林语堂笔下的苏轼靠谱吗？
在「和民国大师，学学如何用英文写人」中我和大家分享了温源宁先生是如何用英文写人的，今天我们来看看林语堂先生在The Gay Genius中，如何向西方读者介绍李白、杜甫、苏轼三位大诗人。另外从读《苏东坡传》出发，结合How to Read a Book，和大家分享一下读传记的注意事项。
1. 李白杜甫苏轼
I think I know Su Tungpo completely because I understand him, and I understand him because I like him. The question of likinga poet is always a question of taste. I think Li Po reached a greater height of sublimity and Tu Fu reached a greater stature in his total impression as a poet great by all the standards of greatness in poetry ― freshness, naturalness, technical skill, and compassion. But without any apology, my favorite poet is Su Tungpo.
林语堂可能是苏轼的头号迷弟了。旅居国外时得带上他的作品，读了1700首他的诗、800封私人信件，疯狂为他打call。
For Western analogies, Li Po may be compared to Shelley or Byron, a literary meteor that burned itself out in a short spectacular display. Tu Fu was like Milton, a devout philosopher and a good old man, writing in a profusion of apt, learned, and archaic metaphors.
Su Tungpo was forever young. He was as a character more like Thackeray, in his politics and poetic fame more like Victor Hugo, and he had something of the exciting quality of Dr. Johnson. Somehow Dr. Johnson's gout is exciting to us even today, while Milton's blindness is not. If Johnson were a Gainsborough at the same time, and also a Pope making criticism of current politics in verse, and if he had suffered like Swift, without the growing acidity of Swift, we would have an English parallel.
为了帮助西方读者一下子get到李白、杜甫和苏轼的特点，他用了类比：
李白 = 雪莱/拜伦
杜甫 = 米尔顿
苏轼 = 约翰生+庚斯博罗+蒲柏+斯威夫特
如果你是英语专业的学生，上课没有完全睡觉的话应该对除Gainsborough(英国画家）外的几个名字都很熟悉。Samuel Johnson是英国大文豪，常被称作Dr. Johnson；Alexander Pope擅长写讽刺诗， Jonathan Swift是《格列夫游记》的作者，以讽刺文见长，英国文学课上我们读过A Modest Proposal的节选，十分精彩（在文中他建议为了解决人口过剩的问题，吃婴儿）。
苏东坡是大文豪，诗词书画全能，于是林语堂说如果大文豪Johnson能够像Gainsborough一样会画画，像Pope一样用诗歌批评政事，像Swift一样饱受磨难，但是多点乐观的话，那就和苏东坡很像了。
2. 传记怎么读？
林语堂的《苏东坡传》把苏东坡描述的是一个完美的人，相比来说，他笔下的王安石就是用来搞笑的... 传记中写得都是对的吗？我们该如何读传记？这让我想到了去年读书会读的一本书，Brad Stone写的The Everything Store，为亚马逊的老大Jeff Bezons写的传记。
The Everything Store在亚马逊官网的评论中大多都是褒奖(61%的人给了5星），其中2%的读者给了一星。这一星评论中就有Jeff Bezos的妻子MacKenzie Bezos，赤裸裸地打脸。
MacKenzie Bezos对作者差评的主要原因是书中的一些内容和事实不符，观点不够平衡。
MacKenzie Bezos也是小说家，她在评论中也提到写传记的困难之处：
One of the biggest challenges in non-fiction writing is the risk that a truthfully balanced narration of the facts will be boring, and this presents an author with some difficult choices.
这给我们如何读传记类的作品提了个醒: 传记不代表绝对真实发生的事情，相比科学来说，它更像小说。苏东坡的传记就是苏东坡的历史，我们应该用读历史的方法来读传记。How to Read a Book中提到如何读历史时提到：
A historical fact, though we may have a feeling of trust and solidity about the word, is one of the most elusive things in the world.
历史不代表就是事情的真相，而是历史学家凭借自己的经验和逻辑还原出来的“真相”，这个真相的演绎过程就免不了一些“编造”。《苏东坡传》是林语堂眼中的苏东坡，是他根据史料和作品的解读，如果他的描述是有据可依的，我们就可以说他的作品是“靠谱”的。
A good historian does not, of course, make up the past. He considers himself responsibly bound by some concept or criterion of accuracy or facts. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the historian must always make up something. He must either find a general pattern in, or impose one on, events; or he must suppose that he knows why the persons in his story did the things they did.
让故事的方式不是只有一种，为了更好的了解历史、人物，我们要读一读不同的叙述，让自己从不同的角度和层面看待历史，看看是否有biased的地方，作者这么写是不是有什么目的。
You should remember, of course, that if you wish to know the truth about a person’s life, you should read as many biographies of him as you can find, including his own account of his life, if he wrote one. Read biography as history and as the cause of history; take all autobiographies with a grain of salt; and never forget that you must not argue with a book until you fully understand what it is saying.