By Wolcott Gibbs
December 5, 1947
覃天/譯
來源：<The New Yorker> Sunday Reading: A Night at the Theatre
田納西·威廉斯的《欲望號街車》是一出令人不安，同時十分精彩的戲劇。它的精彩，很大程度上是依託於完美無缺的製作和演員們精湛的演技。對那些還沒有看過這齣戲的觀眾來說，全面地來評判這部戲是有難度的。大多數人也許在生命中的某個時刻會有這樣的經歷：我們也許會在大街上遭遇一些事件，例如沒有意義的暴行或者令人無法忍受的羞辱，這些時刻令我們無法迴避，常常在生活中的某刻閃回於腦海中。通常來說，我們都錯了，因為生活真實的一面，是斑駁不清，無法辨認的。然而它也給予我們想像的空間，特別是如果我們用文學化的方式來呈現的話，我們可以匆忙地走進家門，把腦中這些的時刻落在紙端。田納西·威廉斯的這齣戲也許就是他個人寫作這種經歷的一次成就。在戲中的最後一幕，我們看見布蘭琪在午夜時分，走出這座搖搖欲墜的公寓。她三十多歲，已不再年輕，但她身上仍葆有一絲體面和那種南方淑女的氣質。通過她的著裝和言語，人們依然能感受到這種氣質。如果把布蘭琪直接看作是一個瘋瘋癲癲的，左右有醫師和看護攙扶著的人，在她的盛裝下，似乎是多餘的。不過，很顯然觀眾也都能看出，任何對這一場景和布蘭琪瘋癲的笑的解釋——她在醫師和看護的陪伴下顯得那麼雍容高貴的樣子——她被揉碎的高雅和她的靈魂的不可言說的骯髒，都面臨著孱弱的希望以及荒謬的戲劇性的危險。我想說的是，田納西·威廉斯寫作了一出強大的，令人可信的劇本，它以低調的方式開頭，緩慢而無情地漸漸達到令人震驚的高潮。我認為這並不是一部完美的戲劇，但肯定是這個演出季最令我印象深刻的戲，它顯得比田納西·威廉斯之前的那部稱讚南方女性的《玻璃動物園》更加強大和成熟。
Streetcar Named Desire,」 by Tennessee Williams, is a fine and deeply disturbing play, almost faultless in the physical details of its production and the quality of its acting. It is hard to define it very satisfactorily for those who haven’t seen it. Most of us at one time or another have come on some incident in the street, some scene of senseless brutality or intolerable humiliation, that struck us inescapably as the last act in a life. Usually, of course, we were mistaken, since the real climaxes are almost never identifiable, but still it gave the imagination, especially if literary, something to wrestle with, and often we got home with quite a story worked out in our heads. Mr. Williams』 play might easily be the triumphant product of just such an experience. The last scene shows a woman being led away from a crumbling house in a nightmare street. She is not young, being in her middle thirties, but she is still handsome and she has a certain amount of style—Old South, as it happens, but still style—both in her manner and her dress. It would not be necessary to identify the two people with her as a doctor and an asylum attendant for anyone to see that she is quite mad. Obviously, any explanation for such a moment, for such a coincidence of smiling insanity—she is clearly delighted with her companions—and ruined elegance and unspeakable squalor, is faced with the danger of seeming either hopelessly inadequate or absurdly melodramatic. All I can say is that Mr. Williams has written a strong, wholly believable play that, starting in a low key, mounts slowly and inexorably to its shocking climax. I think it is an imperfect play, for reasons that I』ll get around to in a minute, but it is certainly the most impressive one that has turned up this season, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a sounder and more mature work than 「The Glass Menagerie,」 the author’s previous compliment to Southern womanhood.
