you hear that someone has lost someone they love, you don't wait but you reach out then with that phone and call them up and say, "I'm sorry for your loss."
是同一个凡人群体中的一部分。 但是,如果你愿意尝试, 重新建立联系很并不难。 不是因为你的利他之心, 而是出于纯粹自私的原因, 免费的死亡课程。 除了另一个将死之人,你还能指望谁 会教你如何赴死呢? 你所要做的就是克服你的恐惧, 使用已经握在你手里的工具, 比如你的电话。 所以,在某天,当你听到有人 失去了他们所爱之人的时候, 不要等待, 而是用那个电话与他们联系, 给他们打电话,告诉他们: “很遗憾,你失去了亲人”。 或者去看望垂危的病人, 试着在死亡降临的 那一刻守候在那里,
Or go visit the sick and dying and try to be there for the moment of death, for the witness and the wonder. Nothing else that you will ever do in life will be more profound or more life-affirming. Or go to more funerals. Even if you think you don't know the dead person that well. I can assure you, as long as you are breathing, you know them well enough. Give of yourself freely. Because even by these small steps, you will be recognizing yourself as part of the great mortal us. Just as human, just as vulnerable as all the lives around you.
为此见证并为之惊奇。 你在生活中所做的其它任何事, 都不会比这更加深刻, 更令人产生对生命的确信。 或者参加更多的葬礼, 即使你认为你与死者并不很熟悉, 我可以向你保证,只要你在呼吸, 你对他们就足够了解。 让自己更自由地投入, 因为,即便只是通过 这些微小的举动, 你也会意识到自己是我们 庞大的凡人群体中的一部分。 就如同你周围的一切生命 同样脆弱, 同样充满人性。 死亡很重要,因为生命很重要, 这两者是无法分割的。
Death matters because life matters, and the two are indivisible. Don't worry if you feel awkward at first. Practice, practice, practice, until it's just like getting in that car and going and you don't even think about it. Though your own death will take you a whole lifetime to get right.
如果刚开始时你感到尴尬, 不用担心, 实践,实践,实践, 直到它变得像是开车上路, 你甚至不用为此做任何思考。 然而,你自己的死亡 需要你花毕生的时间 来准备。 所以,当我放弃了去国外参战, 变得成熟之后, 我成了一位吟游诗人。
So after I gave up on going to foreign wars, and the maturity of youth, I turned a bardic poet. And I wrote this praise song in honor of my island mothers, who for thousands of years never faltered to cradle the dead to rest. It's called "If I could sing."
我写了这首赞歌, 向我在岛上的母亲们致敬, 几千年来,她们毫不动摇地 照料死者安息。 题为《如果我能够歌唱》 如果我能够歌唱, 我不会歌唱伊利亚斯的陷落之城, 以及它消失的荣耀,
If I could sing, I would not sing of the fallen city of Ilias and glories gone or Hector's blood dried and stained in sand. No. I would sing of an island, far out to the west, rising sea-plucked, spray-lashed, a citadel of stone, walled deep in the blue ocean. Another Troy, an Irish Troy. Closer to the sinking sun. Unconquered.
或者是赫克托耳 鲜血洒落,凝固沙中。 不。 我将为一座小岛歌唱, 在遥远的西方, 一座石头的城堡, 耸立于海潮之上,任浪花拍打, 围囿在蓝色海洋的深处。 另一座爱尔兰的特洛伊城, 离落日更近, 不可征服。 如果你听到这首歌, 你也会在狂喜之中听到 哭丧的妇女们,
If you could hear this song, you, too, would listen in rapture to the mná caointe keening women, crying out, grieving, heart-struck in eternal chorus at the wake, where the last best hope of humanity beats on. That mortal being incarnate in flesh shall not live, love or die alone.
在嚎啕, 在哀悼, 在守灵之时, 在永恒的合唱之中, 悲痛欲绝, 人类最终,最好的期望在那里跳动。 那个化身于肉体的凡人, 不该在孤独之中生存、 付出爱和死去。 如果我能够歌唱, 如果我们可以一同歌唱, 我的兄弟姐妹们,
And if I could sing, if we could sing together, my brothers and sisters, surely then we should never stop the singing of this song.
我们当然会永不停歇地唱这首歌。 谢谢。 (掌声)
Thank you.
(Applause)