【经济学人】白芝浩专栏---想要了解英国，请读英国的谍战小说 [英国媒体]

Bagehot

To understand Britain, read its spy novels

想要了解英国，请读英国的谍战小说

The nature of the establishment, the agonies of decline, the complicated tug of patriotism: spy novels explore what makes Britain British

幕后黑手的真相，帝国衰落的痛苦，复杂的爱国主义情结：谍战小说勾勒出了英国人眼中的英国



Sep 9th 2017  ---2017年9月9日

FEW countries have dominated any industry as Britain has dominated the industry of producing fictional spies. Britain invented the spy novel with Rudyard Kipling’s dissection of the Great Game in “Kim” and John Buchan’s adventure stories. It consolidated its lead with Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden stories and Graham Greene’s invention of “Greeneland”. It then produced the world’s two most famous spooks: James Bond, the dashing womaniser, and George Smiley, the cerebral cuckold, who reappears this week in a new book.

很少有国家在某个行业能像英国在谍战小说界一样傲视群雄。英国的谍战小说起源于鲁德亚德·吉卜林在《基姆》一书中对”大博弈政策“的剖析，以及约翰·巴肯的冒险故事系列，并通过萨默赛特·毛姆的《阿新登故事集》以及格雷厄姆·格林原创《格林国度》系列巩固其了领先地位， 随后又炮制了两大世界最着名密探：风度翩翩的情场老手詹姆斯·邦德； 以老婆出轨而闻名的乔治·史迈利---他本周在某本新书中又重新登场

译者注：大博弈政策指的是英国和俄罗斯在19世纪中叶到20世纪初争夺中亚控制权的地缘政治竞赛。着名小说福尔摩斯中，华生医生就是参加1878-1880年的第二次阿富汗战争而负伤回英国复原。

What accounts for this success? One reason is the revolving door between the secret establishment and the literary establishment. Some of the lions of British literature worked as spies. Maugham was sent to Switzerland to spy for Britain under cover of pursuing his career as a writer. Greene worked for the intelligence services. Both Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond, and John le Carré, the creator of Smiley, earned their living as spies. Dame Stella Rimington, head of MI5 in 1992-96, has taken to writing spy novels in retirement. It is as if the secret services are not so much arms of the state as creative-writing schools.

英国谍战小说如此成功的秘诀为何？其中之一的缘由是，小说在见不得光的现实位面与虚构的文学位面之间构建了一道传送门，一些英国文坛名流就曾从事过谍战事业，譬如毛姆曾以职业作家为幌子被派到瑞典替英国从事谍报工作，格林也曾从事过情报服务，《詹姆斯·邦德》系列的作者伊恩·弗莱明和《乔治·史迈利》系列的作者约翰·勒卡雷都曾以谍报工作为生，就连1992-1996年身为军情五处领导人的斯特拉·利明顿女勋爵，也在退休后开始撰写谍战小说，上述种种给人的印象好像情报部门不是保家卫国的利剑，而是创意写作的学堂。。。

Another reason is that British reality has often been stranger than fiction. The story of the “Cambridge spies”—Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and the rest—is as far-fetched as it gets. One Soviet mole at the top of MI6 (Philby, who also worked for The Economist in Beirut); another even looking after the queen’s pictures (Blunt); a cover-up; a dash to the safety of the Soviet Union; larger-than-life characters such as the compulsively promiscuous and permanently sozzled Burgess.

另一个原因之一是，英国的谍战小说与真实故事相比要更引人入胜，譬如记述金·菲尔比、安东尼·布朗特、盖伊·伯吉斯等人经历的《剑桥风云》，要比故事原型更扣人心弦：军情六处指挥部的苏联间谍（菲尔比，他曾为本刊在黎巴嫩首都贝鲁特工作），其中一人甚至负责照看女王的艺术画作（布朗特）；掩护身份的伪装；逃亡苏联；富有传奇色彩的人设（譬如私生活混乱，嗜酒如命的伯吉斯）等等

There is also a more profound reason for Britain’s success. The spy novel is the quintessential British fictional form in the same way that the Western is quintessentially American. Britain’s best spy novelists are so good precisely because they use the genre to explore what it is that makes Britain British: the obsession with secrecy, the nature of the establishment, the agonies of imperial decline and the complicated tug of patriotism.