田納西·威廉斯將《欲望號街車》的場景設置在了路西斯安娜州紐奧良的法語區，這裡似乎有著一輛「欲望號街車」，還有一輛名為「公墓號」的街車以及「伊利恩地段」，這片區域人們的生活仿佛天生和藝術有著緊密的聯繫。舞臺上，我們看見的是有著兩個房間的公寓。它屬於斯坦利和斯黛拉。斯坦利是一個做著小生意的波蘭人，而他懷孕的妻子斯黛拉則是一個來自南方的貴族的後代，是一個美麗的姑娘。很難相信，有比喬·米辛納 Jo Mielziner （美國著名戲劇舞美，燈光師，被稱為「百老匯黃金時代最成功的布景設計師」。）設計的場景更為準確的了：這些場景顯得可怖，陰森，呈現出斯坦利性格暴戾而腐爛的一面。（主布景在一樓，而在舞臺的一側，一座旋轉樓梯通向另一座公寓，我們在舞臺上看見的可能是最不受拘束的一對新婚夫婦）；他們公寓的這兩個房間之間並沒有門，只有窗簾的分隔；房間裡的家具也顯得稀少和破敗；透過窗戶或者是那道公寓外的牆，可以看見外面悽涼的街道。喬·米辛納設計的場景絕沒有僅僅停留在舞臺提示的字面上，而使場景顯得更加的立體了。當夜幕來臨的時候，那種令人壓抑的感受溢於言表。
Mr. Williams has placed 「A Streetcar Named Desire」 in the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, where it seems there is or was just such a car, as well as one labelled 「Cemetery」 and a neighborhood known as the Elysian Fields, life in this case being singularly obliging to art. The set represents the two-room apartment occupied by Stanley Kowalski, a young Pole somehow cryptically connected with the automobile business, and his pregnant bride, Stella, a fine, highly sexed girl, though the daughter of that most exhausted of all aristocracies, an old Southern family. It is possible that some scenic artist somewhere has contrived a more gruesome interior than the decaying horror that Jo Mielziner has executed for the Kowalskis, but I doubt it. It is on the ground floor (outside, a circular iron staircase winds up to another apartment, containing perhaps the least inhibited married couple ever offered on the stage); there is no door between the two rooms, only a curtain; the furnishings are sparse and dreadful; the desolate street outside can be seen through the windows, or, rather, through the walls, since Mr. Mielziner’s design is by no means literal. It is a wonderful effect and, as the evening wears along, oppressive almost beyond words.
一個春天的早晨，斯黛拉的姐姐布蘭琪來到了這座公寓。她是一個有些奇怪的女人，然而在一開始觀眾也很難認為她的絮絮叨叨和輕微的歇斯底裡的行為有著任何不合理之處，她常常會偷喝一口威士忌。這是田納西·威廉斯從《玻璃動物園》中母親這一角色身上沿襲的習慣。斯坦利公寓中正在進行的一場粗鄙而喧鬧的撲克牌局，使布蘭琪身上的高貴和時尚氣質望而卻步，然而這也不能和布蘭琪第一次見到斯坦利時的驚恐相比。這是一個令人有些難以接受的角色，這得益於劇本精準的描寫和演員生動的演繹，斯坦利的舉動完全的禽獸般的，頭腦是未被教育過的，是充滿了骯髒和暴力的一個人，而他的身形也像猿猴一樣顯得有些扭曲和畸形。由於斯坦利對布蘭琪舉止的鄙夷，她慢慢意識到自己不顧一切的偽裝在他的面前是不利的。當布蘭琪第一次出現在斯坦利面前時，斯坦利就開始懷疑她身上骯髒的秘密了，當她開始用自己那種精緻而虛偽的時尚風格來影響斯黛拉的時候，他殘忍地把布蘭琪拉到了燈下，為了看清她虛偽和老去的面孔。
One spring morning, Stella’s older sister, Blanche, turns up at this hovel. She is a strange girl, but at first there is nothing visibly wrong with her except a slight hysteria, which she tries to fight down with frequent surreptitious drinks of whiskey, and that grotesque and terrible refinement that Mr. Williams has carried over from his portrait of the mother in 「The Glass Menagerie.」 She is fashionably appalled by the Kowalski apartment and the goings on in it, which include an incredibly seedy, brawling poker game, but this is nothing compared with the dismay she experiences at her first sight of her sister’s husband. This is understandable, since, thanks to a peculiar combination of script and casting, this character emerges as almost wholly subhuman—illiterate, dirty, violent, and even somehow with a suggestion of physical deformity, an apelike quality, about him. In addition to the personal disgust he inspires in her, Blanche is slowly forced to realize that her desperate pretending is no good with him; from the moment she comes in, he suspects the unbearable truth about her, and when she seems to be infecting her sister with her stylish ways, he drags it out into the light, with contemptuous brutality.
