《李尔王》——暴风雨中的父亲
English
King Lear is the tragedy that most consistently refuses the consolations that tragedy typically offers. In Hamlet, the prince dies with a cause completed and a truth established. In Othello, the terrible clarity of the ending carries a kind of terrible justice. In Macbeth, the destruction of the tyrant restores a moral order that his ambition had disrupted. King Lear offers none of this. Goodness is destroyed. The innocent die. The survivors are exhausted and diminished. And the universe, as the play presents it, is entirely indifferent to the difference between virtue and its absence.
中文
《李尔王》是最一贯地拒绝给予悲剧通常所提供的慰藉的悲剧。在《哈姆雷特》中，王子在完成一项使命、确立一个真相后死去。在《奥赛罗》中，结局可怕的清晰携带着某种可怕的正义。在《麦克白》中，暴君的毁灭恢复了一个被他的野心所破坏的道德秩序。《李尔王》不提供这些。善良被摧毁。无辜者死去。幸存者疲惫不堪、心灵残缺。而这个宇宙，正如剧中所呈现的那样，对美德与美德的缺席之间的差异完全漠然。
The Story
故事
English
An aging king decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters according to which one can most eloquently declare her love for him. Goneril and Regan produce extravagant declarations and receive their portions. Cordelia, the youngest and most genuinely loving, finds she cannot perform what she truly feels. She loves her father according to her bond — no more, no less — and says so plainly. Lear, his vanity wounded, banishes her and divides her share between her sisters.
What follows is the systematic destruction of everything Lear believed: that his daughters’ words corresponded to their feelings; that a king retains his dignity when he surrenders his power; that love is reliable, that the universe is just, that old age is owed reverence. Goneril and Regan reduce him, step by step — first his retinue, then his shelter, then his sense of self — until he is wandering on a heath in a storm, accompanied only by his Fool and a disguised nobleman, his mind beginning to give way.
Cordelia returns with a French army. She is captured. She is killed — offstage, quietly, by hanging. Lear enters carrying her body. He cannot accept that she is dead. He dies believing, or hoping, or unable to determine whether he believes or hopes, that she still breathes. It is an ending that has troubled audiences for four centuries: why must Cordelia die? The play offers no answer.
中文
一位年迈的国王决定按照三个女儿各自能够最雄辩地宣告对他的爱来瓜分王国。高纳里尔和里根发表了奢华的宣言，获得了她们的份额。最小的、也是最真诚地爱着父亲的考狄利娅，发现自己无法表演她真正的感受。她按照她的本分爱她的父亲——不多也不少——并坦白地说了出来。李尔，自尊受伤，将她驱逐，把她的份额分给了两个姐姐。
接下来是对李尔所相信的一切的系统性摧毁：他的女儿们的话语与她们的感受相符；一个国王在放弃权力时仍保有尊严；爱是可靠的，宇宙是公正的，老年理应受到尊敬。高纳里尔和里根一步步削减他——先是他的随从，然后是他的庇护所，然后是他的自我感——直到他在暴风雨中的荒野上游荡，只有他的弄臣和一个伪装的贵族陪伴，他的理智开始崩溃。
考狄利娅带着一支法国军队归来。她被俘。她被杀——在幕后，悄无声息，被绞死。李尔抱着她的尸体走上舞台。他无法接受她已死去。他死去时相信——或者希望——或者无法判断他是相信还是希望——她还在呼吸。这是一个困扰了观众四百年的结局：为什么考狄利娅必须死？剧情没有给出答案。
Nothing — The Word at the Center
「无」——处于中心的词
English
The word nothing appears more often in King Lear than in any other Shakespeare play. It enters in the first scene, when Cordelia answers Lear’s demand for a declaration of love with a single word: nothing. Lear responds: nothing will come of nothing. The word then haunts the entire play — the nothing that Lear’s kingdom becomes, the nothing that remains of his authority, the nothing that the Fool repeatedly points to as the truth of Lear’s situation, the nothing that Lear finally confronts in Cordelia’s death.
What the play asks is whether there is anything left when everything is taken away. Lear’s answer, at the end, is unresolved: he dies in anguished uncertainty about whether Cordelia lives. Some read the ending as containing a moment of grace; others as the play’s final refusal of comfort. Shakespeare arranged it so that both readings are possible, and neither can be definitively excluded.
中文
「无」这个词在《李尔王》中出现的频率高于莎士比亚任何其他作品。它在第一幕登场，当考狄利娅以单独一个词「无」回答李尔对爱的宣告的要求时。李尔回应：无中生不出有。这个词随后萦绕整部剧——李尔的王国所变成的虚无，他的权威所剩的虚无，弄臣反复指向的作为李尔处境之真相的虚无，李尔在考狄利娅之死中最终面对的虚无。
剧情所追问的是，当一切都被剥夺后是否还有什么剩下。李尔的答案，在最后，是未解决的：他在对考狄利娅是否还活着的痛苦不确定中死去。一些人解读这个结局为包含了恩典的时刻；另一些人则将其解读为剧情对慰藉的最终拒绝。莎士比亚将两种解读都安排为可能，且都无法被确定排除。
A Note on Cross-Cultural Resonance
跨文化回响
English
The theme of aging parents abandoned by ungrateful children is familiar in many traditions, including the Chinese virtue of filial piety (xiao). What distinguishes King Lear is its refusal to reward filial virtue or punish its violation. In traditional Chinese ethics, virtue and its opposite ultimately receive their appropriate outcomes. Lear presents a world where this cannot be assumed. The question it raises is not whether Cordelia deserved better — she clearly did — but whether the universe is the kind of place where deserving determines outcome. This question remains open.
中文
年迈父母被忘恩负义的子女抛弃的主题，在许多传统中都存在，包括中国的孝道。李尔王的独特之处在于它拒绝奖励孝道或惩罚其违背。在中国传统伦理中，美德及其对立面最终获得应得的结局。李尔呈现了一个无法假定这一点的世界。它所提出的问题不是考狄利娅是否理应得到更好的结局——她显然理应如此——而是宇宙是否是那种由应得决定结局的地方。这个问题仍然是开放的。