成功还有一个更深层的原因，谍战小说属于英国式自我美化的典范，就如同美国的西部小说对美国的美化包装一样，英国的顶尖谍战小说家之所以如此出色，恰恰是因为他们的文风勾勒出了英国人眼中的英国：对情报工作的锲而不舍，幕后黑手的真相，帝国衰落的痛苦，以及爱国主义的复杂情结。

Britain is honeycombed with secretive institutions, particularly public schools and Oxbridge colleges, which have their own private languages. At Eton, for example, where Fleming was educated and Mr le Carré taught for a while, boys dress in tailcoats and call their teachers “beaks” and their terms “halves”. Walter Bagehot argued (approvingly) that Britain weaves duplicity into its statecraft. The constitution rests on a distinction between an “efficient” branch which governs behind the scenes, and a “dignified” branch which puts on a show for the people.

在英国，私密机构简直是多如牛毛，譬如一些公立学校和牛津、剑桥等大学，甚至有自己的专用语，以伊恩·弗莱明曾就读的和约翰·勒卡雷曾任教的伊顿公学为例，男生们穿着燕尾服，称呼老师为”鹰钩鼻子“，将学期称为”上下半场“。沃尔特·白芝浩先生就曾提出，英国的治国方针具有两面性，宪制的两面泾渭分明，一面在背后“雷厉风行”地谋划，一面在群众面前“冠冕堂皇”地作秀（大赞）。

The British habitually wear masks to conceal their true selves. They put on different costumes for different roles in Bagehot’s theatre of state, and keep stiff upper lips to conceal their emotions. Mr le Carré (whose real name is David Cornwell) learned to put on a brave face at school because he was so embarrassed by his father, who was a professional confidence trickster. Greene learned the spymaster’s art when, as a pupil at Berkhamsted School, he acted as an informer for his father, the headmaster.

英国人习惯于戴上面具，隐藏自我。在白芝浩先生描述的国际舞台上，他们粉墨登场，顽强不屈，将情感深深埋藏。勒卡雷（真名大卫·康韦尔）在学校装的若无其事，其实他是因为他父亲是个职业骗子而羞于启智；格林作为一个学生在伯克翰斯特的学校里学会了王牌间谍的手腕，他为他的校长父亲通风报信。

The British establishment is not only a perfect machine for producing secrets and lies. It also produces the mavericks and misfits who thrive in the secret world. Establishment types seem to come in two varieties: smooth conformists who do everything by the rules, and mavericks who break every rule but are nevertheless tolerated because they are members of the club. The first type is sent into the Foreign Office and the second into MI6. The best spy novels are like distorting mirrors in fairgrounds: by exaggerating this or that feature of Establishment Man, they allow the reader to understand the ideal form.

英国的当权派不仅是制造机密和谎言的完美机器，也是情报界里制造特立独行者和格格不入者的温床，权势集团似乎分成两个极端：循规蹈矩，亦步亦随的温和派，以及破坏一切规矩但却因是体制一员而被无限包容的激进分子。第一类人一般会被派往外交部，第二类会被送到军情六处，最优秀的谍战小说就像游乐场里的哈哈镜：将体制中人的各种特质放大，让读者来理解他们的思维形态。

The other great theme in British spy novels is geopolitical decline. How can people who were “trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves”, as one of Mr le Carré’s characters puts it, bear to live in a world in which the waves are ruled by other powers and statecraft is reduced to providing fuel for the welfare state? Fleming’s novels are full of laments about Britain’s “crumbling empire” and its dependency-producing state. “You have not only lost a great empire,” Tiger Tanaka, a Japanese spy, tells Bond, “you have seemed almost anxious to throw it away with both hands.” Mr le Carré once described Britain as a country where “failed socialism is being replaced by failed capitalism”. The Circus, as he called the secret service’s headquarters, is a physical manifestation of decline: cramped, shoddy, reeking of rising damp, just one hasty repair away from collapse.