田納西·威廉斯的寫作才華讓布蘭琪過往的經歷立刻顯得可信了，使這個人物在舞臺上立住了。布蘭琪和斯黛拉都在一棟大房子裡面長大，在回憶中，那更像是一座「腐爛的樓房」，她們把它稱為「貝爾裡夫莊園」。和斯黛拉一樣，布蘭琪也是已婚的女人，但是那段婚姻卻是簡短和悲劇的，他的丈夫——年輕的詩人艾倫是一名同性戀者，當十七歲的布蘭琪發現了他的性取向之後，他不堪羞辱，開槍自殺了。之後，布蘭琪回到了貝爾裡夫莊園，在那裡看著父母和瑪格麗特的離世，後來債權人收回了莊園，布蘭琪去了名為勞雷爾的鎮上，在一所中學裡教書，同時，在這段時間裡，因為一種瘋狂的對死亡的恐懼，布蘭琪開始了和多名男性的交往。她在勞雷爾的經歷是以引誘一名青少年結束的（年輕和愛情，在布蘭琪看來，這都是死亡的對立面，許多分析人士也會認為布蘭琪犯有花痴症。），隨之而來的，就是她被當地的中學開除，被勞雷爾鎮掃地出門。按照斯坦利的說法：「她在勞雷爾出名地像美國總統」。
It is something of a tribute to Mr. Williams』 talent that the story of Blanche’s past can seem even momentarily credible. The two girls were brought up in an old house, apparently the conventional 「decaying mansion,」 which he has chosen to call Belle Rêve, though they pronounce It 「Belle Reeve.」 Like Stella, Blanche married, but it was a brief and tragic escape, since the boy was a homosexual who shot himself after his seventeen-year-old bride had discovered him in a situation that could hardly be misinterpreted. She went back to Belle Rêve, where she watched the awful, lingering deaths of three old women, and then, when the creditors had taken the house, went on to a town called Laurel, where she taught school and gradually, in a sick—or quite possibly, by this time, an insane—revulsion against death, took up with many men. The Laurel episode ended with her seduction of an adolescent boy (youth plus love, I gather, seemed to her the absolute antithesis of death, though, of course, some authorities might have diagnosed simple nymphomania) and with her expulsion from the town, where, in her brother-in-law’s sardonic phrase, she was getting to be somewhat better known than the President of the United States.
當布蘭琪來到妹妹斯黛拉的公寓時，她為自己這破碎的過去編織了一套俗麗和惹人憐憫的說辭，她讓人以為自己有著許多愛慕者，這些人都羨慕和尊敬她。但是斯坦利無情地撕下了她的這些偽裝——並不是出於道德上的憤怒感，而是純粹出於野蠻。斯坦利那些下流的玩笑讓布蘭琪已經不堪忍受了。斯坦利還使自己的朋友米奇——一個可憐但又真誠老實的人接近了布蘭琪。米奇先是對布蘭琪的過往深信不疑，對她一見傾心，然而知道真相後輕蔑而鄙夷地離開了布蘭琪。當她試圖和妹妹斯黛拉傾訴這一切的時候，斯黛拉難以相信，並且繼續著自己的婚姻，最終，斯黛拉同意把布蘭琪送到收容所裡去。這大概就是我能總結的這部戲的梗概。這也許尚不能總結田納西·威廉斯在這個他自己建立起的美麗而絕望的世界中試圖表達的思想，但是這些對於觀眾理解他主要想說的內容，已經足夠了。
By the time Blanche comes to her sister’s apartment, she has manufactured a gaudy and pathetic substitute past for herself, full of rich and handsome suitors, who respectfully admire her mind, but Kowalski tears that down ruthlessly, without any special moral indignation but with a savage, obscene humor that is infinitely more torturing. He also gives her secret away to the one man—a poor specimen, but kind and honest—who might conceivably have saved her and then takes her, casually and contemptuously, himself. The end comes when she tries to tell this to her sister, who, unable to believe it and still go on with her marriage, consents to having her committed to an asylum. This is, I’m afraid, a pretty poor synopsis—there is no way, for instance, to convey the effect Mr. Williams achieves in his last act of a mind desperately retreating into the beautiful, crazy world it has built for itself—but perhaps it is enough to give you the general idea.
