PortraitofanActress女演员肖像(2)
在她写自传时，或是在深夜里不停地‘写’彩排方案，累得要命，一页页地给萧伯纳写信时，上述情况都从未出现过。文字从她那美丽的巧手中的笔端流淌而出。她用破折号和惊叹号的注释设法给文字以非常的语气以及口语的重音。的确，她的文字不总是构建的那么完美，但她所做的工作成为了她热情、敏锐掌控的一种工具。如果那工具是根擀面杖，那么她就能制作出完美的点心。如果工具是把切肉刀，那么她就能从羊腿上切下一片完美的肉片。如果工具是一支笔，那便落笔独特，其中虽有些缺陷，有些晦涩，但从整体看远比那些专业的写手更具感染力。
With her pen, then, at odds and ends of time she has painted a self-portrait. It is not an Academy portrait, glazed, framed, complete. It is rather a bundle of loose leaves upon each of which she has dashed off a sketch for a portrait—here a nose, here an arm, here a foot, and there a mere scribble in the margin. The sketches done in different moods, from different angles, sometimes contradict each other. The nose cannot belong to the eyes; the arm is out of all proportion to the foot. It is difficult to assemble them. And there are blank pages, too. Some very important features are left out. There was a self she did not know, a gap she could not fill.
当时，她用钢笔，利用空闲的时间描绘着自画像。那不是学院派的那种光滑、有外框的、完整的画像。她随意完成的肖像素描，有点像那一束束散落的树叶—这儿画着鼻子，这里是手臂，那儿是脚，而且页边处也很潦草。那些素描是在不同的情绪下完成的，取自不同的视角，有时还相互矛盾。那鼻子与眼睛不协调；手臂与脚完全不成比例。想把它们组合在一起很难。而且留得空白页面太多了。有些非常重要的特征没有画上，画得连她自己都不知道是谁了，她无法填补这一缺憾。
Nevertheless, the first sketch is definite enough. It is the sketch of her childhood. She was born to the stage. The stage was her cradle, her nursery. When other little girls were being taught sums and pot-hooks she was being cuffed and buffeted into the practice of her profession. Her ears were boxed, her muscles suppled. All day she was hard at work on the boards. Late at night when other children were safe in bed she was stumbling along the dark streets wrapped in her father’s cloak. And the dark street with its curtained windows was nothing but a sham to that little professional actress, and the rough and tumble life on the boards was her home, her reality. ‘It’s all such sham there’, she wrote—meaning by ‘there’ what she called ‘life in houses’—‘sham—here all is real, warm and kind—we live a lovely spiritual life here.’
不过第一个肖像画得还行，那是她儿时的肖像。她出生在舞台上，她在舞台上度过了自己的童年。当其他的女孩们开始学习算术时，她却在被迫练习她的专业技能。她挨过耳光，身体的肌肉练得柔软灵活。她整天都在舞台上忙碌着。深夜，当其他孩子都上床睡觉时，她却在黑暗的街道上，裹着父亲的斗蓬蹒跚而行。窗帘遮住了所有的窗户，那黑暗的街道除了一位貌似小巧的职业女演员以外，什么都没有，而那乱作一团的舞台生活就是她的家，她的现实。‘那儿一切都是那么虚幻’，她写到 虚幻
That is the first sketch. But turn to the next page. The child born to the stage has become a wife. She is married at sixteen to an elderly famous painter. The theatre has gone; its lights are out and in its place is a quiet studio in a garden. In its place is a world full of pictures and ‘gentle artistic people with quiet voices and elegant manners’. She sits mum in her corner while the famous elderly people talk over her head in quiet voices. She is content to wash her husband’s brushes; to sit to him; to play her simple tunes on the piano to him while he paints. In the evening she wanders over the Downs with the great poet, Tennyson. ‘I was in Heaven,’ she wrote. ‘I never had one single pang of regret for the theatre.’ If only it could have lasted! But somehow—here a blank page intervenes—she was an incongruous element in that quiet studio. She was too young, too vigorous, too vital, perhaps. At any rate, the marriage was a failure.
那是第一幅肖像，而接下来便是下一幅。那个出生在舞台的孩子已经变成了一位妻子。她在十六岁时嫁给了一位年过中年的著名画家。她离开了剧院，没有了灯光，生活的场所变成了花园中安静的画室。在那儿是一个充满了画的世界和一些言谈轻柔、举止文雅、彬彬有礼的艺术人群。当那位著名的年过中年的人用轻柔的声音谈论着
And so , skipping a page or two, we come to the next sketch she is a mother now. two adorable children claim all her devotion. She is living in the depths of the country, in the heart of domesticity she is up at six. She scrubs, she cooks, she sews， she teaches the children. She harnesses the pony. She fetches the milk. And again she is perfectly happy. To live with children in a cottage, driving her little cart about the lanes, going to church on Sunday in blue and white cotton—that is the ideal life! She asks no more than that it shall go on like that for ever and ever. But one day the wheel comes off the pony cart. Huntsmen in pink leap over the hedge. One of them dismounts and offers help. He looks at the girl in a blue frock and exclaims: ‘Good God! It’s Nelly’! She looks at the huntsman in pink and cries, ‘Charles Reade!’ and so, all in a jiffy, back she goes to the stage, and to forty pounds a week. For—that is the reason she gives—the bailiffs are in the house. She must make money.