英国谍战小说的另一大主题是，地缘政治的破产。正如约翰·勒卡雷书中某个角色表达的，“统治陆地，主宰海洋”的帝国子民，怎么能够忍受生活在一个海洋已被他国主宰，治国方略只剩建设福利国家的世界里。伊恩·弗莱明的小说中，充斥着对英国“帝国崩塌”的痛心疾首，以及对旧日帝国的深深眷恋。007书中角色，日本间谍大河田中对邦德说：“你似乎要急不可耐地将它亲手埋葬？” 约翰·勒卡雷曾在书中将英国描述为“失败的社会主义被失败的资本主义所替代”，他将情报机构的总部称为“圆场”，正是这种衰落的外在表现：狭小、破败，散发着阵阵潮湿的味道，将来一出故障，就会彻底崩塌。

Nobody does it better  

无人能比 （《007勇破海底城》主题曲）

Why remain loyal to a country that has made such a mess of things and to an establishment soaked in hypocrisy? Mr le Carré’s traitors (like the Cambridge spies who inspired them) betray their country not for money but because they have transferred their patriotism to the Soviet Union. But what makes Britain’s best spy novels so good is that they toy with disillusionment only to reject it. For all its faults, they say, Britain is the best of a bad lot. Bond is so besotted with his country that he boasts that “British food is the best in the world”. For all his professed Europeanness in the new novel, Smiley is the model of a British gentleman.

为什么要向一个乌烟瘴气的国家和惺惺作态的当权派保持忠诚？正如勒卡雷笔下所写，背叛者（就如同被剑桥风云的故事所启发那样）背叛祖国不是为了钱，而是把满腔爱国热诚的对象换成了苏联。但英国的谍战小说最令人拍案叫绝的一点是，作者只字不提帝国梦想的破灭，却还一个劲地拒绝承认这一点，他们都认为，尽管有这样那样的缺点，英国仍然是瘦死的骆驼比马大：譬如詹姆斯·邦德对自己祖国的迷之眷恋，他曾自吹“英国菜是世界最棒的”；还有乔治·史迈利在作者新书中所有登场的欧洲人中，被描述成了典型的英伦绅士。

And spying provides Britain with a way of reclaiming its greatness, by excelling in the most sophisticated form of foreign policy. The Americans have the money and the bluster, but the British have the brains to spend it wisely and restrain the Americans from going over the top. Felix Leiter, Bond’s opposite number in the CIA, admits that Bond is playing “in a bigger league” than he is. Smiley is more subtle than his “cousins” in America. The secret at the heart of the British spy novel is that Britain is much better than it seems. The writers agonise over decline and hypocrisy, only to conclude that the British are cleverer and more civilised than anybody else. A comforting illusion wrapped in a tale of disillusionment: you can’t get more British than that.

在小说书中还替英国指明了一条恢复往日荣光的明路：在盘根错节的对外政策中占据先机。美国老表既有钱又有势，但英国老哥却懂得精打细算，可以阻止美国老表头脑发热，譬如邦德在中情局的对接人费力克斯·莱特就承认，与自己相比，邦德更镇得住大场面；史迈利在书中也比他的美国表兄弟精明的多。英国谍战小说所谓的”不传之秘“就是，英国其实比表面上要好得多，帝国的衰落和当权派的惺惺作态让作者们心碎不已，但他们却得出了英国人比其他所有人更聪明、更有文化这种结论，对帝国梦碎的事实视而不见，却沉迷于自我安慰的幻觉之中：这种做法，简直是英国的不能再英国了

Economist.com/blogs/bagehot
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Spies like us"

注：该文章在纸质版杂志中的标题是《光棍出差》（一部80年代搞笑谍战电影）