《修道院的小船》

文/保罗·克劳瑟译/林小审订/爱艺

《修道院的小船》

文/保罗·克劳瑟译/林小审订/爱艺

这幅画（布面油画，59厘米×36.5厘米，约1880年）中的人物明显是修女，正因这一点，其象征意义远比马拉姆拍卖公司所起的那个名字复杂得多。该画背景为一处真实所在，即坐落在肯特郡梅德斯通附近梅德韦河岸边的艾尔斯福德修道院。该修道院曾是加尔默罗修士会所在地，直到1538年被查封，当时亨利八世颁令没收修道院。此后，修道院转归私人，先后由不同的家族掌管，直到1949年才重回加尔默罗修士会手中。休斯以其丰富的想象力将这座建筑重新解读为修女院——而它从来不曾是。［图见本期封底］

The iconography1iconography象征手法。of the picture (oil on canvas, 36.5cm x 59cm, c. 1880) is much more complex than the Mallams title2这幅画2008年由马拉姆拍卖公司卖出时的名称是River landscape with fi gure in traditional dress looking across towards a cloaked and hooded fi gure in a punt with cottage beyond。suggests, if only because the figures in it are clearly nuns. The actual setting of the picture is Aylesford Priory on the banks of the River Medway near Maidstone in Kent. Aylesford Priory had been a seat of the Carmelite3〈天主教〉（12世纪创立于叙利亚卡迈尔山的）白袍修士。Friars until 1538, when it was suppressed as part of King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries44亨利八世在位期间，促使议会颁布一系列法令推行宗教改革，其中包括废除修道院制度，从而使英国教会脱离罗马教廷。. Thereafter it was in private hands (under various different families) until 1949, when the Carmelites re-acquired it. Hughes offers an imaginative reinterpretation of the building as something it never was—a nunnery.

[2]当前这幅作品或与1874年在英国皇家美术学院展出的一幅同名叙事画有关。人们确实产生了种种有意思的疑问，比如该作是否是早期那幅画作的续作。早期作品展现的是一个悲戚的家庭目送女儿乘小船摆渡到对岸，进入修女院。当前画作中，一名年轻的修女拿着篮子站在河岸边，等待另一名修女撑平底船过河接她。修女院外观也与早期那幅大不相同，外墙上攀爬的植物如今长得极为茂盛，遮盖了原先的入口和几扇窗户。这一不同引发了诸多解读。例如，有人认为现作只是展现了涉及同一所“修女院”的某个场景，因为这很可能是休斯在前作完成多年后所画，所以植被变得更加茂密。换句话说，该作呈现的场景取自同一座虚构的修女院，而并没有更深的叙事意图。也有人认为，休斯所要传达的内容是：等待摆渡的年轻修女就是前作被送入修女院成为初学修女的那个女孩。她等候之处就是前作中她的家人站立的地方，现作以此暗示她已与其他修女建立起家人般的姐妹情谊。

[2] The present work may be related to a narrative picture with the same title exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874.Interesting questions arise, indeed, as to whether it is a narrative sequel to the earlier picture. The earlier work presents a sad family watching as one of their daughters is ferried away to enter a nunnery. In the present picture, a young nun with a basket waits on the banks of the river, as a punt5punt方头平底船（用篙撑）。(steered by another nun) approaches to ferry6ferry渡运；摆渡。her across. The nunnery has a very different appearance from the earlier work, in that the vegetation7vegetation（尤指某地或环境的）植被；草木。growing on its walls has now become extremely dense, with the old entrance and several windows no longer visible. This invites a number of interpretations. It may be, for example, that the present picture merely represents a scene involving the same‘nunnery’, but—since it was presumably done by Hughes a number of years after he had done the earlier painting—the foliage had become more overgrown. It is a scene from the same imagined nunnery, in other words, but with no narrative intention over and above8over and above除……以外。that. Alternatively, it may be that Hughes intended that the young nun waiting to be ferried is the same girl who was taken into the nunnery as a novice in the earlier picture. Since she is waiting at the same place occupied by her family in the earlier work, the implication is that she has now found a new family in the sisterhood.

〔〕

〔〕

[3]有一种解读更加深入，似乎也更为阴郁：现作中平底船上弓腰的修女就是前作中那个女孩多年之后的样子。如今，在河对岸等候她的只有一个人，那是同一修女会的姐妹。她原本的家人早已成为前世的记忆。□

[3] There is a further—somewhat darker—reading. It is that the stooped9stoop弯腰。nun in the punt is the girl from the original picture, shown to us many years later. Now the only person who awaits her on the other side of the river is another member of the same order10order（按照一定的规范生活的）宗教团体；（尤指）修会。. Her original family have long gone into the past.

The Convent Boat

ByPaul Crowther