我對這部戲的意見可能很容易顯得挑剔。整體來說，田納西·威廉斯在寫作這部戲劇的時候，一定是帶著情感的波瀾的，他對于貝爾裡夫莊園和紐奧良的法語區所建立起來的溫和而浪漫的聯繫，也許會感到內疚。對於美國南方舊有的和現在的生活知之甚少的我來說，是在很難想像出斯黛拉和布蘭琪先輩們住過的房子是什麼樣子。除去在劇本中的提示，斯黛拉居住的這所公寓就像愛倫·坡筆下的「厄舍古屋」，然而在威廉斯的筆下，斯黛拉則是一個漂亮，得體，富有教養的女孩，這和她居住的環境卻沒有顯得不協調。在簡陋的環境下，她體內流淌著的，來自家族的貴族血液，似乎顯得有些唐突和令人不可置信。田納西·威廉斯試圖去做的，是把斯坦利描述成一個具有巨大性吸引力的人，即便舞臺上的種種都在阻礙著他如此表現。斯坦利的吸引力是如此強大，以至於斯黛拉都幻想著彩色的風車，而這樣的描寫是不夠的。某種程度上來說，這對布蘭琪來說也是一樣。無論在戲中，她在過去遭受過多少壓力，她的墮落似乎顯得過於迅速和徹底了.她從上層社會墮入社會低端卻顯得十分生動而真實。就像我說的，這些轉變的發生，尤其在南方會顯得十分可信。然而我也十分懷疑田納西·威廉斯為了迎合這部戲中的主題，將生活的矛盾過於激化了。另一點我想抱怨的是（布蘭琪從勞雷爾來到紐奧良時，她和她那滿滿一箱奢華而貴重的珠寶首飾，還有那些珠光寶氣的衣服，剛剛被勞雷爾的廉價旅館掃地出門，這使我感到有些困惑，但我決定不再糾結於此）， 布蘭琪腦中那輛載著欲望和死亡的街車和悲劇衝突間，持續存在的文學類比。田納西·威廉斯作為一名優秀的劇作家，好像過於為布蘭琪的神秘過往而費心了。《欲望號街車》是一部卓越，令人難以舒緩的戲劇，它講述的是一個女人逐漸奔潰的過程，或者你也可以理解為，社會層面上的崩潰。對於作者筆下那些人物，他們極力想掩飾他們思想性的缺失，而正因為如此，他們身上那種虛偽的詩意似乎也就顯得多餘了。
The reservations I have may easily be captious. Principally, it seems to me that in the emotional surge of writing his play Mr. Williams has been guilty of establishing a too facile and romantic connection between Belle Rêve and the Vieux Carré. Not knowing much about the South, old or new, it was hard for me to visualize the girls』 ancestral home, except as something vaguely resembling the House of Usher, but Stella is written and played as a pretty, reasonably cultivated girl, in no sense unbalanced, and her abrupt and cheerful descent into the lower depths of New Orleans seems rather incredible. Mr. Williams attempts, though the evidence on the stage is against him, to portray Kowalski as a man of enormous sexual attraction, so that the very sight of him causes her to see colored pinwheels, but even that is scarcely enough. It is the same, to some extent, with Blanche; whatever the forces working against her may have been, her degradation is much too rapid and complete, her fall from whatever position she may have occupied in a top level of society to the bottom of the last level a good deal more picturesque than probable. As I say, it is conceivable that these transitions do occur in the South, but it is my suspicion that Mr. Williams has adjusted life fairly drastically to fit his special theme. The only other thing I might complain about (Blanche’s arrival from Laurel, where apparently she had just been tossed out of a cheap hotel, with a trunkful of pretty expensive-looking jewelry and clothes perplexed me some, but I’m willing to let it go) is the somewhat sustained and literary analogy that keeps turning up between the streetcars named for passion and death and the tragic conflict in the heroine’s mind. Mr. Williams seems to me much too good a playwright now to bother his head with these ladies』-club mystifications. 「A Streetcar Named Desire」 is a brilliant, implacable play about the disintegration of a woman, or, if you like, of a society; it has no possible need for the kind of pseudo-poetic decoration that more vacant authors so often employ to disguise their fundamental lack of thought.
總而言之，我得對沒有給演員留下過多的讚揚之詞感到抱歉，儘管上帝全部知道他們是多麼優秀。當然，導演伊利亞·卡贊值得我能想到的所有讚揚。傑西卡·坦迪為布蘭琪這一角色注入了令人驚喜和厚重的氣質。而馬龍·白蘭度飾演的斯坦利，就像之前劇中暗示過的一樣，就像一頭禽獸。雖然他確切地認為紐奧良法語區可怖的生活與貝爾裡夫莊園截然不同，但是他身上仍然充滿了野蠻的氣息。卡爾·摩爾登飾演的米奇——布蘭琪的追求者，在劇中那些考驗著觀眾聽力的段落，使這個角色多了一份帶著個人尊嚴和憐憫的酷兒氣質。而飾演斯黛拉的金·杭特，穿著精緻，在這個家裡卻受著各種限制，惹人同情。而舞臺上的其他人——這一荒涼街區的那些居民們，既讓我覺得可怕，卻也心生敬畏。
After all that, I’m sorry to say there isn’t much room left for the compliments to the cast, though God knows they and, of course, Elia Kazan, their director, deserve all I can offer them. Briefly, Jessica Tandy gives a superb, steadily rising performance as Blanche; Marlon Brando, as Kowalski, is, as hinted previously, almost pure ape (his sister-in-law’s description of him as 「common」 entertained me quite a lot, there in the dark), and though he undoubtedly emphasizes the horrors of the Vieux Carré as opposed to Belle Rêve, it is a brutally effective characterization; Karl Malden, as Blanche’s unhappy suitor, gets a queer, touching blend of dignity and pathos into what you might call one of those difficult, listening parts; and Kim Hunter, as Stella, is sympathetic and restrained and very decorative indeed. The others, representing the inhabitants of that abandoned district, all seemed admirable and awful to me. ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the December 13, 1947, issue.
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